I have known intimately the briny waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. As well, I have many times cast my line into the sounds, bays, and estuaries that feed these mighty expanses. I have explored and fished this country’s mammoth freshwater reservoirs and battled the currents of its wide, majestic rivers. I have ridden wicked whitewater and thrilled to the mad rush of adrenaline motivated by churning, boulder-strewn rapids.

These waters have thrilled me, frightened me, and provided me at times with unparalleled angling adventure. I have loved them all. But, you know, thinking now about waterways I have known, it is not the mighty, but the meek among them that command my attention. To wit, there’s just something about a creek.

There’s something about a tiny ribbon of water moving inexorably downward from its source, acted upon by that unrelenting force long ago explained by Sir Isaac Newton and simply called “gravity” or “downhill” by non-intellectuals like me. God bless mighty rivers, sprawling lakes, and deep blue seas. But, if I must choose, give me a creek, please.

Give me a sluggish blackwater stream flowing through hardwood bottomland in the coastal plain of Georgia, Florida, or Alabama. There, I can float a boat or walk a bank, casting my lure or live bait at a leisurely pace for largemouth bass, chain pickerel, bluegills, or crappies. Or, if the mood strikes, I can sit motionless beside some deep, dark hole and fish for catfish with pieces of dead meat and smelly concoctions that leave residue beneath my fingernails and days-long funky odors on my hands.

While fishing there I watch the birds, the turtles, the snakes, and the occasional alligator. I must also take care where I put my hands and feet. There is poison ivy in the underbrush and there are cottonmouths along the banks. That’s okay. They are integral and necessary ingredients and worth the risk.

Give me a sparkling trout stream in the Southern Appalachians. Make it one that tumbles hard in lovely cascades with deep pools at their feet. In it put fat rocks and an occasional fallen tree where brown trout and rainbows lie in wait for crawdads, minnows, and my Rooster Tail spinner. Let there be shallow shoals where my feet don’t slip and smooth, flat-topped boulders where I can sit and watch the creek, and the world, go by.

In this creek, give me one or two spots that take my breath away, places that catch my eye suddenly as I step carefully around a sharp bend. Make them places where the morning sun shoots shafts of light through the boughs of the hemlock trees, where riffling current sends up water droplets that rival the sparkling jewels of the Orient. Give me this (and a trout or two) and I’ll be happy.

Give me a flat, wide, muddy creek flowing through the Mississippi Delta. Not the Southern Delta near the Gulf, but the “real” Delta, up near Greenville, Leland, Rolling Fork, and Indianola; the place where the blues were born. Give me the Delta of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King.

Let this creek flow through woods bordering fields of tall cotton; cool, mysterious woods where one can escape the heat of the Southern summer sun. I’ll sit on the bank of this creek, where my rear end will get wet even on the driest of days, and I shall catch fat catfish on fat earthworms. I shall be bedeviled by hordes of humming Delta mosquitoes, but I’ll stand ‘em if the fish are biting. I’ll also thrill to the flocks of indigo buntings that swarm there in the summertime, almost as thick as the “skeeters.”

Maybe I’ll even walk this stream, following it to its stopping point, the place where it empties into Old Man River. There, I’ll stand and marvel at the mighty Mississippi for a time before turning upstream again, to end my day on the creek.

Yep, if I have a say, give me a creek. Big waters, and big-time angling, are grand things until they overwhelm you, as they both, eventually and certainly, will.

Creeks, on the other hand?

Well, take it from me. There’s just something about a creek.