As a reward for what’s been a long, work-laden winter, I just booked a flight to Tennessee (mid-May) for what will no doubt be my triumphant return to the Southeast.

Spontaneous celebrations are breaking out all over Tennessee’s fly fishing community, thrilled to have the World’s Most Beloved Fly Fishing Blogger once again within the state’s borders.

Prior visits resulted in sizable spikes in the area’s tourism industry, and not simply due to those Underground Megafans who flew in simply hoping to catch a glimpse of my seductive backcast.

There are all the groupies too.

Tennessee’s economy was also bolstered by a mammoth increase in economically tasty slawdog exports after we conducted blogging’s first slawdog vivisection.

I’ll be fishing some with fly fishing friends Ian and Charity Rutter (local guides who oddly recently changed their phone number and email addresses and neglected to mention it to me, but I guess that’s what those Internet detective services are for.)

And while I won’t be hoofing my way through any Hazel Creek backpacking trips, I do expect we’ll conduct the usual Brookie Raids, the requisite Search For Big Brown Trout, and maybe a float trip down Ian’s Giant Secret Smallmouth Stretch, which is seeing a lot of repeat clients (apparently it’s a hard sell the first time, but not the second…).

Naturally, a trip like this raises a lot of larger philosophical questions, and already the massed brainpower of the Undergrounders is grinding away:

Which fly rods do I take?

See you at the ticket office, Tom Chandler.

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