The hot weather has caused inflow to exceed storage capacity in McCloud and Iron Canyon reservoirs and outflow through James B. Black Powerhouse.  As a result, starting early this morning, McCloud Dam is spilling with MC-1 gage (Ah-Di-Na) at approximately 1,350 cfs and MC-5 gage (MSS) at approximately 1,650 cfs. 

Depending on weather conditions, we are hoping to be able to reduce flows as temperatures are predicted to cool through the week and end the spill by Friday, 5/23. 

Spill flows from McCloud Dam are not unusual this time of year, typically occurring about 4 to 5 out of every 10 years; however, this spill event is directly related to the flow studies. 

To provide the target flows required for FA-S8 (Instream Flow Evaluation on the Lower McCloud River) both McCloud and Iron Canyon reservoirs needed to be near capacity.  As a result, there was very little storage capacity left in the reservoir and the hot weather significantly increased inflow to McCloud Reservoir, exceeding the capacity to either store the water or move it through the powerhouse.

The McCloud’s likely out reach for a little while, and the Upper Sac continues to move a ton of water. A weekend reconnaissance of the South Fork revealed one long whitewater cataract, unsuited for man or Wonderdog.

Right now, the local lakes are looking like the best bet. More on fishing conditions as it happens.

The good news? The runoff will be damned short this year, and cooling temperatures will slow it a little.

See you on lake, Tom Chandler.

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Instead, calm and serene sounded pretty damned good — and the Upper Sac and its tributaries were moving some serious water — so in a classic example of finding what I thought I was looking for, ended up on Lake Siskiyou.

Steven Bertrand provided the transportation (boat), and we basically didn’t catch fish when we visited the "usual" uplake spots, though I have to say I still looked pretty good doing it.

 
Siskiyou is calm place (OK, not so much on weekends).

Later, we motored to our best smallie/bluegill water, where apparently fish and frustration waited for us in equal doses.

On one brushy stretch, I did manage four grabs on a popper in a matter of minutes, though in ample testament to my laid-back state and the lack of any predatory edge, I only boated one smallie.

Shameless tupperware plug: the 9′ 6wt Zero Gravity is a nice streamer rod.

Soon, the open-water rises started, and we spent a couple hours chasing trout eating… well, we’re still not sure what they were eating.

The surface film was littered with flying ants, and we pounded up a few grabs from very spooky trout on ant patterns, but we didn’t get bit far more often than we did, creating a suspicion that we didn’t quite get it right.

Midges? Mayfly nymphs? Who knows.

This is what we were chasing later; rise rings, usually coming in groups of 3-4. 

Ultimately, we both missed a handful of takes on ant patterns, and the trout were typically spooky.

They’d create two to three barrel-sized boils before disappearing again, so catching them involved leading them — difficult when you’re never entirely sure which direction they were headed.

I finally hooked and fought a nice trout for several minutes (he just took off every time he saw the boat), and then — like so many unexplained moments in life — the hook just came out.

 
And, as the sun sets slowly in the West…

The Gear Guy

I fished poppers and dry flies using Chris Raine’s 8.5′ 5/6wt hollowbuilt quad prototype, and while it throws a popper nicely with a DT6 line, Next time I’ll try it with a DT 5.

When fishing the wide-open expanses of a lake, I can quickly find myself casting 70 feet while thinking I’m throwing 45 feet, leading me to wonder what the hell happened to my backcast.

I also fished a Corltand Clear Camo sinking line on a 9′ 6wt Orvis Zero Gravity, and while people who fish streamers a lot suggest throwing the fastest tapered rod you can get your hands on, I’m happier throwing a mid-flex rod.

That could mean I’ve stumbled on an essential truth overlooked by the rest of fly fishing, but it’s more likely I’m a little hardheaded about my gear.

So be it.

The Weather

Damn, it’s hot up here. With many of the local rivers absolutely blown out by snow melting (fast) in near 100-degree temperatures, I’ll likely be back on Siskiyou sometime this week, this time trying a little harder to crack the code.

Naturally, you’ll be among the first to hear about it.

See you on the lake, Tom Chandler.

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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 complete, in-depth, helpfully informative coverage.

That’s OK — Singlebarbed completely fabricated did a nice job of covering our Saturday visit to the Upper McCloud (there’s a teensy bit of actual fishing reality in this report).

  
The Upper McCloud fished a little cold, but looked damned pretty.

