This morning it feels like half of me (the thinking half) is still covering ground somewhere between here and Missoula, a feeling eerily similar to my state of mind during the whole Montana Road Trip 2010.

It’s as if I never quite got my feet underneath me.

Today’s going to be spent unpacking, replying to emails, catching up… Basically, the long exhale that comes at the end of every fly fishing road trip.

More soon. Until then, see you anywhere but the road, Tom Chandler.

The problem? Few trout. Why? We can guess, but…

But First, This Commercial Announcement

Wanted to thank the folks at Headhunters in Craig for the help with the Underground’s shiny new (RIO Outbound) streamer line. If you haven’t been there, it’s a funky little shop that features helpful people inside and an old surfboard outside.

The local Headhunters are helpful...

I fish streamers more than most, but had never progressed beyond flinging them with standard fly lines.

[Name redacted] – a self-admitted leader and line geek – suggested I was (in relatively kind terms) an idiot, and that something more specialized was called for.

The Headhunter folks knew just the line needed to make me current (the new Rio Outbound has earned raves from lots of folks), and though this is clearly a budget trip (see meal info below), one is now wrapped around my old Galvan “classic” reel, waiting for today’s trip to…

But First, Food

Even fly fishermen have gotta eat, but instead of staple “health” foods like Fig Newtons or Spaghetti-Os, [name redacted] steered us towards…

The Pork Chop Sandwich.

The Pork Chop Sandwich (better eat just one)

I envisioned a real pork chop on a bun, but in what amounted to a concession to the rising cost of Real Meat, this particular pork chop sandwich was composed of some kind of Compressed Pork Meat Product.

In keeping with the Underground’s mission (to Seek Out Local Foods Which Don’t Contain Even a Hint Of Wheatgrass Juice), we found these bad boys at Pork Chop John’s in Butte, though later we were assured that real pork chop sandwiches were available somewhere else in the Butte area.

Helpful Hint From Those Who Know: Do not – under any circumstances – attempt to consume two Pork Chop Sandwiches even though the first one goes down very easy.

You’ve been warned.

Finally, Fly Fishing

This particular of stretch of stream suffered from heavy metals poisoning (runoff from Butte’s extensive mining operations), and people weren’t fishing it much in recent years.

We stopped by for a visit, and I immediately fell in love with the place, though – if you weren’t a competent caster – it wouldn’t make your Top 10 list.

Snags? What snags?

That’s because it’s basically a stick factory; the banks are lined with willows, and almost every inch of desirable bank is festooned with leader-eating sticks, branches and deadfall.

Great cover for brown trout, but not exactly an intelligent first stop for newbie fly fishers.

I fished my trusty old 8′ Phillipson 5wt impregnated rod, which might have been designed expressly for this kind of water.

Plus, I’ve been fishing little stuff all year long (for the record, I didn’t consider this a little stream – more a medium-sized stream), so the cast came back pretty quickly.

Sadly, the fishing reflected the stream’s difficulties; we had a few encouraging grabs on hoppers and an October Caddis right away, but the action quickly fell off to a pretty slow pace, though the brown trout we did catch were a bit bigger than you’d expect.

Didn't quite get this one, but he was big (for a little stream)

[name redacted] quickly lost one that could have run upwards of 16″, and I moved one to a hopper (twice) that was an easy 14″-15″, but the bite was slow.

We fished way, way too much “perfect” trout water that should have delivered a bite, but didn’t.

It was a little eerie, and you’re left to wonder if you didn’t dial it in, or if – as the locals suggested – the populations simply weren’t there.

Still, some fish were caught (I landed four; [name redacted] landed a half dozen or so):

Caught him, let him go, and he sat right behind my right boot...

You’d be a fool to write off a pretty little trout stream because of a few rumors and one sorta slow outing, especially since fewer brown trout often means bigger brown trout (which looked to be true in this case).

And there are also these rumors of 20″+ brown trout caught earlier in the year, which you ignore at your own peril.

In any case, it was pure, hands-on-knees, tangled-in-willows, once-in-a-lifetime-cast-after-once-in-a-lifetime-cast… fun.

