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Home Waters
A lot of people who fly fish are romantics. They talk about how the light looks on the bend of a river known as "Holy Waters" and they lovingly remember that their grandfather's favorite fly was the Rusty Rat or the Snipe&Purple. Probably the idea of "Home Waters" is the most romantic fly fishing notion of all. Home Waters as in:
"Hi Joe. Wet a line lately?"
"Hey pal. Yup, I just got back from a week on the Yellowstone."
"Ah.. you lucky guy. The Yellowstone is my Home Waters. I grew up out there.. spent a lot of really good days on that river."
Like that. I've noticed people talking about their Home Waters in Montana, Wyoming, British Columbia, Colorado, and other places that make you think of brookies and afternoon caddis hatches and conjure up that image of Brad Pitt casting to a rising rainbow trout.
Me, I'm from New Jersey. My home waters are the Passaic River. Go ahead and laugh. No really, it's ok. I know. When I was a kid the Passaic River was reported to be the most polluted river in the U.S. I even won a prize for a poem I wrote about the chemicals being dumped into the Passaic by Ciba Geigy Pharmaceuticals in my hometown of Summit, NJ. I wrote it as a parody of "Song of Hiawatha." What can I say, I was a romantic.
There was a small brook in my backyard that had some minnows in it. I never caught any but I used to watch them a lot. I built little habitats for them and watched them play with the polliwogs and swim their way around cinderblocks and old handlebars and banana seats of discarded bicycles. One time I followed the brook all the way downstream to the Passaic River one block away. There were lots of dead minnows in the Passaic and I started to suspect that my minnow friends were in trouble. That 's when I went back home and built a dam with the cinderblocks and bricks in the hopes of saving some minnow lives. I think they froze in the ice that winter though. They say that freezing to death is relatively painless and those other minnows down in the Passaic looked pretty chewed up by chemicals so I guess that's ok.
When I was about eight years old, my friend Johnny and I built a raft and tried to float ourselves down the Passaic River like Tom and Huck. The raft floated, we had long enough poles to push ourselves, we remembered to bring a couple of salami sandwiches, we were too far from our houses to hear our mothers call us in to supper. Life was good. We pushed off, wobbled, took on a little water but kept going downstream past old spraycans, split gardenhoses, and waterlogged beer bottles. When we came around the first bend in the river we knew we'd made it.. freedom, adventure, no more bothersome little brothers to deal with! About a minute later we came to a stop.. ran aground.. got stuck in a big pile of old tires, a washing machine, and some nasty oily stuff. Johnny and I had to abandon ship, wade to shore, trudge on home, and let our brothers laugh at us while our mothers made us promise never ever ever to touch the Passaic River ever again.
There must be some fly fishers out there from Philly, Newark, Flint, Dorchester, and .... um.... Toledo. So how come nobody ever says that their home waters ran past factories or alongside public housing, or through the city dump? How come nobody ever says that the Gawanus is their home waters? Not romantic enough?
My home waters are the Passaic River. I remember oil slicks and old shoes and beer cans. An old friend told me that there are wild trout there now. I hope they make it.
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I grew up in Brooklyn, and if those waters were to be called "home" waters then the Gawanas was mine. In my youth I spent summers in the Catskills and then we got a boat and plyed the waters of NYC harbor and beyond.
This summer, my daughter took a group of students for a canoe ride on the Gawanas. She had a great time. She was the only experienced canoer and allher inner city students marveled at canoes and a view of Brooklyn from that perspective. They did see ducks there and horseshoe crabs but not much in the way of fish (or dead bodies).
jed
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Diane:
If you haven't read "The Fish's Eye" by Ian Frazier you should. The last essay is titled, "Five Fish" and the final section of the final essay is something I think you'll enjoy. It is a story that sticks with me and my suburban roots.
My home water was Naylor's Run Creek, a small fish-less stream that doubled as a bicycle and shopping cart dumping ground through Upper Darby, PA. It ran partially above and below ground through the township; just an after thought to most folks since its primary function was a place for storm water to go during the summer deluges we kids loved to watch. But for me it was heaven, just right for walking through on a snail or salamander hunt; perfect for skipping stones, launching Popsicle stick yachts or releasing a beer can flotilla. It also boasted subterranean caverns; large sections of underground piped-in storm sewers that were just the place to sneak that prohibited cigarette by candlelight.
In those days, I wasn?t a fisherman but if I was, I wouldn?t have expected to find any fish in Naylor's Run. But I will always credit my crick and my memories as the reason I love fishing and exploring moving water today.
