SCOF 49 - Fall 2023

SCOF49 | FALL 2023 | CHICKEN n BEER

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by Alexandra Wolf

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8 henrymoon

a photo essay by alexandra wolf

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a letter from john

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haiku

by matt smythe

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Sunny South Tales with Shad:

A River Runs Into a Man Made Impoundment by john agricola photos: clark french

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Dammed if you do by jacob eanes

photos: collin fuller

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The Enduring Magic of Catfish by john agricola illustrations: hank

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Gatorade Water by ryan forbus

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Venetian Heat

by chase pritchett

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southern one fly 2023 results Coosa Riverkeeper photos: chad hoffman

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Movie Review: Mending the Line by sandra agricola

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Poetry Pow Wow

October on the Locust Fork

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Cut Loose and Mend the Line

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by hank

by ethan jacobs

minutia

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Queen of the Stream

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conservation corner

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the Old Man and Me

with dr. professor mike

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Chicken N Beer

by SCOF

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the back page

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by micah mccrotty

by: steven mccaslin

with dr. professor mike

with mike benson & hank

Photo: hellgrammite by Alan Broyhill, summer 2023

s.c.o.f Fall 2023

issue no. 49 Chicken n Beer Managing editor

John Agricola

Editor at large

Michael Steinberg

Creative Director & Chief of Design

Hank

Ads & Marketing Director

Samuel L. Bailey Merchandiser

Scott M. Stevenson Media Director

Alan Broyhill

contributors: Alexandra Wolf Ryan Forbus Chase Pritchett Clark French Sandra Agricola Chad Hoffman Ethan Jacobs Micah McCrotty Mike Benson Carey Chen Craig Godwin Jacob Eanes Collin Fuller Steven McCaslin Matt Smythe Managing editor emeritus: David Grossman Creative Director emeritus: Steven Seinberg copy editor emeritus: Lindsey Grossman ombudsman: Shad Maclean general inquiries and submissions: southerncultureonthefly@gmail.com advertising information: sam@southerncultureonthefly.com cover image: Hank and Alan

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SHOP THE SCOF STORE

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A letter from John, the editor ALL YOU CAN EAT CRAB LEGS While shooting last quarter’s cover, or after the dust settled from it, some ladies from the pool saw me including the woman who was kind enough to snap the photo, trying to get the perfect pose. The cover was my rendition of Nirvana’s Nevermind album — my gut had to be extended, and my arms outstretched for the almighty dollar. The Dose tumeric shots, the athletic greens, the ka’chava mushroom coffee, had restored my energy, but the gut was still a glaring problem for my wife as she didn’t fetishize fat stomach the way I felt about fat boobs.

I really should have scoured the earth for a woman with medieval sensibilities when choosing a spouse. Then the ladies asked her: “What is your husband doing?”

“He has a pot smoking fly fishing magazine.” She answered shamefully. It was then that I realized I had married Courtney Love in an alternate parallel universe.

I should have never bought Southern Culture on the Fly. We could have just as easily called it Fly High Times, or maybe High Fly Times, if it was only for appeasing my reductively simplistic wife. Thankfully it is also about y’all, and this community.

Three months later I have been in a real pickle taking care of my father. I left the hospital and was headed to gorge myself somewhere. Fat Nirvana Buddha living in Gadsden, Ala., doesn’t just happen. Maybe I would grab a deep dish pizza from Little Caesar’s and put marinara over the top of the pie like Pizza Hut used to do for their Detroit style pizza, now discontinued. It's a Saturday, and so maybe I'd find a bar to watch football. Maybe I would eat lobster with dripping drawn butter. There it is: C & 26

J’s Crab Shack. I would not go hungry while waiting on my father to die.

Something about a steak dinner felt inappropriate. A bucket of crab was somehow hopeful still. I was a glutton.

Frequent trips out of the hospital to the parking lot to pull on my pen had made my eyes glassy and red. I wanted to go somewhere and eat the pain away. When I sat down and the bartender, Thorn, asked me what I wanted and my eyes couldn’t find the appropriate deal for the hunger in my soul, he mentioned an off the menu order: “All-you-can-eat snow crab.”

The fluids that my father is receiving for his low iron continuously beeps because of its ability to sense an air bubble in the line.

The nurses rarely care to shut it off. I have put my father in the hospital because of his inability to rise of his own accord and make it to the bathroom. He has been staying in a very nice assisted living. It is the best in town, and is where my father at one time put his momma. They gave him a 30-day notice the first day of being there because he fell, then released his bladder and then refused to call for help with his pendant. I put him in the hospital because his hemoglobin was dangerously low, and the gastrointestinal doctor wants to rule out colon cancer with a colonoscopy.

Ordinarily, the two of us would be sitting at the boathouse drinking and eating all day before the LSU-Alabama football game. Today, he was laying in the hospital bed waiting to shit. Maybe I did not yet know what would kill my father. Maybe it would be the aneurysms. Maybe it would be the colon cancer, if that is what he has.

Maybe it would be a broken hip that he has yet to break, and then pneumonia would get

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him at the nursing home I have not yet secured for him. Three days in a hospital is enough to secure a rehab in a nursing home. So I am hoping he can rally, and build muscle in his legs so that he isn’t bedridden for the rest of his life.

As I cracked shells with tools and stuffed my face with crab meat dipped in butter I considered my father’s Jell-O diet. It wasn’t fair. But as he has taught me: life rarely is. Some eat drawn butter crab legs harvested from Alaska, and others wait days to poop in a hospital bed trying to live.

I ate all that I could without being an absolute pig, washed my hands, and headed back to the hospital. Needless to say we hope you enjoy our latest edition capping our first year of Southern Culture on the Fly. Every issue was better than the last cluster. The sopping and future is delicious and bright over here. The best is yet to come…

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Haiku

matt smythe

They Just Don’t Care Trout wilt in the heat Bass, carp, reds, bream, even cats Middle finger fish

photo by alan broyhill

FAILURE is not an option

ABSOLUTE TIPPET

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Sunny South Tales with Shad: A River Runs into a Man-Made Impoundment

by John Agricola photos by Clark French 32

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shad ->

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T

here is an old story that I found under some stones in a Montana stream. A lyrically charged story about a Presbyterian family of Scotch-Irish Macleans and the tragic loss of a Montana Gazette writer named Paul. They say every bone in his hand was broken, and his degeneracy in gambling led to his demise. He was, however, an artful fly caster known for his inventive shadow cast.

According to legend, his woman, an Indian princess named Mabel, was pregnant with his unborn child. After his funeral, she returned to her people back in Alabama. I decided to go on a trip to Tennessee to be guided, and met a fascinating figure below the bridge blending in with other bank fishermen.

He was Paul’s great-grandson, and grew up with Mabel’s people in Alabama. He looked slightly indigenous with his dark Jehry curl hair, and hippie dress. But make no mistake, Shad was a redneck at heart. I was being guided by Taco Meat Guide service; the moment I discovered who Shad was we decided we needed to fish together.

Shad: Yeah, my great-grandmother Mabel Maclean moved back to Alabama to live on her people’s farm near Guntersville.

She came down here to live on the Henry farm. It had been established on a plot along the Trail of Tears. But then The Authority had the great idea to pay for her to move to the town of Arab, and move her off the farm.

Me: Why did they do that?

Shad: Well you see my people was dispossessed from the farm to make

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way for Progress. I say piss on that. I only know who I am because of my Sage fly rod. It has a soul. It taught me to be good so my soul doesn’t get wrecked by modern life. All that Progress comes in the form of store-bought taxed whiskey, and television. All TV is good for is betting.

According to some, we had a thousand-acre farm with all kinds of crops, not just cotton. Then FDR made my family pack up the farm and move into the city. We almost forgot who we are, but my daddy always says, “Remember who you are and what you represent.” All I am is built on the memories found under Montana rocks. I fish in the shadow of Progress robots, and lines of power.

Me: So how did you become Shad?

Shad: I am me because I found a bamboo fly rod of my Granddaddy Paul’s in a closet. While the rest of my family drank store-bought Dickel on the porch, I would cast that rod with the silk line until I was better than most pleated anglers. I became complete in my heart, and then it did not matter if there was a fish on the line. It wasn’t about the fish. It was about being me, and finding peace. I mean there are good peace pipes to be found under the bridge, but true peace is internal.

