"ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- Like most serious fly fishermen, Tom Teasdale has a little-known place where he finds peace in a river's placid waters.
Standing waist-deep and casting a hand-tied fly earlier this month, he pointed to his favorite deep pool. "This is the honey hole," he said.
Here, the fish are big. The strikes are frequent. And other anglers are kept at bay by the occasional bobbing diaper.
Mr. Teasdale's fly-fishing hole is on the South Platte River, at the mouth of a 6-foot-wide corrugated-metal drainpipe and downstream from a wastewater-treatment plant. The water has elevated levels of E. coli bacteria, according to government surveys. When Mr. Teasdale walks alone past the graffiti-covered overpass and down the littered trail in this Denver suburb, he brings his Glock 9mm pistol to ward off "shady characters."
Mr. Teasdale is a "brownliner," one of the growing ranks of fly fishermen who try to catch whatever lives in the muck close to home -- in drainage canals, cemented urban riverbeds and murky farm-runoff canals. Another of Mr. Teasdale's favorite spots is a muddy stretch of river behind a strip mall.
Brownliners enjoy fly-fishing's primary perks -- the suspense of watching a fly disappear beneath the water's surface, the struggle of man against beast, the spinning of fish stories. If that doesn't come with fresh water and clean air, so be it."
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Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.
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