The Underground’s 2009 Year in Review (in Words & Pictures)

With only a few hours left in 2009, it’s probably time I actually started writing my “The Underground Looks Back at 2009: The Year in Mirth & Pictures” post.

And while the Underground’s fly fishing-related theme for 2009 has to be that smaller is better (I was on an extended small stream jag most of 2009), not everything that found its way to the Underground was about the little stuff.

A recurring theme in 2009 was our obsession with small streams...

First, the Underground threw a brick through his own plate glass window and became a father.

That’s the kind of statement that requires a little pause, and maybe a few deep breaths (or even panic).

I won’t lie; daddy-hood requires an adjustment – one not made easier by the presence of Zombie Terrorist Contractors – but it’s something that’s already added a dimension to my life (and no, that dimension isn’t soiled diapers).

Still, life moves on, though sometimes in odd, erratic ways – like when I found Wally the Wonderdog contentedly munching a still-wet brown trout in my backyard, despite the fact we live miles from the nearest trout water.

I later figured an Osprey – returning from the Mt. Shasta Hatchery – dropped the brown trout on a flyover, but to say the whole event took on a surreal cast qualifies for “Understatement of the Year.”

In the same vein, I believe the Underground laid claim to “Best Fly Fishing April Fools Post of 2009” when I fired up my “Fly Fish From Home” faux business which eliminates messy fly fishing trips, instead offering fly fishermen what they really want: A Hero Picture.

My brilliant FlyFishFromHome.com concept never received the billions in funding it deserved...

It remains a brilliant concept and an excellent example of the following: The Underground’s A Decade Ahead of the Rest of the World.

My “Dozen Best Fly Rods of All Time” post continues to draw visits (and comments), and it’s successful enough that I probably should create a followup, though I’m not all that clear what that will be.

Time passes, and these decisions are sometimes made for us.

The Underground even found itself on national television courtesy of Trout Unlimited (the other, less-famous TU).

Naturally, I caught exactly one, small fish (and looked foolish doing it), so it appears my future in television is on a par with my future with supermodels.

The Fly Fishing Stories

Naturally, we let a little fly fishing creep into the blog, including one essay on Home Waters which seemed to hit home with a lot of readers (it was one of the most linked-to posts of the year).

Fly fishing is something we engage in for reasons of fun or sanity instead of revenue or food gathering, so in other words, it’s an emotional thing, which allows us significant latitude when we talk about it.

Home waters are a state of mind – not GPS coordinates.

For example, the concept of “home water” clearly isn’t geographic in nature, but a matter of the heart.

One fly fisherman can tell another his “home waters” are literally halfway around the globe, and the second fly fisherman won’t bat an eye.

That’s because his “home waters” are a five hour drive to the north (the last ten miles on dirt roads), and while humanity is generally poor at accepting alien perspectives, fly fishermen do sometimes make worthwhile exceptions.

That’s why I tend to seek out smaller, wilder waters even though I live on a beautiful freestoner. It’s not because blueline fishing is “easy” (for the record, nothing’s easy when you’re fishing from your knees or crawling through bushes).

It’s because the fishing is – to leverage a pair of overused words – intimate and predatory at the same time, a combination I find irresistible.

In the same vein, a few other small-stream fishing reports remain my favorites of the year, including this picture-heavy fly fishing affair from early in the season.

This beautiful little stream yielded a grand slam to me - and provided a resting place for a few of dad's ashes.

Then there was the small stream trip in Montana where I caught a trout grand slam on a tiny meadow stream which was – oddly enough – populated with 100 year-old freshwater mussels.

I’ve been there twice and It’s already become one of my favorite places, and because I embrace symmetry and symbolism equally, this time I left a few of my father’s ashes behind to hang out with the slow, patient mussels. It’s a perfect fit for him.

Later – as the season wound down (well, it never really winds down; the Upper Sacramento is open year-round, and in fact, I fished it yesterday), I found myself hitting a pair of local small streams, discovering the unhappy reality that trout which hurl themselves at dries in the summer don’t have much interest in doing so while winter tightens its grip.

