Sometimes, it’s not just a luxury – it’s a badly needed escape from what we euphemistically call the “pressures of everyday life,” and clearly it’s a universal concept; I just got off the phone with about-to-go-fishing Wayne Eng, who was also tired and sore from all last week’s snow removal.

Like me, he was wondering where all his fly fishing time had gone.

Apparently I need a lot of gear to put dust-sized pieces of lint in front of trout.

That’s why yesterday I found myself strapping on the skis and slogging to the Upper Sacramento River – too much work and snow removal makes Tommy a dull, boring (and potentially homicidal) boy (no, I’m not saying any more).

Skiers Only

The road to this section of the river isn’t plowed in winter, so I threw some skis in the car (along with Wally the Wonderdog, whose stubby legs aren’t exactly snow-friendly). The ski in was all downhill, but hardly the stuff of a Warren Miller epic.

The texture of the snow could be described as “mashed potatoes” and even going downhill was a slog (and no, “anticipation” wasn’t how I’d describe my feelings about the wet, uphill ski out).

Still, the river’s beautiful in the winter (based on the empty hotel rooms and restaurants, too few people know that).

Small bug, big sky, corn snow. (Click the image for a 1440 x 900 pixel version)

We arrived at a stretch of slow, technical water; while I pieced together my fly rod (an 8’3″ hollowbuilt 4wt – a 3pc for transport reasons),  the Wonderdog began drinking his body weight in Upper Sacramento River water.

I’d love to relate the kind of steely eyed mountain man savvy it took to spot a trout, but in truth, a good one began sipping BWOs right in front of me. This was 1:00 in the afternoon, and while the BWO hatch wasn’t heavy, it was heavy enough to move at least one trout.

In what I’d later realize was a Gross Tactical Stupidity, I didn’t slip on my waders and wading boots. And yes, on the fourth drift, the trout ate something near my fly (at least where it would be if I could see it, which I couldn’t because of the glaring snow on the far bank).

I lifted the fly rod, and homicidal urges suddenly went away.

The closest I got to a photograph of my big, lost trout.

And yes, it was a big trout; after a couple of seconds of ponderous head-shaking, he rolled on the surface, and his big, broad tail caught the attention of the Wonderdog, who immediately swam out in a wet, cold, misguided attempt to retrieve the fish.

This isn’t one of Wally the Wonderdog’s most endearing traits, but I gave the trout a little line, the Wonderdog circled the “splash zone” once (the fish was well upstream by then), swam back all disappointed and confused, and all was well – until I tried to tail the trout, which is when the hook simply popped out, and he was gone.

An iced mayfly moves slowly enough to make this image a reality.

I wanted to get a measurement, but after the initial caveman-want-food instinctive disappointment stuff went away, I was fine with the outcome.

He was at least 17″ (probably a good deal more than “at least”). That’s a good fish almost anywhere (especially on this river, especially on a #20 dry, especially in the middle of winter).

Even better, after I immersed my hand in the water retrieving a couple dozen pieces of .22 brass some slob had left behind, I was happy enough to only get wet once.

These dotted the snow; I don't know if the trout were on them.

In a nuts-and-bolts fly fishing report, that would be the extent of the story; I saw another fish rise once, but he didn’t respond to a dozen drifts, so I laid down the rod, skied up and down the river a bit, came back, took pictures of bugs in the snow, and around 3:15, started the inevitably painful uphill slog.

Forty sweaty minutes later – with Wally the Wonderdog already snoring away in the back seat – I was in the truck and heading home. Which was only ten minutes away. Did I mention why I moved up here?

See you on the (snowy) river, Tom Chandler.

Special Bonus Wally the Wonderdog Section for Kentucky Jim:

Wally the Wonderdog blows a raspberry to litterers.

Wally the Wonderdog wonders why his human is slow damned slow.

We begin our egress (Wally knows from egress).

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.

One of two for Chris Raine.

That applies in spades to this year’s winter fly fishing on the Upper Sacramento, where a long, long string of warm, sunny, non-BWO friendly days finally fell apart in yesterday’s rain, and Chris Raine and I headed for a stretch of dry fly water, hoping to score a good BWO hatch – the remnants of which might just still be holding on (it’s February after all).

The weather was good: the rain fell a little heavy at times, but it was wet enough to keep the olives on the water, and gray enough to make the trout feel safe enough to populate shallow feeding lies.

Sadly – in a clear example of personal responsibility fleeing the land – neither the BWOs nor the trout fully cooperated; in the long half mile stretch of water we could see, we found rising fish in… about 30′ of it. The hatch was light, and half-dozen fish we saw were only working intermittently.

If you think that’s a complaint, it’s not; we each had a shot at 2-3 working trout, and while Raine landed two and I netted one, the truth is only a massive whiner could expect more from the deeper recesses of winter.

