I have a complicated relationship with change.

As an angler, I relish change. On the water, a change in tactics can often improve my luck. I’ll change the fly, or where it sits in the water column, change the distance or direction of a cast, the speed of my retrieve. I change lines, leaders, and tippet — hell, even rods and reels — to suit my quests and the quarry that I chase.

In daily life, change rarely feels so grand. I cling to patterns, to ways of doing things, to beliefs long debunked. I tell myself these predilections — gin, up with a twist; swinging a wet fly in front of a rising fish; or that a new hat is unlucky until it’s sweatstained and dirty — are quirky, harmless signatures of who I am. But the truth is that consistency feels good. Reliable. And it soothes my innate discomfort with the unplanned and unforeseen.

Still, every so often, something in me itches for disruption. My resistance to change piles up and I long to cut loose, knock the rust off. Ironically, the only antidote to the self-imposed ennui is the very thing I try so hard to control. And for anglers, that means only one thing.

So in early February, in the midst of a particularly snowy winter, when my buddy Chris’s email dinged my inbox, the subject line —McCloud River Fishing Trip - May — read more like the antidote to my chronic malaise than an invitation.

Planning a fishing trip is like pushing a boulder down a mountain. You know it’ll reach the bottom, but you’re never sure how much damage it will do on the way down. Sometimes you just cover your eyes and hope for the best. That’s what I did, and before I knew it, I was standing in the sloped, dusty parking lot of the McCloud Market, watching sunlight ricochet off the snow-capped crater of Mount Shasta, wondering just how much of a mess I’d left behind.

As if on cue, a lanky twenty-something punted open the glass door of the market with a bang, shaking me from my musings. He grinned at me as he lashed a case of Miller High Life to the bench seat of a motorbike with a bungee cord.

I’ve always found it easy to covet the lives of perfect strangers when they live in such beautiful places, and although I’d waited months to fly three thousand miles, drive five hours, and play hooky from work and life to make this trip a reality, I felt a pang of envy when he revved the engine toward some happy-hour hang. I imagined his carefree life, shaped by the easy confidence of someone who still believes, as I once did, that the future is limitless.

A second crash reset my focus on the rider, who was now standing over the smashed case lying in a widening pool of golden, frothy liquid. In the hangdog scene I spotted a glimmer of my former recklessness and tried not to take it as an omen.

Chris and Adam exited the market, and we tucked the last-minute provisions into the bed of the rental truck we’d picked up outside San Francisco Airport. Chris’s Subaru was packed to the gills, duffels lashed to the roof like a caravan camel. We looked ridiculous, a rolling sporting-goods store cutting through Bay Area traffic, and agreed that the cost of a rental was a small price for peace of mind on the steep dirt service road that would drop us into the McCloud River canyon.

Every switchback of the access road ushered us deeper into the canyon, further away from our lives, closer to ourselves, and toward the river we’d traveled all this way to explore. We were here to fish, sure, but none of us was gunning for trophies or even really cared if we caught any at all. The narrow aperture through which we once viewed fishing has widened, the frame around it delightfully blurred. Fishing has become the medium, a chance to be alive, present and together in pursuit, but not obsessed or obsessive or wrapped up in anything but the moment and its unfurling.

At the bottom of the canyon we found the AhDiNa campground and picked a spot close to the water. We unloaded the vehicles and began pitching camp, each savoring the magnitude of our escape and fighting the urge to rig up a rod and head to the water. Somewhere in the jigsaw of camping gear, fishing equipment, and cooking supplies, it occurred to me that each of us, in his own way, was grappling with change.

If the world is an upland field of opportunity, Adam is like a birddog weaving, nose down, with the wake in the grass the only indicator of where he’s going. But this trip was only a few months before the due date of his firstborn, this undoubtedly the last great getaway before fatherhood and all that comes with it. I wondered how it might change him, and to what extent that new responsibility would shift his priorities. I had no doubt his child would someday join us on these trips, and as that thought set in, I realized we were experiencing the last days of Adam 1.0, and a part of me already missed him.

Chris was raw from the sudden loss of a loved one, still piecing his world back together in the fog of grief. Being here with us was clearly hard for him, if only because he thought he had to hide his pain from us, or perhaps that his muted demeanor might somehow detract from the joy we always gained from being in his orbit.

Death is the great magnifier. It shows us what remains when the people we love are taken away. But I’ve never experienced losing someone unexpectedly, and I can only imagine how disorienting it is. I watched him paw through the back of his Subaru and hoped that this trip — the actualization of years of planning on his part— might help him feel more like himself, even for a little while.

Some rivers are grand, poised in postcard vistas that tug the heartstrings of the modern human like the memory of a former lover. Others beckon like pristine oases to the nature-starved traveler seeking satisfaction in their simple, incomparable beauty. Down in the canyon, the McCloud runs wild and primeval, unbothered by its secluded and hardscrabble hermitage. Cliffs of limestone and basalt steppes foil even the boldest anglers, leaving stretches of its blue-green water unreachable and shrouded in ponderosa pines and stalwart oaks; a river unto itself.

And like most beautiful rivers, the McCloud is a technical fishery. Braided, meandering currents make long drifts impractical, and nearly any interpretation of an overhead cast will land your backcast in a tree. Wading is also tricky; the ancient lava over which the river runs is slick and prone to sudden changes in depth. Much of the river is rather narrow, the far bank reachable with a well-executed roll cast, but here the current is strong and the water cold.

My field notes from our first day suggest we’d collectively brought ten fish to hand by lunch on a mix of nymphs and dry flies. “It is rare,” I wrote, “to have such a productive and memorable first day on a foreign river, although not entirely surprising given our willingness to bushwhack through tangled and rocky paths, wade across slippery and fast sections of water, and work hard and methodically through runs and bouldery pocket water to find fish.” That first night we fell asleep to the sound of the river and the smell of a campfire and sausages clinging to our skin.

There are few rivers more integral to modern American fly fishing than the McCloud River. By the mid-1800s the majority of East Coast rivers, the iconic natural laboratories of Theodore Gordon, were showing the impacts of the wool trade, logging, and dams. Native brook trout and Atlantic salmon were choked out, and by the 1870s, most of New England had embraced fish culture-based restoration efforts.

In 1874, the first eggs were harvested from McCloud River rainbows and transported eastward, beginning a longstanding practice of planting rainbow trout in rivers across the United States and abroad. Rainbows, most originating from the McCloud, took root and helped keep the sport alive through the impacts of industrial expansion. Every angler that has hooked a rainbow trout, from Maine to Michigan, Argentina to Australia, owes a debt of gratitude to the mighty McCloud River and the unique genetics that it fostered.

I thought about these remarkable fish as we hiked east along the Pacific Crest Trail from AhDiNa our second day. From that vantage point, the McCloud seemed immortal, impervious to change. Ironic, perhaps, that the trout that evolved in such a rugged and remarkable environment have become ubiquitous to the extent of being iconic, and sadly, a commodity.

It is, perhaps, because of their ubiquity that few anglers target rainbow trout the way they might a brown or a brook trout. In some places, like the Lamar River watershed in Yellowstone, they’ve been relegated to an invasive pest undermining native cutthroat populations, and are sentenced to instant death if caught. The rainbow trout is undoubtedly the most well-traveled trout, but the cost is a reputation tangled up with our modern notions of native fish, conservation, and more than a century of agricultural fisheries management, the downstream effects of which are still being studied.

It’s easy to ignore the fact that McCloud River rainbows were selected precisely because of their hardy nature refined over tens of thousands of years in these remote and austere conditions. And while it may be fashionable to look down our noses at rainbow trout, something of which I was guilty for years, when you consider how successful these fierce McCloud River fish have been at proliferating in new and different environments, it’s hard not to be amazed at their ability to adapt.

Of all the rainbow trout I landed that trip, the aggressive sow that tackled my size 10 stimulator that afternoon was the prototypical McCloud River rainbow. It muscled between current lines, darted toward submerged timber, and managed several impressive leaps before succumbing to my five weight rod and an armful of side pressure. This fish was to the average stocked rainbow what a jaguar is a housecat.

Chris clicked away, capturing images of the fight and the fish we were sure would speak volumes about these storied waters and the magnificent trout that inhabit them. But weeks later, when he developed the roll, the whole thing came back ruined by a wandering light leak. Every frame was scalded and spectral, as if the sun itself had tried to erase the evidence of what we’d seen.

Hoofing our way back along the PCT toward camp that evening, I was forced to confront the change I’d been skirting all trip: I’m getting older. Not catastrophically, just the quiet, predictable kind of aging that is starting to show up more and more in the margins. Proof that my body is beginning to reject the kind of abuse I once shrugged off.

As I plodded along, I found myself performing a quiet calculation: How many more trips like this can I reasonably muster? Will I ever reach the other rugged rivers that fill my daydreams? When does this kind of fly fishing begin to slip out of reach?

On our final day, we ventured downstream to the section of conservancy water within the Kerry Landreth Preserve. This section, several miles of twisting runs and aquamarine drop pools, is limited to a maximum of ten anglers per day via a tag system. Half can be secured online, while the other is reserved for walk-ins, made available daily around 7AM. We found the little ranger cabin well before 6:30 and were pleased when we claimed the first three walk-in tags.

There is an unrivaled sense of ease in knowing you have more water ahead of you than you can possibly fish, and we delighted in stopping at only the best-looking spots. We retained only a vague sense of where we were, or how far we’d fished and occasionally pinched at the image I’d snapped that morning of the cartoonish, illustrated map posted at the ranger station with my signal-less phone.

