Alert Underground Reader Gary pointed out the Underground’s Favorite Cheap, Waterproof, Point & Shoot Camera is on sale for $174 (the Pentax Optio W80), and because our single biggest concern in life is our reader’s happiness, we immediately passed this offer along to you:

Want a good deal on a nice waterproof digital camera? Click the picture.

In the interest of not receiving hate mail full disclosure, I’m compelled to point out that I don’t actually own a W80. Instead, the Underground is neatly decorated in photographs taken with my aging W10 (an earlier model), which continues to function just barely well enough to keep me from plundering Little M’s college account in the quest for a new one.

Looking for a near-indestructible, waterproof fishing camera that requires as much maintenance as your average doorstop?

Want something you can drop in the river without penalty?

See you behind the camera, Tom Chandler.

(More Full Disclosure: I receive no compensation for sales of this camera. I just do this because at the Underground, the giving never stops…)

Technorati Tags: outdoor photography, pentax optio, pentax option W80

With only a few hours left in 2009, it’s probably time I actually started writing my “The Underground Looks Back at 2009: The Year in Mirth & Pictures” post.

And while the Underground’s fly fishing-related theme for 2009 has to be that smaller is better (I was on an extended small stream jag most of 2009), not everything that found its way to the Underground was about the little stuff.

A recurring theme in 2009 was our obsession with small streams...

First, the Underground threw a brick through his own plate glass window and became a father.

That’s the kind of statement that requires a little pause, and maybe a few deep breaths (or even panic).

I won’t lie; daddy-hood requires an adjustment – one not made easier by the presence of Zombie Terrorist Contractors – but it’s something that’s already added a dimension to my life (and no, that dimension isn’t soiled diapers).

Still, life moves on, though sometimes in odd, erratic ways – like when I found Wally the Wonderdog contentedly munching a still-wet brown trout in my backyard, despite the fact we live miles from the nearest trout water.

I later figured an Osprey – returning from the Mt. Shasta Hatchery – dropped the brown trout on a flyover, but to say the whole event took on a surreal cast qualifies for “Understatement of the Year.”

In the same vein, I believe the Underground laid claim to “Best Fly Fishing April Fools Post of 2009” when I fired up my “Fly Fish From Home” faux business which eliminates messy fly fishing trips, instead offering fly fishermen what they really want: A Hero Picture.

My brilliant FlyFishFromHome.com concept never received the billions in funding it deserved...

It remains a brilliant concept and an excellent example of the following: The Underground’s A Decade Ahead of the Rest of the World.

My “Dozen Best Fly Rods of All Time” post continues to draw visits (and comments), and it’s successful enough that I probably should create a followup, though I’m not all that clear what that will be.

Time passes, and these decisions are sometimes made for us.

The Underground even found itself on national television courtesy of Trout Unlimited (the other, less-famous TU).

Naturally, I caught exactly one, small fish (and looked foolish doing it), so it appears my future in television is on a par with my future with supermodels.

The Fly Fishing Stories

Naturally, we let a little fly fishing creep into the blog, including one essay on Home Waters which seemed to hit home with a lot of readers (it was one of the most linked-to posts of the year).

Fly fishing is something we engage in for reasons of fun or sanity instead of revenue or food gathering, so in other words, it’s an emotional thing, which allows us significant latitude when we talk about it.

Home waters are a state of mind – not GPS coordinates.

For example, the concept of “home water” clearly isn’t geographic in nature, but a matter of the heart.

One fly fisherman can tell another his “home waters” are literally halfway around the globe, and the second fly fisherman won’t bat an eye.

That’s because his “home waters” are a five hour drive to the north (the last ten miles on dirt roads), and while humanity is generally poor at accepting alien perspectives, fly fishermen do sometimes make worthwhile exceptions.

That’s why I tend to seek out smaller, wilder waters even though I live on a beautiful freestoner. It’s not because blueline fishing is “easy” (for the record, nothing’s easy when you’re fishing from your knees or crawling through bushes).

It’s because the fishing is – to leverage a pair of overused words – intimate and predatory at the same time, a combination I find irresistible.

In the same vein, a few other small-stream fishing reports remain my favorites of the year, including this picture-heavy fly fishing affair from early in the season.

This beautiful little stream yielded a grand slam to me - and provided a resting place for a few of dad's ashes.

Then there was the small stream trip in Montana where I caught a trout grand slam on a tiny meadow stream which was – oddly enough – populated with 100 year-old freshwater mussels.

I’ve been there twice and It’s already become one of my favorite places, and because I embrace symmetry and symbolism equally, this time I left a few of my father’s ashes behind to hang out with the slow, patient mussels. It’s a perfect fit for him.

