ep. one: Uneasy Listening the lads recap the 49th issue and try not to throw up
ep. two: SSO Debrief the lads siddown with Jeff Wright and Ryan Stephens to talk about another successful southern striper open.
ep. three: SCOF 50 Recap the lads recap the 50th issue and talk permit fishing with Declan "Gecko" Rogers
ep. four: films and shine the lads drink high octane moonshine and discuss the state of the fly fishing film industry
ep. five: The Buzz Fades the lads recap the Emergence Convergence with a South Carolina reservoir biologist
THE SCOF CAST
ep. six: Helene and 3 Cats the lads talk about Hurricane Helene with the Headwaters Outfitters crew, and what it could mean for business, and the fisheries.
ep. seven: Forks of the River the lads attend a festival designed to help the shops and guides that were hit the hardest by Helene.
ep. eight: the Sherpa and a Warehouse of Coyotes the lads waterboard Todd Gregory, founder and owner of Towee Boats. Between gasps for air, he talks about his much anticipated model "The Sherpa".
ep. nine: Family, Plastic, and one Badass Drifter the lads get a
CAST
new episodes whenever we feel like it
The evolution of a fly angler corresponds directly to the pace at which they fish. Eventually, the urges to simply catch a fish, catch a lot of fish, and catch a big fish give way to angling intention—the desire to fish on one’s own terms. How we want to fish is a clearly-defined approach years in the making, a synthesis of personal experience and preferences mixed with the tutelage of traditions, peers, and mentors. Casts are less frequent, but more meaningful—we see, hear, and —most importantly—feel more.
Pace is minimized but awareness is maximized, and observation becomes paramount. We spend days, sometimes weeks, in waiting for the hatch, anticipation steadily building. Finally, when patience has been adequately and thoroughly tested, a mayfly emerges. One cast is all it takes but that may also be all we get. Our fishing is inspired by time and place, and the places that inspire us tell us to take as much time as we can, to slow down. In doing so, we find there is always more to be observed, learned, and felt. Including that one, specific fish.
Presenting CLASSIC
Fish Slow, Feel More
THE GLADES
GLADES
NOT AN ALLIGATOR
calm down
down ladies, he's married
suck on that, nat geo
s.c.o.f
SPRING 2025 issue no. 55
READ IT RAW
Managing editor
John Agricola
Editor at large
Michael Steinberg
Creative Director & Design Chief
Hank
Director of Advertising
Samuel Bailey
Merchandiser
Scott Stevenson
Media Director
Alan Broyhill
contributors:
Lucas Schrage
Gavin Griffin
Declan "Gecko" Rogers
Craig Godwin
Sandra Agricola
Kendall Mayers
Eric Thrice
Managing editor emeritus: David Grossman
Creative Director emeritus: Steven Seinberg
copy editor: Lindsey Grossman
ombudsman: Shad Maclean
general inquiries: southerncultureonthefly@gmail.com
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A
Dear Readers,
I will admit I discovered Jim Harrison in a round about manner. Before I knew about his prolific writing career, I first saw him while watching the old Tarpon movie/ documentary released in 1973. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s a must watch. It entails a motley assemblage of yet to be famous writers such as Tom McGuane, Harrison of course, and Richard Brautigan. Some already well-known tarpon guides such as Woody Sexton, Gil Drake and Steve Huff also make appearances giving insider advice to the more than likely stoned group of writers. The film was shot waaaay before key West become modern Key West with cruise ships and outrageous real estate prices. It was a time when a group of stoned not so famous writers could share a house and tarpon fish relatively cheaply.
Anyway, back to Harrison. He stood out to me because he looked like the commonest of common men, a fellow unassuming Midwesterner (he was a Michigander). After watching the movie, many times actually, I tracked down his writings and dove into his extensive list that continued to grow until his death in 2016. I wouldn’t call Harrison a fishing writer by any means, but he often mentioned or sprinkled in angling references. He did focus on the natural world for much of his writing, but fishing wasn’t a dominant theme. In fact, in Brown Dog, one of his best-known novels, he mentions several times taking brook trout out of season, versus some eloquent prose featuring rhythmic fly angling and catch and release ethos. He was at heart a rural Michigander who often wrote about hard scrabble people trying to survive the best they could.
I didn’t know Harrison personally, of course, but in every interview and throughout his works he seemed to emphasize a bare bones approach to his life and his outdoor pursuits – the struggle in human relationships and the struggle between people and nature. He chain smoked American Spirit cigarettes for much of his life and that style, it seems to me anyway, was a metaphor for other parts of his life. One can see this early on in Tarpon among him and his buddies. This was after all the 1970s, a time before there were 5,000 fly fishing clothing companies and skiffs that cost more than my first house. Again, I can’t say for certain, but I think he continued that simple approach through most of his life. In a 2009 interview on PBS, he talks about how
his writing productivity increased as he aged because he was able to boil his life down to the most important things – nature, friends, dogs, fishing, etc.