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My home waters, growing up, were Kellogg Lake and Spring River, outside of Carthage, MO. Dad and I had long cane poles with green twine line. We had red and white bobbers with quill stoppers, and fished with worms, and crickets. Mom would fix breakfast on an outdoor grill and we would fish, eat breakfast, fish more, and be home by noon. I loved wandering along the bank of Spring River. Dad would let me swim in the river pool, just above the little falls. We would wade around in the riffles below the falls and look for interesting rocks and arrowheads.
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I grew up on the Missouri River. Not on the trouty part. It was the wing dammed, dredged, straightened product of the corps of engineers midnight shotgun marriage to what used to be the Mighty Mo. It flowed past the cornfields of Iowa at that point, silently witnessed by the mortal remains of Lewis and Clark's Sargeant Floyd. Several beef and pork packing plants nearby yielded a pile of manure that the billboard said "represented a gazillion* dollars to the local economy." Ahh, the smell of money.
My parents were outdoorsy people and pragmatists. Dad was an editor for the local newspaper. He and Mom taught canoe safety courses and swimming lessons through the Red Cross. We kids knew better than to swim in the river. We learned at Daddy's knee to respect it. And if the folks' words weren't enough, we just had to read the paper on any given Sunday about some drunken idiot going for a header into the Muddy Mo and coming out in a body bag.
There were fish. I suppose there still are. And with the packing plants gone, there might be less e-coli in the river for the little fishies to cavort in. The town sure smells better, though I don't get back there often. My brother and I would bike down to the river with Dad's tackle box and a couple of rods and just tie on whatever looked good to us. Fishing in the river was certainly like a box of chocolates; you never knew what you were gonna get.
I got my brother. Big ol' treble hook through the ear. He had quite a respectable vocabulary of swear words for a lad so young. To this day I cut one or more of the three hooks off any lure I use and mash the barbs on all of them. Memory says the lure was a balsa wood plug of at least three inches in length, but nothing is ever as big as it was when I was a kid. I go down stairways that engulfed me then and am somehow surprised that I can touch both walls without stretching.
So it should be no surprise that we remember the fish to be leviathans. There were bass, pike, bullheads, catfish, gar, and sturgeons along with less frightening creatures. If the drownings and parental warnings didn't keep us on the banks, Mom had one last weapon in her arsenal, though she couldn't have expected it to work that way.
She was our swim coach and was taking the team to an open water race near Yankton, South Dakota. On the way, she stopped at a fish hatchery and aquarium featuring all the species that were known to swim in that river. Once I saw the carp with scales as big as my five year old fist, I was taken aback. Then I saw the teeth on the monster pike and muskies and there was no way I was setting foot in that open water. But it was the sturgeon longer than our Ford Country Squire that convinced me that not even a toe would touch the water. She'd have to find some other sucker to anchor that relay team.
So if you don't mind, I'll claim the trout water near where my husband and I currently live as my "home water". I'm still getting over the nightmares of the Muddy Mo.
*maybe it said a million, nothing is as big as I remember.
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:lol:
We need more threads like this since a lot of us can relate to industrial strength home waters. Growing up mine was Globe Quarry between Lemont and Lockport, IL.
We literally drove through an oil refinery to get to it since it was on the property of the Globe Oil and Refining Co where my father worked and was a member of the rod and gun club. It held bass, crappie, and bluegills. I have early memories of watching my father fish for the crappie with a Heddon fly rod and Uncle Josh fly strips. It was good for many evenings of fishing and swimming for our family.
The quarry changed hands with the refinery going from Globe Oil, to Pure Oil, and to Union Oil. It was swallowed up and incorporated as a cooling pond during one of Union?s expansion projects. After some effort I recently located it via aerial photos of the plant, now Citgo. The footprint of the old quarry is still there though the fish are long gone.
Since that area is still pock marked with quarries, I can still say that the Lemont Quarries are my home waters if home is the place where it all started. The bush in Ontario is a nice place for Brook Trout, but there is no place like home.
:D
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I started fishing seriously as an adult. My "home" water is the Kishwaukee river in Illinois, where I learned to fish for smallies using spinning tackle and I fish for the same fish now using a fly rod.
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Bear742 and BigA, it's good to hear from some fellow Illini. I've had good luck with carp in Lockport, and very spotty lucky with Smallies on the Kish (although I keep going back because it's just too darn pretty).
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I grew up in NE Michigan and learned to trout fish on this little creek....
http://www.uppermidwestflyfishing.co...m/b_creek2.jpg
...it is near and dear to me...
http://www.uppermidwestflyfishing.co...0/IMG_0112.JPG
...she's feel on some hard times lately but you can still expect to catch small wild brook trout...
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Nice Creek!
I like the looks of that creek!