I will say this: the McCloud’s eye-candy views almost compensated for the fact I pounded up only one take on a dry, and then promptly missed him (still 48 degrees water tempts, though the indicator types are catching fish).

Damn.

Still — in a rare fit of how-to helpfulness — I will fire up a post about my Sunday trip to Steve Bertrand’s Secret Guide Spot.

No, I can’t reveal the exact location of the Secret Guide Spot, but then, that’s not where I caught the above-pictured Brown Trout — nor the handful of others that ate a streamer I stripped about as fast I could.

The dry fly has failed me so far this year, but twice the streamer’s saved my butt (and in a big-fish way).

And yes, streamers are just plain fun. And we do fun here just fine.

Until then, see you at work, Tom Chandler.

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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 instead of posting a fishing report.

So let this be a lesson in delayed gratification; you’ll hear from me again on Monday (when we’ll finally launch the free contest I promised last Friday).

See you at the Super Secret Guide Spot, Tom Chandler.

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At least not about fly fishing.

Instead, I’ll give you the one-paragraph summary.

Dave Edmondson and I fished the Upper McCloud, didn’t fish the water we wanted because of other fishermen, hiked a good five miles, and each hooked a couple trout, though in a stunning display of technical skill, didn’t land any of them.

The pictures, frankly, are more interesting than the story:

 
It’s been a long winter, and the first warm days aren’t all about fly fishing.

Yesterday, you couldn’t (legally) fish this water. Today’s it’s just as beautiful.

 
Still snow on the ground — including the drift that ate my truck the day before.

Dangerous predators infest the river.

Gotta fish bamboo on opening day. Gotta.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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In truth, catching trout on opening day is more an observation of a tradition than a pent-up need to fly fish, but I still find myself headed out the door this afternoon for a little scouting session.

Tradition, it turns out, creates its own inertia.

As for the fishing, the flows on the local rivers look pretty good (though warmer weather brings them up), but first:

AN IMPORTANT FLY FISHING-RELATED ALERT

I heard a fourth-hand rumor — just confirmed (second hand) by Bob Grace of the Ted Fay Fly Shop — that the road to the Ah Di Nah Campground isn’t yet open (blocked by a snow drift), though the road to Ash Camp is passable.

Flows at Ash Camp are fairly low, and the McCloud should be absolutely crowded fishable for the opener.

Rumor also has it the Nature Conservancy caretaker had to hike into the Conservancy along the Pacific Crest Trail, so if you were planning to hit that water this weekend, better bring some boots.

More Fishing Reports

And speaking of the Ted Fay Fly Shop — California’s second-longest running fly shop — they’re going to try and keep their Guide Notes fishing report and Stream Conditions reports current this year, so better bookmark ‘em.

I also talked to local guide Craig Nielsen (owner of Shasta Trout guide service), who spoke to us from his hot tub and was leaving this afternoon for a steelhead trip on a secret Alaskan stream.

That’s style no matter how you spin it, and we’re awarding him an Official Underground Bastard Designation, despite him not inviting us along.

We can’t wait to see the pictures from the trip.

His clients have been catching fish on the Trout Underground deep nymphing, which pretty much squares with what all the other non-dry-fly snobs have been telling me.

Me? I wouldn’t know.

See you on opening day, Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: Scouting Day Photos

Technorati Tags: fly fishing,fishing,upper sac,upper sacramento river,fishing report,ted fay fly shop

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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 to catch a few big trout, which is a lot easier when you know where they are.

A 20″-22″ trout puts a big bend in Raine’s 8.5′ hollowbuilt quad prototype.

Local guide Wayne Eng - sensing I needed a break from the regular beatings meted out by the Upper Sacramento - called and suggested a scouting trip to a private pond.

I’d fished it before, and done well; a fair number of nice trout, and always one big fish.

It’s small, it’s centered in a tiny alpine valley, and later in the year it can get a little weedy. The pond’s been “enhanced” in terms of size, but because that happened years ago, you can’t tell.

That’s me late in the day, speed stripping a streamer (Wayne Eng photo)

Over the years, the edges have softened nicely with weeds and cattails, and the trout — which can’t really reproduce in the lake — were initially stocked in small and large sizes.

Wayne said it hadn’t seen any new fish for over a year, and frankly, I wasn’t expecting much. The cormorants had been hammering the smaller fish, and there’s always the threat of a winterkill when spring’s late in coming.

