I’m not much of a list guy. I’ve just never been one to jot things down. The average trip to the grocery store is generally an adventure in random wandering that depends on me encountering visual clues to what’s needed to fill empty shelves at home.

But when it comes to fly fishing high-elevation trout water, I do, indeed, have my lists. They aren’t written down, per se. They live in the fishy part of my brain, where their compilations now consist largely of instinct rather than recall or reference.

“What did it eat?” I hollered.

Across the lake, my fishing buddy Pat yelled back, “Red chironomid. Again.”

I set my rod across my lap and unzipped a pouch on my float tube. It was a brilliant spring day, warmer than it had any right to be, and Pat and I were on my favorite high country lake a full month earlier than I’ve ever been before. Usually snow blocks the road until the first week of June. We were floating it before Mother’s Day.