About ten years ago, two deaths in my family sent me searching through old boxes and files for a picture someone had taken during a camping trip in southern Illinois around 1970. My obsession worsened for about a month until the person most affected by those deaths sent me a scan of the photograph.

“Have you named it yet? I'd be honored if you'd name it Dave because I feel like I know it now, too.”

Dave Delisi—who at the time served as my dealer, green grocer, andcandy manat Sweetgrass Rods—alluded to a brown trout whose allure had eroded my already meager capacity for self-control. What makes one fish stubbornly reject a fly another will eagerly take, I’d ask at 3 a.m., hoping ten more revolutions of the ceiling fan would release insomnia’s grip on my consciousness. This quest to answer a patently unanswerable question had transformed me—an otherwise capable man—into a neurotic ninny.

“I’m concerned the Siren song of Dave may be too much for me,'' I responded. “Tonight, I'm putting beeswax in my ears, tying myself to the deck, and forbidding my family from untying me no matter how loudly I might beg.'' My Siren was a brown trout I now called Dave, and my Tyrrhenian Sea was a remote river in the Ontonagon watershed.

Having appropriated the title from Charles Dickens, it’s only natural to poach the story’s moral from Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, and George Costanza: A Tim divided cannot stand. This story, you see, is a tale of internal conflict, for which Confucius is said to have said, “He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior”—precisely the nifty sort of circular logic that made the old bearded hypothesizer a household name.

In my younger days, the old people didn’t fear the dark, or at least that’s what they said. “Don’t be afraid of the dark,” they’d tell me as if it was something I could just do. Washing my hands before eating, putting my dirty clothes in the hamper, lifting the toilet seat, closing the toilet seat, and saying “thank you” when someone did something nice were things I could just do. Being unafraid of the dark was not.

There is magic in between. The cadence of the cast, the poetic loop of the line, the soft landing of the leader, and the anxious anticipation of that one thing you think you can’t live without but always do. The sunlight bleeding through the trees, the aspen leaves telling jokes about the pines, and the white-throated sparrow singing the song that always makes you want to cry. The rotten smell of mud, the sour taste of wind, the warm embrace of the river, and the weight of another fool’s monkey—another fool’s circus—lifting from your shoulders.

Those of us who relentlessly pursue large trout with a dry fly are hopeless addicts. If we weren't, we'd take up easy chores like curing cancer, ending world poverty, or explaining how long forever is. The essence of our addiction is not complicated—when we see a good trout rising, we don't simply want to catch it. We believe that we have to catch it.

In the time it takes our planet to complete an orbit around its sun, my friend Mike Sepelak goes fishing at least fifty-two times. More often if possible, but he’s set the bar at an average of once a week. I met Mike through his writing on a blog called Mike’s Gone Fishin’ Again, and, with a title like that, my only surprise about the frequency of his fishing was that he didn’t fish more.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

—George Santayana

The first time I caught the biggest brook trout of my life, I was so excited I wrote a how-to essay called “How to Catch the Biggest Brook Trout of Your Life.” Although I thought I did the fishing world a much-needed service, the reactions to my accomplishment and advice were tepid:

I don't usually write how-to essays. My way of doing something might not be the best for everyone, so I worry about feeling bad when someone points out a better way. The other day, though, I caught the biggest brook trout of my life. That made me feel good. Really good. And now that I've had some time to think about how it happened, I believe I know something so important I have to share it.

Much of the fun of getting to know a new fishing buddy is the slow and pleasant process of asking questions about their life and answering questions about yours.

“Where'd you grow up?”

“What do you do for a living?”

That's the routine Tom Hazelton and I worked through during our first trip together when he asked a question I didn't expect.

“Are you retired?”