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 […]

Chasing a March Brown hatch based on a thin rumor is like chasing ghosts in broad daylight; the odds for success are slim, and the opportunity for drama almost non-existent.
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 […]

Sometimes winter fishing is great drama. Other times, you get in the drift boat and just soak up the sun, which feels pretty damned good in the middle of a snowy winter.
I won’t cop to being lazy as much as relaxed; I sporadically fished a dry fly but Dave Roberts and I were both […]

Fly fishing the Upper Sacramento River in winter isn’t always about the bugs.
In the middle of a gray, snowy winter, the phrase “making hay while the sun shines” acquires a patina of meaning that simply doesn’t exist on your average warm, summer day.
I don’t know if an itch to go […]

The road to the Rogue; clouds, mountains and trucks on I-5
One of the benefits of fishing a river more than a few minutes from home is the windshield time — that jolt of solitary confinement when you’re not subject to all the dings, rings and interruptions of the modern “connected” life.
Even in 105 minute […]

I live in a town overrun with backdountry skiers — the kind of folks willing to hike most of the way up the mountain just to ski back down.
In that context, skiing on a barely inclined, snowed-over road isn’t exactly the stuff of high adventure, but when you sweeten the pot with a shot […]

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.
When life gives you several feet of snow, you employ the same principle; you make a snowshoe trip to some of your favorite trout water.

I don’t know if Edmondson was fishing or praying for trout. Votes?
With cabin fever setting in all over the area, finding a pair of […]

Greetings from the sniffly, germ-ridden Underground, where the noses run far more freely than does the river of pity.
That lack of pity? The L&T pointed out I got sick after spending a chunk of yesterday waist deep in water only a teensy bit warmer than ice, and though the snot came freely, the trout didn’t.
I […]

Fly fishing sometimes offers you moments like this: you hold an insanely beautiful 18″ rainbow in stinging-cold water before letting it swim away.
The L&T Nancy asked me how the fishing was, and I caught myself forming the words “OK” — as if catching a colorful 15″ rainbow and his bigger 18″ brother could ever be […]

Fly fishing the Upper Sacramento River in winter can mean fishless days — but it can also mean big rainbow trout.

In years past, the general trout season ended on November 15, and for a lot of us fly fishermen, the end of year party was more like a wake. Now with fly fishing allowed year-round on the Upper Sacramento, the Trout Underground takes stock.