It always seems to me to be an act of blind faith, tying a #20 midge to a fine tippet and expecting to catch a fish of any size. I read Midge Magic by Don Holbrook and Ed Koch and I understand that a trout's diet includes a lot of tiny insects. But it's one thing to read about that and to understand it on an intellectual level. It's another thing to squint through a magnifying lens and with clumsy fingers attach a nearly invisible object to a nearly invisible line and toss it into the swirling waters of the dam pool in hopes that a fish will a) see it, and b) want to eat it. And yet, faith is often rewarded, as mine was with an acrobatic 18-inch landlocked salmon. When I netted the fish, the little fly simply dropped off his lower lip. I love it when that happens.

I also caught salmon on a slightly larger fly tied by my pal Doug Mawhinney, a #16 Straw Man, another example of faith over reason. The Straw Man is simply deer hair wound around a hook and clipped as close as a Marine's sideburns. The result is a tiny tan cigar on a hook -- no hackle, no tail, no wing, no beadhead. Does it catch fish? "It oughtta be outlawed," Doug says. After a few days of fishing I had to call Doug and ask him to tie up a new bunch for me, because so many big fish were wearing them as lip jewelry after breaking off my tippet.

Of course my overly exhuberant response to strikes had a lot to do with the breakage. That's a habit I've never been able to overcome. When I first started flyfishing, catching small trout in the Alder Stream, many a startled 7-inch brookie went sailing into the alders behind me after chomping down on what it thought was a tasty snack but turned out to be my Royal Wulff. I keep telling myself to be patient, controlled, to raise the rod as though I were picking up the phone. But then comes the tug on the line, and heart and reason stop simultaneously.

Farewell to two fine dogs. Doug Mawhinney's mannered little sheepdog Lucy, she of the astonishing vertical leap, and Tedd Brown's chocolate Lab Bailey, a loyal and lovable rascal, have trotted off this mortal coil, bound for pooch paradise. They're missed.