I’m not just into fly fishing for the chicks and drugs and hotel points. I’m also in it for the freedom factor. To able to be outside on a November day when the sun is warm, the river clear, the cigar tasty, and most of the rest of the world is working does a soul incalculable good. So what if the the catching is lousy? The fishing, my friends, is downright brilliant.

This year’s Housy streamer trip came late. I hit four name pools with my Mickey Finn soft-hackled streamer. I swung, mended, stripped, and dangled. One touch with no hook set was all I could manage. The water was an easily wadeable 565cfs, cold, with just the slightest of tea stains. A short trip, two hours, and I nursed my Gispert churchill for the better part of the outing. Swarms of small stuff, mostly midges, without a single riser.

And so, with big river visions taking up residence in my brain, we turn our sights to steelhead.

No tonic like it indeed.