… I figured I would add a bit of caution to your giddiness …

The above was taken yesterday in yet another fishless fishing trip among the sordid little ditches of the Central Valley. The white specs are not cottonwood dander or disturbance on the surface, those are Trico spinners – doing what they know best.

This is not normal for the end of April, this dense a flight bespeaks late May or mid-June.

As I’ve mentioned in other fishless posts of the past few weeks, the overly warm Spring has enabled most of the traditional insects to come off earlier than normal – and was I in a panic-rush for the Sierra, I’d be stopping at the fly shop and grabbing a fistful of bugs better suited to an early summer bite.

Forget the big drakes and salmonfly’s, go heavy on PMD’s and little yellow stones.

Consider it public service brought on by a moment of weakness. I’ll be skipping the Opener knowing hordes of desperate anglers will be crapping behind every bush to lull my Boss into thinking I’m the Perfect Employee. Naturally, I’ll “drop dime” on all absent brother-anglers who call Friday morning sounding like they’re within an inch of Death’s Door.

“Really, a kidney operation? Didn’t he donate both of those to his Grandma last year at this very same time ? … (snicker)…

The Oscars are actually a couple of shows in one; the first where they award gleaming statuary for popularity in acting and immenseness of box office, and the second watching all the folks you grew up watching, how they’ve spread wider in their seats. Once lean, hungry, and fit – now well fed, botoxed and ill at ease wearing a girdle.

Thoughts of that spectacle came unbidden while tromping through the Little Stinking’s lower marshes … where past pools and deep runs had widened or filled with sand, now a caricature of their former selves.

I found myself naming them with the actor or actress they resembled. The “Meryl Streep Pool”, wide and holding few fish, but doing so with dignity …

… or the “Jack Nicholsen”, stuffed with silt and lifeless, faint resemblance to any past greatness …

I’m sure sometime tonight I’ll see the rows of directors, producers, and the up and coming starlets. Young and vibrant, bodices layered in jewels and sequins sitting next to a director or their parents -  hoping their aging and 50-something airbrushed leading man doesn’t embarrass them further by asking them out.

Poppies being an April phenomenon and suggests this is likely to be a season full of the unexpected.

Not that any season is ever predictable, but this one appears uncharacteristically so.

Should the bugs take their cue from the wildflowers, then our much beloved Stonefly Grab will be finished long before the Opener, and we’ll be vying over the Doldrums of August, versus the traditional cornucopia that is Opening Day.

What little rain we’ve had coupled with morning’s chill has the local fish on the run, so I’m stumping through newer and drier sections of the creek while the weather remains unseasonably warm. I’m unwilling to venture into the “Burning Sands of Death” areas, between Capay Valley and Hwy 505, during the Summer as the reflected heat off the sand and cobble makes trespass a real agony, regardless of how much water is carried.

As I feared, all the springtime fare are out, along with the few “Early Black” stoneflies only seen during Spring. Many are the larger bugs, #14’s and 16’s, that only come out of the underbrush when early morning gives way to midday warmth.

There are 55 miles of the Little Stinking between Clear Lake and the Sacramento marshes, and with my latest trek I’ve covered almost 20 miles via public access, landowner invitation, or outright sneak-age.

While heat keeps me out of this area most of the year, the water is simply too shallow to support anything but frogs. I did find the occasional scour pool, but most of the drainage is host to a wide and shallow trickle, making the creek 4 inches deep and a hundred yards wide.

One such pool was nearly nine feet deep, crystal clear, and had a welcome chill, and given that I was already beginning to perspire profusely I contemplated stopping and shucking off them duds to make like a beached whale …

… it was one small moment of weakness, it would have been miles from any known human habitation, out of sight of any sputtering land owner, or open-mouthed old biddy blinded by my vast expanse of alabaster  …

I figured my pear shaped frame could do with a little sunshine and my exposure to agricultural toxins would be short-lived and assist me in building a robust immune system.

Everyone knows it’s those big fish that live in the ocean for years that have all the Mercury, and like the Corvair, are unsafe regardless of helping size. Tasty little sardines that only live long enough to get their fins damp, and then seek the safety of tins, being safe as all hell …

I set the rod down and glanced downstream … then upstream, and blinked in disbelief at some ill mannered dog in the middle of the river grunting in the Pose Unmistakable.

A well placed rock revealed the interloper to be a coyote, who took flight in a panic …

Yet it cooled my ardor enough. All those manmade toxins just made the story worth the retelling, simply keep your mouth closed and splash about in the coolness of the deep water.

Yet as I splashed a little cool water on my brow, I reflected that if Wile E. Coyote equipped with a nose thousands of times more sensitive than mine own – paused in mid crossing to unleash last night’s dinner, I’d be well advised to remain chaste in my waders.

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,