Damn, it is Monday.
That means the many not-so-neat piles of work on my desk require a little attention. As do the around-the-house spring jobs that sat while I fished.
That’s 19 inches of pissed-off Brown Trout, courtesy a streamer.
It also means the weekend’s fishing trips will get short shrift in terms of […]

Beauty, eh? (And yes, it is pretty damned hard to forget why I moved here)
I fished yesterday with KB — the largely insane author of the Singlebarbed blog.
I’m heading out soon with Steve Bertrand (to a Super-Secret Guide Spot), and frankly, I’d rather eat, bathe, and organize my gear […]

I’d love to bash out a couple hundred carefully considered words about opening day, but the L&T and I are pretty worn out from saying good-bye to an ailing pet (Macy the Cat, 14 years), and I just don’t feel like writing.
At least not about fly fishing.
Instead, I’ll give you the one-paragraph summary.
Dave Edmondson […]

With the general trout season opening in less than 24 hours, the Underground’s Fly Gear Readiness Department is busy dulling hooks, jumbling fly boxes, nicking leaders and pinholing my waders in preparation for tomorrow’s opener.
In truth, catching trout on opening day is more an observation of a tradition than a pent-up need to fly fish, […]

The words “big trout” excite a fly fishermen’s nervous system, and in a way that’s all out of proportion to their caloric value.
You start wondering about things like that, and the next thing you know you’re digging through texts about the psychology of our hunter-gatherer forebearers, and eventually you just give up and go try […]

Wayne Eng, a big trout, and a (slightly) bigger mountain.
Yesterday afternoon was a monster big-fish-fest for Wayne Eng and the Underground’s Fearless Leader, but I can’t file my gloating, self-satisfied fishing report quite yet; there’s too much real work that needs to be written.
Still, I’ll give you a glimpse into […]

The L&T Nancy is back from her weeklong trip, which basically means it’s time to stop gouging dinner directly from the peanut butter jar.
Yes Undergrounders, the influences of the much better half are already being felt, though a fishing trip with cave men fly buddies Dave Roberts and Chris Raine doesn’t exactly reinforce most […]

Fly fisherman don’t experience hope as a powerful emotion as much as a permanent character pathology.
Though the fly fishing’s been slow, we all know it could turn any minute, and if things pop into high gear when you’re at home and someone else is on the river, you’ll suffer the indignity of knowing you’re […]

The reports about the Upper Sacramento have been uniform; it’s tough sledding right now, even if you stumble across a decent hatch.
Of course, something’s always happening somewhere — a lesson I learned in my bass fishing days, where boat after boat would return to the dock with empty livewells, but somebody always hammered the […]

Fly fishing the Upper Sacramento River in spring could mean strong BWO hatches, but also uninterested, spawning fish.

Fly fishing for bluegill isn’t as sexy as sight fishing for tarpon — and it’s hard to reasonably perform a lot of fist pumps and layer a rock music soundtrack over your average bluegill footage — but damn, they’re fun.

Fly fishing for bluegill. The fish are small, but the color’s big.
Most fishermen don’t rank them […]

[ED: This story courtesy of the Underground’s Director in Charge of Montana Fishing and Intellectually Challenged Whitefish. Enjoy.]
Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks requires new Conservation and Fishing licenses March 1. It’s as official and appropriate an opening of the new fishing season as anyone around Missoula requires.
And March 1 really is […]