Posts tagged: brown trout

Fly Fishing a Small Stream for Brown Trout (or, How Knee Pads & Rattlesnakes Made the Fishing Report)

May 18, 2009, by Tom Chandler 16 comments

It’s when I was knee-walking my way closer to the edge of the meadow stream that I literally stumbled across a pair of truths.

First, I formerly owned (and lost) knee pads for just this sort of thing, and by tomorrow morning, I was probably going to wish I’d bought another pair. (To the tune of several aspirin, this prediction came sadly true.)

And second, there is a kind of meadow flower that – after it blooms and the seed pod dries – sounds a lot like a rattlesnake when your fly line brushes against it.

The first realization was of the slow-dawning kind, but the second landed a little harder; when you’re on your hands and knees and think you hear a rattlesnake 1.5 feet to your left, the thought process flows quickly, as does the urge to simultaneously levitate and soil yourself.

Steve Bertrand fly fishes the meadow stretch of a small stream

Later, I demonstrated the rattlesnake doppler plant to Steve Bertrand, who couldn’t see the seed pod from his location, and you could tell he didn’t entirely buy my explanation until I physically pointed out the plant.

The whole episode reinforces what I’m starting to believe about myself (at least at the start of every new fly fishing season); I’m not a slow learner as much as a forgetful one.

We didn't "slaughter 'em" though we did catch a lot. And it was fun.

I seems my capacity for re-learning things is only outstripped by my ability to forget them, and I suppose the glass-half-full view is that every day offers people like me a fresh, new perspective on the world.

At least that’s what I’m going with for now.

Fish on. Note the knee-height positioning of the photographer (ouch)

Fish on.Â (Click image for a 1440 x 900 wallpaper version)

Fly fishing one of the freestone sections of the stream

The Fly Fishing

Steve Bertrand and I abandoned our adult responsibilities (he’s a fishing guide, so he has damned few of those), and fished a small stream that alternately runs through tiny canyons and grassy meadows, figuring the water flows there would be better than in those on the bigger rivers.

We were right, but in truth, that’s simply sophistry. I wanted to fly fish a small stream, and this one has all the goodies; brown trout, freestone sections, meadow sections, and yes, it’s not exactly what you’d call a “well known sporting destination.”

If this doesn't give you goose bumps, you may be dead.

That may be due to the smallish size of the trout (our biggest went 11″), but more likely, it’s just a small stream in a remote stretch of the county, and it takes a little too long to get there given the size of the fish. At least that’s how most people seem to feel about it.

Because this was all about fun and not efficiency, I fished the same 8′ 5wt Phillipson Peerless bamboo fly rod I used on the tiny Montana Cutthroat meadow stream of a year ago, and while most of the world would have trotted out a 2 or 3 weight for this kind of work, I’m happier with a softish 4 or 5wt, reasoning that a little insurance in the big wind/big fly department is a good thing.

Plus, they’re just more fun to cast.

You gotta love the reddish amber color of the Phillipsons

In the end, we more or less caught trout in all the places you’d expect we would, and though I wouldn’t say the trout were technical (they weren’t), they are damned spooky, and demanded a little stealth on their approach.

They’re wild things after all, and it’s in their best interest not to be seen. By contrast, most of humanity’s doing stranger and stranger things in a bid to be noticed, and of the two, the trout seem to make more sense.

Hey, I get to cath one (and only seconds after painfully lurching to my feet) (photo: Steve Bertrand)

Hey, I get to catch one (and only seconds after painfully lurching to my feet) (photo: Steve Bertrand)

Steve started fishing a dry and dropper, but quickly relented on the dropper part due to snags and the realization that I was getting bit fairly often on a small stimulator.

Later – on the meadow section – we went with a flying ant, which was as reliable as it always is on these waters. (How many do you have in your box?)

The red spots on some brown trout look so much brighter than they'd possibly need to be.

Almost everything we caught was a brown trout (even in the freestone stretches), and all had that undeniably lumpy (orange peelish) brown trout feel to them.

Naturally, when the light got right, Steve Bertrand and I went to a specific spot on the meadow with the intention of catching and photographing a nicer brown trout, so Bertrand promptly caught two rainbows, and I was forced to fire him on the spot.

