Pregnancy and steelheading–there may be more similarities than you think… and a few more differences.Years back, after my lady-friend Ellie and I discovered why she could no longer stomach the smell of morning coffee and why she seemed possessed by a pathological urge to clean those tiny spots of mildew that collect at the base of our old windows, I hesitated in telling my fishing buddies our good news.

“Are you embarrassed by our pregnancy?” Ellie asked, rubber gloves to her elbows, a bandanna holding her bangs back. It was midnight on a Tuesday.

I scoffed, “Of course not. Why would I be embarrassed?” And yet, as the weeks dragged into a month, and her belly swelled to the size of a super-grande burrito, still I said nothing.

Instead, I retreated to the literature on the subject. According to a glossy text I found mysteriously stuffed between two of my most-cherished fishing tomes, a baby doesn’t start out as a baby. Actually, it begins as a single cell, then splits into two cells, and then becomes a lizard. The lizard baby comes complete with an elongated head, four wimpy little legs, and a wiry tail. This little creature, as depicted in the book anyway, looks perfectly suited to scaling a stucco building. Or if given just the right action, to tempting a largemouth from a weedy edge…

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