Spring Fever Edition of the Trout Underground

I’m working now, I worked late last night, and I’ll be working late tonight, and damnit, spring is happening without me, a situation I find intolerable.

Frankly, I’m only one winning lottery ticket away from wholly ditching this work thing. Can I get an “amen” from the Undergrounders?

Plus, the L&T Nancy is four days into her five-day business trip, and as always happens when she’s gone, personal hygiene has plunged to horrific new lows.

Still, despite the flies buzzing around me, there’s a chance I’ll be out on the river tonight; I’ve gotta find out what’s going on in the world of trout and bugs.

Foreign Trout: The Brit Blogs Wake Up

I love the U.K. blogs, but haven’t seen much of them lately. The streams they fish are wholly recognizable, but the country surrounding them differs so markedly from the mountains surrounding me that

Recently, they started to wake up a bit, so I’m going to feature a few of them here.

First, Alistair from the Urban Fly Fisher lays out a trip for us where he:

• Fried up breakfast streamside
• Caught fish on a dry and dropper combo (which they call a New Zealand rig)
• Fell off a barbed-wire fence and ripped huge holes in his waders

He leads with the breakfast, so we’ll assume that’s the bit that matters most to him:

Alex and I had the classic idea of taking sausages, bacon and egg and having a fry up before starting fishing. We marvelled at our genius idea as if we were the first anglers to ever cook anything beside a car - to be fair people who were passing us looked very jealous of us as we tucked into rolls n’ sausage doublers.

If that’s not enough for you, then pop over to North Country Angler, where you’ll see photos a beautiful little river and yes — a stonefly. Good stuff.

Click image to see the original report.

Tamanawis — perhaps my favorite writer of the bunch — describes an encounter with a brown far too big to land.

A bigger pool. A bigger tree, half in half out of the water. Creeping up, little casts and slow breaths. A pause which lingers for a gaze into the deepest crease. Then you see him. A brown submarine drifting slowly, slowly up and into the very eye. Three, four, five, the weight matters not for he will not be landed today. The floppy four weight quivering in your right fist feels absurd.

Good stuff indeed.

Finally, Fly Fishing South Wales describes getting ready for a weekend fishing trip. OK, the post lacks a little drama, but I like the blog and wanted to give him a mention. We expect a full report soon.

See you in the U.K., Tom Chandler.

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