I woke up one morning late last month and felt like I’d been doing sit-ups all night. Not that doing calisthenics in my sleep would necessarily be a bad thing, but the muscles in my gut had clearly been involuntarily enlisted into some sort of nocturnal enterprise, and not one I consciously approved of.

I got a Facebook message from an old junior high friend the other day. He’d been out to the Sabine River in the sticky thicket of East Texas, and visited the spot we’d all camped as kids, “Stand by Me” style.

I’ll never forget the look on my buddy’s face that fateful September day on the South Fork of the Snake River several years back, when I unhooked the little hybrid that had sucked in a small nymph and, without ceremony, knocked it over the head and tossed into the willows. Had it been just a bit bigger, I might have pocketed it and brought it home for the frying pan.

We’ve all been there. It’s summer. We’re headed somewhere fishy and the sooner we get there, the sooner we can assemble the 4-weight and hit the water. We’ve squeezed a weekend’s worth of beer and grub into the back of the SUV, and we’re ready to stand knee-deep in a trout stream and wash away all that’s wrong with the world. We’re on some two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere, and the speed limit is merely a strong suggestion.

The annual NCAA men’s basketball tournament gets underway this month, and Cheeky Fishing is turning the tables on “March Madness” with a uniquely fishy bent, and all for two good causes.

It’s been awhile since the box came out of the storage room—months, actually. I can tell the last batch of flies I tied was destined for Alaska, given the pink, white and orange marabou situated atop the pile. The box looked like a creamsicle.

A fuzzy, hairy creamsicle.

For every angler who plucked their first trout from a black-bottomed beaver pond high in the Rockies under the watchful eye of a father or a grandfather, this day is for you. For every fisherman or fisherwoman whose first bluegill came to hand after it pulled a bobber under water on some lonely little stream shaded by sweet gum trees, this day is for you, too.