We had been peppering the river with flies for an hour without success, on a dark, rainy morning, January 24, 2001. Trout from three to five pounds had been showing since our arrival, making aerobatic leaps in the absence of any discernible surface hatch, flinging themselves skyward with total abandon.

"What the hell are they jumping like that for? What are they eating?" I asked Jeff. My friend is a better student of trout-stream insects than I, and he had visited the Yuba a few weeks prior, working hard for one large rainbow released and another one lost. True to form, he tried to come up with an answer for me, as he pulled out his insect net and submerged it, anchoring it in the gravel of a shallow riffle. I kicked over a few rocks directly upstream, and when the resulting silt had drifted down in milky clouds, Jeff lifted the net and looked down, letting out a loud, low whistle.

"These boys are well fed." He told me. Indeed, there were a dozen Skwala stonefly nymphs, countless green caddis larvae, several kinds of mayfly nymphs, and even some earthworms washed in by the rain. The stoneflies were by far the largest, most abundant meal, and therefore the logical choice, but Jeff had been drifting his best hand-tied imitations along the bottom without a take. With brown water and the possibility of fresh, aggressive winter steelhead in the equation, I had decided to start with attractor patterns; bright, peach-colored egg flies and purple egg-sucking conehead woolly buggers (don't ever say that in polite company). This tactic proved no more successful.

We were fishing the long channel-pool below the Highway 20 Bridge, also known as Parks Bar Bridge, and I was both impressed and a bit intimidated by the size and boisterous character of this lowland Sacramento River tributary, compared to the intimacy of my Eastern Sierra creeks.

Supposedly, we were here for winter steelhead, sea-run rainbow trout, but this rich tailwater fed by cool flows from Englebright Dam harbors rainbows all year, and the fishing regulations are strict, ensuring the presence of good numbers of large, fairly well educated fish. At this time of year, only artificial lures with barbless hooks are permitted. Below the bridge, we could keep "1 hatchery trout or 1 hatchery steelhead", but must release any wild fish. From the bridge upstream to the dam, all salmonids must be released.

So, which were we fishing; imitative flies for wily resident rainbows that are caught and released year round, or attractor patterns to provoke a fresh-run steelhead still reacting with the intensity needed for survival in the Pacific Ocean? Why do some rainbows run to sea, while others in the same river never leave? How do you tell a trout from a steelhead? A fresh arrival from saltwater will usually have the namesake metallic sheen, but a steelhead holding over in a river for long will revert to a colorful river rainbow appearance. Luckily, the law does not require us to differentiate between resident and migrant fish, only between wild and hatchery trout. How do you identify a hatchery rainbow? Get this: "Hatchery trout or steelhead are those showing dorsal fin erosion and/or an adipose fin clip."

Sorry is the state of our wild ocean-going rainbow trout, and that's what these convoluted regulations are all about; the fine line between exploiting the expensive, artificial, hatchery maintained runs to maximize catch rates for the hard spending public, while allowing the few, lonely wild steelhead that do make it up the system to live. Not even to spawn successfully, mind you- just to freaking live. Every branch of the mighty Sacramento, California's lifeblood, has been dammed, blocking the sea-run rainbows from their birthplaces, their spawning destinations. The answer to the loss of hundreds of miles of headwater habitat has been to build hatcheries, playing fish-god as we strip the eggs from steelhead hens tough enough to negotiate Sacramento's worst neighborhoods, fertilize them with milt squeezed from the flanks of pollution resistant young bucks, raise millions of fry until they're old enough to have their fins clipped, then send the poor, mutilated bastards out to make a go of it in the American, the Feather, and the dammed Yuba, where I was standing in the rain. The only spawning habitat here was what spilled into the water from operations at the huge gravel company, complete with bulldozers, no trespassing signs and barking dogs, just upriver.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly appreciate man's effort, now that we have mucked things up, to restore and maintain anadromous salmonid runs. My experience steelheading comes from Lake Ontario tributaries in upstate New York, where hatchery runs of introduced west coast species (steelhead, chinook and coho salmon) have created world-record fisheries. Even as wild stocks continue to decline in California, the Sacramento has been experiencing year after year of exceptional hatchery-maintained king salmon runs, offering greater angling opportunities now than perhaps anytime since the river was first dammed and diverted. Unfortunately, though, for reasons more complex and contradictory to the status quo than anyone wants to admit, the steelhead have not followed suit, despite intensive propagation efforts at the hatcheries. Yes, the runs on the American have picked up, providing some decent steelheading in the heart of California's capital city, but don't forget that we have been blessed with abundant precipitation and snowfall for close to ten years now. Just watch what happens if we return to a drought cycle, with two or three low-water years in a row. Not only may several distinct genetic runs of wild fish that have been hanging by a thread (think Russian and Napa River steelhead) finally succumb to progress in the name of agribusiness, but taxpayers can expect an exceedingly poor return on the multi-million dollar hatchery investments as well.

