Orvis's latest fly fishing catalog arrived this week. Orvis Orvis.com is a great outfitter with a wide selection of top-flight stuff, and I always put their catalogs in the bathroom magazine rack for close study, but I was blindsided by the bright red banner across the bottom of the cover, which shows an angler dragging a driftboat over a shallow riffle. The words on the banner read: END OF SEASON SALE.

End of season?? Wait a *#&$@% minute! Tempus fugit and all that, but end of season? Can't be, I thought, and a quick check of the ol' calendar on the wall proved that they were only half right. There are really two seasons, and at the moment we are betwixt and between, languishing in the doldrums of the dog days, subjects we covered in a previous entry in this space.

The first season, the one we dream of and scheme for all winter, begins at ice-out and runs the meteorological gamut from frostbite, through the misery of blackflies, to the SPF-40 naked-in-the-waders days of late June, and ends after the Hexagenia hatches in early July. Then we take a break to go swimming, visit non-angling friends, catch up on yard work, or go slumming for bass in their bathwater habitats. In late August or early September, the second season begins, as the nights begin to chill, the water follows suit, and the trout and salmon are again on the move and spoiling for a fight. The brookies are in their glorious best outfits and will leap clean out of water to take a Royal Wulff, the leaves on shore are framing the waters in autumn splendor, and there are no biting bugs!

When the final days of the first season approach I wail, "Wait! Stop the clock! I'm not finished yet!" Then it usually takes two or three hot, fishless days to convince me that it's over. I mope around the house, or finish a project at camp, and then it comes to me: Fall fishing is coming! My spirits rise, I reorganize my fly boxes; I study the DeLorme's, picking my spots (although I already know where I'm going) and life is once again full of promise.