It was hot the last day on the flats. Muggy. Still. Severe clear. We were miserable as we slowly steeped in our own sweat, covered up in light, quick-dry fabric to protect ourselves from the worst of the sunshine.

And the fish seemed to feel the same way. The plentiful bones of the prior day had seemingly failed to crest the lips of the flats this day, choosing instead to stay in deeper, cooler water. As we motored around, prowling for bones and maybe, if we were lucky, a permit, we came to realize that this just wasn’t the day to be out there.

In my memory it was early fall, the leaves in Sioux City just beginning to turn. I must have been twelve or thirteen. Dad and I were tossing the football in the yard and talking about my grandfather, Les Davis. He’d died in 1966, when I was nine. Thankfully I’d had the chance to fish with him the summer before his death on a trip to Lake of the Woods in Ontario—my first-ever Canadian fishing trip—and to this day I’ve never seen his equal with a bait-casting outfit.