You know that legendary (or is it imaginary?) Green Drake hatch that every living, breathing fly fisherman in the United States dreams of seeing, and fishing?

You know those flurries of Sulphers and Blue Wing Olives that most tailwater fishermen can only imagine? And those mythical, Pterodactyl-like Coffin flies....the ones whose real tails look exactly like the moose hair tails on their imitations? And the giant stone flies that you’d actually need to tie on size 4 hooks to make them the real size, but you know they just can’t really be that big? They all exist and they all really do happen. All you have to do is be in the North-East corner of fly fishing heaven in the middle of May.

Fly fishing heaven’s North-East corner happens to look a lot like the area surrounding Bristol, Damascus, Elizabethton, and Crandul, Tennessee on my map.

I was fortunate enough to be there in mid-May, and I saw it all. Heaven only knows, I tried to fish it all, but I’d have needed another month of stream time to cover the spectrum of water that the Beaverdam, Holston, and Wautauga have to offer the fly angler.

Each river deserves it’s own story, and each is unique in it‘s fishing conditions, insect life, and scenic beauty. I’ll begin at the beginning.

Rusty (the boyfriend and best fishing buddy) and I left the Nashville, Tennessee area around midnight on a Thursday in mid-May, intending to be in camp with a group (or was it a gang?) of pals, whom we shall call the P.F.F. gang, by 7 A.M. P.F.F. stands for Psycho Fly Fishing. I have whole books of tales to share about P.F.F., but we won’t go there for now.

So, there we were, jeep loaded, on the road, taking turns driving, and stopping at the I-Hop in Bristol for breakfast at dawn. I’m being cool, not racing down to the stream we could see from our window booth at the I-Hop.

’Till a fish rose.

I’m up on my knees in the booth, like a little kid, face pressed to the glass. “Fish”

“where?” says Rusty.

“Can I get you some more coffee?“ says the waitress.

“Yes please” says Rusty.

“How about you, miss?”

No answer from me, I’m watching a fish. “She’ll need more coffee.” Rusty tells her. “She’s watching fish.” he explains. The waitress replies “oh.” and pours coffee.

“You are not going to get a rod out and cast to that fish....“ Rusty starts. “We have a whole lot of water to fish once we get to camp.“

I look as innocent as I possibly can, and finish my pancakes.

The Beaverdam Creek is picture book beautiful, no matter where you first view it. Our first glimpse of the creek for this trip was just outside Damascus, Virginia.

I had promised to sit still until we got into the Cherokee National Forest, and so I did. I think I was tired enough from a long day of getting the jeep packed, tying up loose ends at home, and driving all night, that I was content to wait another half hour to fish.

At 7:30 AM we were in camp. Greeted by several fishing buddies and host Tom Sharpe, you feel like you see these guys every weekend, instead of twice a year. Once I’ve exchanged pleasantries, I’m ready to fish, but first we check into a room nearby that host Tom Sharpe has snagged for us at the last minute. And then, in a coffee induced flash, we are off to the Beaverdam.

We picked a spot on the road where the river was accessible, and where we could easily go opposite directions. I picked “LillaBelle” as my rod of the day. Now, LillaBelle is built on one of those sweet old Sage LL blanks, and once I got the courage to modify her from her original builder’s design, she started being a wonderful, fun rod for mountain stream fishing. She was built for some one with long arms and large hands, and though I am taller than most women I know at five foot eight, I had the darndest time reaching almost to the ferrule on a two piece rod to find my line at the stripping guide.....which looked more like the eye of a needle than something you’d put a fly line through. So, last winter, I took off the miniscule stripping guide, replaced it with a snake guide, and put another stipping guide lower down, where I could reach it. LillaBelle became seven feet of small stream fun. I lined her up with a buckskin Orvis Wonderline and a Battenkill 3/4 reel, and we are at last a happy family. Rusty rigged up a seven foot six, four weight I’d built him, he turned our handy radios on, and off we went.

I’m not a cell phone person, and I’m not a radio person. They are both tools of modern technology that I find useful when I need them for emergencies, and annoying otherwise. But, fishing freestone streams and rivers, sharing the water with bears and others, and my propensity to fishing alone have made having a little two-way radio one of those things that make sense, even if I don’t really want to use it. So, I don’t mind the first time Rusty calls me, even though I’m in the middle of a good drift, and can’t effectively re-cast while I’m answering the radio call. He reports having had a little wild Brook trout take such and such fly, and I report a few “bumps” and go back to fishing. And proceed to miss several fish, but I’m pretty O.K. with that.

