I had to pay for all them free walnuts somehow. A.Wannabe Travelwriter had graciously extended gleaning rights to anything I could find on his grounds – and likely had second thoughts after looking out his kitchen window to see me stooped over vacuuming his estate.

Walnut “grabbling” is that way, all you see of the practitioner is his “southern half” bent over reaching for grounded goody, unsettling at best – and enough to despoil your morning coffee.

He tried the traditional farmer option; vicious dogs bursting out of the barn intent on blood – I let them wind up to full gallop before breaking their charge with the rustle of cellophane. By the time I’d exposed yesterday’s Tri-tip – I had a couple Walnut-sniffing-dogs, deaf to their master’s commandments, and hell on walnut detection – so long as I first found them and threw them.

I suppose an all expenses paid exotic angling trip was owed, so I took him to a section of the Little Stinking he didn’t own…

Igneous Rock had arrived earlier – so we followed his muddy footprints seeing what fish we could scare into submission. Nothing stirred, early morning with overcast skies – and nothing was biting.

I put TravelWriter into a likely looking pool and fiddled with the second prototype of the Giant Red-Arsed Cray (working title); the physics were perfect – I’d altered the pattern significantly and swapped the hook to the Togen “creepy-crawly” flavor.

I’d added a “turnip” of spun doubled-over yarn at the tail to keep the claws separated, altered the claw shape with “looped” boa yarn (makes a better, bigger claw) and added a loop on the top of the fly to simulate the big fan-tail that dominate a crayfish’s swimming motion.

The Togen hook makes the fly flop over and ride perfectly – although 25 turns of 2 amp is noticeably heavy when casting – the fly sinks nearly a foot per second, legs flopping wildly – and really responds to a twitch of the rod tip. The marabou quality of the yarn makes the entire fly undulate when motion is applied.

It didn’t wake anything up in the first pool, but neither did anything else we threw.

We caught up with older brother further downstream. I’d brought three of the big Red bastards (also working title) – and was husbanding them carefully, one was already gone, due to instream obstruction. I was using the smaller olive variation and managed to hit two nice fish in a pile of underwater tree limbs.

Igneous reported he’d landed a monster smallmouth in the 18″-20″ inch range on the Little Stinking Olive – I immediately demanded photographs knowing his lying, conniving, base nature.

It was me that got served, as he had proof plenty. Now I’ve got to call and explain to Ma how older bro is to receive my share of the baked goods until I can catch something bigger.

I may have been hasty about cutting the deal, I was backpedaling faster than a Wall Street banker, but I needed the lout to show me where he’d caught that monster.

While we were dickering over price, TravelWriter hooked up with another massive fish – and I did my best to coach him about camera angle, extended arm (to distort size), proper fierce scowl, and vengeful predator pose.

The picture would have been really good but his forefinger caught me in the eye – and reflexively I snapped the shutter…

We’ll have to work on the scowl more – unless it appears the angler is angry, it lacks the “money shot” appeal.

Another shot of Igneous’s monster; the Little Stinking Olive is about three inches long, giving you an idea of the girth on this beast.

For now, Olive > Red. Two of the three samples met tree branches and I saved the last for duplication. The physics trial is complete; fly rides true, weight needs to be reduced so it’s better behaved during casting, and I’ll update the Olive with the leg dividing “turnip” of spun yarn to boost its movement, and change the claw style.

I’ve got a date with Goliath above, I figure my eye and his lip heal at about the same rate.