It dawned cold but largely snow free in Mt. Shasta, and the monster storm predicted for the weekend headed south.
Jim Reams – a bamboo rod builder who lives on the Fall River – reported 14 inches of snow on the ground, an amazing amount for April.
That's good for us (but bad for the Central Valley), and with largely blizzard-free weather forecast for the coming week, there's even a chance at some fishing, though river flows will likely remain on the high side of "unpleasant" for quite some time.
There is a lot of low altitude snow coating the hills, and that will find its way to the river sooner rather than later. What we can hope for now is that the river falls to a "relatively" fishable level somewhere below 2000 cfs. That still make huge chunks of the river unfishable, but opens up water that's simply unreachable at our current flows.
As for me, I'm still curled up in the corner after experiencing the electric cattle prod that is the US Tax Code, but I did recover enough to pick up the phone and talk to Steve Bertrand, who said the lower part of the river had some color, and that he also saw a pretty good Slate winged dun hatch (essentially a #16 BWO) that caused a lot of birds to feed, but no trout.
That seems to happen a lot on this river when the flows are high – years ago I sat through a strong March Brown hatch where not a single trout showed its nose, and this on very good dry fly water.
I've received a couple e-mails asking about the "Season Opener" up here. Obviously, the trout season is year round up here and what "opens" is the catch-and-keep season – along with all the other rivers and streams in the area. Frankly, I expect higher-than-normal flows, though air temperature and precipitation will play the biggest role. Since I'm going to be in Tennessee (taunting my readers once again), I guess I'm not as concerned as I could be. Self-interest is sometime an ugly thing...
Today's Underground Entertainment again comes courtesy of Moldy Chum, who somehow find things the rest of us would hide from. In this case, we're talking about
fishing related tatoos. See you at the IRS, Tom Chandler