Evening comes early in the canyon, and we welcomed the chance to replace the heavily weighted nymph rigs with fresh monofilament leaders, and dig the dry fly boxes from the bottoms of our packs. Instinct — and some recent experience — told us to wait and watch for rises, so we did, quietly pondering patterns and squinting skyward at hatching insects silhouetted against the diffused aura of twilight.

The rainbow that sipped Adam’s sparse emerger seemed more offended at having been deceived than at being hooked. It dropped into the deeper seam and tore downstream, drawing the fine tippet taut. Adam played it with the quiet respect of someone who recognized that the subtle, dimpled rise he’d targeted belonged to a full-grown fish.

We hadn’t come to the McCloud in search of trophy rainbows, but Adam had found one; a large wild McCloud River fish. Chris fidgeted with his camera as Adam brought it deftly to the net, coaxing the lens to embrace every photon of fading light. In the end, all we could do was marvel at its muscular tawny green flank, bold black spots, and the rusty band running down its lateral line. In its vermiculations lay a private message, an eons-old secret written in spots and scales that felt, in that moment, meant for us alone.

Watching it swim back into the darkening pool, I felt the first quiet hint of the lesson the river had been trying to teach me all week, and tipped my hat to the mighty, indefatigable, world-traveling McCloud River rainbow. Change comes for all of us eventually; the resilient ones learn to meet it with a little grit and a kick of the tail.

Locked within the DNA of every modern human is the restless will of the ancestor, straining against the confines of time. It prowls inside us like a caged tiger, driving us in ways we barely understand. Modernity has built the cage well, muting our instincts and distorting our primal urges into fleeting rebellions or shallow acts of defiance. Yet, no matter how deeply buried, our past always finds a way to surface.

The ancients that stir in me must have been nomads, born wanderers who shunned the comforts of the village, favoring instead the discovery of the unknown and brief respite of the encampment. When I sleep, my dreams are of the other side of the mountain, of the unknown river cutting darkly through the valley, of the sun casting long shadows on land I have yet to roam. Of wildness and becoming wild and speaking without words with the quiet perfection of nature. Of being lost and emerging again, reborn, made new, made whole.

In September of 2024 I ventured to one of the last wild places in the lower 48, the sprawling unspoiled expanse of Yellowstone National Park. It’s a place that has haunted my imagination since I first visited as a teenager, when the sheer abundance of life unfettered by fences or dams made an indelible mark on me.

As I approached my fortieth birthday, my restlessness began to feel sharper, more urgent. Forty is a kind of cultural reckoning: you are no longer a young man, and each decision feels heavier, the time left to reverse a misstep growing shorter. Yellowstone, with its untamed rivers and unbroken horizons, seemed the perfect place to quiet the encroaching whispers of “old man” and rediscover the kind of freedom that only wild places possess.

There is perhaps no destination more exciting for the fly angler. Yellowstone contains hundreds of miles of water stuffed with trout set against a timeless backdrop that feels primal and dynamically alive. The natural bounty and beauty of this land is surpassed only by its lore. My ancestors would have shared their tales over open fires, the smell of a fresh kill roasting on the embers. My feast was one of books and podcasts and cinematic YouTube videos piped into my throbbing nerve center with abandon.

There is always the question of how. And when. Cost looms large, as does the delicate negotiation of time away from work and loved ones—a balance never easily reconciled with the need to feel alive. In the weeks before a trip, I bury myself in the minutiae of hatch charts and weather forecasts, a salve for the mental torture of being stuck behind a desk while my thoughts drift toward the water.

Amassing gear becomes more than preparation; it’s a ritual, a way to calm the restless energy that builds before the gate swings open. But as the trip approaches, the fervor becomes impossible to quiet. This isn’t addiction or indulgence, nor a middle-aged ploy to veil some looming crisis. A life confined within the rectangle of a screen cannot sustain the lineage we carry.

That lineage demands wildness. Sleeping on the ground satisfies a hunger no hotel bed could ever reach. There isn’t a restaurant in the world that can match the flavor of a meal cooked over coals, or a café that could replicate the taste of coffee brewed in the crisp, frozen air of morning.

Our campsite was a short walk from the confluence of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers. There a wide valley sprawled before us, dotted with scrubby trees and the occasional ungulate wandering through mats of knee-high grass. This is the birthplace of the Madison, and though our tent stood just paces from a potable water station and latrine, it was hard not to feel as though the entire park was ours to explore.

I’ll remember that first evening with fondness: pacing the banks, casting dry flies, and swinging wets through clouds of emerging nectopsyche caddis as they drifted upward, glowing like embers against a violet sky.

I won’t soon forget that first camp meal; peppers roasted on the coals in aluminum foil and plump sausages brought to blister in the cast iron frying pan I’d lugged from home. Nor will I forget how blissfully I slept that first night, despite the discovery that my sleeping mat had been punctured in transit. A night on the ground is made much warmer under a blanket of wild stars.

I am lucky to have such good people with whom I get to share this passion. Luckier still to be accompanied on this trip by two of my favorites. Adam, a fiercely proficient angler whose punctual style of fishing is borne from a lifetime of covering small Adirondack streams, has been a constant in my fishing life. His steady presence has become as integral to my success as any fly box, owing largely to secrets he’s shared with me that were passed to him from his father and grandfather, both of whom would rank highly in the anthology of great American sportsmen. When we fish together I can feel their presence and am always heartened by the knowledge that their blood runs deep in his veins.

Chris is the kind of angler I aspire to be. He is thoughtful and patient, with an indefatigable spirit. Time spent on the water together is always easy going and inquisitive, happy. His practice is part Pennsylvania chalk stream, part California Trout Bum, the combination of which gives him the inspired freedom of an Impressionist, where each cast is a stroke of light and motion on the water’s canvas.

Fly fishing is generally a solitary act, practiced in the quiet loneliness that lends itself to deep self reflection. But fishing alongside these men is a priceless gift with which even the most profound personal revelations struggle to compare.

When you fish long enough you learn to let go of outcomes. The act becomes the purpose and in its practice you are released from the compulsive, obsessive scrutiny drummed into us by modern living. We might have only had days to spend exploring, but we turned them into lifetimes. When much of one day was spent hiking and prospecting a small river that offered only a few splashy rises and one heart thumping refusal, we cracked jokes and a few cold ones, wiping the salt from sweaty necks and tear-streaked cheeks as we laughed our way through the woods like kids playing hooky.

High up in the Lamar Valley we stepped through uncertainty to find a river teeming with fish. Herds of bison grazed around us as we bounced oversized terrestrials off undercut banks. We played the wild cutthroat that snatched them with the ease of knowing there was more water ahead of us than we could cover.

Click-and-pawls chirped and we cheered each other onward until the tips of our noses and the tops of our ears were cherry red with excitement and sunburn. The long hike back to the truck was a small price to pay for the lights-out day, and was soon forgotten as we beside the road in our camp chairs drinking in the rugged beauty of the valley draped in twilight and the beers we’d kept on ice ready for our return.

A key ingredient to exploration is fear. Fear provides context and shows you where your limits are. It’s a unique kind of distortion field that shows us the version of ourselves that we most seek to destroy while obscuring the means to destroy it. I am not ashamed to say hiking the winding mountain trail into the first meadow of Slough Creek was such an exercise, and one I would not have dared on my own. Grizzlies loomed large in our minds, and though we each carried a canister of bear spray, I found myself grimacing at the thought of coming snout-to-snout with one in such thick and unforgiving country.

We found Slough Creek low and clear and full of large cutthroats that cruised along the edges feeding on emerging mayflies. We watched them pick nymphs from just below the surface, sometimes in water so shallow I was sure their dorsal fins would show. Never have I witnessed such grace and elegance on full display. We crept along the banks for hours, trying to tease a few into taking, but mostly just watching the wild beauty.

Our fears were almost realized when a hulking brown lump emerged from a thicket of willows a few dozen yards away, but were soon eased when we discovered it belonged to a large bull bison munching his way through the trees. Few fish were hooked, fewer brought to hand, but the splendor of that afternoon was all the reward we needed. By dusk we’d made it back to the parking lot having learned a lot about ourselves in the process.

The ancestral impulse to discover what lies beyond often goes unrewarded. Incalculable hours have been lost to the folly of chasing what’s just around the bend. I could fill volumes with stories of outings that ended in silence — no takes, no rises, no refusals — if anyone would care to read them. Sometimes, the desire to explore is met only with the quiet sting of defeat.

But then, there are times when the heart whispers louder than the head, and we listen.

We followed that whisper — and the sage advice of a friend — down to the Yellowstone River, deep in the park near where it flows out of Yellowstone Lake. When we arrived, the scene was less than inspiring: a wide, sweeping bend of swift, choppy water running clear and cold, devoid of obvious promise. On the bank, a pair of anglers sat idle, their rods propped against one of the few trees dotting the shoreline. Their stillness, their waiting, cast a shadow of doubt over our own plans.

We scouted the water, searching for lies, but the river gave away nothing. I tried to read its subtle cues and currents, but the clarity of the day felt like an adversary. Stymied, I resorted to long, sweeping swings with a wet fly, hoping the fly-first presentation might coax a take in the bright sun. As I cast, an elk began to bugle, its call echoing across the hills. I paused now and then, scanning the ridges for the source, but the sound always seemed to drift just out of reach.

