My friend Vikki tells me that my musical tastes are deeply offensive to her. I just smile and nod — she’s a few years older than me, but, despite her advancing age, she’s much more tuned into what’s popular now than I am.

“You’re not that old,” she chides. “Why do you like that old-man music?” And “old man” comes out as if it’s some sort of epithet. An insult.

When John Juracek, and I published our little book, Fishing Yellowstone Hatches, we wrote in the book’s introduction how a knowledge of insect hatches can improve angling success and that anglers should take an interest in insects because they are the root of our sport—without them there is no basis for fly fishing.

John and I are honored to be instructors in Todd Tanner’s wonderful School of Trout each fall, along with several other great teachers. We have become great friends, and are told by our students that our passion for fly fishing is infectious. The students come away from the school anxious to get on the water and apply what they’ve learned. I have run into several on stream or in fly shops after they completed the school. The one thing they always comment on is how much they learned and how important it has been to their personal angling success. I always ask them what aspect and topic covered in the school stands out the most to them. Overwhelmingly, their responses echo each other's: how to understand and fish insect periods, specifically caddis activity, on their home waters (and those of Yellowstone country when they fish here).