Coming from the far side of the siphon pool last week, I’d seen an enormous Pikeminnow and a few large smallmouth at the deep end. Knowing that the biggest Pikeminnow always respond to big bait, I figured to wiggle some ersatz wormlike object through that pool slowly – hoping the bass might inhale the bait as it went by …

… mostly because as the water grows colder most bass stop chasing food, preferring to husband the calories and let the bait come to them. Pikeminnow don’t seem to care about water temperature, which ensures their continued dominance of the food chain, and like them whichever proved hungry would be fine by me.

But I’d missed my chance, and releases from the dam combined with morning’s chill makes the water colder and put a cork in the bass fishing. Even Little Meat opted to wait on the bank instead of treading water nearby.

I caught quite a few smaller fish on a variety of small nymphs, but after sloshing around the creek for a couple hours, the sun’s warmth proved a bigger draw and I opted for the high ground …

“High” being entirely prophetic given the sudden resurgence of “huffing” and the constant reminder that kids and their brain cells are on divergent paths.

It was no different for our generations other than we had a bit more self respect, opting for aged model glue or teasing nitrous from the whipped cream cans instead of huffing a 12-pack of oven cleaner.

Most of the time it ended badly, with some dimwit flooding both sinuses with pressurized dairy products, but we had respect for the woods and policed our empties, versus leaving them scattered as evidence of our misdeeds.

If memory serves I dropped model making and the dairy industry for fly tying, suggesting it may have been drug use that made brightly colored bits of feather and standing in the rain so appealing …

What’s your excuse?

Now that I’m simply another aged burden on society, I’m thinking that with this new slimmer physique, how I’m liable to scamper over those steep railroad embankments like a damn Gazelle, and how them as is with me will be sweaty, panting, and begging me to hold up.

Then I heard them self-same pals at work mention, “Him? Yea, I’m, going with Fatty, mostly because the SOB cooks better than my wife – and is the only source of Grizzly hackle between here’n Nevada.”

I think the term is “crestfallen” … but it might be “dashed” instead …

Now that I know my real value I’ll be serving Livermush and Collard Greens to the next group of rowdies, and you can kiss my %&# for a replacement Yellow Humpy – or anything else for that matter.

The real trick is simple and hearty food designed to warm a fellow from the sudden chill of elevation and the beginnings of Fall. Layers of Polenta and Pepper Jack, draped in a flavorful bath of spaghetti sauce infused with Basil and Bay leaves …

I’d describe the result as a “slashing rise” – there’s no timidity in the take.

East and West Forks of the Carson. Be there. Today.

My brother feigned interest.

“The problem you’re facing is fishing vests have always been marketed like dirty underwear; shelf folds visible and on some uncomfortably-stiff sales intern whose sweaty hands lack grime or callous. What’s really needed is some tanned and ripe number stretching seams into the realm of convex, like “Lucille” in Cool Hand Luke – so’s we don’t notice the guy wearing the damn thing mounted his reel backwards.”

I’m not getting the head shake that suggests agreement, so I continue,
“I mean we’re two old fat guys and the only way we’re going to get near some sub-30 buxom is if we pay them right?”

My brother is intent on watching his fly drift off the far bank, and appears moved yet unconvinced, mostly because my fit of marketing genius is on his dime …

“So, we can drape them ladies over most of the brownline with the emphasis on taut, sweaty, and extreme – and with all those features and new stuff no one’s seen, it’ll be provocative and doubly extreme.

Meanwhile we can take turns on the camera, making our lechery legitimate, and if anyone sees us we can say they’re our girlfriends – which will make them incredulous and keep prying eyes off your fantabulous vests and preserve their secret until you’re ready.”

(Naturally it would be twicet as awesome if we didn’t have to pay them to be our girlfriends, but we can convince them we’re famous, and most would think it a privilege.)

“ .. so whaddya think?”

