If you put on waders, you are entering into a great cosmic pact and you are committing to share one day in the baptism of the brotherhood of the angle. In other words, sooner or later, you're going for a swim.

I've taken a few. One that I thought was particularly funny was when a buddy and I were fishing a brook trout stream in central Wisconsin.

Calling this spring creek a "stream" is being pretty generous. In most places you can stand on one bank and touch the opposite bank with the tip of your rod. Your 7 foot brook trout rod.

So I was working my way up this stream on a really hot August morning and I was walking just in the ankle-deep margin along the edge, so my wading boots were barely over the tops. I took a couple of steps into the edge of a deeper pool and discovered there was fine silt that had settled there and my foot sunk in almost to the knee. Then my other foot sunk in up to the knee and I began to lose my balance because both feet were suddenly cemented in place.

At this point, it's important to have a mental picture of where I am. I'm standing facing upstream just inches from one bank, and the "far" bank is 3 feet to my right. The deepest part of the stream is just under my right hand and it's about 10 inches deep.

I desperately tried to pull my feet free, but I had already began one of those slow motion face-first falls in much the same way that a giant pine tree falls when a logger cuts it down. Tim-berrrrrrrrrrr!.

While I was descending toward the ice-cold surface of the spring creek, I had some time to think.

I thought, this is just about the dumbest thing ever as far as falling in while fishing goes. Oh, wait, I should throw my rod so I don't fall on it. Ok, that's done, now where was I? Yes, this is going to look incredibly stupid, I probably stepped right into the only silt bed on this entire creek that was deep enough to trap my feet and now I'm doing a 5/8 pike position dive with a 3/4 twist. . .

Splash. I landed face-down, In the middle of the stream, and I got completely and utterly soaked from head to toe. As an aside, can I just say that spring creek water feels really cold if you get dunked in in on a 82 degree morning. Because I was facing upstream, my waist high waders got filled with a nice 50/50 mix of water and fine silt, so that was a nice touch.

I clawed my way out of the water and dragged myself the whole 3 feet back onto the bank. I had just dropped trou and dumped the water out of my waders and my buddy came through the brush from around the bend.

He looked at me for some time as I stood there with my waist-highs around my ankles. A stream of water ran from my position on the bank, back into the stream from which it had come.

He didn't show any surprise at all. Then he looked slowly at the creek and considered the 10-inch-deep water, and the 4 foot wide stream. He looked back at me as I started to wring out my hat. A crow called somewhere off in the distance.

He thought about it for another moment, as he watched the water run out of my fly vest from those little drainage holes they put on the bottom of fly vest pockets for just such an occasion. Finally he spoke.

"It must be a little deeper than it looks right there."

Grouse