Rain, rain, and more rain. It hasn’t been a biblical forty days and forty nights but sure seems like it.

A record sopping-wet winter has creeks running high, swift, and heavy with silt. This creek would have suited a fisherman by the name of Harry Hampton.

He would have taken comfort in knowing his namesake organization, the Harry Hampton Wildlife Fund, serves as a steward of woods and waters. It wouldn’t have been the best time to fish but a good time and place to think about fishing and a favorite fish of many, bream.

In my day I fished for bream in Granddad’s farm ponds where those greenish, bronze, deep-bodied fish darted about like torpedoes.

It was there that Grandmother Poland taught me to fish. She kept red-varnished cane poles beneath the overhang of the concrete block annex where Granddad cooled green watermelons with zigzagged dark stripes.

Grandmom taught me to dig worms beneath cow piles. She taught me, too, that you’re sure to catch a fish if a dragonfly lands on your cork.

I always felt lucky. A blue darter would land on my red-and-white cork, and I knew I’d catch a big fat bluegill, and I did.

The red-and-white bobber would dive beneath the surface and a bluegill would turn its broad side against me and become a ten-pound fish.

The days I spent as a boy fishing were my best. No demands and no stress other than snagging a hook on a stump or willow. I used a cane pole until I was old enough to cast a Zebco. That’s when I graduated from bream to bass.

I lived like a prince in Granddad’s kingdom where blue farm ponds waited around the bend of every cow path.

And so I associate farm ponds with varnished cane poles, red-and-white bobbers, mats of algae that betrayed snakes’ serpentine wanderings, jelly-like clumps of frog eggs, and the heavy wooden boat Granddad made with ever-present moccasins beneath—treasures like no others.

I never fished a creek, what old folks called a crik. I’m certain Harry Hampton would have loved this crik. Had Harry sat by this creek might he have made a few notes about this rain-swollen creek? I believe so.

If I close my eyes for a moment, I see bream skulking downstream of a sunken log and beneath cuts and overhangs. If I close my eyes a bit longer, I see Hampton’s long legs crossed and stretched out across all that dimpled sand. His feet almost touch the water. He’s got a pad and pen in his hands. All he hears are the sounds of nature.

“Better days ahead,” he writes. “Come summer this creek will be a fine place to take kids fishing, and teach them about nature. It’ll make a good column, ‘Lessons From The Old Fishing Hole.’ ”

Had Harry sat here the day I photographed that old chair, I’d have told him about Granddad’s ponds and asked him how creek fishing goes. And one more thing. Is it really good luck when a dragonfly, the old snake doctor of yesteryear, lands on your cork?

I have no doubt he’d say, “Yes. In fact fishing itself will bring you good luck and more. It’s teaches you about life, and you’ll never regret it.”