It was cold. Not, damn-I-wish-I'd-put-on-another-layer cold. It was I-hate-my-life, I-should-move-to-the-desert cold.

Any reasonable person would have gone home - or not suited up to begin with. But it was Dec. 31, and I hadn't caught a trout yet that month. So it didn't matter that it was near zero with God-only-knows what real-feel temperature courtesy of sustained 30 mph winds and I had to stop every other cast to break ice out of each crusted eyelet.

It had been almost a year since my husband and I decided to catch a trout a month. I wasn't going to break the streak at 11 months, even if it meant I might leave pieces of my frost-bitten fingers in the river.
Now bear with me. I realize catching a fish a month may not mean much to anyone lucky enough not to live where it deep freezes six months of the year, or fortunate enough to have a warm spring or tailwater nearby. I'm not. I live in Wyoming’s high plains, hours from the closest tailwater or thermal feature. Little frozen puddles aren't far away, but our ice fishing skills still leave something to be desired.

That means winters can drag from a fishing perspective.

Shortly before we started our fish a month challenge, I interviewed a local Wyoming guy, Brent Pickett, who had recently finished his 18th year catching a trout each month. He’d fished through wind and snow, good weather and bad.

Even for him some months proved challenging. In 2001, after an emergency appendectomy, he stood on a snowbank casting his fly rod under his wife’s supervision. He still had a drain jutting out of his midsection. Even after he reopened the wound after slipping, he didn’t regret the decision to chase that trout.

Others I'd contacted went even longer. One guy had been going 20 years, another had 25. A club in central Wyoming kept track of the months for members, formalizing the quest.

They each told me the same thing: It wasn't about the record, it was about forcing them out the door when life got in the way.

“There are times when I think to myself, it’s like 9 a.m. in the morning on a Saturday, and I know I will be chipping ice out of my guides, and at the time, at that moment, I don’t look forward to it,” Pickett said. “But there hasn’t been a single time I’ve been out there and I wasn’t glad I was out there doing it.”

It’s become a little obsessive, he admits. This summer, he planned his visiting professorship in the Republic of Georgia in the second half of May and first half of June to give himself time to catch a trout at the beginning and end of each month. When he lands one in January, he’ll be at an even 20 years.

I was inspired. I’m a sucker for a challenge, and life kept getting in our way, too. Work bled into weekends. Family commitments and organization duties added up. But all of those amounted to excuses in the face of a goal - a streak.

We started in January, and those first few winter months weren't hard. We prioritized, spending hours on the ice if we couldn’t drive to a tailwater.

Spring and summer were a given, and fall, even juggling demands of elk hunting season, ended with a couple 5-inch brookies pulled from a small mountain stream.

But then there was December.

My husband caught a nice brown trout near the end of the month below a dam. I got skunked.

So on Dec. 31, as we drove to visit family, we stopped in a town with a warm spring feeding the river. Mini-icebergs careened past rocks, but enough warm water bubbled into the stream that hell could freeze over and there would still be open water.

I looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy with layers of down and wool under my waders. Winds pierced the only bits of bare skin on my face and fingers. Ice formed on my legs each time I stepped out of the water.

Being outside seemed stupid. Standing in a river seemed stupider.

But would I have been out there without a streak to uphold? Not a chance. Did I regret the decision? Not once a rainbow bit.