Sit near Chris Aufleger on his 20-foot fishing boat. Close your eyes and listen. You can’t even hear the fly on his fishing line touching the water. Chris has done this all around the world. Bonefish in Venezuela. Salmon in Alaska. Trout in Wyoming.
“There’s no better way to spend a morning,” Chris says, trolling around stumps in Sandy Creek. He’s caught hundreds of fish in this spot since he and his wife bought a condo at Reynolds in 2013. One morning (Chris knows the date: June 2, 2014) he and his niece caught 12 stripers in 30 minutes. Today? Not a bite. And Chris doesn’t care. “If this were all about catching fish, I wouldn’t use the fly rod. I come out for the tranquility.”
His ideal day starts at 5 a.m. He takes a cup of coffee to Lake Club Marina where the staff has his boat in the water, ready to run to the sunrise. A few minutes later he’s casting that fly, his world of financial advising a million miles away — and home comfortably beyond the stumps and trees.
