I haven’t written a real trip report in some time, and this despite finding fishable holes in my schedule a little more frequently.

There are all sorts of good excuses for this (nowadays, I come home and feed/bathe/put the kid to sleep instead of writing a report), but in a still-high-water year, I’ve had a long string of trips I’d have to classify as “research” as opposed to “fish catching bonanzas.”

A couple of small stream efforts resulted in some damned interesting new water being found, but due to high, cold water, damned few trout were caught.

The same was true for last weekend’s drive to a snowed-in pass; Wally the Wonderdog loved it, but the fisherman driving the truck mostly got a nice hike out of it.

This weekend, Wayne Eng wanted to scout some Upper Sacramento locations for a couple upcoming guide trips, and while scouting gives you the chance to see a lot of water, you also realize the goal isn’t to hammer a lot of fish, but to find places where other people — presumably less capable waders and casters — might catch a few trout.

Wayne Eng fly fishing

Wayne Eng cast-o-rama

We didn’t get skunked, but the trip would have been a success even if we had, which says a lot about goals, expectations, and reality.

Fly fishing writers rarely visit the side of the ledger labeled “paying dues” — the trips where you don’t catch many fish, but sock away the knowledge that pays off later, when the water’s lower, the bugs are moving and the fly fishermen seem more smug.

You can’t “land” a new stream and stuff its face in the camera for a hero shot and you won’t high-five each other at the truck after going fishless on a promising-but-over-its-banks stretch of small stream.

Still, when the water’s lower, there’s a good chance you’ll catch some reasonably sized trout on dry flies, and the concept of “investment” probably applies better here than it does in the financial markets, where different rules apparently exist for different people.

This kind of thing becomes more palatable when you realize every trip doesn’t have to be the Trip of a Lifetime, and that in fact, the whole enterprise makes more sense once you realize fly fishing’s best practiced as a lifetime trip.

So maybe the water’s high and the trout won’t eat dries today, but the heat is here and the snow will melt (a month late), and soon enough, you’ll see how that new stretch of river really fishes. Soon enough.

See you (exploring) on the river, Tom Chandler.

Posted in Writing and tagged .