The ringing phone was not a surprise. After all, we were less than a week out from the start of an early-fall silvers-and-trout odyssey and the calls had been coming for some time, increasing in frequency by the hour it seemed. My companion for the trip boasts an impressive angling resume, he's triumphantly hoisted all the species of the flats, plus everything Alaska has to offer, and blue-ribbon Montana is his backyard. Still, he'd never been on the Southcentral road system in autumn and he wanted to be prepared.

Fly fishers are funny that way: the more we learn the clearer it is how little we really know. Which is why you can expect an angling cheechako to show up for his first charter without anything more than a new rain jacket (and sometimes not even that), while the veteran Alaska traveler will spend weeks agonizing over the most miniscule packing decisions and then turn up festooned with every conceivable piece of equipment anyway.

This was the track we were on. Our conversations concerning fly selection had taken on all the worst qualities of a senate confirmation hearing. He'd ask for my opinion on a series of flies for a specific occasion, say, articulated-style coho patterns that are effective in heavy, glacially-influenced water at dusk on an overcast day, and I'd offer my best guess, which was usually plucked from the air circulating around my head at the time. Then we'd argue about my choices for an hour or so while the long-distance bill spiraled out of control. Under the most serious sort of cross-examination, I might offer an alternative or two, ideas which were in turn scoffed, ridiculed, and then finally discarded as the ravings of a fly-fishing simpleton whose brain had gone to mush through disuse. After we were both confused enough to have forgotten the reason for the debate in the first place, we would agree to disagree and move on to rod and reel combinations.

Line selection took a week on its own, and when it came time to talk about leader construction, well, let's just say that any future conversations on the subject of knots can only end in violence.

In a way, then, I was happy he called to inquire about our prospective weather, a topic fairly free from the manhood-questioning, rage-provoking effects of angling controversy. I just didn't have the energy to put much thought into my response.

"It might get a little chilly," I rattled off with all the nonchalance of someone who routinely goes to the long underwear in August. "But it's nothing to worry about."

"Will it freeze?" he asked.

"No." One- or two-word answers seemed best. I needed to get off the phone, mainly because I still wanted to tie up a bunch of flies that, no matter how many fish were enticed to strike, my friend wouldn't use in a million years.

"Snow?"

"Absolutely not."

By the time he asked about bears, our trip was only a day away. I might have muttered something about being off the water by dark, but it's doubtful, as I seem to remember a wave of insults and basic, third-grade name-calling being the order of the day. There was also a bit about Ahpun and Oreo at the Anchorage Zoo, but that hardly merits repeating here.

The next morning I met my friend at the airport; two hours later we were inching along the Sterling Highway, which could barely be seen through the whiteout conditions. We passed only a single group of anglers on the Kenai, an oarsman and two passengers who were gamely trying to navigate the river in a drift boat that appeared to hold about two feet of snow. Arriving at the cabin under a cloud of contentiousness that couldn't have compared well to the warmth and general affability of the Donner Party, we waited for a break in the weather and at the first opportunity, scrambled down to the water to try our newfound luck. About six minutes later, a sow brown bear and her two cubs walked us out of our hole. Back to the cabin we went, with plenty of fresh material for debate.

I recall this incident now because it's rapidly approaching that time of year again, when the bulk of the tourists have returned to their homes and most of those holding resident fishing licenses have decided the season's best angling days are past. Obviously, there is a small but (perhaps irrationally) devoted contingent that disagrees with the latter verdict, a northern fly-fishing cognoscenti who have waited all year for the weather to worsen so they can get on with the business of risking life and limb in pursuit of the fish so indelibly tied to our notion of fall in Alaska, the coho and the rainbow trout. These two species provide one of the state's most glorious angling combinations, available in many of the same waters, in prime condition and at the same time of year, and both eager to move to the fly. Anglers plan for years so that their excursions intersect with the travels of each, and here I use 'plan' in the loosest terms imaginable, as if anything is true with the coho-and-trout combo trip, it's that the most precisely-detailed itineraries are the ones most likely to leave you disappointed at the end.

It's like basing your retirement portfolio on the upcoming lottery schedule or expecting an Alaska Airlines connection in Bethel to be on time, or to even show up at all, you can dream, but history would suggest you keep a backup strategy at hand. In the end, the best we can probably do is to pick a week and a watershed and hope for the best.

That's the direction my advice is headed in this year: Pack for weather that ranges from frost in the morning to blistering autumn heat (about sixty degrees Fahrenheit for those of you not familiar with the Alaskan's propensity to melt anytime the sun shows itself after September 1). Expect it to rain, you'll get either a few sprinkles here and there or a seven-day deluge could make the building of an ark seem just the thing.

The coho might be upriver already or they might be late. They could be right on time, too, thick as good butter, one drainage to the west.

The trout are always around, of course, maybe not where you're fishing, but somewhere in the same river system. If you're willing to put up with any manner of inconvenience and even outright misery, you'll eventually find them. Tie, or buy, lots of flies. Flesh patterns, leeches, standard trout streamers, egg imitations, a mouse, whatever you have the least of will work the best.

Oh, and about the bears; yeah, the bears: you might want to be prepared to see some of them as well.