Posts tagged: upper sacramento river

Checked Your Stock Ticker & Oil Index Lately? Still Wonder Why You Fly Fish?

May 7, 2010, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

On Thursday – in only 90 minutes – the stock market dropped nearly 1000 points because somebody can’t type, and oil continues to flow toward the some of the world’s richest fishing grounds like something out of a B-grade 50s Sci-fi flick.

My week has been consumed by work, teaching, and a really ungratifying series of computer hassles.

And people wonder why we fly fish?

The Weather

Up here at Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters, the forecast high temp is only 65 degrees – and it’s falling over the weekend.

With only a couple days above 70 degrees so far this spring – and most of our above-average snowpack still squatting on the surrounding mountains – you don’t have to be a Wall Street trading program to know what lies ahead for the Upper Sacramento.

A long, long runoff event.

Normally, It’s a Race

Usually, the season opener (in late April) becomes a race between warm weather and the calendar.

If the calendar wins, the warm water doesn’t show up until after opening weekend. (The happy fishermen frolic and rejoice in their good fortune.)

If the weather wins, we typically get highs in the 70s and 80s, jump-starting the snowmelt and high water a week or two before the opener.

(And the happy fishermen don’t rejoice until the runoff ends.)

Not This Year

This year, we still haven’t seen warm weather (and won’t for the immediate future), yet the river’s been quite high.

With many, many feet of snow in the hills, most of the alpine lakes might as well be 5,000 below the ocean’s surface.

And many of the small streams? Unreachable – some for another month.

Yet I know of one stream that may just be fishable. Plans are being made. Equipment being readied. And negotiations begun over timing.

And while the Upper Sacramento may not be in prime shape, reports suggest the McCloud, Pit and other rivers are going big guns.

So there’s still plenty of room for rejoicing.

See you on the river (finally), Tom Chandler.

The Underground’s 2010 Season Opener Preview Post (or, We Prevaricate and Lie)

April 22, 2010, by Tom Chandler 12 comments

The 2010 general trout season opener is fast approaching, and while I’m the first to admit it doesn’t have the cachet it used to (more and more of California’s trout waters are open to C&R fly fishing year-round), it’s still a point in time that demands a little recognition.

This year – due to an above-normal snowpack in California’s mountains and rainy/snowy spring weather, a lot of rivers will likely be high.

You Are Now Free To Move About Our Rivers

(Note I said “high” and not “unfishably high.” The last time I pronounced the Upper Sac “blown out and unfishable,” someone wrote to say they’d had their best day ever on the river.)

What follows is a loose assemblage of rumors, half-truths, guide promotion and outright lies.

At no time should any of my readers actually believe anything they read in this forecast (I’m a fly fisherman after all), nor change their carefully laid plans based on this information.

Void where prohibited by law.

The Upper Sacramento

It’s high. And with all the low-level snow still piled up in the hills, it’s likely going to stay high.

As of this writing, the Upper Sacramento is running around 3000 cfs at the Delta station (the bottom of the river), which means you’ll find fishable spots, but the midsummer program – wandering up and down the riverbank fishing every likely spot – is a non starter.

That said, local guide Craig Nielsen has reported some monster fish hookups, though I’d suggest some local knowledge of the best high-water holes is needed before you’re going to get your net slimy. Read more →

The Fly Fishing Report That Includes: Food, Wally the Wonderdog, a Trout, and Extremely Dramatic Skiing Drama

January 29, 2010, by Tom Chandler 13 comments

First, a bug photograph:

A winter stonefly on the Upper Sacramento. Hmm. Wonder what the trout were eating?

Second, I really needed that.

Not the bug, or the photograph. I mean the ski trip into the Upper Sacramento River, where I tried some new gear, fished a bit, caught a trout, and then turned around and slogged skied back up the hill.

The trip (in order).

Ingress

Skiing into the river here shouldn’t be hard – at least if you could ski acceptably.

It’s downhill, and for the talented gravity slaves among my readers, that means smooth sailing.

