When you get to be a certain age (don’t ask me when), catching a bunch of fish becomes less important than it once was -- though you do want to catch some trout when fishing. Instead, you start to observe your surroundings, and sometimes you want to do things differently, just to fool around. During the past couple years, I have sometimes deviated from my usual fishing habits, just for the heck of it.

Though I have not tried the popular new method of nymph-fishing called Euro nymphing, which its proponents say allows them to vacuum a stream bottom of trout, I have occasionally lengthened...