The Upper Sacramento is typically running high (with temps in the mid-50s forecast this week, it’s going to run even higher), real spring weather can be more than a month away, and you can still deceive yourself into thinking you’ve got time to tie that hundred dozen flies you planned for the winter.

OK, I’ll be up front: I’m not going to make it to one hundred dozen. In fact, because I’m writing this instead of tying those, I’ll be lucky to make it to a couple dozen, which makes the following fact a good thing: I like simple flies.

Really simple flies.

The Annual Fly Freak Out

Not only am I forced to confront my essential laziness, it’s about this time of year that my love for simple flies is taken to absurd new heights; every late winter, I find myself idly toying with the idea of stripping my fly selection down to a mindlessly bare essential – like fishing a whole year with flies tied from nothing but grizzly hackle and Hare’s Ear dubbing.

That’s something I probably couldn’t get away with, but I bet I could get away tying and fishing nothing but soft hackles.

One fly, all year? Could a lazy/greedy fly fisherman survive one year on a steady diet of soft hackles?

You can effectively fish soft hackles as everything from tiny midge nymphs to mayfly emergers to caddis to small streamers, though most people don’t – a reality which suggests soft hackles need a better publicist.

It’s an interesting idea (and the materials would be wildly affordable), but it’s just something I threaten to do in front of my friends (“Just put the hackle pliers down and back away” Dave Roberts will say, “and nobody gets hurt.”).

I haven’t yet pulled the trigger, and probably never will.

After all, I’m lazy but I’m also greedy, and while I’ve successfully whittled my fly selection down to a handful of simple flies, I haven’t yet worked myself up to what would amount to a fly fishing stunt (though it would make interesting blog fodder).

Still how little could I sneak by with that wouldn’t amount to a stunt? Let’s see:

• Parachute dries (size & color to match the handful of mayfly hatches in this part of the world)
• Stimulators (from small caddis sizes to the big, deadly dark numbers)
• A small handful of soft hackle patterns (PTs to Hare’s Ears to biot bodies, they’re the force multiplier of the fly world)
• Woolly Buggers

Sure, there are big gaping holes in that list, but you’d be surprised what you could accomplish by stretching the definition of “soft hackle” even a little.

In fact, soft hackles could cover everything from midge pupae to stonefly nymphs with a detour into emerging caddis, PT nymphs, and emerging, in-the-film mayflies.

I think I could pull it off.

The flies in the minimalist ointment here are the patterns sent to me by well-meaning friends, apparently unaware I’m trying to kick a bad habit.

Dave Roberts keeps waving innovative March Brown patterns under my nose, and [name redacted] keeps contributing BWO patterns that seemingly never fail (the Roy Palm  soft hackle emerger rarely fails either, but it’s hard to see).

Then there’s my growing interest in streamers, and while I could get by with Woolly Buggers in two colors (black & silver/white), a plain brown package just arrived from Ian Rutter’s end of the country stuffed with what may be the perfect streamer, though more (and serious) testing on smallies, rainbows and big brown trouts is desperately needed (yes, I know where a few lurk).

In short, I may be simultaneously lazy and greedy, but when it comes to slimming down my fly selection, I’m also apparently weak (Hi, I’m Tom, and I’m powerless in the face of free flies).

See you at the vise (barely), Tom Chandler

fly fishing, fly tying, soft hackle, stimulators, nymphs

Fly fishing for bluegill. The fish are small, but the color’s big.

Most fishermen don’t rank them too highly in the “difficulty” department; even John Gierach suggests bluegills provide more sustenance than sport, and we’ve yet to see the best-selling release of “Selective Bluegill.”

Of course, all that human expectation doesn’t necessarily translate to the bluegill, which is how I found myself standing on the edge of small, spring-fed pond with an 8′ 5wt Phillipson in hand, wondering if I was about to receive a bluegill-induced skunking.

The water was a little too cold for the bluegills to spawn, but you know, they’re still bluegill, right?

The scene of the almost-crime; a spring-fed ranch pond.

Let’s set the scene; it was Saturday evening, a barbecue jammed with good food was waiting for us, and pond owner Mad Dog and I were looking for signs — any signs — of happy, feeding bluegill.

He landed one earlier in the day on a dry fly, but I finally went with a flashy, krystal-flash bodied softhackle that used to kill ‘em on my warmwater Bay Area bluegill haunts.

The “glitter-is-good” Hollywood soft hackle.

Because of its somewhat questionable pedigree and “flashy, skin-deep” appearance, I named it the “Hollywood” soft hackle, and once again, it produced the goods.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere (as if we didn’t already know American Idol is more popular than Masterpiece Theatre), but one of fly fishing’s most important rules is this:

When there are fish on the line, ignore all object lessons.

The final score was Underground-1, Bluegill-0, though I did kneel in sizable pile of goose shit, and I imagine the Bluegill were sniggering a little over that misstep.

More bluegill adventures could occur at any time, though the weather this week looks cloudy and rainy — the kind of warmer storms that can speed-melt the remaining low-level snow and blow the Upper Sac flows.

Dave Roberts called; he’s getting over pneumonia and I’m finishing a big project, and we agreed we both needed some river action later this week.

As always, you’ll be among the first to know, provided I don’t do anything stupid like fall in the water or kneel in shit.

See you at the washing machine, Tom Chandler.

Last cast. Even when the fly fishing’s poor, the looking is good.

Technorati Tags: fly fishing,fishing,bluegill,phillipson bamboo fly rod,bamboo fly rod,soft hackle