For most of the last week I’ve been playing the role of single dad, and because that wasn’t quite challenging enough, I decided to also come down with a bad cold.

Apparently, this parenting thing is like Olympic diving; it really only becomes newsworthy when you add significantly to the degree of difficulty.

It doesn’t matter much; small stream fly fishermen in my neck of the woods wait breathlessly for opening day, and then we wait approximately another month for the waters — which rose just prior to the opener — to fall back to fishable levels.

Can you spot the holding water? Me neither...

So after we were finally free to do so, the increasingly gimpy Wonderdog and I took a nice up-and-down hike along one of my favorite little waters just yesterday, and though I brought along a fly rod, it never escaped its tube.

Wally the Wonderdog looking in vain for trout

The Big Bugs

Last week Little M and I created our own little adventure on Hedge Creek, which flows into the Upper Sacramento just below Mossbrae Falls. I introduced her to the big black stoneflies (she didn’t think they were cuddly in the least), and because she’s 3.5 years old, didn’t really understand when I tried to explain why fly fishermen love the things to death.

Perspective clearly remains the province of the holder, though I can say she got excited when — in the first decent pool of the creek above the Upper Sac — we spotted a pretty good sized trout.

I’m never sure how trout move up upcreek through the jumble of rocks, mini-waterfalls and deadfall that define Hedge Creek’s confluence with the river (that alien perspective thing again), but they clearly do.

Oddly, it reminded me of another Upper Sac tributary I wanted to fish but haven’t.

Maybe this is the year.

The Work Thang

The upcoming week qualifies as a “better get it done/written/submitted” week for Tom The Working Guy, who last week made lame excuses involving kids and colds and didn’t exactly peg the productivity meter.

I’m working on two pieces for the Underground (also two for my writing blog), but what you’re seeing right now is the fly fishing blog of a very busy writer who isn’t fly fishing much at all due to high waters.

Thus, the silence is explained.

On Tuesday I should be surveying Hat Creek with several of the men who originally helped restore it in the 1970s (CalTrout’s founders), and after that happens, you can expect at least a picture or two headed your way.

Hat Creek has once again fallen on hard times, yet it’s nice to know that (once again), someone’s got a plan for putting it back together.

The Snowman Melteth

From our second story family room, I can see both Mt. Eddy and the ridges surrounding it (Mt. Shasta is out the opposite window, but screened by trees).

The snow that is feeding the runoff that is putting my little streams out of reach is disappearing quickly, especially if you squint a little and don’t look at the northern exposures when you’re driving south on I5.

The weather has been cool and the Upper Sac has fallen below 2000 cfs, though (finally) 70+ degree temperatures are back and the white stuff will disappear more quickly.

Meanwhile, I’m crediting myself with a certain level of cunning by combining small stream reconnaissance trips with dog walking and child care duties.

I’m a crafty one, no doubt. Crafty enough to not make any bold predictions about this year’s runoff, though evidence suggests things will get better sooner rather than later.

See you on the little rivers, Tom Chandler

Nobody in your family is ever *always* thrilled to do whatever the hell it is you’re doing, and I can’t remember the last time anyone practically wet themselves over the simple fact I came home.

Except, of course, for Wally the Wonderdog.

So when your wife runs into the family room at 6:13 a.m. and tells you Wally is having a seizure, I didn’t finish typing the sentence before I went to see what the hell’s going on.

Wally the Wonderdog during more restful times

I found him standing stiffly and staring out the sliding glass door — before he turned and growled at me. Which meant something was wrong.

Then he went attack-dog berserk and actually charged me, and for a split-second I wondered if I was going to feed him a forearm to keep him away from the vital bits.

Yeah. Something’s really wrong.

And as quickly as he’d become a mad dog the switch was thrown and he was back to Wally — tongue hanging out, tailing wagging like I just fed him a hamburger, happier than ever to see me.

The Intertubes suggest the seizure left him disoriented and probably blind for a while, and I don’t believe he would have bitten me, but, you know.

Damn.

The veterinarian said it sounded like classic adult-onset epilepsy — apparently a not-uncommon condition in dogs.

