Sadly, you’re not looking at any photographs from the Underground’s sporting clays experience (at Clear Creek in Corning, a course I liked).

That’s because I was absorbed enough by the shoot that I forgot fire off a few frames on the camera.

With fewer of these flying about, the world is a safer place

In one sense, it’s an example why sporting clays is a lot like fly fishing a technical hatch over educated fish; to succeed, you pretty much have to exclude the real world and embrace a sort of sporting tunnel vision.

When either event is over, you look up, blink a few times, and find yourself amazed by the fact the sun has moved, the clouds have rolled in, and the birds are no longer singing.

Time, it seems, only stopped for you.

The Bare Facts

First, the chest beating: Our team of three shooters ended up right behind the third-place team (their team average was 67.8 birds per shooter from a possible 100, ours was 66).

That’s a astonishing result given my utter lack of experience, and the fact the Older Bro had fired a shotgun exactly once prior to the tournament.

Despite losing a few birds to misfires on my lower barrel (limited to one type of cheap Remington ammo), I shot a 61, and Older Bro posted a 51.

Propping up the excellent-but-still-newbie-ish scores of the Chandler clan was bamboo rod geek Chris Raine, who has annihilated plenty of clay birds in the past.

Despite a rustiness born of a few years away from the sport, Raine posted an 86, and more importantly, he looked good doing it.

He’d shoot, pop the action open, the spent shells would eject over his shoulder, and he’d have the two new shells in the gun before the empties hit the ground (I’m pretty sure chicks dig that sort of thing).

Lacking those kinds of groupie-attracting reflexes, I was content to muddle along without shooting anyone in the leg.

We all have our goals, it seems.

The Inevitable Comparison…

Being a fly fisherman, it’s hard not to compare fly fishing to sporting clays (after all, to fly fishermen, everything is “just like fly fishing, only different”).

Both are far harder than they look, and the people that make them look easy only do so after many (many) hours of experience.

I’m tempted to crack off a smartass line (”sporting clays is just like fly fishing, only louder”), but if the two really were just like each other, I’d already be good at sporting clays.

And given my tendency to make the hard shots while missing the easy ones, I’m clearly not (though I am fully capable of whining about my hard/easy tendencies in both sports).

Later, Chris patiently explained that the modified chokes on my Browning Superposed 20 gauge probably cost me on the near, fast-moving shots, but helped on the farther efforts.

“Oh,” I said. (That experience thing.)

It’s like explaining to a disbelieving new fly fishermen that their #14 Prince nymph – which successfully worked for them on every stocked trout stream they’ve ever fished – probably won’t cut it during a hatch of #20 BWOs on a catch & release tailwater, and that yes – those tiny bits of fluff actually can hook and land big trout.

“Oh,” they say.

We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Fly Fishing

Sporting clays was fun, and yes, it’s something I’ll do again.

Older Bro is already threatening to sign us up for next year’s tournament, and with a working shotgun, a little prior warning (and a few days more practice), I plan to send a good 3/4 of those Fido-killing orange saucers to their deaths.

I might even plump for “Team Underground,” though that’s contingent on Orvis or LLBean recognizing the extreme PR potential of the event, flying me to their wingshooting schools in the corporate jet, and returning me just in time to clean the course.

Frankly, I can’t think of a single reason why they shouldn’t do it, which is why I run a smalltime fly fishing blog and they run huge, successful businesses.

But for now, we’re returning our focus to another big, orange, flying object – the October Caddis.

Which, it seems, the trout are really, really on top of.

We’ve had a couple frosty nights up here in Mt. Shasta, and the bugs are dying. Rumor has it the Upper Sac and McCloud are both going big guns on the big dry – provided you’re fishing the right kind of water.

Of course, with the McCloud closing in less than a week, those hoping to put the steel to perhaps their biggest trout of the year (yes, it can happen) had better hurry.

Oddly – and assuming I can escape the constraints of father hood for a whole afternoon – find myself drawn not to the glamorous waters, but a small stream, hoping to get one more shot at the little trout before the season closes, and the area quietly fills up with snow.

It’s been that kind of year for me, and I can see no reason to stop now.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.