RENO, Nev. — It's been a shocking few days for fly fisherman Mike McFarland at ESPN's Great Outdoor Games.

The first jolt came when the 30-year-old McFarland boarded an airplane for the flight to Reno. It marked the first plane ride for the Tyrone, Penn., resident.

"It wasn't a real treat," said McFarland. "I was a little nervous."

	A newcomer to flight and the Great Outdoor Games, Mike McFarland won the fly casting portion of the Fly Fishing competion.

The second adrenaline surge was more pleasurable. McFarland guessed he had finished about fourth or fifth in the fly casting competition Thursday on the Truckee River. He was caught by surprise when his name was announced as the top finisher.

"I was shocked," said McFarland, "especially after recording a zero on one my of my (line management) drifts."

With a total score of 1,382.01 points after accuracy, line management, tight loop and distance casting events, McFarland earned the No. 1 seed going into Friday's Fly Fishing event.

Chris King of Redding, Calif., took the No. 2 seed with 1,301.00 points and Whitney McDowell of Denver, Colo., was seeded third with 1,269.08 points.

Seeding of the 12 anglers determines when and where each will fish Friday. A length of the Truckee River has been divided into six sections or beats. The morning session will be held from six until nine for six anglers; the afternoon session begins at five and ends at eight.

A woman's touch

ESPN Outdoors communications Whitney McDowell could only watch as fellow fly-casting competitor Chuck Farneth nearly broke the world record of 126 feet with a monstrous, 120-foot cast at the ESPN Great Outdoor Games. Whitney, 27, of Denver, and the only woman in the fly-casting and fly-fishing event, was dead last after the distance and hoop-ring casting sections of the event. But in the next two segments, accuracy and line management, she used her woman's touch to overcame almost all the brute strength assembled here at the Truckee River, hard by the Sierra Nevada Mountains. McDowell, a public relations specialist from Denver, rallied and climbed to third among the 12-angler field with a strong showing in the accuracy division and line management casts on the river. One of her casts found the bulls-eye from 50 feet and earned her the maximum of 300 points for that effort. Her cumulative score earned her the pick of the third-best waters for Friday's fishing competition, when the angler who catches and releases the biggest fish wins $4,000. "I knew I'd have a disadvantage in the distance part of the casting, but I knew my accuracy, which has always been my forte, would help later," McDowell said. "I really needed that. It was the boost I needed." McDowell said she took up fly-fishing five years ago after being inspired by her mother, Susie. "She's much more insane about fly-fishing than I am," McDowell said. "Fly-fishing is pretty much all she wants to do. She took me on a family outing on the Smith River, and I fell in love with fly-fishing." And now the daughter is getting as rabid about the sport as the mother. McDowell has her brother, Jeff, 30, as her "rod caddy" for Wednesday's fishing segment. Jeff is living in Austin, Texas, and is taking the summer off before starting business school. "She was disappointed after the first half because she's really been practicing casting into those hoops," Jeff McDowell said of his younger sister. "But she came back and hung in there. I'm really proud of her."

McFarland is a newcomer to flight and ESPN's Great Outdoor Games, but he is no beginner in the sport of fly fishing.

"I started when I was 13 years old," McFarland said. "I usually fish small nymphs straight upstream with no strike indicator. But this river is deeper and faster than what I usually fish, so I'll have to adapt."

The consensus among streamside observers Thursday was that McDowell had earned the first seed based on the 1,200 points she earned in the last two categories — line management and accuracy casting. No one else totaled more than 900 points in those two events. She didn't mind settling for third.

"It was fun beating up on all these guys," said McDowell, the only woman in the field.

Unlike McFarland, McDowell is a relative newcomer to fly fishing. The 27-year-old took up the sport five years ago.

"My mother is an insane angler," McDowell said. "My brother is a great angler, too. But I always thought fly fishing was their thing. For my dad's 60th birthday we took a family trip down the Smith River in Montana. That's when I really got started."

McDowell's brother is serving as her rod caddie this week. They tried to call their mother to inform her of the results Thursday. When they couldn't reach her, it was assumed she was fishing.

"She's probably on the Snake River near Jackson Hole," said McDowell.

Chuck Farneth of Little Rock, Ark., won a gold medal at the 2001 Great Outdoor Games and a bronze last year. Farneth took the distance casting event Thursday with a best of 120 feet, 1 inch, but faltered in the other three events to finish as the 10th seed.

While disappointed, Farneth believes a lower seed doesn't mean as much as it has in the previous competitions on the Au Sable River near Lake Placid, N.Y.

"Without a doubt the Truckee River is better in terms of everyone having a good chance to win," Farneth said. "It has a lot of fast deep water and these fish could feed at anytime."

Farneth hopes his prediction comes true and allows him to overcome that low seeding and earn a third medal at the Great Outdoor Games.

The angler who catches the longest fish Friday determines those medals. The trick is knowing when to quit. Once an angler has measured a trout and designated it as his catch of the day the angler must quit fishing. No one knows the lengths of the other anglers have recorded until the conclusion of the event.

Two years ago on the Au Sable, Farneth won it with a 16-inch brown trout. Last year on the Au Sable, Pete Erickson took the gold medal with an 18.5-inch brown.