Spring Fever Breaking Out (Or the Role of Powerful Medications in the Fly Fishermen’s Life)

The Internet is a great medium for disseminating information to large groups of people, but, sadly, not everyone uses that power for Good instead of Evil.

For example, we present a list of “spring-is-here” bloggers singled out for special attention because in the paranoid, multiple-personality, spring-fevered world of the Trout Underground, they’re taunting me.

Yes, me. Directly.

They’re here. Behind that cloud, the Mother Ship is docking.

It all seems so clear to me here in the Trout Underground/Man Cave Padded Cell, and all the spring-fishing-is-a-long-ways-away medication in the universe simply can’t change that fact (though if taken properly, it does reduce the number of voices).

Because it’s hard to type with this straightjacket on, I’ll get right to it.

Smokies Fever

First up is ex-friend Ian Rutter, who scores heavy on dries in the Smokies several days straight and writes about it in a series of posts — the very same Smokies I won’t be visiting this year:

We don’t mean to taunt, but I hope you’re getting something valuable accomplished if you haven’t been fishing in the past 3 days. I said it in the last report, but let me reiterate: Spring fly fishing in the Smokies is here!

Quill Gordons were on the water as well as Blue Quills. Doug made good use of a quill bodied parachute dry fly that I think was #14, perhaps #12. I used a #12 Haystack that came from a pile I tied back in the foul weather we had about a month ago.

Ian intelligently closed the comments on that particular article so I couldn’t post some anonymous, lithium-fueled screed about the very clear fact he and his alien friends are obviously taunting me personally, but then, the restraining order doesn’t permit it. Damn.

Still, if you had the kind of clarity of vision I do, you’d add an extra layer of aluminum foil to your helmet and screen out the spring barrage of mind control rays.

Fail to do so — and after they’ve seized control of your brain — don’t come whining to me. You were warned.

I’ve Seen the Mother Ship. It’s Green and Warm.

Fly Fishing in Yellowstone not only fires up a “spring is coming post”, but also throws in a bikini picture and plenty of interesting local fly patterns too.

The trail through the snow to the Madison River has reached bare ground in the vicinity of Campfire Lodge: brave soles have connected the post-holes at the Hebgen Tailwater, the anchor ice is rapidly disappearing along the Gallatin River in it’s lower canyon reaches, and, (parenthetically,) fish have already arrived at the Henry’s Lake Hatchery on the Snake River.

Then Fly Fishing in South Wales — clearly a member of the Global Spring Fly Fishing Conspiracy — posts about fly fishing on his first warm sunny day:

It was nice to be out fishing on a lovely sunny day. I could have closed my eyes and thought it was summer at one point. Birds flitting up and down the river all afternoon, picking a few tiny duns out of the air as they blew about in the strong wind.

If you read Gareth’s post carefully (assuming that is his real name), you can see the alien influences in the sentence structure. In fact, his post was probably actually written at Area 51 (where it’s already spring).

Hear me Undergrounders; it ain’t summer here, and hell — with waist deep snow still piled up at Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters — even spring feels like it’s farther away than it actually is.

Traditionally, early spring hasn’t been the best time to fish the Upper Sacramento; flows are often high and the river often gets hard to fish about the same time the better dry fly hatches start coming off.

Of course, those manning the mind control rays don’t want you to know that. They want to slowly drive you crazy, eventually seizing control of your mind (what’s left of it), your bank account, and your extensive baseball hat collection (their robots need fuel).

It’s enough to make a fly fisher crazy. In fact, I believe it already has.

So Undergrounders, slip on your aluminum underwear, down those fancy pills, bury that canned food in the back yard and — for God’s sake — keep your eyes peeled for the Mother Ship.

Trust no one. No one.

(UPDATE: Proof that snow-worshipping aliens are among us) 

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