I’ve thought a lot about the idea of boiling one’s life down since I watched that interview almost a decade ago. Of course, boiling down one’s life is not an easy task, especially for younger folks who have kids, soccer games, mortgages, credit cards, etc. Truth be told, young people, it never gets easy. Harrison made a good living through writing, so he had flexibility to boil things down more effectively than most of us (I’m not discounting that Harrison no doubt had similar pressures we all face). And anyone who writes for a living knows it takes amazing discipline to pay a mortgage with a pen or keyboard. However he did it, Harrison was able to boil down his own life, he was successful given his writing productivity near the end of his life including a collection of poems In Search of Small Gods (my personal favorite). I often wonder what he might think of our industry and culture today with our outrageous access to fly fishing “stuff.” I have little doubt he partook in some of our new world by probably owning the best fly rods or shotguns that money could buy. But I also suspect he still used and valued boiled down equipment purchased early in life. I’m not criticizing anyone or any industry, I love hats and shirts and seem to have hundreds. I have three large boxes of tarpon flies when I increasingly use one of four flies. I like knowing I have options I suppose. But I do continue to think about Harrison’s words and lessons, not just boiling down, but the many lessons in Small Gods. Small gods in this case refers to the spirts of animals, trees, and places that leave an impression. As fly anglers, surely, we all are influenced by small gods regardless of our faith in a large god. They make up the specific memories, relationships, and photos we take while we are practicing our craft. As I write this letter, I see a school of bonefish from my dining room and am kept company by soaring frigate birds that roost in a nearby Australian pine. I like to think of these as small gods while trying to boil down my life on an island 40 miles off the coast of Belize. I hope these small gods continue to bless me long after I depart my little corner of bonefish paradise, and I hope y’all find your own small gods this summer.
Haiku
by cola
Middle-aged and Divorced
To get a divorce Is to be a wrong way fish Til you see a skiff You turn back around
Again your emotions stir Thrusters right-ward ho
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Hard Times
Jim Harrison
Moving higher my thumping chest recites the names of a dozen friends who have died in recent years, names now incomprehensible as the mountains across the river far behind me. I’ll always be walking up toward Antelope Butte. Perhaps when we die our names are taken from us by a divine magnet and are free to flutter here and there within the bodies of birds. I’ll be a simple crow who can reach the top of Antelope Butte.
Hard Times on the Hiwassee
by Hank
It’s hilarious to me that the same person could write both the poem “Hard Times” and the novel A Good Day to Die. Jim Harrison was a rare class of person who could see as much poetry in crows as in a Camaro loaded with meth and dynamite. The audiobook had just finished reading me A Good Day to Die when I arrived in Reliance, a dell beneath a dam on the Hiwassee River in Tennessee.
I had enjoyed listening to the story, about a much more interesting road trip than my own. Although I had next to nothing in common with the characters in the short novel, we did share a sort of uncertain desire for achievement and titillation. Harrison’s radical hedonism, channeled through his characters, is at the same time aspirational and scary. I don’t want to die with the gout and an invincible hard-on, but I get a kick out of more than a few of the “four F’s.” He and I would both agree, I think, that there should be five if you count “fishing”.
I was in Reliance to fish with my teammates Sam Bailey and Scott Stevenson in a tournament hosted by The Hatch Outfitters in Chattanooga. It’s called the “Anything Goes Classic”. Unfortunately, our fishing on the Hiwassee was decimated by a phalanx of squalls that pushed over us in waves, leaving little time in between to dry out. Wary of the morning forecast, we elected to punt the long float we had planned in favor of a short float between storms in the afternoon. We should have done the opposite.
We got in my truck and drove up the
narrow mountain road to look for a spot that Sam said he had fished before with some success. Rounding a corner, he said, “Damn, that creek is juicy. Look at that.” I peeped at it and swerved to avoid a massive RV coming around the outside of the turn.
“Was that a greyhound?!” Scott choked.
Sam spit out his coffee, “Jesus, Hank! Eyes on the road!”
“You want me to look at the road or the creek? Damn!” I rebuked.
“Just watch where you’re going,” Sam said. “The turn for the river road should be coming up.”
We were navigating with a blurry digital map and no directions, hoping that Sam’s intel would lead us to some clear water. I got us off the mountain in one piece and turned onto the gravel road. Some old guy with a mustache looked busy doing nothing on an ancient backhoe. A few families were camping along the road, and looked like they had been for longer than what most folks would consider recreational. We looked out into the jungle to see if there was fishable water, but there was none. This section of the Hiwassee River is between the powerhouse and the dam, thus completely starved of flowing water. What little remained was in heavy use by beavers and wood ducks. Lake sturgeon probably used to spawn here. I thought about Harrison’s ecoterrorists and what they might have conspired to do to this place. I clicked my tongue and asked, “Well? Boat ride?”
“Boat ride,” Scott and Sam said in unison. We figured this jungle swamp would not produce any trout and headed
back to the house in Reliance to get ready for a rainy afternoon in the drifter. We pulled up to the ramp and saw the river was in the process of blowing out. The muddy trickle we had seen upstream had since combined with the powerhouse effluent and a couple hundred cubic feet per second from small springfed tributaries upstream. It wasn’t really muddy here yet, but it definitely had a swelling stain to it. We should have floated in the morning.
