ABOUT NYMPHS
Wolfe's disdain for nymph fishing is renowned. "I frown on nymph fishing," he growls. "To me it's just like bait fishing with a bunch of rags. What's the thrill when all you do is wait for something to jerk on your line and you can't even see it come up and take (the hook)?"

Anyone who is acquainted with the veteran St. Joe fisherman knows there are no streamers, bead heads or hare nymphs in the many plastic trays at his tying bench. "If I can't catch them on a dry fly, the damn fish can starve," he blusters.

The banks of the Joe teem with grasshoppers in the hot months, a phenomenon that Wolfe has observed and adapted to for decades. He designed the Bald Eagle, a high-floating hopper imitation geared at catching big fish, years ago as a variation of the Madam X that is more visible because it doesn't hug the surface film.

"It's been my secret hook on the St. Joe River," he says. "I fish it dead drift and it floats like a cork. Give it a twitch at the tail of a good run or in a riffle and the big fish just blast it."

In his St. Joe Hopper, another variety that Wolfe ties and fishes with some regularity, he uses foam wrapped around the hook eye. Deer hair is spun and trimmed around the foam foundation. The head is bullet style and turkey quill segments are tied on the sides of the body. The orange rubber legs make an X from behind the head.

"It should be fished dead drift and given occasional twitches," he says. "If the action makes it submerge, the foam will bring it right back up."

Wolfe doesn't reserve use of hoppers for the upper river because he doesn't much fish the more than 30 miles of river beyond the former railroad town of Avery.

He leaves those places to the weekend anglers who drive past the lower holes in shining SUVs. Although the Joe is still relatively devoid of fishermen for many days during the week, Wolfe prefers solitude when he's fishing, and on the upper waters, he contests, "You might as well bring your own rock to stand on."

Darst concedes that the river is on the radar of a lot more fishermen than in the past, but that doesn't dissuade him from sojourning up to his favorite holes as often as he can.

"It can be bad at times, especially on weekends above Avery in the catch-and-release waters," he says. "On some of the big holes there can be five or six people standing along the bank."

Darst follows the same seasonal patterns as Wolfe, starting in the slower waters near St. Joe City in the spring using mayfly and caddis imitations, and slowly moving upstream as the water warms.

He switches to a Turck's Tarantula -- which imitates a stonefly or a hopper -- when the weather gets hot. "From early July on to when it gets real hot, I use it the most," he says.

In the late season Wolfe dips into his tins of small hooks, from size 16s to 22, and fishes in the middle of the day when midges dot the water.

"Fish feed on those midges, it's strictly midge fishing," Wolfe says. "They go crazy over those tiny little hooks. When they take it, you don't set the hook on them. You let them set it. It's amazing how a little 20 hook can hook a 17-inch trout."