The Underground Fly Fishes: Lessons Learned (and Forgotten)

It’s not as if fly fishing rids you of your worldly burden — all the usual worldly crap is waiting for you when you get home — but when I’m out on the river, things do tend to recede a little bit.

When I make a nice roll cast and catch a 19″ rainbow, things tend to recede a lot.

The head of the night’s big rainbow trout. There are plenty more inches attached.

In traditional outdoor writer fashion, it’s tempting to define the whole evening by the one big fish — implying that I fished with nerve and intelligence, all the fish finally surrendering in the face of my overwhelming skill and simply swimming into my net for counting.

Sadly, the truth is a little different.

I caught four other trout (biggest was 12″), and had my butt absolutely handed to me during a 20 minute long spinner fall; with fish rising all around, the best I could manage was a 10″ trout who ate my too small/too dark/poorly proportioned Chocolate spinner.

Years ago, I spent ten straight nights on this same spinner fall, going home and tying new spinner patterns each night. What I ended up with was a #16 sulphur-quill spinner with organza wings and a slightly oversized sulphur thorax — a fly I had exactly none of last night.

(I may learn slowly, but at least I don’t learn things for long.)

Dave Edmondson fished alongside me, a good thing. I always have fun when Dave’s on the river, and it never hurts to have a witness when you catch a trout who puts three good runs on your reel’s drag.

The night’s festivities were conducted with an 8.5′ 4wt Diamondglass rod, which is nicely suited to technical, light tippet work. The downside of the rig was a nightmarish leader configuration — something I was testing, but will not test again.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, upper sac, upper sacramento river, trout, rainbow trout[/tags]