Last November I mentioned to a colleague that we were trying to catch a fish in each state, and he invited us to their house in North Carolina, in the heart of North Carolina trout country. Their house is near Sapphire, which is eight miles east of Cashiers in the Appalachians in Western North Carolina, about an hour and a half southwest of Asheville. I suspect it was country once populated with hidden stills, but now there are probably more cute shops than stills. It’s pretty wild though, and their house was by far the nicest fly lodge we’ve stayed in. It was just as well it was their house, because otherwise we couldn’t have afforded a three nights’ stay.

Brian booked our guides through a local fly shop, Brookings Anglers, and it may be the prettiest fly shop I’ve seen, not that I’m overly impressed by pretty fly shops. I wouldn’t suggest driving more than a couple of hundred miles to visit. In addition to me and Kris, Brian and Jane had invited other work colleagues and their spouses, and we fished together one day and then the next day Kris and I floated the Tuckasegee River, the Tuck, while they went elsewhere.

The first day, the day we fished together, the Brookings’ guides had access to private water, which was small enough that I won’t give the name; Brookings has the access if you’re interested, and if you’re within three or four hundred miles of Brookings you really should drop by. The problem with the private water was that it was artificially loaded with huge trout that weren’t wild trout. The good thing about the private water was that it was artificially loaded with huge trout that weren’t wild trout. Sometimes that’s just fun. We caught huge trout.

We fished with Roger Lowe, who may be a bit younger than me, but who Brian described as the dean of North Carolina guides. Roger has the peculiar fate of looking exactly like my friend Jim from Austin, who I’ve talked baseball with for the last 20-odd years. Jim was a college pitcher and high school coach, and is a wee bit opinionated about baseball. Sometimes Jim is a bit brusk. Here is a recent response by Jim to something stupid:

“Go the fuck away . . . . Away.“

Which for Jim is pretty measured. In appearance Roger could be Jim’s twin brother. From the time we started fishing I expected Roger to invite me to take my stupid opinions and fuck off. I don’t even know if Roger follows baseball, but I will tell you there is nothing more charming than a guy with a North Carolina accent announcing that we’re going to Euro-nymph, and who then never once responded with expletives in exchange for my casting. If Roger and Jim are long-lost twins, Roger is definitely the more civil of the two.

The private water we fished wasn’t very big, maybe 20 feet across, and its runs are crammed under every overhanging branch in North America. Most of the day I fished Roger’s 10-foot Hardy two weight, with a long mono leader, 15 feet of 20 pound leader at the butt, 5 feet of 15 pound, and then a two foot stretch of Rio Two Tone Indicator Tippet material, finished off with 4 or 5 feet of tippet. What X tippet? I can’t remember, but there are plenty of descriptions of long mono leaders around the internet. I know this: Rio two-tone indicator is the bomb. Alternating hot pink and fluorescent yellow, it looks like the love child of fishing line and Christmas candy. The fourth time I went back to Brookings–not that I’m overly impressed by a pretty fly shop–I bought a spool. I’ll probably never use it, but I sure do like it.

All I really fished was the leader, and I don’t think I ever once had the fly line off the reel. The long 10-foot rod is for better line control in drifts, but I’d never heard why for tight-line nymphing two- and three-weight rods are preferred to the usual four- or five-weights. Roger explained that when a fish takes the fly, if it feels any resistance it will immediately spit the hook. The two weight’s limber tip delays resistance long enough to set.

As for casting, it didn’t matter. We weren’t casting far. With a 25-foot leader on a 10-foot rod on a 20-foot stream there just isn’t very far to cast. My best casts involved letting leader stretch out on the water behind, then using the water tension to haul the line forward, quartering upriver. I wasn’t much good at it. Most of my casts were big overhand lobs that ended with the fly hung in a tree. The flies themselves were weighted, or maybe Roger added weight, but we were fishing with all the classic flies: mop flies, squirmy worms, I think I fished an egg pattern at some point. Forget the fly though, what was fun was high-sticking the leader through the runs, and keeping enough of the Christmas candy indicator out of the water so that I could see any hesitation. It was mesmerizing, and completely successful. I am now one of those cosmopolitan fly fishers who has Euro-nymphed.

Late in the day my shoulder told me that high-sticking might be a young man’s game, but I kept at it. Like I said, leading that tight-lined bit of colored fly leader through a run was mesmerizing. Plus we caught fish. Roger was pretty entertaining too. Roger told a great story about a client who complained about rain on her fishing trip. Roger told her that sometimes you had to put up with a bit of rain. She was in the back seat, and he said she leaned over the seat, got in his face, and told him that he should shut up, that she could complain all she wanted.

Roger said that he shut up.

The story I won’t share is our next day’s guide’s, Matt Canter, who is manager and a part-owner of Brookings. Did I mention Brookings is a really pretty fly shop? Anyway, the story involves how Matt came to manage and then own part of Brookings. If you’re within four or five hundred miles of the shop, you should visit and get Matt to share the story. It’s a great story, and a really pretty fly shop.

What wasn’t so pretty was that day’s fishing. We were fishing small nymphs under big dry flies, dry dropper rigs, which wasn’t what was wrong. Here is what went wrong with that day’s fishing:

Kris had the greatest day fishing ever.

She caught brown trout, she caught rainbow trout, at some point she started catching nice-sized brookies. After her first brookie I mentioned to Matt that Kris had an Appalachian grand slam and Matt said yeah, but then a few minutes later Kris caught a smallmouth. Matt, whose gloat was very unbecoming, said that now she’s really got an Appalachian grand slam.

Why was Matt gloating? What was I catching? This.

Matt said it’s a kind of sucker, known locally as a knottyhead. That picture’s of a big one. After we got home I searched around on the internet a bit, and never could quite match the fish to a genus and species. For all I know God created them that day just to keep me humble. Kris and I would fish the same fly, same depth, same drift, and Kris would catch a lovely wild brown or a tarpon up from the Gulf or a steelhead come south on vacation and I would catch . . . a knottyhead. Ok, they weren’t the only fish I caught. I caught some nice browns and some nice rainbows, and even got a brown on the dry fly once, but I must have caught 20 knottyheads, one after another, while Kris was having the fishing day of her life.

I said Kris didn’t really have a slam until she caught a knottyhead. She immediately caught her one and only knottyhead. Next time I’m in Brookings I’m complaining to the manager.

Not that I’m jealous.

That night over drinks we were comparing our day’s fishing, and somebody asked if any of us had ever had a double, a fish on each fly?

I answered. “Kris has. Today. Twice.” As my friend Jim would say, a double-fucking-double.

I could have had a double if knottyheads just took dries. And she didn’t land both fish, either time. So there.

Not that I’m jealous.