Instead of hurrying up and getting some action on the last fishable water of the day, we had a Really Big Lunch* under the bridge. It would not have met Harrison’s criteria for a gourmet picnic, but the amount of time we spent on it would have definitely merited his approval. We ate pickled okra and rotisserie chicken tacos for almost two hours, while the rain poured off the bridge into the parking lot. Our friend, Garner Reid, pulled up in his fancy new truck, loaded with wife, baby, and prizes for the tournament. We were to deliver them to the fly shop after we were done not catching anything. They were leaving to watch the Kentucky Derby at a friend’s house. It was good to see them anyway.
Finally we got on the water. It was completely blown out at that point. We threw sinking lines and big streamers hoping that a big convict would be fired up on dizzy shad. We snagged in the box elders and rocks, and lost our patience with each other easily. Nobody could touch the oars without getting an earful about how they were steering, and nobody could cast at structure without their placement getting heavily criticized.
“Why the hell would you put a streamer upstream of that log jam?”
Scott blew up as he strained to row back upstream to unsnag Sam’s fly.
“Because fish live there!” Sam shouted back. The bickering made me itch. Box elder looks remarkably like poison ivy when it’s young, and my neck was just calming down after a bad rash from gardening. I was just glad to be dry under my Skwala jacket.
We got off the water skunked and tipsy, and went to get fried pickles and cheeseburgers at Honey & Clove Bistro. The food was fine, but if the restaurant was a person, she would be a homely girl from a trailer park who insists on pronouncing “croissant” the French way, somehow seeming even less cultured. They served Wonder Bread and olive oil with herbs in it to start, and gave us tea saucers that tipped over when you tried to stab a waffle fry on them. If Harrison were with us, he would probably have just smoked a cigarette and asked for a cup of coffee while we snorted up the homemade ranch.
The next morning, we had to find a fish or the weekend would be a complete waste of time. We came to compete, after all. We slid the drifter into some trout water and found fish rising. More bickering and criticism left us on the precipice of disaster. Getting skunked is fine if you can all get along, but when somebody tells you you’re getting skunked the wrong way, things get itchy. Finally, Scott hooked a brown. “Measure it, see if it’s worth any points,” he said.
“That trout is definitely 10 inches, we’re not measuring it,” Sam insisted. It looked small to me, too, but we were fishing in a tournament, and I didn’t see the harm in checking if it might score.
After some unintelligible muttering, Sam acquiesced, got his vindication from the bump board, and practically slammed the chubby brown trout back in the water. “Told you.”
Later, in a peaceful stretch of water, under the watchful gaze of cows chewing cud, I asked Sam about his role models growing up. He said no matter how bad the arguments got with his father, or how mad his father was, he always said “I love you” before hanging up the phone or saying goodnight. That’s one of Sam’s great qualities, too. No matter how frustrated you get with him, you’ll always have a soft place to land. I caught a smallmouth bass after we switched out on the oars, and he measured it for me without a fight.
We turned up at the weigh-in in Chattanooga with nothing to show for our efforts in the blown out Hiwassee. Instead, I was able to enjoy the success of everyone else. Ian Lowery cleaned up with the most points by far. He caught several buffalo, gar, and a redhorse, I think. At the Anything Goes Classic, it’s not just about size, but also about the number of species you catch. It’s definitely still about size, though. None of our fish were big enough to score. The largest smallmouth of the weekend measured 22.5 inches, Andy Taylor reeled her in.
We had some more chicken tacos at the brewery and drove home, feeling lucky to be a part of a great community, and especially grateful that nobody in Reliance, Tenn., has read A Good Day to Die, or got inspired by its characters to destroy the only thing that makes the river fishable after 10 inches of rainfall. Although we achieved nothing on our trip, and the delights we found were less than titillating,
I learned something about my friends and about passing the time. I felt like rotisserie chicken tacos and comparing turkey calls under a bridge is about as good a way as any for a Harrison disciple to spend a rainy afternoon.
The Premier Fly Shop in Blue Ridge, GA
Good Grief
By Lucas Schrage
I stand ankle deep along the same flooded grassy embankment that we did when we were kids, where we used to pull out largemouth on plastic lizards and worms, our baits flavored in pumpkin seed and watermelon, the salt slick forming a film along the webbing of our fingers. Where we used to throw rocks to scare moccasins so that it would be safe for us to fish. Where we spotted gators floating amongst the reeds, eyeing us with a shared curiosity, unsure of what to make of these strange creatures whooping along the shoreline.
I’m here with my brother again. Only this time, it’s not shorts and flip-flops. It’s black suit, white shirt, and waterlogged dress socks.
Like many in Florida, my grandmother, Laura, hadn’t worked since the ‘70s. Her English was fractured, but she spoke it confidently. She never learned to drive. She relied on family to get her from place to place and her focus, despite never being asked to, was solely on hosting whoever darkened her door. For better or for worse, she made herself the matriarch and through that sought to absolve all transgressions. If you wanted to eat, you forgave. Everyone ate.