I was thinking about all these things, which really helped me feel sorry for myself, especially as I watched yet another large fish shoot out of the water, body horizontal but movement vertical. We had fished all morning without a strike by this point, wading in heavy current downstream, then finding a spot to cross and working our way back upstream toward the Route 20 bridge. Wading in a big river is like yoga. You move so slowly, people don't believe it's exhausting exercise- until they try it.

Jeff was always ahead of me, trying dry flies as well as nymphs. He's much more likely than I am to go to different tactics when things get tough, and this sometimes pays off. I tend to be less versatile, simply redoubling my efforts at dead-drift nymphing until I either connect or wear myself out. I was just beginning to lose my ability to concentrate on my drift, focusing instead on the soreness in my casting arm, when my fishing buddy pointed out an area of startlingly clear water near shore.

"Check it out, I think there's a spring here." Jeff was casting and drifting his nymphs along the abrupt seam between the clear and muddy water. The area extended along the bank for perhaps fifty feet, so I began shortline nymphing at the downstream end. After about twenty minutes, he said, "I thought maybe a fish would bite in this clear water. Hell, we've been fishing for eight hours. I'm done. I'm going up and crossing the bridge back to the car. I'll wait for you there" He stepped out of the river and waddled off, waddling being the most efficient method of locomotion when you're wearing thick, neoprene waders, two pairs of sweatpants, three pairs of socks, and spike-soled boots.

As I moved upstream to fish the spot he vacated, I saw that there was indeed a spring of clear water, trickling into the river from beneath a jumble of bankside rocks, pushing the muddy Yuba back a few feet. I cast my nymphs to the furthest upstream point where the two waters remained separate, then watched and mended my line until my strike indicator drifted back down along this strange division. When my flies passed in front of me, nearly at my feet, the bright, yellow foam indicator shot beneath the surface and I swung my rod tip up and back, setting the hook.

My nine foot, seven weight fly rod humped over, and the loose line I had just stripped in shot back out from between my fingertips. I yelled for Jeff, glancing over my shoulder, but he was nowhere in sight. The strike indicator remained submerged, vibrating, then jolted toward midriver as a fish splashed, flapping its broad tail at the surface out in the heavy, silt-laden current. Each convulsion was telegraphed to my dancing rod tip; I realized that this was a good trout, four pounds or better, and by the flash of a pale, pink stripe I also knew it was a rainbow.

I say "knew" in the same sense that someone can claim to know they have seen Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster, because my encounter was just as fleeting and unprovable. The fish seemed to float on the very surface of the water for a moment, thrashing so wildly that its tail curled around and smacked its head, on one side then the other. Then I almost fell over backwards as my bent rod suddenly straightened and my flies, leader and indicator popped out of the river and sailed through the air toward me.

It either simply spat the hook or slapped it out of its own mouth with its tail, which lingered above the surface for a second, waving in a manner that somehow reminded me of a middle finger sticking up. Then it was gone, and I wasn't even sure which of my two flies it had taken. The team consisted of a black, beadhead woolly bugger and a green caddis nymph, and I cast them out again with vigor renewed by adrenaline from contact with a good fish, and the knowledge that one of the flies I had on, after trying more than a dozen others, had actually elicited a strike. I made several more casts and drifts along the same edge, and once again, as my indicator split the difference between the clear and brown waters, it was yanked under, and I set the hook on another fish. This one shot out even further than the last, remaining to deep to see. I let out a loud "Yee-Hah!" which was answered by a yell from above.