A little research ties canine epilepsy to everything from diet to brain tumors, and it’s disconcerting that the vet simply gave us phenobarbital (a sedative used to control seizures) without really exploring the other possibilities.

Which the L&T and I are doing now.

The Wonderdog has always been the family tank; an indestructible, goofy presence who managed to fall off a mountain, get hit by a truck and avoid euthanasia by an hour.

In our universe, he’s a constant, like gravity or the speed of light.

When he stumbles, you can feel the earth rumble beneath your feet.

See you researching things, Tom Chandler

The fish were cooperative, but the wading boots were slick (turns out the Patagonia Rock Grip boots don’t “grip” all that well on dry rock either; it’s back to the glue-esque Riverwalkers), and the inevitable fall was approximately four feet — mostly onto my left hip.

The camera is downstairs and I’m upstairs and there aren’t enough aspirin to get me to make the trip this morning, so expect pictures later this weekend.

But I can still type, and fans of Wally the Wonderdog will no doubt find this edifying…

Welcome to Burger King can I hel…. aiiyeeeeee!

Stiffening up by the minute — and with a wet, tired Wally the Wonderdog sprawled across the passenger seat like a disgruntled pasha — I was too hungry to wait a couple hours for dinner, and in what has become a once-a-year event, the Wonderdog and I curved the straight line home through the local Burger King drive-through window.

The Wonderdog perked up immediately at the smell of all those frying hamburgers, but I didn’t think to roll up the window when I unclipped and turned to the back seat to find my wallet.

Houston, we have a problem.

In an attempt to gain doggie heaven (the Burger King kitchen), the Wonderdog launched himself over the center console and into my lap — actually getting his front paws outside the door and his head through the drive-through window.

I grabbed a couple handfuls of Wonderblubber and started pulling back, and before he could wriggle all the way into the kitchen, the friendly, smiling Burger King employee returned to find a drooling dog with a tongue the size of a necktie waiting for her.

Fortunately, she didn’t scream. (She yelped a little and recoiled.)

After a few electric moments, I got most of him hauled back into the truck (enough to get his nose out of the drive-thru window at least), the no-longer-smiling employee handed over the food, and I drove away, the Wonderdog keeping his nose glued to the bag until he got his half of the Whopper.

When did I become a player in a dog-driven reality TV show (and where are my residuals)?

See you at the medicine cabinet, Tom Chandler.

There was even talk of periodic massages for his sore paws.

After nine days of abject suffering, the Wonderdog rests...

As a result, the dog we returned to is noticeably skinnier and happier than the dog we left, prompting me to think that next time, I’ll send Wally to Maine (where there is much pie and steak, most of it wearing butter), while I stay behind to enjoy twice-daily hikes, heated food, massages and utter lack of air travel.

See you pondering the dog’s life, Tom Chandler.

Technically, I get half points for remembering the camera, but I’d mistakenly slid a 16MB SD card into the slot, which was good for exactly one photograph, yet wouldn’t let me delete anything.

(In my youth, a move like that would have qualified for a “Way to go, Einstein.”)

So while the small stream was muy beautiful (in a small, prehistoric-looking canyon sort of way); and many colorful trout were caught; and I intended to shoot stunning streamside photos of the Orvis 8′ Superfine Touch I’m reviewing… all you’re going to see is this clunker (burned-out highlights and all):

Wally the Wonderdog searching for trout to retrieve

My Casio Commander cell phone was in the truck, so I retrieved it and learned just how poorly suited its camera is to the Split-Second World of Outdoor Photography.

So instead of colorful photographs, I’m going to paint bright, colorful pictures with words, as in:

• The stream was like really, really beautiful. Like awesome, you know?
• The trout were small but they were really, really beautiful. Like major-league sick/phat/awesome, you know?
• There were wildflowers that were really, really pretty in many awesome shapes and sizes.

There. Your minds are probably reeling under that onslaught of vivid imagery. The rest of your day will seem gray and lifeless by comparison, but that’s normal.

You’ll be fine in the morning.

The Gritty Details

I checked last year’s posts an discovered I fished this same area a month earlier — and the water was lower last year.

