Two weekends ago, a pair of us humans fished the Upper Sac under what we both described as “pleasant” conditions.

Thanks to the selfless sacrifice of my #20 winged compadres (and an upstream reach cast), we hooked many rainbow trout.

Ahh, my BWO friends made all this possible...

Truly, we appreciate your help, though we’d like to point out we made sacrifices of our own (we accidentally left the thermos of hot chocolate at home, a travesty that still brings me to tears).

Days later, in the same sunless, cloudy-but-pleasant conditions, Chris Raine and I found more BWOs, and more rising trout.

They were very big trout.

At least three were 16″ long, and at least four others were bigger than 12″ (and those were just the ones I know about from firsthand, personal experience).

Yes, my friends, it was a very good day. And again, that was due largely to you, the BWOs (and that reach cast).

So it was with some excitement that Raine and I noticed last Tuesday’s forecast was for “Perfect” blue-winged olive weather.

Wet. Drizzly. Miserable even.

Manly stuff. To fish it, we would have to show courage.

We could not contain our child-like glee. (Admittedly, Raine doesn’t do “glee” all that well. In fact, the little dance is downright embarassing.)

We piled on the warm clothes. The rain jacket. The gloves. The gooberish hats.

And went to the river.

And stood.

In the rain.

In other words, my dun-colored friends, we showed.

But you didn’t.

Nor did the trout.

What gives?

(And why am I writing like a college Hemmingway wannabe?)

The Hemmingway-Free Zone

I’m always a little startled by the number of people who say their favorite hatch is the Blue-Winged Olive.

It’s a great bug and all, but you almost never have to compete for a spot on the river when the BWOs are hatching.

Which, come to think of it, is probably why it’s a favorite.

Right now, the Upper Sacramento remains in astonishingly good shape for February, but then, we’ve experienced an astonishingly absent winter.

The snowpack is around 30% of normal, which is not an edifying number for us small stream types.

The fishing is good, but apparently not during perfect blue-winged olive weather. (It’s going to suck next summer, when the lack of snowpack is going to hurt a lot of my favorite small streams.)

Turns out almost nothing is ever simple in nature.

The Details

Because I’m still on the clock (much Hemmingway-ish copy must be written), here are a few details:

• You can have all them fancy flies, I still live and die by my Quigley Cripples (the Engle-modified micro version) and the amusingly-easy-to-tie Roy Palm emerger (shuck, biot body, dubbed thorax ball and two wraps of blue dun hen hackle).

• On the last trip I wore my one-size-too-big Orvis wading boots, and damned if my feet never got cold, and those studs of doom gripped nicely. These puppies work as well as they did last year.

• Location is everything. The first trip, the two of us hooked eleven trout yet landed only one, courtesy an accelerating tailout current that gave a hooked trout immediate leverage against a #20 hook. Not one broken tippet or bent hook, but only one landed trout. Not breathtaking.

• As we stood in the drizzle and watched no bugs float by and no trout rise, I told Raine this would never happen to a better outdoor writer, and he allowed as to how my tendency towards complex sentences might have doomed us.

It’s hell when your own friends turn on you (hey, I’m not the one who forget the hot chocolate), but it wasn’t just us.

I spoke to local uber-guide Craig Nielsen, who has the Klamath wired and has been basically crushing them, but even he found the crushing a little slower on the same wet, “perfect” day.

Apparently, I find it comforting when others suffer with me.

The explanations are endless. Falling barometer. Rising river. BWO Christmas. Karmically disadvantaged fly fishermen.

Whatever.

Fly fishing is like that; we reach for understanding, yet the moment we “achieve” it we’re reminded we basically don’t know shit, and probably never did.

See you on the river (in the rain), Tom Chandler.

That used to be a variant of the Quigley Cripple...

In one sense, successful fly fishing is about turning hackle and dubbing into tiny little pieces of garbage, and while the numbers are hardly astonishing, Chris Raine and I did turn formerly useful #20 flies into what I’d suggest were a few (badly needed) happy moments.

More soon.

See you tying more, Tom Chandler.

Fortunately, we found one:

An Upper Sacramento, BWO-eating, gullible Rainbow Trout

This is the week all the smoke has cleared away, and it’s time to forget about snow removal and rental hassles and turn words into payable, actionable (and billable) work for a client.

