Wet.

(Just say it three times.)

We started the sporting clays shoot under leaden skies; I finished it with pants so heavy from water (I foolishly wore work jeans) that I had to tighten my belt to keep the damn things from falling off.

That's Alert Underground Reader Mark - one station before the rains came.

Of course, no outdoor pursuit should be entirely comfortable – it should never be like strolling through a climate-controlled mall looking at uncomfortable shoes in the windows – but in this case, I didn’t need ugly weather to cause discomfort.

My shooting offered plenty of that (or rather, the missing),

He Shoots… He…. Misses!

With the vertically enhanced Chris Raine pretty much folded up into the front seat of the Subaru Legacy sedan (he’s big, it’s not), we rolled up to the shooting site at 7:45.

Sure, the skies looked ominous, but according to Weather Nerd Scott, it looked like we’d enjoy the protection of a big hole in the rainy stuff which was already pounding the canyon.

About one hour later, I became very aware he was wrong.

As I stood in the field and felt my pants absorb water by the pound, the limitations of weather prediction technology in an uncertain world became very, very clear.

Those who don’t wear eyeglasses will never understand The Curse of Rain in Sports Where Visual Acuity Is Critical (when it’s raining, it’s damned hard to see).

Still, I’d already felt the sting of unmet expectation; the rain was bad, but the 10-20 mph winds (gusting to 30 mph) weren’t helping (anybody).

Yet, try as hard as I could, there was no way to blame the misses (especially the easy misses) on the weather.

Turns out shooting tiny, fast-moving disks is a lot like proper fly casting; if you’re putting a lot of effort into it, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Focus is needed, as is a kind of zennish inner stillness, which I simply didn’t have – and couldn’t gain once the winds and the rain piled on.

Oddly – just like learning to cast a fly rod – it’s hugely frustrating and big fun at the same time.

In the end, I shot a 52 (from 100 birds); nine less than last year’s 61. Chris Raine shot a 72 (down from last year’s 86). The other shooters took a similar hit.

Alert Underground Reader Mark foolishly bravely showed up despite the forecast (that’s him in the picture at the top of the post), and he also posted a 52.

Older Bro posted a 47 (four less than last year), and this despite losing a couple birds to a borrowed shotgun “featuring” an automatic safety that engaged every time the over/under was broken open (note to self: never invest in technology designed to do your thinking for you).

Every fly fisherman reading this will understand what’s said next: I stalked away from some of the shooting stations white knuckling the shotgun while simultaneously laughing and calculating what I’ll do next time.

In other words, it’s possible to get all cranky about the immediate result, yet you can’t wait to do it all again (I don’t golf, but hear this from golfers all the time).

Back To Fly Fishing

The weather on the Upper Sacramento has varied widely; everything from warm, sunny days to freezing temperatures and rain (snow down to 4,000′ was part of one forecast for the next couple days).

In other words, it’s Fall in the mountains, which means the trout may or may not be on the October Caddis in a big way, the BWOs may or may not be hatching in a big way, and other fly fishermen may or may not be standing in your favorite water when you arrive.

Since my stint as Mr. Single Parent ends tonight, I plan to be on the water this week, and this time I won’t be armed.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

Fortunately, Little M’s being entertained upstairs (not just by Wally the Wonderdog), and I’m decently prepared for Sunday’s Bogey’s Sporting Clays Extravaganza (shotgun clean, ammo ready, gear sorted and loaded).

Once the meeting’s out of the way, all that remains is a Saturday hike with Little M and dealing with a diabolical sporting clays course on Sunday.

Life is sometimes simple, even when it’s not.

The only sour note is the lack of teams signed up for the sporting clays shoot, which – after all – benefits kids who could frankly use the help.

(click for more info)

If you’re at loose ends on Sunday, own a shotgun, can hit a flying clay target about half the time – or just hate flying orange disks (more common than you think) – then I don’t know why you wouldn’t join up and rid the world of The Flying Orange Menace.

In fact, if you’re a real sicko, you could register to shoot in the morning and play golf in the afternoon.

More importantly, you’d earn the chance to watch The Trout Underground humiliate himself and/or go all Cheney on somebody.

It’s hard to put a price on that kind of entertainment potential (hell, you spend $10.50 to see movies that basically suck), so suck it up, come on out, and we’ll see what hilarity ensues.

See you protecting the world from the Flying Orange Menace, Tom Chandler.

What isn’t softened is the roadburn; Zombie-ism took hold on Friday, and like The Undead, I mostly staggered around, frightening children and mumbling incoherently.

Saturday was the opposite. With winter coming on, I demonstrated initiative and repaired the 200,000 mile, 20 year-old Bronco; blew many clay targets out of the air; and watched a sporting event on TV (drinking a beer!).

