By Nick Simonson
I can’t tell you what I was reaching for in the boat when I set my rod down.
Likely, in the chill of the start to an otherwise perfect Saturday, it was the blue coffee tumbler I had borrowed from my mom when meeting my brother and a buddy for a drift down my home flow of the Sheyenne River. It could have been one of the tiny krystal flash jigs I had been taking from the small pile for the soft-biting walleyes we were pursuing which had required me to downsize to that ultralight rod with four-pound test, to give them something smaller to match their appetite. Perhaps it was to exhale through my hands in order to keep them warm.