The Davidson runs out of the Pisgah National Forest near Brevard as one of the most famous — and most maddening — trout streams in the Southern Appalachians, a clear, cool freestone tumbling through rhododendron-choked hardwood forest over a bed of granite and gneiss cobble. Below the state hatchery the river holds wild and holdover browns and rainbows that have grown large and infamously educated on a steady drift of hatchery pellets and natural insects both, and the section is known for trout that inspect a fly with the disdain of a chalk-stream brown. The bed is rounded mountain cobble and boulder, the water clear and tea-stained, the pools deep and shaded. Wading is freestone rock-work, slick under the laurel. The Davidson is a small mountain river with big, difficult fish — an odd and addictive combination that draws anglers from across the Southeast to be politely refused.

Wading: Slick rock under tight rhododendron