Clearly, I’m not past this small stream thing.

Today’s Fishing Adventure

Today we’re heading for a pond rumored to hold double-digit (pounds, not inches) trout – one of those flat, open places that doesn’t look like much – and turns messy when the wind comes up (as is forecast) – but offers a shot at some seriously big fish.

Tomorrow? Perhaps Georgetown Lake, which is clearly not a secret in the fly fishing world, but does offer hope of a Big Brook Trout (The Official Big Char of The Trout Underground).

See you on the pond, Tom Chandler.

It was blowing upwards of 30 mph today on the Missouri River; tolerable if you’re catching trout, but when you’re not – and you’re fishing with someone who’s spent a lifetime accumulating interesting places to go – you think hard about getting the hell out and hightailing it for calmer water.

Which I think we’re going to do Monday am.

[Name Redacted] knows about some cool small streams nearby, and though he hasn’t fished them in years, they sound like the perfect antidote to wind, poor hatches and too many drift boats.

We hooked a couple fish today (landed none), but I’ll be damned if I’ll spend vacation casting with one band while holding my hat on with the other.

More as it happens (and I can write on my laptop Instead of this damned phone).

See you where the wind isn’t blowing, TC.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

When you’re in the midst of it, “boring” seems fine. Hell, boring is good.

This bad cellphone pic suggests what Oregon looks like at 55 mph

If all you struggle with is whether the footlong meatball sandwich you had for lunch was really the best choice you could make (given the paucity of bathrooms), then frankly, you’ve done OK.

Now go fly fishing.

Oregon: The “Show Me, Slowly” State

In the interest of providing constructive criticism to our political leaders, I’m adding this to my post: The drag through Oregon is always painful – and not because Oregon is unpretty.

It’s because the state – apparently bent on bringing statewide commerce to a crawl (or simply boring tourists to tears, ensuring they don’t move there) – slaps a 55 mph speed limit on even straight, wide, open roads.

As [name redacted] noted, Oregon (Official Motto: “You’ll Get There… Eventually“) is the part of the drive where simply not being cited for speeding is an achievement worthy of a little celebration (but for chrissakes, don’t creep up to 60 while cheering).

I made it through Oregon without even a hint of a ticket (surviving three separate speed traps, including a diabolical one situated on the first blind spot after the CA/Oregon state line), but realized I was getting a bit punchy by the time I reached Montana, where at night, the off ramps started to look like the freeway.

You drive along thinking everything’s OK, then find yourself in the wrong lane twice in five minutes, and realize your brain is largely fried.

The good news? You’re only a half-hour from the finish.

Oddly, once I arrived I couldn’t fall asleep; every time I drifted off, I’d jerk back to wakefulness, the reptilian part of my brain convinced I was about to drive into the ditch.

Guess I’m nothing if not task oriented.

The Fishing Commences

We’re sorting gear, and in a few minutes I’m heading out to fund Montana’s outdoor programs by purchasing a license.

Then it’s a quick afternoon stint on the Bitterroot (it’s bright so I’m not holding my breath), then we’re leaving for the Missouri.

In fact, should you happen to see a small drift boat containing two handsome men throwing impeccable casts, keep looking – it’s not us.

Simply put, we’re “the other guys” in that scenario – the sorta pre-owned looking pair who are laughing a lot and re-tying more often than we’d like, but who are having big fun with the whole process.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Still, you get to bring more stuff.

See you kids on the other side, Tom Chandler.

I’m packing for The Underground’s Monstrously Epic Montana Road Trip, which is expressly designed to be – as one wag said in an email after reading one too many “extreme fly fishing” articles – The Most Fucking Epic Fly Fishing Trip Since The Cretaceous Period.

That’s me.

Prehistoric and epic, and proud of it (you’ll see that in my music selections below).

From the 2009 Montana Fly Fishing Road Trip; More Pics Planned for 2010

Meanwhile, I’m on that pre-vacation treadmill – the one where you work yourself into an exhausted, hallucinatory fugue state trying to wrap up all the loose ends, thereby ensuring you won’t remember the first half of your vacation.

I guess it’s the second half we live for.

