Wayne Eng called this morning to say the McCloud River was entirely fishable last weekend, yet crowded to within an inch of its life.

He even jokingly laid the crowding at the feet of last Friday’s Underground post, and while I’m always happy to see the instantaneous worldwide reach of the Underground confirmed, the sad reality is that the McCloud is one of the only truly fishable rivers in the area, and will remain so until temperatures warm, and it blows out.

We don’t call it the “McCrowd” for nothing.

Still — and purely in the interest of a science experiment — I’m tempted to fish the McCloud next weekend, but only after posting an article suggesting Lake Siskiyou is kicking out 20″ Rainbows and Brook trout to anyone who can fog a mirror*.

If the McCloud was empty, I’d not only have the place to myself, I’d also feed the megalomania that is slowly but surely building here at TU/Man Cave World Headquarters (in between bouts of kid-induced psychosis).

In what amounts to instant karmic recycling, Wayne and near-local Mark Motashem caught some nice trout in an interesting tributary on the Pit River, and I’d like to take the rest of this sentence to tell people not to bother asking where in an email (like a few did after my last small stream trip).

This part of the world isn’t exactly lousy with good small streams, and uncovering one is usually an act of enterprise that requires sharing with only your close fishing buddies. Sorry.

Egged Out By The Cold

Frankly, I think the sustained, unnaturally cold spring weather is taking its toll on everybody’s nerves, though perhaps none of us has suffered as much as the Steller’s Jays that built a nest on top of a ladder leaned up beneath our back porch. Some time ago I peeked around the corner to find the mommie obviously incubating an egg, but a long string of sub-freezing nights and mornings may have doomed that enterprise.

A quick Internet search suggests the egg incubation period is typically 16-18 days, and we’re well beyond that. Realizing I hadn’t seen the female for several days, I climbed the ladder and found an mommie-less nest containing a solitary egg.

My guess? The sustained 10-to-15-degrees below normal weather made it impossible to keep the egg warm, and it was abandoned when it didn’t hatch on schedule.

Of course, real bird experts are welcome to chime in, and maybe we can solve the Mystery of the Abandoned Egg. I’m kinda happy I didn’t make a big deal about the whole thing with Little M, who by now would be looking up at me with her big, innocent, trusting eyes, asking “where babies?”

See you where I’m not, Tom Chandler.

(*An abject lie, but not a bad one)

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