It happens every year. I find myself at loose ends after the trout season closes. Although fishing opportunities are available (see the sidebar), the cold weather and snow where I live usually mean I end up puttering around the house and watching sports on TV. Still, there is more to fishing than the actual activity itself, and there are certainly things you can do during the off-season to help you prepare for the resumption of summertime trout angling. I like to think of these things as productive organization and thoughtful planning. My wife refers to this as playing with stuff and staring into space. Either way, there is a good deal of preparation that goes into my trout fishing, and what better time to get after it than when it is chilly outside and the streams are either low and semi-frozen or high and frigid with snow melt?
Playing with Stuff
Although a naive observer might think that examining each piece of gear is a form of fooling around, there is a practical benefit to it. This is when you get your tackle in order, ask what happened to all those flies tied before the start of the last year and which flies were actually worth the trouble, and develop a list of patterns to be tied and equipment to be tuned up or replaced. It’s also a chance to ponder the overall system by which this stuff is organized, carried around, and used, although to call what I do a “system” might be stretching the meaning of the term. A significant secondary benefit of this activity is that it will yield legitimate reasons to make one or more trips to the fly shop and a trade show or two.
Let’s start with fly boxes and their contents. Wiser anglers than I say that one can successfully fish for an entire season across a wide spectrum of stream types, fish species, and conditions with just a few patterns. I will never know if this is indeed the case. I have more than a dozen boxes, including backup supplies, and they contain a mind-numbing variety of flies. Looking in the boxes, I am not sure what some patterns are supposed to imitate or why I believed I needed to have them at all, let alone why I have 10 of them. One of these puzzling flies, for example, is a light-green-bodied nymph with a clipped pink deer hair head. I do not tie flies in the field, so this is not the result of attempting to solve a specific problem on-site. Still, there were two years or so when it was the fly de jour on both backcountry and more pressured streams. Looking at it now, I think that it has not been out of the box for several years. Why do we latch onto a fly for a time and then abandon it later? Will I exile it from the box this year? (Not likely.)
It seems as if I reorganize my fly boxes at least once a year, beginning in the off-season. Over time I’ve sorted my flies by pattern, by the type of natural imitated, by the type of stream being fished, by the frequency of use — I have tried all these schemes and never seen any benefit from any of them. Maybe there is no ideal system, and I am just looking for an excuse to take out all the flies, examine them, and be pleased with them. There are memories attached to many of these little things, and I find it enjoyable to hold a Cutter’s Perfect Ant and think of all of the different places it has brought success. However, there are a couple of practical purposes served by all this. One is to find the flies that are coming apart or are otherwise damaged or substandard, and the other is to get a sense of what needs replacing or if I need to tie a particular pattern in different sizes.
All this then yields a list that will be the foundation of some time at the vise, which is another of my favorite off-season pastimes. While I’m there, I might as well clean up my tying station, too. There are a lot of bits and pieces that might properly be characterized as clutter: nearly empty spools of thread, tiny scraps of herl, hackle, and hair, and a collection of odd hooks. This is a good time to check head cement containers to see which are close to empty or are dried up and to make sure the tools are in decent working order.
One of my major off-season rituals is to sort all of my gear and put it “where it is supposed to go.” When I’m fishing, things get stuffed willy-nilly into the wrong pockets or boxes, and this disarray worsens over time. So I start with the vest, or rather vests. Each needs to be emptied. Besides probably finding three or four partially used containers of sunscreen and insect repellent, I’ll surely wonder how many kinds of strike indicators there are and why I have to have some of each. How can I have multiple spools of 6X tippet, all not quite empty, and more backup leaders than I can use in a lifetime, let alone a season or a single day? I probably will discover that I actually did have the sinking tippet the day I couldn’t find it while fishing the Owens.
Anyway, it will all have to be culled, cleaned and/or fixed, then reorganized into the main fish bag and the proper corner of the garage. A list will emerge of things to be replaced, and an annual resolution will be made to remember that I truly already have everything I need to fish. I will also need to clean out the socks and towels from the bag that holds wading shoes and waders and give the waders a once-over, as well.
Staring into Space
Cold weather inspires thoughts of what will come when things warm up, and a comfortable place by the fire is the perfect spot to plan things for the year. This is a process that starts with some sort of inspiration. It can be an article in a publication, a presentation at a fishing fair or club meeting, a booth at a sportsman’s expo, something from the Internet or television, maybe even a photograph of a particularly striking landscape. It may come from reading or rereading a favorite fishing book.
Once the spark is ignited, follow up by doing research about your idea. If it’s a destination, how do you get there? Do you need a guide or outfitter, and when should you sign them up? Will it involve traveling in the backcountry, and if so, what kind of terrain is involved, and how long will it take? Decide on the appropriate amount of time needed to get the greatest benefit from making the effort. You will need to find out what kind of gear is involved, what time of year is best, what permits you may need, and who can give you more information.
