15 Miles of Sweat and Snow: Skiing For Trout

After 15 miles on cross-country skis, my brother and I were a little punchy.

Proving that madness has a genetic basis, my brother and I (Scott) skied up the South Fork of the Upper Sacramento canyon, and predictably, it looked gorgeous.

It’s a little-fished stretch of the Upper Sacramento River above Lake Siskiyou, and if the stream’s year-round flows were like yesterday’s, I wouldn’t fish anywhere else.

 
Looking good: The South Fork of the Upper Sacramento.

Sadly, late summer and fall flows on the South Fork are destructively low, so the trout remain tiny. It’s pretty, but fly fishers tend to visit it just once, turned off by the finger-sized trout.

Last year’s thin snowpack was particularly hard; the South Fork looked like a good friend who’d fallen on very hard times.

By mid-summer, flows were minimal, and by late summer, the South Fork became little more than a series of shallow, tiny, overwarm pools.

To see the stream now you’d wonder just how big its trout might be; to see it last summer you’d wonder how many trout even survived.

Older Bro Chandler pegs the manliness meter in the canyon.

Our original plan was to ski to an alpine lake, the hope being we’d catch a Brookie through the ice. Sadly, the snowpack hadn’t yet started backing its way up the canyon, and a 20 mile round trip seemed out of the question (and yes, it would have been).

Instead, we slogged our way towards the top of the canyon, at one point "skinning up" the skis (layering grippy fabric on the bases) to slog up a ridge.

(Fly fishermen have a well-deserved reputation for poor fashion sense, but do bright orange vests even hold a candle to blue Holstein-patterned skins?)

The trip was a slog, but it was till mission accomplished; though we couldn’t fish (the South Fork doesn’t open until late April) its real purpose was as proof of concept.

I have plans for a post-opener ski/fly fish trip in a remote part of the county — one of those covert operations designed to put me on a stretch of good trout water a month before the rest of the fly fishing population can walk to it (and no, don’t bother asking).

To that end, Scott and I spent seven hours skiing, and while I’m sore (and making old man noises every time I stand), I’m still making plans and looking at maps.

Naturally, you’ll hear about it (well, parts of it) first.

Until then, see you at the Top Secret file cabinet, Tom Chandler.