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I internalize stress. Talking to me, you might get a sense that nothing bothers me, but it does. Oh boy, does it ever. With me, elevated stress manifests itself in two ways: surplus gas and too little sleep. It'd be pretty tough to dedicate an entire column to my unearthly gas troubles, so I'll share with you my recent tale of sleepless nights brought about by excessive hand wringing and high anxiety.

I did in fact recently experience nearly two full weeks of fitful, restless sleep that had me up at all hours of the night. It got to the point where I seriously considered paying a visit to my doctor. I suspected a week or so into it that something was nagging at me, but I just couldn't put my finger on the source.

Well, beginning last Saturday night, I began to once again sleep like a log, and wouldn't you know it, it was the very night following a day-long taping of Minnesota Bound up at Seven Pines Lodge, where I teach fly-casting and guide lodge guests for stream trout.

Andy Worhol once predicted that everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes. I thought I'd cashed in my allotted time back in '03 when we taped our first Minnesota Bound segment at Seven Pines. Well, Ron and the rest of the staff at Schara Enterprises thought things went so well the first time around, they decided to pay another visit to the lodge last weekend. So I guess I got lucky and was generously granted a half-hour of face time. Not too shabby for a homely mutt like me, I guess.

This upcoming segment will feature Schara's director of operations, Kelly Weiner, and her father, Jim, on the stream with yours truly. Being new to the sport, I ran them through a complete session of casting instruction, where they did remarkably well and picked up the basics very quickly. From there, we all hit Knapp Creek where they would apply their newly acquired skills and hopefully fool a few resident trout.

Now, at this point of the taping, I was still fairly nervous. There are a lot of things that can (and often do) occur that are beyond my control when I'm on the stream with clients. It's not uncommon to witness calm, cool and collected casting pupils become stark raving lunatics when they hook their first trout. Or, sometimes the trout inexplicably fall victim to a stream-wide lockjaw pandemic and refuse to open their mouths. I always get a bad case of flop-sweat when that happens. Now I had Steve Plummer, Schara's three-time Emmy Award winning director of photography behind his enormous camera sitting on a tri-pod, waiting for something exciting to happen. Exciting as in catching a trout. Jeepers, talk about stress. Fishing isn't supposed to be stressful, but it sure felt that way to me last Saturday until either Kelly or Jim caught the first fish of the day.

I already told you that my sleeping patterns snapped back into alignment last weekend, so you probably figured out that everything went well with the shoot. I'm happy to report that the day and a half I spent with the Schara folks couldn't have gone better. Kelly and her dad caught numerous trout and their enthusiasm for the outdoors and each other was highly infectious. If you catch the segment and get a sense that we all got along famously and had a great time, it's because that's the way it really happened.

During the past four years I've made some good friends at Schara Enterprises. I haven't met a single person from their outfit that wasn't friendly and a lot of fun to be around. They produce a distinctive outdoor program that focuses not on the fish or game, but rather unique human stories that relate to the outdoors. This segment will showcase a really neat father-daughter relationship, and I feel very fortunate to have played a part in creating it. I lost some sleep worrying about the outcome of that day's video shoot, but it was well worth it.

Dan Brown's weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie's Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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