The Last Pale Light in the West

I took five days to trophy hunt in northern California.  The Truckee river left me with a bittersweet taste after losing what would have been my personal best brown trout.  Kypezilla has been on my mind ever since.  Those 20+ inches of copper colored scales, butter yellow fins and belly, kyped out jaw… yeah that big buck has haunted me ever since.

The clouds gray and ominous driving northbound.  I was out of the loop of the wildfire situation in the greater Tahoe region.  Work has had me in zombie mode and tunnel vision of the Truckee river from when I last remembered it, was all that I could see.  National weather warnings interrupted the dull beats of modern country music, all that would come in frequency driving through rural California.  Stubborn as I am, I still had my sights locked on the river, smoke and all.  Only the grim reaper would be able to pry my flaming charred hands away from kypezilla.

The Donner pass looked like a highway to hell.  A caravan of Oregon firefighters blazed passed, disappearing into the smokey horizon.  I was told that approximately 3,000 firefighters were trying to pacify the fire.  I probably should have turned around and headed to the Trinity river.  As the Truckee river came into sight, I immediately realized this is not the river that I once remembered.  Car sized boulders were denuded from the river, flows were low enough to make sections a stillwater fishery.  I knew there were sections of massive elevation change and rapids still had to exist.  I gave myself two days to figure it out.

I battled it out day after day.  Stripping streamers, dead drifting crays, everything that made sense for the time of year.  Crayfish were molting in the slow runs and I figured the big browns would be feasting on lobster dinner.  I worked a section methodically, swimming my rabbit strip streamer in between the boulders.  Electricity.  The line went tight and my streamer was hammered by a hog.  As usual I failed to seal the deal and everything went limp.

Frustrated and ready to throw in the towel.  I called upon the Obi Wan Kenobi of the Truckee river.  I met BigFly on the LT a few years back.  Ever since, I check in with him every now and then to see how the river is doing.  One of these day's i'll be lucky enough to get out on the water with him.  After a lengthy conversion, he steered me in the right direction and I was on my vise tying up some new patterns.  Think smallish caddis pupae, the type that hatch in October.  Only once have I seen this magnificent hatch while on the Deschutes river in central Oregon.  It is a bug that can nearly match the massive salmon fly in size.  After tying a handful, I headed downriver to give it a run.

I began working one of my favorite runs and immediately began getting grabs on the caddis nymphs.  A few in the 14" range and 16" rainbow.  Still not the monsters I was searching more, my thirst was not yet quenched.  The sun was setting low on the ridge and a few locals were sitting on a big hole about 50 yards from me.  As the light faded to dark, the locals set their beer cans aside and pulled out their fly rods from the truck.  They gave me a cold one and watched them throw mouse patterns at the edge of a submerged log.  It didn't take long before I saw my first trout blow up on a mouse.  I was shaking with unrelenting energy.  I wanted to experience this myself.  I called my fishing buddy Charles to help me devise a game plan.  As always the plan gets sucked into a vortex by paranormal forces beyond my power.  The next day, winds were up at the crack of dawn and smoke was about as heavy as it could be.  The Truckee was left in my rear view mirror and hopes of that big brown was to be saved for another day.  I'll be back.

My last hope of a two handed grip n grin was to drive north.  The Trinity flows were up in the 3000 cfs and just recently lowered to 450.  Ideal flows for this river and steelhead for sure would have made it up this tributary.  I followed the pale light set between a funnel of black clouds.  Rain began pouring and lightening flashes set off like paparazzi on the red carpet.  One disaster into the next.  Long story short, I got a short sweet taste of chrome.  Its going to be a long lonely winter with a cold dim light waiting for me at the end of the tunnel.

For the Love of Bass Part Deux

Only mere hours separated our red eye small mouth run and our midnight dash southbound.  I planned on sleeping on my Kelty air bed in the camper of my truck bed, after an hour or so high beams and loud chatter drew my out of my slumber.  With only an hour of sleep, jello legs and road buzz, we were asking for another long hot grueling day.

