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“Everything is a conversation,” Dustin Coffey says. “You’re having a conversation with the stream right now, and everything you do while standing in the stream is a part of that conversation, and everything in that stream is its conversation back with you.”

I’ve never thought of trout fishing that way before. But Coffey often makes me think about things a bit differently. We’re slightly north of Blowing Rock, knee-deep in a Blue Ridge stream, where the promise of a trout — or the hope of one, at least — seems to sparkle in every riffle and eddy.

“Here’s the thing,” he continues in his rat-a-tat-tat, stay-with-me delivery. “That conversation starts before your feet get in the water. It starts when you decide to go fishing. Your attitude, your goals, your hopes for the day. You can’t bring a bunch of negative energy to these mountain waters and expect them not to notice.”

Dustin Coffey photograph by Derek Diluzio

Life and fishing with his grandfather taught Coffey that. When he was a little boy, his grandfather Bill Coffey would carry him up a road deep in the wilds below Grandfather Mountain and drop his grandson’s bicycle at a stream crossing. Then, they’d continue higher into the hills.

“I’d fish down to my bike,” Coffey says. “Eating huckleberries and drinking spring water. A fishing rod in one hand and a bologna sandwich in the other. And talking to the stream all the way down.”

“Paw Paw Bill” taught him many things: How to move so slowly through a trout stream that you make no more disturbance than a beech leaf falling to the water. How to plan your path — through the woods or through life — in a way that emphasizes harmony.

These days, Coffey splits his time as owner of the Boone-based Blue Ribbon Angler in the fall and spring and as a guide at Wild Montana Anglers in summer and early fall. He spent nearly 15 years at Chetola Resort in Blowing Rock as head guide and fishing manager. He has studied at the feet of some of North Carolina’s most legendary fishing guides.

And he has risen to one of the pinnacles of his profession: Last year, he was named Orvis-Endorsed Fly-Fishing Guide of the Year. It’s the fishing equivalent of winning the world’s heavyweight championship belt.

• • •

We’re making our way along the Watauga River and Boone Fork, fishing through a stretch of water that Coffey has long helped manage for healthy trout habitat. He points out where he’s added limestone rocks to help regulate the water’s pH values, and the vibrant patches of moss and algae that have grown on them.

“A healthy trout stream isn’t just about rocks and water,” he says. “You have to look at the stream banks and beyond.” Healthy hemlocks shade the water, creating the cool conditions trout require. The bugs that feed fish rely on complex ecosystems of decaying wood and moist rocks, microhabitats that are hundreds of years in the making.

We step out of the creek so Coffey can change my fly. “These fish aren’t going to make it easy on us today,” he murmurs. “We’ll have to figure them out. Let’s try this.” He holds up a deer-hair-and-feather concoction that bristles with a grizzled collar. “Sort of a cross between a beetle and a bug,” he says with a grin that’s simultaneously impish and very, very serious.

Coffey has the patience of a half-dozen Jobs and the fishing wisdom of as many Solomons.

When Coffey won the Orvis award, few in his orbit were surprised. I was one of those who knew it was a well-deserved honor. I’ve fished with Coffey for years, as a client and a friend. He brings an irrepressible vibe to a day on the water. He has the patience of a half-dozen Jobs and the fishing wisdom of an equal number of Solomons.

Coffey grew up in a little cabin in the Caldwell County community of Globe. His father, William Thomas Coffey Jr., was a preacher for several tiny churches in the remote mountain region — Johns River, Maple Grove, Globe. It was the middle of nowhere, Coffey says with a smile, “but the center of everything.”

He’s been guiding for 24 years, starting when he got his driver’s license and bought a 1978 Dodge long-bed pickup. He went to buy some gear at Appalachian Angler, a long-gone but once-beloved fly shop near Foscoe, and heard a customer talking to one of the shop employees.

“I didn’t even know what a guide was,” he says, “and that one man said he charged $350 for a fishing day. I thought to myself, My gosh! What is this of which you speak?” He’d found his calling.

• • •

Gray-barked sycamores lean over the stream where it takes a slow, sinuous right-hand curve. It looks as if every fishy element of every trout stream in North Carolina has been compressed into this one run: a riffled slide over a cobbled bottom, the dark shade of rhododendrons, a jagged rock wall clad with moss and old-growth lichens, a deep pool bottomless and black as onyx.

I let the fly drift through the fast water and drop over a ledge to slow down, enticingly, in the foam at the head of the pool. When the big fish strikes, I set the hook too early and snatch the fly right out of its mouth.

I know I screwed up. Coffey knows I screwed up. We both laugh with the joy of being in such a restorative place and the joy of being beaten by a fish.

“I didn’t name this the Humble Hole for nothing!” he says with a big signature Dustin Coffey laugh. “You gotta let ’em eat like they owe you money!”

Whatever’s biting in the mountain waters he knows so well — be it brown (pictured), brook, or rainbow trout — Coffey’s got a fly to entice it. photograph by Derek Diluzio

I’ve just stripped in the line to set up for another cast when Coffey suddenly leaps across a gravel bar, pointing out a tiny insect flitting across the pool, dipping in and out of the shafts of light that angle through the shade. “Look! Look! A slate drake! See him? Do you see him?”

I see him and watch the bug — a favored trout food — slip behind the rhododendrons. When I turn around, Coffey’s digging through his tackle bag. There are slate drake flies in there somewhere, he says, because he never leaves the house without them. But then, he never leaves the house without whatever it takes to turn another day on a North Carolina mountain stream into a lifelong memory. Sometimes, that’s the right fly. Most often, it’s the right frame of mind: Slow down. Listen to the stream. Plan your path. Be grateful, no matter what.

And fish like crazy. “Come on,” he says, his next move already calculated and progressing. “Let’s get us another one.”