Long before dawn on a chilly April morning, with just enough grainy light to see by, my friend Adrian Webber and I found ourselves where we so often did in those days: prowling the serpentine banks of Riebolt’s Creek in northern Door County—a.k.a. Wisconsin’s “thumb”—fishing for steelhead.

Every fly fisher that takes the leap and opts, voluntarily, to start slinging flies at carp eventually arrives at a moment of clarity. The garbage fish that have found their way into nearly every drainage ditch, irrigation canal and city settling pond in the country over the last 190 years becomes less onerous, more appreciated … even valued.