Hell, Shad would have been happy to throw an empanada at these hybrid bass and skipjacks. Shad worked in munitions and controlled explosions, so the fact that he was a monkey wrencher fishing below the Chickamauga Dam, it was likely that he had fished with dynamite before, or at the very least a rotary telephone shocker. He called it

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shadow tossing, and it was throwing a lead-eyed streamer into a fish hole and stripping it long enough and low enough that he could make a skipjack rise to the shiner baitfish pattern. “Tick, tick, tick, boom!!!” Shad screamed gleefully while standing on the shoals. Shad would exchange caught skipjacks to the ole timer catfishermen sitting on the banks of the Tennessee River.

I’ve always heard the cliché that the strange thing about fishing is that it isn’t really about the fish. I think for people catching meat for the freezer it is more about the fish than all the other analogs like community and the road less traveled. The day I drove to Chattanooga, we wanted it to be about the fish so badly.

Promises of multi species outings danced in all of our heads. These perspectives could not have been more different, but we were unified in our addiction to the tug, in terms of another cliché — it was the drug. For all of us meeting under a railroad bridge below the Chickamauga Dam, the day was made when we found Shad.

I don’t mean gizzard or threadfin shad; I mean Shad Maclean. When we approached Shad he was ripping in a skipjack that he was going to use as cut bait for catfish. Taco Meat Guide Service was supposed to be taking us to his best hole, but suddenly I found myself standing amongst a number of bankies.

Most were spinning with conventional tackle, and occasionally an old tired umbrella rig would drift through your legs and your fly line, and if you were lucky, the rusty swim baits would not puncture your waders. I felt slightly ridiculous casting below this massive boon to electrification in the Tennessee Valley. My guide, Taco Meat, and I discussed why or 36

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how I was qualified to teach an art class at Gadsden State. When I replied that I wrote my graduate thesis on Tennessee Valley mural art as propaganda, he immediately took the authority’s side about all the benefits the region has subsumed into its culture because of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

Shad could double haul 80 feet of line without breaking a sweat, and this was abruptly unexpected since ole Shad seemed to be just another cast net bait fisherman. When Shad pulled out his Sage Excalibur, it became apparent to everyone that this was a lost royal whose family came South when the bachelor patriarch was beaten to death. Shad’s spirit was just as restless for connection as Paul’s had been in the film, A River Runs Through It, written by Shad’s great uncle Norman Maclean.

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Taco Meat promised us a doubledigit day. Instead we discovered Shad like a troll that lived under a bridge instead of holding a sign with all the banality of one that read: “Will fish 4 food,” Shad stood on the rocky shoals and chucked a wiggle minnow as far as any of us practiced and pleated anglers could. His Jheri curl was occasionally sprayed with Afro Sheen when the rest of us broke for cigarettes. His hair was flowing and majestic, and it was a fire hazard on the back of his shirt with a massive grease slick.

Still, we were in the presence of a legend doing some kind of bizarro impression of a man adhering to principles of genealogical succession.

Or maybe he just couldn’t help calling in bets on Sunday Night Football. “If these small jaws and skipjacks aren’t going to bite, I am at least gonna fire in a threelegged parlay.” I was impressed with his degeneracy. But I would have been more impressed if Taco Meat had led us to the lost city of El Dorado. As it was, without the fish there were only Dorito bags littering the bank amongst the many bankies.

Not even Shad could turn the despair away. At certain points, I felt as though my arm was throwing at musky, because of my joint pain from chucking and ducking. But as the day wore on, all of the Chattanooga fly angler group seemed to materialize before our very eyes. There was Ian, Collin, and Cody.

We stopped and discussed our luck with them when they motored up the tail water to fish for stripe. I sensed a belowthe-dam subculture in the Chattanooga city limits, and I knew that if they were here, then there was typically fish here.

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fish. It is about friendly connection as well. Most importantly it is about TVA’s turbine schedule, and Taco Meat failed to check it. His card said he was the “Gringo that delivers fish.”

But after it is all said and done, I got to meet Shad, and I believe that was worth the trip. Taco Meat did in fact deliver after all.

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Dammed if you do

by Jacob Eanes photos by Collin Fuller

Perhaps nothing so emphasizes the extent of Man’s hubris as our attempt to control and alter Nature. For eons, rivers have flown freely across the world; traveling down, down, ever downward until reaching the seas. At times they flood, simultaneously bringing death and destruction while also providing vital nutrients for entire civilizations.

It’s a fine line between life and death and historically speaking, Nature rarely lets you forget her dominance for long.

The power that Gaea holds over our collective existence is something that has long enthralled Man. Over time, we have sought to control Her power. Enter Man’s arrogance: dams, immense walls of concrete, timber and earth that literally interrupt the flow of nature. We attempt to change the very environment in which we live. Of course, these alterations usually do serve a purpose aiding in irrigation, power generation, flood prevention and even simple recreation. Undeniably, they also represent our meddling with a higher call.

From grinding grain on small mountain streams to funneling fish in Cherokee weirs, altering the course of water has long played a part in our survival. First we built our humble mills, jetties, and breakwaters to subdue our environment in a localized fashion. But, as is human nature, we inevitably built bigger. Observe our modern-day reservoir.

Gargantuan concrete and earthen works that hold back millions of cubic feet of water. And not just one or two the world

over but countless across our nation as dams were built absurdly fast throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. As our burgeoning population expanded so too did the need for reliable water sources, electricity and recreational opportunities.

Our dams and reservoirs serve many purposes; many of which aren’t obvious.

Hell, Lake Fontana at the southern end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created largely in order to power the Manhattan project and create mankind’s first atomic weaponry. Though they can and do promote convenience, dams are far from our society’s constant search for a panacea. Our aging infrastructure is dangerously inefficient as it interrupts the natural rhythm of fish and the aquatic species dependent on their unblocked home waters.

Our modern system of dams is a perfect example of a double-edged sword. As, we receive some benefits, others are notably taken away. And such is life. We live in a flawed world run by flawed people so all we are ever capable of doing is weighing priorities, mitigating our impact and dealing with the consequences of our actions. While we may gain cleaner electricity, we lose migratory fish that depend on open, untamed rivers. Where we gain flood control, we have forced the relocation of communities that were unlucky enough to be in the way of ‘progress’.

Our meddling gives and takes, thus we are left to deal with the repercussions.

In many places this means diminished salmon runs and the extirpation and even extermination of native fish like Colorado pikeminnows, alligator gar, and the ancient Gulf sturgeon. But the gift

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horse we presented ourselves with also bestows in its own unique fashion. Many of our sport’s most famous fisheries are tailwaters, where water releases from the bottom of a dammed reservoir ensuring cold water to sustain a river in even the hottest of months. In the Southeast, we benefit from many such rivers from the mighty trout fisheries of Eastern Tennessee to the more humble tailwaters in Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and even Alabama. The range expansion of trout into more southerly latitudes would otherwise be impossible.

The tailwaters of the South extend our trout fisheries further towards the sunny Gulf and provide for potential yearround fishing of salmonids in our region.

This brings tourist dollars to humble fishing guides and recreation to locals alike. Some of these fisheries are excellent for teaching a child and indoctrinating them into the greatest money-hole of their young lives, fly fishing. I myself got my inauspicious start under a broad oak tree at a public boat ramp some 6 odd miles below Blue Ridge dam. I remember wearing the ridiculous puffy waterproof chest waders that came up to my chin and how, when I stepped in the silt and pea gravel, the trout would hover behind my legs as a current break. I was hooked.

Years later I still return to that spot; these days I am much more aware of how unnatural that fishery is. Without the dam, without a bottom release, without consistent flows, without even a stocking truck coming from a trout hatchery, that fishery wouldn’t have been there for me to appreciate.

Trout tailwaters are far from the only benefit we as fly fishermen have received. Though the year-round cold 52

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outflows of local dams help benefit my guiding business, I also revel in the smallmouth bass, the carp, the buffalo, the longnose gar, the “Tennessee tarpon” and the other quarry I enjoy targeting in the presence of some of Man’s greatest monstrosities. As we have diminished our environment, so too in unexpected ways have we enriched it. These days I often find myself below some of the dams on the mighty Tennessee River fishing for a menagerie of species that might not otherwise be there without the dams.

