Driving west across Colorado on Interstate 70, there was a specific quarter-mile where the public-radio and classic-rock stations I’d been grazing through all faded to static and were replaced by country-western and preachers. The exit for the town of Silt was in the rearview mirror and the Colorado River was off my left shoulder. I’d crossed the Continental Divide some 90 miles back and could have made the Utah border in less than an hour, but it was only then that I felt like I was officially on the West Slope where the airwaves are filled with pain and redemption with livestock reports on the hour.

Midway through 2009, I couldn’t complain about the angling year. I started in January chasing sea-run cutthroats around Washington’s Puget Sound, and then migrated north to the Queen Charlotte Islands for steelhead. By April I was throwing Spey on the Skagit River and shortly after, I was doing the same in Oregon on the North Umpqua. Right after that I headed to Maine for landlocked Atlantic salmon. In May I was in southeast Alaska putting the smackdown on more sea-run cutthroats and steelhead, along with some meaty dolly varden.