The Jeep Trout Expedition (JTE) is an annual event where a robust group of fishermen - mostly employees of Jeep or Dodge Truck Engineering head into the wild northern Michigan back country to stalk the wily trout.  This event originated in 1988 and in June of 2000 was attended by 5 original charter members and 7 other odds and ends including my partner (shown here enjoying his chili breakfast), one second generation, a never cast a fly rod rookie and so on.

A few of the guys that attend each year are gung ho fly tiers.  One of the highlights is to choose the "Fly of the Year".  It seems like in spite of all the planning and preparation, you never have just the right fly for the job at hand.  This year, extended body mahagonies were the rage and as you can see, some were just so good looking that . . .

I don't want to give you the impression that this group is just a bunch of beer drinking, bug eating rowdies.  This was the youngest member of the Expedition and as you can see, could just slip right into your hoidy toidy Patagonia catalog.  What he doesn't realize is that those trout don't care if he's wearing silk boxers and the skeeters will just love that English Leather he splashed on.  You do have to give him a little credit for his choice of rods.

Now things start to get serious.  A leisurely float down the river in the AuSable Queen, a walk in the rain.  If you look really, really, really close you can almost make out the brown trout.  We like to call these guys "Dock Trout" - they are always there, always willing and sometimes they keep you from getting skunked!
 
 

And to make sure you don't think this Expedition was all hard work, this young man (an executive from BP-Amoco no less) was so exhausted from casting, wading , rowing and shopping that he just had to take a minute to kick back and ponder the meaning of life.  OK - maybe the frozen Absolute had a little to do with it.

My apologies to all that I have offended, Patagonia, Absolute, BP-Amoco, Jeep - at least this year the Crawford County Sheriff's didn't stop by.