Alas, when you’re accompanied by a big, clumsy dog possessed of both a need to be in front (the hunting dog instinct) and the very real tendency to get distracted by tree bits in the snow – resulting in a sudden stop right where my skis are pointed – “smooth” doesn’t quite describe the situation.

In fact – if you’re the skier – you tend to describe the situation with a lot of four-letter words, most of which you wouldn’t repeat in front of your pre-verbal child.

It doesn’t help that the “skier” in question isn’t exactly talented, and to say more would be to flog this horse long after it stopped moving.

And besides, all that’s behind me. Having fly fished and returned home to the bosom of my living family, I’m happy now. See?

The Trout Underground looking like a happy fly fisherman

That's me being happy (despite the snow jammed down my pants)

The Fishing Part

I won’t delve into the fly fishing overmuch. It was a lunchtime trip – one that actually included a riverside lunch – so my fishing time was limited to that stuff that didn’t include the following:

Skiing in
Getting skis off, removing jacket, removing snow jammed in pants (courtesy multiple Wonderdog-related crashes)
Getting into waders
Assembling fly fishing
Starting stove for lunch
Eating lunch
Sitting and grooving on intense, snowy, people-free beauty
Catching a 13″ trout
Taking photos
Re-packing gear
Slogging Skiing up the long, steep hill

I did fish long enough to catch a single trout on a nymph – a brilliant fly fishing decision made in part after I observed the following:

Ahh, Stonefly on a Stick - a new snack sensation.

Because I’m the very essence of the Scientific Fly Fisherman, I saw the bugs and immediately made a decision: I’d use a small, skinny black nymph.

(I can almost hear the Undergrounders shaking their heads in wonderment.)

Sadly, the Underground’s waterproof Pentax camera was stuck at home – the victim of a re-waterproofing attempt via some Marine Epoxy – so I was forced to bring the big DSLR, which doesn’t venture out onto the water with me.

Thus – while you no doubt expected one – there is no in-water trout portrait today.

Sorry.

You’ll have to simply trust me when I say the trout was sleek and pure and beautiful and strawberry-striped and leave it at that (you can close your eyes and imagine it if you’d like).

That was it for the fishing portion of the trip: one bite, one hook set, one bowed rod, and one fish.

And trust me, it was plenty. I was a happy man (see picture above).

And why not?

The only thing prettier than a trout stream in spring might be a trout stream in winter. Astonishingly – despite the yards-high piles of snow up in town – the Upper Sacramento wasn’t blanketed with snow, and in fact, a couple bare spots near the river forced me to take the skis off and walk around them.

Clearly, the Snowy Line of Doom for our recent “storm of a lifetime” ran just above the Upper Sacramento River.

The Gear Stuff

Because I often wake up at night wondering if I’m doing enough for my readers, I decided it was time to test-fire a 9′ 4wt rod and reel provided by the Redding Fly Shop – their own “Fresh H2O” private label brand.

How did I end up with this? At one point, I contacted St. Croix rods in the interest of seeing how their “new” Imperial fly rods compared to the much loved, smooth-tapered classic Imperial series.

It seemed like a natural story, and frankly it would have been grand – both from a “is this a new classic?” standpoint and a “where are the bargain-priced rods today” perspective.

Sadly, St. Croix didn’t bother to respond to the request, treating me the same way that cheerleader in high school did, and while I’m kinda misting up right now just thinking about it, I want you all to know I’m moving past the whole thing.

Just talk amongst yourselves for a minute.

…

OK. I’m back. And happy, dammit.

So when I had a conversation with the Fly Shop’s Mike Michalak about the McCloud relicensing – and he offered up one of his value-priced Fresh H2O combos for testing, I said what the hell?

The Redding Fly Shop's Fresh H2O combo. Testing begins...

He did just before I left for Ethiopia, and one problem with testing gear is that you actually have to use this stuff (at least here, though I have questions about some of the other reviews I read).

That I’m just getting around to it now says a lot about my unwillingness to part with the gear I already use and like, but that, my friendly Undergrounders, is the hell of it.

