"The River Why Not"

“Fly-fishing means eliminating all the variables — what fly you choose, what cast you make, how you approach — until you solve the single, irreducible event that is happening in front of you: the head of a trout taking a mayfly from the water’s surface. For me there are no variables left. I am no longer up to problem-solving. The cold has reduced me to a single hypothesis, which the trout are now rejecting.” In The New York Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg decides that becoming “one with the fish” is not the only reason to cast flies. (Thanks to reader John DeVault for this liink.)