Successfully transitioning into the cold season usually means adapting your fly-fishing approach. This doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your gear and tactics, but every season presents a new set of variables. As the seasons change, trout water can seem like a labyrinth — one that is constantly morphing, often making it feel impossible to navigate. The path that worked yesterday suddenly closes, forcing you to take another route. But one of the things that makes fly fishing so exciting is how the same body of water is always changing.

The effort to stop a dragline mining project on the fragile fringes of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and its namesake blackwater swamp is just over five years old, and Alabama-based Twin Pines Minerals LLC already has draft mining permits in hand. Despite recent efforts from the U.S.