THE FINE PRINT

THAT IS THE word I’ve been trying to scrape off the tip of my tongue for an hour, and it comes back to me as I cast a Purple Haze dry fly along a rock-walled stretch of Montana’s Spotted Bear River. The wall gives out where a boulder squats on the shoreline, pushing a bulge of clear flow into the middle of the channel, and it’s about the troutiest-looking 20 feet of creek I’ve ever seen. The leader straightens, the fly drops, and I ready myself for what will surely be the jolting strike