I remember packing up at the trailhead of a small tributary to the South Fork of the Snake River that fateful evening some two decades ago. It was nearly dark, and the mosquitoes were on me the second I removed my waders. The sun had dropped below the Big Hole Mountains, and everything took on a chill that’s universal in the Rockies.

No sun. No warmth. We don’t get those sultry Southern evenings here in the mountains. When the sun goes behind the mountains, it steals the heat from the river bottoms. And the bugs come out. Sucks to be you if you’re caught out in it.

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.