Fishing being a simple exercise in Chaos theory most days, but if you promise anyone anything about the day in advance of the reality, you’ve hexed yourself completely, and Einstein and all his theories no longer matter.

And we fall for this ritual time and time again, simply because most of the retelling is done Monday at work – and any sharp pain as the pin is passed through the doll is assumed to be lunchtime gas or that second donut …

… so we delight in stretching truth or predicting how well we’d do if we all skipped work – and the curse wears off by the subsequent weekend, with us none the wiser to all that dark evil we’ve conjured.

Naturally, I mention to TravelWriter how me and his Dog, which is no longer his Dog as it ignores him completely, have been faring and how he might want to hone his skills on some aggressively eating fish – and I have to listen to how much better the guides were as they rowed him through most of Colorado, versus the fart bar and lukewarm bottled water I’m serving on my stinky little creek …

And if that’s not enough he adds insult to injury by snapping my profile – which suggests the 26 pounds of lard I’ve removed from my frame through Herculean husbanding of calories, would be best served by another 26 pounds of lard yet to go …

Note my ever-present shadow, rooted to my side in case I need to be defended against hamburgers, whose recent discovery that not every home insists on dry kibble, where weekends can be woodsy adventure versus shackled to the garage, and in better homes Taco Bell is served on fine china even …

… and while fishing was off compared to the last couple of outings, we still got bit regular, just not regular enough to make the occasion memorable enough to brag come Monday morning.

Outside of swarms of small Pikeminnow on #20 dries, whose unwelcome hex will have been voided by my next visit to the creek.

While much has been made about all the fish we released, it’s what we kept that makes all this exercise worth while.

Me and Dogbert played along until our fellow angler turned his back and we made off with a goodly assortment of plunder. Walnuts, pears, persimmons, and fresh chard lend precious vitamins to any meal, especially the greasy, leaden variety I’d promised to preserve canine loyalties.

It’s a sudden embarrassment of riches, hundreds of fish in every pool, visible largemouth bass – when they’ve always been a rarity, and oodles of hyper-aggressive Orange finned Bull Trout outracing both Bluegill and Smallmouth to the fly.

Sophistication is a hint of sparkle with a marabou tail – a recipe befitting a hundred fish day, assuming you don’t mind most being six inches or smaller.

Given the creek was barren in the Spring, and with only four fish counted in as many miles and I’m thinking the hell with trout fishing, where a couple of degrees temperature or a few milliliters of toxin denudes most of a watershed.

If we ever stopped to add the millions spent in care and feeding, all the  restorative spawning gravel planted, alder and willows to shore sagging banks, and substrate that can’t abide the press of an angler’s feet. Parking lots and paved roads, flush toilets, guides and drift boats, fancy flies and gossamer tippets – and all for a fish that’s mostly shat from a pipe after being fed Twinkies …

Hard to believe I ever doubted this creek’s survival, given its history of tomato tailings and fertilizer. Seeing this plethora of gamefish in a single season makes a fellow eager to spend his precious conservation dollars on a fishery showcasing hardy warm water species, that welcomes invasives, can tolerate a couple degrees of temperature increase, and can live off a diet of benthic scum and crushed water bottles.

Us fly fishermen have backed a freshwater loser these last couple of centuries, and the knowing is suddenly tough for me to swallow …

Pikeminnow Unlimited wouldn’t need yearly dues nor memberships, unless we opted for starched uniforms and well dressed lobbyists serving aged Cubans and Homarus Americanus to uncaring politicians.

… nor would I care much for what your soles were made of – as most of the locals know, it’s what’s on them that matters most.

While most of you have some small traces of scruples, I do not.

I spent the early part of Sunday hidden in the tules lining the bank making casts to large, fat, fish in excess of 15 lbs. After failing to even make a fish pause, I ransacked my collection of itty-bitty flies for a 4/0, and finding none – mentally calculated whether it was possible to construct the equivalent with dried grass and a couple hundred #8’s …

It was something primeval … old school, and had nothing to do with conservation. I’d release it after I was done, but only after hitting it a few more times with a rock.

So much for the carp fishing, I matched wits with them yet again and came up fishless.

I moved further up and did quite well, hooking and long-lining a nice smallmouth, and landing the first big fish of the season -  a super aggressive Pikeminnow with a taste for his master’s boot …

… and we caught the rare “Orange Finned Bull Trout”- popular among those that fancy adipose fin photography …

Especially popular amongst the unfortunate anglers whose primary quarry gave him the Cyprinid Finger, despite pockets full of test flies and sure things.

