I recently had my 44th birthday.  It’s not exactly a memorable number.  For some unknown reason, Mrs. Angler Wannabe and I ended up planning a trip out to California to visit the Napa Valley vineyards and do a little couple’s fly fishing.  We were originally going to fly in to Sacramento and stay up in the Truckee area for some unstructured fly fishing on the Truckee River.  My birthday doesn’t coincide with favorable weather in the area so I attempted to find good fishing in the Napa or Sonoma area.  No luck there.  So I had the bright idea to book a trip through the famous drool-inducing catalog producer, The Fly Shop.  I’ve always wanted to visit the shop since I took up fly fishing over 10 years ago.

The trout season in California doesn’t start until the end of April but the Lower Sacramento that runs right through Redding California, home of The Fly Shop, is year round.  It’s a big river that’s only accessible via drift boat at this time of the year due to the high flows coming out of Shasta Dam.  If I’m going to fish one of the best fisheries in the state, I have to book a drift boat and a guide with it.

That’s where Chris Parsons comes in.  He was the The Fly Shop’s recommended guide for the full day trip that I booked with Mrs. Anglerwannabe.  Since my wife isn’t a fly fisher lady (yet), he’s the best for getting beginners in to a respectable number of the Shasta Rainbow Trout that the Lower Sacramento River is famous for.  Trip booked.

After a couple of days in the Russian River Valley at a charming inn called the Raford Inn (highly recommended btw), drinking more wine than any two people getting up before 5:00a to drive for 3.5 hours should, we made the treck to Redding, home of the Sundial Bridge.

To save time and avoid backtracking, I chose to drive over the mountain range separating the wine country from the agricultural country.  This really tested the cornering on the rental car as we spent about an hour and a half winding over the mountains.  I’m sure it was beautiful but we were experiencing it in early morning darkness.  We’ll have to go that way some other time when it’s light out.

We arrived at The Fly Shop at about 9:30a.  I met with Chris to go over any other needs we might have and then took care of the remaining paperwork.  Note to the state licensing divisions – you might get more woman out fishing if you don’t ask them for their weight.

We hopped back in our rental and followed Chris and the drift boat to the launch site.  After unloading the boat, we then followed him to the takeout, about 12 miles down the river.  We drove back to the launch site and Chris and I chit chatted a bit about travel and books (he’s also reading An Entirely Synthetic Fish by Anders Halverson).  It was then time to get on the water.

Chris gave us about a 15 minute lesson on how to fish the river.  It involved a 3 rig fly outfit on a 6wt rod called a midget rig.  The flies were very close together, much closer than what I’m used to.

The lead fly was an egg pattern and the two others were small nymphs.  We had an indicator and a really large weight.  The basic gist to the casting was you don’t really.  Flop the line to the opposite side of the boat and then flop it back.  Pay more attention to stripping out some line and mending it in order to get a good drift.  Then watch the bobber, I mean indicator, for any dip and set the hook with a lot of force.

We were then ready to give it a shot.  Chris rowed us a few yards and told me to give it a try.  Immediately, the indicator went under and fish on.  And then off.  The hook set was probably the hardest part for me.  I can’t even count how many fish I (and Mrs. Angler Wannabe) lost.

Chris knew exactly where all the fish were.  So, we would make a drift through a run, catch some fish (or sometimes not), and he would paddle back to do it again.  Not much fun for him I guess, but I enjoyed the hell out of catching fish after fish.  My wife picked it up quickly and started catching fish, one after the other.  I always stopped to either take a picture or just enjoy her fighting these healthy fish and therefore didn’t get much opportunity to do my own catching at that point because every time she cast, she would hook something.  I think she sensed me getting a little antsy so she took a rest, plus her arm was hurting from all the action (a little guide joke).

After a couple of hours of pretty solid catching, we pulled over and ate lunch.  We brought along a bottle of Thomas George Estates Pinot Noir that we poured into water bottles that Chris cut in half.  It was awesome.  There’s something really cool about drinking $60 wine on the side of a trout river in recyclable plastic.

Following lunch, there was more of the same.  We did run into a few slower times but they always heated back up, all the way to the take out.  Every fishing report needs a little fish porn, so here are a few scenery pics along with a couple grip and grin shots:

BTW, You shouldn’t see these awful sunglasses much longer.  Mrs. Angler Wannabe gave me the OK to replace them, they are really that ugly.

