Like good jazz, the surrounding forest and stream make their own music.

Longtime Dean and Sustut guide Paulie, aka Squig, has a theory about steelhead holding in fast current, rolling and jumping when they return to freshwater. "They remember what's it's like to be kids. After all that time in the ocean, they just want to have fun and play."

Fred is a mental health worker who spends his days trying to convince county methheads to part with their axes and come to the front door. He needed a little Fred-time.

Zee German and I had suspicions about the third member of our traveling squad, "The Kid." A notorious chinook fiend who trained for years on the Kanektok and honed his craft on tidal rivers of the Northwest. Suspicions confirmed: The Kid is indeed the much rumored "Dean Carp Whisperer of the Kimsquit".

... at about 4,000 feet in the North Cascades, lies a network of alpine lakes, treeline creeks and about 12 weeks of fishing for angry, angry brookies. Although these rarely break ten inches, there is something about watching vicious little char hammer a Chernobyl ant a quarter their size under the dark overhang of a snowbank.

"I'm headed north," was all he said as he wrapped a battered old glass spey rod in burlap coffee bag and took a drag off his roll-up smoke. He hopped a Burlington Northern grain car and figured he could make it to Smithers with some deduction and plastic liter "light traveler" of budget bourbon.