At some point, I noticed Adam watching me from the shore. The longer I went without a hit, the heavier doubt pressed on me. Perhaps we’d found our limit. I reeled in and sloshed over to join him. We split a smoke and sat quietly, listening as the elk’s haunting yodel rose from a glen of dense conifers and spilled down the valley. Being out of one’s element has a way of making things feel grander than they are, but that moment felt as though it belonged to a future version of us — two old friends sitting together, looking back on lives spent chasing adventure and finding meaning in places just like this.

We caught up to Chris and found him toed up to a deep meandering pool casting intently to a pod of rising fish. Gasses bubbled up from the broken river bottom and in the distance, pillars of steam rose up from cauldrons hidden deep within the earth. Chris got three takes in as many casts and lost one good fish to a bad knot.

Such is fishing.

We ventured another quarter mile downstream, though none of us fished with much intensity. The sheer magnitude of the place had taken hold, leaving us quiet and reflective. It was clear that each of us had uncovered something deeply personal — hidden yet somehow shared — a sacred discovery that didn’t need to be spoken aloud. And in return, it felt as though we left something behind, a piece of our old selves offered to the timeless altar of this wild place.

On our return to the truck we passed by the spot where Chris’s fish had been and were stopped in our tracks by a slow, healthy rise form. It was Adam’s turn to try his hand and Chris and I watched expectantly from shore as he laid down a series of gentle casts to where the fish had risen. With no take and the light fading, he gave me the look, and I waded out into position.

Most of my success with a fly rod has been down to luck or just sheer probability. A decade or more into this practice and I am still very much a beginner. The cast I made to the next rise was hard earned from years of getting it wrong. I could not see the small emerger pattern as it drifted downstream away from me toward the widening rings of the rise, but when the next rise came, I set true and found myself hooked into a wild cutthroat far stronger than my 5-weight rod.

The fish could have run. It could have snipped the tippet or straightened the fine curved hook with one shake of its head. But sometimes, when we go in search of something, we find the very thing we seek. It is said that fortune favors the bold, but when I dipped my net beneath the fish I felt as though the whole line of my restless ancestors were holding their collective breath. Most adventures end in ambiguity, in quiet defeats or unanswered questions. But this one, against all odds, had ended in poetry.

That cutthroat, with its golden eye and faint pink flank mirroring the blushing sky, was the closest I’ve ever come to holding true wildness in my hands. For a moment, I thought of those who had walked these lands before me, who measured their triumphs not by glory but by survival. Standing there with Adam and Chris, the catch felt less like a victory and more like a shared inheritance, passed from the river through time.

As we walked back to the truck, the elk bugled again, sharp and piercing, cutting through the dusk like a church bell. It wasn’t a blessing but a summons, echoing the timeless call that has stirred in us since our ancestors first stepped out into the unknown. Fishing is part of that lineage, a way of searching for what lies beyond the bend, not to conquer it, but to revel its fleeting presence. The wild, untamed and eternal, invites us to step toward it, but we know full well it will never be ours. For it is the pursuit, not the possession, that binds us to it.

About twenty minutes into sanding, I realize that I have made a mistake. This is not how to get the job done. But I just keep going, grinding away the soft pine boards with abandon, getting back to daydreaming about Iceland, love, and the one that got away.

In the basement of the house is a half finished work bench left behind by the previous owners. An old wrought base topped with a series of cutoff 2x4s glued together to form a rectangle. Dried glue had gone solid in bubbles and long brown drips, chemical stalagmites protruding from the surface of the boards now fused into an uneven monolith. Perhaps that’s why it was abandoned, I thought to myself earlier that morning while still determining its future, a cup of hot coffee in hand.

Flat surfaces are a commodity, especially in a garage, and I have a bad habit of squandering them until the piles become landslides, the contents of the dusty boxes long forgotten. Just a few hours ago, the workbench was still covered with odds and ends. A gaggle of old cell phone chargers and cables, a jar of mixed screws, a few piles of old documents in cracked plastic file folders, a revolving assortment of hand tools pulled from tool boxes and never put away. 

Creating a flat surface is best done with machines like a planer, or traditionally, a large heavy hand plane. I don’t own these tools, so I’m improvising. I pull a worn disc of 40-grit sandpaper from the velcro-backed pad of the sander and replace it with a fresh one. 

I return to Iceland in my mind, diving back into the moment when I watched the arctic char shift slightly off his line to eat the peeping caddis that was dropped off the hook bend of a bushy dry fly. He’s in two, maybe three feet of water so clear, that I can see the white freckles on his slate flanks, the brush stroke of white that edges his pert pectorals. I don’t sense the take, nor does the dry fly indicate it, but I see his mouth open and his gill plates flare and I know that he’s eaten. I set, he makes a few frenzied circuits around the shallow run, and then sounds for the deep pool below, pulling line and a long exhale of my breath with him.

The day is young. Sindri, our lighthearted guide, spotted this char just minutes into fishing our first spot. The quickness with which it has happened feels dreamlike, and I don’t realize that I’ve already slipped into the expectant complacency of thinking that today will be one for the books. I raise the rod and give a little whoop to Fjolla who’s just downstream, my grin telling the whole story. 

She whoops back, sets down her rod, and reaches for her phone to snap some pictures of my first ever arctic char on the fly. But before she can free it from her layers of fleece and Gore Tex, the line goes unceremoniously limp. The fish is gone before any of us realize it; the barbless nymph has slipped out. We all groan and then laugh. Catching fish so early in the day is usually a sign of good things to come, and we all believe we’ll get plenty of other shots.

Sindri leads us upstream to another spot. We like Sindri. He’s low key and has a sense of humor, all wool and a yard wide. Fjolla and I slosh behind him as he weaves through tufts of grass and jumbles of sharp volcanic rocks. This is our first fishing adventure together and I check in with her about what she thinks, if she’s warm enough, how the rental wading boots are fitting. The day of fishing, shoehorned into our five-day van camping trip across the southern coast of Iceland, is a gift within a gift she’s given me for my fortieth birthday. It's early, I can already tell she’s psyched herself up for whatever lies ahead. I shake my head in disbelief at my good fortune, at having found someone with so much grit, someone who loves me enough to jump headlong into a day of fishing in the unpredictable weather of the highlands of Iceland. 

The next spot is a deep pool cut into the shale by a sluice of glacial water pressed out between harder igneous rocks. We creep along the aqua blue water, careful not to slip. Sindri gently reminds us that we’re a long way from the truck; this is no place for a swim. I huck a streamer upstream and let it fall into the gin clear depths while working it slowly back. I can see several big char, the size of my arm, lifting off the bottom to inspect the fly. One follows but refuses. Another darts back to the cover of an undercut. We try a few different flies and I do my best to land the casts artfully, suddenly aware that I’m being watched from below and above.

The workbench is stubborn and I replace the disc again. My dog lazes in the afternoon sun and looks at me when I turn off the sander, perhaps wondering what’s taking me so long. I’ve managed to flatten a foot and a half of one side of the top. It’s slow going, meditative. The whir of the toothy sandpaper against the soft pine buzzes up through my hand into my wrist and up the radius of my forearm. My brain hovers in the in between, freed from the frenetic flak of thinking by the simple, monotonous work.   

Fjolla steps up to the edge and I watch Sindri instruct her. He’s a careful and patient teacher, quick to smile and compliment her short roll casts. It’s a windy day and gusts drop over the top of the cut and swirl over the pool. A troupe of small char — six inches or so — is picking midges of the surface and Fjolla hooks a few of them. They jump and skitter the way little trout do, a few hopping off the hook before Sindri can stoop and net them. I hear her giggle, and when she catches me watching her she smiles. Behind the hood of her raincoat drawn tight around her face her cheeks and nose are red and wind whipped. She’s a marvel, totally out of her element but doing great. I feel warm all over.

Back in the truck I pepper Sindri with questions. He tells me about the typical Icelandic season and when the fishing is best. He points out the squat lodge on the edge of a wide lake where they take guests in the summer. He tells us about growing up in Iceland, catching lingcod on spinning rods from the docks of Reykjavik, and vacations in the highlands with his family in their 4x4 Ford Econoline van. I’m surprised when we pull off the main dirt road at speed, tumbling over potholes and washboards toward a grassy hill overlooking a wide glacial valley. He stops the truck with a lurch and reminds us to hold onto our doors when we exit lest the wind fold the hinges back on themselves. 

Sindri tells us the name of the river, a string of words in Icelandic that sound ancient and mysterious but that translate, he tells us, to Cold River. At the edge of the bluff he tests me by asking how many char I can spot. I scan and look for signs of life but can’t spot a fish. I consider lying but decide against it. He smirks and tells me he can see about twenty. Here, he points, there and there. He waves for us to follow and we do, steeling ourselves against the wind that is buffeting the valley. 

The Cold River is aptly named. It’s only knee deep here but spread out in a Rorschach of flat light gray stones surrounded by fine black sand. The stones are slick and Sindri shows us how to slide our boots through the sandy spots for traction. We work out into the meat of the run and Sindri sets me loose, warning me to avoid getting too far downstream; it gets deep quick, he adds. I take pride in the fact that he’s deemed me proficient enough to self guide here, and am glad to see him stay close to Fjolla, helping her wade and make her first few casts with the 8 weight he’s rigged with two nymphs and an indicator. 