Her house was colder now. The fridge adorned with photos of grandkids and great-grandkids plastered over each other through the years had come down in the final months, courtesy of her caretaker,
My dad holding my brother, with me in the foreground, on a gulf fishing pier. 1999
My cousin and I handling a fish while my grandfather (right) watches, at some family friend’s pond.
My grandfather hanging around some SoFla residential pond.
My grandmother with my dad, both gone, and my aunts to the left. 1978
My cousins and I.
My grandmother, Laura. 1978
as the images triggered her Alzheimer’s. The back patio, always clean swept, was covered with leaf litter and overgrown seedlings sprouted from cracks in the pavement. In a few months, the house would be turned over to the bank to recoup the debt. Behind it, a lake: our destination for the evening.
The walk to this so-called lake always seemed much shorter than in reality. One doesn’t account for the amount of brush you’d have to push past with the hedges on one side, separating the road from the houses and various date palms, mimosa trees, and other subtropical ornamental bullshit planted by a revolving door of neighbors always intent on keeping the new generation of kids out. Any year that a big enough storm came through, it shredded the foliage and toppled trees I always could have sworn were older than me. And then it would all grow back again.
This is just like any other time, except I have a mortgage and my back hurts. This is just like any other time, except it’s probably the last.
South Florida is filled with these man made ponds. Tucked within gated communities, behind apartment complexes, abutting strip malls, all interconnected through the same roadside canals running headlong to the ocean.
Fish here don’t stop to consider precisely which neighborhood they’re in, and they’ll rip the same line off your reel, diving for cover into a bed of lily pads and a halfsubmerged shopping cart. Cast from in front of or behind the fence, some of the beefiest freshwater fish I’ve spotted have
been basking carelessly within an arm’s length of a manicured shoreline, floating next to discarded beer bottles and candy wrappers.
Some of these spots are sacred. Not because they are necessarily any more productive than others, but because of how much time I’ve clocked there with a rod or with whom. And whatever mystical creature I imagined lurking below the surface and spent years behind a desk agonizing over. A pound and a half of largemouth was a noteworthy catch when we were kids. Most people aren’t tripping over each other to get here and fish just out of sight of some retiree’s patio. And yet, many a time I’ve sat on the ice at 5am, mid-February in Maine, fantasizing over the inevitable trespassing charge I’ll face hopping fences to get here in my fifties.
Forty-five minutes before sundown, the water is black. I let my eyes adjust and pick up movement beneath the surface. Tiny bluegill and other forage fish hover among the weed beds. I twitch my fly along the edge of the lily pads. Nothing. Strip it close, lead into a sloppy roll cast that takes some of the local greenery with it.
Strip, strip, nothing. I whip more weed off of the leader and cast farther out. The blurple feather changer feels like a mistake. A cocky fly destined for blue ribbon water, and I confidently chuck it into this cesspool thinking I could wow them with something they hadn’t seen before. Embarrassing. Strip, bump, but no commitment. I’m cursing my arrogance.
The house was purchased before there was an address, only a lot number. I have vague memories of when most everything around the neighborhood was sun bleached coquina and white construction sand, but looking around now, you would have assumed that these buildings had always existed. Mere miles from the edge of the Everglades, there was a time when its more reclusive inhabitants would wander through freely before the urban sprawl paved over so much of what made this place unique. Back when it was more “here be dragons” and less “keychains and gator shows.”
This water used to produce largemouth almost exclusively, with the occasional catfish or pleco, but good luck actually hooking one. Now, it’s new fish like new neighbors I don’t recognize: Mayan cichlids, peacock bass, snakeheads, clown knife fish. That skunky haze floating between some of the houses in the evenings when I was a kid is gone, but I finally recognize what the smell is now.
“We should probably head back soon.”
Mhm. The wake will still be there.
I’m not chomping at the bit to join a house packed full of distant relatives sweating through black linen, chugging white wine, and pounding canapes while avoiding eye contact. There was comfort here.
I’m in my head today. I nearly forget my brother is standing behind me, and I could have just as easily hooked him in the ear.
This obsession runs deep. In the blood. Mom tells about how Dad caught a puffer fish off the seawall, at Bayside in Miami, and was glowing for days. How once he lost an unsupervised new rod to something formidable off the side of Haulover Fishing Pier, after a “dangerous marine life” sighting ordered all swimmers out of the water; he nearly dove in after it, pearly white sneakers and all. A year later, Hurricane Andrew swallowed the pier in its entirety.
I remember when a jon boat rental in the Everglades cost 40 bucks for a couple of hours so Dad could watch me lob bobbers at the reeds and pretend every swirl was a gator. And cane poles on my cousin Ernani’s ranch outside of Porto Alegre when I was 10 that were likely eight or nine feet long at most, but might as well have been a mile high. Pieces of bread at the end of the hook whipped into an oil slick pool 15 feet across, immediately swarmed by toothy fish the likes of which I had yet to see back home.
“They’re probably waiting for us.”
Fine, just let me get one more in.