Because I only nymphed with the rod and didn’t actually air it out, I’m not going to craft a detailed report. Suffice it to say the rod’s plenty powerful for all-around fishing (has the high-modulus 4wt become the “standard” trout rod?), and the reel – while a bit on the heavy side – was impressively smooth.

In other words, this is the kind of combo that has high-end manufacturers asking questions about their onshore production lines – and the kind of bargain-priced (under $300) setup that should have been available during fly fishing’s boom years.

In truth, I’m not a huge fan of many of today’s graphite fly rods, but I do try to set that aside, at least so far as the Undergrounders are concerned.

More to come on this setup; I plan to let Wayne Eng loose with it for his thoughts.

In Other Gear Tests

The availability of really warm, really light, really weather-ready winter gear has largely revolutionized cold weather pursuits like skiing, mountaineering, ice climbing, backpacking, etc.

Yet the bleedover into fly fishing has been slow, though after last year’s Patagonia soft shell tests, I’m back testing some new cold weather gear – a pair of ultra-warm, ultra-light insulated jackets from Patagonia (disclosure: I paid for the things).

And I’ve come to some interesting conclusions, which I plan to publish next week.

Until then, let me tease you with a picture of a jacket so warm, comfy, silky and tiny that it was immediately stolen from my grasp by the gear-houndish L&T.

Gotcha! It's a jacket in a tiny packet - the Patagonia Nano Puff. So far, Tommy likes.

Divorce loomed until the L&T ordered a Patagonia Nano Puff jacket for herself (I had to dangle a new Nano in a far more interesting color, natch), and now that the Nano’s safely back in my grasp, I’ve proceeded with testing.

And yes, the word is good.

In truth, ultra-light backpacking and cold-weather gear isn’t often translated to the fly fishing world (or if it is, it goes slowly). Wading jackets are still (in many cases) bulletproof, but also heavy and bulky. Why is that?

Clearly, there’s more to come on the gear front.

For now, I’ll leave the Wonderdog partisans with this photograph of the ski-career-ending hound doing something mindless. Eating snow:

Wally the Wonderdog... eating snow?

See you on the ski trip in, Tom Chandler.

Fly Fishing the BWO Hatch When You Haven’t Fly Fished a BWO Hatch in a Year (or, Ouch)

November 30, 2009, by Tom Chandler 13 comments

The bugs had just started and a few trout were rising, and it was suddenly very clear I’d spent most of my summer fly fishing small streams.

Well, somebody caught something. I just wasn't me...

Well, somebody caught something. It just wasn't me...

Fishing a small stream is gratifying, but it’s not the best preparation for throwing #22 emergers at very spooky trout – which tend to stop rising whenever you wade closer than 35′.

In other words, I was rusty.

Rusty enough that I got a little cranky with myself on the water.

That’s a bad thing, because when I’m cranky, I start cataloging my fly fishing failures, and under the impetus of an admittedly self-critical nature, that list can grow very long.

Wrong flies. Out of 6x. Every cast eight inches short. Not sneaky enough. Not piling enough tippet for a good drift. Not focused. Bad karma from prior lifetime.

It can get a little weighty at a moment in your life when a little confidence is a real asset.

The Code

Sometimes, you never do crack the code, and the bugs stop appearing and the fish stop rising, and you stand hip-deep in seriously freezing cold water and wonder why you took up this sport in the first place.

Other times you change one simple thing: tippet, fly, more reach in the cast – and the whole experience resolves itself right in front of your eyes, and the trout do their part by eating the fly.

It’s either the way things are supposed to work, or pure magic.

When that does happen, you tend to forget the first half hour or so; that stretch where some apparently immature fly fisherman would be tempted to imitate his new daughter by stamping his wading boots and whining.

(Thank goodness that doesn’t apply to you or me.)

In this case, I sorta cracked it. Barely.

Well, not really.

I was able to get fish to eat, though before it all came together, I had one actually come up under my bug while aiming for the natural right behind it.

My simply too-big #18 parachute simply slid off his broad back, and I simply stood there wondering at the unfairness of it all.

