Photo of the Day: Boys on the Road for Huge Trout

Written by: Will Lillard, Lillard Fly Fishing Expeditions

Connor (right) helped his buddy Brendan land this gorgeous brown trout on Arkansas’s Dry Run Creek.
Photo courtesy Lillard Fly Fishing Expeditions

Last summer, during our North Carolina Blue Ridge Fly Fishing Camp, Connor caught his first trout over twenty inches. I helped him land the fish, and then told him that if he ever got the chance, he should check out Dry Run Creek in Arkansas before he got too old. (Dry Run is open only to anglers under 16 years old and those who are disabled.) In the last two summers that Connor has been to our fly-fishing camps he fished as long and as hard as anybody I have ever seen, so it didn’t surprise me when he emailed me this photo.

Connor convinced his dad and friend Brendan to join him on the nine-hour drive from Chattanooga to Dry Run Creek. He helped his buddy Brendan land this pig before catching some of his own personal bests. I think it is safe to say they are both at the headwaters of a lifetime of great fly fishing.

Will Lillard operates Lillard Fly Fishing Expeditions based in North Carolina and Colorado.