Few people have affected a sport’s or pastime’s literature the way Nick Lyons has with fly fishing. Through a celebrated career as an author, editor, and publisher, Nick advanced the field of fly-fishing writing in such significant ways that Tom Rosenbauer calls him the godfather of modern fly-fishing books.

As we motored across Aylmer Lake in the far north of the Northwest Territories, guide Kevin McNeil touched me on my shoulder.

“Do you have bigger flies?”

Aylmer’s storied tundra lake trout were giving us a bit of a struggle, given our limited supply of streamers. As is usual, I meant to devote a couple of evenings prior to my departure to Yellowknife to tying up big lake-trout streamers – massive hunks of imitation protein that big predators just can’t ignore.