I can’t see the fish, but the water is readable, so I fish, wondering how I’ll land a char if it decides to turn tail and run toward the lake below. There’s nothing to choke a cast here and I fling the indicator rig freely, feeling out the wind and the drift. Everything feels otherworldly and I relish in the feeling of being an alien in this landscape,  

After fifteen minutes or so, Sindri makes his way to me and asks me why I’m not casting to the char five feet off my rod tip. Right there, he points. The char here are native, wild fish, and they possess the kind of camouflage that only comes from eons of evolution. I strain to see through the choppy water and finally spot the fish when it sways to take a nymph, teasing me with its pale orange belly. I make a few casts, switch flies, and make a few more. The wind is howling in gusts that blow froth off the tops of the choppy current. Upstream, Fjolla is casting dutifully and I can’t help but chuckle. If she only knew how tough these conditions were, I muse.

If woodworking is an art, what I am doing to this workbench feels like an abomination. For a moment I start to calculate the diminishing returns of my time, the cost of the sandpaper, the wear on the machine. I survey my work and find that nearly half the workbench is evened out, with only a few high spots left to work down. I’m amazed that this crude approach is working. I feel a sense of pride shoot through my neurons. I refresh the disc and get back to the daydream. 

With no willing char in the Cold River, Sindri calls an audible. We traverse several kilometers of bone-rattling F-roads, the seasonal dirt tracks that crisscross the remote parts of the interior, shouting over the rumble of the Toyota and the music that leaks through on a patchy radio station. Sindri tells us about another husband and wife duo that he guided a few years earlier. When the wife outfished the husband, he blew his top, threw his rod in the river, and stomped back to the truck to pout. 

Guides, especially experienced ones, share their wisdom in little allegories like this. What he’s telling us — and me, specifically — is that the conditions are tough and to not spoil the day with a bad attitude. I’ve been known to get sour when the fishing is tough, and for a moment I wonder if my reputation has somehow made it across the Atlantic. But his hedging is unnecessary. The day feels adventurous and I’m ecstatic to be exploring this incredible countryside with Fjolla. This is the stuff we’ll remember when we’re old and gray.  

Sindri and I fish a half mile of the next river together while Fjolla naps in the truck. It is clear and low but he’d seen some sea-run brown trout feeding a few days earlier and figured it was worth a quick look. I bounce a bead head streamer off the basalt rocks on the far bank while walking. It’s late afternoon and we’ve yet to find another willing fish. I can sense that he is getting frustrated at the lack of action. We both know that a few dry days in a row has stemmed the feeding and that this late in the season our targets are limited. You should come in June, he offers as I work the streamer around a boulder. Char like this, he holds his hands out measuring an imaginary fish, on dry flies. I won’t lie, that sounds pretty good. I reel up and we scamper back to the vehicle.  

It's easy to get down on your luck when things don’t pan out the way you’d hoped. But I’ve learned that in most circumstances, having low expectations for the outcome can alleviate frustration and dented hopes. The trick is to be happy in the doing, thankful for the things that will, eventually, be looked back on as a relative luxury. Disappointment stems from a flawed mindset. 

We head back downhill, which I know is a sign that we’re working our way back to the valley. His phone rings and he answers, speaking in Icelandic. I imagine what he’s saying while trying to pick up bits of info. It’s no use. Icelandic is as otherworldly as the countryside, so I am left to wonder who’s on the other end of the call. He negotiates the road at full speed with the phone in his right hand, pausing his conversation to downshift before hanging up. I am surprised when Sindri veers off the main road again. One more spot, he says, a...what do you call it...hail Mary. 

Sindri hops out and surveys the run. Fjolla says she’s going to stay in the truck, and I linger in the warmth of the vents blasting hot air onto my feet. He’s a good guide, she remarks, and I agree. You never know what you’ll get when you hire a guide, and Sindri has exceeded our expectations. He waves to me and points to a shallow riffle at the head of a slow moving flat. They like this spot, he tells me as he ties on a small zebra midge. Maybe they like it today, he adds. 

When you fish long enough, you learn the extent to which you can beat up a run. Fish are canny, especially wild ones, and you usually only get a handful of presentations before they get wise to your flies. After fifteen drifts through the riffle, I resign to Sindri that we should probably call it a day. I keep fishing though, mechanically roll casting into the one spot that looks likely to hold a fish. Then, the indicator bobs.

There’s a fight, the kind you hope for. I’m jubilant and Fjolla springs from the truck, iPhone at the ready. Sindri’s smiling. I play the char as carefully as my numb fingers will allow, guiding him slowly but surely to the net. Sindri scoops and the net bulges gray-green and orange. We all cheer, a joint celebration that at once acknowledges the grueling day, and the drama of having caught a fish on the hail mary. We’ve done it. 

But when Sindri swings the net up to show me the fish, it’s limp and empty; the char is gone. We look at one another in disbelief. Sindri curses. We check Fjolla’s video and discover that the fish got its nose through a small hole in the net, tasted freedom, and forced its way free. Sindri apologizes profusely, ruefully inspecting the ripped netting.  

Sindri and I exchange a look, a shared understanding of the strange, unbidden twists that fishing days can take. It’s a loss, sure, but it feels fitting — the kind of memory that hooks deeper than any grip and grin could. Fjolla clicks off the recording, capturing the moment in all its bittersweetness. It’s enough.

Back in my garage, I run my hand over the workbench, now smooth, its ridges and high spots worn down to a level surface. The hours of sanding have left their mark — both on the pine and on me. What was once rough and half-formed now lies flat, ready to be put to use. I can see where I missed a few spots, tiny pits and dips in the wood, but I like the character they add, the story they tell. I set the sander down, feeling a quiet pride, the satisfaction of a job completed, realizing that maybe it’s the work itself that’s the real catch.

Fly fishing has a way of stripping you down to your core. I’ve spent countless hours with a fly rod in my hand, chasing fish that always seem just out of reach. And in the process, I’ve had to redefine what it means to succeed. The truth is, I’ve failed more times than I care to count, but those failures have become an essential part of the pursuit. Long gone are the days when I believed I could waltz into a new fishery and give 'em hell. That kind of effortless talent is rare, possessed by a select few who are revered in our little corner of the world. For the rest of us, success is something we inch toward, one cast at a time.

Over the years, I’ve learned to embrace coming up empty handed. Gotten good at it even. I’ve learned that not catching fish can be as illuminating as catching them, and it’s helped me develop other qualities that make up for my lack of innate ability. It’s taught me to fish with stubbornness, a grinding determination that suspends disbelief just long enough for the odds to play out. A thousand-to-one shot? Make a thousand casts. Or better yet, two thousand. Sooner or later everything aligns and I come tight and I know I’ve earned it. And when my luck finally hits I cash in before the house can win it back.

On a recent trip to the Texas Coast, however, my well-honed stubbornness is being tested. I’ve failed all morning, which is a hard thing to do on the teeming marshes and flats of the San Antonio Bay. This estuary, just one of seven that dot the East Texas shoreline, is a richly diverse ecosystem home to everything from coyotes to whooping cranes, alligators to white tailed deer. Fed by the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers and sheltered by a narrow barrier island, it’s an ideal feeding ground for countless species of fish including my quarry, the red drum, or simply, redfish. 

But after half a day of fishing I’ve spooked every redfish I’ve seen. I’ve lined them, stripped the fly too quickly, stripped it too slowly, picked it up with too much force, and made presentations too short, too hard, and too close. I am a flailing maelstrom of fly line and graphite, inventing new ways to come up empty with every cast.

My guide, the stoic and affable Captain Doron Lovett, poles his tidy blue skiff through the labyrinth of the marsh like a Zen master. The water is shallow here, about a foot in most places, and when the sun breaks through the clouds we can see crabs skitter away in puffs of mud. Mullet are everywhere and dart around the boat leaving sharp narrow wakes. Their activity keeps my excitement up and I often mistake them for redfish. I feel tantalized and gullible for falling for their fool’s gold.  

Redfish have large spade-like heads and at this depth they reveal themselves in wide rounded wakes they swim. I’d seen wakes before, in Saskatchewan. But there, northern pike, long muscular ambush hunters, streak out from reeds and grassy banks in arrowed azimuths like torpedoes intent on destroying your fly. But the wake of a redfish is often erratic, moving away from you in several pulsing thrusts, each with its own distance and direction. It’s possible, Doron tells me, to intercept their escape with a cast and get them to eat, but predicting the moves of a redfish is something for which I’m solidly unqualified.

I’m surprised to discover how bad my short game is. Redfish plow away from the boat when we’re right on them, urging me to make quick flip casts of ten or fifteen feet. I’m all elbows at this distance and my reaction time is abysmal. My instinct is to make two or three false casts, measuring up my distance before casting, a rookie mistake that leaves my presentations landing far behind the fleeing fish; I’m not accustomed to this close quarters combat. 

When a redfish feeds on small bait like shrimp, it sometimes breaks the surface of the water in an abrupt splashy spasm. My freshwater-logged brain defaults to rising trout and I find myself staring at the spot where the redfish appeared. But these fish were not rising trout. They had no current to ride on, no conveyor belt delivering food to feeding lies and gaping mouths. Redfish are constantly on the move, searching, stalking, chasing, and pouncing on their prey. And when they eat they just keep on moving, in search of the next bite. 

We glide into a large basin, about the size of a basketball court. It’s filled with fish. Redfish are herding bait into the edges of the mangroves and tackling them. From his perch on the polling platform, Doron calls out fish that I struggle to see until it’s too late, and after a few more missed shots we decide to alter the tactics. The dark fly with bead chain eyes is replaced with a gurgler, a topwater lure with a foam back and flared head that pushes pops of water when it’s retrieved in short, aggressive tugs.

