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.

A couple inches here means closed roads higher up...

I was planning to stage a last-minute alpine commando raid sometime this week, but with a new garage door to install and a couple of teaching gigs on the calendar, a last trip to the high country was probably an illusion anyway.

One stream will remain accessible and I probably will hit that before closing day, though without a lot of hope; this stream originates in some mountains, where all this snowfall is accumulating.

With a couple warmer days ahead, a lot of that snow will melt and dump into the stream, and it’s not the higher flows that necessarily get you, it’s the sudden drop in water temperature (to just above freezing).

In fact, I might have just talked myself out of it.

Especially with the BWOs apparently underway on the bigger rivers.

See how confusing fall is for us outdoorsman types?

On Saturday we held Little M’s third birthday party at the house, and rather than watch Wally the Wonderdog steal a metric ton of birthday cake off the kid’s plates on the low tables (I’ve seen it before, and it’s not pretty), I took him for a walk in the snowstorm.

There might be only one or two things better than hiking through the woods during a snowstorm, and it occurred to me that this is probably why I’ve developed an itch to go squirrel hunting in the fall.

Not for the squirrels (which I hear are pretty tasty), but as an excuse to throw a .22 over my shoulder and wander around in the woods for a couple hours with the Wonderdog.

It’s similar to my reasons for fly fishing for smallish trout in remote places; it’s gorgeous, it’s contemplative, and for all you know you’re the last person on the planet.

Fish and game might even be optional.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Are you really tough enough for winter fly fishing?

(As I write this, it’s snowing outside TU/Man Cave World Headquarters — the first of the year).

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Fly fishing when ice is as common as the water offers its own challenges...

(Whether that’s good or bad depends entirely on your feelings about impressing other fly fishermen with Jack London fishing stories)

In the “old” days (like upwards of four years ago), cold weather meant a couple base layers, at least one fleece layer (perhaps two), and a wading jacket.

It kept you warm, but was bulky, and god forbid the sun came out or you decided to hike thirty minutes to another spot.

Fleece is wonderful stuff, but it doesn’t compress at all, and most wading jackets don’t exactly crush down to fist-sized wads.

In other words, those layers are hell to stuff into the back of a vest.

Fly fishing in the winter: You're dealing with a lot of variables.

“Warm” when you’re standing stock still in a river waving a stick at a BWO hatch is different from “warm” when you’re briskly skiing or hiking to the river.

And while layering is a useful concept, it doesn’t always adapt well to circumstances where you can peel away a layer, but lack a place to put it once you do.

Like when you’re fly fishing.

First, The Soft Shell Arrives

A truism about being outdoors in the winter is that “way too warm” is almost always worse than “a teensy bit cold.”

That’s because overheating leads to sweat, which leads to hypothermia, which is why – two winters ago – I expressed my love for Patagonia’s Insulator soft shell jacket.

It was a brilliant piece of engineering – one I found desirable for its adaptability and serviceability across a very wide range of temperatures.

To refresh, Patagonia’s Insulator soft shell isn’t bulky, insulates nicely, repels water and wind, yet moves moisture like the California Aqueduct – so hiking/skiing fly fishermen don’t become sweat-soaked hiking/skiing fly fishermen.

My Insulator soft shell sheds water, but stays warm even when it gets wet.

It’s become my all-around cold-weather fishing jacket – one I wear even when I’m not fly fishing (chicks dig me in it).

On this winter’s pair of ski/fish trips, I never really needed anything besides my Insulator soft shell – a startling confession given the difference between standing in 38 degree water and xc-skiing for 50 minutes up a steep hill.

Still, despite my love of the soft shell, they do run run second best when temperatures fall below freezing – especially if you’re not hiking, skiing or generating any heat of your own.

When it’s real cold and you’re simply standing in a river – or in the front of a drift boat – something warmer would make for a happier fly fisherman.

Soft shells don’t react well to a lot of base layers, so you can’t simply throw a few long-sleeve underlayers on when it gets cold.

In other words, when it’s truly cold, it’s not your best choice.

