Teaching the Teacher

Shayne Langford shows up at my house at 7 a.m. in his aging Toyota pickup on a sunny August morning wearing quick-dry pants, a long-sleeved sun shirt, a 4UR Ranch truckers’ cap sun-bleached to no color at all and stuck with eight bright flies, and polarized sunglasses that probably represent some reasonable percentage of his net worth.

“It’s windy already,” he says, “but maybe down in the canyon we’ll be a little more protected. I’m just hoping we get in there while something’s still hatching, before the sun’s right overhead.”

I’ve got half of my body in the closet looking for my water shoes. Somewhere here is a legitimate fishing shirt, with mesh and the button-down flap in the back, but finding that is an even bigger longshot. “Rain jacket, Clif bars, plenty of water,” Shayne says, “maybe your hiking poles in case we wind up climbing out in some crazy part of the canyon. Oh, and you’re going to want something to keep the sun off your face. We might be standing in the