Chatham was something of a fly fishing bum and the stories reflect it (he’ll fish almost anywhere for anything), but a modern fly fisherman can’t help but sit up and notice when Chatham tells us Bill Schaadt caught between 800 and 900 steelhead on the Russian River in 1956, yet when the book was written (the early 1970s), Schaadt would have counted himself lucky to land twenty.

What would that number be today?

In other words, the steelhead hasn’t always been the “fish of a thousands casts” and it’s interesting too see how its scarcity has created a folklore that isn’t — historically speaking — true.

Time adds weight to some written works (Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a shining example), and I’d recommend The Angler’s Coast to any newer fly fisherman (especially those in California) who wonders why so many are fighting so hard to restore our still-declining steelhead and salmon runs.

As someone who started fishing in the mid-70s and graduated from high school in 1979, Chatham’s stories about the west’s fisheries fall just outside my grasp; they overlap my childhood but were largely gone before I was old enough to notice, leaving me with the impression of something I should remember, but can’t.

The book was written four decades ago and things have largely gotten worse instead of better, and while it’s not a weepy recounting of what we lost, it is a robust set of stories about the very tail end of the losing, and perhaps an incentive to do the things it will take to recover at least a fraction of what have become the West Coast’s version of the buffalo.

See you in the stacks, Tom Chandler.

And as the winter slowly closes out, those phone calls turn to spring.

Naturally, there’s an unspoken etiquette when discussing the upcoming fly fishing season – especially when that season involves a record 170% of normal snowpack and a forecast for a cooler-than-normal spring.

First, you don’t come right out and admit the obvious: You’re screwed.

That’s considered poor form.

Instead, you’re encouraged to speculate wildly about best-case scenarios, often couching your speculation in experience: “The snowpack was higher in ought-whatever” we’ll say, “but we were still fishing by the Fourth of July.”

Of course, the snowpack wasn’t higher in ought-whatever, and plenty of years the river was still unhappily elevated by the Fourth of July.

But you don’t say that out loud. That way lies insanity.

Instead, you dance around the subject, but slowly — because you’re not blind to reality — the evidence builds.

Record snowpack. Cold spring (the temperature is 15 degrees lower than “normal” for this time of year).

High water.

Lots and lots of split shot.

Thus concludes the discovery portion of the phone call (over the past two days, I went through this with both Wayne Eng and Steven Bertrand).

Then we move into the Adaptation phase.

Wayne, ever the optimist, suggested we’d just have to look for the right spots on the river, which will become difficult to fish just as soon as water starts spilling over the Box Canyon dam at Lake Siskiyou.

Bertrand – who is not so optimistic – suggested trips to reservoirs and tailwaters, which set off a whole new round of speculation about what happens to the Lower McCloud and McCloud Reservoir once that 170% snowpack hits Mud Creek.

Even with the Optimist setting turned up to 11, we quickly started running out of fishable water.

I even essayed a classic backcountry gambit, where I suggested I’d be able to fish a couple of my alpine streams as early as late May or June, which is total bullshit.

Bertrand noted that we normally fish those places by May or June, and this year wasn’t normal, which forced me to fall back on my “I’ll snowshoe or ski in” fantasy.

That works if you ignore the fact that you’d ski many, many miles one way, only find a creek over its banks.

In other words, it works not at all.

We did isolate on small creek that might be fishable before the others, and because you don’t want to find other people there, you speak its name sparingly on the phone (apparently out of fear the NSA is populated with fly fishermen).

The Lower Sac? The Rogue? There will be fly fishing, though it’ll likely involve some travel or AA sized split shot or sheer luck.

And naturally, you’ll occasionally encounter a spoiler; while I was writing this, Dave Roberts called to reveal he’d spent yesterday in a snowstorm on the Henry’s Fork, catching trout during a heavy BWO hatch.

You simultaneously curse him for the taunt, but quietly thank him for restoring some hope.

Now if only you could afford the gas.

See you working the phone bank, Tom Chandler

Earlier this week, a reporter called to write an article about the Trout Underground, and just as the conversation started, Wally the Wonderdog wandered slowly past my office window — holding a stiffly frozen, snow-encrusted squirrel in his mouth.

I considered telling the reporter about the squirrel-cicle, but then realized it really wasn’t that believable; the kind of thing a guy would make up to impress a reporter.