He points to a small pod of reds on the surface and gives the green light to cast. I launch the gurgler—a little too far— and work it back towards the boat right over their heads. The hungriest (read: the dumbest) of the group turns, follows, and gulps the fly from the surface of the water. I set and he’s on and the old Tibor does its job. When we land him I feel the wave of relief as the smell of skunk finally dissipates. It’s a good fish, a beautiful copper orange, and a little smaller than average, but those are mere footnotes for my first redfish on the fly. 

There’s a lot you can learn about a person when you spend all day with them on a boat. Guides, often cagey, generally don’t make for great conversationalists. Their job, after all, isn’t to entertain with small talk, especially when there’s fishing to do. But Doron and I have hit it off. We’re of similar age and he spent many years chasing trout before guiding here. He’s easy going and offers casual tips about my casting or presentation the way a good fishing buddy does.

Between shots at fish we chat. He tells me stories about guiding, and the month he spent as a trout bum solo truck camping is way across the west. I learn that he grew up in the rodeo, riding broncs and bulls before he had his learners permit. He shows me the long puffy scar from a surgery that rebuilt his forearm after it was crushed by a bull. An injury, I learned, that pulled him off the pro circuit and sobered his young aspirations for eight seconds under the big lights. 

We creep up on a big redfish and I get another solid eat. He takes off and I try to stop him, breaking him off with a quickness. Doron pushes on and tells me about long winters in Colorado and how guiding in the endless summer of Texas Coast is tantamount to a dream job. His new skiff has less than forty hours on it, his captain’s license is less than a season old. I admire his life, envy it even, and try not to think about my own looming large back at the boat ramp. 

By mid afternoon I’ve landed a second average redfish and bungled several more layup shots. Doron tells me we’ve covered double-digit miles of marshland. The sun is high and we’re feeling cooked so he turns the motor on and we speed to another hunting ground. “Let’s turn on the AC,” he quips. Doron’s skiff glides over the skinniest spots with ease, the flat-bottom design and propless jet-style motor can cruise in just a few inches of water. Off in the distance lightning flashes in a patch of woolen sky, a gentle reminder that there’s no cover out here and that I’ve left my rain gear back at the lodge. 

Most guides will make you sit in the middle of the boat when they’re motoring, whether for safety or just some personal space it’s unclear. But Doron lets me sit next to him and I revel in the feeling of playing co-pilot. The motor and the wind make it impossible to chat, so we point things out to each other and nod. He makes quick calculations as we speed over turtle grass. At one point he cuts the throttle and pulls out his phone to mark a sunken concrete foundation, an old duck blind, he thinks. Sitting just a few inches below the surface of the slack tide, it’s the type of hazard that would shear the bottom off a boat and leave you stranded and waiting for the Coast Guard. If a day spent out in nature is a meal, danger is the pinch of salt that makes it memorable. 

We stop at a few places and look for fish but the tide is off or the water too murky and Doron keeps moving. I’ve landed two fish in well over a hundred shots, a dismal batting average that’d bench most players, but I’m unfazed. As we skip over the bluegreen, I reflect on previous saltwater outings. 

My first saltwater trip was brutal. I had discovered a guide on Culebra, a small island off the east coast of Puerto Rico, who’d discovered a bonefish population and cultivated a very respectable guide service. I was still in New York and I convinced an editor friend of mine to let me write a how-to article as a guise for going. I was green and spent two days infuriating the guide. The only thing I managed to hook was the back of my head. It turns out writing about how to catch a fish is a lot easier when you can actually do it yourself. It took me three more trips to Culebra with the same guide before I hooked a Puerto Rican bonefish.   

Then there was Belize, another story idea sold on the promise of catching fish. This time the stakes were raised as I had two photographers in tow, one with an underwater housing and drone. I fished hard for three days straight in fifteen knot winds that hemmed in the tide and kept the water high and off color. By the end I’d brought in a couple small bonefish and landed another tricky conversation with an editor. 

More recently, Mexico, and another long day casting at shadows. The morning consisted of several blown shots at permit which frustrated the local legend of a guide I’d manage to hire. And I’d have logged another strikeout had it not been for a few juvenile tarpon that were as inexperienced as I was. Becoming a skilled saltwater angler is a kind of patina that you just can’t fake. 

There’s one last spot on the other side of the marsh Doron wants to hit, so he drops the hammer. He threads the skiff through narrow elbows with the deftness of a rally driver in a race against the sun that’s already hanging low and hard boiled in the skillet of the sky. As the skiff whips around the last bend of the exit channel we come to a squelching halt. The tide’s left less than an inch of water covering our escape; we’re completely mired. 

Doron hops out and starts shoving and heaving and cursing but the skiff is stuck and my 200-plus pounds are only exacerbating the problem. I watch him pace around the transom like a bullfighter weighing his next move. I can’t help but smile as I watch him perform his quiet calculus, an inner tempest hidden behind a stoic face. I offer to help and he declines.

While his protests are admirable, we both know what needs to happen. So I kick off my flip flops and jump into the thigh-deep mud beside him. The floor of the marsh effervesces long-dormant odors and each footprint bleeds a dark black cloud into the water. We coordinate our efforts and push the skiff to freedom, stopping to rinse the muck from our legs and shorts. We exchange a smile and then a laugh that seems to say, now this is fishing.

A right-minded person would have taken it as a sign, a warning that our luck, and the tide, is wearing thin. But we’re back on the hunt, polling the outside edge of the marsh. Perhaps it’s the hours, or the baptism of mud, but we’re in sync. Doron calls out tailing fish and talks me through each presentation with commands and adjustments until I’m hearing his voice in my head and the rod and the line and my arms all disappear and the fly is alive in the water.  

Out of nowhere we a small pod of happily feeding fish materialize directly in front of us, fifteen feet off the bow. They’re nosed down, rooting, tails wagging out of the water like labradors on a scent. I plop the fly once, twice, feel the weight, and the line goes tight. I play the fish carefully, seriously, knowing in my gut that it’ll be the last action of the day. I work it to the boat and we free the hook.

As the fish peels away I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Doron gives me a nod, a quiet affirmation with a touch of raw honesty that comes from days like this, where every inch gained was hard-fought.

Doron secures the push pole and nudges the boat to life. I pull the battle-worn gurgler from the fly patch on the console, jamming the hook point into the brim of my hat like a gambler tucking away a lucky chip. I’m sore, sunburned, and reeking of sweat and mud, but it feels like a badge of honor. Tomorrow, I’ll be haunted by the missed shots and bad casts, already craving another chance to go all in on this unforgiving marsh. But for now, I let myself savor the rare taste of victory, no matter how small. I lean back, close my eyes, and let my mind drift off on the thrum of the motor and the sweet salty air of the Gulf.

Read More from Hookswain:

It was 4:30PM when I slid into the front seat of Max’s rig. My merino wool long underwear and thick hiking socks were already wet from a morning of fishing and when I closed the door my waders pushed a waft of stale, soggy air up past my face making the rabbit strip and schlappen streamers that hung from the visor dance.

By the time we reached the gated dirt road that cut downward into the thick deciduous forest I was feeling the familiar hum of excitement and nerves that thrums in my veins whenever I’m headed to new water. 

The SUV tumbled down the road straddling washouts and exposed boulders with a bouncy energy that matched the sense of adventure that was brewing. The forest was thick with life, an American jungle bursting with birdsong and the fluorescent buzzing of insects that mingled with the Blind Faith and humid air pouring through our wide open windows. 

Max stopped the rig in what felt like the middle of the road and threw it in park. He chuckled when he told me that for months on end he’d walked all his guests down into the Bush Country before learning that the gate could, in fact, be unlocked.

Through the chartreuse of spring growth the Ausable glittered like a red carpet. I wiped a trickle of sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve and thanked my lucky stars for his recent discovery. 

I followed Max down a faint trail toward the water. His thick reddish beard and big frame reminded me of a Norse warrior, and when we waded into the tannic water of the ancient river I was struck by the timelessness of our pursuit. When we reached the far bank, we emerged baptized, cleansed of the trappings of our lives, free of the weary yokes of modern existence. 

The first trout came at 7:30. The sun had melted into an orange pat of sunshine that slid across the cast iron surface of the water which sizzled with tan caddis, March browns and the occasional indistinct pale yellow mayfly. The hatch had brought the fish up and they were rising in splashy playful takes. 

The fifteen-foot leader that Max had built let the double-dry rig flutter to the surface delicately and bought me enough time to slide the line and leader butt out of the strike zone. Though I am not sure it would have mattered much. The trout were un-pressured and eager to consume the smorgasbord that was being served up.

The brown that tackled the size 10 Ausable Bomber was well fed and coaxed my click-and-pawl Abel to sing its nickel-bright aria. Max and I laughed like kids as the trout zipped around us, dodging his net. 

The evening stretched languidly onward without the anxious twitch of time ticking in our minds. Soon we were picking our shots. We switched out flies when they got soggy, fielding untested patterns like scientists suddenly gifted with the perfect conditions for experimentation. We called out rises to one another, and I laid down presentations here and there, each time almost knowing that it would result in a take. I decided then and there that Max must be part Viking, for he’d walked us right into Valhalla. 

Seldom in my fishing life have I reeled up my line feeling completely sated, but as night fell, Max and I hung up our rods without hesitation. We waded back to reality shaking our heads in disbelief as fish continued to rise in the increasing darkness, sometimes so close we could have scooped them up in our nets.