The answer, of course, is that fairness isn’t a concept often adhered to in nature, and it wasn’t the trout’s fault I was stinking the place up.

The Ugly Reality

Chris Raine – who was ironically fishing my backup rod (an 8.5′ Raine prototype) because he’d grabbed the wrong rod tube on the way out of the shop – landed two nice fish.

Chris Raine, hooked up to a nice Upper Sacramento rainbow trout

Sure, his fish, but MY fly rod. I claim at least half of the trout's 15 inches

Naturally, I claimed ownership of half of both trout, suggesting it was a fool’s tax for grabbing the wrong rod (an obvious symptom of advancing age).

Just as naturally, he replied with a rude gesture.

I fished an 8.5′ Jim Reams hollowbuilt (a rod I love dearly for its smooth nature, but may sell because I’m not nearly caster enough to enjoy the taper when the bugs are on the water and I get impatient and start driving casts).

I had a total of four grabs, one brief hookup, one driven-by-frustration hookset (broke him off), and missed the other two on general principle.

In other words, I kinda sucked, and because I was preoccupied with rising fish, I can’t even save this fishing report with a handful of good pictures.

It was the kind of day that shows you brief flashes of promise, yet reminds you that you’re not nearly as good at this (or most other things) as your daydreams suggest you are.

Or more accurately, I’m not always as good at this as I was on the one day I did it all perfectly – a day which somehow becomes our benchmark for normalcy, which is self-deception raised to a high art.

While I’ll eventually adjust to the demands of the BWO hatch (I’m stocking up on #20 Roy Palm biot-bodied soft hackle emergers), I’ll also embrace the concept of letting the trout win the day without assuming I’ve lost my marbles.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

The October Caddis Arrive Back In Town Before The Trout Underground (Damn)

October 13, 2009, by Tom Chandler 9 comments

It was late Saturday and the L&T and I were blasting our way up the Upper Sacramento River canyon – new, cranky daughter in the car seat and two barely conscious adults piloting – when the October Caddis started bouncing off the windshield (more on the trip later).

Sometimes, an unfortunate group of pumpkin-colored caddis sometimes mistake the I5 freeway for a river, forming up over the asphalt ribbon in ill-fated mating flights, and while cruel ironies are always appreciated at the Underground, I truly have little interest in seeing what an October Caddis looks like from the inside.

Big trout on October Caddis dries? Yep, but not as often as you think...

Still, the caddis were flying, but after better than two weeks spent literally on the other side of the globe (completely without Internet access), the disconnection struck me, and I had to ask: “How did the caddis happen without me?”

The Caddis-Go-Round

The October Caddis have become a milestone event on the Upper Sacramento and McCloud Rivers; the October emergence of these amberish-colored, small-hummingbird-sized caddis often occurs in front of the year’s biggest crowds of fly fishermen (several fly fishing clubs plan outings), yet the weather – while often cold at night – is still pretty comfortable during the day.

The result are a lot of fly fishermen throwing big, big dry flies (#6-#10s) at trout, some of whom will actually eat the things in splashy, aggressive takes.

Of course, no fly fishing hatch comes without its “gotcha” moment, and what’s true is that often, the big October Caddis don’t generate much in the way of interest from the trout. In fact, it’s common to fish a #18 PED through an October Caddis hatch and catch more trout.

It’s also true – when I first wrote about the October Caddis in 2007 (“Fly Fishing the Upper Sacramento in the Fall: An October Caddis Primer“) – that the best October Caddis fishing might be found in early winter, when the bugs are dying and falling into the water.

Presumably, the trout “know” that dead bugs won’t make a last-minute getaway, and the party (as they say), begins.

Now For a Real Expert

Everything I’ve told you about the October Caddis I’ve said before (but oy, nobody listens, nobody writes, nobody calls, especially you kids with your iPods and fancy-pants phones, and hey get off my lawn).

Still, I’ve always stopped far short of claiming expert status around the October Caddis, mostly because I may have caught a fair number of big trout during October Caddis season, but never with the kind manly, chiseled-jaw confidence I have when hitting the Green Drakes of spring.

