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Turtle came to the house last night. Third time this week and it's only Thursday. Turtle's been coming over regularly lately, ever since his wife kicked him out and he had to move into that wall tent down at the Creek Place. Most of his visits are the sort that you really wish you could escape from. He sits there in the ladder backed rocker on the porch, Budweiser in hand, Marlboro dangling from his lips, staring out at the woods in back, looking as forlorn as a lost puppy in the winter time. But not this trip. He burst into the house (without waiting for me to open the door - Turtle thinks he has house rights, or "rats" as he calls them). He grabbed my wife, Danni, in a big hug and spun her around like a merry-go-round and then caught himself, mid-swing, and started stammering an apology before my wife stopped him in mid-repentance.

"For gracious sakes, Eugene! Put me down!"

My wife always calls Turtle by his Christian name. Turtle doesn't care for it much - mostly because he got the crap kicked out of him as a little boy on account of the name "Eugene" not sounding like everyone else's. Of course, Turtle grew up in junior high and beat hell out of his elementary school tormentors. Nobody except his mamma and Danni call him Eugene now. His mamma gets an automatic bye. Danni gets her excuse because she's a recovering southern belle and always uses people's full Christian names, so Turtle forgives her. Besides, she's meaner than he is and we all know it.

"Uh, I'm sorry Danni," Turtle said, lowering his head in reproach, but then swinging it to me, "Jack, you gotta come with me. You gotta come. I have done seen heaven and it's rat here in Cherohowla County!"

"What in blazes are you talking about, Turtle?"

Turtle is known for his flights of fancy - has been since we were in high school together and he was convinced that he was the illegitimate son of Patsy Cline and Jerry Lee Lewis. I had tried to convince him that Jerry Lee only liked young women, and Patsy hadn't fit that description, but Turtle was sure. One day he'd go around singing "You shake my nerve and you rattle my brain, too much love drive's a man insane." The next day, he'd be singing "Crazy…I'm Crazy". Now that I think about it, maybe he was on to something.

"Jack, you know that place up 'air near Sharon's Mountain? That place where Jerry Bob found them 'shiners?".

"Yeah, I know the place." Jerry Bob Whitestone had been a classmate of ours at Cherohowla High School. He went off to the Marines. I went off to college and then to the Army. Turtle went off to….well Turtle didn't go anywhere. He got Mary Beth Haymaker pregnant and Judge Haymaker, Mary Beth's father, put a Winchester Model 21 to Turtle's nose and married them right there in his living room. Turtle's promise as a running back for the University of Tennessee ended there. Jerry Bob got out of the Marines, ran for Sheriff, got elected and got shot on his second week on the job when he stumbled upon the wrong set of moonshiners up on Sharon's Mountain. He managed to kill three of them before dying himself. Turtle managed to stay married to Mary Beth for a year, before she kicked him out. His present wife, soon to be the second ex, was just following Mary Beth's precedent and good judgement.

"You ain't gonna believe what I saw this mornin'! I was up 'air, lookin' for a stand of walnut I'd heard about," Turtle made his living loggin' fine wood for custom furniture builders down in Atlanta. "Jerry down at the feed store in Ridgeville told me 'bout this big stand of walnut..."

"Turtle, damn it. Tell me about what you found."

"Beavers done got into that holler back of the Baptist Church up 'air. Man, you ain't gonna believe the specks that fill that water. It look like a bunch of fish tanks or even that hatchery over at Rock Creek. There's specks as big as any I've seen since that sumb@#&h Baker dammed up the Little Ten."

"Watch your mouth, Eugene Wallace," Danni was on him again.

"Yes ma'am. I'm powerful sorry; I get too excited, I know."

"Well, I know. But that doesn't give you the ease to call people names," Danni said. She's big on being graceful towards people.

Turtle was prone to exaggeration to be sure, but the idea that brook trout (specks in mountain parlance) had taken up residence behind the Sharon's Mountain Primitive Baptist Church was something else altogether. And if they were anything like what Turtle was saying, the prospects were not to be scoffed at. Turtle and I had fished since the mid-60's. The Little Tennessee had been our favorite water, regularly yielding brookies in the 14 to 18-inch category. But TVA decided that a dam would look better than the best water in the South and Senator Howard Baker made sure they got the money. Turtle never forgave him for that. Me neither.

So this morning, Turtle was on my doorstep at 5 am, tapping out a song with his antsy feet while I grabbed the rod tube and my ditty bag. We drove the hour drive over Hogback Ridge, down through the valley, and then up the winding dirt road that leads to the Sharon's Mountain Primitive Baptist Church, a place where foot-washin' still happens every Sunday and the only Baptists I ever heard of that drink real wine with communion. They are also the only Baptists I ever knew that admitted to dancing.