I swap flies. Olive crystal bugger. Out past the second cluster of lily pads and let it sink deep this time. One long strip toward the surface and I think I see movement. Did I wake you? Another clean cast along the pipeline. We’re losing daylight. Strip, strip, bump. Serious bump. Pause. Nothing.
“You know we can come back…right? Nobody’s going to stop us.”
Sure. But will I, really?
Okay, one more.
Huge, fancy-fuck-off-last-shot-false-castinto-the-fading-sun as far out into the middle as I can muster. Strip, striiiiip, sigh. Alright.
I take it to the reel, defeated, drawing as much line as quickly as possible.
From beneath the lily pad cluster, a horrifying wake boils up and tails my fly as it skates wildly across the surface.
For a fraction of a second I freeze, then keep reeling. Just as quickly, almost in a single fluid motion, the shape sinks back beneath the surface.
Did you see that? No pound-and-a-half largemouth here.
“Yeah. Throw it again.”
No–I’m good, I think. We should head back.
A few months later, my cousin calls. She evidently has been sharing in this strange heartache. She and her husband have made some arrangements, and are making an offer on my grandparents’ house. All of the other rituals suddenly seem petty. Trying to strong arm my cousins into transplanting the pitanga bushes that my dad and grandfather had planted for my grandmother 20 years ago now feels foolish. There are notes to the new homeowners hidden in the walls that I’ll have to go back to retrieve.
The day after the funeral, I sneak in and steal her ice cream scoop. A wave of relief washes over with the realization that I might finally get to undo a goodbye. One more cast.
My cousin’s kid turns four next year. In some corner of the garage, behind a veil of cobwebs and towers of musty cardboard, is an old Shakespeare Spider-Man rod.
On my flight back north, through the pinging of the fasten seatbelt sign, visions of topwater eats lull me in and out of a restless sleep. I let the chatter of new ghosts fill my head, drowning out turbulence, as I dream of the return – itching for the next wake.
photo by alan broyhill
LYDIA IS COOL. LYDIA WEARS
SCOF MERCH. BE LIKE LYDIA.
photo by alan broyhill
photo by alan broyhill
Satan Must Not Have Been A Gladesman
by Gavin Griffin photos by Alan Broyhill
“We saw 9,000 tarpon today in broad daylight, Gavin,” Ryan announced before Alan even had the HPX tied to the dock. They knew it was the news I wanted to hear. I was a wrecked slut for bigger tarpon.
I honestly felt so elated at the news, the only plausible thing to do in my head was hoist them up on my shoulders, parade them to a Cuba Libre like one was Rudy and the other, Radio.
(And, if you know anything about Radio, only Alan could play the part—for reasons unspoken, but measurably similar.)
After sharing the news with the group, without hesitation, they invited everyone to follow along the next day. It was a generous offer—one I wanted to accept, even if it came drenched in pity.
Nearing the end of a six-day stint, based 34-some-odd miles deep and now, apparently 48 miles round-trip deeper into the backcountry of the Everglades, Sam and I had some issues. The first was that we had one day left to make something happen. The fishing for the week had been rather dismal, with high winds, cold mornings, and lackluster fishing.
Our spirits were running low—both in our souls and in our bottles.
In the thousands of yards of mangroves we poled, we had just a handful of moments
give us any reward. The one day tarpon truly showed up—supposedly thousands of them, thick and happy in a place I hold close—we weren’t there. Instead, we’d sent our new friends, Chris and Richard, to fish it. Maybe it was generosity, maybe it was blind optimism that we’d find something better. Either way, Sam and I chose to sit and pray in a secluded bay, eight miles away.
No action, no tarpon.
Before the trip, I’d asked ChatGPT what Jesus would have said if he were a tarpon fisherman. It gave a couple of good lines about the grace of catching tarpon. Curiosity then had me ask what Satan would say, and it stated, “You’ll never land one. Give up now. Go home and lie about the size.”
At this point, Satan was giving anything but inaccurate depictions of the week’s tarpon fishing. He must have been a true gladesman.
If I were taken to confess my sins and tell the preacher the truth of our excursion, Sam and I had taken several blind eats that roughed our leaders inches up— unmistakable signs of tarpon—but never got anything to stick in the button.
Just nails in our emotional coffins, if you ask me. Even worse, wasted leader—shit ain’t cheap.
The second problem: by all mathematical calculations, if we’d joined the journey, we’d be asking for a tow back to Choko, guaranteed. We had an empty runner on the boat and 10 gallons tucked behind my
tent. We needed a minimum of seven to get home from basecamp and still had a full day of fishing left. With three usable gallons, we were shit out of luck on going anywhere productive.
And from the heavens above, I heard Ryan ask, “What if we took two boats, three on each?”
Hell, maybe Jesus was a tarpon fisherman, too. He heard my prayers in that moment.
Even though I was thinking it, I knew that solution—the only one we had—must come from the boat owners. I didn’t want to impinge on anyone’s final day by suggesting it. That’s a sacrifice I wasn’t willing to ask for. But, there we were.
It took about an hour to figure out the logistics of how it would all work. The spot was farther than any of us anticipated going. Non-ethanol is a commodity at the end of these trips.