I decide to keep after a particular run that promises a fat eight inch brown trout from a space between two slippery rocks, and finally aggravate the thing into nabbing my offering. I skip the net and release this fish quickly, hooking a couple of tiny rainbows, and a baby Brookie. The fog from lack of sleep lifts, and I remember the photo and article opportunities that are flashing in the water before me, and make a mental note to photograph a fish or two. The reward for regained memory comes along a few minutes later in the form of a beautifully colored brown trout that fights like a rainbow, jumping and darting, and LillaBelle’s bent profile tells me this fish has a bit more size than the fish I’ve hooked so far. I reach for me net. It’s stuck. The fish bolts for cover, and now it’s a matter of avoiding rocks and brush to get it back in netting range. Now it’s back in range, and I go for the net again. It will not release from it’s magnetic hold, so resign to hand-landing the fish, which makes me leery on seven x tippet.......but wait! Photo Op!

The fish bulls down in a hole beside me while I unzip my vest pocket to have my handy little digital camera ready. Now, how I plan to hand-land the fish with a rod in one hand, the camera in one hand, and the fish in the other hand, I have not figured out. I have not consumed enough coffee to be able to count how many hands this will take. But I know from years of being a photographer’s daughter that the first thing you do is to secure the camera by neck or wrist strap, so that if anything happens, you will not drop the said camera on the ground. Or in the water.

So now, somehow, I have the fish right in front of my feet in boot-deep water, and I decide I can get a shot from here if I stick my rod under my elbow and get the vinyl camera case out of the way. I do this by accidentally dropping the case in the water on the way to putting it back in my vest pocket. Rats! I decide not to let it get downstream, so I reach for it quickly before it gets too far. You remember the wrist strap on the camera? It worked, so when I grabbed for the case, dunking my digital camera in the water via the wrist strap, I still had the camera when I raised my dripping arm from the water. There are words that describe my feelings at that time, but I must not say them in print. The trout blushed.

So I drop the camera into a vest pocket for the time being, to attend to the fish, who is hiding and watching everything. Only, when I raise my elbow to slip that camera into the vest, I drop LillaBelle. The fish can’t bear to watch anymore, it is too embarrassed for me. I step on the flyline to stop the rod, cram the reel back under my arm and release the fish, which, I’m sure goes back to tell it‘s friends about the poor bumbling human that it encountered quite by accident on the streambed today.

And then the radio crackles. “ ccccccchhhhhhhhzzzzzzhhh.......Juni.....do you read me?.........cccccchhhhzzzzzzzhhh........where ARE you?........cccchhhhzzzhhh.”

I yank the radio out of the holder on my waders .“I’m Fishing.”

“cccccchhhhhzzzzhhh........I’m heading for the car......what do you want to do?.....ccchhhhhhhzzzzhhh.”

“Well, duh, I want to fish. I just dropped my camera and my rod and now my camera doesn’t work, and I’m FISHING.”

“cccccchhhhhhzzzzzhh....I’m going to take a nap, where are you getting out?...ccccchhzzt”

I’m so completely over and done with having a radio to contend with that I’m considering giving it the same swimming lesson I gave the camera, but I keep it in my hand long enough to say that I’m coming out when I get to an easy place, and when I’m done fishing. Over and out.

Rusty is a wonderfully patient fishing buddy. Let him sleep instead of do a road trip, let him eat instead of starve, and let him catch a bunch of fish, instead of fishing a tough, slippery freestone stream hard while he’s sleep deprived and starving, and he’s a perfect fishing buddy. He carefully presses the talk button on his radio to say “...that’s fine, go ahead and fish. I’ll be at the car.“ and the radio is blissfully silent.

I would love to tell you that I did get some terrific photos of that trying day on the Beaverdam. And that I caught a surprise monster trout from a deep pool under a log. But I did not. The camera did, however, cough and sputter two days later, and regained function. I had a 35 mm in the car, and got some camp photos later that afternoon with it when we returned to camp.

That evening, in camp, we stood on the banks and watched the coffin flies lift off the water. Several guys (who had had some semblance of sleep the night before) hit the road along the Beaverdam to find a green drake hatch. I wanted so badly to throw my waders back on and join the search, but Rusty reminded me of my better judgment, that I’d had surgery five weeks earlier, needed to get a good night’s sleep, and that we had FOUR MORE DAYS to fish. Ah, yes. Four more days of “fish ‘till you drop.”

Now THAT was worth getting some rest over!