Moments like this force me to realize that much of the Underground’s universe — especially the bits concerning Wally the Wonderdog — simply aren’t fit for print.

Or maybe they’re just not readily explainable.

And that was only the start of the interview. It wasn’t long before he asked the inevitable, grind-my-brain-to-halt question:

“What is the Trout Underground?”

And, like every other time I’ve been asked, I had no answer — at least nothing that glibly approaches a sound bite (outside of the ill-advised “I’m simply oversharing my mental illness”).

Part of the problem lies with the sport itself; beyond the gear used (and that’s up for grabs these days), fly fishing is pretty hard to define.

Even Gierach — who writes far more gooder than I — refuses to be cornered:

“Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It’s not even clear if catching fish is actually the point.”

It gets worse.

A quick survey of the Internet suggests catching fish actually is the point fly fishing, but for some (an awful lot, actually), it clearly isn’t.

Others accumulate fly fishing gear and clearly think that’s the point, while others embrace minimalism as the One True Path to Heaven.

For others, it’s all about being miserable, and reminding everyone just how tough they are to withstand the suffering, or…

You get the picture.

Recruiting new people to the sport has never proved all that easy, with some quick to point to things like the high cost of equipment (ever compared the cost of a fly rod & reel to a bass boat?), the notorious stuffiness of the sport’s practitioners, surly fly shop employees, the fussiness (and shrinking habitat) of trout, the technical demands of casting, etc.

Here’s a thought; maybe it has nothing to do with any of the above.

Maybe it’s hard to sell a sport that you can’t really define.

Unlike tournament bass fishing (or golf, or whatever), fly fishing’s goals are a little unclear, and for some of us, they shift over the course of a day.

Which is a long-winded way of making myself feel better about an inability to clearly define the blog I’ve been writing for better than 720,000 words, especially after the reporter asked me to pick a couple of highlights (posts) from the prior year.

I ended up picking three posts that felt like they represented the blog, then realized that one was definitely not about fly fishing, and two that were about fly fishing kinda dealt with it in the periphery (OK, they were all about Little M, though fly fishing featured heavily in this one and here).

A sport with shifting goals? Blogs with no visible point? An writer’s inability to summarize 720,000 words of his own work?

Frankly, it’s enough to make me want to wander off and find a beer.

Maybe watch Wally the Wonderdog eat his squirrel-cicle.

Right now, that makes perfect sense.

See you outside, Tom Chandler.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Hat tip to the Horse’s Mouth blog)

In recent decades, Hardy was the manufacturer you turned to if you smoked a pipe and spoke like Rex Harrison, but it’s interesting to note that they – and the formerly tweed-friendly Orvis – both now offer cutting-edge fly rod technology (they’d suggest “industry-leading” technology), which is proof, I suppose, that you write off the old guys at your own peril (I’m not drawing parallels to the Underground, though you kids should stay the hell off my lawn).

Despite the win for an Underground advertiser, I’m compelled to offer a couple comments about the testing, which – despite the language – doesn’t appear to be a search for a truly “all-around” 5wt.

Only Speed Demons Need Apply

In fact, a quick glance at the criteria suggests a test that’s highly biased towards strong, fast-tapered rods – the kind of rods that are often more useful in daydreams than on small and medium-sized rivers.

For starters, the testing was conducted with an SA GPX line – the “half-line-weight-heavy” line that falls perilously close to 6wt territory, and represents (to me anyway) a sad admission that many modern fly rods are simply too stiff to function at “normal” distances with normal fly lines.

For other signs of what I’d consider a skew towards fast “power” tapers, look no farther than Yellowstone Anglers’ own evaluation criteria:

If you’re in the market for a good 5-weight rod, we are going to assume that you want one rod that will do it all – a rod that will cast in close with delicacy and accuracy with small drys and fine tippet, a rod that will launch larger drys like hoppers seventy feet into stiff breeze, and a rod that has enough backbone to throw a couple of nymphs, a wind resistant strike indicator and maybe a little split shot as well. It also must have the guts to chuck a streamer with a split shot clamped next to the eye, and put it on that cut bank 80 feet away.

Uhh, casting weighted streamers 80′? Throwing hoppers 70′ into a “stiff” breeze? Really??

It’s interesting to note that the only two “medium” tapered rods in the test (both by Orvis) finished no higher than the middle of the pack.

And that – to my eye – two of the four critera aren’t exactly the native habitat of the 5wt fly rod.

