"Home Waters"

As the old adage goes "There's no place like home." Every avid angler and lover of the outdoors has their special spot or home away from home. And when speaking to my fellow anglers most of us have what we call our "home waters". For some of us its zig zagged creeks which trickle along the outskirts of town filled with fry or small trout eager to devour a mayfly or caddis. Others may claim the small farm ponds behind an over pass with bass just waiting for the splash of your lure. These places can be fun to learn the art of angling, but for some of use home waters shape who we are, how we think and why there will always be "one more cast."

For me this is so, the river system that forever changed me is the upper kings river, which to this day I find myself day dreaming about on those gloomy winter days stuck behind a desk. On the best of days you can have 18-20" browns and rainbows rising to carelessly sip a yellow stimulator or a foam beetle off the surface of the clear blue water in the spring or in the fall, when the water has a green tint, the size 16 pheasant tail nymph will be on a trophy browns menu.

While all this seems too good to be true, the same river that is nothing but exhilarating and rewarding can have you burn half of tank of gas, just get you sitting on a large bolder watching a honey hole of a run bless you with nothing but wind knots and snagged leaders. Never the less any good angler knows that all the bitter days on the water make the good days taste that much sweeter. The dynamic between days of pure bliss paired with days of agonizing frustration show me that there are two words sown though the rivers essence.... patience and humility. These two words have followed me through the mundane trials and tribulations of life on life's terms and have steered me from many shortcomings that could have came up from my own hard headed nature. The river is truly King and I am but a weary traveler hoping to share in its riches for but a blink of time when compared to the rivers transcendent life before and after my trip on this earth.