Later – as the season wound down (well, it never really winds down; the Upper Sacramento is open year-round, and in fact, I fished it yesterday), I found myself hitting a pair of local small streams, discovering the unhappy reality that trout which hurl themselves at dries in the summer don’t have much interest in doing so while winter tightens its grip.

First, on a remote water:

Lucky To Be Here

That said, I felt lucky to get what I got. In one sense, I was lucky to be there; it was sleeting when I arrived, but by noon it had grown colder, and by two, it was snowing.

When I finally left, I wondered if this was the storm that would close the road.

Even if it doesn’t, the next one might.

On the drive out, the truck skidded and slipped on dirt road, and I figured I might be the last fly fisherman to spook those trout until June or even July of next year.

Once, I entertained thoughts of skiing into this stream and fishing it long before others could get there, but the distances are daunting. And hell, I’m not even sure if the roads to the road are plowed.

Soon (very soon), the meadows will fill with snow, and they’ll stay that way for better than half the year, and the trout will go on about their lives largely untroubled – until one day the snow melts and a strange shape looms above them, waving a long, skinny stick.

If the romance of that escapes you, then check for a pulse.

Then, on the last day you actually can fish most of the small streams in my neck of the woods, I visited something nearby, and found the catching was great only if I was interested in ice-related photographs:

The last small stream trip of the year? Almost certainly...

In other words, small streams are reviving when you want a “pure” fly fishing/predatory/wild experience, but they’re not above kicking your ass, then freezing it, then sending you home empty handed.

Good for them. Us fly fishermen are a ragged lot, prone to ego and willing to forget those moments in time when we’re not skilled or heroic, and if it takes a dumb trout living in a tiny stream to remind us, all the better.

At least we’re learning our lesson in a pretty place.

The Humor/Satire End of Things

One of the Underground’s most-viral posts was my story about the vicious, man-eating chipmunk brought into our house by a cat – a wild animal that hid under a blanket until I promptly grabbed him, thinking it was the cat, proving once again that the Underground can scream with the best of the little girls when he’s surprised.

In a less-startling vein, a couple of less-than-optimal (euphemism alert) experiences on the river left me ruminating about the kind of people you run into on a river, and why you wouldn’t necessarily want to hang out with all of them: The Top Ten Signs You Don’t Want to Fish With That Guy You Just Met

Late in the year, an Onion story got me thinking that the sport would acquire a whole new urgency if death was the result of failure (instead of a ribbing at the hands of friends).

Along the way, I managed to alienate the fly fishing industry on several fronts, including the ongoing trade show spat that’s served as one of fly fishing’s longest-running soap operas.

The Year in Pictures

It was a tough year on the picture front; my trusty Pentax Optio camera continued its slow decline, and yes, I managed to forget the thing often enough that it’s become a running joke with the L&T.

Still, I managed to scrape together a few nice pics for use on this post, and here – in no particular order – are the better pics from the Underground’s 2009 season.

I hope you enjoy them – and also hope you and yours experience a 2010 that is memorable for all the right reasons.

Big winter trout, last light.

The next two pictures were taken on my best ski-and-fly-fish trip.

If you were a trout, would you eat these?

One of my favorite pictures of 2009

Another big trout caught at last light.

"On The Rise" TV host Frank Smethurst on the Lower McCloud - when flows rendered it almost unfishable.

Winter fly fishing on the Upper Sac isn't all BWOs; Wayne Eng nymphs up a trout

Wayne Eng caught a trout on this very drift...

The local scenery isn't bad either...

The Wonderdog remained a fan favorite, and why not?

Sometimes snow falls in black & white instead of color...

When the fly fishing's slow, the napping can be good.

Wayne Eng again, this time on Burney Creek.

An early season stonefly.

Stephen Betrand and I paid a spring visit to a small, meadow stream.

This brown trout's giving me the fin.

Sasquatch siting on a small stream.

Does he feel like a putz, or what?

Do we know all the best spots, or what?

Sometimes it's not just the trout that are pretty.

Without the hike, you're missing half the good stuff.

Weird, but we like it that way.

Mount Shasta's almost always visible around here. Lucky us...

See-through beauty...

This is what happens when the fly fishing's slow.

IMPORTANT NEWS UPDATE: One important 2009-related fact went unreported in my Year in Review post, and I wanted to correct it here: The Underground is proud to announce that we were one of the few organizations who did not sleep with Tiger Woods.

You may resume your normal lives.