Finally, the use of the GPX line means the “5 Weight Shootout” is actually a “5.5 Weight Shootout.”

Merge those realities with repeated uses of marketing power words like “backbone,” “guts” and “launch” and I had to wonder why they didn’t simply test 6wts – which would actually handle 3/4 of the tasks far more comfortably than a 5wt.

In simple terms, Yellowstone Angler might have actually picked the best “All-Around 5wt” – but only if you were trying to sell overlined fly rods to people fishing big, windy western rivers.

That’s not the world faced by most fly fishermen – the vast majority of whom have never actually cast 80′, and probably never will.

Still, let’s not forget commerce is involved, and that reality always finishes a distant second to fantasy when you’re selling people things they probably don’t need.

Before The Emails Begin…

Before the nasty emails begin to pour in, let me be clear: the folks at the Yellowstone Angler state their criteria right up front, and I’m not alleging hidden agendas.

What I am saying is this: before you start buying your way down their shootout list (or any Top “XXX” list), consider the criteria, and see if they even remotely match your particular reality.

Being as I live in the mountains of Northern California, my “all-around” 5wt isn’t anything like Anderson’s.

Mine would cast wonderfully at small stream ranges, yet still throw a Green Drake (or October Caddis) on a medium-sized freestoner like the Upper Sacramento or McCloud. If pressed, I’d say it looks a lot like a medium-tapered 8.5′ 5wt that wouldn’t necessarily launch every 6″ or smaller small stream trout I hooked.

In all likelihood, it would barely lift a weighted streamer, much less cast it 80 feet.

It might even be bamboo or fiberglass, and could have been made upwards of half a century ago – an admission which suggests I don’t need to sell modern, high-modulus fly rods to fly fishermen.

In other words, consider the Yellowstone Angler 5wt Fly Rod Shootout a highly subjective test of strong, fast-tapered 5.5 wt rods in situations where you might normally fish a 6 wt, give Hardy their due for their apparent comeback (or simply welcome them back to the party), and let’s all move on with our lives.

See you testing anything but fly rods, Tom Chandler.

In fact, it usually is. I do it all the time it myself (I once wrote “sporting clays is just like fly fishing, only louder”).

It’s telling, but really only reveals the user’s frame of reference; the yardstick used to measure an increasingly incomprehensible universe.

Former world champion chess player Boris Spassky (of Bobby Fischer v Spassky fame) emigrated to France and took up tennis, and I read an interview where he said “Tennis is the sport most like chess.”

As a soccer fan, it’s clear to me that Spassky is nuts; soccer’s the sport most like chess. And so it goes.

Which is why I found myself marveling at the similarities between fly fishing and shooting, and not feeling all that weird about it.

Last Sunday, with only a few hours available  (and the local streams closed, and the Upper Sac running too high to fish well), I opted out of fishing and dragged an odd old shotgun to the shooting range.

A recent gift from an in-law, it’s an old-school Remington 870 pump gun (the shotgun found locked away in most police cars), but this one was outfitted with trap-shooting hardware: 30 inch barrel, Monte Carlo buttstock, double-bead sites, etc.

The result is an odd bird; something like a double-handed spey rod designed to fish a three weight line.

It works for its intended task, but it’s not exactly what you’d call elegant (at least not when compared to the elegant-as-can-be over/unders or specialty trap guns).

Of course, pushing it over the hump from “odd” to “interesting” was its history; it showed all the signs of heavy use, but not abuse. Clearly, its former owner (my stepfather’s dad) shot a lot of trap with this gun.

In our hyper-connected era – when attention spans are measured in picoseconds and pants are manufactured so they look used even when new – a decades-old artifact carrying the unmistakable signs of good, honest use fires up an almost chemical feeling of warmth in the back of my head.

Two small stress fractures in the wood grow out of the receiver on either side of the buttstock (evidence of of a lot of rounds through the gun), and every moving part offers a smoothed, machined appearance; the supple evidence of wear instead of the dings and divots of abuse.

I have bamboo fly rods in the same condition; a pair of impregnated Phillipsons and a just-barely-postwar Orvis rod that were all regularly fished, but because they weren’t beaten or yanked on or experimented with by some idiot when graphite “obsoleted” them, they’re eminently fishable.

And highly intriguing.