My brother slowly reels in his line and affixes the fly in its dangling keeper and comments to no one in particular, “ … I passed a fourth kidney stone the other day … “

Which in my bloodline is a “No” – and I’m duty bound to make one last attempt…

“You’re opting for the staid and jaded low-budget-fly-fishing-Diva option, where I’m supposed to wade circles around your corpulent frame snapping pictures, while you hope the convex of your waistline conveys the more traditional ‘I’m well fed, so this gear must be good’ image, which relies entirely on a sympathetic fifty-plus, aging-not-so-graceful, fly fishing audience to make your designs successful?”

“ … and may explain why the fish ain’t eating at all. That portrait is enough for an involuntary regurge, dooming ‘Cyber Monday’ and all its nouveau retail goldmine to Hell and Perdition …”

“I charge double if you want them in focus …”

Fishing on the heels of a weather system is never very productive, but since every living thing had been dodging lightning bolts last night, I was hoping I could get something hungry to stir.

Not a chance.

… even the small fish weren’t interested.

… and with the people still abed, and all the candy wrappers, water bottles and toilet paper washed away, the cattails gave a glimpse of brown water majesty – the Valley version of Fall colors.

Hisself lives on the right side of that downstream root ball.  With the beaver dam raising this run about two feet in depth, it’s nearly eight feet deep. I managed to swim the fly through the area effectively, but nothing was eating.

Once the rain starts in earnest his protective cover will be a distant memory – and with it will go the beaver dam providing the safety of the extra depth. I’m sure he’ll stay within the area, but there’s no telling whether some big mass will wash down this winter and either change the character of the flow, or mash life out my quarry.

With a stiffening breeze and a mass of dark clouds bearing down on me I opted for the safety of the car.

I snuck over and dragged the fly through the deep end just to let the fish know I meant business, then forgot my surrounding during one overly ambitious cast and got a jump on the holidays and tree decoration.

Which gives me ten left, and moot testimony why some of my good ideas are tied in quantity, versus carrying one or two.

Us clean-living types braved the cordite and pre-dawn roadside IED’s to get blanked, but the colors are remarkably similar …

… at least one of us can make his next house payment.

Tags: July 5th, shad flies, fireworks, IED, clean-living, fishless fishing

While reluctant to pay for pleasure, most of the guides won’t take my money, claiming everything North of South is blown out, knocked up, and stay away. Even the party boat skippers claim the ocean bereft of salmon, and my idyllic little stinkwater a lifeless yet burgeoning plume of dam release unable to provide the release I so sorely need.

I’ve little choice and fewer options, and the prospect of fixing sprinklers versus putting the boots to your watery, yet supple form, is just increasing my ire … and as a vindictive SOB I’ll spend those agonizing moments of forced idleness producing even more things that’ll prove irresistible later.

We’ve done dinner and the obligatory romantic comedy, now I’m requiring more than a peck on the cheek, or nervous handshake on your dimly lit boat launch – I’m not looking for your regard or your respect, I’m looking for some action.

… that’s right, I’m looking for the nasty.

Sure, you’re the coquette and playing the field – but them other fellows are nice guys, who’ll keep their hands off your ample shoreline and respect your irritating seasonal largesse.

… flirt with Igor, the Hunchback of Folsom Dam … but while you’re giggling over the scowls of fishermen below, I’ll be in the bushes contemplating the unspeakable … waiting for your return home.

Tags: American River, enforced idleness, tired of this bullshit, Pink Pee Wee, fishless weekend, snow melt,

Fishing of late has become a series of indignities; rain when there shouldn’t be any, sun when there shouldn’t be any, and mean arsed black Labradors who beat me to the river just to harsh my mellow.

I can’t wade anywhere near where I fished last year, the water being too high and too cold, and can’t cast far enough – now that the river’s twice as wide. Yet I still wade out with high hopes and practice something or fiddle with flies, and after a couple hours stride back to the truck contented.

Make that three times as wide, as of today’s graph…

I had an opportunity to confirm model plane fabric is tough as nails. Thirty minutes of abuse on a seven weight head didn’t even scratch the carapace.

… and despite being hung up on rocks a half dozen times, that point is still sharp enough to make any gamefish blanch …

Tags: American River, fly fishing for shad, cubic feet per second, terra firma, wino dog

You can’t fault them

Stop the creek with a well placed cork, extinct everything but ATV hellions and gravity donations from the housing dispossessed – and when no one’s looking – slap up new signs to keep out the dog walkers and environmentalists.

