I have never had a bad day with Mark and Chuck... and I'm not necessarily talking about the fishing. Sure, we've caught a LOT of big fish over the past few years, including a 30 inch steelhead on the Trinity, but moreso our days have been memorable for a variety of reasons. The friendly banter, fisheries, and overall fishing success that we've enjoyed always leaves me looking forward to fishing with them again. Yesterday was no different. After Chuck got over the initial shock of me telling him that I'd be picking them up at 5:45am, I made sure my rods were rigged up and ready to fish at first light. First light, first bite, right? We rowed out in the dark and did our best to dodge the Armada of boats that October is known to produce, which we mostly managed to do. The egg bite was pretty crazy in the early morning and we quickly learned just how fast those trout can grab an egg. One thing about the egg bite is that the trout can get pretty tuned into eggs and all bets are off if an egg imitation is passing through their lane. What's the solution? Set on everything! And even then you'll still miss a bunch of fish. It just goes with the territory. Just keep in mind that there are thousands of people sitting on the bench in the MLB, making MILLIONS of dollars every year, who have a batting average of .200. Anyway, small rant over. Yes, the fishing was really good from the top all the way down to Anderson. We caught fish in all of the likely spots and saw some salmon splashing around in multiple locations. It's hard to have a bad day when you start the day off with a number of 18 to 20 inch fish. We did, however, have a small adrenaline rush that put us over the edge just before lunch. Chuck, after high sticking perfectly in a spot that required high sticking, managed to hook a fish that jumped out of the water that was easily in the 26+ inch range. HUGE. THICK. MONSTER. All of these words came to mind. That fish picture was going to make the front page of some outdoor magazine. Though Chuck did EVERYTHING right -- keeping his rod up... keeping tension on the fish... not horsing it... letting it run... -- it popped off. No bent hook or broken leader. Just one of those unfortunate events where our hearts sunk and we needed a few moments of silence. EXCEPT IN LESS THAN TWO MINUTES WE HAD SOMEONE WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS WHO WAS NOT CHUCK OR LUKE HOOK THEMSELVES IN THE EAR. Yeah... it was bad. I was queasy but managed to man up and though I thought I might have to use the "string yank" technique, I also knew I fish with pinched barbs. So I was able to remove it with my pliers. Phew. Mark was okay after I splashed a bit of Scotch on his ear and put a bandaid on it. I don't know if I fully recovered, but I knew that flask and first aid kit would come in handy some day, ha ha! And this brings us to rule number one on the Lower Sac -- water load and do the Lower Sac flop! Yeah... it's ugly... you'll get made fun of on other rivers... but with the length of our leaders, three flies, and amount of weight we're using, it will save you! On a serious note, these two are so fun to fish with! And it doesn't hurt when the big fish cooperate and you put some nice fish in the net. So the mornings have been fishing REALLY well. The afternoon was ghost town and we only hooked a couple really small fish. Conditions have been changing a bit on the Lower Sac flow wise as the flows have been dropping down to the winter flows... 3690cfs. It was crisp in the morning but around 90 degrees by the afternoon. Hard to beat fishing in October when you can still be wearing shorts and sandals. That won't last forever. I got a few days off now and plan on recouping from the guide bender I've been on. I'm gonna try not to think about all of the fish I'm not catching, ha! Also... no suckers or pike minnows were harmed in the making of this report.