Rainbows occupying the slower water of a brown trout stream? Stop the madness!

What photographer wants to work with talent who can’t catch trout (the right trout) on command?

Later – when the light got even better and we both caught nice, red-dotted brown trout – I forgave him his clumsiness.

Apparently I’m the fickle artist type.

I’m in the middle of a couple big weeks, yet I’d consider taking a human life to get back out to that stream (there are two more sections we didn’t even see). Still, with a Web site & email program to launch for a client and two more online marketing boot camp classes to teach, any fishing will probably take place closer to home.

See you on a small stream, Tom Chandler.

The “Fly Fishing a Small Brown Trout Creek” Pre-Post

May 15, 2009, by Tom Chandler 5 comments

Fish on. Local Guide Steve Bertrand hooks another. (click image for a 1440 x 900 pixel wallpaper version)

It’s late, so I’m grabbing a shower and going to bed. More to come on today’s fly fishing expedition, where many brown trout were caught (and many casts were blown).

See you in the morning, Tom Chandler.

Expectations, Fly Fishing & Brown Trout: Mix All Three, Then Wait. And Wait. And Wait.

May 13, 2009, by Tom Chandler 3 comments

Loading up a fly fishing trip with a lot of expectation seldom ends well for fly fishermen. Outside of the usual “I’m going fly fishing” excitement, no two trips are the same, and yet the memories of a prior slaughter burnish up nicely over the course of a year, so it’s possible they’re even brighter than the reality.

That’s a tough starting point for any trip.

Then there are the trout, who aren’t a party to your expectations. After all, they don’t care what you think – their goal is to leave you broken and disappointed at the water’s edge.

Steve Bertrand probably didn't have the same expectations I did, which was smart.

Big Brown Trout Syndrome

Last year, I fished McCloud Reservoir with Steve Bertrand, and yes, you could pretty much say we ripped it up, though the Undergrounders never actually read about it.

On that day, we caught a fair number of smallish rainbow trout, and then went headhunting. In the space of a spectacular two hours, I landed 21″, 19″ and 17″ brown trout – in addition to a pair of oversized rainbow trout.

That’s the kind of raw finny tonnage you dream about every time you string up your fly rod, and that it happened while I was stripping a streamer just as fast I could was only a bonus.

One of last year's McCloud Reservoir Brown Trout - in a great big boat net

In the clear water, you could see the big browns rocketing up to the streamer, though sometimes – in what amounted to a test of bladder control – they stopped just an inch behind the streamer.

In those situations you’re supposed to keep stripping just as fast as you can, and for fly fisherman who’s proven himself not quite capable of doing two things at once, it’s a tough job.

That you heard nothing of this Supersized Brown Trout Festival wasn’t game playing on my part; the trip fell just a few days before my father’s death, and for a time, confusion reigned.

Enter this year’s reprise of the trip, and for reasons that probably amount to little more than howling at the moon, I wanted a repeat of last year’s trip.

It seemed like the universe owed it to me.

The Early May Brown Trout Festival

Which brings us back to the expectation thing, which I’ve already suggested is unhealthy.

And in this case, I was right.

McCloud Reservoir was murkier than usual, and littered with debris. That’s not unusual for spring, but it doesn’t exactly scream “streamer” fishing.

Early on, we did well on the rainbows, half of which appeared to be recent stockers. The other half were pretty and full finned, and you never know if they’re holdover stocked fish or the wild McCloud variety.

A McCloud Rainbow Trout: Who'd overlook this in favor of something else?

Did I say we did “well?” Actually, we did lot better than that – to the point that we were calling the spot on the drifts where we’d get bit.

Still, even the hot rainbow bite hadn’t entirely erased the thought of big brown trout, and eventually we fired up the streamer rods.

And never caught another trout.

Frankly, I probably deserved it.

Expecting to catch big fish belies the gratitude you’re supposed to feel when nature hands you a raft of big trout, and as the Greek dramatists suggested, hubris is rarely rewarded.

There’s also the thought I’m something of an ungrateful shit for looking past the pretty rainbow trout, some of whom stretched into the 13″ range and sported those iridescent strawberry gill plates that hint at art instead of wildlife.