In other words — due to the high snowpack and cold spring — we really are running a good month behind last year.

Fortunately, the trout seem healthy, and they were perfectly willing to eat a dry.

I caught many of them.

I wanted to kiss all of them.

And I lost the biggest of them (true story).

It was like running across a great friend from your college days (assuming your college days were decades ago), and discovering you picked up exactly where you left off, no hiccups or false starts.

So while the drifts were not easy (they almost never are on a small stream), the fish were wild, the stalking mine-emptying, the exertion innervating, and the sense of gratitude (on the part of the fly fisherman) was an almost palpable thing.

It’s good to be back. Good to see you, old friend.

The Gritty Gear Details

I thought I’d finished my review of the 8′ 4wt Orvis Superfine Touch, but realized it needed a test on a truly small stream — one where getting more than a foot of fly line past the guides qualifies as an ambitious cast.

How did it work? Look for the review this week.

Since I’m in testing mode, I also dragged out the Patagonia Sun Hoody, which once again performed admirably (no buttons, pockets, Velcro or anything else to snag fly line).

I’d love to parade the fly I fished as the end product of a lot of painstaking trial and error, but this was a small stream filled with fish hungry for both spring and a meal, so they ate all three patterns equally enthusiastically.

Wally the Wonderdog was his usual self; staring hard at the water in a vain attempt to spot trout, and then attempting to retrieve them once I did hook one (which was probably a lot less often once he dove into the water, which happened about half the time).

When he wasn’t chasing trout, he was dashing from tree to boulder to bush in the hopes of finding something dead to eat/roll in, tail wagging hard, tongue lolling to the left (he lost his left canine when he fell down a mountain).

He’s older than he used to be (we all are), so after he basically hovered off the ground for a couple hours, he collapsed in the back seat of the Bronco and was asleep before I got the fly rod taken apart.

Live hard, sleep well, lick your privates.

Sounds like a recipe for life.

See you on a small stream, Tom Chandler.

Earlier this week, a reporter called to write an article about the Trout Underground, and just as the conversation started, Wally the Wonderdog wandered slowly past my office window — holding a stiffly frozen, snow-encrusted squirrel in his mouth.

I considered telling the reporter about the squirrel-cicle, but then realized it really wasn’t that believable; the kind of thing a guy would make up to impress a reporter.

Moments like this force me to realize that much of the Underground’s universe — especially the bits concerning Wally the Wonderdog — simply aren’t fit for print.

Or maybe they’re just not readily explainable.

And that was only the start of the interview. It wasn’t long before he asked the inevitable, grind-my-brain-to-halt question:

“What is the Trout Underground?”

And, like every other time I’ve been asked, I had no answer — at least nothing that glibly approaches a sound bite (outside of the ill-advised “I’m simply oversharing my mental illness”).

Part of the problem lies with the sport itself; beyond the gear used (and that’s up for grabs these days), fly fishing is pretty hard to define.

Even Gierach — who writes far more gooder than I — refuses to be cornered:

“Fly-fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands, poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic considerations. It’s not even clear if catching fish is actually the point.”

It gets worse.

A quick survey of the Internet suggests catching fish actually is the point fly fishing, but for some (an awful lot, actually), it clearly isn’t.

Others accumulate fly fishing gear and clearly think that’s the point, while others embrace minimalism as the One True Path to Heaven.

For others, it’s all about being miserable, and reminding everyone just how tough they are to withstand the suffering, or…

You get the picture.

Recruiting new people to the sport has never proved all that easy, with some quick to point to things like the high cost of equipment (ever compared the cost of a fly rod & reel to a bass boat?), the notorious stuffiness of the sport’s practitioners, surly fly shop employees, the fussiness (and shrinking habitat) of trout, the technical demands of casting, etc.

Here’s a thought; maybe it has nothing to do with any of the above.

Maybe it’s hard to sell a sport that you can’t really define.

Unlike tournament bass fishing (or golf, or whatever), fly fishing’s goals are a little unclear, and for some of us, they shift over the course of a day.