I know one of the Phillipsons was hauled out during the Henry’s Fork Green Drake hatch back when the Fork’s Green Drakes were arguably the center of the fly fishing universe.

The other has kicked around much of the Rocky Mountain west with its former owner, who fished it a lot.

I know little about the Orvis rod, so in one sense, it’s more mysterious. Imagination is a powerful thing, and I could guess at its use on some of the east’s best-known rivers at a time when the country was recovering from a terrible war, and frankly needed the recreation.

In fact, I liked it enough that when the only tip began cracking, I couldn’t stand the thought of retiring the thing – ending its history in the present – and had Orvis build two more tips.

The Remington trap gun clearly received similar use for (reportedly) a couple decades, and because it was owned by a person who circulated in a higher tax bracket than myself, was probably witness to a lot of fascinating conversations.

I love that kind of stuff for the same reason I’m fascinated by the roads and building foundations which emerge when lakes dry up and recede; they’re not just stones, they’re monuments to a recent past I can’t help but wonder at.

Which, admittedly, is the long way around (I started this essay to discuss the idea that shooting is a lot like fly fishing, and we’re not really there yet).

Done properly, shooting and fly fishing feel largely effortless, and if you’re aware of your own existence, it’s in a detached, slightly bemused way – as if you were a bystander watching things unfold instead of wondering if the onlookers are impressed or a client check will soon arrive.

In the grip of that kind of tunnel vision, you cast the fly rod and the fly drops perfectly in the seam and you know the trout’s going to rise; or you mount the gun and the bead at the end of barrel picks up the clay and tracks smoothly through it, and your finger tightens…

It’s not in the style of outdoor writers to admit that overthinking stuff largely screws it up, but it my case, it’s true.

Every fly fisherman who has false cast a long line beautifully – and then overpowered the cast on the presentation, throwing a tailing loop and almost beheading themselves – knows exactly what I mean.

Likewise, hitting every clay in the air on Friday, then missing almost half of them on Saturday, when it counts, suggests a similar effect.

Last Sunday I knocked down clay birds like bowling pins and was regularly hitting shotgun shells at 75 yards offhand with my target .22 rifle.

Either I’ve become a much better shot over the last month (without practicing at all), or I’m simply a much better shot when I’m having fun.

Which is pretty much how it plays out on the creeks and rivers; if a rising fish represents a fun challenge and potentially pleasurable outcome, I’m death from above.

If the trout represents a complex problem looking for a solution – one that brings to mind a heroic cast and the first draft of a self-aggrandizing blog post – my failure rate triples.

It seems my brain is so powerful, the mere act of thinking draws all the blood away from my extremities.

A second (more likely) option is this: It turns out the point of “Getting into the Outdoors” may simply be to “Get the Heck Out Of Our Own Way.”

See you not thinking, Tom Chandler.

Right now, the Klamath River is sick as hell. Every summer, the river below two of its reservoirs runs bright green with toxic algae, and while I could write a good fifteen paragraphs of text outlining the latest move on the part of the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors  to keep it that way (Measure G), but rather than bore the Undergrounders as a whole (99% of whom won’t get to vote on this subject), let me just say this to my Siskiyou County readers:

Vote “Yes” on Measure G

Below is a letter to the editor I wrote (the local paper didn’t publish it). Just to be clear, a “No” vote means you don’t support dam removal, and the Supes are hoping to use an overwhelmingly “No” vote to springboard a later (and expensive) lawsuit.

Yes Vote on Measure G Means Jobs

With Siskiyou County’s economy faltering and unemployment near 20%, it’s hard to understand why the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors are so rabidly opposed to the recovery of Klamath River salmon and steelhead – especially given the huge economic stimulus that dam removal and the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) would bring.

Independent economic analysis says dam removal and habitat improvement projects would lower unemployment, provide sustainable tourism-related jobs, and result in lower power rates (compared to retrofitting the dams to current standards).

Also, the KBRA’s adaptable flow regimes offer us water for salmon and water for farmers, who need some idea what they’re getting so they can plan ahead (many are also getting way-below-market-price power too).

Tellingly, the Board of Supervisors have repeatedly called for in-depth studies of the effects of dam removal, yet they’re now asking citizens to make up their mind before the asked-for studies have been completed.

Simply put, they’re hoping to use an overwhelming “No” vote to springboard this county into an expensive lawsuit which we can’t afford – and will delay the jobs this county so desperately needs.