"All right, finally! Now land that sucker." It was Jeff calling down to me from the highway bridge, where he was leaning over the guardrail, watching me. The fish leaped once, then ran back toward me, coming to net fairly quickly. "What is it and what is it on?"

"Gorgeous rainbow, maybe 16 inches, on the green Marabou Caddis!" I hollered back.

"Keep it!" he cried. "You can if you want, you're below the bridge."

"No sir!" I replied. "It's not missing any fins! Steelhead, river rainbow, whatever it is, this baby's wild." It had a slightly hooked jaw, deep red lateral line, and full fins with crisp, white edges. I returned it to the water and suddenly felt, in one particular knot in my lower back, the truth of what Jeff had said, that we'd been fishing for eight hours. Still, I tried for a third trout for a few more minutes, but had no more strikes, so I trudged up the hill toward the bridge.

On two hour drive home to Tahoe, we talked about edges; current seams, drop-offs, and the peculiar edge between waters of differing clarity, where I had hooked my fish. "But I fished the hell out of that edge and caught nothing!" Jeff lamented. Then the talk turned to the indignity of spending hours tying special flies for a certain trip, only to end up skunked. Then we stopped talking at all, which was preferable.

Lake Tahoe: High Sierra Skunk

You may have heard that the water of Lake Tahoe is magic, but thought it was just an expression, a figure of speech used to describe the amazing clarity, or the way it captures the color of the sky on a clear day and intensifies it; from emerald green in the shallows to azure blue in the depths.

At the Cave Rock boat ramp in the pre-dawn darkness, though, the water is inky black and the magic is real. The first hint of the supernatural you'll see is that there is no ice. Sure, frequent mild, sunny winter days here keep the lake from freezing over solid, but on January 31, it was less than ten degrees Fahrenheit out, and had been every night for a week. Still, there was not even a rim of ice along the shore, not an inch of crust where the glass-calm water met the boat ramp.

Canoeing in these temperatures may seem utterly insane, but that's just because in most parts of the world, it's impossible. When temperatures go this low, lakes normally freeze, and fishermen put away their boats and start drilling holes in the ice. Here on Tahoe, though, the fifth deepest lake in the world, the sheer volume and shape of this massive liquid body, at this exact altitude and latitude, give it unique properties. Besides remaining ice-free all year, it has a seemingly magical ability to grow big, wild trout.

That's why I was there, tying on my Rapala by the beam of my flashlight, for some redemption after my humbling wild-trout experience on the Yuba River. Tahoe is my home water, and though it is not an easy lake to fish the first time out, with experience it can be remarkably consistent, and in fact had been for the past year providing me with a remarkable string of successful trips, topline trolling for rainbows, mackinaw and brown trout.

Sure enough, after a slow start trolling minnow plugs from Cave Rock south to Zephyr Cove, I began catching fish by midmorning. Though conventional wisdom holds that fast-trolling plugs at dawn or dusk is the only reliable method for shallow water angling here, I have found that in midwinter, slow-trolled bait will take more fish, often at mid day. The winning combination on this trip was a Lahontan redside minnow, threaded on a treble hook and 18 inch, six pound fluorocarbon leader, behind the new Sep's Sidekick Dodger, in the watermelon pattern. If you enjoy trolling dodgers, I highly recommend the Sidekick. It is the smallest dodger I have ever seen, shaped and sized more like a trolling spoon, with a fairly rapid yet still distinct side-to-side wobble. It runs at less then twenty feet deep when slow trolled on a long (fifty yards or more) line, and this was the secret of my success. By running my canoe right over shallow, submerged rockpiles in ten to twenty feet of water near Cave Rock, I was able to run the dodger and minnow right over the rocks as well, shallower than possible with conventional flashers or dodgers.