**********************

The walk up the holler behind the church was not an easy stroll. The snowstorm in '93 had laid down poplars with trunks the size of small cars. This had been the only area in Cherohowla County not to have been timbered out in the late 1800's and some of those trees were around when Longstreet chased Yankees up and down the western spine of the Appalachians after Chickamauga. What would have been a one-mile walk, turned out to be more like two as we climbed over, around, and under trees that dreams are made of. Turtle would have given his left arm to make lumber out of those trees, and had said so, but the church members that owned the land would not give him permission. The fact that Judge Haymaker was the head deacon probably had a bit to do with that.

Finally, after sweating like two convicts in a bordello, we made it through the windfall and were standing directly down stream of the first beaver dam. Turtle reached in his pocket and pulled out the cigarettes, offering me one. I took it. I reached in the ditty and offered him the flask - he drank from it and handed it back.

"I figure we'll just belly-crawl up to the dam and cast upstream," Turtle offered. "Them specks might be pooled at the dam, so we gotta stay back some and cast off our knees, else they see us and we'll never see 'em again.

I knew what Turtle would fish. He always fished a Yellerhammer, no matter when, where or what time of year. I know for a fact that he still uses authentic feathers too, regardless of what the game boys say or how many times I try to teach them that messin' with endangered species is not a good thing.

"Oh hell, Jack. That damned yeller woodpecker ain't endangered, 'cept the ones that come and peck on my house. Sheet, we got more yeller flickers in Wilson holler than them DNR boys says are alive in the world."

"Yeah, Turtle, that may be. But you've got to realize that if you shoot one yellow flicker, someone else will, then the next thing you know, there won't be any flickers down at Wilson's."

"Sheet, you done gone crazy and joined them tree-huggin' commies down at the college."

That's the way the conversations generally go. What do you do? Turtle is a good friend, maybe, after Danni, my best friend. All I can do is stay on him and hope, just hope, that he'll come to understand. In the meantime, any flicker in Wilson Holler that pecks on Turtle's house is likely to end up tied up into little dingy feathered flies, thrown from Turtle's 60-year-old Granger. Turtle's grandfather had left him his entire collection of Grangers. Turtle has never fished with anything but bamboo. He may be white trash, but he is white trash with good taste. There had been one EF Payne in the lot, a 6 ½ foot beauty that throws a 5 weight double taper like Johnny Unitas used to throw passes, gracefully and effortless. Turtle gave me the Payne one night: said it didn't fit in with the four Grangers in the set.

**********************

By 7:30, we were rigged up and crawling to the dam. I deferred to Turtle - he'd have first honors. On his knees, bending forward slightly at the waist, he made one false cast and line shot out twenty feet landing like air on the water with the fly dropping and sinking, ever so slowly. Turtle stripped one inch and raised the rod. I watched as the rod bent in the graceful arc, extending well back towards Turtle's hand, as only bamboo does. The brookie came exploding upwards, tail-walking and Turtle dropped the rod to the side, keeping tension on the tippet. He cursed, hoping the fish wouldn't spook the others. In a minute, he slid his net under the 'speck and lifted it over the dam.

The brookie was easily a dozen inches long with a girth that bespoke of too many lazy afternoons eating bugs and fallen inchworms. Only native brookies have that slight iridescence highlighting the worm-like patterns on their flanks. It was as beautiful a fish as I have seen in the past ten years.

"It took me five years and at least 400 butt chewin's to get him to listen."Turtle grinned and raised his hand for the high five that he demanded after such feats. I obliged and the trout was allowed to slip back out of the net and swim back to his girlfriend in the pool. One of the proudest moments of my life was the day that I finally got Turtle to realize that he should release trout instead of eating everything he caught. It took me five years and at least 400 butt chewin's to get him to listen. Now, we keep one each for lunch and that's it. It was still too early in the morning for lunch, so anything we caught now would be sent home to its mamma.

It was now my turn at the pool of specks. I am not half the caster Turtle is, but I managed to toss a #14 Tellico so that it landed about 15 feet to the right of where Turtle's earlier cast had been. It started its slow descent into the water and then, at the point where the leader entered the water, I saw the tell-tale twitch that told me Mr. Speckled Belly Brook Trout had come to dinner. I set the hook and we had a lovely time for about 10 seconds, whereupon I landed and released a beautiful hen, puffed up and ready to lay. There is a strange yellowish grayish brown color that pregnant brookies get on their bellies that I have never been able to describe, but it is one of the most beautiful colors in nature, the promise of regeneration.

We both caught two more each out of that pool. They were easy trout, not yet driven to cynicism by the offerings of humans: no selectivity, just opportunists - the way trout had been in these parts for eons before man started trying to deceive them with handmade bundles of fur and feathers. Trout are like people. They start off naïve and innocent, eager to explore and taste the world around them. Then, somewhere along the line, they feel the sharp pain of deceit and it hardens them, making them mistrusting, dour, and crotchety. I have fished too many years for trout with attitudes. I am always surprised and glad to find those that rarities that retain their "aw shucks" innocence.