And while it seems that becoming an online commando is all the rage these days, I’m going to defer to someone who hasn’t spent the last month on kid-related stuff: Craig Nielsen of ShastaTrout.com, who does the responsible adult thing and posts real fly fishing reports while I’m over here changing diapers and ruminating on the power of bikini photographs to change our lives for the better.

Right now, it’s raining hard at Trout Underground/Man Cave/Soiled Diaper World Headquarters, and the river’s starting to come up, though the line between an unfishable river and a refreshing plug of water that turns on the trout is finer than you’d believe; at some point, both conditions may be true. (What, you wanted easy? Take up checkers…)

Simply put, I’m back, and there’s more to come, though what “more” looks like is yet to be determined.

See you fishing the October Caddis, Tom Chandler.

Salmon Recovery in Upper Sacramento Facing Huge Barriers (Like 602′ Shasta Dam)

June 23, 2009, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

The announcement that salmon restoration in California could lead to salmon and steelhead once again swimming the Upper Sacramento River above Lake Shasta caught pretty much everyone by surprise.

And while the idea is an interesting one, actual implementation faces a lot of hurdles – not the least of which is the 602′ high Shasta Dam. In fact, transporting fish over the dam and then back down (of the two, back down might be harder) could relegate this project to has-been status – except that the fisheries people don’t see many alternatives.

Underground Fave water journalist Matt Weiser wrote this article about the project, where he notes the issues, but also pens several telling passages (both key passages bolded below):

Restoring fisheries above Folsom, Shasta dams faces high hurdles | Sacramento Bee

The Sacramento was the only river in western North America with four salmon runs. They numbered in the millions – so numerous that American Indians and settlers could catch a salmon dinner with their bare hands. Now one run is gone, and two are endangered. The fourth could join them soon.

Restoring a fragment of that spectacle to the Central Valley is the goal of rules proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The service wants, among other things, restoration of winter- and spring-run salmon above Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River, and steelhead above Folsom Dam on the American River.

Combined, the fish transit order is considered the biggest of its kind in U.S. history.

…

“It’s pretty substantial, the amount of work that’s required,” said Mike Chotkowski, regional environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dams. “We still haven’t even determined whether it’s feasible.”

The fisheries service says that without restoring access upstream, it’s likely the three fish species will go extinct. Climate change means it will be harder to maintain cold-water habitat below the dams, so they must have access to better habitat.

“The fish are at that jeopardy point where it’s important for us to take immediate steps,” said Howard Brown, Sacramento River basin chief for the fisheries service.

Wow. Frankly, this is an idea I hadn’t even heard proposed before, and now some consider it essential. Is it a desperate throw of the dice, or simply a recognition that the hatchery mitigation model has totally let us down, and that habitat destruction in the central valley is largely irreversible?

Some have already suggested it’s far most cost-effective to simply restore small creeks below the dams:

Rabe said 600 small creeks between Modesto and Redding also could be restored – at far less cost than fixing the big dams.

“Don’t
waste time and money on the dams. Spend it on the creeks,” he said.
“That would open literally thousands of miles of spawning, which would
make a huge, huge difference.”

Still – as we learned from the destruction-by-irrigator of Singlebarbed’s home waters – most of the Central Valley’s waterways are tied up by the West’s arcane water laws, and restoring cool, clean, sustainable flows to them might be even more involved than figuring out how to move fish around big dams.

In other words, it appears we’ve pumped all our easy options into oblivion, and all that’s left are the hard choices that nobody wants to make (so they probably won’t get made).

See you on the dam, Tom Chandler.

salmon restoration, california salmon, california water wars, sacramento river salmon, shasta dam, matt weiser, upper sacramento river

Many Fly Fishermen on the Upper Sacramento and McCloud Rivers: Local Guides Suffering Horribly Under Strain

June 20, 2009, by Tom Chandler 7 comments

I won’t mince words: The Upper Sacramento River’s been seeing a *lot* of fly fishermen the last two weeks, and this weekend, there are a pair of sizable (30+ anglers) groups in town.

