Jim Maffett and I were casting into a small Montana trout hole almost 30 miles from the nearest road. Specifically, we were standing beside the South Fork of the Flathead River, in a million-acre refuge called the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Jim unfurled a perfectly undulating line across the water, a line that didn’t hit the surface until the fly itself settled lightly down.

Jim wears an impressive handlebar mustache and can tell you about the time a then-unknown band called ZZ Top played his high school prom. He’s my next-door neighbor back in Woodford County, KY, and since my wife and I moved to the country 10 years ago, he has been a kind of mentor to me in many things rural, from repairing riding mowers to spotting oriole nests. He stopped fishing, observed my shaky casting for a minute, then said, “You’re arcing your rod too much. You want it to follow a straight line. Imagine your rod and your line forming a T. Move that T back and forth.” Then Jim reminded me, as a form of encouragement, that he’s been at this for 50 years—“as long as you’ve been alive.”

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