Note: I’ll be doing extensive work related travel between now and Christmas, so posting will be shortened and brief, and only part of each week. This gives you a welcome breather – and allows me a bit of time off from the relentless invention of news that you would as soon do without.

Travelwriter had spied some rising fish in a stretch of the river that was normally bone dry this time of year. Adding 170% more water to the stream means the farming community can’t suck it all down, and would as soon avoid doing so given the mattress springs, dead bodies, late model stolen-everything – all of which is tumbling in the current, surely to foul pumps and pipes alike.

BEFORE

That additional volume makes banks vanish, holes get created, and sandbars move miles overnight. Understanding who survived all that carnage would fill a big hole in my understanding of floods, fish, and who wins what …

AFTER

Note the shrubs, trees, and grasses are completely vanished off the right side of the creek, leaving only a single innocent looking tree that isn’t quite as innocent as it would seem … as I found out later …

The water was about 40-50 feet deep here a couple weeks ago, now it’s only a foot to 18 inches in most spots.

I went down the next evening to investigate, as I skeptical of “mystery rings” and whether anything could have survived given the above circumstances …

The stretch had become repopulated with about a dozen 4-6 inch Pikeminnow. Last season, the second since water was restored, the Pikeminnow fry had grown to three inches in length. The length of these suggests they’re second year fish.

Making these survivors of two massive earth moving floods (last year was wet too) I’d guess these fish survive by staying near the bank – despite the bank being a hundred yards from its historical norm.

I managed to land three or four fish – all similarly apportioned and nary a mark for their ordeal. 

Unfortunately they’ve survived only to die due to evaporation – which will start shortly. I may bring down a bucket and relocate what I can catch -  the creek is still starved of citizens and I don’t mind getting dirty. I’ll call it “Pee You” for Pikeminnow Unlimited – as I’m the only SOB willing to stick my neck out for a cockroach …

As I was there for a scienctific purposes, I hunkered down largely oblivious to my surroundings. I’m tossing cottonseed dander imitations and small nymphs into a small, deep hole in the wide part of the bend.

After pulling three or four fish out of  it’s depths I’m satisfied they’re all Pikeminnow, so I ease down the bank into the shallows below just to see if there’s any other activity .

The wind shifts abruptly and I get a faceful of meat decay. It’s close and I’m thinking big animal, yet dreading turning around and finding someone’s kid wedged in the crotch of a tree, victim of some upstream flooding accident.

I’m backpedaling while attempting to hold down the evening meal – all the while scanning the riverbank, underbrush, and everything else nearby, and nothing.

I ease around the tree and find Big Bird, the wiliest of all Mother Nature’s game birds, slammed into a fork of the tree at speed, and becoming more fragrant by the moment.

Naturally a moment of introspection was needed, especially as the little Angel on my shoulder was in heated debate with the little devil on the other …

The little angel claimed, “Dude, forget the bragging points, your girl is arriving tomorrow and the use of refrigerator or any other storage on your premises is completely out of the question!”

The little Devil snorted in contempt, “Dude, call yourself a Man? Don’t think of the rotting and swollen beached seal you cut too deeply, this time you’ll be able to get the stink out of your clothes easy, by tomorrow even!”

… just the thought of the rotting seal episode was enough, even if I was doing it for Science …

… in between his riding the moors shirtless in search of impressionable young females of low to middling expectations …

I figured I could play the same game – perhaps landing some impressionable young farming wench, whose Poppa’s massive tomato acreage might encompass a couple of bluewater tributaries (not seen on any map). Naturally, she’d have to find portly and balding, unshaven and flabby completely attractive, but in her naiveté a badly contrived Cockney accent would appear terribly exotic, and I’d be snapped up like cheese dip.

In short, I had Great Expectations.

Unfortunately so did the local talent, and while I cut quite the figure slipping wading through high water and moon-walking on bankside mud, I couldn’t compete with the verandah full of gun-toting, bonfire-making, 4-wheel, drug-smoking-pitbull-equipped killers that accosted me.

“Dude, awesome! A fly pole, I wished I brought mine …”

As he’s leveraging more rounds into the rifle magazine I’m really not sure how to take this, is it highwayman-speak for “hand it over, bitch” – or should I wait for a proper demand?

I opted for the non-committal, “… nice dogs, they yours?… and can you tell the big one to give me my nuts back?”

I was safe, these were kindred sporting spirits, the kind that our angling organizations wish to attract, can’t find, are scared of … who don’t like to walk far after shooting, running over, and unleashing ravenous killer dogs on their prey. They were friendly and good natured, made doubly so by a couple of large blunts circling the campfire, and warming themselves and Miss Tomato Acreage after an arduous morning of four-wheel gun crazies.