The McCloud River – which may be earning its “McCrowd” nickname – is also seeing a lot of fly fisherman.

Apparently, it’s getaway time in the mountains of Northern California, and I might suggest we’re seeing a lot of fly fishermen who are ending up here instead of more exotic locales.

I’m always happy to see the local economy acquire a little spring in its step, but for some among the guiding community, the strain of guide trip after guide trip takes a terrible (terrible!) toll, leading to heart-wrenching scenes like this:

Wayne Eng at the Underground's Corporate Ideation Center

Yes, that’s Frequent Underground Character & Local Guide Wayne Eng crashing at the Trout Underground’s/Man Cave Official Corporate Ideation Center, where he napped (untroubled by killer Chipmunks) until it was time to eat.

The Underground Escapes

With so many fly fishermen apparently enjoying the Upper Sacramento, I’m heading off Sunday to a small stream in the area, hoping to escape some of the crowds.

It’s a gamble; it only takes one or two good (or clumsy) anglers to pretty much chew up a small stream for those who follow, and I tend to stay away from that kind of water on the weekends.

But damnit, there’s fish to be caught. And this time, I’m taking the camera.

The Wading Boot Testing Continues

And don’t think we’ve forgotten our wading boot tests – especially now that Korker has thrown its boots into the fray. They sent along a pair of wading boots and many, many pairs of their interchangeable soles, and we’ll see what happens in light of the Underground’s somewhat unhappy experience with a pair of much older Korkers (I wasn’t thrilled with the ankle support, but these look sturdier).

See you (anywhere but) a small stream, Tom Chandler.

Our Days-Old Fly Fishing Report (or, Good Fly Fishing vs Great Fly Fishing)

June 6, 2009, by Tom Chandler 9 comments

It’s rare that I run a fishing report 2.5 days after the fact (usually I just give up and move on). Given that the fishing conditions are of interest to a portion of the Underground’s tiny sizable International audience, I’m putting in the extra hours. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

The by-now standard TU fish portrait.

Wednesday afternoon, I went fly fishing. Wally the Wonderdog – eyeing the waders and fly rods as they came out of the Man Cave – wormed his way out a barely-open sliding door, and took up residence right in front of the truck’s driver’s side door.

Point to the Wonderdog.

Heading to the river in the Brown Bomber (my centuries-old Bronco, which has deteriorated to the point the Wonderdog’s muddy paws actually improve the interior), I figured the fishing would be good.

And potentially great.

Every once in a while, you hit the Upper Sacramento when all the big fish are looking for the big dry fly, and while that happens only a couple years every decade, we fly fishermen basically live in an Statistically Unreal Parallel Universe of our Own Making.

You know: the fly fishing was drop-dead great five times out of 300 trips, so odds are it’ll be that way tonight.

At least that’s how the inner conversation goes.

Even if the fishing's only good, the wildflowers are out

The reality?

I had fun, but few big trout. Right now, we’re experiencing the kind of fly fishing where – if you really bear down and you have some game – you will tap into a few of the Upper Sac’s bigger trout.

Or you can tie on a big dry, shove the drooling family pet into the truck, and just fish along the river, enjoying the challenge of making good drifts.

If you’d done that Wednesday night, you’d have experienced double-digit numbers of trout eating your dry fly, with the biggest being only 12″ or so. That’s a good evening by almost any standard, but one or two big fish short of “notable.”

The Wonderdog, however, suffers from no such size issues, and every trout is to be celebrated (and sniffed, and potentially eaten).

In fact – ever since the episode where Wally lunched on a brown trout that apparently fell from the sky – I’ve learned a net is an essential part of any fly fishing trip that includes the Official Sausage-Shaped Mascot of the Trout Underground.

In one gripping action sequence, where I was slowly fishing my way up a run to the sole working trout, Wally the Wonderdog saw the splashy rises, and – grasping the fact that I might want to catch that trout – sprinted up the opposite bank, perched on a rock, and then dove into the river after the next rise.

He did not catch the trout.

Neither did I.

Only a second before his Leap Into The River

After his attempt to retrieve a trout. He doesn't seem sorry.