At least we can scratch the winterkill theory:

The trout were all like this; shoulders like WWF wrestlers.

My final body count was in the vicinity of ten fish. My two smallest went 16″-17″ and my biggest was somewhere in the vicinity of 22″-24″ (most were around 20″).

Naturally, I lost a few - they’d get their big heads in the weeds and that was it - and several real torpedoes chased a streamer I was speed-stripping, which was enough to stop my heart.

Wayne was oddly focused on catching a big trout on a mouse pattern, and he worked it to death in an attempt to prove… well, I can’t imagine what.

He got a few to swirl at it, but never hooked up, and sometimes it happens that way; you’re fly fishing in pursuit not of fish or bragging rights, but to prove an obscure point.

That you catch fewer fish doesn’t much matter, and besides, once you figure catch & release into the mix, it’s clear the pursuit the actually is the point.

The Fish & Gear Portion

All my trout (and two of Wayne’s) were caught on the prototype Hollowbuilt Quad (8.5′ 6wt) loaned to me by Chris Raine, and it handled throwing weighted streamers in the wind about as well as you could expect any rod to.

When I took it apart at the end of the day, it was still arrow straight. In the space of a single afternoon, I think we inflicted several year’s worth of abuse on the rod, a fact which will hopefully put the myth of bamboo’s fragility to the sword.

My first trout ate a small wet fly that looked a little like the water boatmen the trout were chasing.

The fish was huge, and 1/3 of his length was head. His jaw was hooked like a salmon’s and I put him back in the water, couldn’t quite grasp the size of him, and decided I could probably stop for the day without any qualms.

One of Wayne’s bigger fish

I didn’t of course — fly fishermen just talk about doing that stuff to reinforce the perception of our elevated moral sense — and after a while, I started channeling Ian Rutter because I had the sudden urge to speed-strip a rabbit zonker streamer.

On the second cast, a big fish hammered it and tailwalked a good ten feet before throwing the hook.

A minute later — with adrenaline still pumping through my system - another monster trout freight trained it from the side and because I saw the whole thing happen, I instinctively set the hook hard, immediately breaking the 3x tippet.

One of my streamer trout doing his best to break my fly rod.

That’s when I sat down for a few seconds, took a few deep breaths, and reminded myself I wasn’t fishing for bass with a flipping stick and 20 pound test.

I hooked several more on the streamer, and almost as much fun were the fish who followed it and swirled, but never ate it.

Watching the wake of a 22″ trout approach your streamer — and doing nothing about it — is an effective test of your nerve, and after the streamer bite died, I was actually pretty relieved to go back to slow-stripping a nymph.

A streamer trout. Thanks Ian.

Yeah, What is the Point of It All?

This was a rich, weedy pond that at one point hadn’t been much of a fishing hole, and while the fish in there were mostly stocked, they’d survived several years — long enough to lose their hatchery drabness and mangled fins.

In the larger picture, they were pretty damned lucky trout; they’d gone from a concrete runway to a wild place where they’d never actually be hungry, and if trout look up at the surface of the water with anything approaching wonder, they’d see a breathtaking mountain view staring back at them.

Wayne Eng hooked up (in more ways than one)

It’s a great place for fly fishermen to play, and yes — you have to go where the big fish are to catch them — but I get the feeling that bragging too much about the monster trout I caught would be a lot like going to a strip club and bragging about all the boobs I saw.

It’s fun, it’s diverting — and maybe it’s an example of the way the West fished before we screwed it up — but given the number of big fish swimming around in the thing, even a pretty bad fly fishermen could walk away thinking he’s a real predator.

See you on the water, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fly fishing,fishing,rainbow trout,big rainbow trout,big trout,fly fishing for trout,fly fishing stillwater,bamboo fly rod,raine hollowbuilt quad fly rod,damned straight

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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 future — you’ll read all about:

• Many Big Trout
• A prototype bamboo fly rod stretched to its limits (see #1)
• A mouse pattern
• Stunning views
• A broken camera
• Several Manly Acts of Courage (not really)
• Fly Fishing Stupidity (really)
• A Taco Bell Big Box Meal

See you on the blog, Tom Chandler.

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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 civilized behavior.

Sadly, our hardy little band of neanderthals picked the wrong day to get together; we stared straight down the throat of a post cold-front day — those cloudless, cold, windy days that mar the fishing after a front has moved through.

Past experience suggests the fishing would slow, and with rising fish already absent from the Upper Sacramento River, I didn’t exactly hold out hope for a banner day.