The Road Trip

The Subaru is prepped and ready for the trip, shod with a shiny black set of Continentals.

Unfortunately, packing is not going well, and even without the use of my advanced psychic powers, I can safely predict I’ll spend Thursday night basically shoveling random gear into the Subaru (some of you are nodding).

That means I’ll arrive in Missoula (approximately 14.5 hazy hours after leaving Mt. Shasta) with almost no knowledge about what I actually brought, and little ability to find any of it.

Instead, I’ll open the trunk, and – already woozy and roadburned – see little but a heaving, tangled mass of gear, some of which may not have seen light for a decade or more.

Fortunately, [Name Redacted] owns at least two of everything (yes, everything), and because he’s even more of a geezer than I am, a lot of it’s the killer older stuff that makes my naughty bits feel all tingly.

It’s the kind of thing you can get away with when you’re fishing with a gear-collecting buddy, but if you packed that way for a trip to the South Pole, they’d never find the body.

The Great Music Quiz

Through most of my life, I’ve driven beater cars – mechanically sound but lacking unneeded luxuries like air conditioning, working stereos or paint. I have a strong a preference for cars you can drive over 17 miles of potholed road without worrying about the glossy finish, and for the most part, the concept has served me well.

I made the trip to Montana three years ago in a battered, base-model 1987 Toyota pickup, and everything went perfectly (if you ignored 100+ heat).

Last year – with Little M’s arrival imminent – we bought Older Bro’s 2002 Subaru sedan, which came equipped with bourgeois items like low-profile tires, a tuned suspension, a/c and a stereo.

A great, big, finely tuned stereo that revealed every last delicate sliver of sound, and at (if necessary) great volume.

I could hear every whisper. Or bleed out my ears.

My choice.

Which creates a new problem.

What the hell do I play?

Road Tunes!

A five CD changer hides in the back and the player up front takes loose CDs, so my choices are essentially limitless, but the last thing I want to do is juggle CDs while driving through wildlife territory at 70 mph.

That means five key CDs and let’s say three changeable discs, and all have to hold up over a 14-hour drive (which means good enough for two plays each).

And yes, I know I could carry a bazillion songs on an MP3 player, but we don’t have a jack for the thing in the car.

So we’re back to these archaic CD things. Which could look something like…

Top Five In-Changer CDS

1. Dave Matthews/Under the Table & Dreaming
Obvious, but great, surprising stuff.

2. Paul Simon/Graceland
Music by a genius, lyrics by god…

3. Steely Dan/Aja
(Intentionally left blank)

4. Ricki Lee Jones/Flying Cowboys
Surprised? The lady at her [probably clean] peak, and so beautifully produced by Walter Becker that I am tearing up in an unmanly way just thinking about it.

5.U2/All That You Can’t Leave Behind
Sure, my tastes run to quieter stuff with what I’ll grandly term “sophisticated” production values, but every once in a while I need something to keep me awake (and help me exceed the speed limit). This is that CD.

Loose CDs

Heart/Dreamboat Annie
Brain cells are bursting everywhere, but this is seriously good stuff (one or two aside). Haven’t listened since the 70s? Shame on you…

Dire Straits/Love Over Gold
Never got over this CD, and see no reason to start now.

The Who/Quadrophenia
Sure, it’s a two-CD set, but it’s my blog, dammit.

Alternates (could be subbed in at any time)

• Counting Crows/Films About Ghosts
• The Best of Pete Townsend
• Bruce Springsteen/Born to Run
• REM/Document
• Piles of other stuff…

Special Bonus Points For…

The Ultimate Geezer Mix CD. This could get messy, but yes, I’m building one as we speak. Probably not time to build another.

In truth, narrowing the avalanche of good music down to a tiny pile is a pointless exercise – most of the Undergrounders can name a band or album that I will immediately shuffle into the Top 5, leaving me with something more like a Top 50.

Naturally, the Undergrounders are encouraged to play along, and we promise not to snicker.

See you on the road, Tom Chandler.

[Name Redacted] and I found ourselves headed for Georgetown Lake – a large, shallow impoundment that’s heavily stocked, and where the fish grow quickly under the impetus of a staggering food chain.

