They say when you guide fishing trips you get all kinds. They also say that you learn something new with every day on the water. I can’t tell you the name of the creek or the eight high school boys involved, but I can tell you that both of those axioms were underlined for me over the past week as I attempted to teach fly fishing on a trout stream in southern Virginia. So I feel it is my duty to relay the lessons I’ve learned to you, should you, sometime in the future, concoct

High water. It’s the bane of any river fisherman or fishing guide, and I’m sure I’ve opened my last three columns bemoaning it. When the rivers blow out for weeks at a time, there are really only a handful of things one can do—swallow depression, fish stillwater, tie flies, pray for a window of opportunity, or resign oneself to less important things—and two of those things I try not to do ever. Thankfully, when I blew into Fluvanna County a few weeks ago, we were blessed with