Brain Dead on the River…

While bad weather was forecast, good weather was the reality. Turns out the weather forecasts out here are even less reliable than Mt. Shasta’s. Who knew?

Pretty weather greeted us - puffy clouds and all.

Grand Lake Stream – the three mile stretch of river that draws anglers from all over the Northeast – has been largely abandoned lately. Word has it the landlocked Atlantic Salmon were mostly gone, and flows through the dam were high, rendering a couple of key pools almost unfishable.

Thinking today’s trip to the river was going to be a streamer-fest, I brought only a graphite rod, mini-sink tip line, and only the barest minimum of flies (you can see it coming already).

I dredged the dam pool for a couple of hours with streamers and never had a tug. But – illustrating the concept that we are all children of a vengeful god – I found a pod of sporadically working fish on a lower pool, and though I had a floating line (I’d forgotten to take it out of my vest), I had only one miniscule box of dries and wets.

The Grand Lake Stream dam is run by evil doers intent on ruining my fishing.
I could go into agonizing, painful, skunk-drenched detail, but suffice it to say I might find my way back to that pool tomorrow, only this time with a few more caddis, olive, and midge patterns in my vest.

Still, it’s only really a failure if you don’t learn from it, so now I’ve been reminded to bring my basic patterns everywhere.

I’ve also been reminded why I prefer softer fly rod materials like bamboo and fiberglass for my trout rods – they just cast, mend, and set the hook better at normal trout ranges. Oy.

That’s it for tonight. It’s dark and I’m going to shower away the skunk smell and get my fly boxes together for tomorrow… See you in the showers, Tom Chandler.

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