I've been sitting here at the kitchen table, thinking, and I just realized that I haven't been fishing in a long time — more than a month — and that winter is here.

For the past several seasons I’ve been spending most of my fishing time pursuing brown trout. Free-rising brown trout. While so engaged, I’ve been reminded countless times of a feeding quirk particular to this species. It’s this: Brown trout react to food according to their own whims and fancy, completely independent of its presence and abundance. Surround them with a good hatch, spinner fall, or stonefly flight, and brown trout might feed readily, might feed haphazardly, or maybe not at all.