While me and the Two-Gun-Kid exchanged casting techniques, some his dad had taught him, and some my dad taught me, I gave Miss Tomato Acreage my rarified eye, the selfsame glance that makes a Whiting neck recoil in fear.

I figured her taste in gum ran to Spearmint, dinner out was Mac & Cheese, and the bit of ample that pooched out of her too-short tee showed the eight-ring of her deftly inked bull’s eye, suggesting Miss Tomato was both chaste and pure – of a sort.

… the frown suggested my portly and aging were no longer letters of Marque, it was a friendly and disinterested refusal, there was never a chance and we were both relieved …

On further reflection, the vast acreage owned by the local Tomato cartel pale in comparison to what Miss Gravel Aggregate could potentially offer her beau, unfortunately for the genteel there remains the pesky insurgency offered by us fishermen and … off road crazies?

… hell, nobody likes them.

Well maybe the six o’clock news does. It’s just as likely they’re tired of us hand wringing enviro types and could use a bit of sound and fury to rattle Grandma off her couch …

While them kids was bee-lining it to your place because you handed out Snickers last year, and as the train of ghosts, fairies and skeletons climbed the long flight of stairs to your darkened doorway, and while their darling little eyes looked expectantly at the door after knocking … you sent the little tykes away teary eyed and sniffling …

… while you lay sprawled amidst the carnage of candy wrappers and discarded Dots, watching football or the World Series, or both.

Likely you made an entire generation resentful; no candy, and when they’re old enough, they’ll know of your unspoken guarantee to treat their Social Security the same way.

Beast.

At least I was stand-up about my desire to trick versus treat. I didn’t hide behind drawn shades and a hot TV, I brought the badness to them Innocents and giggled in the doing.

The Pikeminnow kept knocking, each more optimistic than the next, but every “apple” held a razor blade – which turned their greed into root canal, compliments of that menacing dark shadow with the big hammy feet.

I hoped they’d bring an enraged parent back – but what few were left knew better, remembering the Will O’ the Wisp from last year, when dental work was again free for the asking.

Olive with a touch of Pumpkin drew the greedy from under the cut banks and cut a swath through the hatchery water. A grinning Jack O’ Lantern promising sugary treats by the fistful, and delivering base metal instead.

.. and when all are clustered around that big bowl at work, where all the health conscious parents deposit their child’s haul, and inquire did I have many little footsteps on my porch last night, I’ll opt for the noncommittal, “about the same as last year.”

Right.

I had dog watching duties this weekend, and while tossing slobber-Frisbee is a rarified treat, peeling the layers of domestication off a well mannered beast is twice as much fun.

“Little Meat” is a burner, and freed from the leash and dropped into the primitive, there was a better than average chance that all my Spey flies would be real Blue Heron …

All we had to do is corner one on a stretch with no deer carcasses or desiccated anything – as maggot-ridden has a special draw equal to something fleeing in a panic, and only to a dog occupying the seat next to you.

… only they were smart enough to keep their distance, mostly …

The nametag says I’ve never seen him before, akin to the perfect crime. While the Fish & Game is frantically searching for a second clip and with closure approaching Mach 0.6, like everything else that breaks cover …  Toast.

Me and “Cheetah” have a few rough edges to work on … Tennis balls can be returned, but anything screaming or bloody should be consumed behind bushes – so I can feign horror like the rest of the onlookers.

Any animal “siding” you while fishing has to have personality aplenty. It may justify its oxygen providing precious “pointer” skills; lift the right paw if it’s a Pikeminnow, left paw if it’s a sucker, droop both ears if its Bass … yet while attentive to my pantomime, Meat’s keen eyesight and rocket-speed were reserved only for terrestrial prey.

While twenty-four hours isn’t enough to undo years of obedience, there was a tell tale gleam of malevolence after a scorching march through the watershed…

… especially after consuming two of the three Otter that have migrated down into the Big Fish stretch. It’s both the first and last time such magnificent creatures have been seen on my creek, and despite blanket protection provided by the Fish & Game, ag chemicals made them slow and fat, something my companion exploited unmercifully.

Chase stuff, crap on stuff, roll in stuff – look wounded when hurled into the creek after acquiring a disguising scent, and expect to go to Disneyland or Sizzler upon return to civilization.

Almost like fishing, with the only difference being our insistence on cooking or photographing stinky stuff, rather than wearing it proudly.

… mostly, a limb missing or suppurating infection is close enough.

