IT WAS A FAMILY vacation to the Wisconsin Northwoods, and while I hoped to steal some time to fish, I’d packed only a barebones gear kit. So when I spotted a pair of big smallmouths patrolling a rock hump—I was poking around in the rowboat that came with the cottage—I had to mark the spot the way my dad had taught me: triangulation. A white boathouse, a lightning scarred pine, and the wreckage of a duck blind gave me landmarks to reckon by when the lake glassed off that evening.

I rowed out after supper, a swell of anticipation rising in my chest with each pull of the oars. The lake, as I’d hoped, had gone mirror-smooth. I anchored with the sun at my back, knotted a chartreuse Dahlberg Diver to my leader, and began slinging casts. A loon yodeled nearby, raising the hair on the back of my neck.

Day-Glo deer hair and rod pointed straight at it, I worked the fly in short glugs, pausing to let the ripples settle before twitching it again, the bug submerging briefly then bobbing to the surface when— Ker-pow!

Or maybe it was Ka-boom!