It was a great day.  Good discussions, great healthy fish on the fly, top notch vino and some time out on the water on an otherwise insignificant birthday year.  But, I’ll remember it for a long time.  Thanks Chris for being a great introducer to drift boating and fly fishing the wonderful Lower Sacramento River.  And thank you Mrs. Angler Wannabe for taking a day away from the vineyard visits just so I can enjoy being rowed around a river for the entire day.  You must love me.

We fish on Saturday and Sunday. For now, back to the Saints game. Tomorrow is a travel day. I’m anticipating a good game and some great fishing.

On Thursday, I made the 10 hour drive out to Alamogordo NM with my brother. David was there on business so it worked out perfectly.

My plan was to fish on Mulcock Ranch on Friday and fish on some of the streams around Ruidoso on Saturday. The only flyshop in the area shutdown a while back so my Ruidoso trip was going to be based on a couple of books I got from Amazon.

• Fly-Fishing in Southern New Mexico (Coyote Books (Albuquerque, N.M.).)
• New Mexico (Flyfisher’s Guides)

Both books warned that rivers in Southern New Mexico aren’t like western ones. Many are seasonal and most can be stepped across without getting wet. For some reason, I still had high hopes for Ruidoso area flyfishing. More on that soon.

I arrived at the ranch on Friday around 8:15a.

It was a cool morning in the upper 40′s but it didn’t feel chilly. Must have been my adrenaline. I drove for over 10 hours for this opportunity so I was beyond excited when I got to Charlie’s house. We exchanged greetings and went in to his house to talk about flies and look over an aerial map of his property. I brought 3 hodgepodge boxes which he determined held flies which should be adequate for the day.

Charlie had about an hour of work he needed to accomplish with the cattle that morning so he showed me to the first spot at one end of the property.

I initially tried a wooly bugger and nymph dropper. The water was deep in spots and only about 3-5 feet across. There was lots of great vegetation and clear water. I was definitely sight fishing for a change.

Some really nice trout came out of hiding to chase after the combo but they would always refuse and return to their holding spot. I moved upstream and continued fishing. I ran across a monster fish under a high bank but couldn’t get him to even approach the flies. About this time, Charlie showed back up to show me the variety of water he had on the property.

Following the tour, Charlie dropped me off with his 4 wheel drive Land Rover and I was on my way. I started near the waterfall in the picture above and worked upstream. I never found an easy way to get into the canyon though with so much water, I decided to save it for another trip. I ended up landing four nice sized Rainbows and long distance landed 2 others. I also hooked up a hog that broke my dropper off. I would have loved to get a better look but in my mind he must have been approaching 20 inches.

Overall, the trip was very worth the long drive. Charlie was a wonderful host and I really wish I lived closer. I would join the club in a second if I didn’t have to take a 3 – 4 day weekend to utilize it. If anyone is looking for a very reasonably priced club to join, it’s worth the $100 to check it out. You’ll be very pleasantly surprised. Tell Charlie that you read about it on my blog.

Now on to my second day. Not much to write home about since I never found water or water worth fishing. Ruidoso (as I was warned by some friendly locals who were on the ranch), was a dud.

The Rio Riodoso was easy to get to but I could tell by a quick look down in a ravine, couldn’t sustain anything but trout from a truck. I’m guessing that they would have been fished out within a few minutes of being transplanted from the hatchery. Not my kind of fishing.

I ended up coming back on Saturday instead of waiting until Sunday. Although I got home around 4:15a Sunday morning, it was so nice waking up in my own bed instead of having to spend another whole day driving back

Had a great trip overall and will be back to get that fish that took my bh nymph.

Here’s a picture of a model carp from the current edition of the magazine:

Article and Pic: Fly Snobs Not Allowed

Fishing for carp are probably as close as I’ll get to bonefishing any time soon. I’m pretty sure I can find them around central Texas somewhere.

Oh, speaking of bonefishing and traveling to bonefish waters, I listened to an extremely informative podcast at AskAboutFlyFishing.com Internet Radio. Jim Klug from Yellow Dog Fly Fishing Adventures was interviewed on the last show. I haven’t spent much time traveling to exotic places to pursue my favorite hobby, but it was very obvious that Jim has and would be a wonderful resource if you were considering a trip. Here’s a link to the podcast.

Also, if you wanna check out a different type of fly fishing magazine, order a copy or a subscription of Fly Fusion. They aren’t distributed widely in the states (at least from my experience) so you may have to just order one and give it a try.

Fly Fusion Magazine subscription link