Hours into the float already, we’d chucked green and yellow, chartreuse and pink, and black and purple—some with big reflective eyes and others with barred feathers that enticingly slip and slide behind the body of the fly. Nothing was working. Brett, my musky copilot, and I weren’t moving fish like I thought we would, considering the cold mornings that fall had been delivering.
So we anchored our raft among a toothy, login-fested section that we’d both come to love and hate over the past year. We then went about the task of choosing a new fly from several I’d tied a few nights earlier. Our simple process was based on three factors: Does it look good in the water; is the hook sharp; and is it big enough?
“This one looks juicy, dude,” I’d say to Brett, as I spun the fly around in my fingers, stroking it into that perfect fish profile. For every confident statement like this I’d ever made about a fly while it was in my vise, I’d contradict it with another one once we got on the water. “Actually, it looks like shit