Pushing all major concerns aside to lock in commitment from Chris, the owner of a tank-sized East Cape Vantage getting around six miles to the gallon, I said, “I can guarantee three gallons out of our 10. That’s a third of the way taken care of.”
A little nudge here, a little persuasion there, and Chris finally gave us a thumbsup. With that, all boats were green to go on the first-ever three-man, two-boat day in our history of Glades trips.
Before dawn, Ryan and I stood on the dock before shove-off, and he quietly conveyed his concern, kneeling over his boat: “I hope we got the math right on this, or we’re all not getting out.”
Trey's Daddy
Without question, we reached our destination. Within moments of coming off plane, tarpon rolled in the lower tidal pools.
“Alright, Gavin, here’s what we’re going to do,” Ryan said. “You’re going to get up on that bow and jump a tarpon in the air.”
This was where the story converted from an epic of chasing tarpon to a testament of what being a friend was. In lieu of rolling tarpon, I continued to fuck a minimum of six shots in the morning before they all quit rolling as tide went slack. Some of those shots were as close as 20 feet from our bow. I wasn’t proud of my efforts.
I looked back at them and said, “Okay, gents, that’s plenty of shots. Get up here.”
Both Ryan and Alan stated I wasn’t done and that the action wasn’t even started. But, when it did, they’d step up. After the week Sam and I had, I was more than satisfied with just having a single shot, let alone a half dozen.
As the tempo slowed down, we broke away from Sam, Chris, and Richard and took to a nearby zone they’d found the previous day. We beached ourselves against a parcel of sand they called The Gator Den.
“Cocktails, anyone?” Alan asked.
We primed ourselves with half-decent rum, a splash of Coca-Cola, and sliced mini limes. Within a dozen minutes, the ice began to collapse under itself, caused by warming, flattening Coke that was already holding on to dear life in the Florida sun. It doesn’t take long until you realize you’re
drinking very little rum and lots of water and stale Coke—a great time to chug what’s left, make another.
In the midst of blind casting from the stern, with Alan doing the same on the bow, we all heard what sounded like a cannonball falling from the sky. Within seconds, a second one followed, with frothy white boils just across the way. Within minutes, a third, a fourth, and a fifth. An emerging symphony of cymbals crashing together.
Tarpon were rolling to the surface, slapping tails down on the water and creating vicious boils. I had fished tarpon plenty: from juveniles to giants. I’d seen and caught them daisy-chained together, in Congo lines, free-jumping dramatically in the distance and all the cool jazz they do, but never had I seen these quick, violent, heavy-tailed eruptions.
“This is the start of it,” Ryan said.
I was prepared to relax and watch the show. Ryan and Alan urged me to get onto the bow and start casting.
Cannonball fire came from all around us: behind, in front, port, and starboard. Tarpon were erupting and softly rolling continuously throughout the day.
I landed nothing.
Over and over I heard, “You’re behind him. The fish was right, you went left. Don’t you see the bubbles, Gavin?” In total, Alan and Ryan sacrificed most of their day for me on the bow. I took bow from 7:30 A.M. till 4:30 P.M.
It was all dog-shit behavior and poor angling, if you asked me.
I insisted they take the bow. After a full day of selflessness from them, Ryan took my place, and I took his on the poling platform. I was relieved of duty.
We were edging the mangrove line while Ryan blind casted into the middle. Tarpon were still rolling, but not within distance. At the time, they guesstimated the depth of the channel somewhere between 15 to 20 feet, with a soft taper into the shallows of the edges.
Ryan threw his line against the outgoing current, letting his fly collapse beneath itself and reaching max depth. His strips were elongated and slow. Unnaturally slow for an angler that has any other experience fishing tarpon.
Within a dozen or so casts, Ryan locked up with weight that led into the first jump of the day. The silver king’s gills flared. The sound of their body curled over itself as it flipped and flopped, like fluttering wings of a large bird of prey gyrating into the air with somersaults as it tumbles back into the tannic water.
“Well, fuck, that’s just embarrassing for me,” I said out loud.
Ryan put that tarpon in the boat with Alan in less than 15 minutes. The both grabbed face, recovered the fish and sent the king back home.
Fully expecting the bow rotation to go to Alan, Ryan said, “Get up there, Gavin.”
I denied, Ryan insisted, and again, Alan sacrificed in his final hours of his everglades trip. Without question, this was another request steeped in pity.
I could see Satan perched on my shoulder, whispering, “You won’t catch one. Go Home. Lie about the size.”
In another dozen casts using the same technique, my strip sunk into a dead stop weight as the fish emerged, crashing upon itself left of bow. Jesus really was a gladesman, if I recall.
By 5:25 P.M., we had two tarpon in the boat and released.
I was feeling some sort of way: no doubt elated, excited by the catch and my hardon tarpon fishing gives me. I smoked Richard’s emergency cigarettes he’d lent me the days before. However, here I sit in the boat with two men on their taken vacation, among the best action they’d found all week and I’d felt I’d stolen all their time.