So the full report will have to wait a day or two. Sorry.

See you chasing BWOs, Tom Chandler.

Except when it isn’t.

On Sunday, it wasn’t.

The first fish (and the only picture).

Up here, we’re still in the grip of our indecently nice winter weather — a run of sunny, rain-and-snow-free days that defy the “winter” label.

The banks of the Upper Sacramento (the upper bits) should be carpeted with snow, and I should have skied down the road, but simply drove it instead, and could have done it in a two-wheel drive. I even fished some of the afternoon in a single long-sleeve undershirt before slipping on a light jacket.

It’s early January, and I was fishing a bug with its roots in a hatch that began in early October, and while I haven’t seen an October Caddis for weeks, I had an inkling.

For years I’ve suggested the “best” time to fish the October Caddis dry isn’t during the actual hatch. I can’t count the number of times I’ve caught more and bigger fish on an #18 PED parachute while October Caddis popped off the water like slow-moving hummingbirds.

Thousands of big bugs in the air, yet few — if any — trout eating them on the water.

Until they start dying.

Fly Fishing’s Confidence Game

Fly fishermen often pretend at knowledge they simply can’t possess. It’s a time-honored tradition, so when I say that the trout “know” the late-season October Caddis on the water are probably dying and therefore can’t escape, it sounds pretty good.

When I add — as a virtual certainty — they realize winter is here and the food-free spawn is coming soon afterwards, so they’re seizing the opportunity to bulk up, it all seems reasonable.

But really, who the hell knows?

The fly and the rod, a pretty stellar combination before the snow falls.

I can say that Wally the Wonderdog and I fished for less than two hours, most of it spent rigging up and hiking down the rails (and in the Wonderdog’s case, rolling in something dead).

I only had three grabs.

But what grabs they were; slashing takes, like Northern Pike eating mice.

And yes, all the trout were big, at least by Upper Sacramento standards (they always are in winter).

The October Caddis

The big dying October Caddis pattern (a prototype tied by Raine, who has since changed the pattern) floats low in the water and the CDC wing no doubt looks tattered — like you’d imagine a dead October Caddis would look.

The first trout was a good 14″-15″, and like winter fish always do, he felt heavy and firm and solid and alive in my hand. After so long without a fly rod in my hand, it felt a little like I was reaching back into my past.

The second fish only stayed on for 4-5 seconds, and I’d suggest he was as big as the third, which — when I tried to measure it against the wraps on the fly rod — went on past the 18″ wrap.

Unfortunately, we come to the bad news; unless I can find some kind of accommodation, this might have been Wally the Wonderdog’s last fishing trip on the Upper Sac. In the past he was only peripherally interested in the fishing, but over time, he’s wholly keyed in on the fish to the point he’s trying to retrieve the damn things right out of my hand.

Wally the Wonderdog is pretty keyed in on trout...

It makes for a tough time landing and releasing them (not to mention getting a picture), and sooner or later he’s going to catch one and kill it.

And I’m leaving out some of the language used when he decided to swim through a run while I was casting to it, or those moments when I lose a fish because I’m trying to horse them out of his reach.

Plus he’s not as spry as he used to be, and we hadn’t even reached the two-hour mark when he started limping and falling back, which meant it was time to go home.

We all get older, and the trick is to figure out what still works for us, and in the Wonderdog’s case, that might not involve scrambling up and down steep rocky banks — not exactly the Lab/Basset’s forte to begin with.

The Gear Stuff

I fished the 8’3″ Raine Hollowbuilt 5wt and the Rio Avid DT5 line, and the combination — at close and medium ranges — was astonishing.

Big dry flies are tough to fish accurately at short ranges; they’re wind resistant, so until you’ve got enough line mass driving them, they open up your loops and kill accuracy.

And accuracy is pretty much what it’s all about in this kind of fishing.

A short, strong leader is a necessity, as is a rod that will throw a decent loop at short range.

This happened three times -- plenty when the trout are big...

When Raine built new tips for this bamboo fly rod (converting it from a 4/5 to a true 5wt in the process), he added a little line speed to the equation.

It’s almost as if he’s reinvented the semi-parabolic style rod, only without all the weirdness.

More To Come

With the first real storm of the winter not expected until January 18 (and that’s a long-range forecast, which is worth about as much as you’d guess it was), the dying October Caddis bite might last a little longer.

