Information has dribbled into the Underground drips and drabs, but because of my throughput-challenged dial-up connection and lack of time, I've fallen behind.

And since it's September – start of the Fall fishing season – there's a lot of catching up to do.

While I chase the wily smallmouth and landlocked Atlantic Salmon in Maine, the digitally challenged Ian Rutter is heading for Montana, where he and Charity will pretend to "host" two weeks worth of fly fishers while – in reality – they fish like mad people.

Down south, the Underground's SoCal Saltwater Correspondent Jim Troyer has been hammering calico bass from a kayak, and he's tying a lot of 2/0 streamers for his trip to Baja's East Cape in October.

The East Cape fish are fearsome critters, so let's hope he makes it back with his typing digits intact and sends us a report.

Back home, Dave Roberts is looming up the truck and heading for the North Umpqua, where he'll chase steelies and even cutthroat on the upper reaches. And as soon as Chris Raine reads all this, I'm pretty sure he's going to load up the Airstream and head for the Williamson. Or not.

I spent the morning chasing smallmouth from a kayak, and after bagging one here and there, finally found a concentration of the bronze battlers hanging on a boulder-strewn dropoff.

I have enough fishing options at hand – not including the lakes and ponds that are only a short drive away – that I catch myself getting a little frantic about getting it all in (forgetting that I'm on a vacation).

This afternoon I'll either be back on the river, or headed uplake with the LT Nancy. And if my urban readers aren't already jealous enough, I'm sitting on the back porch of the cabin watching a pair of woodpeckers scouring trees for bugs.

My cup runneth over. See you wherever, Tom Chandler.

ian rutter, maine, grand lake, smallmouth, east cape