Many of us started this crazed "libation" on a humble farm pond. My question: just what lessons did you bring from the pond? Environmentally? Ethically? Angling-wise? How have you used or enhanced these lessons as you've moved on through life?

As for fishing, my biggest shock came from a neighbor's young kid, maybe 7ish, who was playing with a June bug he'd harnessed to a string and was letting it fly around. I was probably 15 or so at the time and was zinging a flyrod Hula Popper to the middle of the pond, for that was "where the big ones are." I was watching the kid and enjoying his antics, when the June bug flew quite close to the surface of the pond -- maybe a foot from the very edge of the pond. A humugus bass exploded from the deep and I swear the kid left a mess he's had therapy on ever since. And I learned to fish the edge. Just the general observation of nature, too, especially in small ecologies. Everything started there for me, right on the banks of our farm ponds. JGW