With most of our options out of reach, my short trips are confined to the river or the nearby lake, though with a big deadline on the table, it may be a couple more days.

Fly fishing in winter is often portrayed as a kind of manly pursuit practiced by those lacking common sense (a label sought by many these days), but in truth, it always feels quieter and more reflective, and the sense of stillness is almost palpable.

Because nobody’s going anywhere in a hurry — and any expectations of a spring-level body count are gone — it’s as if you’re freed from the need to move quickly, and three big trout eating a dry fly is more reward, frankly, than it feels like I deserve.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

My chance to get all arty and pretentious...

The picture sucks, but the moment didn't...

(It didn’t hurt that I was the dope holding the camera and the bamboo fly rod.)

After a December only barely populated with outdoor pursuits, I found myself at the shooting range on Saturday and fly fishing the Upper Sacramento on Sunday.

God, I hate it up here.

I wondered if the dying October Caddis bite was still on, and I discovered it was.

More when I can find a minute to write about it.

See you outdoors (finally), Tom Chandler.

I got a pair of those ponderous head shakes that tell you the fish is big (or he’s foul hooked), and then the reel went from zero to ohmigod speeds in a fraction of a second.

That’s thrilling stuff, but hardly Jack London-esque — unless the fast-moving trout decides to run under the only laydown on the whole run.

Well played, Mr. Trout.

It was cold and I was wet and trout were going everywhere, so this is the only pic I got (it's the smaller of the two)

I waded over and sized up the situation. The trout was still on, apparently hanging around just downstream trying to figure out what was going on.

The fly line dove under the tree and made a right-angle exit downriver.

I remember thinking “I can fix this. This won’t be too bad at all.”

Which is when things started to go sideways.

Hey, This Clear Liquid Is Cold

Sometimes — for brief moments — I fancy myself a Man of Action, though at my age, you’d think I’d connect those moments with what inevitably follows.

Which is generally humiliation.

I waded up to the downed tree, put the rod in my left hand, reached down into the water with my right (a lot farther down than I originally thought, which should have been a clue), and lifted the tree.

So far, so good.

But sliding the rod under the tree took me a little deeper than I anticipated, and that extra couple inches meant the top of my waders (and the side of my head, and the neck opening of my jacket) got… submerged.

At the time it happened I realized it was trouble, but I’d started and you know how it is — you’re already there so you decide to brazen it out.

I distinctly remember straightening up — a huge wad of wet, decomposing leaves clutched in my hand along with my still-attached-to-the-trout fly rod — thinking I had the fish and I was still dry.

Which is when the 39 degree water hit my skin.

It kinda takes your breath away.

Shrinkage was body-wide and immediate.

I managed to land that trout — the second of the day. It went between 18 and 19 inches (Raine put measuring wraps on my rod at 16″ and 18″, suggesting a distinct lack of faith in my ability to catch 20″ trout).

The other trout fell just short of the 18″ mark.

I was wet enough that I squished when I walked, though — thank god for the Nano Puff jacket — I warmed up a bit after I got past the shock, though my feet never really enjoyed the trip.

Taken as a whole, that’s still not a bad day.

The Nitty Gritty Details

The air was around 40 degrees, the BWO hatch was light and only lasted an hour, but I still managed to get seven rising fish to eat the bug.

At just under one grab every eight minutes, that’s Happy Hour as far as I’m concerned.

The hook popped out of three with only slight resistance (it’s a #22 cripple after all), and I landed two of the four I hooked.

That’s not a stirring percentage — and I sometimes catch myself wondering WWGD (What Would Gierach Do) — but the fish are big and the hook gape is probably best measured with an electron microscope, so I’ve largely done away with fly fisherman’s remorse.

The 8’3″ 5wt Raine hollowbuilt has confirmed its status as a killer BWO rod — you need to make longer casts than you think on this stretch because wading any closer means the trout simply stop rising.

Thirty feet is a gift. Forty is common, and casting at an upstream or downstream angle can leave you with surprisingly little fly line on your reel.

It’s cold up here (we’ve got two inches of snow on the ground as I write this), but we’ve reached the Bonus Portion of the year; the “real” Upper Sac winter when the little fish go into hiding and the big fish start eating BWOs — provided the hatches come, the sun stays behind a cloud, you’re on the right piece of river, and the fly fishermen don’t wade too close.