The Facts

Because I was tired and basically craved the big dry fly experience, I hauled out my 8′ Raine Upper Sac Special – a rod similar in action to my beloved 8′ Phillipsons, though just a bit stronger (this is the first, solid-built version – not the same as the hollowbuilts currently being built).

Because I live in the same statistically unreal parallel universe my readers do, I was hoping to land a couple of 14″-17″ Upper Sac rainbows, and wanted a rod capable of making it more “interesting” for the trout than it did for me.

The often-empty parking lot was overrun with cars (including someone in a black Ford Focus rental who parked me into a corner), though that was related to yet another train derailment, this one just above Cantara Loop.

Alert Underground Reader A.M. said the machine used to un-derail the train cars woke him up later that night, and while nothing was spilled into the river, it’s an excellent reminder the Upper Sacramento lives with something of a sword hanging over its head.

The Fishing Forecast

With two days of on-and-off rain falling between Wednesday and now, the Upper Sac’s flows have swelled a bit, though not beyond the fishable range.

Reports from others are somewhat spotty; a couple guides said the fishing was generally good, though not always easy.

One tattered rumor suggests a lucky local stumbled onto a very brief Green Drake hatch, though on this river that usually means fishing working the emerger instead of the dry (hint: bring your Green Drake cripples, just in case).

Shucks on an Upper Sac rock. Interesting...

Simply put, it’s not a bad time to be fly fishing the Upper Sacramento.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler

p.s. – On Friday, I fished the year’s first alpine meadow stream. Report coming Sunday (though no pictures – I forgot my camera)

Will Salmon One Day Spawn Again… In The Upper Sacramento River??

June 5, 2009, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

Salmon swimming in the Upper Sacramento once again??

You could say the news caught my eye.

The court-ordered biological opinion on restoring salmon to California’s largely salmon-free waters was just released, and this tidbit from the Redding Record Searchlight suggests salmon could be restored to the Upper Sacramento River above Lake Shasta?

A federal plan to revive salmon in the Sacramento River could put the fish upstream of Shasta Dam for the first time in seven decades and would mean the end of Lake Red Bluff.

The National Marine Fisheries Service made the two recommendations in its 800-page biological opinion for the Central Valley Project released Thursday. The Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Shasta Dam and the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, has tentatively approved the federal court-ordered plan while it reviews the lengthy document.

The Keswick and Shasta dams have blocked spawning beds on the Upper Sacramento and McCloud rivers north of Shasta Dam since the bureau began construction on the dams in the 1930s.

Federal and state scientists will develop a pilot project to truck fish trapped in the lower Sacramento around the dam by 2011, said Maria Rea, supervisor of the fisheries service’s Sacramento office. A permanent plan for moving the fish past the two dams should be created between 2012 and 2015, she said.

What? I thought – frankly – that it was just a mixup due to terminology (some call the Sacramento River near Redding the “upper” part of the river).

Then we went digging around the Sacramento Bee’s should-be-award-winning California water wars coverage, and found this:

The rules require the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to restore access for fish to waters above Nimbus and Folsom dams on the American River, Shasta Dam on the Sacramento, and New Melones Dam on the Stanislaus.

Those dams were built decades ago without fish ladders and have blocked access to hundreds of miles of historic spawning grounds.

The Bee’s Matt Weiser is not the kind of writer to get this stuff wrong, so I’d suggest moving salmon around Shasta Dam is at least a consideration.

Frankly, I’m not all that sanguine about the potential for trapping and trucking salmon – it hasn’t exactly been a raging success in the Columbia basin. And the mechanism for doing so – or returning the salmon smolts to the ocean – isn’t at all clear.

Then again, I’ve also long heard that Shasta Dam effectively blocked access to better than 80% of California’s salmon and steelhead spawning habitat.

One Thing Is Clear

With many of California’s native and anadramous fish populations in a state of collapse, the water wars are firing on all cylinders – including a broadside from Arnold “Fish Terminator” Schwarzenegger, who has consistently cast this as an issue of “fish vs people” – an idiotic stance, especially given the clearly unsustainable nature of current water projects, and the fact a lot of commercial and recreational fishing dollars are also being lost (I’m waiting for someone to ask Ahhnold why heÂ favors Alfalfa over People).