I was rigged with three rods this time around.  My Sage Bass for throwing a big Dahlberg diver, TCX 7wt for punching my 330gr outbound short long range.  And a 6wt with floating line and a small mouse pattern.  My first fast ball thrown at me was within' the first 15 minutes of fishing. Still under the cover of night, I chose to fish a large diver fly to create a resonating pattern in the upper water column.  After a few dives, I let my fly settle on the surface.  A terrifying surface blow up nearly made my heart stop.  I pulled the trigger too slow and missed my shot at a largemouth lunker.

Several more takes were taken on my diver, yet nothing on the magnitude of the first one.  I couldn't manage to get any to stick on this fly.  Perhaps it was the weed guard, but most likely it was my poor reflexes.  It was a mistake to compromise this trip with lack of rest.  I switched out the Bass rod and decided to throw mice.  After what felt like 100 casts, I finally find a large mouth ready to rumble.  Not a large fish, but enough to make the 6wt dance with joy.  My first fish on a mouse pattern.

By now, the sun has risen over the crest and the topwater bite turned off like a light switch.  I grabbed the 7wt and headed toward the center of the lake.  It looked like bombs were exploding in the distance like there was a war going on.  The bass were leaping on the school of baitfish, it was a blitzkrieg.  Explosion after explosion, cast after cast, fish after fish.  It was fly fishing nirvana.  Never have I experienced anything like it.  Bombing casts into the frenzy and stripping shad patterns warp speed back to the boat guaranteed a pull.  The next four hours was high bore adrenaline pumping bass on the fly action.  We were up in the triple digits as our catch rate never seemed to slow down.  None were monsters, but all were respectable sized bass in the 2-3lb range.

We left the lake with bass thumb and the muscle memory of the bass tug.  Until next year...

For the Love of Bass Part 1

For years I have been trying to get myself a river resident smallmouth bass.  Trout fishing has always taken priority when passing through this part of the county.  Flow rates were always good in the head waters I was aiming to fish, however the smallmouth water was typically blown out during high water years.  This year has been exceptionally dry and trout water critically low.  The smallies were now accessible and the trout distraction absent.

We left to the river under the cover of night.  It was going to be a hot day.  The canyon would be hovering around 100 degrees F.  Our intention was to hit the trail before sunrise, find our small mouth and get the hell out.  Like usual, our plans dissolved.

After a gut busting breakfast in town, we made the drive up the winding road to the river.  The sun was already breaking over the canyon ridge and the mercury was rising.  I rigged a 4wt for stripping small streamers and 6wt for banging the banks with poppers.  We geared up and headed up a narrow deer trail that ascended up and over a steep escarpment.  The descent looked gnarly and I questioned how we were to climb our way out.

 Once we scrambled our way down to the water, figuring how to get out had already become a forgotten after thought.  I made a cast across a current and let it swing through the back eddy.  I held it for a moment and began stripping upstream suddenly getting vicious grabs.  The takes were rapid and strong, for a moment I had a powerful smallmouth bend my 4wt deep into the blank.  As usual, I lost another heart breaker.  What a trend for this year.

Further upstream, we found some pocket water with short rapids.  It didn't take long to get a smallmouth to stick.  A cookie cutter 8 incher, but it was the species I was looking for.

We made our way upstream and I switched out my 4wt for my 6wt.  I tied on a crayfish pattern and dead drifted the tail outs, hoping to stick a pike minnow.  Another species that I have had missed opportunities catching. I missed a grab from my dead drifted crayfish as I foolishly lifted my rod before a proper downstream presentation.  It was getting stiffling and my brain was turning into mashed potatoes.  We foolishly pushed forward upriver only to waste hours of precious travel time back home.
In just 8 hours we were to gear up for another 300 miles southbound for some epic largemouth bass fishing.  Two days of straight driving and fishing, who needs sleep when your driven by addiction.  Die by the fly.