That used to be a variant of the Quigley Cripple...

In one sense, successful fly fishing is about turning hackle and dubbing into tiny little pieces of garbage, and while the numbers are hardly astonishing, Chris Raine and I did turn formerly useful #20 flies into what I’d suggest were a few (badly needed) happy moments.

More soon.

See you tying more, Tom Chandler.

Fortunately, we found one:

An Upper Sacramento, BWO-eating, gullible Rainbow Trout

This is the week all the smoke has cleared away, and it’s time to forget about snow removal and rental hassles and turn words into payable, actionable (and billable) work for a client.

So the full report will have to wait a day or two. Sorry.

See you chasing BWOs, Tom Chandler.

Except when it isn’t.

On Sunday, it wasn’t.

The first fish (and the only picture).

Up here, we’re still in the grip of our indecently nice winter weather — a run of sunny, rain-and-snow-free days that defy the “winter” label.

The banks of the Upper Sacramento (the upper bits) should be carpeted with snow, and I should have skied down the road, but simply drove it instead, and could have done it in a two-wheel drive. I even fished some of the afternoon in a single long-sleeve undershirt before slipping on a light jacket.

It’s early January, and I was fishing a bug with its roots in a hatch that began in early October, and while I haven’t seen an October Caddis for weeks, I had an inkling.

For years I’ve suggested the “best” time to fish the October Caddis dry isn’t during the actual hatch. I can’t count the number of times I’ve caught more and bigger fish on an #18 PED parachute while October Caddis popped off the water like slow-moving hummingbirds.

Thousands of big bugs in the air, yet few — if any — trout eating them on the water.

Until they start dying.

Fly Fishing’s Confidence Game

Fly fishermen often pretend at knowledge they simply can’t possess. It’s a time-honored tradition, so when I say that the trout “know” the late-season October Caddis on the water are probably dying and therefore can’t escape, it sounds pretty good.

When I add — as a virtual certainty — they realize winter is here and the food-free spawn is coming soon afterwards, so they’re seizing the opportunity to bulk up, it all seems reasonable.

But really, who the hell knows?

The fly and the rod, a pretty stellar combination before the snow falls.

I can say that Wally the Wonderdog and I fished for less than two hours, most of it spent rigging up and hiking down the rails (and in the Wonderdog’s case, rolling in something dead).

I only had three grabs.

But what grabs they were; slashing takes, like Northern Pike eating mice.

And yes, all the trout were big, at least by Upper Sacramento standards (they always are in winter).

The October Caddis

The big dying October Caddis pattern (a prototype tied by Raine, who has since changed the pattern) floats low in the water and the CDC wing no doubt looks tattered — like you’d imagine a dead October Caddis would look.

The first trout was a good 14″-15″, and like winter fish always do, he felt heavy and firm and solid and alive in my hand. After so long without a fly rod in my hand, it felt a little like I was reaching back into my past.

The second fish only stayed on for 4-5 seconds, and I’d suggest he was as big as the third, which — when I tried to measure it against the wraps on the fly rod — went on past the 18″ wrap.

Unfortunately, we come to the bad news; unless I can find some kind of accommodation, this might have been Wally the Wonderdog’s last fishing trip on the Upper Sac. In the past he was only peripherally interested in the fishing, but over time, he’s wholly keyed in on the fish to the point he’s trying to retrieve the damn things right out of my hand.

Wally the Wonderdog is pretty keyed in on trout...

It makes for a tough time landing and releasing them (not to mention getting a picture), and sooner or later he’s going to catch one and kill it.

And I’m leaving out some of the language used when he decided to swim through a run while I was casting to it, or those moments when I lose a fish because I’m trying to horse them out of his reach.

Plus he’s not as spry as he used to be, and we hadn’t even reached the two-hour mark when he started limping and falling back, which meant it was time to go home.

We all get older, and the trick is to figure out what still works for us, and in the Wonderdog’s case, that might not involve scrambling up and down steep rocky banks — not exactly the Lab/Basset’s forte to begin with.

The Gear Stuff

I fished the 8’3″ Raine Hollowbuilt 5wt and the Rio Avid DT5 line, and the combination — at close and medium ranges — was astonishing.

Big dry flies are tough to fish accurately at short ranges; they’re wind resistant, so until you’ve got enough line mass driving them, they open up your loops and kill accuracy.

And accuracy is pretty much what it’s all about in this kind of fishing.

A short, strong leader is a necessity, as is a rod that will throw a decent loop at short range.

This happened three times -- plenty when the trout are big...

When Raine built new tips for this bamboo fly rod (converting it from a 4/5 to a true 5wt in the process), he added a little line speed to the equation.

It’s almost as if he’s reinvented the semi-parabolic style rod, only without all the weirdness.

More To Come

With the first real storm of the winter not expected until January 18 (and that’s a long-range forecast, which is worth about as much as you’d guess it was), the dying October Caddis bite might last a little longer.

