So, here's the story: Every fishing trip is an adventure

Under the best of conditions, a fishing expedition always generates tales of adventure as well as hardship.

So tuck the notion that fishing is nothing more than a story into your memory banks.

I make that declaration because I tell lots of stories. And because I am a person who becomes easily excited when fishing and hunting, I tend to transfer that energy to some these columns.

I can't help it. Next to hearing my three daughters shower me with shopping carts full of thanks and adoration, fishing and the stories it generates fuels my internal generator.

Try explaining that concept to some uptight bluenose sitting in an office while trying to tell the world how important they are in the overall scheme of things. He or she is the kind of person who is quick to turn a nose up at the very thought of you and I hooking a fish with fly or lure. And worse yet, they're fast to condemn anyone who takes down a rooster pheasant or wild turkey. To them, hunting is a leftover remnant of earlier centuries.

As for adventures, even attending an outdoor sport show can be one.

Years ago, close friends would tag along with me for the annual trek to the Rosemont outdoor show. It was a mark on the calendar. They joked that the long walk up and down that covered walkway over River Road was something akin to the Burma Road. Sometimes there were four of us, each one eager to see old friends and talk with lodge owners and exhibitors.

More often than not some of us would purchase a year's supply of lures and accessories. And then we would meet for coffee in the building for a catch-up session.

Unfortunately one of our local personalities couldn't quite grasp the camaraderie and glue of our little group, and the stories we exchanged with each other. So he subsequently chose to publicly label the group as a band of sycophants. That outdoor scribe claimed to be a friend.

Some embrace the concept that fishing is fine all by itself, without the catching aspect as a consideration. They claim it's the experience that matters.

I tend to agree a tiny smidgen about a fishless day, because I have had some of those and chose to sit on a river bank to think about future fishing stories I could share with my grandchildren. For most of us, however, the catching, and the adrenaline rush that goes with it, still matters.

Even though I have many spinning and casting rods and reels, I am a devoted fly angler. I have been challenged by bull, black-tips, and reef sharks. All of them won the battles, except for one.

The juice for the stories sits in reserve while I think of an appropriate time to share them here.

My adventures during a flyrod bluegill bite was nothing less than phenomenal. It was nonstop catching for me one evening not too long ago. I haven't shared that one yet.

And even today, as I write this, I gazed upon a note sent to me by a person who ascribes his few visits to a watery locale as nothing more than ho-hum.

Of course he's entitled to his opinion. But my counter is simple. I say it's b.s. - or baker sugar, for us military types. And that's a story, too.

• Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, and catch his radio show 6-7 a.m. Sundays on WSBC 1240-AM and podcast at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.com.