True North

A STORY OF PASSION, SOBRIETY, AND SECOND CHANCES.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” -Statue of Liberty, New York, New York. 1883.

Brian pulled on the oars as we cut further into the dense fog. My headlamp felt obnoxious when I realized it only shown three feet into the morning darkness, so I focused its beam instead on my coffee, timing sips between the bursts and lags of strokes. Clearing the cobwebs from our early start took a few minutes, but I eventually caught a boost from the caffeine. It could’ve just as likely come from the stoke of the unknown, which carries plenty of buzz in itself.

Brian Kozminski or “Koz” to friends and clients, operates True North Trout outfitters. He and I met while at a Backcountry Hunters and Anglers event in Detroit a few years ago. This was our first time connecting in person since then. We’d set out to fish the final hours of a Hex hatch on the Jordan river outside East Jordan, MI. The Hexagenia Limbata is a species of mayfly that h