See you on the river (literally), Tom Chandler

Funny what a size 22 insect can do for a fly fisherman.

Thanks. I needed that.

The Upper Sacramento’s hatches are maddening; one day they’re gratifying. The next — despite perfect conditions — they’re nonexistent.

And yesterday’s conditions were were damned near perfect.

So I was prepared to get wet for no good reason at all.

Happily, at 1:15, enough BWOs showed to pull a few trout to the surface, a handful of which I tricked into eating my Quigley Cripple.

It’s a simple enough sentence, but fly fishermen read it and their pulse quickens.

Especially when the trout are, well… stunning:

In just the right light, they're stunning (better looking than your angry fingers)

Fall in the Upper Sacramento River canyon is easy on the eyes; half the trees are evergreens, yet the other half are turning red and yellow and orange, and those isolated riots of color stand out more than if they consumed the entire hillside.

The water is low and so clear it’s as if the river bottom is encased in Lucite.

It’s also a time when your hands sting every time you (foolishly) dip them in the water, and when the average size fish throw the hook before you can land them, you’re secretly relieved. Later, when you look at the photos involving fingers, they’ll be an almost angry red.

Our digits apparently are less enamored of fall than we are.

The Details

By the numbers? I had seven grabs, three of which turned into those “life the rod and feel them for a millisecond before the hook pops out” endeavors.

That leaves us with four hookups and three landed fish, all of which were in the 11″-12″ range.

All that happened on a #22 Quigley Cripple (the scaled-down Ed Engle version), the trout having already ignored the #20 Adams Parachute I’d started with.

I was fishing the Raine 8’3″ 5wt hollowbuilt I mentioned here, and as you’d guess, I kept pretty close tabs on its performance — right up until the first good drift over a trout was ignored and I switched to vengeful angler mode.

The verdict? It’s looking good, Undergrounders.

But more testing is needed. Lots more.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

That's not bad weather. That's BWOs and rising trout...

It’s even possible I’ll hit this one a couple times on the Upper Sacramento (assuming the rain stays reasonable and the river doesn’t blow).

The L&T long ago gave up trying to understand the glee I feel when bad weather approaches in the fall.

It’s little wonder that fly fishermen — who go to great lengths to catch fish and then return them; drive right past big fish in pursuit of smaller remote fish; and buy thousands of dollars of fly tying gear to save a buck on a fly — are largely misunderstood among the general populace (if anyone bothers to try) .

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

“Introduction To Fly Fishing” Clinic Sunday, August 21st, 2011

Local Guide Wayne Eng will lead instruction in river history, reading the water and more in Dunsmuir’s beautiful City Park
Hosted by the River Exchange’s Sustainable Watershed Series

DUNSMUIR, CA– On Sunday, August 21st, the River Exchange is hosting their “Introduction to Fly Fishing” Clinic on the grounds of beautiful Dunsmuir City Park, from 10am to 2pm. The clinic is a great way to be introduced to the river for anyone interested in learning about fly fishing.

With the help of other fly fishing volunteers, Wayne Eng, local fly fishing guide and river lover, will lead the clinic with lecture and demo instruction on various aspects of fly fishing in the Upper Sacramento River. Topics covered will include river history, casting techniques, reading the river and more.

Wayne Eng has taken hundreds of people on the water to hone their skills, from beginners to experts. “The “Zen” of fly fishing is that you place yourself completely into the moment, using all of your senses and skills to be effective,” says Wayne. “No matter what skill level you are, being able to immerse yourself in the art of fly fishing in such a beautiful setting is magical and inspiring.”

Cost of admission is $35 per person, which is used to fund the River Exchange’s watershed education programs. Space for this clinic is limited; call the River Exchange at (530) 235-2012 or email them at mail@riverexchange.org to make your reservation.

The River Exchange is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting healthy watersheds through community involvement in stewardship, restoration and education. For more information about the River Exchange, visit www.riverexchange.org.

We’ve been treated to surprisingly stable flows on the Upper Sacramento and (especially) the McCloud, and local guide Craig Nielsen suggests the dry fly fishing on the McCloud’s been stellar.

That might be coming to an end:

Warming up....

As always, see you on the river, Tom Chandler.