Fish on. Local Guide Steve Bertrand hooks another. (click image for a 1440 x 900 pixel wallpaper version)

It’s late, so I’m grabbing a shower and going to bed. More to come on today’s fly fishing expedition, where many brown trout were caught (and many casts were blown).

See you in the morning, Tom Chandler.

I’m going fly fishing today.

On a small stream.

That looks something like this:

It looks like a small stream, but to a beat-up fly fisher, it's Intensive Care.

In yet another sign of Just How Bad Things Have Gotten, I even lack the energy needed to taunt my readership over my good fortune.

You know the situation’s become critical when there’s no pre-trip end-zone dance broadcasting from Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters, and yes, it probably is time to wheel me into the ER and connect me to the machines that go “beep” and “ping.”

Of course, for a fly fisherman, it’s not so much “beep” and “ping” as it is “splash” and “chirp,” and instead of disinfected tile floors, we’re looking at spring-green meadow grass surrounding a winding stream.

Yes my furry band of Undergrounders, the only good news is that beating the debilitating disease called “civilization” doesn’t involve reclining in a hospital bed as much as knee-crawling your way behind a tuft of grass and sidearm casting a dry fly to the far bank.

And instead of “nurse, I have to go to the bathroom now” you say “whaddya think – a #16 Adams or an Elk Hair Caddis?”

See you on the stream, Tom Chandler.

p.s. – To any clients who were expecting me to stay home and work on their projects today, rest assured I’ll be working all weekend long on your stuff. Really.

Yesterday evening – in the grip of some irritating work details – I found myself headed for a stretch of water where the rocks were big, the rock-hopping hard, and the trout very small.

There I’d meet the absolute minimum of humanity (which was sort of the point).

Tiny flows, little trout, zero civilized veneer.

The beauty of fly fishing is that life recedes; at some point it becomes just you, some water, and a few trout, who may or may not have any interest in what you’re doing.

That’s a far simpler equation than what you experience in your everyday life, and it might explain the hold this sport has over some of us.

At this time of year, small-stream trout are spooky; the low water levels mean they’re extremely vulnerable to predators, and the “wander up to a bubbling run and catch a trout” stuff that worked in the spring is a sure-fire recipe for an unslimed fly by late August.

Two things I like: Parachute Hare’s Ears and classic fly reels.

My two best fish came on casts made from my knees – casts you’d normally say were far too long for a small stream.

Since I made them and caught the trout (a pair of 7″ fish – big for this tiny stream), it’s a story that nicely illustrates the relativity of phrases like “too long.”

Small freestone streams tend to strip away all of fly fishing’s civilized artifice; you do what you have to catch fish, and sometimes that means duck walking behind a boulder and dapping the fly from the tip of your $500 fly rod.

In other cases it means making long casts from your knees, and the trout judge whether you got it right or wrong – not some writer sitting in an office a continent away.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, small stream, trout

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A little rainbow trout. Cute, eh?

I put in a couple hours on a small, small stream, and caught small, small trout (biggest was 7 inches).

This stream’s still running a little high, so I went scouting. Turns out the road to Gumboot Lake is clear, and the lake’s ice-free. Looks like it’s been that way for a while.

The backcountry’s opening up my friends, and tomorrow’s attempt at a high altitude stream promises much — both in trout or adventure.

See you way up high, Tom Chandler.

Sun, rain and dramatic skies were on tap — as were smaller waters.

The silver lining, of course, is that while small stream trout may be little and wary, they’re not particularly picky.

They flee at the sight of a looming biped waving a stick, yet still eat a #16 Adams wired to 4x when the water’s covered with #20 PMDs.

A small-stream Brown trout; our biggest might have stretched to 12″.

Steve Bertrand and I kicked around four different stretches of the same small stream on Friday afternoon, and while Steve classified it under the work-related heading of “intelligence gathering,” he eventually got into the spirit of the exercise as much as I did.

In fact, he borrowed my 8′ 5wt Steffen glass rod, reasoning the sometimes blustery wind demanded a 5wt but that smaller trout showed best on a relatively pliable rod.

A pair of small-stream 5wts: Diamondglass & Steffen 8′ glass rods.

The fishing itself required stealth (witness today’s sore knees) and some fast reaction times, and with my small-stream reflexes dulled a little by winter, I didn’t exactly distinguish myself.

Over the course of the day, I had better than two dozen grabs, but landed less than a dozen fish.

Most were in the 7″-10″ range, though my biggest topped 11″, and did the hard work of landing himself; he jumped at the sting of the hook, and ended up on the grass at my feet.

I fished (with little apparent difference between them) a #16 Red Humpy, a #14 Royal Coachman, and a #16 Adams.

You can’t step across it, but a long-jumper could clear it.

The Brown trout were typical small-stream browns; feisty and aggressive, yet they’d run when you walked right up to the pools instead of sneaking there on your knees.

The weather — cold and blowing hard at home — was considerably warmer and calmer at the stream (absolute proof you should always go fishing).

Periods of rain and wind alternated with sun and calm, and the fish didn’t care much either way, though when the wind blew a cast into the grass on the bank, the fly fishermen sure did.

It rained on and off. Fortunately, fly fishermen aren’t made of Alka-Seltzer.

It’s tempting to describe a day on a small stream in terms of its restorative powers, but in truth, it’s just plain fun with a fly rod — fly fishing stripped of all the things we’ve added, but maybe shouldn’t.

See you on the (small) water, Tom Chandler.

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