Travel

The fine line between resting and insanity…

May 6, 2006, by 3 comments

It’s a beautiful day in the Smokies – not the kind of day you’d want to spend in a dark motel room watching daytime television and trying to sleep away a hacking cough. Outside, fleets of Harleys rumble up and down Townsend’s main drag, and a steady stream of cars flow into the park, presumably filled with fishermen who are now joyfully fishing my streams and catching my fish. Not that I’ve noticed or anything.

Still, sitting out yesterday and this morning have helped some, and this evening I’ll head out and test fly my new lungs on the evening hatch. Tomorrow (Sunday), I’ve got my eye on some Brookie water that Ian suggested last night. It’ll be the first outing for Raine’s 7.5′ 4wt “Rush Rod” that came together just before the trip, and I’m looking forward to the year’s first brookie. Ian warned me the stream was pretty tight, and given my current status as an impatient, easily frustrated sicko, I think I’d better embrace my “inner zen” tomorrow or go home with a five-piece rod instead of the three-piecer I started with.

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Afternoon [cough] in the [hack hack] Smokies

May 5, 2006, by No comments yet

Without going into the gory details, suffice it to say that I’ve been a bad, bad boy and brought my cold back upon me. Yesterday was pretty harsh on my apparently aging respiratory system, transforming me from a strong, virile fishing machine into a pathetic little cough monster, and on the drive home it became clear I was running a fever.

Things were unhappy enough that I even considered a visit to a healthcare professional (if you know me, you know that’s almost never), but figuring he’d probably just tell me to stop fishing for a couple days (never ask for advice you don’t want to take), I passed on that little adventure.

Ian, Charity and Willow
Daddy, you’re getting micro-drag…

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Two rivers, one day…

May 4, 2006, by 2 comments

According to Ian, the Tennessee trout fishing universe tends to fall in two hemispheres; the tailwater specialists and the small stream folks. Obviously, plenty fish both, but it’s a rare fly fisher that doesn’t lean towards one to the exclusion of the other. On Wednesday – after a day in the park – it was our turn to chase the glittery, Hollywood-style fish of the tailwaters.

Ian Rutter launches his drift boat
We had a name for this launch ramp: dirt.

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This was our “can’t miss” day on the Holsten; Ian’s clients absolutely whacked the trout the prior week during an hours-long caddis hatch – the same durable, six-week long hatch that I hit twice last year. The Holsen is the same “new” tailwater I wrote about then, and like all the Tennessee tailwaters, it’s under the thumb of the TVA, whose decision to alter flow regimes and generate electricity can make or break your sporting day.

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Hatch Repellent…

May 2, 2006, by 5 comments

Today we fished the Little River inside the park; some of this I’d seen on prior trips, but most of it was new to me. Rich Margiotta, myself, and Ian slunk around and tried to look like nice, safe, non-predatory beings to the fish, and I have to say it only worked part of the time. It’s late, I’m beat, I’m hungry, and I’m still pretty sick, so this will be short.

I fished Raine’s 8’3″ 4wt, which really was a nice rod for the Little River, which is like a smaller, kinder gentler Upper Sac with weird trees and a different set of bugs. As you might expect, Ian has this place pretty wired, and recent evening hatches have been wild affairs, so even though my sick, abused body pretty much folded up the tent by 5:00, we stuck around until after 8:00, waiting for the evening’s festivities, which never really came off.

Ian immediately burdened me with the responsibility, and given the current, unfishable state of the Upper Sac, it’s hard to argue. Tomorrow, I’m expecting the Tennessee fish and game department to call with an offer to leave the state, thereby restoring the fishing. I’ll let you know if I take the money.

A couple different dry flies allowed me to land a handful and miss a bunch more. Ian used nymphs early and changed to dries midday to land close to a dozen. He moved at leat two real good fish, but landed neither. Rich had to leave early, but landed a couple and was probably the person really to blame for the lack of an evening rise (he’s not here so he gets the blame).

Tomorrow we’re floating the Holsten, and we’ll find out if that blizzard caddis hatch – which resulted in literally countless hookups for a pair of Ian’s clients last week and yesterday – can stand up to a liberal dose of Chandler’s Hatch Repellent. See you on the river.

Ian Rutter Little River
That’s Ian being all sneaky.

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Little River Rainbow
This is what happens when you’re sneaky.

Ready, set, fish…

May 1, 2006, by 4 comments

After what only seemed like forever, I’m safely tucked away at Rich Margiotta’s house in Knoxville, TN. It’s after midnight on Monday, which means my plane from Chicago was better than 2.5 hours late. It’s hardly a secret that – like a souffle – I don’t travel particularly well. In fact, if I wasn’t afraid of looking like a complete and utter sissy, I’d probably invent some whiny rationalization why nobody should fish a place they couldn’t drive to.