First, on a remote water:

Lucky To Be Here

That said, I felt lucky to get what I got. In one sense, I was lucky to be there; it was sleeting when I arrived, but by noon it had grown colder, and by two, it was snowing.

When I finally left, I wondered if this was the storm that would close the road.

Even if it doesn’t, the next one might.

On the drive out, the truck skidded and slipped on dirt road, and I figured I might be the last fly fisherman to spook those trout until June or even July of next year.

Once, I entertained thoughts of skiing into this stream and fishing it long before others could get there, but the distances are daunting. And hell, I’m not even sure if the roads to the road are plowed.

Soon (very soon), the meadows will fill with snow, and they’ll stay that way for better than half the year, and the trout will go on about their lives largely untroubled – until one day the snow melts and a strange shape looms above them, waving a long, skinny stick.

If the romance of that escapes you, then check for a pulse.

Then, on the last day you actually can fish most of the small streams in my neck of the woods, I visited something nearby, and found the catching was great only if I was interested in ice-related photographs:

The last small stream trip of the year? Almost certainly...

In other words, small streams are reviving when you want a “pure” fly fishing/predatory/wild experience, but they’re not above kicking your ass, then freezing it, then sending you home empty handed.

Good for them. Us fly fishermen are a ragged lot, prone to ego and willing to forget those moments in time when we’re not skilled or heroic, and if it takes a dumb trout living in a tiny stream to remind us, all the better.

At least we’re learning our lesson in a pretty place.

The Humor/Satire End of Things

One of the Underground’s most-viral posts was my story about the vicious, man-eating chipmunk brought into our house by a cat – a wild animal that hid under a blanket until I promptly grabbed him, thinking it was the cat, proving once again that the Underground can scream with the best of the little girls when he’s surprised.

In a less-startling vein, a couple of less-than-optimal (euphemism alert) experiences on the river left me ruminating about the kind of people you run into on a river, and why you wouldn’t necessarily want to hang out with all of them: The Top Ten Signs You Don’t Want to Fish With That Guy You Just Met

Late in the year, an Onion story got me thinking that the sport would acquire a whole new urgency if death was the result of failure (instead of a ribbing at the hands of friends).

Along the way, I managed to alienate the fly fishing industry on several fronts, including the ongoing trade show spat that’s served as one of fly fishing’s longest-running soap operas.

The Year in Pictures

It was a tough year on the picture front; my trusty Pentax Optio camera continued its slow decline, and yes, I managed to forget the thing often enough that it’s become a running joke with the L&T.

Still, I managed to scrape together a few nice pics for use on this post, and here – in no particular order – are the better pics from the Underground’s 2009 season.

I hope you enjoy them – and also hope you and yours experience a 2010 that is memorable for all the right reasons.

Big winter trout, last light.

The next two pictures were taken on my best ski-and-fly-fish trip.

If you were a trout, would you eat these?

One of my favorite pictures of 2009

Another big trout caught at last light.

"On The Rise" TV host Frank Smethurst on the Lower McCloud - when flows rendered it almost unfishable.

Winter fly fishing on the Upper Sac isn't all BWOs; Wayne Eng nymphs up a trout

Wayne Eng caught a trout on this very drift...

The local scenery isn't bad either...

The Wonderdog remained a fan favorite, and why not?

Sometimes snow falls in black & white instead of color...

When the fly fishing's slow, the napping can be good.

Wayne Eng again, this time on Burney Creek.

An early season stonefly.

Stephen Betrand and I paid a spring visit to a small, meadow stream.

This brown trout's giving me the fin.

Sasquatch siting on a small stream.

Does he feel like a putz, or what?

Do we know all the best spots, or what?

Sometimes it's not just the trout that are pretty.

Without the hike, you're missing half the good stuff.

Weird, but we like it that way.

Mount Shasta's almost always visible around here. Lucky us...

See-through beauty...

This is what happens when the fly fishing's slow.

IMPORTANT NEWS UPDATE: One important 2009-related fact went unreported in my Year in Review post, and I wanted to correct it here: The Underground is proud to announce that we were one of the few organizations who did not sleep with Tiger Woods.

You may resume your normal lives.