UPDATE: We just learned the Coastal Commission voted NO on the toll road.
Jim Troyer - the Underground’s Director of Saltwater Fly Fishing and Beach-Related Alcohol Consumption – asked for some quick help on this one.
In Southern California, they’re fighting a pretty desperate battle to keep some yutzes form building a private, freeway-sized toll road that […]

Advancing the culinary level of the average fly fishermen is at the heart of the Trout Underground’s mission statement*; witness our reader-friendly attempts to introduce the slaw dog into the fly fishing zeitgeist.
That’s why we had to immediately notify our readers about this hot new product (found via backcountry.com):
The German-Built Canned Cheeseburger!

Frankly, we’re in awe. […]

What’s New In An Old Technology (This is Part II: Read Part I here, and Part III here.)
If I described the number of fiberglass fly rod makers as “large” or even “booming,” I’d be a liar.
There are a handful of small companies building glass, and a few larger companies dipping their toe in the technology, […]

Here’s one I wish I’d though of — fly fishing’s Top 10 overused words and phrases. The Day Tripper just fired up this crowd-participation post, but listed only nine played out phrases, expecting his readers to supply the final one.
Head on over and leave a comment — before some rat bastard posts your worn […]

We first covered this in March, so I wasn’t totally surprised to find “collapse” headlines screaming at us from every newsfeed: The chinook salmon runs in the Sacramento River are the second lowest ever recorded, and the 90,000 adult fish are only one-tenth the all-time high (800,000 recorded five years ago).
From the LA Times:
SACRAMENTO […]

When cabin fever takes hold in a big way and the sun starts shining for the first time in days, you’ve got two choices: you can fight it (and end up wearing an oval track in the carpet from pacing), or you can chuck a couple hours worth of work, saddle up the truck, throw […]

It’s the birthday of none other than Edward Abbey, who wrote the The Monkey Wrench Gang — a groundbreaking novel about four people who sabotage development projects in the desert wilderness.
It was released in 1975 — about the same time I started high school — and the controversy it caused immediately made it an attractive […]

There’s work to be done my friends, and this was a weekend for moving it from the “someday” pile to the “been there, done that” stack.
In truth, it was a good time for it; the storm settling over the mountain wasn’t cold and snowy as per forecasts. Instead, it was warm and wet, and while […]

Those of you who spend far too much time on this site may have noticed a new addition to the rightmost sidebar — a "Sweating the Small Stuff" box.

It’s home to all sorts of short posts that either don’t make the front page cut, or come along when I don’t have time to write […]

Six inches of snow yesterday, and two more since I cleared the back deck last night. Sadly, there’s a direct (inverse) relationship between the amount of snow we get and my chances of hitting the river in search of a BWO hatch.
Still, at Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters, we’re making headway in the ongoing War […]

They’re obsolete. They’re low tech. They’re soooo 1960s. So why are fiberglass fly rods reappearing on rivers and streams?
[ed: This is Part I of the series; read Part II here, Part III here]
It’s hard to define the “rightness” of a fly rod, though once — over a couple beers — a few local fly fishermen […]

The road to the Rogue; clouds, mountains and trucks on I-5
One of the benefits of fishing a river more than a few minutes from home is the windshield time — that jolt of solitary confinement when you’re not subject to all the dings, rings and interruptions of the modern “connected” life.
Even in 105 minute […]