Boons come in all shapes and sizes and, depending on the season, the generation schedule and whatever number of other factors, a host of different species are available both from shore and small watercraft. The areas below these dams are the freshwater equivalent of fishing the nearshore reefs of south Florida, “box of chocolates” fisheries in the greatest sense of the term as you really never know what you may get. As of late, dawn on the Tennessee River means striped bass, big rods, heavy lines and aggressive stripping. The hope here is for big predatory fish looking for a lowlight breakfast. As the sun just peeks over the 5,800 foot long dam, the striper begin to move back into their deeper haunts. So, now we look to the rocky banks and eddies finding smallmouth, largemouth and spotted bass crashing bait seemingly everywhere. This is the time for the 4, 5 and 6 weights rigged with floating lines connected to wiggle minnows and gurglers. Once you’ve caught your fill, you can pursue the skipjack of regional fame or you can dredge deep for freshwater drum, catfish and whatever else may bite a spawn craw. All of these locals are influenced by 54

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the release of potentially up to 470,000 cubic feet of water per second and all that comes with it.

It is human nature to meddle.

Humanity constantly feels the urge to push the limits and see what can be altered, upgraded or grasped. We have proven this repeatedly as a species.

To see if something is possible has historically been enough reason to try to do something whether climbing a mountain, building a dam or transplanting rainbow trout all over the world. We are always pushing, always testing the limits of Nature to see what we can do.

Our artifices are flawed and sometimes even dangerous when they fail but they are an intrinsic part of our world. We are capable of deriving a lot of benefit from them as is the case with the lowly

fly fishermen. The urge to meddle and modify runs deep within our collective psyche and we must be cautious with where it takes us. By their existence, dams modify the environment around them in countless ways. Everything, everything, from the lowliest snail darter in the Little Tennessee to the haunted Oscarville under Lake Lanier is subject to the impact of dams. Do the benefits outweigh the environmental cost? When altering the fundamental design of Nature, you are dammed if you do and…

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sam bailey's first beer 60

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boy broy

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The Enduring Magic of Catfish

By John Agricola

Because I have always fancied myself a purist fly fisherman, I came to the sport of fishing for catfish as a late bloomer. Little of me identified with other catfishermen who I saw standing on causeways in North Alabama. I did get catfished once on Tinder, but that identity dilemma is a whole other story. (She was a Tullahoma, Tenn. leviathan however.) Recently, I bought a boathouse on the Coosa River’s main channel. Fly fishing was not really an option in this place because of the depth of the channel. So I started with chicken livers, then tried numerous concoctions of chicken thighs mixed with grape Jell-O powder and Kool-Aid mixes. I bought a green monster light where I could throw a cast net over bait balls to serve as my alluring catfish food. All I knew about catfish hunting was filtered through three cinematic narratives.

On the shiners, I caught a few undersized flatheads. My passion for catfishing grew to a feverish pitch over the course of a month. I did not feel like a traitor to fly fishing, because there was something about baiting worms on a hook that I kinesthetically enjoyed.

The only problem was the trees blown downriver next to the boathouse. I would feel thrashing once that circle hook bored itself into the fish's jaw, but then in a mere 30 seconds that fish would find structure and hunker down.

I always thought I enjoyed fly fishing because of the active nature of casting and angling in general. Thinking about fly patterns that I needed to try, or how to drift that fly right to the fish is an engaging pursuit. I dismissed catfishing because I 62

only ever saw people waiting. In my last month I rarely slowed down while fishing for cats. My passion for the fish kept me going to the boathouse to the point of making marriage tenuous again. I had just repaired it from the Black Fly Lodge debacle.

Last night, my father was with me as witness, and I fought a giant for about 40 minutes. I felt head shaking throughout the fight, but generally when I gave the fish a bit of slack. It kept going behind the structure, and ultimately it broke the line. I adjusted the drag perpetually throughout the fight. I poured sweat in the autumn breeze. Dad positioned his chair at the edge of the dock, hoping to see this gargantuan player. When it broke me off, we were defeated and my hope for ever catching a giant deflated.

I.) The Southerner, 1945, Directed by Jean Renoir How far we have come as a species when my exertion to catch a 50- to 60-pound cat is so great that I spend hundreds on the sport only to release the fish after. The film, The Southerner, features a family that leaves cotton monoculture to be free of the tenant system. The main character, Sam Tucker, hears about a giant fish known as Lead Pencil. In a scene with his kids he explains that Lead Pencil is not after worms, rather it is something else this ancient catfish is after.

Sam Tucker stresses the intelligence of an old fish. The family is fighting for survival and the father of the family fights asshole neighbors, pellagra, and starvation. The catfish represents an essential element of sustenance and survival in their struggle for self-reliance.The fish is a metaphor for the interdependence of humans and the

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natural world. This delicate balance is a distant memory for modern life, but fishing for cats reminds me of the old ways. Feeling his head shaking in the night was primal, and me versus that fish is a physical task that as a fly angler I only felt while fighting tarpon.

2.) Grumpy Old Men, 1993, Directed by Donald Petrie I conjured this film while fighting that giant fish because in the comic pursuit of Catfish Hunter, John Gustafson and Max Goldman have a contentious friendship in a small Minnesota town. Their shared pastime is catfishing on a frozen lake.

This activity is the backdrop for all their interactions. Their competition is the humorous milieu of their activity. I have no friends who will dirty their hands in worms, and spend hours on end chasing giant fish. It has been a solitary endeavor, except for the time a local redneck stopped by drunkenly after a day on the river and helped me net a very big flathead caught on a Snoopy rod that was meant for catching bait next to the rip rap. Luckily, I had an inebriated net man capable of grabbing that fish.

I was not a born catfisherman. I was a born fly purist. Someday I would harness the storytelling powers of Lead Pencil on the Coosa chain. Maybe his alchemy would make me a legendary catfish man.

Like the old timers I observed on the causeways, we all are looking for magic in the fight.

3.) Big Fish, 2003, Directed by Tim Burton After the giant got free, I was so dejected that I could not keep fishing. I was greeted by an angry lady at my home who had surprisingly missed me, just as I had missed the opportunity to grab the giant uncatchable fish. Just as Edward Blum used a wedding ring to catch the magical “uncatchable fish,” I, too, was using my own. I finally understood the metaphor of this film. It gave him imaginative storytelling powers to have caught that fish. With a bit of luck, I might be so fortunate one day as well.

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words & photos by

Ryan Forbus

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Gatorade Water

By Ryan Forbus

It’s been a couple months now since I’ve returned home from the Oregon coast, where I recently spent a week chasing anadromous chromed ghosts as they navigate obstacle after obstacle to reach their home waters.

It’s become a tradition now, when the leaves have finished falling and the temps dip downward, lower and lower…the call of Oregon’s Gatorade-colored waters beckons me. This is my second winter heading out there, and I suspect some will shake their heads…that isn’t a tradition…not yet, at least.

But it is to me, and frankly, one must start a tradition somehow. My first outing in 2022 was a failure in the steelhead department, but it was successful in that I fell in love with Oregon and its rivers; and one river in particular.

In 2022, I fished the North Umpqua.

Its beauty is jaw-dropping, every corner I turned on the North Umpqua Highway elicited a muttered “unreal” said out loud.

With its “Glacier Freeze” waters, its mosscovered trees and boulders, and its cliffs and outcroppings—it’s idyllic. Unfortunately, parts of this iconic river were ravaged by the Archie Creek Fire in 2020, which burned up to 130,000 acres, so its devastation is on display as one winds their way upriver. It’s deeply saddening; I find myself daydreaming of what things must have looked like before, hillsides of evergreens from riverbank to horizon. Now scorched black, with lifeless skeletons of trees dotting hillsides and ridges, it’s almost an apocalyptic scene.

Driving further, the fire zone ends and almost as abruptly the scorched earth vanishes and evergreens grow thick and tall once again, providing a lens into the past, pre-fire, and a view of what this valley looked like for 68

hundreds of years prior. With only two days to explore initially, I knew it was barely any time to search these hallowed waters. So as I drove past the Narrows on my way out after that 2022 trip, I vowed to myself that I would return.

Fast forward 12 months: it’s late February, almost early March, plane tickets purchased, rental car secured, plans confirmed. It’s time to begin my winter pilgrimage westward. After multiple flights, airport sprints, overweight bag fees, airport beers, and 6-plus hours of flight time, I finally touched down in Portland. Once I haphazardly throw my bags in my rental, it’s time to blast south. Stopping in Eugene for supplies: isobutane, freeze-dried food, beer, and water. You know, the essentials. With no extra inch to spare in my rental Tacoma, I make the final leg of my journey south to the North Umpqua to fulfill my vow. It’s been a hell of a long day and I’m exhausted, but as I round a bend in the road and get my first glimpse of the NU’s turquoise colored waters, I find my second wind. Giddy with excitement, thinking of the many possibilities of the upcoming days, I make it to camp with a bit of daylight left and hurry about setting up. As soon as I get my tarp secured and my stove ignited, the rain begins. I heat my water and make my freeze-dried delicacy.

