Fishing partners are important. Mike (who is married to my wife’s cousin) and I had never fished together before but had played poker many times and attended parties and family gatherings plenty of times. Saturday we are at such a gathering and decided that we should go fishing early the next day at a lake across the street from his house. Mike had been into fly fishing way before me but had not been out in quite a long time.
5:30 AM the next day wearing sweatshirts in August we loaded up our fly rods, coffee and buttered rolls and paddled into the fog. We hit super fiesty bluegills right out of the gate and eventually lost count of how many fish we caught. A few Crappie and a small Largemouth made it even more sweet. Mike kept saying, “this was a good idea” as we floated around a completely empty body of water. That night Mike sent me a text with a pic of a fish saying he was “addicted, thanks”. That’s a good dude to go fishing with.