The Spring Fever Escape: No Bugs, No Fish, No Errors.

Chasing a March Brown hatch based on a thin rumor is like chasing ghosts in broad daylight; the odds for success are slim, and the opportunity for drama almost non-existent.

Still, when you’ve spent the last couple weeks staring at the several feet of snow outside your office window, chasing a ghost hatch is as much an exercise in self-preservation as an act of faith.

I’m happy to be here, though my hat’s in danger of being blown away.

So there you are on the river, and no, the March Browns aren’t hatching, and the fish aren’t rising, the wind is blowing hard enough that you dedicate one hand to holding your hat, and frankly, you couldn’t care less.

The March Brown Excursion

With the sun shining and temps edging towards 50 degrees — one of the faux spring days nature rolls out to tease us every March — I drove to the middle third of the river where the March Browns tend to hatch the best.

It’s too early for the Upper Sacramento’s March Browns to really take hold, and in fact, they’ll probably hit in April and still be hatching in May.

When I first moved up here, the March Browns were a wonderful — if sometimes ignored — hatch. Back then, the season didn’t open until late April, and I have no idea how much of the hatch we might have missed.

A March Brown Emerger; I have no recollection of tying this fly.

I’d sneak away from my work at the stroke of noon, often hitting a couple hours of good-to-stellar dry fly fishing.

On the way to way to the river, I’d run into other fly fishers leaving for lunch, apparently unaware of what was about to happen.

I’m a nice guy, but not stupid, and I never took it upon myself to enlighten anyone, and for a while, the March Browns felt like my own secret hatch, though that was self-deception.

Today, I don’t know if the March Browns have fallen on hard times or if my own timing has deserted me, but the hatches don’t seem as heavy as they were nearly a decade ago.

This year, we’ll see.

The Dynamic River

My first stop was on a stretch of the river that has often blessed me with good fly fishing, though it’s changed a lot since then. The last year we had an opening day, I caught a 16" trout on my second cast of the season (on a dry), but since then, it’s fished, well… small.

Everything in nature evolves, and my image of the river is often more a snapshot than a constantly changing movie. Still, I’m not wholly blind to change.

The low waters of last year allowed a string of willows to take root on a rock bar that never had willows before, and the channels in this long run are clearly redefining themselves.

Whether I find the wrinkles in this new stretch is largely dependent on the amount of time I spend there, and with so much of the river waving and beckoning like relatives at a family picnic, promises are easier to make than keep.

The Fishing Report

Oh yeah. The fishing. No March Browns. A handful of BWOs (the #22s), and a few #18/#16 mayflies in a yellowish olive color.

No rising fish. No break from the wind. And a stronger interest in walking along the river than nymphing, so that’s what I did.

I fished an 8′ Steffen glass rod and a new Lamson Radius (mega-bargain) reel that I’ll talk about more in another post.

Until then, see you on the always-changing river, Tom Chandler.

 
For those who — like me — have forgotten what a river looks like.