Thunderstorms do have their advantages, but fishing isn't one of them.

Last year, my first cast on Georgetown produced a good sized fish, and a gratifying percentage of the subsequent casts did too.

Fly fishing Georgetown isn’t hard if you’re around at the right time. In truth, it’s a little like a visit to fly fishing’s red light district; the fish are easy, and too much self-congratulation over the result simply looks stupid.

Of course, with that mindset, the Undergrounders can already see into my Georgetown Lake future, which involves only a glimpse of the kind of fly fishing the lake offers.

Karma, it seems, it not the warm, fuzzy construct that some would have us believe.

The First Clue

After cruising the state campground once, [Name Redacted] and I seized a prime camping slot, and because I’m a seasoned outdoorsman, I began setting up my lightweight-but-sizable backpacking tent without even glancing at the directions.

For someone with my utter lack of spatial analysis skills, this, of course, is an act of hubris – a grandstand guaranteed to draw the attention of the gods.

And sure enough, no sooner had the tent gone up (only two do-overs) then “the flash” came. The very bright flash.

A thunderstorm had snuck in over the Pintar Range, and the flash was followed almost instantly by a loud crack of thunder – the kind of thunder that might send a fly fisher back to his just-erected tent for a clean pair of underwear.

Then, of course, it started raining.

No problem. Afternoon thunderstorms roll through here all the time, and we still had plenty of time before the much-anticipated evening caddis bite went off.

Problem was, one storm followed the next, and we finally found ourselves fishing a narrow 1.5 hour window in the evening between storms – the last chasing us right off the lake.

The rainbows would barely have a chance to form before the next storm rolled in.

Big Dries, Big Trout

The fishing – using #8 caddis dry flies – was spectacular… while it lasted.

You’d cast this enormous dry onto the relatively still lake surface (remember, this is between storms), then either twitch it or simply drag it back.

A surprisingly high percentage of the time, a trout would hammer it (in much the same way the Trout Underground hammers slaw dogs).

The take to hookup ratio is fairly low, and it took me a while to finally get a trout to the boat. That my hosts kept apologizing for the slow pace of the fishing only made me wonder more about what it’s supposed to be like.

I mean, we were getting big, splashy takes from good-sized trout, and a lot of them.

And it was slow?

Broken, Not Beaten

The fishing didn’t get any easier when I performed a long-distance hookset, and broke my Orvis Zero Gravity 9′ 6wt fly rod.

In truth, this was what we in the high-tech world called a “user problem,” and yes – I’d been expecting this. More than a year ago, a pair of us were fishing big streamers on this rod on a local river, and the bottom ferrule came a little loose, and neither of us noticed, and the inevitable happened.

After we picked up the pieces, I realized the Zero Gravity’s bottom ferrule hadn’t broken, but you could visible signs of stress on the female ferrule, and I figured this rod’s lifespan was limited.

I gave it another month, but I was off by more than a year.

Convenience Versus Breaking Shit

Ian Rutter warned that 4-piece rods require a lot more attention when you’re fishing big streamers and putting them under a lot of stress, which is why I started using ferrule wax on my travel rods.

I’ve paid special attention to the thinnest ferrule at the tip of the rod, which have simply cast off a pair of other four-piece rods, but clearly, I started using ferrule wax little too late to save this rod, and now it’s back to Orvis, who hopefully have a replacement section.

Simply put, my bad.

The Next Thing

We figured we’d fish the next day, but it rained at night, rained in the morning, and was going to rain (and storm) all day, and while I’ve got nothing against getting wet, I do have some questions about the concept of electrocution, so fly fishing during the long string of electrical storms was out.

We left, ate a warming breakfast at a nearby joint, then headed back to Missoula, and with work and home issues looming – and the forecast for more crummy weather – I headed home.

The long, long (boring, flat, hot, straight, featureless, high desert) road home.

The Wrapup

This Montana Road Trip was tougher than last years; my time on the little streams was just as gratifying, but the weather – cold and stormy – pushed the better fishing out just beyond the scope of my visit.

