Faith in a River

EFORE I’D FULLY degenerated into the folly of flyfishing, I lived in South Bend, Indiana, along the St. Joseph River. Every year, I would talk my dad or girlfriend into a winter drift trip for steelhead, but this was the business of egg sacks and crankbaits, not fly rods. And it only worked part of the year, when the fish would swim up from Lake Michigan in search of salmon eggs and spawning grounds. During other times of the year, I fished away from the Rust Belt waters of the St. Joe. I confess that, as a busy graduate student, I squandered my prime