Which is a long-winded way of making myself feel better about an inability to clearly define the blog I’ve been writing for better than 720,000 words, especially after the reporter asked me to pick a couple of highlights (posts) from the prior year.

I ended up picking three posts that felt like they represented the blog, then realized that one was definitely not about fly fishing, and two that were about fly fishing kinda dealt with it in the periphery (OK, they were all about Little M, though fly fishing featured heavily in this one and here).

A sport with shifting goals? Blogs with no visible point? An writer’s inability to summarize 720,000 words of his own work?

Frankly, it’s enough to make me want to wander off and find a beer.

Maybe watch Wally the Wonderdog eat his squirrel-cicle.

Right now, that makes perfect sense.

See you outside, Tom Chandler.

“The wall of flames is at least 100 feet high and advancing towards us very rapidly. Little M & the L&T are safe, but the Wonderdog and I are in great peril.

The tiny pond in back offers the only hope of survival. Yet it’s only big enough for one of us.

Signing off now.”

Several of you would offer comments like:

“Sorry to see you go Tom, but we’ll see to it the Wonderdog’s kept in kibble.”

Those that didn’t post some variant of that would be thinking it.

You ungrateful bastards.

That said, we weren’t entirely pleased with the Wonderdog’s progress when we returned home from Maine; the nasty spider bite (about the size of the smallest Orvis CFO reel) was still raw and pink, though thankfully, it wasn’t absessed or infected or septic or necrotic or any of those other medical words I really don’t like to hear.

The good news is the whole mess is finally skinning over (several Undergrounders suggested this would take longer than you’d think to heal), and we expect that he may actually commence with the hair growing any time now.

He’s apparently recovered from the other blueline-induced abuses, though we’re planning a visit to the vet soon to address what we fear is an arthritis issue.

Interestingly, the L&T and I did some mental math; we’d assumed he was in the neighborhood of 7.5-8 years old, but it’s more likely he’s 9.5 years old.

Shit.

See you with another Wonderdog Update (when appropriate), Tom [the less-popular] Chandler.

The new King of All Fly Fishing Media

They’re less a permanent home than a home base for further exploration.

Which is where the parts you haven’t fished enter the equation.

On the map, they’re likely to be marked “places to try” instead of “here be monsters” (if they’re marked at all).

It’s the kind of perception that creates its own reality; the second you look upstream and wonder what the water’s like a half mile up, you’ll be haunted by it until you find out.

An updside-down rock in a pool (somebody's got a sense of humor, if not gravity)

Which is how the Wonderdog and I found ourselves at the chokepoint that defeated us on our last trip up this tiny stream gorge – a place where a steep rock wall, deep water, plunging waterfall, willow trees, loose rock and last winter’s fallen trees congealed into one nasty roadblock.

Last time we fished this far and turned back, figuring we’d exhaust our remaining time climbing around the chokepoint, only to turn around and head back down.

This time we hiked right past the deep green pools (and the pair of women sunbathing in the first pool) to this spot, stopping to fish only once.

The idea was simple; find a (safe) way past this point, hike up a mile or so, and fish our way back.

A quick two-hour trip.

Right.

The Great Unraveling

We made it.

Sorta.

In truth, getting around the chokepoint wasn’t really Hollywood blockbuster material, though it was a grunt. An arc-shaped path took us above most of the gunk, though finding a safe path across the loose volcanic rock fired the heart rate just a little.

After we beat the bottleneck, the route alternated between unpleasantly steep and really unpleasantly steep and cluttered.

The trees, willows, rocks and very, very steep walls took turns poking at us, and while I was doing OK, the Wonderdog was having his problems.

He’s a wiz in the forested sections – able to simply walk underneath the thick branches that frustrate the hell out of me. But his best rock-hopping days – which were none too great to begin with – are clearly behind him.

More on that later.

The stream gorge is narrow and steep - this was the only way to see for distance.

Eventually, I couldn’t take it any more, and we stopped to fish some of the flatter stretches (flat being relative in a mountain gorge). I caught little trout in more or less the expected places, though I made two unhappy discoveries.

First, the trout here seemed smaller than those farther downstream, an artifact of the deeper plunge pools down there.

