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.