We could have stayed. We could have gorged ourselves on our good fortune, but something inside both of us wanted to leave the water as we’d found it: happy, unspoiled, and bursting with life.  

Max prodded the SUV back to life and up the gravelly wash toward the gate, and we hummed along to his stereo blasting into the cool night. Down inside my boots I wiggled my toes in the wet numb wool of my socks, and smiled.

Keep the mood going with this playlist, inspired by — and evoking — the vibe of this post. Enjoy!   

In a few days I will head west to the Great Lakes to chase lake-run rainbow trout (hereafter referred to as steelhead)1. It’s an annual trip that’s become a beloved tradition shared with my dearest fishing comrades. It’s also one of our biggest and most anticipated trips of the year. 

Unlike resident trout, the rainbows that cruise up the small creeks and rivers of Western Pennsylvania and Ohio are commuters, following their ancestral impulses from the ‘inland oceans’ to pea-gravel spawning beds miles upstream at certain times of the year, and only when the conditions are favorable to do so. Once they reach their destinations and carry out their biological raison d'être, they slip back downstream to the shelter of the deep water. 

As you’d imagine, these transient trout make for a beguiling quarry. Once on the move, steelhead seem to employ a foraging mentality and tend to favor energy-rich food like minnows and the eggs of other trout carried downstream. It’s impossible to know if they comprehend the length of their journey, but they exhibit a mastery of energy conservation that suggests they do. Cover, while of utmost importance to a resident brown or brook trout, is second to hydrodynamic structures where a steelhead can rest and refuel. They seem to constantly be on the move, making fishing for them a pleasurable form of cat-and-mouse fun. 

I wasn’t always such a dyed-in-the-wool fan. In fact, I used to be quite stuck up about fishing for Great Lakes steelhead. 

It came into sharp relief three days into our first week-long trip to Ohio in 2019. My brother Reuben and I had called an audible for our spring fishing trip due to blow-out conditions across our original destination. He mentioned reading some articles about Lake Erie steelhead and was intrigued. I was skeptical, but willing to go just about anywhere if it meant salvaging our trip.

Now, I love my brother. He’s the oldest of four kids and six years my senior. He’s been fishing for as long as I can remember. Most, if not all, of my fundamental fishing knowledge can be traced back to when we were boys and I wasn’t much more than a snot-nosed tagalong trying to be like him. So when he offers a fishing suggestion, I go on faith that he’d never knowingly steer us wrong. Still, I wasn’t totally sure. 

Ohio didn’t strike me as a fishy place, certainly not a destination for rainbow trout. All I really knew of Ohio were some vague memories of my grandparents house in a suburb west of Cleveland and stories our father had told us about the Cuyahoga river being so polluted that it caught on fire. (Truth is, the Cuyahoga caught fire about a dozen times before the 1969 blaze that, in concert with a few other incidents and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, led to the formalization of the Environmental Protection Agency the following year.) All I could picture was Blinky, the three-eyed fish from the Simpsons and feared the worst.

Like most snobbish anglers, I sought out ‘trusted’ sources to see if I could get the skinny on the fishery before making the nine-hour journey to our destination, an area referred to as Steelhead Alley. A few fishing friends had heard rumblings, or knew a guy who knew a guy who went to Ohio and ‘caught some decent fish.’ Orvis had fishing reports for Ohio rivers which I figured was a good sign, and Tom Rosenbauer himself even went out there in an episode of The New Fly Fisher. I decided to jump in with both feet and figured that, all things being equal, time on the water with my big brother was a good enough reason to head west, fish be damned. 

Our first couple of days on the water gave us a taste for what we were in for. Reuben hooked a few nice buck in the first run we fished (his first cast) but I remained skeptical. The run, nestled behind a local fly shop in a skinny stretch of brownish water and ringed by old concrete blocks reused as riprap, looked more like a hatchery tank than holding water for trout.

A day with a guide on some bigger water turned up some feisty juvenile fish — jacks, the guide called them — and though I wasn’t accustomed to chucking a heavily weighted indicator rig with an 8wt rod, their energetic runs that peeled drag from my saltwater reel made me pay notice. 

On the third day, we worked the water at a narrow pinch point on a popular river. Long periods of quiet casting were broken by fresh fish making streaking runs and acrobatic leaps like freshwater tarpon. I broke heavy tippet. Fish spit hooks in aerial defiance. I finally landed one — a chrome hen that candy caned my Loomis and clocked in at around 27 inches. It was the largest trout I had ever seen in person, let alone held.

That evening, perhaps from exhaustion from a few restless nights in our makeshift sleeping quarters in the bed of Reuben’s Toyota Tundra, or simply a flush of petty indignation at having been so wrong about Ohio, I opened my big fat mouth. 

“I just don’t think it’s very sporting,” I said aloofly. “Catching these fish on their way to spawn…I don’t know if it’s for me.”

Reuben and I haven’t had many fights as adults, but that comment launched us into a stiff disagreement that I won’t soon forget. While I don’t recall the ins and outs of the argument, I do recall that I was being a jerk. Something about catching these fish — the likes of which we’d otherwise only see at the end of a trolling line — had me bent out of shape. And if you’ve ever gotten that version of me, you know the only thing that straightens me out is time. We spent that night in a cheap hotel room, each of us stewing in a springy queen size bed while reruns of The Office blared on an old Panasonic. 

Every epoch has a beginning, a sketchy stretch of time where things are in such flux that it’s impossible to see it for what it is. It’s only when you look back that you realize how significant of a moment it really was. In 2019 we turned a corner in our fishing lives, and we haven’t looked back. 

Much has been learned in the years since. Some through trial and error, some dumb luck. Over the last four seasons we’ve been fortunate to meet and fish with some incredible steelhead anglers who’ve shared their spots and strategies. We’ve lightened our rods and refined our terminal tackle. We’ve made note of optimal flows for our favorite rivers, and dropped pins on pull offs where access is best. We’ve developed fly patterns specifically for the fishery, iterating on success and failure like scientists conducting longitudinal studies. There are stretches of water that we now know better than our home waters. 

Introspection is critical in any practice. But I believe it's especially important to review our principles as anglers and come to grips with the reality of things. And reality, as it pertains to steelhead, is one that took me a few years to understand. 

Fishing for Great Lakes steelhead has forced me to accept that as a sport fisherman I am much closer to being a hunter than I previously acknowledged. Much of hunting centers around the mating and migration seasons of animals. It’s just part of the game, and has been since humans fashioned the first spears. Migrations the world over are part of the exchange of biomass of this planet, whether it be caribou or herring. And while the instinct to procreate drives the trout from the shelter of the lakes, it takes skill, grit, and patience to come face-to-face with one. 

I have also had to confront the nature of an unnatural fishery. Today I find it fascinating that steelhead were first introduced into the Great Lakes from the Pacific Basin in the late nineteenth century as an experiment. The hypothesis was that the trout would treat the lakes as they do the ocean, navigating between them and the rivers just as the anadromous West Coast fish do. The experiment worked, a testament to the fish’s evolution and innate will to survive. Every year, thousands of rainbow trout leave the lakes and push upstream to carry out their annual spawning ritual. It’s all kind of miraculous.

The fact that the Great Lakes fishery is an engineered one is problematic to some. We’ve become so precious about wild and native fish that it’s easy to look down our noses at those which have proliferated from human intervention.

Steelhead Alley may be lacking in our narrow definition of wildness, but the fish don’t seem to care. They are carrying out an impulse that goes back millenia, and have adapted to this environment with a vigor that feels primordial and genuine. When that 28-inch steelhead peels drag and leaps like a saltwater gamefish 100 yards downstream you couldn’t care less about which hatchery they came from. 

Now, a few days before heading west, I can’t think of another fish, or destination, that has pushed me more as an angler. I’m grateful for the chance to chase these strange amalgams of evolution, environment, and human intervention. I am thankful for a brother’s patience and for our fishing crew that’s grown up around an expedition of his making. 

But most of all, I am excited. Excited to test new fly patterns and improved rigs. Excited to explore new water and revisit runs marked in our memories by anguish and ecstasy. Excited to look downstream in the fading light of the day at the silhouettes of the best anglers I know making ‘just one more cast.’ Excited to slide into bed with nothing but a day of fishing ahead, and to dream of dime-bright leviathans on the end of my line.

Sitting here, counting down the hours, I wonder, what’s more sporting than that? 

There is a moment in the winter when every angler becomes a caged tiger. There’s an itch that’s impossible to scratch, an ache in the bones that cannot be soothed. It’s part cabin fever, part S.A.D., a malaise that overwhelms the sensibilities and brings a monotone mantra to our lips. I gotta go fishing. 

Lucky for me, that itch typically coincides with my best friend Adam’s birthday. And birthdays, according to the unwritten bylaws of the fishing posse to which we belong, are for fishing. Unfortunately for me, his birthday is in February, a month that is more readily associated with ice fishing than casting a fly. The lucky and sane ditch the Northeast in winter altogether, flocking to the warmer climes of The Keys, Abaco, or the Quintana Roo.

We first went to the Farmington in January of 2020. I was working for a gear review outfit in New York City then, and had somehow talked the editor into letting me write an article on winter fishing. With no budget for travel, I did some research and was pleased to discover that the Farmington River was a tailwater fishery and was only a few hours north of Manhattan. 

Putting aside all the problems usually associated with dams for a second, Northeastern tailwaters are a special thing, especially those fueled by bottom-release structures. Most of the rivers of New England freeze in the dead of winter, capping off access and eliminating any chance of the sun coaxing aquatic insects from their homes.

