First Post/Introduction

Fish nerds and other people with too much time on their hands; welcome to the Headwaters! I'm Jake and I'll be your "online fishing guide", so to speak. What's the difference between an actual fishing guide and me? Everything. In many ways I'm still a novice fisherman. I'm a 21-year-old student at Virginia Tech majoring in Fisheries Science. Hopefully my lack of incredible fishing skills will be over-shadowed by my ability to find out more about the lives of fish and share it with my friends. Documenting my fishing trips seems fun, I'll be able to look back on some of my best trips in a few years.

What to expect:

Detailed Fishing Trips:

Expect small streams, ultra-light gear, and generally small fish. If I hiked a significant amount or camped as a part of the trip, I'll include information pertaining to that. I'm going to re-trace my steps and give you a play-by-play of each fishing trip, both good and bad. If I catch a large trout, it makes the blog. If I cast all day to no avail, get skunked, and fill my waders with water; it makes the blog. If I leave my backpack unzipped and my lunch floats away downstream, it makes the blog... along with what species of minnows chased my Doritos through the swift water.


Sweet Pictures:

If you fish, you know how easy it is to inflict water damage upon your precious electronic devices. Let's just say I'm going to do my absolute best to keep a working digital camera to help document this stuff.

Guest Writers

I thought it would be a cool idea to involve my friends in this. If you're a friend of mine who fishes around here, feel free to submit me your stories or pictures! I'm also trying to convince my beautiful girlfriend, Taylor, to help with the writing process. She's a good sport and she loves the outdoors as much as I do. Nine times out of ten, if there's a picture of me in the woods, she was the person behind the camera.

What not to expect:

Specific Locations:

It's a no-brainer that if a small stream gets too much fishing pressure it's going to be hard for it to recover. I'm not saying that my dinky little blog is going to cause the masses to flock to every trout stream I visit. I guess I'm just old-school in the fact that I don't reveal my fishing spots all over the internet. If you really want to know where I was in any given post, email me! I might even be able to hook you up with a map or take you with me the next time I go.

Poetic Nonsense:

I'm taking fisheries classes, not the liberal arts. As much as I'd like to speak ever so eloquently about the gentle beauty of teal plunge pools brimming with mayflies while enveloping white cascades within the fierce grasp of rhododendron bushes from all sides as the sun carefully levitates higher and higher in the panorama of mid-morning... that just isn't me, man. I may delve into the science of it from time to time, but mainly, I just want to catch a few fish.

Unrelated Posts:

If I begin to post about topics unrelated to fishing, someone call me out on it! I love metal music, I love watching wrestling, and I love my cat; but this one's all about the trout baby!

...New posts coming soon! I have a new fly fishing rig on its way to the house at this very moment. As soon as that's here, it's time to go chase some salvelinus fontinalis.