Still, while expectation probably leads directly to disappointment, hope remains the salve for any fishermen’s wound, and yes, I know there are big, big brown trout in a certain part of the reservoir, and it’s likely I’ll make another run at them, though hopefully with the right attitude in place.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

To Live In a Place Where The Brown Trout Fall From the Sky

April 27, 2009, by Tom Chandler 41 comments

It’s not as if Brown Trout fall from the sky and onto Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters every day, but – after a significant investigative news effort – the Underground’s Crack Investigative Reporting Team has concluded it happens at least once in a while.

Really.

And no, I am not making this up (this time).

Wally The Really Wonderdog

Every Undergrounder knows Wally the Wonderdog is a special beast, but I didn’t realize how special until he handily outfished many of California’s fly fishermen on opening weekend, and did so while miles away from the nearest trout water.

Get ready.

Early Sunday afternoon, I was in TU’s back yard, and heard crunching noises. Wet, crunching noises.

Wally the Wonderdog and the Brown Trout That Came From Outer Space

Wally the Wonderdog and the Brown Trout From Outer Space

There was the Wonderdog – chewing on a foot-long… brown trout? Really??

No way.

Yes.

Way.

At this point you rub your eyes a couple times. And then look again.

And wonder if this isn’t some odd dream, and soon you’ll be standing naked in front of your high school English class writing “I will not come to class naked” 100 times on the blackboard (not that I’ve ever had that dream, mind you).

After several fully clothed seconds, I realized I was awake. And that I needed photographic evidence of the First Dog-Caught Brown Trout in My Trout-Less Backyard Ever, and that the evidence itself was disappearing fast.

Wally the Wonderdog and his fast-disappearing brown trout

At that moment – in a fit of liturgical plagiarism – I decided to call this the first Immaculate Ingestion.

(It’s fast thinking like this that’s rocketed us to the top of the fly fishing blogosphere.)

It’s Raining Trout, and We Ask the Tough Questions

Where did the relatively fresh brown trout come from?

My neighbors don’t fish, so Wally didn’t steal an un-cleaned brown trout from one of them.

And no, he didn’t make the 12 mile round-trip to the lake, catch an apparently stupid brown trout in his jaws, then carry it home either.

After a few minutes, the answer became clear.

The brown trout had fallen from the sky.

CSI Shasta

The Trout Underground isn’t like those lazy news blogs, which would simply Photoshop the Wonderdog & trout into a picture of Paris Hilton and call it solved.

No, at the Underground we investigate random trout appearances in dry, trout-less areas. We consider it our civic duty (and suggest our exceptional level of civic-mindedness should excuse us from jury duty).

In this case, my clearly Pulitzer-ready work consisted of five minutes crafting lucrative headlines for the Weekly World News – until the real solution occurred:

Barring serious evidence of alien brown trout abductions in other regions, I’m going with the “Osprey Dropped its Dinner” theory – an assumption bolstered by the existence of an osprey nest 1.5 miles to the southeast.

The Osprey Nest in Question

Draw a line from the Osprey nest to the hatchery in Mount Shasta (The Osprey Cafeteria), and you’ll neatly intersect our otherwise trout-free property.

So yes, the Underground Investigative Reporting Division now suspects…Â fowl play.

Where the Trout Fall Like Rain

It’s stories like these that make fly fishing journalism worthwhile, because they allow us to say the following:

Eat your hearts out, Undergrounders: In addition to living near some pretty decent fly fishing, it’s now scientifically proven the Trout Underground/Man Cave is situated in a part of the world so perfect, brown trout periodically fall from the skies like rain.

See you in the backyard (with a net), Tom Chandler.

Once In a Blue Moon Video (or, Looks Like New Zealand During Mouse Season…)

April 15, 2009, by Tom Chandler 2 comments

It’s tax day, and as pick-me-up for the Undergrounders who are sending Uncle Sam the equivalent of a couple fly rods, we’re reporting on yet another hot-looking video trailer that’s crossed the Underground’s desk. This one’s called Once in a Blue Moon, and it’s set in New Zealand during “mouse” season:

Once in a Blue Moon 60sec promo from Bumcast on Vimeo.