Still, I fished the Bitterroot twice, returned to the sites of last year’s small-stream nirvana moments, and – despite a long string of electrical storms – hammered trout for a sterling 90 minutes on Georgetown Lake.

My trip home – in the Underground’s new, air-conditioned Subaru sedan – was a breeze, though a meeting with a client put me on the road late.

I got home at 3 AM after 14 hours of driving, and the only real glitch was my brain’s increasingly inability to process the data my eyes were sending it the last hour of the drive.

Sometimes, things just get weird that way.

John Gierach once told me that his readers had essentially turned him from a fly fishing essayist into a fly fishing travel writer, and in a sense, I can see how that happens.

You can write volumes about your home waters – and the Undergrounders read that stuff with interest – but there’s something about applying the same perspective to new places that wakes us all up just a bit.

We are creatures of routine, but even the sniff of adventure is enough to get the grey matter engaged, calculating fuel costs and available vacation time against the risk of divorce and the chance to see something new.

See you on the road (at least once in a while), Tom Chandler.

Lately, we’ve conducted a small stream festival here on the Underground, and on the Montana Road Trip 2009, that wasn’t about to change.

If you're into beauty and wild trout, not a bad place to be...

The tiny meadow stream carefully not mentioned by name here was one we fly fished last year, and the fly fishing was the same small stream festival I remembered from 12 months ago.

The trout were still small – though we eked out a handful in the 11″-12″ range – and the fishing itself was something even a purist could love.

To the uninitiated, it would seem easy; the casts are short, the flies are floating, and the takes a little greedy.

Then again, the fish are spooky, the casting needs to be accurate to the inch, and the drifts surprisingly difficult.

Cutthroat trout go drab in the water, but neon in the sunlight.

And yes, there are more fly eating shrubs, trees and grasses than trout, so the price for a bad cast might be more than a few choice swear words.

Even when retrieving a snagged fly, you step carefully on this stream; it’s home to a rare freshwater mussel (the Western Pearlshell) that can live in excess of 100 years.

And yes, grinding a small colony of 70 year-old mussels into oblivion under your wading boot is not the memory you want to take from a day of fly fishing.

Western Pearlshell Mussels? These could have been here since WWI

It’s more than an “ooops” moment.

The (Uncelebrated) Grand Slam

Oddly – in the middle of cutthroat country – I found myself the owner of a Grand Slam: I caught a brown trout, a couple Brook trout, and many Westslope Cutthroats.

Brookie spots. Proof of a Grand slam - and too many non-natives?

In some instances, that’s cause for celebration – but only you’re not concerned about finding so many non-natives in a tiny alpine meadow creek. If [Name Redacted] and I go back, we’re packing a cooler and taking the Brookies and brown trout home for dinner.

Finding a brown trout this far up a cutthroat stream made our biologist friend sigh.

Catch and release has become something of a religion among fly fishermen, but sometimes the natives need a hand, and while the Brookie is still the Official Char of the Trout Underground, they simply don’t belong everywhere.

Plus they’re good to eat.

The Other Fishermen

Any time you stumble on a rarely fished stream, you assume complete and total ownership of it (at least in your head).

It may flow through public land and a (barely) drivable dirt road may cross it, but it’s yours, damnit.

So when you find a group of campers – including some who might even be fishermen – at the confluence of your tiny creek and the larger creek it feeds, you’re forgiven if your first thought is streak your face with mud, crawl down there through the brush, and go all Rambo on their camp.

It’s possible I accidentally vocalized some of that thinking, and [Name Redacted] gently reminded me I was standing on public land, and that the knee-high grasses on our tiny meadow stream looked undisturbed.

I mean, what fishermen wastes his time on a tiny meadow stream when a bigger version – with presumably bigger fish – runs right nearby?

Fair enough. Given all the trouble and worry that human greed has caused over the last 18 months, it’s refreshing to realize that wanton greed sometimes works in our favor.

Too small to be interesting? Nahhh...

Later – farther up the meadow – we’d stumble across a part of the meadow ripped up by ATV tracks (which also plowed through the stream at one point, which brought out that Rambo thing again), and sometimes you wonder why hopping on an otherwise useful ATV causes some people to immediately lose 30+ IQ points.

