Autumn typically comes to the Great Land in something of a rush. Before we ever get comfortable with those seventy-degree days of June and July it’s windy and rainy and gray every day. Of course, we still get plenty of nice, bluebird days, though they’ll now start with a bit of a chill—and eventually, frost.

One morning we’re fishing with friends for sockeye on the Kenai and by that night it seems the coho are coming and the reds are either dying or dead. What was green and blooming yesterday is yellow and gold today and we quickly find ourselves staring down the barrel at another long Alaska winter.

It hardly differs from year to year, and in some ways this kind of reliability in change can shield us from the absolutes of our seasonal transformation. Trout anglers should be among the most aware, however. Those that are enjoying any kind of fall success anyway, for all they have to do to triangulate their position on the calendar is take a quick look into the fly boxes that were hauled streamside.

At this time of year, the traditional nymphs and streamers are put away. Dry flies are out of the question. What you have now is built of variation on but a pair of themes: eggs and flesh. Yes, it’s often ugly fishing, but it’s also singularly effective—and any deterioration of the aesthetic is more than made up for by the trout we catch, fish gorgeous in their girth, chrome-sided, Alaska-sized beauties that are worth every minute of cold, every wet inch of skin, every split-shot crimped onto the end of your leader. Gone may be the early-season aerials and extended acrobatics of a Russian circus performer, but in return we get blistering deep-water runs, dogged determination, and trout with the power reserves of a Los Angeles-class submarine. Summer should be so lucky.

Recently, I find myself much more aware of the kind of Maginot Line that exists as a demarcation between summer and fall angling in the Last Frontier. It’s not necessarily that I’ve become any more trenchant in my observations, but rather because like the Wehrmacht in World War II, I’ve simply gone around the line altogether.

For the second consecutive Labor Day weekend, I’ll be out of the state, visiting Ennis, Montana, for the Madison River Foundation’s annual fly-fishing festival, the directors of which having again been fooled into inviting me to speak about Alaska. It’s a good gig—I get to return to my former home state, attend presentations by truly interesting speakers like Ted Leeson and Seth Norman, and wade through lots of blue-ribbon trout water. In return all I have to do is talk about the fishing in a state that sells itself.

The abrupt nature of this transition—from Alaska to Montana and then back again—helps me to clearly see the result of the changes I missed while away.

One August day I’ll rig a 250-grain sinking line and swing an Articulated Leech through deep pools on the eastside tributaries of the Susitna River and the next I’ll be trying to thread 7X through a size 22 dry and come to some kind of grips with a mid-morning Trico hatch. I’ll swap the standard three coats of bug dope for equivalent applications of sunscreen. And while there will be summer days in Alaska where a twenty-four-inch trout doesn’t prompt so much as a glance towards the camera, I’ll soon be reminded that any fish approaching twenty in Montana warrants the kind of celebration that can end in either jail time or Wyoming, a pair of equally dire results.

Then, after just enough time to feel properly reacquainted with the Big Sky State, I’ll find myself back in Alaska, looking at the seven- and eight-weights leaning against the wall of my office, wondering about the rainbows hanging below Skilak or whether the big brutes of the Naknek and Kvichak have been lured from their respective lakes yet. If I’m lucky, and my supply of domestic harmony hasn’t been completely expended, I’ll soon find myself in a jetboat realizing firsthand the reason Alaska is famous for trout.

It’ll be a big change, from the Montana of a day before and from the Alaska of just a few weeks ago, and the skies will probably be overcast and my toes cold. But this is an occasion when change is a good thing.