Are they worried someone will destroy the perfection of their mounded symmetry?

The latest batch of signs that surround a couple billion pounds of spawning gravel excavated out of the surroundings of my newly dampened – dirty little creek.

… soon to be part of your driveway or that subdivision up the road that’s dampening the resale value of your home – due to jinglemail and foreclosure.

It’s one of many changes I logged while tromping through the underbrush this weekend, part of the yearly Spring ritual which maps the newly deepened, the undercut, and the shallow.

… and the living, although there’s not much of that left.

Saturday yielded two turtles lounging in the shallows, away from the sterile scour of the main stem – proof that some of the larger life had made it through the de-watering and subsequent flood.

Old cars being a lifeform of a sort, and most are disgorging their contents independently of the chassis. This old Chevy moved a couple dozen feet closer to the Sacramento, complements of the root ball it has created.

I managed to sting one bass up at the Siphon hole, and the departing ripples suggested at least a pair of carp remained from the school that inhabited the area last year, so some small brood stock remains.

There are no minnows in the shallows, nor fry of any type.

Benthic drift suggests the smallest insects repopulate first, and the larger organisms follow. This may be why the watershed is dominated by Trico’s – who have yet to stage an appearance.

All algae and weeds are limited to the secondary channels which are typically dry by June. New growth is readily apparent and I stomped through the dense sections to assist Mother Nature in releasing plenty of algae and sprouted growth to repopulate the sterile sections downstream.

Sunday it was the upper stretch of the river, which had been completely dry last year.  The creek is running about four times normal, so crossing the main channel required trepidation and tree limbs morphed into wading staff.

No sign of fish or weeds apparent, drastic bank removal complements of the earlier flood, and the bottom cobble covered with a thin layer of brown algae.

Much of the willow growth has been sheared cleanly, evidence of the flood’s ferocity.

What’s left is being eaten by those beaver that survived, and the ample tracks in the drying mud suggested numerous survivors.

After covering nearly five miles of creek in two days and finding visual evidence of fish in only a single spot, things look grim. It’s not unexpected, and the increased flow likely hides additional detail, but it will be some time before anything more than casting practice is offered.

Tags: rebirth of the Little Stinking, turtle, largemouth bass, grass carp, fly fishing, brownlining

I had cork in my hand, the creek was a river – and hip boots weren’t enough to get me to the other bank.

Unsettled flood gravel gives no purchase when fording, and the water’s pressure merely drives you and the pile of gravel downriver without regard to how the cleats bite or the frantic tap-tap-tap of a wading staff.

I was content. A winter worth of couch pupation had birthed the awkward predator – the young lion, clumsy and unsure of footing and every disturbance an excuse for the stalk and pounce, yielding only dry leaves and dandelions, adventure of a sort as the den and safety only a few feet distant.

The river hosts a single green frog.

The insects are largely absent, many perished during the drought and those remaining were hunkered down for Spring. Cracks in the clay banks yielded small scuds and water fleas and little else.

The beaver dams are gone, but they served their purpose. Alder shoots driven flat by flood are starting to emerge from the matted grasses and sticks cast onto the bank by receding water – prime forage for beaver and the multitude of muddy tracks and gnawed ends suggested a few survivors.

I added a single green wing teal to my collection – the outdoor’s equivalent of dumpster diving, as everything manmade eventually becomes entangled in a root ball. This year was mighty slim as the scour was thorough and even the ever-present water bottles were gone.

I was content to throw experimentals at imaginary steelhead lies – or dangling them in the current to see their posture. Scouting via long line – as the far bank was inaccessible to foot traffic.

With the first week of dry weather scheduled, I expect flows will begin to dwindle and allow me a little elevation and ability to see whether any fish remain. Until then my fishing is reduced to out of practice, out of shape, and out of luck – old friends in our annual Spring purgatory.

Tags: Little Stinking, spring flood, green wing teal, spring purgatory, fishless fishing