Once again, I was right.

I’ll spare you the grim details with this report: no trout, no risers, few bugs, no nymphed fish. There.

The bright spot was evidence of Skwalas and a water temperature that — 1/3 of the way down the river — was approaching 50 degrees.

That seems to be the temperature where bugs and fish become active, and we could be looking at an interesting pre-runoff fishing spurt. I’ll keep you posted.

Test-Flying a Prototype Bamboo Fly Rod

The bad weather was offset by the rod I was fishing; a prototype hollowbuilt bamboo quad rod by Raine.

It’s an 8.5′ 5/6wt that defies what everyone believes 8.5′ bamboo rods have to be; it’s surprisingly light in the hand, yet remains wholly capable of dealing with strong winds.

You’ll hear more about this interesting, two-tipped rod as I abuse test it (one tip is a 5wt, the other a 6wt).

The Ghost Warden

Those of you who reveled in our post about busted-trout-poacher Larry Baker already know of the Underground’s open admiration for "Ghost Warden" Joe Powell, who led the sting operation against Baker.

Powell’s the local warden who’s seemingly everywhere at once, drifting between anglers like a phantom.

We ran into him yesterday, and he’d captured four Skwalas in a glass jar — proof the stonefly shucks we’re seeing along the river aren’t fakes planted by trout to mislead fishermen (it wasn’t much of a theory, but…).

We got the scoop on the Baker bust, and frankly, if I was poacher, I’d find another region of the state to play in.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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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 a lazy slacker, bereft of grit or staying power.

That’s how — despite a stretch of bad fishing on the Upper Sacramento River — Dave Edmondson and I found ourselves far upriver, fishing a section I rarely see.

 
Sure, we didn’t catch any trout, but we looked pretty damn good doing it.

The results, sadly, were predictable; despite going "ugly" right away (I never touched a dry), neither Edmondson nor I made anything happen in the trout department.

This time, my pocket thermometer registered a chilly water temperature of 43-44 degrees (it was 47-48 degrees at the bottom end of the river).

That’s not an auspicious number, but then, I’ve seen trout eating BWOs in lower water temperatures, so the cold doesn’t excuse their lackluster performance.

Apparently, these trout aren’t grasping The Big Picture.

Damnit, I’ve got a blog to fill, and those slacking trout are denying me my Colorful Trout Photographs, or even fly fishing’s hoariest staple: the Puffed-Up Hero Shot.

Despite the non-cooperation of the trout, we’ll keep trying. Until then, see you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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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 fish.

With that reality in mind, Steve Bertrand and I ran way downriver, looking for active fish, rising fish, or just hungry, stupid fish.

Yes, I’m crushing Bertrand’s head. Crushing it.

And yes, it’s never a good sign when I lead a fishing report with a "just screwing around" photo — one where I’m crushing Steve Bertrand’s skull with my all-powerful fingers.

That photo suggests — despite covering a lot of river, peering into a lot of water, casting to a lot of promising runs, and burning too much $4/gallon gas — pictures were about all we had to show for our efforts.

 
At least somebody was getting it done.

The river looks great; flows are plenty fishable, water clarity is good, and you can’t look at the better runs without knowing they’re loaded with fish.

Without delving into the gory details, I’ll simply say that I fished a dry and took pictures, while Steven rapidly progressed from dry fly to dry and dropper to serious nymphing rig — with exactly the same results.

Looking, but not finding.

We both knew of places where we probably could catch trout (because Steven had just recently), but damnit — we wanted the motherlode. We wanted to find the fish nobody else had.

Today, Wayne and Steve are off to the Pit River while I stayed behind to <cough> work, and file this all-encompassing fishing report.

Sorta Gear Porn

Raine’s Upper Sac Special (the first [and still solid-built] model) and Velocity Radius

While I’m pretty set on the gear front, I recently scored a heavily discounted Velocity Radius reel at the Sierra Trading Post, and fished it on my Raine Upper Sac Special, which provided a pleasingly smooth, balanced package.

In other words, at least it was warm, and green and sunny, and the casting was good.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

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Rather than continue staring, I dragged together the big pile of all the stuff you take on winter fishing trips, piled it into the truck, invited Wally the Wonderdog along, and left.

 
March Brown. One of two I saw…

It all looked good; the Wonderdog and I drove to a remote stretch of river (actually, I drove; Wally sat in the back and issued directions).