Nothing beats al pastor with cilantro lime rice, washed down with a cold Rainier. I power on my Garmin inReach and check in with my wife, Mary Parker. I guess it’s about time in the story I mention that she’s seven months pregnant with our first child, a daughter who’s planning a mid-May debut. Soon fly rods will be replaced temporarily with bottles, dirty diapers, and many a bedtime story for our future angler. With both my girls doing well at home, I call it an early night.

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One would think sleep would come quickly, but it doesn’t. Tossing and turning all night, rain dumping, and fitful dreaming provide glimpses of what I came here to do.

Those dreams must have fueled an early wake-up. Bright and early at 4 a.m. PST, I can’t stand being trapped in my sleeping bag any longer. Bleary-eyed and cold, I trudged my way over to my tarp and picnic table to crank up the stove for some coffee.

With something warm and caffeinated on tap, Black Rifle Coffee that I brought out with me, I’m warmed up enough to get my fishing gear situated and rod rigged up. Finally, the night’s darkness fades, giving way to the morning’s light which slowly illuminates the forest around me.

After gearing up and loading up, I pull out of camp and work my way downriver to a run I had spotted on the way in. I scramble down to the river, up and over boulders and fallen trees, dodging thorns left and right, and finally I find myself standing knee-deep in the North Umpqua again. A sense of peace befalls me as time and worries fade.

Swing, step, repeat.

Swing, step, repeat.

Swing, step, repeat.

I work my way through the run. No dice.

But my casting is good, and the sun began to burn its way through the overcast morning.

Off to the next spot. Clamber down. Swing, step, repeat. This process goes on and on until around lunch time. I pull off at the next run, crack a cold one, re-rig, and head down to the river’s edge. I strip out line and start the process again. Swing, step, repeat. At about the fourth iteration of this, I send a Circle C across the river, hear a loud thwack, and think to myself that it didn’t sound good…it didn’t sound good at all.

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hand with the rest of it about 30 feet into the middle of the river. Perfection. Day one of seven, and I snapped my rod. I reel in my line to retrieve the remaining 10 feet of spey rod and retreat to the truck, shaking my head in disbelief and frustration. Finishing the beer I had opened, I began to ponder options.

My buddy Courtney was coming down from Eugene tomorrow to link up with me; maybe he could bring one down? Just as I settle on that plan, a lightbulb goes off in my head, and I fire off a text from the inReach to Mary Parker and ask her to call Caddis Fly Shop in Eugene and ask if they have a replacement.

“No one’s answering the phone,” she says.

Perfect. But, shortly thereafter the inReach bleeps—she’s gotten through. They have what I need. I speed down the road until I get a bar of service and call the shop, purchasing the rod over the phone, and reserving it for Courtney to pick up after work. A close call, and certainly a hefty unforeseen expense.

Courtney confirmed he could grab it and bring it with him the next day. Crisis averted.

It’s near 2:30 p.m. PST now and last night’s lack of sleep and the day’s drama was beginning to wear on me. I decide to drive up to one of my favorite spots on the river and shoot some photos. Trying to forget my earlier misfortunes, I rig up my back-up rod, a less than ideal setup for the reel and line pairing I had with me. But I decide I will give it a shot. I step out into the current and onto a boulder big enough for me to stand steadily on. Strip off line and begin casting.

It’s not perfect, struggling to turn over the heavy Skagit head and sink tip. It’s not pretty, but it’s getting it out there, kind of. I send a half-dozen mediocre casts through the run.

Nothing. Yet, it’s no surprise to a steelheader.

I fire a half-decent cast midway across the river, mend, and let her swing. I’m getting a bit lazy at this point, admiring my

surroundings as my fly swings through the run. My line reaches the dangle, and I lift to start my next casting motion. I lift and I’m met with resistance. Must be hung up. Before I could even finish that thought, my rod tip bends over and the drag starts screaming. I hop off the boulder awkwardly and stumble my way back to the bank and start chasing it downstream. Half walking, half running, while reeling up line as I gain ground. Below the run is a fairly significant section of whitewater with some decent drops. I knew I couldn’t allow this fish to make it there, and it was going to be long gone if I did. With all of this going through my mind, I tried to catch up while clambering over boulders slick with moss and wet from last night’s downpour.

Edging closer to the roaring white water, I finally find a decent spot where I can fight the fish. A couple drag-screaming, heart-thumping runs more, and the fish feels as if it’s losing steam. Luckily there was a bit of slack water behind a large boulder that jutted out into the river, and I was able to coax the fish into it which gave me my first real good look at the fish. A steelhead. My heart races even more, my brain screams, “Is this really happening?!” I force myself back to the task at hand.

I have to land this bad boy.

Solo.

Somehow, someway.

I reel in more line. I contort my arm back behind me with the rod in my hand, trying to pull it in closer. That’s not working. I attempt the maneuver once more, which was not appreciated by the fish, causing it to run directly back into the current. Perfect. A run or two more, and I have it back in the slack water. Rod back behind me bending almost impossibly over on itself it seems, I think to myself, you’re going to break this rod, too, if you keep going at it like this. I look at the fish

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through the water, some five or so feet away and grab the sink tip. This is dumb, this is dumb, I think to myself. I slowly start to pull the fish via the sink tip and leader towards me. This thing is going to take off again, I think. The rod’s behind me now, so I have no idea what’s going on there. All my attention is on the fish and praying the leader doesn’t snap. Pulling, gentle now, gently, pulling, getting closer…closer. It’s almost at my feet now. I reach down and wet my hand. Getting ready to tail it. I go for the grab, and I miss as it tries to rocket back into the current at the sight of me. Leader and sink tip streak through my hand for a second and then stop. I slowly and gingerly start coaxing the fish back towards me again. Back at my feet again. I wet my hand and slowly move my hand through the water and in a quick motion wrap my fingers around it right before the tail. I let out a sigh of relief. I have no idea how much time has passed. But I kneel down, with half my legs submerged in the water, and stare at a beautiful wild steelhead.

Adipose fin and all, and even some sea lice.

I’m in disbelief. Not in a million years did I expect for this to happen.

I spend a minute admiring its beauty through the water. My camera is way upstream now, but I quickly remember my phone in one of my wader pockets. I pat around and find it and fumble it out. I snap a few photos and then reach down and remove the hook from the corner of its mouth. As soon as I had removed the hook, it pushed hard with its powerful tail and shot out of my hand and back into the current, gone to continue its journey upriver.

I sit back and breathe. With my heart still pounding, I let out a short yell. A yell of excitement, a yell of adrenaline, a yell of gratitude, I dunno. I’m shaking. I collect my rod and admire my surroundings again.

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Still in disbelief that I caught my first wild steelhead on my favorite river in Oregon, in my favorite spot on the river, with a fly I tied, on my back-up rod. Once back at the car, I hear myself laugh aloud at the thought: My broken rod offering must have pleased the fishing gods and they hath smiled down upon thee, as another Rainier cools my throat and settles my nerves. “Thanks Frank,” I said with reverence to myself as I sipped my beer, still in my waders, on the tailgate. I never had the honor of meeting Frank Moore, but his tireless work to protect the North Umpqua and its fish is a masterful story of conservation, sacrifice, and perseverance.

Without it, I fear the words you’ve just read may have never been possible. My hope is that anglers from near and far take up his torch and continue fighting for this special place that so many of us hold dear. I know I plan to. Cheers to you, Frank: May we all follow in your footsteps, and ensure the time we spend advocating is as much, or more, than the time we spend searching for these chrome anadromous unicorns.

P.S. This story has been on ice for several months as Mary Parker and I have had our hands full rearing our newest angler, Ellie. She already loves being outside like her mom and dad. As I write this post-script, the North Umpqua is under attack once again, this time by the Winchester Water Control District and their disastrous dam “repair” as they close off the already inadequate fish passage to the cold waters above for over a month. If not bad enough, river advocates have witnessed wet concrete being dumped directly into the river, mats for heavy machinery made of old tires known for leaching toxic chemicals, and other egregious violations. Thanks to The Steamboaters and other organizations for banging the drum for conservation and justice. The ODFW must 82

hold the Winchester Water Control District and its repair contractor accountable for all violations and the harming and killing of these imperiled steelhead, Chinook salmon, and Pacific lamprey. I beg of everyone to use their voice to help preserve this special and unique place for future generations. I plan to.

