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I grew up in a sliver of a subdivision outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, built along a single lane that curved, in approximately the shape of a fishhook, along the edges of cornfields and woodlots. Single story brick ranch houses lined each side of the lane. Those on the north side were without exception smaller and cheaper. Not only were the houses on the south side larger, but they sat on sprawling four acre lots, perched on the edge of a hill that looked down on a fine little trout stream.
My family lived on the north side, but that didn't stop me from fishing the stream devotedly. Most of the families who lived on the south side didn't mind local kids traipsing around their lawns trying to hook a trout or two. I went to school, played, and fished with some of their children, so a lot of them knew me pretty well anyway.
People use the phrase "Country Club Angling" to describe fishing in pastoral settings among refined and well heeled sportsmen, and it pretty well characterizes those environs where I cut my fishing teeth. Walking the bank with my can of nightcrawlers, I could see large, immaculate homes surrounded by large, well-tended lawns with sedulously trimmed bushes, quaint outbuildings, and occasional extrusions of cement statuary. It wasn't hard to imagine myself at one of those Scottish fishing estates I read about in Field and Stream where you cast for salmon in the shadows of ruined castles, looking smart in your tweed jacket and tie.
It wasn't the environment most fishermen associate with wild, wary trout, but plenty were there if you knew where to look. Though obviously stocked at one point in time, hatchery trout had not been planted there for decades. (It has been replanted more recently). And despite a heavy harvest of trout in the spring by both locals and visitors from the city (not to mention the occasional fish kill from lawn chemicals leaching in to the water), the creek provided reliably good fishing year after year. If you've ever seen a quality trout stream, you'd understand why. The creek has lots of clean gravel runs for spawning, riffles full of sheltering pockets, and an abundance of downed logs and brushpiles left from the woods that once lined its banks. Most days, the water has a glasslike clarity with none of the milky tone common in other southern Michigan streams. Looking down as you wade, you can easily make out individual grains of sand on the bottom, as well as trout bold or foolish enough to venture from the safety of brushpiles or boulders.
Almost any day, you could count on catching at least one or two trout, if you put in enough time. A good Saturday morning swing early in the season would often produce half a dozen. Under ideal conditions, double digits were not out of the question. You could get skunked, of course, as you can anywhere, but by my midteens, that seldom happened to me. The only complaint one might have about the fish was that most of them were pretty small, almost invariably in the 8-12" range. The occasional 14-incher would come to hand, and on a couple of occasions I hooked and lost fish that were probably over 16. At least that's how it was in the Country Club section. I hardly fished any where else until I acquired my first pair of waders when I was about thirteen. No longer having to stand on the bank to fish, I began to explore what locals called The Swamp, a neglected, muck-bounded, brush-choked arm of the creek mostly invisible from the fine homes along the street. There, I tangled--repeatedly--with large trout that I never saw yet never forgot, heavyweight brawlers with a taste for nightcrawlers that I dubbed the Swamp Things.
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