Once there, he attempted to sniff/mark/dig out pretty much every bush while I rigged up and rooted around the bankside brush for clues.

Encouragingly, I found a handful of medium-sized stonefly shucks and a pair of March Brown adults.

Good signs, and like hopeful fly fishers everywhere, I immediately laid it all out in my head; I’d pound up a few trout on a big dark stimmie before the BWOs started, then switch to #18 dries and pound the rising fish (there’d be hundreds).

Once the little bugs faded, the March Browns would start hatching, and I’d catch a few more (bigger) fish on a #12 parachute.

The plan. You gotta love a man with a plan.

Stonefly shucks, but no trout.

What could go wrong?

The stimmie failed to attract even the briefest attention, and though the Wonderdog and I fished a fair amount of good-looking edge water (the river’s up, so the edges tend to fish better), nothing happened.

Still, we made it back to the "technical" water in time for a sizable BWO hatch, and I — like the Wonderdog — was licking my chops.

Unfortunately, not a single trout rose to eat the bugs. Or the micro-mayfly I hung under the stimmie. Or the March Brown dry I tied on in desperation.

Those March Browns? The slackers never showed up.

While all this happened, Wayne Eng and a friend were fishing only a short distance above me (I didn’t know it), yet when we spoke on the phone, it was if we’d fished two separate rivers.

They saw few bugs, but lots of redds, and the few fish they caught fell to egg patterns. I saw what looked like a few redds, so I’d say yeah — it’s started.

I’m not much for chasing fish on redds — a holdover from my bass fishing days when targeting spawning fish felt a little less than sporting.

After all, they can’t simply give you the fin and glide away, and the battle becomes one of persistence rather than skill.

The good news? There’s a lot to fish up here, and I’ve been itching to try some different water. With local guide Steve Bertrand back and dusting off his fly rods, I’d say we’re looking at something different relatively soon.

See you elsewhere, Tom Chandler.

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Fly fishing for bluegill. The fish are small, but the color’s big.

Most fishermen don’t rank them too highly in the “difficulty” department; even John Gierach suggests bluegills provide more sustenance than sport, and we’ve yet to see the best-selling release of “Selective Bluegill.”

Of course, all that human expectation doesn’t necessarily translate to the bluegill, which is how I found myself standing on the edge of small, spring-fed pond with an 8′ 5wt Phillipson in hand, wondering if I was about to receive a bluegill-induced skunking.

The water was a little too cold for the bluegills to spawn, but you know, they’re still bluegill, right?

The scene of the almost-crime; a spring-fed ranch pond.

Let’s set the scene; it was Saturday evening, a barbecue jammed with good food was waiting for us, and pond owner Mad Dog and I were looking for signs — any signs — of happy, feeding bluegill.

He landed one earlier in the day on a dry fly, but I finally went with a flashy, krystal-flash bodied softhackle that used to kill ‘em on my warmwater Bay Area bluegill haunts.

The “glitter-is-good” Hollywood soft hackle.

Because of its somewhat questionable pedigree and “flashy, skin-deep” appearance, I named it the “Hollywood” soft hackle, and once again, it produced the goods.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere (as if we didn’t already know American Idol is more popular than Masterpiece Theatre), but one of fly fishing’s most important rules is this:

When there are fish on the line, ignore all object lessons.

The final score was Underground-1, Bluegill-0, though I did kneel in sizable pile of goose shit, and I imagine the Bluegill were sniggering a little over that misstep.

More bluegill adventures could occur at any time, though the weather this week looks cloudy and rainy — the kind of warmer storms that can speed-melt the remaining low-level snow and blow the Upper Sac flows.

Dave Roberts called; he’s getting over pneumonia and I’m finishing a big project, and we agreed we both needed some river action later this week.

As always, you’ll be among the first to know, provided I don’t do anything stupid like fall in the water or kneel in shit.

See you at the washing machine, Tom Chandler.

Last cast. Even when the fly fishing’s poor, the looking is good.

Technorati Tags: fly fishing,fishing,bluegill,phillipson bamboo fly rod,bamboo fly rod,soft hackle

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[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 auspicious; if it weren’t for televised sports, the freezing, low-light months from November through February would terminate all habitation here.

A few local fly fishermen seek relief through winter road trips to tailwaters: the Big Horn and Missouri.