I hope you do as well.

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CLINICS & CLASSES // GUIDED TRIPS // TRAVEL

YOUR FRIENDLY, FULL SERVICE FLY SHOP 79 SOUTH MAIN STREET, ALPHARETTA, GEORGIA 30009 ALPHARETTAOUTFITTERS.COM // 678-762-0027

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Venetian Heat

By Chase Pritchett

It’s 3:00 a.m. as we pull into Cypress Cove marina in Venice, La. Typically, one would assume the fall/winter months is the time to be here to fish. It’s August and 95 degrees with the sun on the opposite side of the Earth. My good friends Matt Murphy and Russ Miller in tow. We were all on autopilot from a long travel day. As we dragged into the little house boat and began to unpack gear and claim beds for the week, there’s an anticipation that seems to permeate our subtle conversation. For lack of sleep perhaps. But sandwiches had to be made and rods needed to be rigged in order to meet our 6:00 a.m. departure for the world's greatest sport fishery. Not gonna lie, there were some shitty knots and mismatched lines to rod rigs that night. Fortunately, the notoriously large Louisiana reds don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about presentation. At least that’s been my experience in the marsh. Then again, lack of sleep and a microdose can disable a sense of concern.

Off to bed. After what seemed to be a three-hour fever dream that felt more like living in a Salvador Dali painting than actual sleep, I rolled out of bed, threw on a solar flex, crushed a Red Bull and hit the no-wake zone with guides Paul Lappin and Nick Sassic. Paul, who seems to be more native than most Nola-ites, has a not-so-apparent wisdom about his tactics. With a semi non-functional GPS unit, Paul runs on instinct, good vibes, and prayer beads. It works. He poles up on flats as if he dropped into a drained Southern California swimming pool alongside the likes of Tony Alva, Stacy 86

Peralta and Jay Adams. There’s never been a moment that I thought we were in the wrong place. Paul is simply sure without being sure. As he hums along to his own version of “Hungry Eyes,” Russ spots a tail glistening in the daybreak around 30 feet at 11 o’ clock. As the Umpqua marketing guy, dropping the purple Po-Boy on his plate and getting tight is the embodiment of selling a fly that works. Alex Gerbec would be proud.

All day they stretched the line and the truth about it.

After a series of weather grumbles shot our plans to tarpon fish earlier this year, Nick Sassic and I are finally in the same boat. He’s been on my short list for quite some time. All of my warm water clients have recommended him for years and now it’s my chance to hear his song and dance. It’s funny how we are all connected by those who push and row. Nick has a wisdom that carries the weight of a Sherman tank. He’s also built like one. The center of gravity on this guy poling into a 20 mph headwind could move a commercial jet. Each move

by Nick is deliberate and calculated. His stoic yet approachable personality makes for a solid day on the water. Nick will not give credit to a good cast but will toss an absolute soul crushing blow for a bad one. That’s for anyone who he deems worthy of his friendship. After a few shots on the open flats in what seemed to be a game of Whac-A-Mole at floaters appearing in the dawning light, we moved onto the grass lines. Murph takes the pointy end. As a tailwater guide, you’d think the double haul takes a back seat to bobber mentality. Murph and I have fished Louisiana for almost a decade, and he never disappoints. He always

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seems to make it happen. Second nature, I suppose. With the looks of a Keys guide and drawl of a true eastern Tennessean, Murph has a devil-may-care attitude on the bow. Guess that takes the pressure off when making short technical casts into the wind. Or it could be the halfempty Busch Light at his feet. As I recall, Murph fed the majority of his shots that day. Most of which were accompanied with Nick’s version of praise, “Bad cast, but he ate it so that works.”

Day two arrives and drags Nathan Outlaw with it around 2:00 a.m.

Dedication to his inaugural trip to the 88

marsh is evident. Young, witty, driven.

Everything I used to be before making 40 trips around the sun. Still though, the August Venetian heat will drain that life from you and test your mettle. Nathan is new to our group. One thing I’ve learned about this kind of trip is you just know if someone will jive with your tribe. Nathan was never a question. He gets it. We all do. Almost strictly an east coast tarpon guy, Nathan appreciates the process of a dialed-in fishery. Having grown up as an angler in the Mosquito Lagoon region, he has longed to see a formidable redfish ecosystem. Although Louisiana has

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experienced its share of trials with fish population and land loss, Venice still has a pin on most anglers’ maps and hearts.

Pushing off for Nathan’s first trip into the holy land of red fishing was nonetheless epic. Bringing two fish over 30 pounds to the skiff, he found himself falling for the fishery. As most of us have.

After a few days of what was commonly referred to as being hotter than a two dollar pistol, we gathered in the shade and told our stories. In my experience, when the guides hang out for a few hours after the trip is over, you might have been accepted. Guides fishing guides is still work, especially in the heat.

But the one common thread we all share is the experience that few embrace. One could say we missed the best time of the year by choosing to fish summer. That’s a narrow perspective. My efforts to flat call the table in August paid off. With friends who are willing to pay the price, summer in Venice can be a trip worth taking. Stay hydrated.

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WWW. BA JIOSUNGLASSES.COM

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Movie Review:

Mending the Line

by Sandra Agricola

Lights twinkle across the water from the boathouse as “Mending the Line” plays on a TV installed on a side wall. It’s a new way to bring the inside outside. It’s a man thing, I think. I smell the charcoal grill and hear the sizzle of steaks. Another man ritual perhaps, but also steaks are easy to prepare so it’s a woman thing, too, as I bought them and asked my son to cook them. I picked up my ex-husband and brought him to the boathouse for supper and a movie. It feels festive, but really it’s a way to get him out of his little green house and offer him a meal with family. The first part of his day was spent hooked up to a blood bag as his hematocrit level was below 6.

He is frail and kind. And a little playful.

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Maybe the blood transfusion is working.

There is no remedy for Alzheimer’s. There is only patience and a good fly fishing movie.

For 30 years, he and I were like the combat veterans in the movie. After my breast cancer and his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, we are now old friends tethered like men in a fox hole. Our tour of duty is almost over, and yet here we sit side by side. Our son serves up steak and potato and the Marines on the film, swift, silent and deadly (Hoorah!) agree to one more patrol on the last day. The movie in all its tragedy and beauty begins here.

Full disclosure—I am not a fly fisherman, but I am a fan of the literature and crotchety old men. Ike Fletcher, one of the main characters and a Nam vet, says more great literature has been written about fly fishing than any other sport. He tells John, a patient in the wounded warrior transition unit, to start with the literature if he wants to learn to fly fish. Ike pulls the story along with his pain in the ass, big ole King Salmon approach. He doesn’t own a TV, ties his own flies, and quit listening to music in ’72 when Creedence broke up. John, a wounded Marine back from Afghanistan, is not a group therapy guy, so his doctor suggests fly fishing as his healing therapy.

The third wounded person in the film is Lucy. She is a librarian who has lost her fiancé and sometimes reads to the vets. The wounds of each character are different but somehow “there is a great deal about living that trout can teach them,” says XX of Casting Forward. The overarching point of the movie is in the title itself. When you cast a line, all the imperfections are mended as the line

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lands upstream from the fly. When you mend it, you make the fly look perfect in the trout’s eyes. Everyone in the movie has a mend they need to make.

The Montana scenery is picture-postcard pretty and a stark contrast to the brutality of war, but the ornery character of Ike reminds me of old-timers at an AA meeting.

His wisdom is epic and he casts it lightly to John. Take what you like and leave the rest, he seems to be saying.

When John wants to know why they don’t keep the fish, Ike says, “I decided a long time ago I was done killing.” And, “Fly fishing is just like recon. You’ve got to know where the fish are.” And this—“The most important part of fly fishing is humility.” He thanks each fish as he wets his hand, lifts it carefully out of the net and lets it go. This broken world needs more movies like “Mending the Line.” It’s a movie that addresses the hollow emptiness in all of us.

The movie ends and my ex-husband walks to the edge of the boathouse to take a leak. This is my cue to leave as I tell my son to make sure his father doesn’t fall in. I guess there is a little pain in the ass in all of us.

