With the last snow finally melting out of the Trout Underground's backyard and no monster storms forecast for the coming week, we can hope that spring has officially arrived on the Upper Sac. It's very green downcanyon, and starting to green up here at the top. It's a time of year that – when you look out the window – appears warm and inviting, but if you open the window, you flood the house with cold air, starting the heater and making the cats glare at you because you're a cement head.

It's also time to admit that over the winter, you didn't quite tear up the trout like you did last winter, when your head grew several hat sizes and megalomania settled in nicely for the summer. No, it's a different spring from last spring, which is both depressing and precisely the reason you do this in the first place (and despite all the "you" in the entry, it's possible we're talking about me here).

It's also time to admit that it's only a week before my trip to Tennessee, and that I'm far enough behind in my work that there might not be much fishing before I go. And yes, there are a few leaders that need to be tied, a few size 14 yellow Beetle Bugs to be thrown together, and yes – that annoying question about how you're going to fish those tiny brookie streams in the Great Smoky Mountains when your lightest-actioned travel rod is a a too-strong 8' 5wt. More on this riveting story as it develops.

Meanwhile, this river's high, but still fishable in places if you're willing to bobbicate, and there are a few bugs hatching. That's not counting the caddis on the Rouge and mayflies on Baum, but both are all-day trips, and I've only got a half-day's worth of guilt-free time in me. That - is as sometimes said - is the hell of it.

While I thought about all this, I got an email from inveterate worrier Ian Rutter, who – despite nearly selling out his first shipment of books on Amazon – writes to say that he has something new to worry about, namely a lot of stress cracks in the back pedestal seat of his drift boat, which is as good an illustration as anything about the kinds of things a top guide worries about vs. the kind of things that slacker writers worry about.

Today's Underground Entertainment (as if Saturday's four-hour meltdown and recovery effort of the my shiny new Trout Underground site wasn't amusing enough for some of my friends) involves a surprise visitor to the Annual White House Easter Egg Roll, my just-finished review of Bob Quigley's not-that-new "Signature Flies" DVD, and an excellent blog entry by the excellent conservation writer Ted Williams.

Thanks to everyone who has registered on the Trout Underground and posted comments.

See you at the open window, Tom Chandler