The small streams of the Peach State's Blue Ridge Mountains offer some incredible scenery and pristine angling. Photo by Jimmy Jacobs.

One of the appeals of trout fishing in the southern highlands was always opening day of the season. Through the winter months, time at the tying vise or fiddling with dormant equipment could assuage slightly the void created by incarceration indoors. Those activities could also manage to keep at bay the memories of forays from the previous summer and fall. A slip in that discipline, however, ran the risk of sending one plunging into reminisced revelries, which only lengthened the calendar's intolerable creep.

But with the arrival of the short but frigid days of late February on into March, the added anticipation of that opening day kept alive the faint trout-angling pulse in many cabin-bound men. Finally, as the singular event drew near, the sense of anticipation built to such a fever pitch that it demanded clear, cold waters to stand in while stalking trout.

You might note a touch of nostalgia in this reference to the beginning of trout season. In fact, here in my native Georgia, much of the impact of that new beginning has dissipated. For the most part, opening day has fallen victim to successful management of our coldwater-angling resources. Here and in most of the Southern states, trout fishermen now enjoy being able to target larger fish year-round in major tailwater trout fisheries, or in the very popular streams managed under delayed-harvest regulations. These latter fisheries are usually found on streams that offer only marginal trout habitat in warmer months, but provide conditions the fish thrive in during the colder fall through spring.

Finally, the tailwaters and delayed-harvest waters have taken enough pressure off the mountain streams that harbor wild trout to let many of them remain open throughout the year. Though some creeks and rivers are still managed under seasonal regulations, Southern trout fishermen are no longer confined indoors during the cooler months. Their collective angling itch does not have to fester through the winter while awaiting the beginning of the season. Unfortunately, this newfound freedom has removed much of the mystique of opening day.

It was against this factual backdrop that early one April morning, I found myself shuffling up the sand-and-rock bed of Bear Den Creek. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains a bit north of Georgia's neo-alpine tourism village of Helen, this ribbon of crystalline water adheres to seasonal trout rules as it courses through the Chattahoochee National Forest. Only a small stream by any standard, its water harbors wild rainbow and -- if you labor far enough up into the mountains -- a vestige population of Southern Appalachian brook trout.

As I climbed rocks and bullied past rhododendron limbs shaded by stately hemlock and tulip poplar trees, the creek demanded rollcasts or extreme caution where any back cast was possible. As a water for wild trout in North Georgia, Bear Den is not exceptional. The trout it holds, in potholes and tiny plunge pools, rarely attain lengths of 10 inches, with 6 or 7 inches the norm.