Technorati Tags: Fly Fishing, fly fishing small streams, fly fishing the upper sacramento, the year in pictures, the year in review

Forwarded to us via Outdoor Babe MK (and found on the Facebook page of Kialoa paddles), we’d like to note the above fly fisherperson is also a fulltime marine biologist, so we’re awarding her (Michelle Woo Bowman) the Underground’s Three B’s award (beauty, brains & backcast).

Stand up paddling is a relatively new paddling sport, though (for some reason) we’re expecting explosive growth. Just saying is all.

It’s yet another example of the Underground working so very hard to make the lives of the Undergrounders even better – and this from the Middle Eastern desert.

Selfless we are.

Technorati Tags: elizabeth woo bowman, Fly Fishing, fly fishing babe, kialoa paddles, stand up paddling

Todays small stream fly fishing trip took on a whole new dimension when I stumbled upon Sasquatch in the woods. It turns out he fly fishes:

Who knew Sasquatch fly fished?

Sure, he looks a lot like Barton of Singlebarbed fame, only hairier and smellier (nice loop tho).

More to come from the Trout Underground – your online home for fly fishing related cryptozoological blockbusters.

My last small-stream fly fishing trip unfolded without a camera, so this, time I’m doubling up on the photographs. (See? The Underground takes care of its readers.)

The catch? I’m too busy to write a lengthy report (like last time I skipped out and ran to Stream X). Instead, I’ll hit the highlights in between the pictures.

Spring Creek? Brown Trout? Dry Flies? Sign me up.

Stream X is a small, alpine spring creek, and it’s the kind of place the enforces a certain intimacy between the fly fisherman and the trout.

It’s nicely populated with wild brown trout (and the odd rainbow & Brookie), but features rough roads and enough mosquitoes to suggest the existence of a vengeful god.

Like all small streams, the trout aren’t particularly selective, but they are damned spooky, and this – simply put – is not the best stream for a novice, but I brought my relatively new-to-fly-fishing brother there anyway (suggesting the existence of a vengeful brother, bent on payback for the emotionally scarring cherry incident of my childhood).

Think sneaky. Sneaky is good.

Unlike my last visit, the stream was running at normal levels, but the weather was eerily similar; it started raining the minute we arrived (after a lot of bouncing around on some auto-unfriendly roads), and alternated rain and sun all day.

It was also colder than I would have guessed, and once again, the Patagonia soft shell jacket proved the perfect jacket for the gig – a good lesson in packing, since I’d almost left it behind (it’s summer after all).

In fact, fingerless gloves wouldn’t have been out of place.

Welcome to the mountains.

Predictably, the early bite was slow. Equally predictably, the early scenery was stunning.

Even when the trout aren't eating, the scenery's working.

The Fishy Stuff

Later – as it warmed a bit – the bite got a little better. In the afternoon, there was even the hint of a small mayfly hatch, and (gasp) rising trout.

Almost everything you catch is a brown trout, which range wildly in coloration. Some are a burnt-butter brown while others feature a lighter, milky yellow color, and still others offer a golden metallic sheen.

Some brown trout look like golden butter - their scales would look perfect on a stack of pancakes.

Some feature slightly washed colors, others offer up bright red dotted flanks that – if found on a painting – would lead a non-fisherman to accuse the artist of artistic license.

"I'm ready for my closeup now."

Is he giving me the fin?

Every once in a while, you also come across a Brook trout (the Official Char of the Trout Underground), and yes, the Underground’s veins fill with naturally produced chemical pleasure at the sight of the Brookie, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the colors.

Underground Fave Char: the happy pappa shows off his Brookie

Why so many colors? The Brook trout continues to impress.

The Non-Trout Stuff

The first couple hours found us catching one trout each (it picked up later, and we ended up with 10 between us). Which means we had plenty of time to marvel at other things, including a couple close encounters with deer, and even a very low flying eagle.

Then there was the stuff that wouldn’t run away when you found it, including:

My brother identified this as Columbine. It's pretty.

Proof of rain?

He's hairy, and he's cool.

We found one of these- an olive stonefly

The Hard Facts About the Fly Fishing

The fishing itself wasn’t what most would call “technical,” though when you find yourself crawling towards a ten inch fish on your hands and knees – and trying to thread a backcast through a narrow hole behind you – the fishing’s plenty technical enough.

These aren’t world-weary tailwater trout, habituated to the presence of humans or sophisticated flies.

Instead, these are trout as god intended – hungry, aggressive, but wholly intolerant of a sloppy, lazy predator. Trout darting to safety from under your feet is a common sight, yet despite a fair number of fly changes, I settled on a simple Beetle Bug attractor for most of the day.

