Gray Skies? Check. Freezing Weather? Check. Fly Rod? Check. BWOs? Check. Hook Set? Uhh…

Fly fishing sometimes offers you moments like this: you hold an insanely beautiful 18″ rainbow in stinging-cold water before letting it swim away.

The L&T Nancy asked me how the fishing was, and I caught myself forming the words “OK” — as if catching a colorful 15″ rainbow and his bigger 18″ brother could ever be just “OK.”

Perspective, it seems, is the first casualty of lost fish.

With gray skies threatening rain (no, sadly, it didn’t), Steve Bertrand and I ran downriver, looking for tiny bugs and big trout.

We found both, though not quite in epic numbers. It was difficult fishing (I spooked my first three flatwater fish just wading [quietly] into casting range), and is often the case with long, stretchy tippets and tiny bugs, long-distance releases (LDRs) were common.

Drifts had to be spot on, and more than a few of the trout in the slower water were ranging back and forth in a small area, maddening fish behavior if ever it existed.

Long casts? Looks like it from here.

It’s the kind of fishing challenge I say I love best (and Bertrand reminded me of that fact every time I lost a fish), but that’s largely bullshit; announcing a preference for technical fishing over tossing a #14 Beetle Bug at tiny-stream Brookies is akin to saying I prefer breathing over a heartbeat.

Smaller, but just as pretty; a 15″ rainbow looking all sleek.

The final tally? I landed two and LDR’d four, including one pig that jumped twice and probably exceeded 18″. Bertrand’s count was higher; I think he landed four, and LDR’d a similar number in pretty much the same sizes.

Fly Fishing & Genetics: An Underground Breakthrough

He fished a #16 hackle stacker dry you could see, and I went with a CDC emerger (#18) that I really couldn’t, and I was waving an 8.5′ Steffen Brothers 5wt glass rod. I think both of us were fishing 7x tippets, so the hooksets were more “lift and pray” than lip-ripping.

The water was damned cold, a fact that impressed itself on me less than five minutes into the trip. Despite wearing the full-blown winter outfit, my legs went numb in literally minutes, leading me to wonder if some long-dormant “woosiness” gene hadn’t suddenly activated in my old age.

Of course, the Underground will keep you posted on this breaking surefire Pulitzer Sciene Prize bio-genetics story.

Nurse, Hand Me the Fingernail Clippers

When we netted my first fish, Steve and I noticed a pair of flies in the net that weren’t mine. It turns out the fish had passed what looked like an old Wooly bugger out his “anal vent” (ouch) and the line attached it went through his body and out the fish’s mouth — where it was attached to another big nymph.

Holy crap (literally).

Guide/fish surgeon Steven carefully snipped the line at the bugger and pulled it (slowly) out the trout’s mouth, leaving him — I’d like to think — in better shape than when I caught him.

Cold. Snow? Fish.

The forecast for the upcoming week isn’t for bright, happy sunny days, and thank god for that. In the snowpack department, we’re not exactly where we need to be, so a forecast like below looks pretty good to those of us who want to fish smaller streams next summer:

Of course, if the roads don’t tie up too much, it could be epic fly fishing too. If it is, you’ll hear about it.

See you in the fleece department, Tom Chandler.

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