Raine's first fish was gorgeous; light colored, big dark spots... (click image for bigger version)

Raine’s first trout was a very stocky 16″-17″; his second a more sedate 15″ trout. Mine came in shorter than both, though on the drive home, I maintained mine earned extra inches because he required a tougher drift. Raine, inexplicably, disagreed (clearly, I need some new friends).

The Gear Geekiness

Some bamboo fly rod users refuse to fish their cane rods in the rain (a practice which denies their existence as fly rods instead of museum pieces), but I love the practice. The varnish never seems so smooth, and the grain never quite so real as when it’s magnified by drops of water.

I love the look of bamboo fly rods in the rain; they smell like... varnish.

In honor of the fact I got a free sandwich out of the deal, I fished my Raine 8’3″ 4wt Hollowbuilt bamboo fly rod, which is about as perfect a rod as you can get for this sort of thing. Raine – who’s been building a lot more than he’s been fishing the last couple months – dragged along his prototype 8’3″ 5wt staggered ferrule hollowbuilt, a rod I covet, and not just because it’s amazing fishing tool.

It’s what I call a “builder’s rod” – a prototype where the cane for the butt section is flamed and striped, while the tip section is a mismatched, medium-toned cane.

At times I get tired of the relentlessly cosmetic obsessives that often populate the bamboo fly rod universe, and a “builder’s rod” makes a statement – this is a fly fishing rod, not some over-delicate, self-centered freak show attraction.

With feet as big as Raine's, you gotta figure wading's easy.

I did fully intend to test the Patagonia soft shell under rainer conditions than past trips, but it rained steadily and hard for a while, so I opted to hide the soft shell under a very lightweight backpacking rain shell, and I think I still came out ahead in the bulk department over my stops-bullets full on wading jacket.

With a series of low-intensity storms on the way, there’s a chance for more weekend adventures.The river was just picking up a little color, but flows were good, and yes, the wily fly fisher strikes while the rain falls. It’s like Christmas, you know.

I’ll see you on the river, Tom Chandler.

What killer BWO weather looks like (death of a raindrop, Upper Sac)

I figured it was my turn.

Where I headed was a part of the river that should be huddling and shivering this time of year; banks carpeted with snow, bankside rocks slick with ice. You should ingress on skis or snowshoes, yet I drove right to the river’s edge, hiked (on solid, wet ground) for a short eight minutes, and there I was – on a snow-free riverbank.

There should be snow, not lots of green.

Damn. (Note to rest of California: You ready for what’s coming?)

In other words, it was perfect BWO weather, but sadly my Undergrounders, I’d forgotten about the “No-Hatch Zone” – the Underground’s comic-book superpower that disrupts 90% of the hatches within a one mile radius.

My friends know about my superpower, but thankfully don’t comment on it much (except for Ian Rutter, who’s now taken to notifying the Emergency Office of the Tennessee Tourism Board when he learns I’m headed his way).

Damnit, where's the snow?

In short, the BWOs – despite the textbook-perfect conditions – never got going. I tied on a nymph and hooked/played/fouled-up one small trout, but was heading back to the truck when I settled in at one run that should have held rising fish. And after fifteen minutes of rock-sitting, there, my friends, he was.

One fish bubbled up three times in a foam line. This, I knew, was The Purity Trout – the single rising suicide fish the guy upstairs gives an angler if his heart is pure enough (I’m going to expand on this concept soon).

The nymph came off, a #22 Quigley Cripple went on (I still wasn’t seeing olives on the water, but what the heck), and on my very first cast, the bastard surprised me and ate the thing.

Then the bastard on the other end of the line (if you’re not keeping up, that’s me ) lifted the fly rod, and… missed the trout.

Damn. Upstream hook sets are a problem, and OK, there is evidence I may have set a hair too quickly. It’s either a deeply rooted character flaw or proof that fly fishing still excites the hell out of me, and given the options, I’m taking the second.

The Moment of Decision

It’s at this point in a trip you can trudge back to the truck knowing you couldn’t even hook a gift trout, or sit and wait a little longer (despite the Wonderdog’s insistence we go home, where there’s potentially more bacon).

I sat, and fifteen minutes later another trout rose at the tail end of the run.

And him, I hooked. (Long enough to get him to my feet before the hook popped out.)

He was a 14″(ish) specimen that received the usual intense interest from the Wonderdog, and while I sat a while longer (still looking for BWOs), that was my last shot of the day, which was strangely OK. I wanted to fish for rising trout, and I’d done exactly that, and all the walking and looking while the Wonderdog sniffed every bush was just bonus time on the river.

Where's the bacon. There's no bacon here. Let's go.

The Gear Stuff

I was hoping for a little more rain – and a little sterner test of the Patagonia soft shell – but the rain never fell harder than a drizzle, and not even that a lot of the time.