By the end of the day, I needed a hose to wash all the testosterone off.

Blowing Shit Up

After successfully shooting nothing, I'm back for a second attempt...

The clay targets I blasted out of the air with my 20 gauge did not die in vain; being slow learners, the organizers of last year’s Bogey charity sporting clays shoot invited me back for a repeat performance, apparently misled by the fact that last year, I did none of these things:

• Shoot Myself
• Shoot Anyone Else
• Shoot Anyone’s Car

After demonstrating competence like that, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised I was invited back. This time – without beginner’s luck working for me – I’ll have to practice a little to beat last year’s score of 61 (on a course Raine described as “challenging”).

Frankly, anything over 70 would be lovely. And yes, the whole thing’s for charity, so I’m blasting to better mankind. Or something like that.

The Local Fishing Report

I’m hearing rumors (whispers, mind you) of a few October Caddis downriver, but there are allegedly some decent numbers of the big orange bugs showing up around Cantarra. Like everything else this year, they’re a little late, but then, most of us are too.

Rumors of late afternoon BWO hatches abound, but with me starting another teaching cycle (I’m teaching an online marketing boot camp the next three weeks), time on the river will be in seriously short supply.

That’s too bad, because at least one guide (OK, two guides) have seen clients catch some big fish.

That said, we’re finally seeing some cooler weather – the kind that reminds fish that fall is here, and that now would be a good time to eat a lot of bugs.

Which is where us fly fishermen enter the picture. You’ve been warned.

Also Coming To A Blog Near You

Tonight I start teaching another three-week Online marketing boot camp, so time on the water may be in short supply.

Still, I’ve got actual, live data on the McCloud Hydro relicensing gig, and some perspective on what’s going on around that.

And I still plan to write a wrap-up of the Montana Road Trip 2010. The fishing wasn’t very good (in fact, it rose the level of “good” only once) and – in the grip of some kind of photographic ennui – I didn’t shoot too many pictures.

Still, I understand your need for closure.

Also, there’s other stuff. Probably lots of it.

See you in class, Tom Chandler.

That’s because I was absorbed enough by the shoot that I forgot fire off a few frames on the camera.

With fewer of these flying about, the world is a safer place

In one sense, it’s an example why sporting clays is a lot like fly fishing a technical hatch over educated fish; to succeed, you pretty much have to exclude the real world and embrace a sort of sporting tunnel vision.

When either event is over, you look up, blink a few times, and find yourself amazed by the fact the sun has moved, the clouds have rolled in, and the birds are no longer singing.

Time, it seems, only stopped for you.

The Bare Facts

First, the chest beating: Our team of three shooters ended up right behind the third-place team (their team average was 67.8 birds per shooter from a possible 100, ours was 66).

That’s a astonishing result given my utter lack of experience, and the fact the Older Bro had fired a shotgun exactly once prior to the tournament.

Despite losing a few birds to misfires on my lower barrel (limited to one type of cheap Remington ammo), I shot a 61, and Older Bro posted a 51.

Propping up the excellent-but-still-newbie-ish scores of the Chandler clan was bamboo rod geek Chris Raine, who has annihilated plenty of clay birds in the past.

Despite a rustiness born of a few years away from the sport, Raine posted an 86, and more importantly, he looked good doing it.

He’d shoot, pop the action open, the spent shells would eject over his shoulder, and he’d have the two new shells in the gun before the empties hit the ground (I’m pretty sure chicks dig that sort of thing).

Lacking those kinds of groupie-attracting reflexes, I was content to muddle along without shooting anyone in the leg.

We all have our goals, it seems.

The Inevitable Comparison…

Being a fly fisherman, it’s hard not to compare fly fishing to sporting clays (after all, to fly fishermen, everything is “just like fly fishing, only different”).

Both are far harder than they look, and the people that make them look easy only do so after many (many) hours of experience.

I’m tempted to crack off a smartass line (“sporting clays is just like fly fishing, only louder”), but if the two really were just like each other, I’d already be good at sporting clays.

And given my tendency to make the hard shots while missing the easy ones, I’m clearly not (though I am fully capable of whining about my hard/easy tendencies in both sports).

Later, Chris patiently explained that the modified chokes on my Browning Superposed 20 gauge probably cost me on the near, fast-moving shots, but helped on the farther efforts.

“Oh,” I said. (That experience thing.)

It’s like explaining to a disbelieving new fly fishermen that their #14 Prince nymph – which successfully worked for them on every stocked trout stream they’ve ever fished – probably won’t cut it during a hatch of #20 BWOs on a catch & release tailwater, and that yes – those tiny bits of fluff actually can hook and land big trout.

“Oh,” they say.

We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Fly Fishing

Sporting clays was fun, and yes, it’s something I’ll do again.

