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A county road bisected my little subdivision, and just below where it crossed the creek, the flow split into two channels. The smaller one, splitting to the north, continued picturesquely across the immaculate lawns, while the larger wound southward through an uncut phalanx of alders bordering a seasonal wetland to the south. On the lawns north of the Swamp branch, the ground was spongy in dry weather, and in spring, half an inch or so of water would gurgle up with each step. The stream itself in the Swamp was no more than eight feet wide, but much of it was at least two feet deep, with portions of it close to four. Upstream, few spots went as deep as two. You could fish portions of the Swamp without wading by dapping your bait though a break in the alders--I had done that before and caught a couple nice trout doing it. But that left about a hundred yards of water out of reach. Given the lack of access, the inhospitability of the terrain, and the overabundance of watersnakes in the area, few people bothered fishing the Swamp. Once I had a pair of waders, though, I began exploring it regularly, wading up into it from where the branches of the stream rejoined.
I know I fished the Swamp with moderate success a few times in that first wader-clad year, but the encounters that burned this place into my memory commenced a year or two later. I had learned early in my trouting career that the best fishing of the season usually occurred on early summer evenings after a thunderstorm had passed. Heavy rains dump lots of food into a stream and cloud the water enough for large brown trout to venture confidently out of their lairs. When I'd done my post-cloudburst fishing up in the country clubbish stretch, my definition of "large" was about fourteen inches. That changed the summer after my freshman year of high school when I first fished the Swamp branch while it ran swollen and silted.
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