Winter Fishing: The Guessing Game

This will be short. I’m going out again today, and in fact, between sentences I’m building the sizable pile of gear that always comes along on winter trips.

Yesterday I hit the river about 1:00, but wasn’t prepared for it to hit back so hard. I was walking and looking for rising fish, and biffed it on a patch of ice.

The only picture I took. Moonrise, Upper Sacramento.

With nothing damaged but my self-image as a cat-like predator, I ran through a couple dry flies with little to show for it, and reluctantly (and mistakenly) tied on a nymph. After 1.5 hours with nothing but two small fish (and a few tangles), I decided to go nuclear.

October Caddis??

It gets dark very early in the canyon, and being as it was already cold, I figured I’d tie on a spent October Caddis dry and enjoy the easy rhythm of casting my way towards the truck.

Six hookups and 1.5 hours later, I noticed that I couldn’t feel my hands, and that a thin film of frost was building up on the front of my wading jacket.

The trout weren’t huge, but in the low, very clear water, I got see most of the fish tilt up and take the bug - an experience not to be missed.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. The “Dead Caddis Bite” sometimes lingers until the new year, but it hadn’t played out too well lately, and I’d given up.

Prematurely, as it seems.

The TurBow

The biggest was a 14″ rainbow that grabbed the fly and ran upstream around a big rock, across the current, down the current, and around another rock before ending up back at that hookup point.

He described a rough, 30′ diameter circle in what seemed like a few tenths of a second, and after that didn’t work, he took off for a downed tree, and if I hadn’t been using 2x tippet (or he had been an inch or two bigger), he probably would have made it.

Even if you’re facing frostbite, if that doesn’t warm you up, you probably shouldn’t be fishing.

Today? More of the same. Maybe some pictures too. See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, upper sac, upper sacramento river, october caddis[/tags]