And you thought your fishing weekend was exciting…

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See you fighting carnivorous trout in hand-to-fin combat, Tom Chandler.

The original gas-station slaw dog (in profile).

Otherwise, this is a man writing about a slaw dog lacking cheap canned chili or fluorescent yellow mustard, so sensitive types, those with a functioning gastrointestinal system and small children are encouraged to look away:

Nonetheless She Who Must Be Obeyed shocked me yesterday when she said, in reply to my query about a Mother’s Day dinner this weekend, that she’d like some type of grilled artisanal hot dog.

She was, of course, probably speaking entirely in jest.

It was, of course, too late.

The moment she uttered the phrase ‘hot dog’ my mind was racing with images of nifty, uptown dogs from places we’ve visited over the years. Being a fly fishing foodie my mind then conjured up images of the mighty slaw dog.

You can see the whole sad recipe here.

I refuse to use anything named “daikon” on a slaw dog, but I am, however, stealing the phrase “grilled artisinal hot dog.” It’s going to make me rich.

For a minute, I wasn’t sure.

Home is where you are.

I bought the Dunsmuir house in 1999 after coming to the conclusion I’d die young if I kept living in the Silicon Valley. I weighed 234 pounds, even short hikes left me redfaced, and I got tired of battling traffic every time I left the house.

Simply put, I wasn’t enjoying life in the big city, and given my weight and general lack of exercise, the concept of “your money or your life” was acquiring a breathlessly real patina.

I ended up buying a little house in Dunsmuir which was located only minutes from the Upper Sacramento River. I moved there the day before trout season opened in 1999, and I remember my first task was to buy a trash can at the local hardware store.

I bought it, carried it back to the house, then drove to the north end of town to visit with Bob Grace at the Ted Fay Fly shop. When I walked in the door, he glanced up and said “Heard you bought a trash can.”

Welcome to small town life.

Older Bro was there and though he wasn’t fly fishing back then, he was enough of an outdoorsman to realize that with the opener only hours away, the priority was to locate the fly fishing gear among the boxes of stuff piled in the living room.

The Dunsmuir house was the first place that was truly mine.

I hung bamboo fly rods in the front closet (I left the light on all night to dry wet rods); loaded the living room with waders, float tubes and bicycles (figured they called it the “living” room for a reason); and didn’t bother with luxury items like furniture or decorations.

A friend said it seemed like the kind of place a serial killer would live, and though it doesn’t sound all that sweet, I think he meant it as a compliment.

I fished and hiked enough in the first four months to drop 25 pounds of blubber, and the little granny flat behind the carport became a flophouse for fly fishing friends.

For someone who had always lived with someone, owning my own home was freeing.

I came and went as I wanted, and for the first time in my life, no one on the outside world would know if was quietly tying flies or committing wild acts of depravity (for law enforcement officials and purposes of Big Data, all acts of depravity were consensual).

Back then, the Upper Sacramento was only open half the year, yet I still managed to squeeze in more than 100 days of fishing.

Eventually, life changed. I moved to Mt. Shasta, got married, and adopted a couple of firecrackers with legs (defying the laws of chemistry, their fuses are always lit).

We rented the house, but the last couple rentals ended badly, and we came to the conclusion we weren’t really cut out for landlordhood.

So we sold the house to a nice guy — a Bay Area working stiff who wants to eventually live up here and fish a lot. He got a pretty good deal, and I got one more complication off my plate.

When the L&T asked me if I was going to miss the place, I thought for a minute, then told her I was a little nostalgic, but when I visited it these days I mostly saw a house full of stuff waiting to break.

Time to go.

See you at the title company, Tom Chandler.

Hard to see, but I’m hooked up to the biggest brown trout of the day.

On the way in, the Official Beater Fishing Vehicle of the Trout Underground (a 200,000 mile 1990 Ford Bronco that has seen most of California’s dirt roads and looks like it) got stuck in a snow drift, but we managed to dig it out, back it out, and then dig our way through the drift.

Ultimately, we got within a mile of the stream before the drifts acquired that “You think you’ll make it, but you’ll end up walking back to cell phone coverage” look.

I’ve seen that look. I know that look.

We stopped there.

When we got out of the truck, one thing struck us.

It didn’t look like spring. The snowfall has been so dismal in California that even the alpine landscape looked dried and dusty, like it was already summer.

If you’re a fan of wildfires this would be a good thing, but if your tastes run to fly fishing small streams — which are dependent on snowpack for much of their summer flow — you might be less thrilled.

The Fishing Part

We were there to fish, so we suited up, hiked in, and arrived at a stream that was in absolutely perfect shape. We even spooked a couple trout at the first pool.

Unfortunately, we spooked them from the bottoms of the runs, which means (you guessed it) our dry flies remained largely untouched for the first 45 minutes.

Apparently, just because we blew into this stream in spring is no reason for the trout to eat dries like it was summer.

They’ve got a lot of nerve.

Eventually, we hooked a few on the [cough]nymphs[cough] hanging eight inches behind our dry flies, and about 2:30 it warmed enough to get a few bugs flying, which got the trout interested in our dry flies.

It wasn’t a wide-open bite (I ended the day with five, Older Bro one or two less), but I thought I was the first to fish this stream this year.

Until I saw the footprints on the sandbar.

