Mason Creek isn’t a particularly remarkable stream as it flows through the backyards of suburbs in Salem and Roanoke, Virginia, before merging with the Roanoke River. But this little creek is where I caught my first smallmouth bass and is also the waterway that created and nurtured my lifelong love of bass, moving water, and nature itself.
As a grade schooler, I constantly risked the wrath of my parents by sneaking away and biking the mile from our house to Mason Creek. My parents believed that nothing good could ever come from those rapscallions who wasted their time wetting a line. It was better, they lectured me, to spend time preparing for the workaday world by doing my schoolwork instead of risking being bitten by snakes, stung by bees, and developing poison ivy while at that godforsaken creek. After all, my grades weren’t satisfactory, and I’d never make any money fishing.
But their warnings had the opposite effect. If a place flaunted all kinds of dangerous creatures, as well as bass, then it must be a paradise
