Fly Rods, Religion, and Fly Fishing the Upper Sacramento

I haven’t fly fished the Upper Sacramento in over a month, a pretty long stretch given the time of year. Maine loomed large, and before that, the temptation of backcountry fly fishing proved too great. Clearly, the real tragedy of our corporeal existence is that one person can’t fly fish in two or more places at the same time.

I tend to avoid dabbling in theology, but I’m willing to advance this thought: If there is a heaven, perhaps the biggest benefit isn’t the wings and soothing harp music, but the ability to fish upwards of a half-dozen good spots at the same time . The bible’s jammed with fishermen, right?

First trout on my Maurer bamboo fly rod — and the first Upper Sac rainbow in a month…

My time away from the Upper Sacramento River was time well spent, but I felt a little clumsy and out of synch on the river. The section I fished was not forgiving; trees obstruct every backcast and hang over most of the fishy spots.

Making it all a bit weirder was a new fly rod — the first trip for my 8′3″ George Maurer “Paradise Valley Special.”

The first trip for the 8′3″ 5wt George Maurer “Paradise Valley Special”

The rod is the slightly longer and lighter brother to the “Trout Bum” model John Gierach made famous in his “Lost Rod” essay. It’s also a semi-parabolic — a distant cousin to the seminal Paul Young rods — tapers I love when lawn casting but sometimes struggle with on the river.

Semi-paras — in my opinion — offer a boatload of benefits, but are some of the least-forgiving rods when you’re actually fishing. Impatience and a tendency to drive the rod are not rewarded, and at times, both maladies seem embedded in my genetic code.

My latest excuse? “I can’t cast because I was born that way.” (It’s nice to know my thinking time on the river wasn’t wasted. )

Too Early, Too New, Too Perfect…

I arrived a couple hours before the evening hatch, started struggling with the rod, and then a few casts went right, and suddenly, it all fell into place — like riding a bike after you haven’t done it for a while. I was fishing a small hopper, shot a cast under a tree, and an 11″ rainbow absolutely jumped all over the bug.

Normalcy had been restored.

You can always hope your first trout on a new rod is 22″ and fat, but all that really matters is that the fish is pretty and wild and memorable. In this case, the trout was pretty — gill plates smeared in the standard Upper Sac iridescent reds, oranges and purples — and only an absolute jerk would would demean the fish (and the fishermen) by wishing for something “better.”

Each fish you catch is perfect in some way, even if that perfection extends only to the fact it was stupid enough to get caught and released by a clumsy proto-predator whose brain masses many times the fish’s weight.

The Fragility of Belief

After the fish trout, another came, and then I switched to an olive parachute, incorrectly anticipating a hatch that never appeared. For the next hour, I hit a run of bad luck — four grabs lead to exactly zero hookups, something that happens from time to time.

I caught another trout, and then made an absolute miracle cast and caught a fish. (It was almost that simple.)

I saw a trout rise in a current running just under a rocky overhang. It was on the far bank, the backast was obstructed, it was too far to rollcast, and I simply dismissed the fish as unreachable. Still, after the trout rose again, I made a kind of half-assed, nothing-to-lose attempt at carrying a long line then dramatically altering the direction of my forward cast.

I got closer than I thought I would (teaching me something about the fragility of belief), and tried it again, and absolutely nailed it. It was a messy cast and lucky one, and I was almost too surprised to set the hook when the fly was sucked under, and because it was a hard cast, I was convinced I was onto a big, big fish.

I was wrong by a wide margin (the 12″ rainbow threw the hook at my feet), but it was a hell of a lot of fun — sorta the point of the whole exercise.

With this weekend’s Shasta Summit Century ride looming (I’m the Ride Director), I won’t fish again until next week, though I’m not without a lot of targets.

The McCloud’s apparently fishing well, the backcountry’s brookies await, Stream X might be worth another look, and Dave Roberts has hinted at some small stream fishing up his way.

It’s a shame I can’t fish all of them at once.

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, upper sac, upper sacramento river, fly fishing the upper sacramento river, [/tags]