I worked as a youth counselor at a church camp once. Over the couple summers, there is one conversation that hasn’t left me. My boss – only a few years older than me, still hardly able to drive to work legally at the time – asked me one of those questions that you never forget your answer to.

“Best rock and roll band of all time?”

“The Rolling Stones”

He didn’t like my answer. His reply was nothing short of theatrical, showy, and monotone to the beat – classic Beatles. He was a Beatles guy; I wasn’t then and I’m still not now.

I don’t know what he’s doing these days as our summer job stint ended about twelve years ago to the day. People grow up; things change. But I’d venture a guess that there are certain elements of people’s personalities that don’t – things that reflect permanent personality traits, things like your stance on the Beatles versus the Stones.

Windows down and blasting forty-minutes of Beggar’s Banquet on repeat, I pulled into Yellowstone National Park with my cat, my camera, and a twelve-pack of Snake River brew for a day with Mick, Keith, and the brown trout of Yellowstone River.

You just can’t do that with the Beatles.

On October 27, 2004, the confetti fell, the pennants raised, and the people of Boston let out a long-overdue sign of relief. Their streak had ended.

On June 10, 2016, my clouser minnow disappeared, my excess line went tight to the reel, and I let out a long-overdue sigh of relief. My streak too ended in Boston.

While it wasn’t eighty-five championship-free years of paranormal haunting from the drunken ghost of Babe Ruth like my Major League Baseball counterparts with the ruby hosiery, my fishless streak among target species had worked its way up the east coast from the mountain streams of North Carolina to the big bass lakes of Virginia. It was only two weeks without catching a fish, but when you’re traveling for the sole purpose of adventuring, paddling, and knocking new target species off of the ol’ aquatic bucket list, two weeks feels like eighty-five years.