Older Bro is already threatening to sign us up for next year’s tournament, and with a working shotgun, a little prior warning (and a few days more practice), I plan to send a good 3/4 of those Fido-killing orange saucers to their deaths.

I might even plump for “Team Underground,” though that’s contingent on Orvis or LLBean recognizing the extreme PR potential of the event, flying me to their wingshooting schools in the corporate jet, and returning me just in time to clean the course.

Frankly, I can’t think of a single reason why they shouldn’t do it, which is why I run a smalltime fly fishing blog and they run huge, successful businesses.

But for now, we’re returning our focus to another big, orange, flying object – the October Caddis.

Which, it seems, the trout are really, really on top of.

We’ve had a couple frosty nights up here in Mt. Shasta, and the bugs are dying. Rumor has it the Upper Sac and McCloud are both going big guns on the big dry – provided you’re fishing the right kind of water.

Of course, with the McCloud closing in less than a week, those hoping to put the steel to perhaps their biggest trout of the year (yes, it can happen) had better hurry.

Oddly – and assuming I can escape the constraints of father hood for a whole afternoon – find myself drawn not to the glamorous waters, but a small stream, hoping to get one more shot at the little trout before the season closes, and the area quietly fills up with snow.

It’s been that kind of year for me, and I can see no reason to stop now.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

After all, what I know about Sporting Clays you could fit on a page the size of the Nestle Ethics Manual, though after blasting a few targets out of the air today – and receiving several detailed emails jammed with technical hints (keep both eyes open, mark your break points, point your toes toward the second target, etc) – I think the real secret has been revealed to me:

As a sportsman, you must develop an intense hatred of orange clay saucers – as if they murdered Fido (your beloved family dog) in a previous life.

And we thought catch & release fly fishing was weird.

Murderer. Tomorrow, you die.

The Lone Gunman

In the interest of not getting it completely wrong at tomorrow’s sporting clays for charity shoot, I hit the shooting range today (abandoning the BWO hatch), and pretty much annihilated everything that was thrown in the air. Everything.

Naturally, I’m tempted to call Vegas and make book on my odds of my getting 50% of tomorrow’s sporting clays targets, yet my greed joy is tempered by the simple knowledge that all of today’s targets were headed pretty much directly away from me, and died around the 40 yard mark.

In other words, easy pickins’.

Still, there’s now hope I won’t be forced to slink from tomorrow’s contest like Ike Turner at a NOW convention. Instead, I can hold my head aloft and score one for the “I’m-in-way-over-their-head” Undergrounders everywhere.

We’ll see. For now, there are a pair of barrels that need cleaning, and lots of gear to forget to pack for tomorrow’s shoot.

Expect a report, and don’t be surprised if I beat the Vegas spread.

After all, I hate orange saucers. And this one’s for Fido.

If I'm going down, I'm going down shooting...

All the caller knew is that someone had recently given me a heavily used, slightly rusted 20 gauge over/under shotgun and that I wrote some kind of outdoor blog, which in their mind qualified me to compete, despite the fact I’ve actually fired the shotgun the following number of times:

Four.

Naturally – because I am suffering from sleep-deprivation-driven hallucinations – I accepted.

And you thought fly fishing was humbling?

Sure, it’s a good cause and all, and – as my readers know well – I sometimes simply do dumb things.

Let’s be clear; me shooting a sporting clays competition is a lot like me taking on Steve Rajeff with a 7′ 3wt (and a flimsy one), but now that I think about it, it’s actually much worse.

After all, my capacity for committing mayhem with a fly rod is several orders of magnitude less than my capacity for mayhem when holding a shotgun (even a dignified Browning 20 gauge over & under).

In fact, I can already envision several scenarios involving my shotgun and somebody’s else’s brand new, gloss-black SUV, and for my own sake, I’m going to stop writing for just a minute, close my eyes, and go to my Happy Place (where there are no gloss black SUVs).

…

There. I’m better. Sorta.

Though I still wonder why nobody ever calls to offer a competition in something I do well (which could include the following Brilliant Contest Ideas):

• Falling In The River In Full View of Hot Angling Babes
• Wrapping My last Beetle Bug Around The Tail of a Now Pissed-Off Bull
• Saying Precisely The Wrong Thing At The Wrong Time To My Wife

More To Come…

But because this complex story clearly demands one (and they’re all the rage these days), I’ve compiled the Underground’s First “By The Numbers” Infographic, which you lucky bastards can now use to Quickly and Easily Digest Important Facts About This Post:

Naturally, you’ll hear and see nothing about this Saturday’s Pending Shotgun-Related Disaster unless I get on a hot streak, or can actually round up a few hundred target loads (it’s not easy when you live in the boonies) and sneak in a little practice.

See you on range, Tom Chandler.