Welcome to Nano and Micro territory.

Cue The Happier Fly Fisherman

A while after I sprung for the Patagonia Insulator, I also bought Patagnoia’s Micro Puff jacket – a piece of clothing recommend by every mountain guide I spoke to (and mountain guides know from cold).

And yes, I discovered it’s everything they said it was – unbelievably light, windproof, water resistant, extremely compressible, warm when wet, and… very warm.

Really warm.

In fact, it’s often a little too warm for an active fly fisherman in this part of the country.

I wore it – and loved it when I needed it – but kept bumping against an unfortunate reality; the Micro Puff overheated me within minutes of starting a hike or if the sun came out.

Which is often how my fly fishing goes.

My army-drab Micro Puff jacket: Great when you need it, too warm when you don't.

I ended up wearing the Micro Puff when I knew I’d be standing in the front of a drift boat, or fishing a single, waist-deep run when it was very cold. And basically loved every second of it.

Lightweight and supple, I hardly knew it was there.

Yet the fly in the ointment is that the Micro Puff was often too warm for this area’s above-arctic temperatures, though on a pair of occasions I was damned glad I had it along. And yes, it almost always came “along” – it compresses into a sack about the size of a small lunch bag.

If I lived farther north – like one of those deluded souls who inhabit northern Montana or Idaho – my Micro Puff would probably never leave my body.

My mountain guide friends use the things endlessly; they ski or climb in their soft shells, but once they stop for any length of time, out comes the Micro Puff, which fits over their soft shell, keeping them warm while their disgustingly fit guide bodies stop burning calories.

As I discovered, that works better at 10,000′ than it does at 2500′.

This year, looking for a kinder, gentler version of the Micro Puff, I tumbled for Patagonia’s Nano Puff pullover (Disclosure: despite being handsome and thrifty and frankly deserving of a lot more free swag than I actually get, I bought my Nano Pullover, though got a “media” discount).

Nano Perfection

In essence, the Nano is an even lighter variation off the Micro Puff jacket; less insulation wrapped in an even smaller package (it stuffs into its own pocket, which is about the size of a small, thick paperback book).

The Nano Pullover (photo stolen from Patagonia)

Despite its “floats on air” mass, it’s still windproof, still water “resistant” and yes – quite warm.

Just not too warm.

I still wouldn’t wear it while skiing, but it’s so damned small and light that I can bring it along when I do.

Couple it with a baselayer and a rain jacket (for when it really rains), and I’ve got something that will work right down to the temperatures where it’s really too cold to fish.

The Nano I bought was so well received in the Underground’s household that it almost immediately disappeared into the L&T’s cavernous closet.

She found it indispensable for downhill skiing, post-xc-skiing, and just generally wearing around town.

This meant that – when I needed it for fishing – it was usually gone, and while Patagonia still has to answer for almost causing a divorce, I finally broke down and ordered a women’s model for the L&T, reclaiming mine by force when hers arrived.

Who says money can’t buy happiness?

A portrait of the writer being happily warm...

The Lightweight Revolution: A Plea For Sanity

Fly fishing tends to lag other (higher-tech) outdoor sports on the clothing front, and why not?

Despite a lot of videos to the contrary, fly fishing is not an “extreme” sport in the climactic sense, and I think we’re only experiencing the lightweight/minimalist revolution that has shaped mountaineering and backpacking the past ten years.

In essence, it’s no longer considered smart (or fashionable) to carry 65 pound backpacks on weekend trips or lug huge technical daypacks on simple ski trips.

Older Bro Chandler – who once lugged backpacks in the 45 pound range – has embraced backpacking’s lightweight revolution, and now routinely finds himself shouldering three-day packs weighing less than 20 pounds.

Even though wide-angle distortion makes it bigger than it really is, you can tell the Nano Puff packs small.

Materials advances have accounted for some of the weight loss, as has a willingness to cut out the useless crap that was formerly used to conquer the wilderness instead of simply passing through it.

