Faces In The Stream: Mike Medin

I first had the pleasure of meeting Mike when he camped next to me on the UCCTU Fall Trip in Brevard, NC.  After kindly lending me a fuel cannister to finish cooking breakfast, we fished the Davidson River together and enjoyed a pleasant weekend full of friends, flies and fish. Mike recently volunteered to represent the Chapter at a Bass Pro Shops event, and he has been active in a number of UCCTU events.  Below is Mike's story, in his own words.

Growing up in Minnesota, as a teenager I enjoyed ice-fishing for crappies in the winter and trolling for northern pike in the summer.  But with college (University of Minnesota, undergraduate, and Stanford University, graduate, majoring in electrical engineering) and a career in R&D, I didn't touch a rod again for forty years.  Intrigued by the Orvis catalogs featuring fly fishing gear, I talked my wife, Lynne, into spending our anniversary weekend a few years ago taking an Orvis fly-fishing course at Smithgall Woods. After gradually accumulating our gear, we did our inaugural fishing excursion at Dukes Creek, thereby beginning a long sequence of getting "skunked".  With some good mentoring and studying fishing literature, I've gradually improved but still consider myself to be a novice at fly fishing. The Chattahoochee River (Jones Bridge and Island Ford, primarily) is my favorite place to fish for trout because of its shear convenience, natural beauty, and variety of fishing situations.  I also enjoy float-fishing for bass and bream in the subdivision lake behind my house.  I haven't made any "destination" fishing trips, but sometime I'd like to try fishing for salmon in Alaska.  I'm not into fly-tying yet.  Rick Heneghan encouraged me to join him in attending TU meetings to expand our knowledge of the sport and awareness of fishing opportunities in this part of the state.  I find the presentations, like the recent one on Toccoa River fishing, to be most informative.  I've also enjoyed the fall fishing/camping trips, as the Davidson River and Pisgah National Forest has long been our family's favorite outdoor vacation destination.

My fishing tale is about the fish in the photo.  While fishing a seam in the Chattooga River, I hooked this good-sized brown, but it broke the tippet knot as I was retrieving it.  After re-rigging with the same type of fly, I began casting in the same seam and, lo and behold, it took it again (I doubt there were two trout this size in the same spot).  This time I worked the fish across the main flow more carefully and was able to net the fish -- the largest I have caught in the wild. Fortunately, I was fishing with someone who had a SLR camera to get the photo.

-Tom Hayes & Mike Medin