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 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.
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