It’s about time. A good six inches of snow — and some seriously high winds — fell upon Trout Underground World Headquarters yesterday (Sunday), though if you lived farther down the Upper Sacramento River canyon it was raining instead of snowing.
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
Recent comments