Accounting for most of weight loss is an embrace of minimalism, which means that an ultra lightweight tarp might be prove just as useful as a tent, and that the equipment itself didn’t exactly need to be built to resist nuclear attacks.

A case in point is the Older Bro’s old Dana backpack, which was state of the art a decade ago. Unloaded, it weighed in at a manly 8.5 pounds, and literally would last forever.

Today, his bare Osprey pack weighs just over three pounds.

One difference is the design philosophy – buying goodies made to last four lifetimes is great, except that hardly anybody backpacks more than a dozen times a year, or needs bombproof straps, or needs all those straps to being with.

And five pounds is five pounds.

Invoking the same design philosophy across every category of gear has resulted in people hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with (admittedly extreme) 10 pound packs.

We may be on the verge of seeing the beginnings of that thinking today in fly fishing – wading jackets are getting lighter (and thinner), minimalist chest packs are appearing, and even wading boots seem to be on a diet.

Every time I drag my fly fishing gear to an alpine lake, I couldn’t be happier.

My soft shell remains at the center of my winter fly fishing universe, but I can also stuff my Marmot Precip rain jacket (very light) and a Nano Puff in the back pocket of my chest pack (they both fit), and be ready for everything from a frozen downpour to a hard ski out of the river canyon in brilliant sunshine.

The Frozen River: What do you wear to fish this?

If the forecast was for really cold temps – and I was standing on the front of a drift boat or waist deep in a steelhead run all day long – I’d pop for the Micro Puff and my soft shell, and If I had to wear both together and still wasn’t warm, I’d know I needed to get the hell out of there.

One caveat to all this lightweight love is this: My Nano Puff pullover is nowhere near as durable as my Filson waxed cotton wading jacket.

If I repaired trucks or trimmed trees for a living, I wouldn’t wear a Nano to work.

The Micro and Nano’s whisper light fabric has held up so far, but a guide rowing a boat every day might opt for something more durable (and heavier), and that makes sense.

Still, I think the lightweight revolution is peeking out from around the edges of the fly fishing world.

All the major fly fishing manufacturers now offer soft shell jackets, and Orvis is touting its sonic welded seam wader and wading jacket technology for lightweight, packable waders and jackets.

(A report is coming on the Orvis packable waders as soon as they’ve been put through their paces, though I can say the sonic seam waders may well get a workout whenever I’m away from the Upper Sac’s wild blackberries).

Simms offers what appears to be a lightweight insulated jacket in the same vein as Patagonia’s Micro/Nano jackets (though Simms doesn’t offer weight data), and almost everyone is throwing their hat in the minimalist vest/chest pack/sling bag ring.

In other words, the days of carrying enough gear (and enough overbult gear) to invade Canada – and earning the stooped posture to go with it – may be ending for fly fishermen.

In a day (summer or winter), we can literally cover miles of river and spend hours on our feet – a lot of it spent wading in fast-moving water – and if we bothered to check, I think we’d learn that even a five-pound weight difference would make a big difference at the end of a day (or a couple of them).

Frankly, the less I hurt, the happier I am. (I may not be alone in this.)

(Interesting lightweight side note: My four-day backpack trip up Tennessee’s Hazel Creek saw my pack, tent, gear & food come in at 23 pounds, yet my clunky fly fishing gear – waders, boots, two rods, one reel and flies – sadly added almost 15 pounds to the equation. Anyone still wonder why I’m grateful for lighter weight fly fishing gear?)

I’ll find out for sure during next year’s alpine fishing adventures, but I bet I can shave a good ten pounds off my “let’s hike into an alpine lake and fish it today” pack simply by using lighter, more appropriate gear.

And as Older Bro has pointed out (often), when you’re hiking, ounces equal pounds, and pounds equal pain.

See you on the river (warm but lightweight), Tom Chandler.

It’s a day you notice not because it promises any immediate relief from the cold and dark, but because it offers the faintest hope; from now on, each day grows a tiny bit longer instead of a tiny bit shorter.

With winter’s worst yet to come, progress of any kind makes a real impression on those of us who think light and warm and Green Drakes are better than dark and freezing and nothing.