And second, my leader really sucked.

Throwing a soft, 7′ 3wt glass rod demands a leaders with a soft butt section.

Which I didn’t have.

Instead, the casting loop in the line was pretty, but the leader turned over like a two-decades-old gate hinge (poorly), and the fly landed almost where it was supposed to (actually, it landed there almost never).

When you think of yourself as a seasoned fly fisherman who’s got the basics wired, something like this grates a little (note: it grates a lot).

Later – after the wind came up a little – I cut a chunk of the butt section away and lengthened the tippet to compensate, so instead of the thing casting like a capital L, it cast like an ampersand.

Sometimes, I hate the language.

Still, we caught fish and kept moving upstream, right up to a new chokepoint I’d have suggested wasn’t a big deal – at least until the slope gave way underneath me and I started sliding down a steep 40′ embankment, which ended in a six-foot cliff above a half-submerged boulder.

“This,” I thought as I plunged down the slope, “might not end well.”

Fall From Grace

I managed to keep my feet underneath me, but any further control was an illusion. To stay upright – which I figured was the key to surviving the fall at the bottom – I was grinding both hand and forearm into gritty little skin dust.

I’d basically given myself over to the graces of gravity when – a good five feet above the cliff – my lower boot caught briefly on a buried rock, and my upper boot had the good sense to also nick it, then stop.

Whew.

Sorta.

I had toehold on a steep bank above a rocky fall, and faced a nasty traverse to get off it.

And then I heard it. And turned my head upwards…

Oh Wally…

Wally the Wonderdog – apparently assuming I was skidding down the embankment because I thought it was a good idea – had thrown his sausage-shaped body down after me.

Oh goody.

Gravity runs as strong for him as it does for me, and he was sliding uncontrollably right towards me.

I was pissed at first, but in truth, the bewildered, “oh shit” look on his face was almost worth the plunge over the cliff.

Which fortunately, didn’t quite occur.

The Wonderdog may lack the latest in wading boot technology, but he does own an impressive set of claws, and I could see him physically digging them into the dirt, slowing and stopping him a full five feet above me.

From there, we looked at each other for a few seconds (I’m sure we both looked calm and cool, just like I remember it now), and searched for an exit.

We finally got off the face by traversing upstream – Wally by maintaining three points of contact, and me by kicking tiny little footholds in the loose stuff.

Deep breath.

My shin and forearm were chewed, but the vital bits – ankles, legs, arms, neck – were unbroken.

Frankly, I counted it as a victory.

The Wonderdog – whose brain retains nothing of what happened more than six seconds prior – seemed fine too.

So we kept fishing.

The Turnaround

I knew we’d already gone farther than I planned, but we’d justed reached a slightly flatter stretch. After you drag your butt up a steep, claustrophobic canyon in the noontime heat, you rightly consider these stretches your reward.

Which is when the Wonderdog started limping. Badly.

Wally’s nothing if not enthusiastic, but he’s not exactly equipped for boulder-hopping his way up a canyon.

And while it hate to admit it, he’s no longer a puppy.

In fact, even a short walk tends to gimp him up the next day, and both the L&T and I are facing an unhappy reality; the Wonderdog’s aging fast.

Once we’re back from Maine, he’s going to the vet for a full workup, and perhaps those once-a-month arthritis shots will put a little spring back in his step.

At that moment, my biggest concern was getting him home without carrying him, which I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do anyway.

The little mountain stream - so far...

We limped back down the canyon – me trying to clean the bigger gravel bits out of my leg and arm, and the Wonderdog stopping every few minutes to stand ungracefully, his back paw elevated.

Then he started limping on his left front paw, though fortunately, that was the result of a few stickers.

After a little wrestling, I yanked those out of his paw (let’s hear it for surgical forceps), and we resumed our Death Limp.

In truth, this part isn’t very dramatic – until we got back to the big pool, where a new bathing beauty had taken up residence (drama takes many forms).

We rolled into the house better than five hours after we started, both of us feeling a little beat up.

Maybe even a little old.

