--Walter Workman

In Montana there are two kinds of winter days-those that are warm enough for fishing and those that aren't. Here, cold is a relative term. A week of high-sky, 40-degree weather in early November can send the Baetis hatch into submission and seem downright arctic after a month of Indian Summer. Yet a windless February day topping off at 35 will feel balmy enough to send you searching for early stoneflies.

--Jay Ericson

Here's how you float the Yellowstone: With a good friend, it's impossible to make a mistake. It's also impossible not to. Every oar splash and drift through a seam is cause for good-natured accusation and graceful riposte ("You're the shithead." / "Hey, fuck you.")

Waiting your turn at the put-in, sizing up the other fishermen. Judging. There is, you decide, at least one fundamental truth about fishing. You yourself are the standard by which other fishermen are measured. Turns out that everyone is either a clown in costume or a sunburned, squint-eyed guru. On a hot weekend morning, the boats are lined up anchor to bumper. Tired guides tying on flies. Nervous clients pacing back and forth, glancing at watches. Name brands everywhere. Which leads to another truth about fly-fishing: Like a magnet with paperclips, it collects pretension. Look at these people. Christ. Inevitably, you find yourself in one of two camps. Competing with or reacting against. That guy in jeans soaked to the crotch and a stringer of browns for the barby might be somebody you could drink a beer with . . . or a local to be ignored. The fat man in the Orvis waders and Armani polarized glasses, his pipe leaking slow trails of Prince Albert, is either a resource to be mined or an out-of-stater to be mocked.

--Denver Bryan

See them coming, swimming toward you like ducks across the sky at dawn. It's hard for a Northern Rockies trout chaser to fathom: no hatch to match, no current seam to aim for, just you and a couple dozen bonefish headed your direction. Throw it too late and you'll spook 'em. Too early and your fly sinks to the bottom. But time it right and suddenly there you are-light breeze, palm trees and a fish heading straight for Honduras.

Ephemerella grandis is, like the rest of us, a sex fiend. From the moment he sheds his heavy, heinous body of youth, his thoughts are dominated by mayfly fornication-drake nookie, if you will. He can't sleep. He can't eat. He can do nothing but flutter about on the breezes of desire, looking above the river for his one true love-or, if he's lucky, a couple of them.

--Brian O'Keefe

All creatures are, in a way, sex fiends. They must be at some point simply to keep their species in the game. But E. grandis, commonly known as the Western Green Drake, pays one hell of a price for it. He is the All Star sex fiend-for after he does the deed, he's done. His life is over, and we don't mean figuratively. No wonder he does it in midair. The poor guy has no friends when he begins his courtship, surrounded as he is by dozens of others with the same goal-sorta like guys in a ski town. Grandis boy figures, and rightly so, that his acquaintances, all just as sex-crazed, would stab him in the back before they'd help him get laid. Grab a lady and make it happen-that's the name of the game.