This tactic first produced a silvery, 16 inch wild rainbow trout, then a larger 'bow, a 19 incher that gave me quite a run on my eight pound test spinning rig. This one, though also with the full fins and broad tail of a wild trout, had a completely different appearance; instead of silver with faint spotting as is commonly seen on Tahoe, this fish had the rich, dark olive and purple, heavily spotted pattern of a river rainbow.

Finally, at around 11:30 am, on the same dodger with a fresh minnow, I hooked my best fish of the day, a 25 inch, five pound mackinaw. These char are considered highly light sensitive and best suited to deep water, but here I was, just before noon in brilliant sunshine, netting one in seventeen feet of water.

On the short drive home, I reflected on the fact that each fish had come when my dodger was passing along the edge of the rocks. Not right in the middle of the rock piles, not from the sandy bottom near the rocks, but from the meeting point between the two. I thought more about edges, and how important they were when fishing. My only two trout from my recent fly fishing trip to the Yuba also came from an edge, between clear and muddy water. Then I thought about my friend Jeff, who went fishless that day, and about how it felt to be skunked. I recalled his comment that such a day "makes you want to take all this expensive flyfishing equipment, just chuck it, and go back to fishing bait."

When I got home, I called Jeff, told him about my success on Tahoe, and said "So if you still want to chuck your fly rods, throw them at me, I'll take them, but if you want to fish some bait and get over that skunky feeling, let's go back to Cave Rock on Sunday."

That's just what we did, arriving at the boat ramp at dawn on February third. I had a dozen minnows, saved in a cooler full of water from my last trip, and this time we took Jeff's canoe. Yes, he is also one of these extreme-canoe fishing nuts. At one time, I was not much of fly-fisherman, but watching my buddy's success with the long rod inspired me to get serious, serious enough to outfish him at times. Likewise, he tired of seeing my photographs of big trout caught from a canoe, and went out and set himself up with a 16 foot Old Town, trolling motor and fish finder. Now we trade trips, reports, advice, and more rarely, skunks.

And that's just what happened this time. I should have seen it coming. I had just gone with Jeff to "his" river and caught trout on his favorite technique, fly fishing, while he went all day without a bite. Now here we were on "my" water, a section of Tahoe I know intimately; Jeff was maneuvering the canoe just as I had taught him, trolling the Sep's silver and prism tape dodger I gave him and showed him how to use just last year, and he was catching all the fish. When my little watermelon Sep's Sidekick dodger that had been the ticket on my last trip failed to draw a bite, I even switched to the identical dodger-and-minnow setup that was working for him, but to no avail. His catch was remarkably similar to mine the previous Wednesday- he hooked several rainbows from two to three pounds, and one mackinaw around four pounds that went berserk, darting in and out of the rocks and completely controlling the situation for several minutes as Jeff struggled to pull it up on light leader. I had a great morning playing photographer and net-man though, until he hooked yet another good rainbow, bigger than the others, that leaped three times, pulling the dodger into the air with it. My easy-going attitude had worn thin by this point and I jokingly complained-

"Enough, already! I only landed one fish on the Yuba, so you're way past even at this point! Let me catch one now!"

"I'm trying to. You asked me to put your lure up over the rocks like you said worked last time, and there you are. Look down- the canoe's running right along the edge of this rockpile; your rod is over the rocks, mine is over sand."

He was right, and that was it! It's all about the edges, and today the fish were relating to this one differently than the last time I was here. Instead of hitting at the edge of the rocks, they were looking for minnows slightly further out, at the edge of the SAND, where Jeff's bait was running. Lake Tahoe, the Yuba River, and many other wild-trout fisheries often require such a high level of precision, of exact positioning, for success. By the time we had "patterned" the fish, though, and I was about to demand that I be allowed to run the outside rod, over the sand, I glanced at my watch and realized that I had to be at work in an hour.

We headed back to the boat ramp, packed up our gear, and drove home, talking once again about edges, and how it's good to have a friend with whom, when conditions are tough, you can "trade the skunk."

Until next time!
Mark (Never stand in a canoe) Wiza