April days can be as cold and wet and miserable with wind as December days.  April rivers can be swollen and thick with flood.  But April is still as beautiful as its name, the true spring month that breaks our world out of winter into something nearly summer.  it could not be right to keep anglers away from their rivers at such a time, and I think they seldom are kept away, unless by the ice of high altitude or a late year. -Roderick Haig-Brown, A River Never Sleeps

The weather was too good to stay home on Saturday.  Actually, a little too good for fishing with the warm temps and bright sun.  I headed to a stretch of home water and did some hiking to check out the changes wrought by the winter flood.  While swinging a soft hackle through some softer water, I hooked my first fish of the year on this river, a very small cutthroat.  I think it’s the earliest I’ve ever had any action there.  It was a great day and I noted a few new holes and slots to visit once the snowmelt runoff subsides and the dry fly season begins.

I had been anxiously watching the weather reports and river flows all week with a Friday ‘mental health day’ planned.  A rain shower on Thursday night had me on edge but it missed the little river down south where I was headed.  Despite the longer drive, in early spring I tend to head down to this foothill stream as it doesn’t get the heavy snowmelt runoff that drives up the flows on my home water.  It’s also a much more fertile river in the middle of lowland forests with tons of insect activity, unlike the almost sterile mountain streams where I normally fish.  The greater abundance of food means slightly bigger cutthroats but they are also more picky.  There are a lot of flat glassy sections that make presentation and fly selection critical if you want to catch something other that the swarming 8-inchers.

Today, started with an #18 BWO parachute, working upstream and concentrating on the soft seams and deeper slots close to the bank.  The flows were still a little pushy and I thought the better fish would be saving their energy.   Later, after seeing a lot of darker mayflies, I switched to a #15 Klinkhammer tied on a special Japanese Yamame hook that I my father-in-law sent me from Japan.  As I worked upstream, I picked up 3-4 nice cutthroats and a couple little ones.  Finally good weather and finally a few trout on the end of my line…

When it came time to turn back downstream, I tied on my ‘confidence fly’, a green and partridge traditional soft hackle and started to cover the water with a standard wet fly swing.  It’s a confidence fly for a reason, I picked up a several more nice fish working through spots that showed nothing with a dry.  I missed one much larger fish that actually tore a bunch of line and made my little Farlow’s  100 year old drag scream for a few seconds before shaking free.  Startled the crap out of me…

Summed up, 3 hours total driving, perfect weather, 6 hours of fishing and a bunch of nice Coastal Cutthroats.  Good stuff!

Sea-run Cutthroat Trout, the anadromous life history of Oncorhynchus clarkii clarki are what lured me back to fly fishing after a school/work/whatever induced hiatus of too many years.  Roderick L. Haig-Brown said it much better than I can in A River Never Sleeps:

The cutthroat, the coast cutthroat of tidal waters particularly, is such a down-to-earth, workaday, unspectacular fish; he fits into his environment so perfectly and makes such good, full use of it, following the tides and the salmon runs and the insect hatches to the limit of their yield; and he has not been, as the rainbow has, more or less successfully transplanted to all parts of the world.  He lives in his own place in his own way and has his own special virtues.  He is a little like the burned stumps and slash and new growth of the old logging works in that one must know and deeply love the country to appreciate him properly.

To say I’m enamored of these creatures is an understatement.  I’m deeply appreciative of the pleasure and peace I derive from the pursuit of our Coastal Cutthroat with the fly rod.

This Spring has really been a bummer from a fishing standpoint.  With the prolonged cold Spring and heavy snowpack, it seems like dry fly season is a long ways away…  From what I’ve read, California is even worse with the crazy snow they’ve had this year.  This post on Cliff Mass’ weather blog sums it up – the worst Spring in 50 years:

Are Northwest Springs Getting Worse?

I had been watching the flows creep down all week and with the forecast showing some sun, had hoped for a nice day of pre-runoff fishing, maybe swing some soft hackles and even throw a dry fly if I saw some BWO’s.  Nyet…  A slug of rain on Friday had my targeted river running more than 2x where it needed to be for decent fishing.  On Sunday I said to hell with it and headed out to my home stream despite the high flows just to get some water time.  I went pretty high up in the drainage to get into some smaller water and it was beautiful as usual, even without any fish.  It started out partly cloudy with some nice sun breaks.  The water color was great but it was just high and fast.  There was way more snow than there should have been (=none).

After fishing the first spot, I was trying to take a photo of a new fly pattern and the wind got a little gusty.  I gave up and headed to the car to hit another run.  By the time I got my gear stowed, I was in a blizzard…  All within about 5 minutes.  5 miles down the road, it was sunny again…  The high point was actually seeing some bugs.  There were quite a few BWO’s coming off including one big mayfly that looked more like a Pale Morning Dun but it seems much too early for that.  Also, I looked down at one point and watched a huge stonefly nymph float by my boot.  Maybe there are a few Salmon Flies in that river?  I think the little cutthroats would probably be too scared to tackle one of those bigass bugs!

Supposed to be sunny this week with the flows dropping to very fishable levels before rain hits on late Saturday/Sunday.  The way things have been going this year, it’ll pour on Friday night.  Time to head to Eastern Washington?  Idaho?

I picked up a new (to me) bamboo rod last week from a fellow over on the Classic Fly Rod Forum.  It was made by a gentleman named Tom Smithwick and here’s how it was described by the seller:

Tom was curious what the results would be if he took an 8′ 3/2 FE Thomas taper and made a 2 piece and a one piece rod based on that taper. This is the 2 piece rod that he made…  Although he wrote “Wet Fly” on the rod, that denotes it’s lineage more than it’s reality. I don’t really use wet flies much, so I can’t speak to it’s use for that purpose but I imagine it would do fine at it. I do know it is a very nice light nymphing rod as well as a nice dry fly rod, having fished Hendricksons with it…  This is a one-of-a-kind rod from a one-of-a-kind maker.

Everything was still high and fast here but we got a slight break in the weather on Saturday (pouring again now) so I headed out to my ‘home water’ to get in some casting practice and try out the new ‘boo.  The description above tracks for me.  I don’t have a lot of bamboo experience but the rod seems fairly slow and is of course, significantly heavier than my normal graphite sticks.  It’s funny that being heavier, it takes less of a casting stroke, just a little short stroke and a touch of wrist and the rod does the rest.  I was throwing nice loops between 30-40 feet, right in the sweet spot for the small/medium mountain streams I fish in Summer.  It’s not likely to take the Morgan’s spot as my main dry fly rig but it’s going to be a fun rod.

I also wanted to try out a new pattern I’ve been working on.  This one is a full palmered Catskill with an olive body and light mallard flank wings.  It’s similar to the ‘Dark Comport’ shown in Mike Valla’s book The Classic Dry Fly Box.  It looks good on the water and floats well.  I’m sure it’ll fool the local caddis-chasing cutthoats and keep me from fishing EHC’s which bore me silly.

Now if it would stop raining and the rivers would (rise then) drop, I might get a chance to use some of this stuff…

Oh, I almost forgot.  No, I didn’t catch shit.  I didn’t see a fish or even a bug other than a midge or two.  I now haven’t caught a fish since the midget steelhead back in December which might be my longest skunking session since I started flyfishing again.  Given the river situation, I’ll probably need to hit the beach or a lake to break the streak before July…