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Photo: Will Graham

Salty. And Sweet.

What perfect saltwater fly rod dreams are made of.

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SHEP IS COOL. SHEP WEARS SCOF MERCH. BE LI

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October on the Locust Fork Hank I. For six long months I’ve soaked.

Trousers stuck with sweat to chigger-bitten legs.

I’ve itched and itched and itched.

Now, on bloody feet I stand proudly in the midst of gully-washer work.

My friends have been here too.

A kinglet sings a kettle chime, summer’s rolling boil is done.

II. North wind smells like toasted pine and persimmons bend their branches like blue lipped kids on the end of a diving board, giggling nervously, shivering with glee.

One by one they drop, gobs of honey in Sycamore tea to steep in stillness.

III. Wolfpacks prowl the fallen timber.

His grief could fell a water oak.

But he smiles at rope swings, and loves the wolves.

IV. We’re here to visit old earth, to rest on her bedrock and slide along with any help this fork can give us.

She’s parched and tired.

Short stanzas of smooth gin punctuated by nearly broken ankles.

A smoke blanket.

A headwind.

A chili craving.

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photo by friends of the locust fork

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Cut Loose and Mend the Line

By Ethan Jacobs In my mind, the sound of a creaking door opens to a familiar chorus of crickets.

It's warm.

In the distance, a gentle storm.

There’s flowers swaying below the porch.

They’re partly purple, partly brown, I’m sure you’ve felt the rain-starved ground.

“That rain will make its way over,” you said.

You always were the faithful one, in darkness, perceiving sun.

We talked of nothing normal.

Magical lands we’d never see, a journey to a distant sea.

The joys of gliding over waves, the thrill of sleeping roofless, free.

“Fishing,” Titus said, “will be our next adventure.”

“In the mighty shoals,” said I, “We’ll use the fly, an artful and delicate chase.”

“One day we’ll learn to tie ‘em,” Jay P. said, with impish face.

And so it was, there was strength to trudge on Through a world of progressive regression: modern, flashy, depressive, deception.

Because next weekend, when we cut loose, from sterile places, conformity’s noose, we will no longer be a cog.

We will no longer be a number.

We will function as one with God’s creation.

We’ll raise a glass to rain and thunder.

For a day or two, we will be cloaked in sweat, and dew, and wonder.

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Minutia

By Micah McCrotty for Jesse This memory will cling with me: the dry pine woods of North Georgia, our empty creel and spooled up leaders, how we bent to watch midstream riffles, held hats above to darken the sun, and saw through the wrinkled surface into an isolated world of streambeds and minutia, into the ways of shiners, several stoneroller’s nodding in their silty steady work, the nearby mother shellcracker guarding her henpecked pebble nest.

Our anglerspeak soon quieted in observation, both silent with the curiosity of the small, years peeled back nearly to boyhood.

I wanted to leave you in that wide ring of wonder, absorbed by the smallest ways amidst creatures who consider little yet search many a narrow shadow and swirl.

How long will our figures kneel in freestone shallows, and when floods cut the bendpool straight, will our two haunts remain knee-deep?

I retell this now as a way to cup my hand around the flame.

photo by hank

“You’re going to need more beer than that.”

I looked down at the 12-pack of Budweiser in my hand, head aching from late-night drinks in the French Quarter. He was right. Twelve beers wouldn’t last until lunch. “Why don’t you go into the marina and get some more – a lot more.” We hadn’t even formally introduced ourselves with a handshake, let alone stepped onto a boat, and Captain Miles LaRose was already in full guide mode. Handing the 12-pack off to Torie, I turned and walked toward the rust-crusted marina building. Judging from his instruction, I knew we were in good hands for the next two days seeking reds in the Louisiana marsh. I just hoped the marina would sell me a case of beer at 6:45 am. My worry was unfounded. I was in the land of drive-thru daiquiri stands. Of course I could buy beer at that time of day. I would have bought two cases, but they only had one left on the shelf. I returned to the parking lot to find that Torie and Miles had moved down to the dock.

A thin layer of clouds over the marsh hid the rising sun and any morning warmth. The channel leading out to the bayou seemed busy with large, industrial boats coming and going.

Despite the early February chill in the air, Miles said we were lucky to get such weather. The layer of clouds would burn off later that morning leaving us only light winds to deal with. The next day, he said, was expected to be clear with no wind. These were perfect conditions for first timers out in the marshes.

‘Your Other Ten O’clock” It wasn’t long before Miles had us speeding 1226 full throttle through the curves of Fully what seemed likefly a maze outfitted shop LA-46 of seagrass. Since this was our first time with Miles, he explained we wouldn’t be going too far out as he guided fishing Bernard wanted to assess angling skills by going St for smaller, “training wheels-size” fish before weboat set sights on supplies the big ones. Torie took the stand first. Moving silently near grassy edges, he spotted tails long before we Louisiana good hangs could.

“Two o’clock, maybe 25 feet.” She cast delicately into the brackish water. “Recast, a bit further. Perfect.

Strip, strip, strip.”

Her line tightened, she set the hook, setting in motion a nice run by the red and the sound of the reel’s drag. She made it look easy. Now came my turn. “Ten o’clock. Get it out there.”

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Queen of the Stream

By Steven McCaslin

Teddy Roosevelt said it well, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” It can be easy for me to get wrapped up in the success and adventures of others. One minute you are loving life and abundant with joy in the situations you are in, but the next you are jealous of the guy on social media you don’t even know catching giant trevally on some flats in the middle of the ocean. Maybe that’s not what takes you out of your zone. It can be comparing our jobs, marriages, houses, or anything really to someone who has it “better”.

I’ve lived all over the state of Texas and have always pursued all sorts of game in the outdoors. From growing up in the pinewoods of East Texas being taught how to hunt whitetail by my late father to getting married and moving to the far stretches of the Panhandle hunting sandhill crane and chasing upland birds with my GSP, I’ve seen just about all that Texas has to offer. A piece of my heart has been left in every place I have been. These streams here in the Texas Hill Country are where most of my heart currently resides. The diversity of native fish to chase is outstanding. From the northernmost, native population of Cichlids in the western hemisphere to dinosaurs like gar, no trip has to look the same as the last. This day’s target species was our state fish, the Guadalupe bass. Brushy Creek is well known as an excellent fishery thanks to Living Waters Fly Fishing making it their home base.

Because of that, it’s a very populated fishery, so finding a remote stretch can be difficult. After many hours of Google Maps and driving, I decided to check out 108

a new stretch of the creek that appeared very promising. After a mile of wading from the access point with only one small Guad to the net, I rounded a bend and was transported to another world.

Suddenly I was surrounded by car sized, Colorado-esque boulders lining the bank and pools teeming with Guadalupe bass.

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I was certain that I was living a moment that couldn’t be topped. A moment I could post about later and someone else would think, “Man I wish I was there instead of this cubicle.”

Using an unusual tactic, I kept my fly rod in its case that day and used only a tenkara rod from Hill Country Tenkara.

Did I mention I had only cast a tenkara rod one other day prior to this trip? Is it the most practical method to throw streamers at bass? Absolutely not. If fly fishing is the bowhunting of fishing, then a tenkara rod is like a recurve bow with no sights. As an outdoorsman, practicality sometimes takes a backseat

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to the experience. Well, I chose to leave the house without even inviting practicality into the car. That didn’t seem to matter as the cooling Texas weather and arrival of fall has the bass active and aggressive. The large boulders provided the perfect amount of cover for me to sneak up to sight cast the 25-foot casts to which I was limited. I really thought the day couldn’t get better, but then it happened. I made a cast towards a perfect looking tree stump protruding from a boulder, blocking the rapids. I could see a very large fish roll onto my fly shortly after it hit the water. Upon setting the hook, my tippet immediately snapped. My heart went from beating out of my throat to the depths of my stomach in an instant. Knowing that big fish can’t be fooled twice, I tied on some heavier 2X tippet and shot for the stars.

Like I said earlier, the cooler weather had the bass acting silly. The fish hit my fly again just a couple of casts later making for an incredible fight and probably the most ungraceful netting of a fish ever.

Pretty glad no one was there to watch me stumble in the current while trying to net such a powerful fish on a fixed line.