Still, salmon swimming again in the McCloud, Upper Sacramento, and Pit Rivers?

I’d be surprised. Still, we’re all about news here at the Trout Underground. I bet there’s plenty more of it to come.

UPDATE: Note from Underground Fave Reporter Matt Weiser in response to my question about whether the plan really provided for Upper Sacramento salmon passage: “Yes it does, in great detail, starting with trial reintroductions, then full permanent fish passage by 2020.”

For now, I’m going fishing. See you on a stream, Tom Chandler.

Einstein Was Wrong: Fly Fishermen Know Everything Does Happen All At Once

May 26, 2009, by Tom Chandler 8 comments

I already live where other people vacation, so it doesn’t feel strange that I’d spend my long weekends at home, letting the weekend warriors have their day(s) on the water.

Adding one more hideously over-equipped body to the scrum isn’t likely to tip the scales from simple overcrowding to elbow-to-elbow fishing, but then, Steve Bertrand did take one of his weekend guide trips to Mossbrae Falls, which was overrun with tourists.

As he relates it, a half-dozen photographers were clicking away at a scene that’s so postcard-perfect every fly fishermen’s seen it a dozen times – even if they’ve never been to Northern California.

I’m always happy when the local tourist industry enjoys a banner weekend (which by all indications it was, suggesting people are vacationing as much, but traveling to exotic locations less), but that doesn’t mean I want to be a part of the crowd.

I did manage to sneak out and visit a nearby small stream where the fish are small and the “prime” water widely dispersed – a reality which guarantees the bare minimum of competition.

It went largely as expected; the water’s still a teensy bit too cold for the trout to abandon all caution, but a few small fish rose to eat my dry fly (and one large one I’d say was a stockie).

Sadly, my camera found a temporary home on the kitchen counter (waiting for the return of our pond-diving bear), so there are no pictures of this tiny stream – or the tiny, parr-marked trout that inhabit it. (Everybody loses when the cameras stay home.)

The Upper Sacramento River

Word has it the Upper Sac’s been fishing on the slow side of OK, though more than one hopeful sort suggested it’s getting ready to pop in the way you only find for a couple weeks in spring.

You know the drill: flows are down so the whole river’s fishable; the water’s warming and the bugs are getting serious about procreation; and with the bigger bugs starting to hatch, the bigger trout start to look up.

That kind of thinking focuses me on a few spots on the Upper Sacramento that I know hold big trout, but can’t be fished well with streamer or nymphs.

The big fish hidden there are really only vulnerable when they’re willing to slither out of their log jams to eat a big dry, and yes, we’re probably headed for one of those stretches soon.

Naturally, you’ll hear all about it here – but mostly after the fact. After all, I’m a writer, not a psychic (or a fool, though some have trouble telling the difference).

Time Exists So Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once

Einstein said “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” That might be true from a cosmological standpoint, but it’s a damned lie when it comes to fly fishing.

Everything does happen all at once when you’re a fly fisherman, and sorting out the possibilities is either a joyful exploration of potential, or a reminder that we’re all going to die long before we cram in enough fly fishing.

How you view it is your choice.

I’m starting another 1.5 weeks of a burdensome work schedule (anyone but a freelance writer might consider my schedule “normal”), and then my ability to make the best “it’s all happening right now” decisions will be tested – both by my clients and my willingness to drive farther than the eight minutes to the Upper Sacramento.

You could say I’ve got several destinations in mind, but that the savvy fly fishermen waits until the last minute to make those decisions, carefully piecing together the slices of fly fishing intelligence that comes his way.

The backcountry’s opening? The Salmonflies are a week late? Pink Alberts already? Green Drakes?? There are crowds here, but Stream X is empty?

That kind of thing.

I’ll let you know. And – assuming I remember my camera – bring you along for the ride.

See you on some river, Tom Chandler.