But a tailwater like the Farmington is a different ballgame. Geothermal forces keep the water in the reservoir steady – right about 38 degrees – which in turn keeps the river cold in the summer, and, relatively speaking, warm in winter. Being free of ice also means that sunny winter days can invigorate the cold-blooded fish and convince all manner of insects that it’s a good time to hatch (or at least move around). 

Of course, we didn’t know this then. Nor did we really care. Our tigers were pacing, and the magazine had just unlatched the cage. 

That first year we were more lucky than good. We brought a few fish to hand, and got our photo op for the article. We broke the winter doldrums and created a few memories. Mission accomplished.

We had no idea we’d minted a grueling new tradition. 

For the initiated, you know what I mean when I say that fly fishing in the dead of winter can be the pits. Everything is working against you. Everything is slow. Everything is cold. Casting is choked by frozen guides, wading cumbersome by numbing feet. A thought emerges; why would anyone do this to themselves? 

By February of 2022 COVID had upended just about everything except fly fishing. Adam made his stand in the city while I had fled Manhattan for the mountains of my youth. But there we were again, jonesing for some action and feeling even more caged than usual. Plus, it was his birthday and, well, birthdays are for fishing.

We decided to meet in the middle – so the Farmington is was. 

That year we had much better luck. We’d done a little more research and had time to prepare. We hypothesized that the upper reaches of the river – closest to the dam – would be the warmest, and spent most of the weekend poking around in the shallow runs and slow moving pools. 

The weather was fickle, with gusts and squalls giving way to bouts of bright sun. The fish didn’t seem to care. We caught some gorgeous rainbows and enjoyed a day peppered with healthy, well-fed fish. The short fishing window and sub-freezing temps made us appreciate the bend in the rod even more, and made it easy to pack it in early while we still had feeling in our toes. 

There is something about shared misery that binds people. It’s what Army drill sergeants rely on to gel slipshod kids into dress-right-dress soldiers. I think it’s why our high school friends will always have a place in our hearts, or co-workers from old shitty jobs. 

But choosing to be miserable with people you love is a different matter altogether. I think that’s what makes finding fishing buddies so hard; you must share the same enthusiasm for getting your ass kicked by mother nature. And get our asses kicked we did. 

Though in truth, it wasn’t all that bad. We’d rented a room at the Old Riverton Inn which sits a double haul away from the water and whose attached pub – the aptly named Royal Coachman Tavern – comes alive in the evenings with locals looking for bite and whatever’s on tap. The place has a charming quirk you’d expect from a building that’s been around since the late 1700s, and the affable staff turned a blind eye to us marching through the lobby and up the stairs to our room with our waders on. There really is no greater luxury in this sport than a short trip up a flight of stair after eating your fill and washing it down with a seasonal libation.

In 2023 we descended upon the Farmington again, booked the same room, perched up at the same table in the tavern. (These are the makings of traditions.) We were ready; the warmest wool socks secured, the layering game perfected. We learned how to clear our guides by melting the ice with our mouths. We ordered extra breakfast sandwiches and kept them warm on the dashboard vents while we drove from spot to spot. And coffee. Lots of coffee. 

Each visit to the river yielded new findings. That year we ventured around a bend in the river we’d always ignored and discovered a deep channel that slithered through a handful of submerged boulders. It was the kind of run that just begs for a streamer. And to our glee, we started catching one trout after another. We laughed like kids as we heaved our flies downstream and teased them back through the gauntlet of trout that had podded up there. Soon we’d forgotten all about our numb digits and the pinholes in our waders that had rendered whole limbs lifeless. 

It was only over a drink later that evening at the Royal Coachman that we checked the stocking report and learned that the state had just dumped a few hundred rainbows in that very stretch of water. Our angler-egos were bruised, but not too much to keep us from raising a glass to our success when the next round came. 

* * *

Being in love with something like fly fishing is a bittersweet business. You have to come to grips with the fact that for every one day of lights out fishing there will be at least three of getting absolutely skunked waiting for you down the line. You tell yourself that you’ll cherish the good days, but they end too quickly and before you know it you’re driving home trying not to open work emails.

My heart breaks a little each time I break down my rod and toss my soggy waders into the back seat before driving home. But we learn to make peace with heartbreak. The heartbreak of losing a fish, or worse, killing one. The heartbreak of the trusty weathered rod broken in a car door. The heartbreak of knowing that someday you’ll be too frail to bear the beatings of wind and rain, too weak to fish all day without stopping for lunch. The heartbreak of discovering that one day you just can’t fish at all, or worse, have no one left to fish with. 

* * *

When February rolled around this year the outlook was gloomy. Temps in the high twenties and little to no sun. But birthdays are for fishing. Damn the torpedoes.

Even a mediocre fishing report has the ability to raise one’s spirits. Throw in a picture of a beefy brown trout – the kind we’d tangled with before – and we’d wade through hell and back for a chance to make a cast. In the days leading up to this year’s outing our inboxes were ablaze with photos of recent catches posted on guide accounts, rumors of hatches, and up-to-the-minute radar readouts on wind, precipitation, and temperature.

We spent the first morning scouting, a tactic we were happy to employ with the mercury nudging twenty degrees. We ducked into pull offs and scrambled down drainages. We slugged coffee and scanned for signs of life. We were Holmes and Watson, and the game was afoot. By noon we were waist deep.

For the next two days we waded. Everything was slow. Everything was cold. Casting was choked by frozen guides, wading made cumbersome by numbing feet. Dark thoughts swirled; what the hell are we doing? 

At one point a couple of bootfoot spin fishermen popped from the bank and trudged into the run we were fishing, zipping their lures to the far bank with ease. I got pissed, then jealous. But I just stood quietly sucking on my frozen guides like a petulant child daydreaming of flats boats and drinks with little umbrellas in them. 

Overcast winter days play tricks on your sense of time. It’s easy to get lost in the diffusion, disconnected from the slow shuffle of shadows that predict the coming of night. Instead, you feel it. Suddenly it’s cold and you realize the sun’s behind the hill and you’re standing in the middle of a freezing river and the trip is almost over. And that’s usually when someone hooks into a fish.  

I hadn’t seen Adam make the cast, or mend the line so that the sink tip would pull the streamer down into the seam. I hadn’t heard the thrum of the line in the guides as he teased it slowly across the current. By the time I turned, all I saw was the proud rod, nodding excitedly downstream. 

After a short tussle we landed a beautiful wild brown, its blue cheek shining in the last bits of light.

In the grand scheme of things, our annual ritual isn't just about battling the elements or tricking trout; it's a testament to grit, a bit of madness, and the glue of friendship that holds it all together. So let the uninitiated shake their heads. Because no matter how absurd it seems, this is our kind of fun.

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Attempting to predict how you’ll react when you hook the fish of a lifetime is a futile pursuit. You’re never ready when it happens. It’s a snag, you think. Maybe you’d curse at another lost rig. But then something curious happens; motion where there should be dead weight. That realization is tectonic, and then everything shifts. The neurological avalanche that ensues is as exhilarating as any drug, more pure than any religious experience.

When Adam hooked his brown trout, he reacted as honorably as any one of us could hope to.

We had spent the morning working upstream along a familiar piece of water, fishing in a loose proximity such that communicating vocally over the sound of the water was fruitless. So we spoke in the language of facial expressions and hand signals gained over countless seasons of fishing together; since the beginning, really.

We leapfrogged one another, working through nice runs that held the typically-sized holdover stocked rainbows. Fun fish that don’t make you work too hard. When we hit the first decent pool, we watched for risers. I spotted one at the head on the far side, so I crossed the shallow tailout and stalked up behind it to within casting distance and watched. I could see blue wings hatching — little ones, maybe #18. I stripped the nymph rig off and tied on a foot of mono tippet to which I knotted a BWO emerger. He took, and Adam and I exchanged a grin across the river as I brought the plump brown trout to hand.

Rather than work all the way back down the pool to cross the tail out once again, I stayed on the far side. This piece of water, a popular destination in the Northeast, has, at any given time, a well-trodden path running alongside it. It took us a few seasons to know where to cross so that we could fish the runs from the good side, and how to avoid the sections where the trail is grown in with thick shrubs that prick elbows and poke unprotected eyes. A blazed trail is a creature comfort easily scoffed at when you’re searching for an escape in the woods, but a godsend when you’re wearing waders that don’t yet have holes in them. 

The far side was feral, and though I was able to force my frame through thickets, I was regretting my decision. We picked up a few more small fish – more rainbows – hailing each as we went with a shout and a thumbs up. Every so often I’d stop and watch Adam fish and skip along the shore. I envied his agility but couldn’t help but smile as he hopped from one slick boulder to the next, stopping occasionally to flip a cast into the broken water between us. This was his favorite type of water and he fished it with the skill that only a lifetime of practice can produce. Child’s play. 

Adam and I met when he was a first year law student and I was fresh off a long stint of military training. Though I had fished conventionally most of my life, I had never tried fly fishing. Adam had a vise on his desk, clamped to the only spot that wasn’t covered in textbooks and atlases of New England. He invited me out one day and gave me a handful of Elk Hair Caddis. I didn’t even know how to tie a knot. That was the beginning of everything.

Upstream, the river took a right-hand bend that pushed wide to my side which created a soft slick under a thicket of willows. It was late afternoon and the Olives were hatching more consistently now, with some caddis popping too. My success downstream urged me on through the scrubby shoreline. I got low and tucked along a deer trail until I found a place to punch through to the water. I did, and rejoined Adam just in time to work the run together.

