I've had two favorites over the years. The first was a little hole in the wall shop in Bryson City, NC where Dad would always stop to buy us some nightcrawlers (before I got good at collecting them) and spring lizards on our way to Fontana Lake. I always had hopes of a good day when we left there with the lizards.
The other was Jack's Tackle shop in Newport. I bought some of my first trout flies from Jack as a UT student. When I was an officer there, they were my BEST license agent. If I needed to get the word out about a law/rule change, the first thing I did was stop and see Ms. Reba.
One year I got a call from the head of licensing instructing me to go to Jacks and collect all of their licenses and shut them down for failure to pay. I talked to Reba and she assured me all payments had been sent on time. I called the License Head back and told her that the payments had been sent in. The next thing I knew, I was getting a call from the Asst. Director telling me to shut them down. I responded to him, that with all due respect, if he wanted to shut them down, he could drive to Newport and do it, that I wouldn't. I told him I believed Reba. He, obviously, wasn't very happy with me. I spent the next few hours anticipating a call that I was fired. Thankfully, it was one of the time periods I really didn't care one way or another.
But, they found the unopened payments on somebody's desk later that afternoon.