In fact, Montana still preserves a vestigial Opening Day - the hard-wired third Saturday of May small creek opener. Still, hardly anyone notices; the larger rivers — the fabled magazine waters — have been open to year-long fishing as long as memory serves.

The Paradise Valley spring creeks are very fishable by President’s Day, but with egg patterns: tantamount to ordering a slawdog at a five-star restaurant. [ED: what’s wrong with that?]

By the first of March spring is a foregone conclusion. Ice has largely left the rivers; the new fishing season is at hand.

Me and the (Apparently) Gullible Whitefish

I’ve been prowling one of the local rivers the past several weeks. The first trip was mainly to break out Christmas loot. A pristine Rio Gold line spooled on a new Waterworks Purist ULA reel proved a high dollar mismatch against the first fish of the year- the always eager Rocky Mountain whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni).

Several whities and a couple extremely surprised rainbows ate stonefly nymphs, and as far as I’m concerned, the new gear was fully amortized that day.

Normally I wouldn’t ramble on about Spring Training nymphing but an extraordinary event occurred during the first outing on the new license- the same fish ate the same fly almost immediately after being caught and released.

Whitefish do suffer a certain sameness. Their coloration is remarkable in its drab uniformity. Once you look aft of their rosy gill plates, the word “gray” fully describes them. They also tend to aggregate in groups of about the same size.

So how did the instant recidivist reveal himself? Specimen A had a heron strike mark on the right side of his back just behind the dorsal fin. (You don’t catch fish with strike marks on the head — they become ex-fish). He was roughly 11-inches in length.

After swinging in and releasing the fish, without moving my feet, I maneuvered a couple of drifts through the same slot.

On about the third cast, Fish B, bearing the tell-tale divot, vigorously ate the fly.

Again.

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Still, when you’ve spent the last couple weeks staring at the several feet of snow outside your office window, chasing a ghost hatch is as much an exercise in self-preservation as an act of faith.

I’m happy to be here, though my hat’s in danger of being blown away.

So there you are on the river, and no, the March Browns aren’t hatching, and the fish aren’t rising, the wind is blowing hard enough that you dedicate one hand to holding your hat, and frankly, you couldn’t care less.

The March Brown Excursion

With the sun shining and temps edging towards 50 degrees — one of the faux spring days nature rolls out to tease us every March — I drove to the middle third of the river where the March Browns tend to hatch the best.

It’s too early for the Upper Sacramento’s March Browns to really take hold, and in fact, they’ll probably hit in April and still be hatching in May.

When I first moved up here, the March Browns were a wonderful — if sometimes ignored — hatch. Back then, the season didn’t open until late April, and I have no idea how much of the hatch we might have missed.

A March Brown Emerger; I have no recollection of tying this fly.

I’d sneak away from my work at the stroke of noon, often hitting a couple hours of good-to-stellar dry fly fishing.

On the way to way to the river, I’d run into other fly fishers leaving for lunch, apparently unaware of what was about to happen.

I’m a nice guy, but not stupid, and I never took it upon myself to enlighten anyone, and for a while, the March Browns felt like my own secret hatch, though that was self-deception.

Today, I don’t know if the March Browns have fallen on hard times or if my own timing has deserted me, but the hatches don’t seem as heavy as they were nearly a decade ago.

This year, we’ll see.

The Dynamic River

My first stop was on a stretch of the river that has often blessed me with good fly fishing, though it’s changed a lot since then. The last year we had an opening day, I caught a 16" trout on my second cast of the season (on a dry), but since then, it’s fished, well… small.

Everything in nature evolves, and my image of the river is often more a snapshot than a constantly changing movie. Still, I’m not wholly blind to change.

The low waters of last year allowed a string of willows to take root on a rock bar that never had willows before, and the channels in this long run are clearly redefining themselves.

Whether I find the wrinkles in this new stretch is largely dependent on the amount of time I spend there, and with so much of the river waving and beckoning like relatives at a family picnic, promises are easier to make than keep.

The Fishing Report

Oh yeah. The fishing. No March Browns. A handful of BWOs (the #22s), and a few #18/#16 mayflies in a yellowish olive color.

No rising fish. No break from the wind. And a stronger interest in walking along the river than nymphing, so that’s what I did.

I fished an 8′ Steffen glass rod and a new Lamson Radius (mega-bargain) reel that I’ll talk about more in another post.

Until then, see you on the always-changing river, Tom Chandler.

 
For those who — like me — have forgotten what a river looks like.

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