As I stared at such a beautiful Guadalupe bass in my net that was just a couple inches shy of a world record, it hit me; Comparison really is the thief of joy. See a fisher, let’s call him Kyle, uninformed of the differences between a largemouth and a Guadalupe bass would likely have seen this fish as having pretty colors, but not really very big. Kyle would see a 15-inch bass and be rather underwhelmed and might not even look at the fish much before releasing it.

Don’t be like Kyle. I, on the other hand, knew the fish I had was something 110

special. Guadalupe bass were made for these small, Central Texas streams. Their size, shape and power make them one of the most prepared predatory fish in the area. A 10-pound largemouth would struggle in these streams. So, much like a goldfish growing to the size of its bowl, these fish have adapted over time to

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make the most of their size and become the powerhouse of the creeks. This specific Guad was, without a doubt, the “Queen of the Creek.” Comparing her to a ShareLunker largemouth would be a crime against the Creator who made her just what she needed to be. After some photos and letting her swim back to take

her throne under the stump, I pushed on through this dream of a stream. Every Guad I landed after continued to show me that even they shouldn’t be compared to the Queen. Every fish in every stage serves as a vital part to the health of this waterway. Every one of them left me filled with as much excitement as the

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last. Who knows? Maybe someday they will dethrone the Queen and have their day in the limelight.

Eventually, it was time to get my daughter from daycare. The rod was back in its tube and flies frantically tossed into the box (don’t you dare pretend that your fly box is organized after a day’s wade). I was left with a truly humbling realization.

It is a crime against the Creator to compare myself to someone else.

Whether I am seeing myself as better than or coveting the lifestyle of others, I am uprooting myself from the stream I have been put in and transplanting myself to a place I don’t belong. We all have our own stream in life, and I don’t ever want to become discontent with where I have been placed. Instead, I will recognize my surroundings and focus on being the “Queen of my own stream.”

Oh yeah, and don’t be like Kyle.

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SCOF winter fluffer

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Conservation Corner

How to Kill a Bonefish Flat

by dr. professor mike

There is a “classic” bonefish flat in Belize that I visit every year. I don’t know exactly why I call it classic, but it’s a perfect flat to me—wade-able, lined by mangroves and reef on opposite sides, covered in turtle grass and coral rubble. The flat is found on the ocean side of a small island where I stay, within a large marine reserve. I take students to the island every May as part of a marine conservation field course. On the mainland side of the island are a couple of other schools of bigger bonefish that hang around the grass beds and docks during the day waiting for the conch pirates to clean their catch before disappearing at night. I’ve been visiting this island and these fish for about 15 years.

In years past, I’d walk that bonefish flat once and sometimes twice a day. I’d slowly move north to south through the turtle grass looking for tailing fish. At the end of the flat, I’d walk back to my cabin on dry land, where my coffee and students were waiting. There were normally two schools of fish on each end of the flat.

They moved up and down the flat and occasionally joined schools, but through careful observation I noticed they would eventually split up and head back to their respective ends of the flat. The fish were very predictable based on years of observations.

There were also singles and doubles that moved and fed independently of the school. They could be seen crawling at low tide with their backs literally out of the water. That was my favorite time to fish and the hardest time to catch them, but it was 120

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Conch Diver, 1885 graphite on paper winslow homer (1836-1910)

Woman Standing by a Gate, Bahamasof Maguey, 1885 watercolor, graphite on paper winslow homer (1836-1910)

Hillside wit of Mag watercolor, graphite winslow homer (18 122

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an exciting challenge. I resorted to tying tiny, unweighted “Crazy Charlies” to keep from spooking the fish. It usually ended in failure. I tried to time the landing of my fly and fly line with the incoming small swells, but at low tide these were almost nonexistent. Every so often I got lucky with a decent fish that I felt like I earned.

The bonefish school closest to my cabin on the north end of the island would often move back and forth with the small swells at the end of a depression in the flat, from where water and I assume small shrimp and crabs were flushed onto the flat.

It was always very placid and informative to watch the bonefish while sitting on the nearby sea wall. I learned a great deal about bonefish and bonefishing simply by watching that small school, usually without a rod. I learned how they moved and fed during different tides, different lights, and how they reacted to birds, small sharks, etc. I’ve caught enough bonefish that I didn’t feel the pressure to fish every time I saw the school. It was the most relaxed fishing/non-fishing I ever took part in.

Even more exciting was when the sickle tailed permit (singles usually) would make an appearance in slightly deeper water, closer to the reef break. I managed to catch one permit on that flat some years ago, but usually the tail appears and disappears before I can retrieve my 9 weight from my cabin. I tell myself I’m okay with that because I am certain a permit of any size would immediately head into the nearby reef and take my Bauer’s crab and leader with it. But I’m probably not being totally honest. And again, like the bonefish, when I have been able to observe the permit for any length of time, I have learned a great deal about their feeding habits and timing. Or perhaps it’s 124

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more accurate to say I’ve learned how unpredictable permit are.

The past couple of years the bonefishing has changed. At first, I saw fewer singles and doubles, and now the schools of bonefish are simply gone. The fish on the dockside remain, but the classic flats fish are absent. I have tried to solve this riddle over and over. I visit the same time every year, there have been no new resorts or dredging etc., and the grass flat, mangroves and reef remain the same. I still see occasional permit and triggerfish, but the schools of bonefish are gone.

So what changed? The only discernible difference is more fishing pressure. The flat has been discovered, so now guides haul their boats up onto the flat, or anchor and walk it with clients.

When I started walking the flat 15 years ago, I literally saw no other fly angler during the two or three weeks I spent on the island. Now I see many boats, every day, targeting the empty flat and the remaining schools of fish on the landward side of the island. The increased number of boats corresponds with the explosion of flats fishing in Belize pre- and post-COVID, and with the consolidation of several lodges in the areas under the ownership of an international tourism company. The landward schools are often targeted by sunburned tourists in anchored pangas using spinning gear baited with poached conch. The pangas literally line up waiting for a shot at the school of fish cornered by a seawall.

My appraisal can perhaps be chalked up as a story about the “good old days” (although it wasn’t that long ago), but the larger lesson is more meaningful

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than just my bitterness. Our industry needs growth to sustain interest and related conservation efforts, but in many popular angling destinations we are walking a very fine ecological line, and increasingly crossing that line. Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” is an old and well-worn topic in Econ 101, but its implications remain very relevant today. Even catch and release angling creates pressure and has impacts on local populations of fish (the commons). As we have learned with countless other fish species, there are no easy answers in managing the commons.

But lodges in Belize and elsewhere need to work together to manage access and impacts, otherwise there will no doubt be many more empty flats. There are efforts to manage access in Belize based on a guide’s home base, but that doesn’t limit the number of boats in an actual area or on a specific flat. In popular tourist areas, that can mean a tragedy of the commons.

As catch and release anglers, we often pat ourselves on the back about our impacts or lack thereof compared with bait fishermen, but we do have impacts. And to ignore those impacts is a Faustian bargain, short term gain but long term environmental and industry damnation.

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cuban hillside, 1885 winslow homer (1836-1910) Graphite, chalk, brush and gouache on wove paper, mounted on coldpressed paper. courtesy of smithsonian

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Carey Chen

The Old Man and Me

By Mike Steinberg

The Old Man and the Sea, written

by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1952, is often described as the greatest fishing story ever written. But like all of Hemingway’s works, no story is simple, and all are rife with deep symbolism. Hemingway subscribed to the iceberg theory or theory of omission, meaning only a portion of the actual story is obvious, with the rest of the iceberg remaining hidden below the surface. Hemingway believed the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface but would be detectable through implicitly. Certainly, Old Man would fall under the iceberg style.

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story, and it is of course, a classic fishing story, but it’s much more than that. There is religious symbolism, shark symbolism, turtle symbolism, age symbolism, etc. But the point of this piece isn’t to dissect the symbolism, far smarter people have already done that. Instead, I’d like to counter one of the great assumptions of the piece, that it was a great tragedy and that the main character, Santiago, was a failure. The story is often described as a tragic fishing story because Santiago, hasn’t brought a fish to market in months and on the trip in question loses the fish of a lifetime to sharks, a marlin so huge it would be the fish of anyone’s lifetime. It was a mythical-size marlin, and why not, it’s a fishing story!

