So it's been a year? Wow, we suck...

Well first off, I would like to apologize to what few followers we had for our lack of posts over the past year. Lack of motivation on my part as the "Editor-in-Chief" is who's mostly to blame. I am gonna try to resurrect the blog and keep it up to date to the best of my ability. All this blog reading I have done has provided me with much needed motivation to start posting again.

Lots of things have happened over the past year for the CTD crew. We have had several great trips as well as a few tough ones. We got to check out a few new fisheries this year and revisited some old favorites. The following post is just a summary of how CTDs year went....

First off, I made a very beneficial purchase to open up more options of fishing for us. I bought a drift boat. I had been kicking around buying one for a couple years but never could pull the trigger due to other things taking financial priority. Well, we were finally in a position to do it and I pulled the trigger. I picked up a 2008 Clackacraft Headhunter skiff from Clackacraft for a good price just under a year ago and have never looked back. Absolutely love my boat. Don't know why I waited so long to buy one. It opens up so many new avenues for fishing. No longer do we hope and pray that they don't generate water on the tailwaters so we can fish, now it doesn't matter what they do. We have been able to extend our range on other rivers that we were only able to wade before. Basically...its awesome.

As some of you know, we have a yearly tradition where we travel to the Current River to camp and fish the Blue Ribbon waters below the state park. Last year was our 3rd year which officially made it a "tradition" in our books. The fishing this year wasn't the best we ever experienced but we did stick a couple of good browns and we were able to do some headhunting (dry fly fishing) on Sunday afternoon as caddis started coming off. We had some great camp food as always and caught some fish. Plus it rained on us like always. The trip was a success...

Another place that is a normal haunt for the CTD crew that always keeps us on our toes and our fishing ego in check is Crane Creek. My 2nd favorite place to wade fish in MO behind the Current, hands down. Its a wild place that always presents a challenge to even the most seasoned fisherman. This spring we were able to get some redemption on Crane for Donny and Cole since their first Crane experience wasn't that great. We caught a ton of fish on both trips. I was able to finally break the 18" mark on both trips with two beautiful McClouds. All in all, our year on Crane was amazing.

In the past 2 years, CTD has began to really chase another prized game fish in the Ozarks. Some call it a brownie, bronzeback, or a smallie....whatever you wanna call it, the smallmouth bass has totally consumed the crew from April till September the past couple of years. They are just a bad ass fish to chase on the fly. We have had some great wade and float trips chasing them. We fished Elk River and Indian Creek numerous times this past year and have came to know these fisheries as our "homewaters" for smallies. We also did an overnight float trip on the Kings River in Arkansas in June that was a huge success. We covered 12 miles of some of the most pristine smallmouth water in the state, all the while avoiding snakes, drunks, crazy locals, and tornado like weather. It was awesome. As I'm writing this, we are all going crazy waiting for smallie season to really kick off.

Later in the summer, the CTD crew caught wind of some epic hopper fishing on the White River below Bull Shoals dam in Arkansas. In years past, we never really were able to take advantage of this due to the generation patterns for that time of year which is basically 24/7 heavy generation which means you need a boat. Well, with the addition of the drift boat, we decided to give the hopper bite a shot on the White this year in hopes of catching some big browns on big foam nasties! Needless to say, it was a big learning curve for us as the White River under 15k-20k CFS is a totally different river than at low water which was all we were familiar with. The first trip was sub par at best with just a few fish to hand as well as blistering July temps that made it miserable to fish. We took several trips to the White to chase fish on hoppers and each time we learned more about the river so in turn, the fishing was better. I cant freaking wait for hopper season to start back up....

The rest of the CTD crew also made the pilgrimage to the Current River in the fall which is also about to become a tradition for us. They made it a 3 day trip this year which allowed them to cover more water in the lower stretches of the Blue Ribbon water. Fishing was decent but the time around the campfire was nothing short of epic from what I was told. Some mullet wigs were involved in a few shenanigans along with the normal BS being thrown around the campfire. A good trip indeed...

All in all, the CTD crew had a pretty damn good year as far as fishing goes. We have already taken a few great trips so far this year that I plan to write about in the coming days. We were able to put some big fish in the drift boats, catch some nice wild rainbows in new waters, and have really set the stage to have an epic year of fishing. We will see how it plays out....

Until next time...keep chasing the dream...