Last Thursday I spent much of the workday staring out the window at perfect BWO weather – drippy, but not windy or rainy. Intel gathered from the Underground’s spy satellite network revealed decent olive hatches, so when Saturday dawned drippy, cool, damp and grey (in other words, “perfect”), I loaded Wally the Wonderdog into the truck and headed for the river.

This is what killer BWO weather looks like (close up)

What killer BWO weather looks like (death of a raindrop, Upper Sac)

I figured it was my turn.

Where I headed was a part of the river that should be huddling and shivering this time of year; banks carpeted with snow, bankside rocks slick with ice. You should ingress on skis or snowshoes, yet I drove right to the river’s edge, hiked (on solid, wet ground) for a short eight minutes, and there I was – on a snow-free riverbank.

Upper Sacramento River in a sadly snow-free winter

There should be snow, not lots of green.

Damn. (Note to rest of California: You ready for what’s coming?)

In other words, it was perfect BWO weather, but sadly my Undergrounders, I’d forgotten about the “No-Hatch Zone” – the Underground’s comic-book superpower that disrupts 90% of the hatches within a one mile radius.

My friends know about my superpower, but thankfully don’t comment on it much (except for Ian Rutter, who’s now taken to notifying the Emergency Office of the Tennessee Tourism Board when he learns I’m headed his way).

Damnit, where's the snow?

Damnit, where's the snow?

In short, the BWOs – despite the textbook-perfect conditions – never got going. I tied on a nymph and hooked/played/fouled-up one small trout, but was heading back to the truck when I settled in at one run that should have held rising fish. And after fifteen minutes of rock-sitting, there, my friends, he was.

One fish bubbled up three times in a foam line. This, I knew, was The Purity Trout – the single rising suicide fish the guy upstairs gives an angler if his heart is pure enough (I’m going to expand on this concept soon).

The nymph came off, a #22 Quigley Cripple went on (I still wasn’t seeing olives on the water, but what the heck), and on my very first cast, the bastard surprised me and ate the thing.

Then the bastard on the other end of the line (if you’re not keeping up, that’s me ) lifted the fly rod, and… missed the trout.

Damn. Upstream hook sets are a problem, and OK, there is evidence I may have set a hair too quickly. It’s either a deeply rooted character flaw or proof that fly fishing still excites the hell out of me, and given the options, I’m taking the second.

The Moment of Decision

It’s at this point in a trip you can trudge back to the truck knowing you couldn’t even hook a gift trout, or sit and wait a little longer (despite the Wonderdog’s insistence we go home, where there’s potentially more bacon).

I sat, and fifteen minutes later another trout rose at the tail end of the run.

And him, I hooked. (Long enough to get him to my feet before the hook popped out.)

He was a 14″(ish) specimen that received the usual intense interest from the Wonderdog, and while I sat a while longer (still looking for BWOs), that was my last shot of the day, which was strangely OK. I wanted to fish for rising trout, and I’d done exactly that, and all the walking and looking while the Wonderdog sniffed every bush was just bonus time on the river.

Where's the bacon. There's no bacon here. Let's go.

Where's the bacon. There's no bacon here. Let's go.

The Gear Stuff

I was hoping for a little more rain – and a little sterner test of the Patagonia soft shell – but the rain never fell harder than a drizzle, and not even that a lot of the time.

The same could be said for the sticky rubber wading boots, which performed beautifully rock-hopping the wet bankside rocks, but weren’t exactly tested today.

I fished a Raine 8’3″ 4wt hollowbuilt bamboo rod I drag out when there’s real potential for a BWO hatch – a surprisingly light, powerful and sensitive hollowbuilt rod that suggests bamboo rod building still has a few surprises left in it.

bamboo fly rod

It's today's gratuitous gear shot, this time on leafy greens.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

Posted in Fishing Report, Upper Sacramento and tagged , , , , , , .