This time, I also toted along a rod nicely suited to the fish and the waters – an 8′ 5wt Phillipson Peerless bamboo fly rod.

Underground Fave: The reddish-brown impregnated Phillipsons look stunning against spring green.

It’s a rod that gets fished, and fished hard (as Bill Phillipson intended), and yes, I think little’s harder on a fly rod than a wet, brush & tree-choked environment

Somebody out there is wincing, but this remained after I released a nice brown.

The fishing was slow at first, then gradually built over the day to the point where about half the really good looking spots seemed to hold a trout.

Nicely illustrating the concept of good and evil, the mosquitoes also built as the day progressed, and while I didn’t do for the garment what the Buff Babe did, I wore a Buff like a balaclava, protecting my neck and cheeks from the evil, bloodsucking Nestle bugs mosquitoes.

I may be back later this week.

Hint: There's a decent brown trout in the middle.

See you on a small stream, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: bamboo fly rod, brook trout, brown trout, fishing, Fly Fishing, fly fishing small streams, fly fishing spring creeks, phillipson fly rod

Some guys know where all the best fishing spots are.

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fly Fishing, fly fishing spot, rainbow trout

Fly tyers fall into two groups: the insane and the almost-insane Those who tie the most realistic bug they can, and the impressionists, who are seeking flies that only need be buggy.

I’m firmly in the latter camp, but that’s likely a reflection of laziness; I do sloppy “buggy” well. Still, even the rampant impressionists want their flies to look like something edible, which is why Michelle Mahood’s photography site will probably see a lot of fly tying visitors soon.

A small sample of the bug photos available at Mahood's site (click image to go there)

It’s practically a photographic encyclopedia of Northern California trout food, so next time an annoying, Type A fly tyer chastises you for too-heavily speckled Callibaetis wings (yes, this did happen), you can bitch slap him using Ms. Mahood’s excellent photographs.

The Underground’s Favorite Photo? Probably the blood curdling assault on a fly fisherman by a giant crustacean. Keep you up nights.

See you staring at the monitor, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: bugs, Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, fly tying photography

It’s late, I’m sleepy, and this is all the fly fishing report you’re getting until tomorrow:

Wayne Eng about to land a trout (or, fly fishing another horrible place)

Sleep tight, Undergrounders.

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fly Fishing, fly fishing photography, outdoor photograph, wayne eng

Because the Undergrounders are always hungry for red, fly fishing-related meat, I’m throwing you this bone while I tend to Other Stuff..

Sunday - at the killer private pond - was actually this kind of day (perfect).

It’s the start of a busy couple of weeks here at Trout Underground World Headquarters – I’m teaching yet another six-class online marketing boot camp, and there is that little matter of making a living (disgusting stuff, I know).

Expect a fly fishing report on our Sunday visit to the Private, Big Fish Stock Tank (words that should be capitalized when used in any fly fishing context) sometime soon. Plus a couple gear reviews set to launch in mid-week. And of course, a little fly fishing news along the way.

Until then, see you in the classroom, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fishing Report, Fly Fishing, outdoor photograph

Fly fishing the Upper Sacramento in late winter rain

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fly Fishing, nymphing, wayne eng

Black Butte, storm.

Technorati Tags: black butte, storm

Overlooked this last spring; kinda creepy when they're looking at you...

Technorati Tags: Fly Fishing, golden stone, outdoor photography

The Underground chucked it all today for a shot at a trout - though you'll never guess the fly

I wasn’t having a sterling day. In fact, it seemed as if going fly fishing or becoming a serial killer were my two viable choices.

I barely opted for fly fishing, grabbed Wally the Wonderdog, skied into the river, and found a few BWOs waiting for me… on ice.

A report’s coming soon. Until then, see you on the river (and lock your doors), Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: blue winged olive, bwo, fishing, Fly Fishing, fly fishing photography, outdoor photography

Something is always happening on a river, even if you never see a BWO or rising trout, or invest a couple hours fruitlessly stripping a streamer.

Moving water is a dynamic medium, and just like no two snowflakes are alike, I’d venture it never washes along the shores of the Upper Sacramento exactly the same way twice.

When the fish aren’t biting, these things occur to me, and I noticed the water right at my feet glinting bright gold. The overhead sky was reflecting blue onto the flatter water, but the low-on-the-horizon sunlight blasted the far shore, so any water rearing up even a little bit burned bright gold.

A few frames and a little contrast enhancement later, the Underground offers you close-up photographs of one man’s home river – abstracted blue and gold:

See you on the river (looking at my feet), Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: Fly Fishing, skunked, upper sac, upper sacramento river

Technorati Tags: moonrise, mount shasta