The same could be said for the sticky rubber wading boots, which performed beautifully rock-hopping the wet bankside rocks, but weren’t exactly tested today.

I fished a Raine 8’3″ 4wt hollowbuilt bamboo rod I drag out when there’s real potential for a BWO hatch – a surprisingly light, powerful and sensitive hollowbuilt rod that suggests bamboo rod building still has a few surprises left in it.

It's today's gratuitous gear shot, this time on leafy greens.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

What I’m going to say next won’t surprise any of my fishing buddies: only minutes after jamming my gear in the truck and leaving my house, the skies cleared and the sun appeared – an occurrence common enough that the local Undergrounders have developed an acronym for it: it’s a “NOWE” (Non-Olive Weather Event).

My less-generous friends would say I “Tom’d” the hatch (and no, it isn’t a compliment).

Later – near Dunsmuir – the sunny weather made for nice light.

Fair enough. After all, we’re fly fishermen, which means we start whining when the rain stops and the warm, happy sun emerges.

In short, we aren’t exactly the poster children for mental health (at least not in the outdoor sense). Glancing apprehensively at a clearing sky might seem normal to us, but it’s the kind of behavior that’s likely a source of concern for our families.

Still, when you need the river time, you don’t let something like a little sunny weather stand between you and a trout, so Steve Bertrand and I found ourselves way downriver (somehow reasoning the BWO hatches down there are more reliable in sunny weather, though how we arrived at that I can’t honestly say).

We hiked past a lot of attractive-but-riseform-free water, eventually finding ourselves on a very flat, very shallow, very technical stretch of water I hadn’t fished in a year (and for good reason).

We interrupt this fishing report for an artsy-fartsy picture.

It’s the kind of place where simply easing yourself into casting distance means the fish can and will stop rising. Of course, we knew that, so we tried the old ploy of picking a spot and standing still for 20 minutes.

One minute, the trout seemingly believe you’re an oddly shaped predator, and the next, you’ve become new piece of cover, and voila – they’re rising cautiously again.

Well, on a cloudy, rainy day they’d start rising cautiously again.

On a sunny day – with only a few #20 BWOs floating by – the best they do is rise sporadically, and with long dead periods in between. Catching a single trout tends to put the rest of them down, and given the thinness of the hatch, that could mean they were down for good.

A Roy Palm Emerger worked where the parachute didn’t – especially once coated with a little Frog’s Fanny.

I caught the only trout I had a real shot at, and in an odd moment of synchronicity, Bertrand bagged his just upriver, and at times our drags were whirring in unison.

My trout was a 14″ specimen with a messed-up lip but an expansive mid-section, and Bertrand’s went a couple inches longer (though I still contend mine was “smarter,” and therefore counts for more).

Odd lip, but he’s got the Upper Sacramento color.

Steve had a shot at another fish and got him to eat, but didn’t get the hook in him. The hatch – never good to begin with – faded rapidly into memory, along with the rising fish.

In the fly fishing sense, that’s the end of the story.

And I was fine with that. Better than fine, actually.

A nice trout is a nice trout, and time spent on the river isn’t time spent at a computer monitor.

At some point in the recent past, I’d started waking up to the idea that the world’s being overrun by yahoos and buttheads, most of whom seem happy to follow the loudest, most-vicious voices in the crowd instead of thinking for themselves.

That trout rise for a while and then stop – simply because it suits them – feels refreshingly, well… real. It’s possible fly fishing remains interesting to me after 30+ years because I play the game in somebody else’s ballpark, and do so by their rules, which are never entirely clear at the time.

It’s intriguing stuff, and you can’t embrace it when it works for you and then whine endlessly about it when it doesn’t.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, upper sac, upper sacramento river, bwo, blue winged olives, rainbow trout

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The goal is a few wet, drippy days – not a downpour that muddies or blows out the river – but gray skies and a little weather mean the BWOs hatch better, the trout rise more freely, and yes, a lot of October Caddis will likely get washed into the flow.

The river’s been jammed with fishermen the last few weekends – and it probably will be again – though I’ve got a day or two before that particular reality sets in. And frankly, I need it. I created and taught a class on e-newsletter marketing, and I’m wholly tired of functioning as a responsible adult.

See you singing in the rain, Tom Chandler.

Another sign? Chris Raine reports October Caddis flying clinging to the Burger Barn (though I wonder if they weren’t simply after a Philly Cheese Steak).

The coarser side of fall, it seems, has truly arrived.

Fish smart, and fall's Upper Sacramento River rainbows can be yours.

Until now, the Upper Sacramento’s weather has been… nice. And we’re heading into the part of year some locals call the Fall Traffic Jam – when the river might just be its most crowded.

During the October Caddis hatch, several fly fishing clubs hold gatherings, small groups of fly fishers dot the landscape, and guides – complaining about the lack of work in August – are now complaining about too many guide dates.