With spirits high, it did seem inevitable that
the third tarpon would be in the boat. We’d go back to camp titled grand-poobas of tarpon, sending Satan back to the pits of Hell he had risen from and crowning Jesus as the tarpon angler we all knew him to be.
But, for the next coming hours, Alan stood, casted, stripped and ultimately, landed nothing by sundown. For that, I was sad. But that pain wasn’t over.
Unintentionally, during lunch, I’d left my camera case on land. We circled back in the dark amidst a peaking low tide and just inches of water that after the case recovery, forced us, more, forced Ryan, to pole the boat for an hour until depths let us get on plane.
I thought to myself more than once as sat my ass on the bow balancing the hull to prevent us from getting stranded: “I’ve fucked their day and they’re still out here willing to pole a boat through low tide and mud to help me.”
To me, and I think to both Jesus and Satan, these two guys defined what it meant to be a true, trustworthy gladesman.
Someone Call the Cops, I Just Killed a Tarpon
by Declan Rogers
In light of the internet's obsession with the 100 men vs 1 gorilla standoff, I often think to myself: How many 12-year-olds could I take down in one sitting? I’d like to think 4 or 5, but I guess it all depends on the genetics of the litter.
Anyhow, these 12-year-olds have long been a pain point for my stuffy North Florida Home Owners Association. My spam folder is filled with the Susans and Sallys of the world condemning these young anglers, asking for us owners to call the cops whenever we see them
I’ll agree they are annoying, but for different reasons. I don’t care that they fish on my property, I care that they throw 9” swimbaits at 10 ounce fish. I care that they all have e-bikes, which weren't available during my tresbassing era.
They’re incredibly mobile. They don’t run from the cops, they rip from them. Topping 40 on their temu trikes. I'm super jealous, and that’s why I ponder how many I could hurt in a battle to the death.
I’m 27, but I still look 17. I get carded buying spray paint and can’t bench 2 plates. So sometimes I get grouped together with the e-bike bandits.
The other day I was out back, fishing on the property I OWN, behind the house I BUILT.
The 16 no-fishing signs scattered throughout make it hard to keep fly line flying, but they are permanent structures. The e-bike bad boys kept ripping the signs out and throwing them in the canal, so they are now sunk in the ground with concrete.
As, I dumped my second cast 60ft into the micro zone, I stripped all the way in and began to pick up for my next chuck. In that exact moment, a 6” tarpon took the fly.
He flew out of the water, catching me off guard. Mid-haul, my 10-weight zipped his entire body into the metal, concrete-based, no-fishing sign.
Dog walking Dollie looked over her shoulder, startled by the back-breaking bang. From her perspective, she likely then saw this same fish fly another 30 feet high and eventually land lifeless into the very center of the cul-de-sac. She saw the whole thing, while I looked up for an osprey to blame.
She screamed back at me, “I’m calling the cops” assuming I was temu Timmy illegally launching tarpon on someone else's property.
I stood there thinking to myself, “yeah, yeah, you probably should.” I scraped up the tarpon and returned him to his watery grave.
Someone call the cops, I just killed a tarpon.
caddie shack
st. declan the satisfied, photo by Jason Burge
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COLOMBIA
COLOMBIA
photo by craig godwin
photo by craig godwin
Critical Moments: A Hero Story for Once
By Cola
Photos by Craig Godwin
My Colombian adventure in South America began with failure.
Andreas, our Bogotá tour guide, took our group to “the best restaurant in all of Colombia.” After walking the streets near the University of Bogotá and checking out the government buildings, his brother drove Craig, Declan, John M., and me to the north side of town. This, he explained, was where Bogotá’s wealthiest citizens lived.
The restaurant was terrific. We ate chicharrones — fresh from the fryer, not the gas station variety we southerners usually find in bags. We had beef tenderloin with wine reduction sauces. Toward the end of the meal, a mariachi band burst into song. A beautiful Latina woman with a bull ring in her nose passed out paper butterfly cutouts and asked us to write down our innermost desires. I considered jotting down one of the dancers from the floor below but thought better of it. Instead, I wrote “peacock” and “payara” — jungle fish — then shook the bottle, as the ritual required.
I forgot to plug the top with my thumb.
Everyone’s wishes fluttered out at once.
It was a f*$k up.
Now, I thought, my arduous journey would be for naught. The beautiful woman crawled around on all fours, collecting the dream cutouts scattered by my mistake. I’m a superstitious angler. I hadn’t had a bangup fishing trip in years, and I attributed that drought to a time I failed to grab a sixtypound poon with my bare hands — didn’t want to shred my palms on its sandpaper mouth. Lesson learned: always wrestle your trophy with your own damn hands.
The next day, we flew to Puerto Carreño to meet our road warrior Land Cruiser guides. I was lost in translation most of the time, but I bought six packs of Rothschild cigarettes to tip the drivers — a karmic counterbalance to my butterfly blunder.