Many years ago, my fishing partner and I were watching a basketball game and talking about wanting to fish for golden trout. Neither of us had ever seen one of these fish, and we had no idea of what was involved, except that they are found in out-of-the-way places in the high country of the Sierra. Although this was before the Internet, we were quickly able to identify some possible destinations, all of which were a serious distance from the highway. While attending a show at Cal Expo, I visited the booth of a horse packer whose operation was near
Bishop. I had never considered this form of travel, but the idea of it spoke to the physical limitations of my friend, which prevented his being able to do a strenuous backpacking trip. Some inquiries with the Department of Fish and Game narrowed our search to a specific basin in the John Muir Wilderness, and we were able to locate an outfitter who could get us in and out on our own schedule. Seven months after our first conversation, my friend and I spent five days in the French Canyon area. We fished five lakes and their connecting streams and caught the most beautiful trout I had even seen. That trip is still alive in my memory, and it was the beginning of a series of such backcountry journeys that will continue with a trip that is in the works for this coming summer.
This kind of planning does not have to involve complicated multiday trips, either. It can be as simple as looking for a few new places to visit for a day over the course of the year. I keep notes of my fishing trips, some of them in little books and most of them in my mind. I looked at the list of places I had fished over the past three years and was struck by the fact that the same waters dominated every year. Without particularly intending to, I had restricted myself to a pretty static list of venues. (In part, this is because I made a resolution to fish the same stretch of Bishop Creek once a week from the opening week of the season to the day it ended. There was a specific purpose for this: I wanted to record my observations of the conditions and changes on this water during the course of a season.)
Spread out a few maps and look for some places that you have never been at all or that you skipped while on the way to another destination. If you have gone into the woods for a distance of 10 miles or so to reach a particular lake, there is a good chance that you passed some fishing opportunities along the way or that there are some locations near the one you visited that deserve attention. I wonder what else can be found in places such as the other side of McGee Pass or Mono Pass or in the Golden Trout Wilderness. Surely I would find spots that I would love.
Think about the waters you have seen from the car as you were driving somewhere to fish. Sometimes you can get information about them from guides, fly shops, and chambers of commerce.
For the backcountry, grab a couple of hiking guides and look for routes in the area of interest. The guides will identify the principal destination in every area, leaving you the opportunity to examine the surrounding countryside for alternative side trips. This approach will let you discover excursions that can involve anything from a few hours to several days, and an hour or so with a map is enough to generate a list of research projects.
Hiking guides also are invaluable because they contain information about the most important questions in backcountry travel, starting with the basic: What trail do you need to reach a particular destination? These guides will tell you about elevation gains, the type of country involved (forest, above the tree line, hot and dusty, rock scree), and sources of water, shade, and possible camping locations. Take that information to your map and follow the trail. Chances are that there are going to be streams along or near the trail as you climb into a drainage. Look for possible areas on these streams such as forest runs or meadows to fish along the way. Keep an eye open for places where the trail crosses creeks that drain side basins. These are often overlooked and lightly fished.
If the reward is in the journey and not the destination, a large part of that reward is in designing the journey. Happily, during this planning process, every trip is a howling success. Every day is sunny, but not too hot, every cast is on the mark and is followed by a perfect float, and every fish (and there are a lot) is wild, fights hard, and gleams in the sunlight. Take time to enjoy putting together the details of a special and unusual experience for the summer to come.
One last thing to think about, looking forward: With whom would you like to fish? Often, we meet people and discover that they’re also anglers. Sometimes there is conversation about getting together, but no follow-up. This is a good time to renew those contacts and figure out a time and place for fishing together. And perhaps your usual fishing buddies will share new places or new techniques with you, as well as propose some outings.
Taking stock of things is a traditional off-season activity, and there’s no need to rush it. Maybe it could all be done in a weekend, but you may find the process more meaningful and enjoyable if you dawdle and reflect. And as you sort things out and make plans for outings, take heart: summer is almost here.
Scratching the Itch by Casting a Line
To be sure, a great way to get an off-season fishing fix is actually to fish. Trout fishing does not entirely shut down in California in mid-November. As I noted in “Cast Off Those Winter Doldrums” in the November/December 2015 issue of California Fly Fisher, in the eastern Sierra, Hot Creek, the West and East Forks of the Walker, and the upper and lower Owens River, including the Gorge, are open to angling all year long. Sections of the Pit, Little Truckee, Truckee, East Fork of the Carson, and North Fork of the Yuba Rivers are also open throughout the year. Before you head out to any of these, make sure you check Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations for restrictions that apply to specific locations, species, and take limitations.
If you don’t restrict yourself to trout in the Sierra, many lower-elevation waters actually are at their best during the off-season, and there are species other than trout that respond to a well-fished fly. In my neck of the woods, there are bluegills, crappies, perch, catfish, and largemouth and smallmouth bass. One of the most surprising experiences of my fishing career was taking two-to-three-pound catfish on a beadhead Copper John Nymph in a pond near my home in Bishop. My intention was to hook a few bluegills for fun on a bright day in early spring. The catfish put me to an unexpected test with the 3-weight rod I was using, and I went home with a real sense of wonderment. In the eastern Sierra, these warmwater fish are found in Inyo County in ponds and other still waters, in the lower Owens, and in various creeks and ditches. Inyo County and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power have produced a guide to these eastern Sierra locations, and information can be obtained at local fishing businesses. Chasing warmwater fish provides a great opportunity to spend a few hours outside on sunny spring days. You get the enjoyment of being out and about, as well as a chance to cast different types of flies, try new techniques, sharpen up casting skills, and maybe bring home a dinner’s worth of yummy panfish.
— Peter Pumphrey