Enough said.

The Paragraph Where It Gets Mortal

Regular readers will recall my father’s death more than a year ago, despite the passage of time, a couple vials of his ashes sit perched on the shelf.

In truth, I didn’t know what to do with them.

My father was a big, gentle, quiet guy who took better care of us than he did himself – a guy who didn’t spend a lot of time “recreating” because that’s simply not what responsible, depression-era men did.

I’ve discovered you don’t get over a parent’s death as much as try to make peace with it, and while time and distance grant you a certain serenity, they don’t insulate you from the random thoughts that surprise you along the way.

Sometimes, I just like a picture - for no reason. Ok?

It’s too late to drag dad along on my adventures – some of which he would have enjoyed – but I am perfectly capable of depositing a few of his ashes in a tiny meadow stream, which links to a bigger freestone stream, which runs to a much bigger stream, which flows eventually to the Clarks Fork, which flows eventually to the Columbia River, which ultimately flows into the ocean.

That he might someday occupy the whole of the Columbia Basin watershed puts a smile on my face.

It also makes sense that a small part of my quiet, patient father now occupies a stream populated by freshwater mussels – which may have been quietly doing whatever mussels do since before he was born.

A thought like that grants an almost totemic power to things like small streams and ashes, and you ignore the wonderful symmetry of it at all your own peril.

If there’s a moral here, maybe it’s this: maybe the mad poets among us know something we don’t.

A tiny, grassy, Montana meadow stream - a good place to hang out for a while.

More Montana

The Underground’s Montana Road Trip 2009 took a turn for the stormy after [Name Redacted] and I returned from our small stream odyssey, but that’s fodder for my next post.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Sometimes you love an image, but don't know where to put it. This belongs here.

Unfortunately, I won’t make I90 West until 1:00 pm, which means – even if I stayed awake and drove straight through – I wouldn’t reach the loving embrace of the L&T and the Wonderdog until 3:00 am.

I’m not at all sure that’s going to happen – long drives through remote areas can lead to hairy eyeball moments with roadside deer, any one of which can end a trip – so the Undergrounders may not see a post until late Wednesday.

Still, never underestimate the power of the word “home.”

It exerts a powerful draw on all of us, regardless of where the word leads you.

Still to come from the Montana Road Trip?

We’ve got photos and a report from the coolest little meadow stream in the world.

And a handful of photographs from Georgetown Lake – where one thunderstorm after another finally sent us packing – though not before we squeezed in a couple hours of the lake’s famous Monster Caddis Hatch (Monster CADDIS PULL! Be There! Torque Torque! Torque!!!).

With the Underground’s faithful photographic companion (the much-abused Pentax Optio W10) wobbling on unsteady legs, the picture count is a little short, and with a new camera not really in the immediate budget, we’ll see what we can do to get it back in the ring for future adventures.

What are those? Life is about to take on a more hectic pace, but there are still a host of unvisited alpine lakes sprinkled around Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters, plus all the usual suspects.

In any case, the Montana Road Trip 2009 pictures are already taken, the experiences have already been lived, and the duffel already packed.

See you on the long road home, Tom Chandler.

Hmmm.

Looks like the Undergrounders will have to be content with a teaser:

It's (Name Redacted) again, this time on an alpine meadow stream

This meadow stream is a tiny thing and you rarely even touch the water (except to release a trout), but in this instance, [Name Redacted] caught a trout right at the base of the flowers.

This particular stream required a little hiking, and I managed to land a Grand Slam there: Brown trout, Brook trout, and a Westslope Cutthroat.

[Name Redacted] also put the steel to a 12″ Brook trout – a big fish in such little water – and we returned with photographic evidence of the existence of a rare freshwater mussel – the Western Pearlshell.

Its range is shrinking fast, and it would be a shame to see it disappear; it’s extemely long-lived (one specimen lived 67 years), and it’s being killed by eutropification – mostly due to cattle grazing and bad agricultural practices.

More pictures and words coming – I just don’t know when. In the battle between blogging and fishing, well…

See you in Montana, Tom Chandler.