I used to be able to see rocks from where I stood—pebbles and pea gravel beneath my boots, larger stones a few feet farther out, an enormous boulder barely covered by a thin sheet of water just upstream.

Across from where I cast I could discern three or four submerged feet of fallen log; I could see the darkening that promised depth beneath it and make out enough of the angle of its decline to work a fly into the slot and guide it through without ever sticking to soggy timber.

The features of the run were clearly written in a little burble here, a swirl, an eddy, a riffle over there. Current flowed leisurely. Even the normal tannins seemed scarce, the water’s clarity more like weak apple juice than English tea.

In the end, it felt as precise as geometry. I would fish with such skill and precision as to make steelhead the natural consequence of my having turned up at all.

Of course, it had been misty when I awoke that morning. It then started to sprinkle as I tied a surgeon’s loop through the eye of a size 4 Super Prawn. The weather worsened by the time I’d stripped twenty feet of line from my reel. It was raining properly now.

In stages that lasted approximately seven seconds each, the creek turned from apple juice to rust-colored to sorrel and finally to its current state of mocha latté madness. I could no longer see the laces of my boots, let alone any rocks. The only feature that came to mind in trying to describe a surface characteristic was swollen. It was a cartoonish angling environment, possibly grotesque.

Not knowing what else to do, I cast one more time. The fly settled into a thickening, rising soup; I felt a slight delay in the progress of my drift, stopped breathing for a single, irrational moment, and promptly dug my hook into the sunken log. It seemed a decent time to remember all that reading of Beckett in school: “Ever tried. Ever failed.”

It’s the story of most of my autumn forays.

Searching for ideal fall-fishing conditions in Alaska is probably a little like looking for proof of extraterrestrial life. All things considered, staking out some hillside in the Nevada desert in hope of seeing the right kind of flying lights and tromping around the Last Frontier in October with any inkling that the sky might be blue, the river in shape and the fish in the river, is at least a wash. We’ve all seen the photos, I guess, meaning that either might be true. Theoretically.

I have a hard time with faith, though, most likely due to my near-constant presence on the rivers and streams of southcentral and western Alaska during fall. I’m there because that’s when the biggest fish are around—both steelhead in the right areas and in others, hordes of egg-and-flesh-fattened rainbow trout. I’m also there for the aesthetics: I like fishing in the fall, fewer people, remote country, harvest colors from the fiery end of the palette. I’m also there for the style; the deeper we get into autumn, the better the fishing on the swing, and I’m all about the tight-line take.

The rain’s there—I think it’s quite obvious by now—because I am.

Now, like anyone who knows the difference rabbit fur and Marabou, I have no problem fishing in the rain. It’s pretty much a state of being at this juncture, and thus, I’m not disappointed to repeatedly find out that fishing in Alaska rarely looks like the picture postcards. I could do without leaning into a sixty-knot gale on the Naknek, trying to force the longest casts of my life with a fly that weighs more than the average hummingbird, but that’s another story. The point here is that the late fall is a wonderful time to fish Alaska, and if a few characteristics are important to you, characteristics related to both the fish and the fishing, it may even be the best time.

I’m just wondering when it all might come together for me. One river, on one day, under a nice blue sky with a spot of sun providing a decent temperature, and that fish. I don’t know quite what it looks like, other than it’s a rainbow, sea-run or otherwise, and in truth, I know I’m quite greedy. I’ve caught a hell of a lot of great Alaska rainbows, and some steelhead (no sense angering the gods), in all kinds of conditions, and yet I’m out here looking, day after day, frequently in terrible weather. Since I must possess a bit of ambition, I figure there must be an aim somewhere in all this, a summit of sorts at the end of at least ten thousand casts.

And so, staring through rain growing steadily worse, I pull on the leader and leave my favorite fly in the log I used to be able to see. I re-rig, choosing an easier-to-tie leech that might be large enough to provide some profile in the flooding creek. I cast, remembering why I love late fall in Alaska, why I love to fish—and why I love Samuel Beckett.

It’s the story of most of my autumn forays: Try again. Fail again. Fail better.