With most of our options out of reach, my short trips are confined to the river or the nearby lake, though with a big deadline on the table, it may be a couple more days.

Fly fishing in winter is often portrayed as a kind of manly pursuit practiced by those lacking common sense (a label sought by many these days), but in truth, it always feels quieter and more reflective, and the sense of stillness is almost palpable.

Because nobody’s going anywhere in a hurry — and any expectations of a spring-level body count are gone — it’s as if you’re freed from the need to move quickly, and three big trout eating a dry fly is more reward, frankly, than it feels like I deserve.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

My chance to get all arty and pretentious...

The picture sucks, but the moment didn't...

(It didn’t hurt that I was the dope holding the camera and the bamboo fly rod.)

After a December only barely populated with outdoor pursuits, I found myself at the shooting range on Saturday and fly fishing the Upper Sacramento on Sunday.

God, I hate it up here.

I wondered if the dying October Caddis bite was still on, and I discovered it was.

More when I can find a minute to write about it.

See you outdoors (finally), Tom Chandler.

Which is why they send me photographs like this from their smartphones:

This still-warm, dying-October-Caddis-driven photo comes courtesy Chris Raine, the bamboo fly rod builder who clearly knows what it’s like to have bamboo slivers driven up under his fingernails (how else do you explain this photo, which — not to belabor the point — isn’t the only one he sent).

Important Announcement

Starting next week, the Underground will be taking applications for the position of “New Best Friend.”

No health benefits, but you get to walk Wally the Wonderdog.

See you anywhere but the river, Tom Chandler.

I got a pair of those ponderous head shakes that tell you the fish is big (or he’s foul hooked), and then the reel went from zero to ohmigod speeds in a fraction of a second.

That’s thrilling stuff, but hardly Jack London-esque — unless the fast-moving trout decides to run under the only laydown on the whole run.

Well played, Mr. Trout.

It was cold and I was wet and trout were going everywhere, so this is the only pic I got (it's the smaller of the two)

I waded over and sized up the situation. The trout was still on, apparently hanging around just downstream trying to figure out what was going on.

The fly line dove under the tree and made a right-angle exit downriver.

I remember thinking “I can fix this. This won’t be too bad at all.”

Which is when things started to go sideways.

Hey, This Clear Liquid Is Cold

Sometimes — for brief moments — I fancy myself a Man of Action, though at my age, you’d think I’d connect those moments with what inevitably follows.

Which is generally humiliation.

I waded up to the downed tree, put the rod in my left hand, reached down into the water with my right (a lot farther down than I originally thought, which should have been a clue), and lifted the tree.

So far, so good.

But sliding the rod under the tree took me a little deeper than I anticipated, and that extra couple inches meant the top of my waders (and the side of my head, and the neck opening of my jacket) got… submerged.

At the time it happened I realized it was trouble, but I’d started and you know how it is — you’re already there so you decide to brazen it out.

I distinctly remember straightening up — a huge wad of wet, decomposing leaves clutched in my hand along with my still-attached-to-the-trout fly rod — thinking I had the fish and I was still dry.

Which is when the 39 degree water hit my skin.

It kinda takes your breath away.

Shrinkage was body-wide and immediate.

I managed to land that trout — the second of the day. It went between 18 and 19 inches (Raine put measuring wraps on my rod at 16″ and 18″, suggesting a distinct lack of faith in my ability to catch 20″ trout).

The other trout fell just short of the 18″ mark.

I was wet enough that I squished when I walked, though — thank god for the Nano Puff jacket — I warmed up a bit after I got past the shock, though my feet never really enjoyed the trip.

Taken as a whole, that’s still not a bad day.

The Nitty Gritty Details

The air was around 40 degrees, the BWO hatch was light and only lasted an hour, but I still managed to get seven rising fish to eat the bug.

At just under one grab every eight minutes, that’s Happy Hour as far as I’m concerned.

The hook popped out of three with only slight resistance (it’s a #22 cripple after all), and I landed two of the four I hooked.

That’s not a stirring percentage — and I sometimes catch myself wondering WWGD (What Would Gierach Do) — but the fish are big and the hook gape is probably best measured with an electron microscope, so I’ve largely done away with fly fisherman’s remorse.

The 8’3″ 5wt Raine hollowbuilt has confirmed its status as a killer BWO rod — you need to make longer casts than you think on this stretch because wading any closer means the trout simply stop rising.

Thirty feet is a gift. Forty is common, and casting at an upstream or downstream angle can leave you with surprisingly little fly line on your reel.

It’s cold up here (we’ve got two inches of snow on the ground as I write this), but we’ve reached the Bonus Portion of the year; the “real” Upper Sac winter when the little fish go into hiding and the big fish start eating BWOs — provided the hatches come, the sun stays behind a cloud, you’re on the right piece of river, and the fly fishermen don’t wade too close.

