Revive - A Quarterly Fly Fishing Journal | Page 146

The best fishing trips are dirty like that. Someone gets on the phone, and, two days later, you’re building a campfire. Fishing means old trucks and dirty coolers, not destination trips and aesthetically ornate magazine spreads. No one said fishing has to be about exotic locations and a second mortgage. Or even about the fish.

It’s like that July when Brett, Todd and I headed up there for a long weekend. We saddled up mid-afternoon and took off in Todd’s camper, a three-bed model complete with a canopy for waiting out the inevitable afternoon rains. TWRA campsites are primitive; rarely is there more than a hole to crap in. As rugged, sporting gentlemen, we were ready to shack up like desperate housewives in a hotel room during the inevitable thundershowers.

We were out for the peace and quiet only found on lonely gravel roads. These are the trips that help you recover from the chaos of jobs, families, or whatever it is that pulls you off center. What we needed was the spiritual rejuvenation found in a shiny can of beer sitting on the lichen-coaster of a rounded boulder. When it came down to it, we were just out to cut loose and get crapulous. The kind of drunk that replaces stress with a hook in your neck and crap in your waders.

I remember watching Brett stumble through the stream just down from me. We were on a side trip to explore Sycamore Creek, a tiny trickle home to a number of wild rainbows and, more importantly to us, native Southern Appalachian brook trout. Sycamore Creek is one of the few places where you can still find this distinctive species of char. Genetically distinct from their Yankee cousins, these fish were abundant until pollution and redneck carpet-bagging pushed them to the brink of extinction.

Brett had just broken another fly off in the overhanging branches that choke this small stream off from the world. He’s a fairly experienced angler, but these woods are an angry mistress. The rhododendron will reach out and strangle your fly like a serpent with a simple flick of it its green-forked tongue. He sat down on a rock to tie on yet another fly and was quickly lost as we scrambled up a small series of falls and plunge pools.