We left that pool and walked on upstream, skirting the boggy edge of the beaver pool. It was obvious why the brookies were in such good shape and of such good size. The whole area was lined with small springs issuing forth from the limestone bedrock at temperatures low enough to combat the high temperatures of an August in the middle South.

Upstream about 600 yards was the second pool, smaller than the first, but the beaver had managed to clear enough trees around it and within it that the sun had full access to over half the pond surface. We could see dimples as the piscatorial inhabitants ate breakfast the easy way, on the surface. Turtle bent low and sent a cast curling over and landing softly, slightly up from where we both could see a hump in the water, indicating a large trout cruising for emergers. Again, he stripped the Yellerhammer slightly: short strip, let it settle, short strip, let it settle, and so on - three casts and nothing. Cursing at me when I reminded him that the Yellerhammer, while a great fly, is not always the best fly, he cast a fourth time. I joked that this was his lunch cast, so he'd better catch something or he'd be eating nothing but watercress for lunch.

"Bite me," he replied

That's when it hit and hit hard, almost ripping the rod out of Turtle's hand - bending it almost double, see-sawing back and forth, pulsing like pure energy itself, threatening with each pulse to break the slender reed.

"Oh man, I have caught paw-paw trout for sure!," Turtle exulted. He was almost dancing, there on his knees.

"Turtle, that's not a trout!"

"What the heck do you know? 'Course it's a trout! What the hell else would it be?"

"You've caught a beaver," I answered. And it was.

Turtle was on his feet now, working the 8-foot Granger for all it was worth. Trying to turn an angry beaver with a willowy stick of Asian bamboo is a losing proposition and we both knew it, the trouble was Turtle isn't given to surrendering to reality

The beaver was headed upstream, likely looking for its home. Line was peeling from the reel like the number 24 car at a NASCAR race, when Turtle turned, handed me the rod and yelled:

"Don't lose that fish!" 

With that he dove over the beaver dam and started swimming after the beaver. Turtle is the best swimmer I have ever seen and he was stretching it out now, long strokes, pushing water beside him, boring forward like a half-submerged submarine, only coming up for air every third stroke. 

The beaver, meantime, decided to turn. I started stripping line back in, as fast as I could pull. I looked up. They were headed straight for each other, both oblivious to the presence of the other, both intent on their own purpose - the beaver to be shed of this hook embedded in his side, and Turtle, determined that the beaver not get away. In the meantime, I was trying not to laugh and to strip line at the same time. The beaver and the Turtle were headed on a collision course.

The pool must have suddenly gotten shallow because Turtle stood up, straight up, with the water at his waist. The beaver was twenty feet in front of him, still coming, me still stripping. By this time, I was convinced the beaver was some sort of kamikaze rodent, bent on mutual destruction. But at ten feet, the beaver suddenly came to his senses and realized that the large mass in front of him, standing tall in the water, was not a tree - too late, for just as the beaver turned, Turtle pounced.

There are many sights in life that one must see before one dies and ascends to the native trout stream that is the Heavenly Jordan. You really should see the Alaskan outback from a DeHav Beaver and the sunset from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But the sight that is most wondrous, more rare, and more utterly ridiculous than any I have ever imagined was the sight this morning of Turtle wrestling beaver in a forest pool two miles up and half a world away from the Sharon's Mountain Primitive Baptist Church.

We had watercress salad for lunch, sitting beside a small fire that I built to help Turtle dry out his clothes over. That was a sight too - Turtle sitting there naked as a jaybird, clothes strung over every rhododendron in sight, bandaging his left hand where the beaver had clawed him, just before the beaver got away, a fugitive from Turtle's justice. Turtle looked like death itself - skin pallid from never seeing the sun, blood oozing from deep scratches on his face and chest, and mud streaking down over all of it.

"You think you learned anything today," I asked as I took another sip from the flask and inhaling the cigarette that I shouldn't have been enjoying?

"Hell, yes. I learn't that you ain't worth a fiddler's fart at keepin' tension on a fly rod. If you'd a kept that beaver's head up, I'd 've caught him and we'd be eatin' beaver 'stead of this blasted muskrat weed. What did you learn, smart ass?"

"I learned how ridiculous a naked Turtle looks…..and I learned that given the right environment, a beaver will whip a Turtle's ass any day of the week. I also learned that you've screwed up the fishing in this pool for a long while."

"Shoot," Turtle said, spitting a stream of Copenhagen and saliva at the fire. "Wait 'til next week. I heard 'bout some place over near them Kilmer trees where the bears are as thick as the trout. We'll go there next week and have some real fun!"

© Doug Gilmore 2001

About the Author...Doug Gilmore of Adaire, GA, was instrumental in the founding of GOTC gatherings and their support of Casting for Recovery. Besides fly fishing, Doug enjoys bird hunting, woodworking and fine scotch.