See you on the river (literally), Tom Chandler

Funny what a size 22 insect can do for a fly fisherman.

Thanks. I needed that.

The Upper Sacramento’s hatches are maddening; one day they’re gratifying. The next — despite perfect conditions — they’re nonexistent.

And yesterday’s conditions were were damned near perfect.

So I was prepared to get wet for no good reason at all.

Happily, at 1:15, enough BWOs showed to pull a few trout to the surface, a handful of which I tricked into eating my Quigley Cripple.

It’s a simple enough sentence, but fly fishermen read it and their pulse quickens.

Especially when the trout are, well… stunning:

In just the right light, they're stunning (better looking than your angry fingers)

Fall in the Upper Sacramento River canyon is easy on the eyes; half the trees are evergreens, yet the other half are turning red and yellow and orange, and those isolated riots of color stand out more than if they consumed the entire hillside.

The water is low and so clear it’s as if the river bottom is encased in Lucite.

It’s also a time when your hands sting every time you (foolishly) dip them in the water, and when the average size fish throw the hook before you can land them, you’re secretly relieved. Later, when you look at the photos involving fingers, they’ll be an almost angry red.

Our digits apparently are less enamored of fall than we are.

The Details

By the numbers? I had seven grabs, three of which turned into those “life the rod and feel them for a millisecond before the hook pops out” endeavors.

That leaves us with four hookups and three landed fish, all of which were in the 11″-12″ range.

All that happened on a #22 Quigley Cripple (the scaled-down Ed Engle version), the trout having already ignored the #20 Adams Parachute I’d started with.

I was fishing the Raine 8’3″ 5wt hollowbuilt I mentioned here, and as you’d guess, I kept pretty close tabs on its performance — right up until the first good drift over a trout was ignored and I switched to vengeful angler mode.

The verdict? It’s looking good, Undergrounders.

But more testing is needed. Lots more.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

The cold spring meant the wildflowers were firing on all cylinders (they should have been done a month ago), and everything that wasn’t a flower wore the hard-working green of summer leaves.

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(click the images to see full-size versions)

Older Bro and I hiked into this tiny alpine meadow stream based on his recommendation; “You’ll love it, though don’t get too excited about the size of the fish.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

And frankly, I was proud of him. He’s a relatively new fly fisherman, but aside from the casting and the knots and drag-free drifts, he’s already mastered the art of couching his recommendations in case the weather’s bad or the trout are sulking or the other guy’s a headhunter.

I’ll be blunt; I think a lot more people say they love these little streams than actually fishes them; they’re pretty, but for a lot of fly fishermen, fish that seem to top out at 9 inches (we got one 13″ and one 10″ fish on this trip) add a little glitter to that other, bigger water.

Still, we hiked the length of the meadow and fished our way back up, and before we even strung up our fly rods my heart rate was picking up.

I even tried a couple of the standard gambits on him (“Didn’t you notice the special reg poster at the ranger station? This stretch is bamboo fly rods only…”).

Sadly, he didn’t fall for any of them, but then, he’d probably been disappointed if I didn’t try.

I admit I was disappointed by the state of my lower body after we got back to the car; if we went farther than six miles I’ll eat my government surplus Boonie hat, yet I felt like I’d been crossed the continental divide, and with a heavy pack.

The late, great Jim Gade once told me that the way to avoid geezerhood was to not start thinking like you were an old man. “Once you start thinking you’re a geezer, you’ll start feeling like one.”

Tomorrow — if I can drive a stake through a couple projects — I’m going for a walk.

The Fishing Details

I fished a (probably) 60 year-old Phillipson Peerless 8′ 5wt, and I was reminded that although the rod wasn’t necessarily designed to cast a leader, the mass of the bamboo in the tip does tend to load the rod when there isn’t enough line to do so.

And if you’ve worked your way through the pictures, you can imagine how rarely we cast more than a foot or two of line.

As you might imagine, fly selection wasn’t exactly critical, though given the sheer tonnage of grass and insect life living around the stream, I wasn’t surprised when the Arizona Mini-Hopper worked slightly better (OK, it’s hard to know for sure) than anything else I tried.

After all, it’s as much a beetle or caddis as it is a hopper, which seems like a pretty ideal combination for a stream so often visited by terrestrial bugs.

See you somewhere green and wavy and Brookie-filled and beautiful, Tom Chandler.

Fly fishing a small brook trout stream

Today is launch day for a client website, so instead of writing about the weekend’s fly fishing trip, I’m throwing a teaser photo at my readers. Tomorrow we’ll get to the real thing.

West Grand Lake, Maine

That’s a stark contrast to my neck of the world, where everything looks raw and new, and — geologically speaking — actually is.

