Guess that kinda puts the kapoots on farm ponds, resevoirs and channelized rivers. Nice thought, though. My choice would the very same Minnesota River I now fish minus the years of septic tank and city discharge contamination, without the years of crop nutrients and soil particle-runoff common to open tile drainage that is all the rage here in the flat prairielands, where a simple two inch rain wouldn't cause a major river "event" with a rise of two or so feet within an hour or two that is so detrimental to fish propagation, and where God provided a natural buffer strip called prairie grasslands that kept the rivers clean and healthy from such man-caused pollution. According to journals prior to Euro-American imigration, this was a clear-water river with good populations of pike, smallmouth bass and other "sporty" fisheries. Lots of work has been been done in cleanup efforts over the past ten years but the river has so much healing to do. River watershed projects and federal easement programs have been responsible for much of that. Yet, I would have loved to have canoed and fished a pre-imigration Western Minnesota River. JGW

[This message has been edited by white43 (edited 05 February 2005).]