Finally: A Calm, Relaxing Fly Fishing Post From the Underground

The last couple weeks have been trying; I’ve been packing, moving, and then unpacking again, then settling in to write a series of truly irritating posts about Siskiyou County’s Board of Supervisors.

Those have been the literary equivalent of listening to heavy metal while someone jackhammers concrete right outside your window, so I thought it was time for… calm.

Moving water and fall color on the Upper Sacramento – an irresistible combination.

A relaxed post. A happy post. A “late-night FM jazz station” post.

So here it is. It’s our “Z100 On Your Dial” Underground At Night post.

You are getting sleepy…

The Upper Sacramento exerts a calming influence on me. Now you know why.

Truthfully, I was feeling a little beat up, and when you’re feeling that way, you don’t rush to the water and start firing as much as wander along it looking for some peace.

And it was a nice walk — the fall colors are just a hair past their prime, but they still make the place look like a Hollywood movie set without all the egos.

A big mushroom. Now that’s a calm fungus, eh?

That’s why I only brought a few October Caddis dries and a nice, smooth Phillipson 8′ 5wt bamboo fly rod; the combo allows me to casually poke and prod the river with a big dry, and it’s a little like fishing a streamer on valium; the odds are you won’t get many bites, but the fish will likely be big, yet you’ll stay strangely calm and slightly detached when it’s over.

Frankly, that sounded perfect.

For the record, I hiked and fished two hours, and landed two fish: a chubby 13″ rainbow and a really fat 16″-17″ chunk monster that featured a beautiful, dark maroon stripe.

He’s a good 16″-17″, and check out the colors; “elegant” comes to mind…

After the big fish swam away, I sat on the riverbank for a good twenty minutes of… nothing. For the first time in a month, I didn’t have any place to go, and while the long list of “must-do’s” sat on my desk only a few miles away, it might as well have been in another universe.

I’ve always loved fly fishing for the places I go to practice it, and also because — done right — everything else recedes.

No politicos after our rivers, no deadlines, no aching back, no half-empty moving boxes.

Just moving water, gorgeous color, bamboo and trout.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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