Interesting stuff (great soundtrack), but we gotta ask: how does an industry that can’t quite cover the marketing basics support a movie that includes helicopter time? Just asking is all.

Another Yo-Yo on the McCloud River: Reports Suggest it’s Clearing & Fishing

November 9, 2008, by Tom Chandler No comments yet

Because we enjoy jerking our McCloud River-addicted readers around like hooked hatchery trout, we’re posting a followup to all our other McCloud followup posts, only this one suggests the McCloud’s clearing and in fact, we have a pair of it’s fishing “OK” emails.

Clearly, it’s going to be a busy last week on the McCloud (a good reason for me to stay on the Upper Sac), and everyone should be careful about wading into Brown trout spawning redds (careful about not wading into them, that is).

And while you’re busy avoiding those redds, you’ll do yourself a favor if you bring some warm clothing; there’s still hail on the ground here in Mount Shasta from last night’s storm, and more “weather” is forecast for the week ahead.

And just a reminder to everyone who rushes to the McCloud and then fails to catch a trout, please forward your angry, spittle-filled emails to someone else (say East Tennessee’s Ian Rutter, if only because he’s catching big Brown trout and I’m not).

See you on the McCloud, Tom Chandler.

mccloud, mccloud river, brown trout

Fly Fishing an Alpine Spring Creek: The Underground (Finally) Returns to Stream X

October 4, 2008, by Tom Chandler 15 comments

Early in the year, small stream trout exhibit the kind of easygoing eating habits fly fishermen tend to attribute to dumb, rural fish. Later in the year, those same trout get picky (fast), and they become immensely unhappy when fly rods and body parts intrude on their view.

Chris Raine fly fishing a small alpine meadow stream
He’s either hiding from trout or praying for a clear backcast.

Still, with clouds and drizzle in the forecast, I decided – despite a great big steaming pile of unfinished work – that I needed to fish a small alpine stream I’d somehow bypassed all year long.

I call it “Stream X” (and no, don’t bother writing to ask), and while it’s hardly a secret, it’s also not particularly well known, and given the paucity of truly good small streams around here, I’m sorta hoping it stays that way.

brown trout
Off he goes, but not before I get a picture of those gorgeous colors.

With any luck, it might stay a little-fished stream. Finding it amidst a labyrinth of dirt roads is never easy (and I supposedly “know” where it is), but what’s most important is that it’s challenging fishing – especially when the water is low, and the fish spooky.

At the best of times, you need to sneak up on ‘em – and while the abundant snags and bushes provide some cover, they also make casting nearly impossible when you’re sneaking around like a frat boy outside a sorority house window.

The result is a daylong circus of snagged flies, improvised-on-the-spot casts, muffled obscenities, and yes – a handful of embarrassed brown trout.

That’s an embarrassed brown trout if I’ve ever seen one.

Helping matters a little was the drizzle, which at times turned to rain. Helping a lot less was the wind, which happily gusted pretty much every time something delicate was going on streamside. Or maybe it just seemed like it.

I fished Chris Raine’s 8’3″ 4wt hollowbuilt bamboo rod – a hair on the strong side for this stream, but useful when the wind blew. Raine was waving his new 8’3″ 5wt staggered ferrule design around, and after testing it for a bit, the only knock I had was that the rod didn’t display the native intelligence needed to avoid backcasts into trees (someday they’ll build one, trust me).

Raine hollowbuilt bamboo fly rod and reel
The 8’3″ 4wt and reel (manufacturers should pay me for this kind of photo placement).

Flies didn’t seem to matter (as long as they floated). I concluded the fly needed to bounce off overhanging grass in the stream or even scoot long the undercut banks themselves; not one of my six trout came out of a riffle or the middle of anywhere.

brown trout
Most the browns we catch around here lack the bright red spots, but not these.

Chris did about the same, and after a bunch of hours spent skulking, knee walking, hunching, climbing over downed trees, and (yes), catching the odd trout, we were both pretty bushed.

fly fishing a small stream
Fall color was definitely on display up there.