It’s been all over the papers and is likely old news, but when you take a passel of hedge fund managers with those dainty dry fly only predilections, mix in an urban setting with white wine and a pedicure,  the results are predictable enough.

Those aren’t little chalk outlines, those are the bleached and embalmed participants.

We’ve harped on this many times, regardless of Orvis’s release of a carp podcast, sanctioning roman noses and inferior fish, if you lack the proper antibodies, you’re a goner.

- via luzinterruptus

Sure, I wish I’d been there to give them a wave off, but the combination of dry fly purism and one-upmanship would’ve had the crowd ignoring most of my lecture. I would’ve consoled myself by gathering up all those expensive rods and accoutrements – and felt pretty good about the whole experience, however.

It’ll be awhile before the shockwaves hit Wall Street, most of their DNA has been wiped clean, and notification of kin will be problematic.

Test brown water fly fishing, dry fly purism, carp, Orvis podcast, fly fishing humor, pedicure

Two weeks without wheels and I was desperate enough to risk the mile and a half to the body shop to claim my chariot. Nearly expiring in the process, another 24 hours alternating shots of Nyquil and orange juice emboldened me to attempt the local watershed, knowing it was still recovering from last year’s dewatering, and probably felt as healthy as I did.

The healing properties of brown water are well documented, whatever remained of the cold bug gobbled up by legions of voracious Ecoli, and like Popeye making me stronger with continued exposure …

… and invulnerable should I slip and take a header.

Given the continued high water the last thing expected was to see the bones of the Old Girl exposed.

The flow is only a third of the old normal, which is consistent with the acres of green tomatoes still in the field. The draw on the creek has extended into August as the harvest has been delayed by the wet weather of Spring.

There’s ample fry evident in the “frog water” – mostly Pikeminnow, but I did find largemouth spawn in the deeper water, and fingerlings up to 3” in size.

Most of my beloved creek was ankle deep however.

At least one pair of beaver survived the Purge, moot evidence of why their reintroduction into the UK is a hotly debated topic. Terraforming being part of their nature, and while both fish and fishermen are appreciative of new cover, the land owner is often less so.

I rested on the bank watched for signs of fish life, but all the commotion was the result of fingerlings growing fat on tiny Trico spinners.

At the Siphon Pool, I managed to wake something of the brood stock, lean and sinewy – a Fedayeen who’d survived on a handful of dried dates all winter to plant a Stinger in the path of a Soviet Hind, or so he thought. A holdover from past seasons that had escaped suffocation, the both of us surprised and winded by the violence of the ensuing tussle.

Perhaps through the miracle of a rare shot, you can glimpse them as I do, noble in their own right, burnished by early morning light and worth every droplet of sweat necessary.

Puts a lightness in a Man’s step, sorely needed when faced with the slow regeneration of a dead creek, and a couple miles of burning streambed cobble between him and his beloved Nyquil tit.

Test: Sacramento Pikeminnow, fly fishing for coarse fish, brownlining, Nyquil, largemouth bass, august cold

… meaning all those 100 year old oaks will be chipped and shredded, all the bankside willows and cottonwoods will be ripped up and vanished, and goats will be commonplace – given their incredible mowing ability.

For those out of state, the canal-aqueduct system of California is the next Big One. The potential for a natural disaster of epic proportions – due to water scarcity in the south state, and the relentless development that adds more toilets, mouths, green lawns, and swimming pools where they’ve no business existing…

Many are simple earthworks, built with now-primitive tools in the late 1800’s to reclaim fertile soil for farming. With our propensity for earthquakes, and the power of all that pent up water – a significant breach in the right spot would bleed the freshwater out and cause salt water from San Francisco Bay to rush inland, past the pumps to SoCal, and rendering everything south of Sacramento bone dry.

One temblor away from 25 million people thirsty. There’ll be plenty of soda pop and beer, but after the riots even that will be gone.

If the guidelines are enforced it’ll require the removal of a lot of vegetation and the shade it affords those waterways, and if there was anything naturally occurring – it’ll cease quickly.

… and for those anglers fishing the Delta, it may warm the water a bit, remove much of the bankside cover, and likely cause fish to abandon prior haunts in favor of those areas where vegetation remains plentiful.

Us fellows plying the long rod had better think of brain-addling daytime temperatures and pack plenty of water.

The Delta is a legendary Largemouth Bass and Striped Bass fishery, I imagine this type of change won’t be positive for the resident fish, but SoCal is owed, so it’s necessary.

Tags: California Delta, San Francisco Bay, levee repair, largemouth bass, striped bass, temblor, averting an eco-disaster, fly fishing for bass