In the journey to refinement of my piscatorial pursuits, I’ve fundamentally changed everything I knew regarding, rods, reels, casting, lures, and giving life to lures. Casting was the first hurdle and, though there are still acres of room for improvement, laying a fly in the water is not the voodoo art I once thought it was. Even the dreaded Clousers are becoming more responsive. And I’ve started to experiment with different casts. Roll casts aren’t too tough as long as line is in the water, providing just the right amount of drag.

I’ve been at this fairy wand fishing thing for over four months now. This year’s peculiar winter, or rather lack of winter — a blessing from the climate change gods of doom — meant rarely a week went by that I wasn’t able to spend time on the water’s edge or at least practice casting in the yard. I caught a few fish. In fact, I’d lay a wager that I caught more fish this winter than any winter prior.

I’ve been searching for the word, and the word is “guilt.” That’s what I felt — guilt.

I felt guilty because I enjoyed the climate change-fueled El Nino that produced 70-degree days through most of December. In years past I would have cursed the warm temps while sitting in the deer woods. But this year I’ve got a fly rod.

If you’ve kept up with comments on the first installment of “Trans-Angler,” you’ll note that my ECHO fly rod and reel arrived courtesy of UPS on the very day that story published. I wish I had some insightful comments about ECHO products, but as a newbie all I can offer is that they look cool. The ION reel looks like a quality piece of work and I really like the deep blue color of my BASE 6 weight rod.

I did not know any fly anglers while growing up here, in the River Valley region of Arkansas. I read about them in the pages of Field & Stream and Sports Afield. I remember one named Lefty and another fellow named Wulff. But my fishing heroes drove fiberglass boats and threw the patently pagan Texas-rigged scuppernong Jelly Worm as opposed to the cultured and elegant-sounding Royal Coachman.