Returning the Klamath to a healthy state delivers many economic benefits to Siskiyou County – including to our vital (and wholly sustainable) tourism industries. After all, once they stopped shipping all of Northern California’s water south out of the Trinity River, the steelhead and salmon runs came back strong, and on some weekends, you can’t find a place to park along the river.

Those who want you to vote “No” on Measure G will tell you the dams provide irrigation water and flood control, yet they don’t.

Instead, they offer us terrible water quality (the Klamath runs pea green with toxic algae every summer), and because they’d cost us power users $500 Million to retrofit yet only $200 Million to remove, we’re simply better off without them, and in almost every way possible.

Please vote “Yes” on Measure G. Our local economy will thank you for it.

Note to the Board Of Supervisors

Turns out salmon restoration – and a healthy river – actually creates jobs. To see how, watch the video below from Chelan County, WA.

And – Siskiyou County’s Board of Supervisors take note – the restoration actually helps the local economy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

McGuane’s known among fly fishermen for his liberal application of fly fishing scenes in his novels, but also for The Longest Silence; his seminal collection of fly fishing essays that many feel define the sport better than any other single book (“book on tape” version here).

McGuane’s latest novel will no doubt find its way to the Underground’s bookshelf, but Charles McGrath’s insightful profile included this rather charged McGuane quote:

“Like everyone, I have that general sense that we’ve been cast adrift. It’s almost banal to say it, it’s so obvious. But at the same time, living out here I have sense that I’m living in a world that hasn’t quite changed. I see it in some of the kids who work here — they’re still so in touch with natural world.”

These days there are plenty of good writers practicing the art, and yet McGuane continues to deliver single-sentence insights that rock me back on my heels.

A year ago I suggested our lives changed when a brick got tossed through the plate glass windows that contain our existence, and that nowadays, the bricks were coming with increasing regularity.

It’s a theme that apparently plays out in Driving on the Rim:

But like much of Mr. McGuane’s recent writing, it’s also partly about the collision of the Old West and the New. Dr. Pickett finds himself involved in a very contemporary malpractice prosecution but also spends a lot of time hunting and fishing and thinking about the old days.

Fly fishermen have long described their sport as an escape from everyday life; should we add the concept of fly fishing as an anchor against the changes washing over us with increasing frequency?

See you in the bookshelves, Tom Chandler.

In that environment you’d think corporations would be careful about acting like bullying assholes (are you listening Nestle?), but ahh – you’d think wrong.

Bamboo fly rod builder Jerry Foster received what any sentient being would describe as a threatening, bullying, wholly disrespectful letter from Lockheed-Martin’s lawyer, who apparently attended multiple sessions of “Being a Massive Corporate Bully 101″ while in law school.

When Foster decided to build his own web site (clearly a do-it-yourselfer), he thought long and hard about a domain name, choosing ‘SkunkworksFlyRods.com.’

The skunkworks reference was his homage to the idea of geek types working without interference from fools, marketing and management – an apt description of any number of bamboo rod builders.

I have to point out that Foster’s site makes maximum use of obsolete, slow-loading technology, and will draw the bare minimum of passing web traffic.

All of which apparently meant nothing to the above-mentioned attorney, whose form letter includes warm, fuzzy passages like:

“Here, it appears your use of the Skunkworksflyrods.com domain is in bad faith, and is an attempt to profit off the goodwill of the Skunk Works trademark as you have created a false affiliation, connection, or association between your website and Lockheed Martin, and you have potentially misdirected the unwitting public to your website away from Lockheed Martin’s official Skunk Works website.”

Of course. I mean, there’s a real risk someone headed to Lockheed-Martin’s “skunk works” site for nuclear ICBMs to destroy Iowa will mistakenly end up with a stack of largely non-lethal bamboo fly rods instead.

There’s more:

“On behalf of Lockheed Martin, we hereby demand that you immediately cease and desist from any and all use of skunkworksflyrods.com. We also demand that you take immediate steps to assign and transfer the domain name to Lockheed Martin by XXXX, thereby relinquishing all rights therein.”

Demand This

I understand the concept of protecting intellectual property. I even understand they need to protect their trademark – or lose the right to do so later.

What I don’t understand is the kind of threatening crap evidenced in the letter above. Why not something that doesn’t immediately put the recipient in a place of hating you?

Ms. Boisineau, didn’t your mother teach you any manners at all?