Fortunately, we had less trouble finding the way out than the way in, and I drove away pretty pleased with the day – it was challenging fall dry fly fishing and I’d enjoyed modest success – but I wondered why I’d waited all year to get here, and if I’d make it back before the first snow closed the roads.

See you in the mountains, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, fishing report, fly fishing small streams, small streams, brown trout, bamboo fly rod

Fly Fishing Your Home Waters: Why It’s Good Even When It’s Bad

August 7, 2008, by Tom Chandler 12 comments

Your home waters are your home waters, and if you lack a possessive sensibility surrounding them – even those stretches you haven’t seen in years – then you’re a better man than I.

Of course, the Upper Sacramento River is my home water, and yet – because of work and trips – I haven’t seen the thing in close to two months.

An Upper Sacramento River rainbow trout
One cast, one fish. To preserve my perfect average, I should have stopped there.

Naturally, you don’t whine about fly fishing places like Montana and Maine, but because you know your home waters well, you’re keenly aware you largely missed the Pink Alberts, early summer’s “secret” big spinner falls, and that your annual trip to a Big Fish Stretch You Don’t Talk About Online is way overdue.

Time for all that later. Tuesday evening, I couldn’t take it any longer, and headed to a nearby stretch – something I’ve fished as much as anything on the river.

The Great Gear Search

While my fly fishing gear is scattered around the floor – bits of Montana and Maine still attached – I got to the river with pretty much everything (except hemostats, which I needed, and the BWO/midge box, which I didn’t). I did remember my roll cast – the most underrated, underused, can’t-live-without-it cast on the Upper Sacramento.

Feeling contemplative, I brought Raine’s hollowbuilt 8.5′ 5/6wt quad.

It’s a rollcasting machine, and while I hesitate to mention it – fearing Raine will remember he loaned it to me and want it back – I will say it kicked butt on water where most seem tempted to haul out their 3wts.

The Hollowbuilt Quad bamboo fly rod: a roll casting machine
Raine’s hollowbuilt quad and a reel I use simply because I like the way it looks.

On the Upper Sac, indiscriminate use of light-line fly rods isn’t always rewarded, and there are days when I wonder why a reasonably tapered 6wt – the “normal” trout rod just a couple decades ago – isn’t still the standard.

But then, it’s entirely possible that’s just me retro-grouching; I’ll leave that to a later post.

Steve Bertrand met me in the turnout, which was good since I’d brought a big ziplock bag of surplus potato salad from the Shasta Summit Century (a guide care package).

Being in a basically wiped-out mood, I was happy to watch for a while, though if I didn’t crow a teensy bit about connecting with a 12″-13″ rainbow on my first cast, I’d probably be dead.

I caught a handful more during what looked like a sparse, mixed hatch that could have included PEDs, caddis, and midges.

Given my preference for presentation over bugs, I caught all my trout on a #16 Quigley Cripple, and after catching a couple on a small caddis, Bertrand eventually tied on a Quigley Cripple that had been mauled so badly in a prior use that I shortened the name to “Quig” to reflect the loss of materials.

Upper Sacramento Brown Trout
Lots of color, little trout: Bertrand’s brown tout.

He quickly used it to connect with a small brown trout, which probabably came from the lake through Box Canyon dam, though it always fires my imagination: is there any significant brown trout reproduction on the Upper Sacramento?

I’m checking it out, and will let you know.

Fish question aside, it was the kind of laid-back evening you enjoy on your home waters when you don’t have anything to prove, or a body count to meet, or a deadline for going home.

You’re just there, waiting for something to happen, realizing that sitting quietly and watching the river stream by means something is happening, though it might fall under the heading of “internal dialog” instead of “big hatch of bugs and large trout.”

There is more local fly fishing headed the Undergrounder’s way, though where that fly fishing will happen is anybody’s guess.

I’m in a strange mood surrounding fly fishing; getting someplace remote feels more important than the fishing itself, which suggests another hike into the mountains.

See you somewhere, Tom Chandler.

The Underground’s Montana Road Trip Continues to Rock Creek

July 5, 2008, by Tom Chandler 5 comments

Montana’s Rock Creek is hardly a secret, which is why you’re seeing its name in print (don’t expect similar treatment of upcoming locations).

