Turning Paperwork into Trout: The Underground Escapes the Office

I’ll skip the whining about work trapping me in the office and get right to the good stuff: I got the hell out of dodge and went fly fishing.

Of course, you never know what’s waiting for you on the river, though the more open you are to the things you see every day — but never really notice — the more you bring home with you at the end of the evening.

I woke up this morning with ice on the ground, though it warmed up nicely during the day. At the end of a hot summer, that’s a recipe for little mayflies, so at the start of the evening, I ran to some of my favorite technical water. And waited.

OK, I didn’t just sit. I pounded up a small rainbow trout on a beetle pattern, but after I washed away the skunk smell, I just sat back and watched the water slide by.

Of course, the river does that whether you’re watching or not, and I found myself troubled by the idea that so much of it had rolled by since I’d last fished this stretch.

Fortunately, I didn’t have too much time to idly ponder things like that (people have suggested it’s not my strong suit to begin with) when a couple of small fish started working.

I tied on a new fly (I was fishing an 8.5′ 4wt Diamondglass), and got to work. It was easy water but a tough drift — the fish were working two current tongues away — but one ate my olive biot-bodied soft hackle right away.

The Roy Palm Emerger (the biot-bodied soft hackle) has become my go-to fly during the olive hatch (and I was sure I was fishing an olive hatch).

Despite being hard to see, it’s damned effective; you can grease it and fish it on top as an emerger, yet it works just as well when it sinks (maybe better).

Last night’s slightly battered Roy Palm Emerger (biot-bodied soft hackle)

You get a little lift when you catch a fish on the first fly you try. After all, you’ve already escaped that panicky downward spiral that occurs when the fish are working — but you’re not getting bit.

It buys you some time, and I invested that time eyeing a foam line that’s devilishly hard to fish due to a long roll cast and conflicting currents.

It goes without saying that it often holds the better fish, so I was pretty pumped when I finally spotted a quiet rise form.

Like a lot of anglers, I’m good at spotting the flash of a rise in my peripheral vision, but this fish was working so quietly, you wouldn’t see it unless you were looking for it (score one for local knowledge).

In true outdoor writer style, I’m tempted to delve deeply into the heroics surrounding my cast, but let’s skip the chest thumping for now; the truth is that it wasn’t that hard, the line unrolled, the fly fell on the water, and because I couldn’t see the damned thing 40 feet away, I tentatively raised the rod when I saw a dorsal fin barely break the surface.

You know you got it right when the rod loads and the water starts flying, and I suppose the element of mystery (did he eat it?) only adds to the effect.

He was a pretty, iridescent 14″ rainbow — cranky at having his dinner interrupted — and he was the highlight of the evening.

There were more inches to this fish, but I found these the most interesting.

Hot Damn: Time for a Pimp Walk

It’s at this point you’re tempted to start pimp walking your chunk of the river — strutting like the Prom King because you’re absolutely, positively sure you nailed it. Right fly, right cast, right everything.

You da man. I da man.

And frankly, I was pretty well into the whole sequence when a mayfly landed on my glasses, and I realized I wasn’t fishing an olive hatch at all.

Oh yeah. I not “da man.”

I “duh man.”

It was a PED. Later, I would discover it was actually two PEDs — one a size 18 and the other a #20 or #22 (I don’t know how anyone can tell the difference). The bigger bugs disappeared pretty quickly, and later the fish got going on the smaller version, and for some reason, the biot-bodied soft hackle wasn’t working.

I cobbled together six fish for the evening (plus a couple hookups that didn’t last), admired what had turned into a spectacular night, and went home to the L&T Nancy and Wally the Wonderdog, knowing that even though I had become Duh Man, they still thought I was OK.

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, upper sacramento river, upper sac, bwo, ped, blue winged olives, trout, rainbow trout, fly tying[/tags]