You know, why not a letter starting with: “Hey, your site’s cool and all, but we need to talk.”

Then there are the “demands” that Foster immediately transfer the name to them, with no mention of paying him for the domain reg fees.

Turns out, they do this kind of thing all the time, even earning a nasty note in Wikipedia:

They have filed several challenges against registrants of domain names containing variations on the term under anti-cybersquatting policies, and have lost a case under the .uk domain name dispute resolution service against a company selling cannabis seeds and paraphernalia, which used the word “skunkworks” in its domain name (referring to “Skunk”, a variety of the cannabis plant). Lockheed Martin claimed the company registered the domain in order to disrupt its business and that consumer confusion might result. The respondent company argued that Lockheed “used its size, resources and financial position to employ ‘bullyboy’ tactics against . . . a very small company.”

OK.

It’s likely that Foster’s going to eventually lose this one, being as Lockheed-Martin has a largely inexhaustible supply of your tax dollars to invest beating a bamboo fly rod builder into the dirt.

Still – in an homage to Lockheed Martin’s (and their legal firm’s) poor manners – I just registered “skunkworkssucks.com.”

They’ll enjoy that.

As for the Undergrounders, any legal eagles with intellectual property experience able to offer up some advice – as in would “skunkwerxflyrods.com” fly under the cybersquatting radar?

Any other ideas?

I realize this is a lot of words for a small gig, but you don’t have to listen to the news very long these days to get a little tired of the whole corporate bullying thing.

See you in court, Tom Chandler.

Later, you struggle to catch your first fish (on purpose), then you struggle to legitimately catch and land a tough fish, and finally you end up viewing technical water (or apparently fishless water) as a puzzle instead of a place to invoke divine intervention.

And at some point – after most of the technical barriers have been overcome – you start wondering what comes next.

Every fly fisherman answers that question a little differently.

Some head off to exotic locations. Some become headhunters. Some test themselves against educated trout on famous waters.

Others – the anglers most likely to sink from sight while living in a deteriorating trailer near the water – chase only exotic or little-seen species like permit or steelhead.

Some keep repeating the same trips over and over, returning to the same spot out of a sense of comfortable familiarity.

And still others become explorers, heading off on Ahab-esque searches for the one stream, current seam or inshore flat that may, in fact, have never been fished before.

Some even become assholes, undermining every fly fishing victory with phrases like “these fish aren’t anywhere near as big as the fish I caught at XXX last year.”

(Hint: Don’t become that guy.)

In simple terms, mastering the cast (and the reach cast, and the mend, and the stack mend, and the rollcast, and the…) only prepares you to begin your fly fishing journey.

Where you went from there was probably not the subject of a lot of thought; like many of life’s big decisions, it’s a choice often made organically, without much conscious thought.

Still, it’s worth pondering for a minute – preferably while bank sitting your favorite stream.

What kind of fly fisherman have you become?

Quo Vadis

I know one angler who fishes all over the west, but derives a special kick when fly fishing water that may technically be private.

Another thrives on a certain social equation; he’s happy catching a lot of trout (he’s a coldwater guy), but he’s even happier when – at the end of the day – a good bottle of good Irish Whiskey might get passed around a well-populated campfire.

It’s always easier to define others instead of yourself, but in my case, I’m pretty clearly tumbling for smaller waters remote enough to guarantee a bare minimum of contact with other anglers.

If I’m the first to fish the water that year (or can make myself believe I’m the first) then the taste is even sweeter.

At one point in my life, I intended to fish the sport’s better dry fly hatches, but that’s not the bright light it used to be – especially once I realized famous hatches draw sizeable crowds.

So there it is; I prefer an intimate, predatory experience to larger waters, though even I’m not immune to the charms of big fish on big water eating big dries.

Tomorrow, I’m driving into the mountains, hoping to find my way to a small stream that may still be snowbound.

I’m hoping it’s just as I left it late last year, when I thought I could have been the last to fish it before the snow closed the road.

With any luck, I may be the first to fish it this year.

That’s pure hubris, of course. The odds are stacked against me on both ends of the season, yet I’m a fly fisherman, and like every other fly fisherman, I’m a sucker for a poetic ending.

If I fail to reach it, I’ll find my way to another – and far more accessible – stream. It lacks a certain romantic element, though it turns out the brown trout are still plenty fun to catch.

See you on the stream, Tom Chandler.