Me on a small stream last summer. A repeat is many months away... (photo courtesy Jim Troyer)

And while surviving a mountain winter from the heavily insulated, nicely heated Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters doesn’t exactly qualify me to write a Jack London-esque short story, sunsets at 4:30 in the afternoon do eventually take their toll.

If you’re a short-horizon type like I am – someone who tends to focus on the near-term situation instead of the long-term picture – milestones are the tools that keep you going when the light at the end of the tunnel is dim indeed.

Some fish even when the river’s too high (and going higher), and others decide that writing about something interesting is almost as much fun as doing something interesting, and hole up in their office and type.

Chris Raine – being neither – is (typically) scattered across a half-dozen different bamboo fly rod building projects, while the local guides either work hard on their businesses, or essentially take a few months off.

Others tie flies like obsessed shamans – wielding fly tying tools like talismans meant to ward off madness – and some fools even clean their fly lines and oil their reels for next year.

That we look to January as the start of the year is nothing more than a convenience borne of rigid thinking.

The real fly fishing year begins (and ends) yesterday, and what are you doing to get ready – or simply make it to – next season?

See you in the (growing) light of day, Tom Chandler.

Those are the kind of temperatures that put the kibosh on all sorts of outdoor activities, especially those involving water (at least the liquid kind).

I know it’s considered extremely extreme to fly fish in sub-double-digit temperatures, but my lower limit falls at 12 degrees or so – the point at which the water freezes in the guides so quickly that all you can do is plop the exact same length of line on the water each and every cast – and hope nothing capable of breaking your tippet grabs hold.

(This is one circumstance where fishing a Tenkara style rig makes perfect sense.)

On the Big Wood River, I often fished in 15-17 degree temperatures, which were tolerable – right up to the point where even a slight breeze came up, which led to the immediate freezing of the fly line in the guides.

I’m all for suffering in the name of sport, but draw a line when the suffering extends to not being able to practice the sport in question.

In other words, it’s a good day to stay inside and write.

Which is good, because I’m frantically working on projects that should have been finished a week ago, and teaching my Online Marketing Boot Camp classes four nights a week.

Those are gratifying and yes, the ego’s largely out of control, but even as my head swells to levels which prevent automobile travel, I can’t quite shake the knowledge that real success involves time on the river (or in the woods, or at the shooting range), not time spent at the front of a classroom or flatscreen.

Then there’s the matter of Little M, who is a joy, yet she’s not exactly great for productivity or sleep – both of which are in seriously short supply right now.

For those wondering just how much more adorable Little M is than every other living being on the planet other kids, I offer proof (from a slightly warmer day – and don’t pretend you didn’t know the kid pictures were coming):

And – in stunning proof that Little M walks exactly like I wade – here’s actual video evidence of her first steps (don’t pretend you didn’t see this coming too):

Mesky Walks from Tom Chandler on Vimeo.

For the Wally the Wonderdog fanboys, rest assured that – after a somewhat bewildered start to the relationship – Little M and the Wonderdog are now as thick as thieves, partners in crime on all sorts of scams (one night Little M consumed extreme quantities of food, and as I turned to get her some more, I noticed she waited for my back to turn and then fed her mac & cheese to the Wonderdog).

Of course, you can’t hide inside forever, and even nasty, continent-wide cold fronts eventually move on.

It’s cold as hell now, but it’ll be warmer this weekend – when my poor overworked soul will be free to soar with the eagles, and I’m not ruling out trips to the Upper Sacramento or the shooting range (likely both).

Hope is central to the practice of fly fishing, which means it’s central to fly fishermen too.

Today may be too cold, tomorrow’s too jammed with work, and the day after’s jammed with something else (and the nights are all jammed), but the day after that the weather should be cloudy and rainy and snowy (which means BWOs), so with that in mind…

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

“Save yourself,” I mumbled. “Go on without me.”

“Get your ass up” he said. “We’re going fishing.”

And thus, a fly fishing trip was born.