Going Home/Leaving Behind

More obstacles were overcome than trout were caught, classifying this as a successful small stream exploration with a little fly fishing sprinkled in (sorta like Lewis & Clark, but on a slightly smaller scale).

When I go back – and I’ve got that flatter stretch in my sights – I’ll (sadly) leave Wally the Wonderdog at home.

It’ll kill him (it’ll kill me too), but that kind of travel is awfully hard on him, a perception backed up by the next day’s extremely high gimp factor.

There are flatter, less-convoluted places for us to fish, and while summer’s disappearing fast, the cool days of fall are more the Wonderdog’s speed than the heat of summer.

Instead, I’ll take a daypack with plenty of food and water, and leave the rod in its tube until I’ve reached the end of the known universe, and then start fishing my way up.

It’ll be great.

In the meantime, I’m off to Maine, where there are damned few gorges to fall in, though a header out of a canoe is well within my grasp.

See you in Maine, Tom Chandler.

Not knowing what’s around the next corner is a gift enjoyed only once on a stretch of water, and every yard of it should be savored.

After all, the next time you fish it, you’ll know it (well, at least you’ll remember the bits where you caught fish).

This day, I hauled out a rarely fished toy - a 7' 3wt Diamondglass. Big fun...

That the “new” stream in question is less than an hour from your house – a place you saw and wondered about, but never explored – is a bonus.

A big bonus.

New Stream, Same H2O

Of course, water obeys the same laws no matter where you go, so while the stream may be new to you, its stream hydraulics are pretty much hardwired into your brain.

Apparently the trout are hardwired too, because they eat the same Beetle Bug fly all the other small stream trout eat.

Big fish of the day (except for the really big fish of the day - see Wonderdog story below)

At times, the prehistoric beauty of the tiny canyon threatens to root you to the spot for fifteen minutes at a time.

Yet that sense of wonder is quickly replaced by the fly fisherman’s predatory response: there’s a seam, there’s a bucket, the trout will be here and there and there…

You get the picture.

One of the least-fishable - put plenty photogenic - stretches.

I caught trout from almost every pool – the biggest maybe breaking the ten-inch mark – and found myself in a reasonable facsimile of heaven: gorgeous little stream, gorgeous little trout, gorgeous little (rugged) canyon.

With one tiny wrinkle.

Wally the Wonderdog – mostly recovered from his Brush With Death (it was nothing a quick $1K couldn’t fix) – tended to charge into the pools (cooling off and looking for trout) before I had a chance to fish them, which put a damper on the bite.

In one choice pool – which shaded to a deep, mysterious, emerald green in the middle – I got him to stand on a rock while I made a cast.

When a small stream shades to a dark, emerald green (a sign of depth), you never know what you're going to find...

Just as I lifted the Beetle Bug off the water, a fish swirled at it – a fish that moved an impressive of water.

The 12″ trout I’d been looking for?

I false cast three times off to the side, setting up mentally for what was sure to be the Big Fish Cast of The Day, and Wally the Wonderdog – ever alert for a chance to remind me his head is mostly bone – leapt off the rock and on top of the long-gone swirl.

The Wonderdog is capable of many things, but a clean, Olympic-style entry into the water isn’t one of them.

When 80 pounds of bone and gristle smack the surface, a lot of things happen, none of which are good for the fly fishing.

OK. I lost this one, but I know where that big fish lives.

And I’ll be back.

Wally the Wonderdog anxiously scanning for rising fish to chase

Upcanyon Calling

It had been a tough, largely sleepless week for both the Wonderdog and his owner, and while I would never publicly admit to weakness, it is possible we both hit the wall after a couple hours of climbing up and down boulders in the 90-degree heat.

So when we reached an impassable, rocky stretch that required more climbing than the Wonderdog clearly had left in him, we simply headed back to the truck.

I usually open the doors and give the interior of the truck a few minutes to cool down, and while I stood around and fed the Wonderdog hot-to-the-touch dog treats, I realized this was only the first step of the adventure.

An unfished (by me) half-mile of stream stretched out below me, and dog only knows how much fishable stream I’d find upcanyon.

In other words, I know where I’m going the next time I get an afternoon free.

See you on something new, Tom Chandler.