No Shortage Of Good Days is the title of John Gierach’s latest book.  As with most of his previous books, this one is a collection of short essays and memoirs on various subjects related to fly fishing and being a fly fisherman.  I’ve read most of his books and burned through this one in a couple days last week.  Comments posted on various fishing web sites have run the gamut from “best yet” to “same old stuff”.  For me, it was very similar to his previous books, but that’s a good thing.  Reading this book was like sitting in my favorite chair while sipping a fine Bourbon, by which I mean, damn good.

Gierach’s essay called ‘Home Waters’ was my favorite, probably because I can directly relate to the content.  He says:

Your home water eventually gets under your skin and begins to define you as a fisherman…

I definitely have a home water.  The fish are small but they are beautiful, wild and aggressive.  The scenery is beautiful but given the lack of big fish, I can almost always find a bit of solitude.  Unfortunately, my home water is in the middle of Spring runoff and is unfishable, so I went to my home away from home, the small stream I frequent this time of year.

It was a nice day although the weather was a bit unsettled and breezy.  I think the temperature change may have put the fish off the bite but I still caught plenty of little guys swinging a soft hackle.  I bushwhacked into a new spot and rose a pretty good fish but missed the strike.  I’ll be back for him next week…  To get beyond that spot will require some good maps and a mountain bike as I’m at the limit of my hiking range for this spot.  I arrived about 9AM, fished upstream and back down with no real breaks and got back to the car about 7PM.  I know there’s good water just around the bend, probably unfished except for people willing to put in a lot of work for small cutthroats.  Time to check out Google Earth…

May is a great and generous month for the trout fisherman.  In the English chalk streams the fish are coming into their best and the hatching May flies drift in squadrons and flotillas and armadas, their proudly upright wings a mark that stirs both fish and fisherman. -Roderick Haig-Brown, A River Never Sleeps

Well…  not exactly like that in Western Washington in May of 2011, according to Cliff Mass at the University of Washington, the worst Spring in about 60 years – Coldest Spring Confirmed with BBQ Index

It’s been a tough May for fly fishing.  The last couple weeks, weather conspired to keep me housebound.  Actually, it’s just an excuse.  I could have gone to one of the beach hideouts and fought the wind to try to coax a sea-run into action but I just haven’t been able to find my beach jones this year.  The more time I spend on the rivers, the more time I want to spend on the rivers…  The silver lining has been that when I have been out, I have yet to see another fisherman on the runs I’m fishing.  Too smart I guess…

It was nice to get a little sun exposure and fishing this weekend.  I made the longish drive to a section of river I know very well and spent the whole day fishing very slowly and just doing a lot of sitting on the bank watching the water and the wildlife.  A mink(?), several types of waterfowl, a hunting Kingfisher and a Blacktail fawn made appearances.  There were no real hatches but there were a variety of insects floating by all day, mostly small Blue-winged Olives a few Red Quills and a lot of anonymous midges (=any small flying insect I can’t identify).  One beautiful, bright yellow Pale Evening Dun flew right by me but a little too quickly for me to sweep up in my hat for a photo. Conspicuously absent were caddis flies especially since there were big cased caddis of about 1″ crawling everywhere in the vegetation around the water’s edge along with lots of empty husks.  They must be a nocturnal hatch?  Research needed…  There were also a good number of these monsters buzzing around.  This one almost flew right into my face!

It was a great day – temps right around 70deg and a number of nice trout to hand even though the water was high, off-color and and about 30% faster than what I think is optimal for this small stream.  Fishing back downstream with my not-so-secret-killing-fly, I had a pull that was a good bit stronger than normal and my St. George actually got to sing a little bit when the fish took off into current.  I knew it was a decent Cutthroat as he didn’t come up.  The little guys go crazy with spastic jumps but the old cutts try to bull their way into the depths to hide in a snag.  After a tense couple minutes given the fairly light tippet and current, this very fat cutthroat came to make my acquaintance.  A quick photo and he sped back to sulk in the murky depths.