Rock Creek, Montana
Rock Creek from the “Hogback” overview. Lots of stones – and trout.

The first stop on the Underground’s Tour of Montana’s Fishy Fleshpots, my fly fishing host [name redacted] and I arrived on Saturday for the last three days in the drift boat season.

Last three days?

On July 1, drift boats are banned from Rock Creek (flows are typically too low to comfortably float anyway), and the river becomes a playground for wading fly fishermen.

Rock Creek, Montana
Yes Undergrounders, the wildflowers are out. You almost don’t need trout.

While I was just in time for the end of the drift season, I should have been several weeks too late for the stoneflies.

Helpfully, a late winter intervened in my favor, and the salmon flies and Golden Stones were out in force (given all the â€œyou should have been here last weekâ€ stories I’ve heard, I’m accepting this as my due).

Rock Creek Stone flies
The stoneflies were late — good news for me.

In simplest terms, we arrived in big bug heaven.

[name redacted] and I broke out our big bug fly boxes, argued that the other guy’s patterns were obvious crap, loaded [name redacted]‘s small Santiam Drifter, and pushed off.

Small drifter, Rock Creek I wasn’t really ready for what followed.

Rock Creek flows like the government spends. It was the fastest float I’ve ever experienced, and there were few places to pull over and take a breather.

And while you wanted to drop the big Golden Stone dries right next to the willows and overhanging branches, breaking off a fly meant missing a hundred yards of good trout water – a heartbreaking thought even now.

God help you if you broke off a chunk of leader.

The result was an ongoing exercise in Risk Assesment; bigger trout would come to tougher casts, but no trout were caught if you were tying on a fly and the bank wizzed by.

While the bite varied over the three days, it was almost always good, often crossing the line into great.

Browns by the dozens jumped our dries (mostly Golden Stones as the Salmon Flies weren’t working as well).

Golden Stonefly pattern
Other patterns worked better, but the Stimulators worked (and floated) well.

In one side channel, we stopped and I caught my first pure strain West Slope Cutthroat, though it turns out the things are hard to hold and we didn’t get a picture.

Most of the fish we caught were Browns, the biggest of which might have pushed 16â€.

A fair number of Cuttbow hybrids also made an appearance in the net, though true Cutts were rare.

Neither [name redacted] or I are exactly fish counters, but I’d guess our best day resulted in several dozen hookups (and a bunch of misses).

Fly Fishing Rock Creek, Montana
[Name redacted] and a rare cast delivered outside the drift boat.

The pace of the float was intimidatingly fast; I took damned few pictures on the water, unwilling to sacrifice a shot at prime holding water (I’m greedy that way).

And nobody was surprised to hear we’d broken a rod setting the hook into a big Brown Trout. Manly stuff, but not unusual given that Rock Creek claims a couple drift boats and rafts every season.

These things were big enough to skewer and eat (we didn’t).

It’s a nice place to fish, but don’t show up thinking you’ll learn to row on the river. You’ll mostly learn to hit things.

The Camping Comedy Twins

We camped at the Stony Creek Campground, were we lived through the Harrowing Blown Radiator Hose Nightmare and also found trip mascot Stony: a roadkilled, dehydrated snake.

The Rock Creek Radiator Hose Nightmare
When a whole day’s float is at stake, you fix stuff.

It’s frightening to contemplate, but [name redacted] and I share a similar sense of humor, so the off-river time passed quickly.

In short order, we solved the fly fishing industry’s woes, heaped piles of scorn on those responsible for our environmental troubles, speculated as to Martha Stewart’s sexual potential, and yeah – managed to squeeze in a little talk about fly rods and bugs.

Trip Mascot Stony. Say “Hi” to everyone, Stony.

The culinary highlight of the trip (the lowlight comes in a later report) was [name redacted]‘s Dutch Oven Pork Chops, which combined simple ingredients into unbelievably tasty camp food, all cooked in a single pot.

Why it didn’t attract bears and other wild animals amazes me still (when we cooked it at our next stop, fly fishermen poured out of the woodwork looking for a free meal).

Hantavirus warning sign
Meet your campground — and its friendly inhabitants.