West Grand Lake’s water level doesn’t vary more than a foot or so over the course of the year, and granite rocks that ring the lake offer a sense of absolute permanence.

Fueling that perception are the cabins in the camp; most of the half-dozen buildings feature roots going back at least half a century and they’re decorated with the kind of “rustic kitch” you simply can’t fake (pictures cut from 1950s outdoor magazines, deer-antler coat hooks, etc).

There’s even the pennant flag from a steam-powered boat that plied the area’s lakes way back when steam-powered boats were considered high tech.

In one building I found a B&W photograph of the L&T’s remarkable mother sitting in a Grand Laker canoe and reading a magazine — somewhere around the age of eight.

The world has changed around the camp and the place is hardly frozen in time (they’ve now got running water, electricity and even wi-fi), but the atmosphere runs at a rural, turn-of-the-century pace, which can find you sitting on a rock-strewn shore, napping and tossing pebbles into the water without noticing a couple hours have passed.

Exactly the kind of thing, it seems, that could go on forever.

West Grand swimming hole...

The Fishing Report

I already related my first-cast heroics in another post, but did manage to get two full days in on the water.

This is the trip where — hearing the stream was dead — I didn’t bother with the fly fishing gear, so naturally, there were fish rising in the evenings, and few fishermen around to hound the fish.

It’s too bad (or par for the course when you rely on the Internet to shape your reality), but only a wretched ass would have regrets about catching smallies with lightweight spinning and casting gear.

My first day on the water was with Registered Maine Guide Steve Schaefer (note the caps). We fished Big Lake, and while we got hammered by one rain squall after another (Steve’s canoe-borne rain gage showed 1.5″ of rain for the day), the fishing was steady.

One of several squalls that hit us like the water was being dumped from a bucket

At times the rain hit us like sheets, as if there simply wasn’t room between the raindrops, so the whole mess fell at once.

Want to test rain gear? I’ve got the place.

Grand Laker Canoe (they fill up fast)

Two fish in the 16″-17″ range came to the boat, and because Big Lake is weedy and shallow and rich, a steady stream of 12″-14″ smallies ate my plastic jerkbait and drop shot rig, and because we’re talking about smallmouth, I was never really sure how big the fish were until they were in the net.

One of the rare sunny moments -- so we went for a shore lunch.

Catch a smallmouth and he’ll run you around the canoe a half-dozen times, and unlike trout or largemouth bass — which kind of give up after a while and flop over on their side — smallmouth bass fight to the net, and then glare at you out of those demonic red eyes, as if to say “I’ll see you in hell.”

Day Two (or, Really?!)

Day Two dawned clear, and the morning’s fishing on West Grand Lake was tough; one here, one there — even getting enough for a shore lunch was a challenge.

You can almost taste it (I actually did)

After The Big Shore Lunch (something created by guides to make clients sleepy and compliant so they go home earlier), Steve Schaefer and I pulled up on an island that looked like all the other islands, and Steve said “I’ve always wanted to try this, but never have.”

1. First cast = 14″ smallmouth
2. Second cast = 13″ smallmouth
3. Third cast = 14″ smallmouth
4. (repeat for the next twenty minutes)

It was — literally — a fish every cast.

After 20 minutes we started to feel guilty and slowly moved around to the other side of this tiny island (we’d been anchored), and the action slowed immediately to a fish… every third or fourth cast.

As near as we could figure, a school of smelt had been backed up against a steep dropoff bordered by two cabin-sized boulders, and every smallmouth bass within cellphone range (who knew?) had hurried over for lunch.

By the time we’d circled the tiny island, we were back in the fish-every-cast routine, and I was out of (apparently) smelt-colored baits.

I even told Steve that nobody at camp was going to believe what sounded a hell of a lot like a fish story. They were, I said, all going to say ‘Really??’ with that disbelieving roll of their eyes.

You don’t try to top a performance like that, so with the sun still bright, we headed back to camp.

Where, it turns out… everyone said “Really??” — even the L&T.

Et, Tu, L&T?

Fishermen are portrayed as a shifty lot; we lie to other fishermen about the number of fish we catch (we say we caught more if we caught fewer, and less if we caught a lot), the places we fish, and the kind of day we had (“It was just great to be out there“), but when we stumble onto the kind of fishing that most people don’t believe actually exists — a fish every cast — then we pay the price for all the prevarication.

The Wrapup

It’s hard to summarize an experience like Maine; the cloudscapes and landscapes differ so much from this part of the world that my mind gets stuck in reset mode; the experience isn’t quite alien, but it’s different.

I fished a pair of days from a Grand Laker canoe that turned out to be the last built by Pop Moore, and if you’re into Grand Lakers, that name drops very loudly indeed.

The sum total of the experience outweighs the hassles getting from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere, though that may not be true in coming years.

See you back in the mountains, Tom Chandler.

And so, as sun sets slowly in the west...