Below Elizabeth Falls, where it thunders out of Black Lake, the Fond du Lac du Nord relaxes. The river sprawls across a boulder-studded delta, braiding into pools and riffles and narrow chutes before losing velocity and spilling into a mile-wide bowl. The roar of whitewater becomes a murmur, the murmur a sigh. A tall, flat-topped esker, so perfectly and symmetrically formed that it might have been engineered by an ancient civilization, cradles this widening on the far side. The near shore is lower, a gradual rise through willows and alders to the lance-like crowns of spruce.

“A fly reel’s job is to just hold line.”

You’ve probably heard that a thousand times. In most cases, that’s true. If you fish mountain streams where a nine-inch brookie is a trophy, playing fish from the reel isn’t a common occurrence. And you’ll never see your backing. But if you play in the salt, or anywhere else fish are measured in pounds and not inches, having a capable drag system can mean the difference between landing fish and burnt palms.