March 28, 2006. That was the date I found smallstreams and excitedly started participating. How do I know the exact date? Because when I tried to visit here a few days ago, my password didn't work. So, I went into my files and found my original "Welcome to smallstreams.com Forums" email from Adam (I really have to clean out my inbox one of these days!) and checked my password and login, but they still didn't work.

I had no idea that the site was down, I had no idea of anything happening with smallstreams for quite awhile. All I remember is that there came a point when it wasn't as fun to visit as it had been at first. There was an all-out internet flame war going on, and for every fishing report or story there seemed to be a dozen angry diatribes. So I just quit visiting. I don't know how many others there were, but there must have been some. It was a shame, but other sites filled the void. Still, I did miss this spot, because there had been a lot of good things to like about it. So, I really hope that all of that stuff has been settled and put behind everyone. I don't want to appear to be pointing fingers or anything like that, because I neither know nor care what the "inside story" was. I just hope it's over and the new beginning is a true new beginning, for all.

I like to write, so my reports or tales are often lengthy and descriptive. Not long after leaving here, I posted one that I thought was pretty good on another site. It was fairly large, but I had peppered it with some pictures every couple of paragraphs. However, when one of the responses was from someone who said that they only opened reports to look at the pictures and another person agreed with them saying that they barely skimmed the written part, and then only to see if there was any information they could use (I almost always exclude locations, and rarely include stuff like type of fly used, instead concentrating on the narrative) I knew I was really going to miss smallstreams. And I have. Glad to see it up and running again! Jon