We saw tire tracks on the road, but didn’t figure them for a fly fisherman. Still, the season opened on Saturday and we showed up on Sunday, so it’s possible someone got in ahead of us.

On the way out, we learned the sad truth.

Not only had we beaten to the punch (now I’m consoled by the idea I was the first to fish at least some of those runs), but we’d been beaten by someone who was eating brown trout — alongside the road we found a gutted, cleaned brown trout which had likely slipped off a stringer.

Dang. Beaten by a fish killer.

The Gear

First, I wanted to take pictures of this trip so badly that I made absolutely sure the camera battery was fully charged.

Which is why I left both the camera and battery sitting on top of the charger. Not my finest moment, and it’s why the Undergrounders are viewing this trip through the lens of Older Bro’s smartphone.

Sorry.

I continued my test of an Orvis Helios 2 8’4″ 2wt, while the backcountry stream-loving Older Bro fished his Orvis Superfine 8’6″ 3wt. The Helios 2 is an impressive (and expensive) fly rod (it weighs nothing), but in a blow for thrifty people everywhere, we both found ourselves preferring the less-expensive Superfine.

The Superfine Touch bends a little deeper and tapers a little slower than the Helios 2, which admittedly offers a light tip and good close-in performance. It’s just a little faster than it needs to be for a small stream. Certainly, it’s not too fast for something bigger, which is where I hear some are fishing it.

This is why I dislike writing rod reviews; I could tell you I prefer the Superfine series but can’t break it down into anything approaching a pie chart, which means we’re straying awfully close to “because I said so” ground.

In the end, I can only speak to what I like, and anyone with $775 is free to disagree.

See you on a small stream, Tom Chandler.

Manchester, VT (May 1, 2013) – The Orvis Company, Inc. of Manchester, Vermont today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Scientific Anglers and Ross Reels businesses from 3M (NYSE:MMM). Upon completion of the transaction, Orvis plans to continue to operate the Midland, MI based business independently under the Scientific Anglers brand. Ross Reels will also continue to operate independently under its brand name from its Montrose, CO headquarters. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Ok. My first journalistic response was that Orvis worked with SciAnglers on fly lines (SA produces the Orvis “base” lines, which are then hot-rodded in the Orvis rod shop), so… why not?

But this passage caught me a little unawares:

“There is no plan for Orvis to carry Scientific Anglers-brand fly lines in its catalog, stores or website, nor are there plans to more widely distribute Orvis products through S.A.’s established wholesale accounts. Each brand must remain focused on being the leading innovator in their respective product categories and distribution channels,” Lepage said. “Maintaining that clarity will be the key to our success.”

Orvis is something of a direct marketing machine; I assumed we’d see all three organizational marketing bits intertwining with Orvis applying some of its direct muscle. But on a phone call, Tom Rosenbauer said SA and Ross “are wholesale business and we want to keep them wholesale businesses.”

OK. It’s all adding up to be a standard, everyday buyout.

Until I applied the sophisticated journalistic techniques developed by American’s stellar crop of birthers and conspiracy theorists. To whit:

“We think both businesses have incredible opportunities to drive fly-fishing innovation well into the future,” said David Perkins, Orvis Executive Vice Chairman. “Jim Lepage will move to Midland and from there he will be dedicated to running both S.A. and Ross. He and the excellent teams already in place will build these strong brands for the future. Neither consumers nor the trade will likely notice much of a difference in the branding of these businesses under Orvis ownership. What they will notice is renewed marketing energy, well-supported sales and service staff and an even higher level of new product innovation.”

Aha! And I had my story.

All the facts clearly point to the following: Jim LePage is the love child of Marilyn Monroe and one of the Perkins clan, and this purchase is basically a gift to him in return for his silence on the whole embarrassing episode.

When I confronted Rosenbauer with the truth, he backpedaled desperately: “We’ll see an increased emphasis on quality control and R&D.”

You can almost read the fear in his voice.

“And we’re bringing Bruce Richardson back to SA. It’s really cool to have Bruce Richardson back on board, and with Jim LePage working as a hands-on manager, we should see some cool new innovations coming from SA and Ross.”

That, my fellow Undergrounders, is confirmation.

Need more proof? I can already predict that not a single one of the other Illuminati-controlled fly fishing blogs or media is going to publish the real truth.

Thus, the absence of the truth confirms the truth — which you’ll receive only at the Underground.

See you scanning for black helicopters, Tom Chandler.

This video by Mikey Wier documents a tagging program designed to find out where and when the majority of the river’s sizable trout population spawn.

Fall River Fish Tagging with CalTrout, FRC, UCD, DFW and Orvis from California Trout on Vimeo. 

The project — a joint effort between CalTrout, The Fall River Conservancy, Orvis, California Department of Fish & Wildlife, and the UC Davis Center For Watershed Sciences — should prove interesting, especially if I can get a look at the fish location and movement data before everyone else.

Hey, this blogging stuff has got to have some benefits.

The Fall River has suffered at the hands of excessive sedimentation and invasives (Eurasian Milfoil), but it still fishes well, and if CalTrout and Fall River Conservancy have anything to say about it, it’ll fish even better in the future.

See you on the Fall River, Tom Chandler

“Wolverines!”

We drove, we dug, we got stuck, we dug more, we hiked, we fished.

Several brown trout were caught. Much celebrating was done. Report coming soon.