I recently re-read Old Man and started to re-evaluate the idea of failure as a major theme or perception of the book. I began to question the idea of failure because how

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many fly anglers haven’t lost their own fish of a lifetime? If one fishes enough, you will no doubt lose fish. And if one loses a trophy, is it really failure? It can certainly feel like failure in the moment, but an angler must do a lot of things right to even be in the position to hook and possibly land a trophy fish. I have had a lot of experience with losing fish. I’ve lost many BIG tarpon after long fights. At the moment when the line goes slack, I certainly felt failure. I remember irrationally thinking, “Oh, the fish is still on, it’s just swimming towards the boat. I’ll still get my amazing photo opp. All is well.” Delusional to say the least. In one instance I had a 150-pound tarpon next to the boat. I thought I had succeeded just before it took one last dive into the coral 20 feet below the boat and in a moment, it was gone. I beat myself up for days over that fish with its huge eye boastful silver scales. I obsessed over what I possibly did wrong. Did I try to bring it to the boat too fast? Did I have my drag set too loose at the end? The guide shrugged it off and said “you can’t do anything about coral.”

He was right of course but at that moment, I didn’t think there would ever be another

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Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba, 1902 Oil on canvas winslow homer (1836-1910) courtesy of the met

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fish that size, or at least another fish that size on that trip.

In hindsight (three years’ worth of hindsight), if I didn’t directly screw something up, I don’t really feel like it was a failure. So certainly, Santiago in Old Man didn’t fail. He single handedly landed a 1000 pound-plus marlin in the middle of the Gulf Stream with nothing more than a primitive harpoon, a hand line, and sheer determination. If we base success and failure on getting his catch to market, then ok, perhaps he fell short, but from a purely angling standpoint, to make it home alive with the skeleton of a giant marlin should be enough to be considered not only a success, but a fishing freaking legend.

I have read and re-read Old Man many, many times. And for some strange reason, each time I read it I hope the ending is different. It’s a weird game I play with myself that somehow if I root for Santiago enough the ending will be different. For instance, I hope Santiago somehow fends off the sharks, that he can butcher the fish alongside his skill and save some of the meat, that maybe another skiff sees him and help him land the fish, etc. My therapist calls it magical thinking, and that I do it too often. But I think I’ve finally come to peace with the ending after losing enough big tarpon to haunt my dreams for one lifetime. We can only control so much in a skiff and in life. Success is putting ourselves in the position to achieve the goal, the trophy fish - the follow, the bite, the hook set. After that all hell breaks loose and we control very few things. We don’t control the sharks, the current, the coral, or the following winds. If we did our job and trophy is lost, we have to bow to the elements and move on.

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Honey Mick’s Chicken and Beer Samuel Growing up in the south, fried chicken has been a part of life as long as I can remember. The thought of fried chicken takes me back to the days of my mom picking up Church’s chicken on the way home from getting my brother and I from weekends at dad’s (Where most likely we had my grandmother “Honey Mick’s” homemade fried chicken). My earliest memories of beer, other than holding my dad or granddads beer for a funny pic as a kid was in 9th grade taking my Uncle John’s Red Stripe from the “locked fridge” at the hunting camp and heading out to the woods on the fourwheelers. For me the two delicacies of beer and fried chicken didn’t converge together until on a fishing trip with some buddies about 20 years ago. They had brought day old cold fried chicken and beer for lunch. Since then, cold fried chicken and beer have been a staple on any fishing trip that I have been on.

What’s the BEST you ask? Any you can get! But if I’m picking for a day on my local, then we are having Ingle’s fried chicken and cold Miller Lite. If I could go back to my childhood and I could have it, it would be Honey Mick’s fried chicken and some Red Stripe!

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Keep it Greasy Scott I’ve noticed a trend these last few years in that fancier restaurants putting fried chicken on the menu. For the price of a few pieces at these places you could buy a metric shit-ton of chicken at your local gas station or grocery store with the latter being just as delicious if not tastier.

Here’s to keeping it cheap and greasy.

One of my most memorable meals is hitting a local place for Sunday lunch in Walhalla, SC after four days of camping and fishing on the Chattooga. The line was long and out the door at this cafeteria style joint and I knew the church crowds wouldn’t steer us wrong. That first meal out of the woods is always special but I will never forget seeing the enormous hunks of fried breasts being placed on the plates in front of me in line. They used fish batter, and it looked otherworldly giving it an exaggerated shape and size.

It did not disappoint. Oh, and dark meat 4 lyfe.

Beer of choice is something light and cold when pairing with some chicken on a float. I’ll take a Pretoria Fields Skywater if available. Scrimshaw Pilsner in a can works too.

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Featherweight Alan

A Brief History of Chicken Gizzards John

You live near Asheville long enough; you are gonna get tired of everyone's latest WEST COAST HAZY JUICY LOLLIPOP IPA. Honestly, these days I care more about drinking all day on the raft rather than where the hops come from. Give me an Ecusta Guide Beer with some cold Rocky's chicken, and I'll row you all damn day. These spots are basically a one-two punch of fishing for me, and it doesn't hurt that they are run by some pretty great community-based people.

My selection of fried gizzards from the Glencoe Shell Station is because I am easy. Like Sam’s granny, no, Sam’s mammy, I have always had a diverse palette for chicken parts. There was the steakhouse in Nashville where waiters dressed as butlers served me rocky mountain oysters, and I liked it. Then there was the time in Wyoming where to appease the rancher we cooked whole ducks instead of breasting them; I was easy then too because I ate the deliciously chewy and savory duck gizzards with a goofy smile and a banquet beer. My love for gas station chicken gizzards dates back to the early 2000s when we hunted in Hurtsboro, or Barber County. There was only one restaurant in town. They served gizzards and iceberg lettuce drenched in ranch. I learned to pep them up with mustard or hot sauce. Then in college I learned to eat them with hunch punch at Nick’s in the Stix, that is a hole in the wall dive that serves filets and gizzards. It is located near the T town airport. Now my favorite place to find them is a joint called Wings and Seafood. It is on highway 431 in East Gadsden. If you are easy too, then try some gas station fried chicken on a stick and a side of gizzards.

I’m Not From Here Hank I’m not claiming to be a connoisseur, sommelier, or other foreign sounding expert on southern shore lunches, but I am definitely foreign. I was born in Belgium and grew up eating pretty much only sausage and potatoes. So, while my first exposure to beer came at an age some baptists might balk at, my exposure to fried chicken was relatively delayed.

Since I moved to the American South, I don’t think my palette has developed so much as to refuse any fried chicken, but I’ve grown to appreciate several different styles. In 2017, with all my earthly belongings packed into a Toyota Venza, I stopped in Nashville on my move to Auburn to start graduate school, and ate Hattie B’s hot chicken. The upholstery in the driver’s seat did not survive the rest of the trip. Nowadays, I prefer something milder, like the offerings at the Publix deli counter, although I always apply a moderate amount of Tapatio or Crystal if the chicken has been refrigerated. I do like to stop at Joella’s when I’m in Lexington, but I’m trying to keep the new car smell in my Tacoma as long as possible. As for the suds, I almost always prefer a cold filtered lager or pilsner. Forced to name one, I'll pick Creature Comforts Classic City. It’s just so good.

Photo: Peter Perch

illustration obviously not by paul puckett

The Back Page Light and Shadow By: Mad Mike Benson Sometimes it seems that all of life is just shadow and light.

Something visible, and then not. Something we are aware of in our periphery, only to vanish under a direct gaze. Turtle grass and sand, river rocks and current, shadow and light. They play on our ocular nerves in a dance that can conjure up dreams or destroy your reality. A piece of aquatic vegetation that moves just right, but it couldn’t be a fish, could it? Did it just move up in the water column? Shit I think that’s a fish. Light overhead crashing through laurel thickets, splashing across the water, giving life, hiding death. A big brown using dappled light to mask his hunt, a funny shaped rock swimming beautifully enough to draw 5 or 6 casts. Tropical heat riding rays of Caribbean sun through scattered clouds. Fish coming in from 11, now you see them, now there are none. Lights on… They’re still there.

Lights out… Did they ever exist? Dark backs over white sand, phantoms of your imagination over turtle grass. And just what is the meteorological explanation that can tell me just how in the hell if there is an entire blue sky, that line of puffy little clouds will always find its way across my light, no matter the wind direction?

Lights on… they’re coming, closer now, moving off to 9 o’clock.

Lights off… Shit I lost em’ again. Lights on… They’re right here 60 feet 10:30, put it on em’. Lights off… You have got to be kidding me. Lights on… He’s on your fly, he’s on your fly, he ate!

Lights off….

S.C.O.F Magazine | issue no. 49 | Fall 2023 | Chicken n Beer