In the afternoon light, Wayne's last trout - colorful to begin with - lit up (click the image for a 1440 x 900 pixel version)

With much of the country blanketed in sub-freezing temperatures, those living near Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters have been enjoying unreasonably warm temperatures – some days approaching 60 degrees. (Coincidence? I think not.)

While we could damn sure use some snow, I’ll probably find myself laboring behind Satan’s Snowblower soon enough, so in the spirit of opportunists everywhere, you go fly fishing while the fly fishing’s good.

Wayne and I ended up on a good dry fly stretch of the river, where Wayne personally witnessed a decent BWO hatch – and yes, rising trout – only a couple days before.

Wayne Eng fly fishing away. It’s been warm, but some snow remains.

Observations like that excite me; some people crave powerful illegal drugs, others accumulate power and expensive cars, but I’ve got a thing for rising trout. Sadly, the universe knows this, so while conditions were almost identical to a couple days ago – and the weather had been stable – the BWOs didn’t show, and neither did any rising trout.

Sometimes, the Universe sucks.

Still, the low-on-the-horizon light was gorgeous, and anyone who can’t embrace the reality of fly fishing in winter – wearing only two thin layers – needs more help than this site can provide (“lie down on the couch, and tell me about your fishing childhood…”).

Without risers, Wayne and I plugged away for a while, then headed downriver a bit, where I fired up the Pentax Optio digital and Wayne went nymphing.

A half hour netted him two fish – the biggest a chunky 14″ Upper Sac Rainbow, complete with color.

See? The rainbow trout just went pure color in the late afternoon light.

I popped a few more frames, tied on a woolly bugger, and we headed back upriver, where I quickly caught a wide-shouldered 15″ rainbow, and Wayne proceeded to get three more from an upriver run – two of which were gloriously colored in the golden afternoon sun (it was a daylong “Magic Hour” out there).

Earlier in the day, we’d stumbled Ted Fay Fly Shop owner Bob Grace, who pretty much confirmed what we’d discovered – the fish really hadn’t turned on until mid-afternoon.

A rare Bob Grace sighting (at least when he’s not behind the counter at the Ted Fay Fly Shop).

It was bracing to catch trout in that final flurry, but the old say about “it was just great to get out on the river” was true. I won’t pretend it’s been a hard winter (so far), but cold is cold, and the warm sun not only contributed Vitamin D by the truckload, it just plain felt good on bodies used to being swaddled in layers of fleece.

The river doesn’t wash away all our sins, but water’s a solvent after all, and any time spent in moving water lightens the load in some small way.

The Pesky Details

The day was a study in contrasts; Wayne strung up one of the best fly rods of all time – the Sage 389LL. And while I wanted to believe I’d hit a BWO hatch (I had a glass 5wt in the truck if I did), I pulled my Orvis 9′ 6wt Zero Gravity streamer rod out of the tube, and after fruitlessly casting a dry for an hour, ended up tying on a streamer anyway (the Underground’s streamer fly rod mantra: Longer, Stronger, Warrantied).

My ongoing review of Patagonia’s Insulator soft shell remains stalled; it wasn’t cold enough to wear the thing, much less the Micro-Puff insulated jacket still hanging in the Trout Underground/Man Cave.

The Patagonia “Sticky Rubber” wading shoes did get another workout, and while the jury’s not wholly in, I remain pleasantly surprised by the results. I would have told you an un-studded rubber sole wouldn’t function on the Upper Sacramento, but so far, the results are pretty good.

They don’t grip as well as studded felts, but my feeling is they’re better than the Weinbrenner studded rubber soles – and absolute dynamite on dry rocks, where studded felt can get downright dangerous.

So far, so good – Patagonia’s “Sticky Rubber” wading boots are light, comfy, protective and grippy. More to come.

Lightweight yet supportive, I am willing to say the Patagonia Riverwalkers would make an excellent hike-to-fly-fish-a-small-stream boots, but more testing is needed on the big river.

Plus, with Simms, Patagonia and Cloudveil all planning to release new Vibram rubber sticky soles soon (with very different sole patterns), the rubber-soled wading boot will evolve yet again.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.