(Photo by Jack Horan)
Bobby Kilby decided on his own to become the first person to catch trout in 1,000 North Carolina streams. Not content to sit on this record, he has now run his total to 1,266 creeks. If you throw in the creeks in other states that he has fished, his grand total is 2,277. I have been with him on several of these creeks, and he is a man obsessed. We have fished creeks that I am fairly certain no other human has fished, mainly because they are too small, or not worth the trouble of crawling on hands and knees through laurel. Bobby enjoys catching big fish as much as anyone else, but he is just as content to catch two four-inch trout in a one-foot wide creek, if that would add a new creek to his list. I'm a pragmatist, so I have no qualms about using nymphs and streamers, but he is pretty much a dry fly purist. Many of these creeks are so overgrown that false-casting to dry your fly is not an option, so he dries the fly by blowing on it, and he is the master of the bow-and-arrow cast. Bobby also has a streak going that just blows my mind - he has caught a trout on a dry fly in 314 consecutive months. He lives a minimum of four hours away from trout water, broke his ankle one summer on a back country trip, and just recently had a hip replacement, and the streak is still alive.
Here is a link to an article in the Raleigh News & Observer about Bobby, and special thanks to Jack Horan:
See you on the creek,
Ray Sugg