Angler’s are, generally, perfectly equipped for solitude. Inviting someone to share in the little slices of peace that fly fishing offers us doesn’t come naturally. There’s a delicacy to fishing with others, balanced on attitude, physical ability, and technical proficiency. Over a decade of fishing together, Adam and I have developed a tandem approach that we loosely refer to as ‘eyes and judgment.’ Sometimes it’s literal: As a lifelong hunter, Adam has an uncanny eye. My vivid imagination merely keeps us from wading too deep in unfamiliar waters. 

But mostly, it’s a symbol of how we augment each other on the water. He’s affable and generous. I’m hot-tempered and stubborn. He moves when he fishes, as is the way in the Adirondack streams where he was taught to fish by his grandfather. I post up, dead set on catching the fish I can feel in my bones is hiding in plain sight. He likes broken water that you can read, or where you can dance a streamer through the rocks. We often fish in tandem, taking turns fishing and watching, exchanging ideas, working the water as Holmes and Watson might a mystery. An ongoing conversation in this strange language we both call our mother tongue.

I did not see him make the cast, or set the hook. But when I did look up, he didn’t have to say a single word. The saucers that had replaced his eyes told me everything I needed to know. In an instance he was off, stiff arming the rod above his head while hopping down the rocky bank in pursuit.  

Sometimes big trout run, sometimes they sound. Sometimes they shake their heads in a frenzy of instant regret. Sometimes they come unbuttoned before you get to experience their full might, or break you off so efficiently you could swear they’re packing a pair of nippers. But really smart big trout just sort of back away, flaring their pectoral fins like air brakes and letting the current carry their mass downstream in a powerful, yet subtle, escape. 

I scanned the water between us, searching for a way across. He yelled something that translated roughly to ‘help!’ as I watched him — half in horror, half delight — get dragged downstream, around the bend and out of sight. It was clear that he’d hooked a monster, and that it had the upper hand.

Moonwalking is a technique reserved for the hairiest of wading scenarios. It’s a method to cross a deep spot or a piece of current that’s too strong to stand in by letting the natural buoyancy of your body and the air trapped in your waders carry you like an astronaut in the low gravity of the moon. It’s the Hail Mary of riparian navigation, and works about as often. 

When I reached the other side of the river, Adam’s side, I didn’t stop. I found the trail and ran downstream. I could see Adam through the trees, still wrestling the trout, the two sliding ever downstream. I unclipped my net before ditching my rod and vest in a bush and chased after them. It took fifty yards for me to catch up, another fifty to eclipse them and find a place where landing was possible. The first attempt was stymied; just as I stabbed my net into the current the trout slid away from me and surfed a tongue of white water down to the next hole. I hit a rock and heard a crack. 

But I had seen him. Big and muscular, with spots like black nickels against the autumnal blush of his broad sides. And now we were close enough to communicate. The trout didn’t know it, but the odds had shifted in our favor. Adam kept working him and I reset, the two of us herding the fish toward a sandy shallow. I stabbed again. He dodged. My net hit the bottom and snapped. But this time he slid left, toward the soft pocket. Adam deftly picked up slack and lifted his head. I stepped up, grabbed the broken hoop of the net and scooped with all my might. 

In the quiet aftermath, as we sat in the sandy shallows, watching the river reclaim its calm, the magnitude of what had transpired settled over us like the gentle dusk. The fish, magnificent and momentarily ours, was now a shared memory—a testament not just to the thrill of the catch but to the unspoken bond it had fortified. This experience, woven from the fabric of countless casts, laughs, and silent acknowledgments, transcended the mere act of fishing.

It was a vivid reminder of why we return to these waters: not solely for the fish we hope to catch but for the moments of unguarded joy and the deep, enduring connections they foster. In the end, the true catch wasn't the trout, nor was it the broken net — it was the realization that in the pursuit of these fleeting encounters, we find something infinitely more valuable; a piece of ourselves, mirrored in the water, in our companions, and in the stories that ripple outwards, long after the day fades.

The mandated trout season traditionally comes to a close in October, and for many, it marks the end of fishing until spring. I often scramble to capitalize on warm days when the sun pulls up the late bloomer bugs and the idea of landing a trout against the colorful backdrop of late fall feels nostalgic and romantic. But the stunted daylight often means sneaking away from chores on the weekend, which I manage with only occasional success. 

While most Vermont rivers are now open to fishing year round, the bite is often too slow for me to get truly excited, and by Halloween, trout fishing is pretty much done.

That’s when my attention turns to bigger, more eager fish: Northern Pike.

In 2016, I joined a small group of outdoors writers on a trip to a remote lodge in Saskatchewan. I was the youngest and the least experienced by far, but the pike were so plentiful that even I was able to land a few over the 40-inch mark. (Hat tip to Scott Gardner from Outdoor Canada for putting the trip together. It remains one of the most memorable of my fishing life.) 

It was on that trip where I tied my first fly – an ugly little streamer of Schlappen and marabou that I nicknamed the Tiger Lunker. Pike must experience pity, because the one that ate it seemed to wink when I released it back into the cold water of the lake. Kudos to Scott for sharing his vice and several bags of tying material, not to mention lugging it all the way to the hinterlands in the first place.   

But it was only a few years ago that my brother Reuben convinced me to chase Northerns in our backyard. Local guide and friend Chuck DeGray was instrumental those first few seasons. As a self-proclaimed pike addict, he was happy to enable our budding taste for the game.

And what a game it is. 

In the northeast, pike can be had on a fly in late fall, when the water has cooled and the fish are putting on the feedback before winter. Northerns will hunt in shallow edges and reed beds, ambushing their prey as they fin by.

When they take your fly, they are usually trying to destroy it. I’ve seen them chase a fly with such gusto that they push a wake of water in front of them like a toothy submarine set to ramming speed. They aren’t jumpers like landlocked salmon or sprinters like bonefish, but they are powerful, and will take drag when they beeline for deep water. 

A 7- or 8-weight rod with backbone is necessary for these fish, and you’ll want heavy duty mono bite guards — or better yet wire — to avoid having your fly clipped off by one of their many dagger-like teeth. Once boat-side, a pike will generally cooperate, but a long-necked hook remover will keep fingers safe from a sudden thrash of the head when removing the fly.  

A rod that will turn these powerful fish is one thing, but having something that can throw 6 to 10 inches of buck tail, craft fur, and flash is another. We’ve gotten into using wiggle tails, which don’t look like they should work as well as they do. It’s hard not to duck when that fly rips past your ear.

Recently, Reuben procured an Old Town canoe, oars, and two motors – one electric trolling motor and one gas-powered outboard. It’s been a game-changer for us to be able to putter around pike-filled waters trying our hand at the late-fall bite. 

One day stands out among the rest.

Reuben and I were fishing Lake Memphremagog, a wide glacial lake that straddles the border with Canada. We were working along the lea side of the lake, guiding the Old Town thirty or so feet from where the reeds thinned and the water darkened. It was warm for November and gray clouds loomed over the lake in a blanket of low pressure.

Reuben was at the stern. A proud captain of a vessel he had scouted and researched for months. Years maybe. It’s hard to tell with him sometimes. Just when I think I have him pinned, he surprises me with a new idea. And unlike mine, they’re never half-cocked or far-flung. He’s a grounded person. The type of guy you want to know. The type of guy who other guys would kill to have as an older brother. And although I couldn’t see him from my place at the bow, I could feel his sense of accomplishment as he maneuvered the electric trolling motor through its settings to get just the right speed for the first few casts of our early morning expedition.    

We meandered along the reed edge, riding a gentle current with minor course corrections from Reuben. We started getting some takes and landed a couple smaller pike.

But with the canoe parallel to the shore, each seated and half twisted to our right, getting a good cast was tricky. With the conditions in our favor and the bite seemingly on, we decided to run the edge again. 

This time I manned the oars while Reuben fished. I am no guide, but I was able to push the boat along the reeds at an angle, giving Reuben a slightly better casting position. The quarters were close enough, and the light just right, that we could both see his fly as it pulsed off the edge of the reed bed and into the deepening water.

Watching someone expertly work a streamer in water where predators lurk is exhilarating. Reuben is particularly good at it. Like a puppeteer with a marionette, he worked the fly with deliberate focus, turning feathers and fur into fins and flesh. With every cast, the tension mounted. They were there, and we knew they were hungry. 

Not all days spent in pursuit of pike are successful. Some you get skunked. Most are cold and rainy. Out on a lake, there’s no shelter from the elements, and no easy casts. It isn’t for the faint of heart. But Chuck has a rule of thumb: for every three hard days you put into pike fishing, you get one memorable day back.

Our hearts must have leapt when we saw the fly jump sideways in the water, rammed by something dark and swift. But they stopped simultaneously when it disappeared into the mouth of a large northern. Reuben’s strip set sent the pike racing for deep water, bisecting the canoe and sounding directly behind us. It’s not every day you see an 8-weight candy caned to the cork. Reuben held on with both hands while I spun the canoe around. After a few blitzing runs, the pike acquiesced and we were able to land it. 

I’ve watched my brother catch fish my whole life. It’s something of which I never tire. And while I don’t recall the final measurement, it certainly one of the best pike Reuben has landed, which is saying something.

As he held it up for a quick picture, his grin beaming from behind his burly beard, I felt like a kid again, and for a time, forgot all about trout.