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Oct, 26 2002 Upper Sac Time: Saturday 3:30am - 6:00pm , Sunday 8:00 -
10:25am
Narrative: I didn’t fish much this weekend. True, this was the “annual” October Caddis trip but it was just it was just Vita and myself and we tried to spend as much time together as possible. I fished about 2-3 hours on Saturday (late afternoon) and 2-3 on Sunday (early morning). I would characterize the fishing on the Sac as good to excellent right now. I didn’t catch many fish but I feel that with the proper methods, the fish are there for the taking. Saturday was to be my big wet fly experiment. I’d been getting favorable results all season fishing the Black Magic and decided that I would dedicate this trip to learning to fish a wet fly properly. During the week, I tied up about a dozen soft hackle wet flies to imitate the insects I expected to find this time of year. The first fly was an October Caddis imitation tied with a body of light orange silk, a thorax of orange sparkle yarn with a collar of dark hen. This fly caught a single small fish and I think was missing a key feature of the natural, namely it’s bulk. The second fly was a wet fly version of my Bird’s Nest variant. It shows promise as it was the most consistent fish taker. The Bird’s Nest consistently pulls fish in the 8- 13 range on the Sac, the wet fly version pulled fish 13 – 16 inches. This fly will require more testing. I tied the third fly for a possible BWO hatch. The original forecast was overcast days with a chance of rain- BWO weather. This fly was tied in a very traditional manner, very similar to the Waterhen Bloa. It has a body of light olive floss, thorax of mole and black mallard collar. The Waterhen Bloa is tied with and underbody of floss and an over body of sparse mole or water rat. Waterhen is used as the collar. I began fishing the wet flies down and across stream using the traditional method with a reach cast. The reach cast allows you to present the flies downstream on a dead drift. At the end of the reach, the flies are presented on the swing. With this method I hooked one fish during the first hour. Encouraging to be sure but not the numbers that I would expect this time of year. Each year I fish this water with dry flies. Fishing is generally good and I expected to be able to pull fish up to a wet fly fairly easily. This wasn’t the case. I began to wonder if the problem was me and my wet fly technique or the flies. I pulled in the flies and clamped a split shot to the leader. I readily hooked a fish. Convinced the problem was me, I pulled the shot off and continued to fish. I could fish the wets as nymphs and seemingly catch fish, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to work the wet techniques and that’s what I did, albeit with little success. Sunday morning I fished the water above I-5 to the City Park. I’ve fished the City Park before and found good water but had never from the I-5 bridge to the City Park, which was the plan today. I fished my variant fly in both its nymph and wet versions. I fished the flies as nymphs and the wet fly won out. Fishing was tough. The water temps were 44 degrees and I knew that I’d have to place the fly in front of a fishes mouth and hope that it yawned at that instant if I was going to catch fish. I generally feel that the Upper Sac is not a morning fishery. Perhaps it’s my techniques or the flies I select but I’ve never done well fishing here before 10am. I feel the water is much too cold. Unfortunately, today I was only allowed to fish between 8 and 10. Vita and I needed to check out of our trailer (yes, “trailer”- that’s a story all it’s own) at 11am. I fished above I-5 until 9:30 and managed to catch a single beautiful, wild, 6 inch fish. I then climbed out of the canyon and walked up the street to the City Park. At the City Park I cheated a little. I knew I could let me self imposed 10am deadline slide and still make the check out time of 11am. Between 10:00 am and 10:25am I landed 3 fish. The fish were starting to wake up but I had to move on, Vita and I had exploring to do. We spent the afternoon exploring streams and creeks for future Pishing trips.
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