All too often there’s conflict between wild swimmers and other river users such as boats and fisherfolk, but not me. The swimmers seem a decent enough bunch of people, mostly of my generation, or thereabouts, and with whom I could comfortably share a mug of tea and some friendly chatter. Male and female, they are as polite as I aspire to be (that’s a compliment). Socialising would be much easier were they not wracked by uncontrollable shivering.

“Have you named it yet? I'd be honored if you'd name it Dave because I feel like I know it now, too.”

Dave Delisi—who at the time served as my dealer, green grocer, andcandy manat Sweetgrass Rods—alluded to a brown trout whose allure had eroded my already meager capacity for self-control. What makes one fish stubbornly reject a fly another will eagerly take, I’d ask at 3 a.m., hoping ten more revolutions of the ceiling fan would release insomnia’s grip on my consciousness. This quest to answer a patently unanswerable question had transformed me—an otherwise capable man—into a neurotic ninny.

“I’m concerned the Siren song of Dave may be too much for me,'' I responded. “Tonight, I'm putting beeswax in my ears, tying myself to the deck, and forbidding my family from untying me no matter how loudly I might beg.'' My Siren was a brown trout I now called Dave, and my Tyrrhenian Sea was a remote river in the Ontonagon watershed.