Across the square from the Catholic church in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, Merrilee and I put our feet on a low wall and the owner of the shop brought us egg coffees. We were early and the city awoke around us. Children in uniforms. Men in work clothes. Women in business skirts. On scooters. On bicycles — moms and dads and toddlers, sometimes four in a family on one scooter.

A grandmother sat on the corner near us and received respect from passersby but not from her daughter-in-law.

I kissed my wife goodbye and our party of fishermen worked our way out of the city in a Ford Focus, Khanh at the wheel, my old friend Mike Tom in the passenger seat, Hoang beside me and Tuan, with the camera, dozing next to him. Big trucks, work vans, three-wheeled cars, cattle and motorcycles with trailers shared the road with us and always scooters to pass. A beep-beep of the horn and a flick of the turn signal and traffic flowed irrespective of lane markers and supposed direction of travel. Somehow there were no accidents.

Khanh was 34, Hoang’s cousin, owner of a tackle shop in a city of 8 million people. Two hours later when we had pulled down a narrow lane and parked on a sandy spit, Khanh began to assemble fishing rods. Of politics he said he did not care a lick. He liked to fish, drive nice cars and share a good meal with friends.

Two other anglers arrived at the same time and it became apparent they were our fishing partners for the day. They had the latest gear. Good inflatable boats — a rarity in Vietnam — and new spinning and casting rods with braided line. Mike and I strung fly rods. We were fishing for snakeheads.

Hoang indicated the narrow bay and said we would fish there and then get in the boats. I managed to catch a redbelly tilapia and Mike snagged an old rope and then we loaded up in the boats. Khanh stayed behind to fish from shore and I got in the raft with a 20-something fellow with a cowlick, a smartphone and no English. Mike climbed in with a young guy with a good haircut and a spinning rod. They never told us their names. It didn’t matter.

Hoang and Tuan followed in a third inflatable with Hoang, who had never operated a boat before, learning how to run the electric motor and how to row to keep up with our faster boats. It must have been in his blood because he made the little boat scoot.

Snakeheads average 12 inches long and up to 12 pounds or whatever.

They run the bottom like catfish and eat like snakes, anything they can trap in the shallows and bite with that snaky mouth. And people eat them, although Khanh said we were letting them go today. If we caught any.

In a little cove, tucked against the shore, I saw a bunch of minnows splash. Frantic tiny fish above the surface, which could mean only one thing. They had been ganged up on by snakeheads and driven inshore. We got close enough and I threw a frog pattern while Cowlick cast a plastic frog with a small spinner. He cast onto the beach and dragged it into the water. A fish blew up on his bait, but the hook didn’t stick.

We prowled the shorelines and learned the ways of these shallow water predators that can do almost as good on land as they do in the muddy water.

Sometimes the fish don’t bite as fast as we want them to and this was one of those days. Cowlick talked to Hoang, who translated. Slow down your retrieve. Cast into the brush. Cast onto the land.

They knew we were trying. Fish blew up on our baits and we had a hard time hooking them, but Mike caught one and his guide hooted, and the guys started talking among themselves.

They asked, through the translator, if we had more time, could we drive 100 kilometers from here and fish another lake where there were peacock bass. “Much easier to catch.” And we knew we had made friends.

These guys were good anglers; put them in the United States on a largemouth lake and they could be tournament fishing the next day.

They had the skills and fishy-ness. In the back bay I caught a snakehead, battling it out of the shallows to Cowlick’s end of the boat.

We lunched at a family campground on the edge of the big muddy. Noodles and beef and chicken. Sprouts and lettuce and mint with fish sauce. Washed it down with Coca-Cola. We looked around at our new friends and promised to fish with them again, and said they were welcome at our homes and we would take them trout fishing in the U.S.

Fishermen are the same around the world. And grandmothers and daughters-in-law are the same too, I guess. And we have something we can learn from each other. Like how to make egg coffee. And they might learn a thing from us about driving, but I doubt it.

Fly-tying Corner

Here is a high-floating fly that can handle rough water. It’s a great choice in May and June, especially in fast-moving pocket water. The little yellow stonefly, also called the yellow sally, is a creature of fast flows and clean water. Before the hatch, stonefly nymphs crawl into the shallows and onto rocks along the bank. Above the surface, they shed their nymphal shucks and fly.

This is a fly for the Lower Deschutes, especially below Sherar’s Falls. Look for the yellow sally when the nymphs migrate to slower water then crawl to shore in late spring and summer. Fish close to the bank and prospect in the back-eddies.

Go buy one of these and look at it with a magnifying glass if you want to tie it. Tie Larimer’s Yellow Sally with yellow thread on a No. 12-16 dry fly hook. Tie in a strip of light pink foam, leaving a short trimmed tail. Tie in rubber legs at the back. Build the body with fine tying yarn, a light root beer rib and a fine tan hackle. Next, tie in a thin strip of tan foam overlaid with light pink foam. Tie in a sparse poly wing with pink and yellow fibers. Build the thorax with yellow tying yarn then cinch down a pair of rubber legs on each side and the foam to define the thorax.