Your favorite spots – especially those close to the road – might just be taken, and while you normally have time to chat up local legend Joe Kimsey at the Ted Fay Fly Shop, he might just too busy to gab.

Of course, the nice weather goes away too; mornings are brisk and the winds can blow – and all this is going on against a backdrop of low flows, which make the fish spooky.

The days are shorter, but the evenings can find you fishing to overlapping hatches of the #18 PED, small-hummingbird-sized October Caddis, midges, caddis – even BWOs.

How you handle those sometimes trying moments is your own affair; buying salmon eggs at the hardware store has been suggested more than once, but never by your intrepid reporter.

My advice? It’s a time of year when you can be fishing a wind-resistant October Caddis one minute, and a #22 BWO the next. To a medium-rod guy like me, that translates to a nice, soft, 6wt rod.

It features the line mass needed to boss a big caddis fly, but still fishes a BWO nicely (better tippet that leader out a little).

Of course, the reasonably tapered 6wt fly rod is fast becoming a relic; most are rocket launchers designed for streamer or even saltwater use. It’s one area where vintage glass and cane rods generally have it all over the modern marvels.

Fall Leadership Material

It’s a tough time of the year for leader geeks; big bugs don’t cast well on long, thin leaders, but big fish don’t eat BWOs fished on stiff, 7′ designs.

Fortunately, the Underground’s Director of Extra-Terrestrial Leader Design has graced us with his Big Bug leader formula – a 10.5′ leader that handles big caddis and tiny BWOs with equal skill.

It’s an older post that’s worth another look.

Once again, the Underground goes out of its way to unselfishly make your life a better one (can you say that about Nestle? No you can’t).

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

A half-foot of snow and gusts to 35 mph made it a good day to stay inside.

Right now (Monday), it’s raining again, which means a lot of formerly white, fluffy snow is going to melt and run into the river. The long and short of it?

If you were planning to fish the Upper Sac this week, keep an eye on the flows. They could hit the “I’m just out here for the casting practice” levels in a hurry.

The Winter Game on the Upper Sacramento

To a fly fisherman (namely myself), the first big snowstorm also marks the transition from fall fishing to winter fishing, and the difference isn’t as subtle as you’d think.

While the big October Caddis dry might still draw strikes, the dry fly game from now focuses almost exclusively on the BWO hatches.

That’s not to say you can’t score heavy fishing summer-sized patterns; during the Upper Sac’s first winter season, Wayne Eng clued me into a stellar dry fly bite. The trout were sitting in knee-deep water along the bank, and I caught a lot of them on a #12 Beetle Bug dry — a method I’d have sworn was a waste of time during the winter.

I haven’t experienced a similar bite since then, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again.

Hope, after all, is one of the pillars of fly fishing, and if you don’t believe your next trip will be as good as your best day on the water, then pretty soon there won’t be a next trip.

Still, dry fly success now mostly involves uncasing those technical fly rods, longer leaders, smaller flies and warmer fishing gear.

That isn’t a huge surprise, but the timing changes too; now you’re normally fishing through the middle part of the day, and the morning and evenings are flat tough.

Fortunately, with the days running short, the mornings and evenings aren’t all that far apart.

Meanwhile, At Trout Underground World Headquarters

Our new digs in Mt. Shasta now feature the “Winter Wonderland” look (assuming a Winter Wonderland includes one very wet, very happy Wonderdog).

The New Trout Underground’s World Headquarters Dry Fly Flotation Test Lab is closed for winter.

This means that fly tying season is firing up, and we’ve got a couple interesting surprises headed your way. Sure, my fly tying stuff is still hiding in one of the boxes filling my office, but that won’t last forever. At least, I hope it won’t.

Until then, see you (in winter clothing) on the river, Tom Chandler.

Technorati tags: Fly fishing, fishing, winter fishing, upper sacramento, upper sac, blue winged olives

Today’s weather might be a little clear, but that’s OK; I’ve got work to catch up on and little post-Stream Access Battle relaxing to do.

Still, when Thursday rolls around, I’m grabbing a rod, running for the river like I stole something, and putting a little tug into the lives of a few trout. Could be cosmic BWO weather all weekend, and I’ve sure as hell paid my dues for now.

Local guide Steve Bertrand — who along with Chris Raine represented for the long rod crowd at the Board of Supervisors meeting — has also recently suffered the slings and arrows of outrageously picky trout, and we’ve talking over strategies for catching these picky, picky low-water fish.

We’ll field test a few, and let you know.

 
The Roy Palm Emerger — normally a killer — hasn’t been too effective

The general season closes tomorrow, but with more and more of the state’s rivers being opened to year-round C&R fishing, why not get out and stand in the rain?

Cheaper than therapy.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.