In the Valley of the Moon, green farm fields stretched a quirky patchwork beside a little stream that meandered back and forth to its confluence with a more determined river. We were in Patagonia, but it could have been any western stream in any hemisphere. Alejandro, our guide, led the way and spoke to us over his shoulder.

“The wind, on a scale of one to seven, is, I think, a four.” We leaned into it, our faces tight against the raindrops that stung our cheeks.

“You will need a 4-weight with maybe a 5-weight line to cast into the wind. But the trout can be big, so use a 3X tippet. On some streams we might use a dropper, but not here, these fish for some reason like to take a dry.

“We will walk for forty minutes then get in the water and play leapfrog or baseball, back upstream.” Meaning we would be careful not to work the water already fished by the angler ahead of us. If there were two anglers in the same water, they would alternate runs or trade off after two strikes.

“You will start always downstream and cast first to the middle then to the side and the other side. Then take two steps up and cast again. It is a searching pattern.”

To run the searching pattern to its utmost efficiency, we would place a water bottle on a gravel bar at our starting point. When the angler behind caught up to the water bottle, he would pick it up and walk upstream, allowing the other angler several good runs to fish before he would pick up the bottle and leapfrog ahead.

It is a strategy that works when there is one party on the river and the anglers cooperate to work one section of river.

Whenever an angler finds himself on a new stretch of water with no visible hatch in progress, a searching pattern should be employed. I thought of Alejandro’s instruction when I strung my rod last week on the Los Pinos River near Durango, Colo.

There are three types of searching patterns: the kind you tie on the end of your line, the kind you use to cover water and the kind the guide employs to make sure everyone casts over undisturbed fish.

I poked through my boxes. I could have used a Soft Hackle Hare’s Ear or a Muddler Minnow, but I opted for a black beadhead Woolly Bugger. My friend John Dustin would employ a black Panther Martin, the spinning rod equivalent. JD pointed me upstream to a rapid that broke over a line of rocks with a few boulders that broke the seam.

I started at the top and cast a short line then lengthened it by 18 inches on each cast until I threw as much line as I could with a simple lift-and-lie-down.

After that, each cast was two steps downstream. It is called the Wet Fly Swing. Throw quartering down, mend once, let it swing, take two steps down and do it again. When I had covered the run, I started again at the top. On the second pass, I touched three fish but hooked none of them.

Another way to come at the same problem is to fish two beadhead nymphs below an indicator. In intimate water, a Prince or Girdle Bug paired with a Scud or a Spitfire is a good combination. In this case, the angler should start downstream and cast up.

After an hour, we worked our way to a shallow spring-fed lake. No bugs flitted over the surface, no rises broke the glassy stillness. This called for a searching fly. In deeper water, I might have employed one of Bob Gaviglio’s Rufus patterns, but in this case, I thought an unweighted nymph might be a good choice. Perhaps a simple Brown Hackle was in order, maybe a grizzly-hackled Woolly Worm. Instead, when I opened my box, I spied a No. 14 Peacock Pheasant Tail.

Meanwhile, Sam Pyke tied on a Prince and worked his way to the other side of the lake. I fan-cast in an arc starting on my left and before long had a hook-up, a rainbow that charged the fly from behind.

For the next hour, I moved up and down the bank and covered the water with long casts and slow retrieves. Best fish of the morning was a 15-inch rainbow that straightened my line and went airborne when the bug stuck like lipstick. Across the water, Sam used his Prince to turn a couple of fish, including a nice rainbow he battled to the bank.

On our way to the afternoon plane, we pulled off the road and looked back into the Los Pinos valley and out across a network of roads that wound between two-acre homesteads and timber-framed hobby ranches.

Beside a ribbon that shimmered blue, the willows and cottonwoods were tinted by September. Shifting shafts of shining searched the patterns of the landscape. Through it a river ran, woven in the fabric of my dreams.