Tomorrow, though, it begins. Rich and I will meet up with Ian and go catch some fish. It’s likely these won’t be big fish, but it’s 100% certain they’ll be gorgeous wild fish, and maybe even a few will be native brookies left behind when the last ice age ended.

I just pulled a couple cane rods out of my bag – a pair of Raine hollowbuilts, a Thramer hollowbuilt, and a Beasley-built 50DF for back up. Cane rods are the perfect fishing tools for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Not to mention they’re almost as beautiful as the fish… See you in the park.

Fly the really, really friendly skies

May 1, 2006, by No comments yet

I’m on the longest leg of my trip to Tennessee (which is to say I’m still in the airport after running the oh-so-dignified gauntlet of check-in and security), and because my flight’s been delayed more than an hour (and aren’t I glad I got up at 4:45), I’m enjoying the Disney-esque ambiance of yet another tiny airport terminal.

In case you haven’t been in one lately, allow me to refresh your memory: airline terminals are designed to be so uncomfortable they actually make you happy to risk your life on an airplane. This one’s so crammed with people that I’m developing a lot of empathy for what hatchery trout endure on a daily basis (another argument for the elimination of the hatchery system).

Let’s be blunt – I didn’t move to a remote part of moutainous Northern California because I love rubbing elbows with humanity as a whole, and while the surly youth across from me wearing the “US Keg Lifting Team” hat is probably a friendly enough guy, I know I’d like him a lot more if our kneecaps weren’t knocking every couple minutes.

Ian called to let me know the dry fly fishing’s been awesome the last couple days – a hell of a carrot compared to the stick of a 6,000 cfs Upper Sacramento… See you in the security line.

Tennessee’s on…

April 30, 2006, by No comments yet

I wouldn’t say I was 100% (in fact, I wouldn’t say I was even 75%), but it’s close enough. Hell, I can always get better on the river. Plus there’s all that time spent relaxing in airports and airplanes to recover even more…

For the first couple days anyway, I’ll post reports. Stay tuned.
The local opener was tough; flows were in the 6000 cfs neighborhood, so there just weren’t a lot of places to fish. Even high-water expert Wayne Eng didn’t find trout at his usual spots, a rare event indeed. As for high flows on the Upper Sac? Get used to them…

And just a quickie for those those who fish the Yellowstone area, check out the Fly Fishing Yellowstone blog.

See you at airport security.

Diseases of mass destruction

April 29, 2006, by 1 comment

I was chugging towards the start of my Tennessee trip but this morning the train sorta came off the rails. The annoying head cold turned into a fever, headache and other symptoms too graphic to describe in a family fly fishing site.

The ever alert L&T Nancy called the airline to see about pushing my departure a day or two, and what we discovered was that United – despite the fact they’re losing millions every hour – doesn’t have an empty seat. (You have to admire a business model that includes losing money while at nearly 100% capacity.)

While some friends have snidely suggested that this is instant karmic payoff for the high levels of taunting they’ve experienced on the Underground, I haven’t abandoned all hope yet, deciding to decide tomorrow. See you at the medicine cabinet…

Spring Cleaning…

April 23, 2006, by 2 comments

With the last snow finally melting out of the Trout Underground’s backyard and no monster storms forecast for the coming week, we can hope that spring has officially arrived on the Upper Sac. It’s very green downcanyon, and starting to green up here at the top. It’s a time of year that – when you look out the window – appears warm and inviting, but if you open the window, you flood the house with cold air, starting the heater and making the cats glare at you because you’re a cement head.

It’s also time to admit that over the winter, you didn’t quite tear up the trout like you did last winter, when your head grew several hat sizes and megalomania settled in nicely for the summer. No, it’s a different spring from last spring, which is both depressing and precisely the reason you do this in the first place (and despite all the “you” in the entry, it’s possible we’re talking about me here).

It’s also time to admit that it’s only a week before my trip to Tennessee, and that I’m far enough behind in my work that there might not be much fishing before I go. And yes, there are a few leaders that need to be tied, a few size 14 yellow Beetle Bugs to be thrown together, and yes – that annoying question about how you’re going to fish those tiny brookie streams in the Great Smoky Mountains when your lightest-actioned travel rod is a a too-strong 8′ 5wt. More on this riveting story as it develops. Read more →

The Trout Underground in the 21st Century

April 14, 2006, by No comments yet

It’s time to enter the 21st century with some up-to-date software that limits how pretty I can make the site, but handles most of the content management work for me.

Plus, my readers can now leave comments behind! This is the real reason for the switch. Feel free!

The Lovely and Talented Nancy in Baja