I was using two new pieces of gear for the first time on this outing.  The first is the rod shown in the photo above.  About two years ago, I got a wild hair to build my own rod so I picked up a 2-piece Thomas & Thomas Paradigm blank, a 904-2 (9′ 4wt) which I finally got around to building up into a beautiful rod.  And then I woke up… No, what really happened is that I put it in the closet and didn’t do shite-all with it.  Finally, a few weeks back, I decided that it was too nice a blank to let sit any longer and sent it to a pro who actually knows how to build rods.  Tyler Speir took my blank and turned it into an awesome fishing tool.  I gave him a minimal amount of instruction for the build which was probably frustrating for him.  Something along the lines of “well… you know, something vintage, yet modern, low-bling and simple but with all the fanciest stuff…”.  Well, Tyler brought the goods and did a great job.  It’s a long, light rod with a very traditional medium dry fly type action.  The cosmetics are skillfully executed, simple, yet elegant and remain true to the T&T heritage.  The length is great for throwing big mends, holding line off the water or reaching out to cast around brush like I was doing on this trip.  50′ is easy-peasy even for a crap caster like me but it also feels good with only a bit of line out of the tip top.  I picked up a nice trout on the third cast and caught fish throughout the day with both dries and swung softhackles.  It’s a rod that has mojo from day one so I’m going to give it to my 13yo son Angus (but I’ll ‘borrow’ it whenever I want..).  So if you want a custom rod, look up Tyler.  His website is here:

TyRod Fishing

The second piece of gear is the Sagebrush Drygoods waist pack.  It’s very, very nice.  Utilitarian, but nice.  I actually ended up wearing it as a sling but it could go either way.  It’s a very simple single compartment waist pack with an internal pocket and a water resistant external pocket.  The main compartment is sealed with a drysuit zipper.  Very bomber and high quality all the way.  I read on the interweb that Sagebrush used to be the source of Patagonia’s waterproof packs before they went offshore.  Don’t know if it’s true but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.  I liked it so much I ordered a daypack from them too…  A bit expensive but in this case, I think you get what you pay for.

I had planned to head south again this week but the flows were marginal so I slept late even though the weather was gorgeous.  I spent the morning around the house clearing up my administrivial duties.  By lunch time, I was eager to get out on the water and in a bit of a rush getting my fishing crap together and on the road.  Car loaded, I set out at mach schnell.

Right as I merged into the center lane of I-405 I heard a small impact noise and in my rear-view mirror I saw my cell phone disintegrate as it bounced down the highway at almost 70mph…  Worse, I remembered that my cell phone wasn’t the only thing I had placed on top of the car as I struggled to find my keys with arms full of fishing gear.  Yep, that’s right.  My wallet…

Circling back and retracing my path at double mach schnell, I found said wallet in the middle of the intersection right in front of the highway on-ramp.  Wallet secured and intact, I had to acknowledge the lesson learned – never rush, even when you’re in a hurry.  My karma balance must have been in the green as the lost wallet was a bullet dodged fo’ sho.

I had planned to just do some casting practice with the trout spey but ended up hiking and scouting on a section of river that always changes in the winter floods.  No different this year.  It’s a very woody section with lots of huge logs in the water creating pools and small braided channels that split and rejoin.

Surprisingly, there was a very prolific mayfly spinner fall going on.  Any shady section of river was filled with small brown males flittering around slightly larger and less numerous females.  They were a dead ringer for a #16 Quill Gorden.  Luckily, I tied a dozen of them a while back.  Unluckily, I didn’t have any with me…  Didn’t matter anyway as there was no sign of rising fish in any of the pools.

I ended up catching 2 small (=normal for this river) heavily marked Coastals.  The first came at the end of a swing with a green & partridge #14 softhackle.  The second when I was fishing back upstream with a #16 Adams, the closet thing I had to one of the small mayflies.  Catching the second fish was a treat, the water is still so cold, I had no real expectation of raising a fish.  I was mainly practicing my casting with the Smithwick bamboo.  This time of year, I’m mainly looking for likely spots to fish later in the season and figuring out the best drifts so I can hit to right the first time when it really matters.

I’m pretty sure the little mayflies were Cinygmula also known as the ‘Small Western Gordon Quill’.  I also spotted a fair number of small brown stoneflies and a couple early caddis.  The highlight of the day was running into a mated pair of Harlequin Ducks.  I was sitting quietly re-rigging my rod for dries and noticed the two of them making their way up the small braid right beside me.  They were amazingly efficient in the way they ducked and swam upstream while feeding – true masters at using all the little micro eddies.  I snapped a crappy shot with my cell phone while wishing I had my big Nikon…

After getting my rod rigged, I moved away from the river so as not to disturb them as I moved upstream.  Given what I have now read about their habits, they probably have a nest somewhere in that area.  As I fished upstream, I looked back only to find that they were still moving upstream following at a respectful distance.  I would move up and they would move up, when I stopped to fish a section, they would stop too.  It was very cool and I really enjoyed watching them.

Unbelievable weather, a couple little Coastal Cutthroats and great scenery.  And…  when I got home I found out I was due for a new cellphone on my service plan anyway!