His latest column in the Boulder Daily Camera is typically clean and clear, focused as it is on winter midge fishing, a pursuit that – in the style of predators everywhere – Engle’s stripped down to the bare bones:

It may sound strange, but my strategy on these difficult-to-catch fish is dogged simplification. I use a “soft” 9-foot, 5-weight fly rod, a hand-tied 12-foot leader of my own design and a single size 22 or smaller fly pattern that imitates a midge pupa or, less often, some sort of low-riding dry fly or cripple pattern.

I would probably be more successful if I fished a tiny dry fly and trailed the midge pupa imitation behind it because I could use the dry fly as a strike indicator. But I’ve caught enough midging trout using two-fly techniques and it was a good day for me when I finally figured out that what I like most is catching a trout in the most direct way possible.

My most memorable fish have been the ones where there was as little between me and the trout as possible. That means no junk or gizmos attached to the leader other than a single small, unweighted fly that I’ve tied myself and the application of a no-nonsense aesthetically pleasing, but practical, cast.

The icing on the cake is when the trout takes my artificial fly in precisely the same way that it has taken the naturals.

I wish I’d written that.

In truth, this is precisely the kind of fly fishing I thought we’d get when the Upper Sacramento was opened to winter fly fishing.

Oddly – unless I’m completely missing the right time slots – we almost never get fish working midges in the winter, though it’s something we often get in the summer. Go figure.

I’m not complaining about the Upper Sac’s winter BWO hatches: challenging fish, clear water, small “technical” flies, long casts – these are a few of my favorite things (unless I’m doing poorly, when it kinda sucks)

As further proof that Einstein’s theory of relativity applies to fly fishermen, it’s clear that in the Underground Universe, one trout caught on a nearly invisible #22 emerger is more satisfying than one caught blind nymphing.

My infrequent trips to Idaho’s Big Wood River in winter have produced the kind of minimalist, tiny-fly fishing Engle’s talking about, and yes, every time I approach the Upper Sacramento in winter, I wonder if this is the time I’ll find them eating midges.

See you on the river (chasing midges), Tom Chandler.

Bertrand only seconds away from a 17″ rainbow trout.

Trout populations run in cycles; the last couple years we’ve seen good numbers of bigger fish on the Upper Sacramento River (a little unusual for the Upper Sacramento), but this year, most fly fishermen are catching a lot of small fish.

That’s not bad – little fish grow up to be big fish – and despite a self-centered belief to the contrary, nothing’s ever static in nature.

What Steve and I found downriver wasn’t the big-fish bonanza we’d experienced in prior years – nor the Trico spinner fall that I knew was a long shot, but wanted to fish anyway (Rosenbaeur at Orvis fired up a nice Trico-specific podcast) – but as we know, the lord giveth, and the lord taketh away.

So while Steve caught the 17″ rainbow that should have been mine, I managed to land a nice spotted bass, apparently making this my Year of Species Diversity.

A spotted bass – 11″ of pure dynamite. Really.

I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but that’s ten different species this year, which is already four more than last year (rainbow trout, brown trout, Westslope cutthroat trout, Coastal Cutthroat trout, brook trout, landlocked Atlantic Salmon, lake trout, smallmouth bass, spotted bass, bluegill).

To somebody who travels a lot or fishes saltwater, ten species isn’t much of a body count, but to someone who lives in the mountains – and lacks much in the way of real warmwater fly fishing – it’s a sign that something’s going right.

Sure, a quick trip to Singlebarbed’s selenium-tainted brownlines would up the species count considerably (carp, pikeminnow, largemouth bass, etc), and yes, there are still redbands and steelhead to be had locally, but I’ll get there when I can.

As for the largely ignored spotted bass, they move up into the lower river when the lake warms up, and while they’re not a secret, mentioning them to most fly fishers leads to glazed looks and pointed questions about the evening hatch for trout.

For the record, a spotted bass is far tougher than most rainbow trout, and since they happily eat streamers, you ignore them only if you’ve got a sure thing going elsewhere.

Streamer Heaven

And yes, in addition to the Year of Species Diversity, this is also the Underground’s Year of the Streamer.

Sure it’s funny looking in a Hollywood sort of way, but it catches fish.

Ian Rutter’s spent the better part of a couple years force-feeding me streamer propoganda, and because I’m a slow learner, it wasn’t until the last year that I tumbled for them in any real sense.

This year, pretty much every time I’ve tied on a streamer something interesting has happened, and in a few cases, that “something interesting” was very big and had fins.

(Note to self: Ian’s OK despite his poor taste in southern rock bands.)

For the record, I also landed several rainbow trout, though the bigger specimen I drove all that way for (at $4.59/gallon) didn’t eat a big streamer, but instead came unbuttoned from my black, #20 Yong’s Special midge.

Small and black are beautiful on the Upper Sac.

I managed to hook a couple others in the footlong range on the Yong Special (the Zebra midge is another favorite), which are clearly imitating the blackfly larvae coating some of the rocks.

Blackfly larvae cover some of the Upper Sac’s rocks.

Closeup of above: these are tiny (about #20-#22).

They’re more common on the lower end of the Upper Sacramento, and when you’re down there, it’s hard to miss with a black midge larvae pattern.

And yes, I think it amuses Steve Bertrand that this annual Big Fish Trip is about the only time all year I’ll fish a nymph rig from the moment I hit the water.

I don’t think nymphing is the Official Fly Fishing Technique of the Devil, but I’m not in love with it, citing a lack of grace and an overabundance of stuff that wants to tangle as my excuse. At least that’s my story.

Still – when the flies are small, the split shot count is low, and the trout are big – nymphing can be OK (for absolutes, better visit another blog).

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.