Hi
I am from west central Indiana, I commute to Indy for work.
I fish mostly in farm ponds and a few creeks and rivers in my area as well as some reclaimed coal strip pits.
I also like to go trout fishing when I can. That's usually either in Indiana (far from where I live) or in Missouri but I hope to expand my horizons this year now that my kids are grown (but not out of the house just yet). I am hoping to get to Idaho in the next couple of years and maybe Wyoming or Montana THIS year.
I retired from my first career as a U.S. Air Force Senior Non Commissioned Officer and was lucky enough to get to fish several places while stationed overseas.
I also was stationed in Oklahoma (twice) which is how I came to love Fly Fishing as well as getting introduced to the Missouri/Ozark region fishing.
Fishing in Oklahoma itself can certainly be quite awesome as well. I feel like I have a "million" miles on my butt from paddling my old Fishmaster float tube around on small lakes in Oklahoma. Lots of great memories there! In fact, I am going there in a few weeks to visit family. Fishing may be a bit early but we're gonna do it anyway.
I caught a very nice smallie there last year from a boat at Lake of the Arbuckles. We were fishing (or trying to fish anyway) with "gear" for crappie off of some points and didn't have any luck for several hours. I asked my brother to move the boat to a cove and then I got the fly rod out. He laughed and said "you'll never catch anything on that in this wind." (Wind is EPIC at times in Oklahoma. I am sure others on this board that live anyplace west of the Mississippi can relate)
I told my brother "I am tying on a beadhead Olive Woolly Bugger SO OF COURSE I WILL catch something, probably within a couple of minutes in fact. It's a foregone conclusion that I will catch a fish! " (I also cast an earnest scowl in his piscatorial blaspheming direction as well)
Sure enough, I pulled some line off the reel and let it down on the lake so the wave action would pull it away from the boat and then I made ONE low to the water sidearm cast and let the fly sink for about 20 seconds. As soon as I started stripping it back in it went THUMP once and then started going sideways HARD. It made enough noise going through the water and pulling on the guides on my rod that he turned around and looked - very surprised in fact! (or maybe it was me going "Wooo hoooo" loud enough in the back of the boat that they could hear me in Dallas?) I caught a very nice smallie and no one was more thrilled than my brother.
Anyway, it was a great day with my best friend (brother) and good memories. Looking forward to making some more in a few weeks.
Sorry for the novel
JD