On our first day fishing, we targeted payara, standing on massive boulders in Class V rapids. It was like a brutal mix of musky fishing and steelheading. We threw giant double-articulated streamers with heavyduty hooks, wire bite tippets 8 to 10 inches long, and 400- to 500-grain sink-tip fly lines. I cast all day, slinging the fly again and again across roaring water and over endless obstructions. By the end, my arms were wrecked.
Nick, my guide, kept saying, “Keep it up. You’re doing just right.” But I was broken, sore, skunked, and ready to give up on payara.
At lunch, we swung hammocks between trees on an island in the rapids and took siestas. I picked Nick’s brain about sightfishing for peacocks in shallow, tannic water. “These are the moments you sign up for,” he said, “when the stars align and you get that shot at a big neon-green peacock.”
Nick was the most well-traveled angler I’d ever met — he’d landed arapaima, fished for giant Mekong catfish, lived near Thailand, and married a woman from Indonesia. His whole life was built around jungle fish.
We were the last group of the season to stay at the Orinoco Lodge — a site tucked between Venezuelan and Colombian indigenous communities who guided our jon boat adventures. Their nationality was as murky as the muddy water of the Orinoco, though they spoke Spanish.
We had all watched Gladiator 2 on the flight in, and someone dubbed a massive bust on the riverbank “Marcus Aurelius.” In reality, it was Simón Bolívar — the revolutionary who helped free South America from Spanish rule. The other side of the river burned in smoky fires set by people under communist dictatorship, hoping to flush mammals from the jungle for food. Somewhere in that haze, someone in our group heard a rifle shot.
The Indians lived in the interstitial space between conflict and the glory of big game fishing. Their lives, though stoic and hard,
were as beautiful as a Marcus Aurelius quote:
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
The Battle Begins
Day two, I fought a real battle — close combat.
On my fifth cast, a grande neon-green peacock exploded on my fly. The fish torched my fingertips, burning grooves into the pads. But somehow I found my inner stoic warrior — palming the reel, refusing to let the beast wrap me in structure. This fish set an unrealistic standard for all others, but it made the journey worthwhile. This was the one I came for.
As a southerner, landing that mondo made everything else gravy on a biscuit.
And somehow, the big ones kept coming.
Every day in the jungle, I landed peacocks over ten pounds — a couple pushing twelve, even thirteen. On the final day, we’d travel from our tent camp back to the main lodge. Most of the group was still licking their wounds from the day-one payara bust. Only Declan, Bajío’s marketing director, had landed one. The raucous Texans in our camp — mostly gear guys — were set on more
peacocks. But my crew deferred to me, and when Declan agreed to chase payara again, I was ecstatic.
The Final Push
The journey from Río Tuparro to Orinoco Lodge was about 70 clicks, and the group split up. Declan and I went our own way — toward vampire fish.
Payara fight like striped bass, with the added terror of submerged boulders. And unlike the peacocks, this was a fish you put on the reel.
At our first boulder-strewn stop, pacu were surfacing like crazy — thrashing, spawning. We cast to them, but they weren’t eating. After giving up, we ate roasted chicken in the shade of the jungle.
Then Sylvio, our guide, took us across a rapid-streaked channel to a massive spread of boulders.
Within a few casts, a leviathan surged up and crushed my streamer.
The fish bolted downstream, into the current. I reeled like mad, but it felt clumsy — like I was losing him. But our musky/payara fly had hooked true, and this fish wouldn’t be lost to fate. Not this time.
I reeled until I caught up, and Sylvio helped wrestle the beast to the boulder’s edge. Declan snapped photos of the massive, 15to 20-pound payara — a legitimate trophy.
I reeled like mad, but it felt clumsy — like I was losing him. But our musky/ payara fly had hooked true, and this fish wouldn’t be lost to fate. Not this time.
I lived in that moment all day, and for quite a while after.
Declan caught another in the same run.
As we wrapped, he and I gave our sunglasses — Bajío shades — to Sylvio and Arnelle. Bajíos are for people who fish, not people who pretend to fish. The two Orinoco guides lit up with gratitude.
We left the Fish Colombia adventure feeling like heroes.
And maybe, for once, we were.
Because if you prepare right — physically, mentally, spiritually — a trip like this can turn you into something braver than you were before.
Always savor the critical moments.
And remember what Marcus Aurelius says: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Sometimes, choosing the difficult path leads to the greatest reward.
GALERÍA
DE GECO FOTO ESSAY
DECLAN "GECKO" ROGERS
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photo by craig godwin
STORE
Small Tragedies
by Hank
“This is crazy!” I yelled over the old motor’s whine.
Jonathan pulled his neck gaiter down from over his mouth revealing a big grin. He yelled back, “Makes you feel like you’re doing something that can’t be done!”
We were in a 15 foot Hell’s Bay Waterman speeding over inches of clear water in the Marls, a three-hundred square mile wilderness in the Bahamas. Our guide, Danny, has been running boats here since he was born in the 60s, which I guess is enough time to become capable of the impossible. I held onto my stern facing seat and watched him navigate tiny cuts in the muddy flats with ease, never squeezing the tiller handle or clenching his jaw. It seemed that he no longer had a need for effort, having committed each pass and channel to muscle memory ages ago. Maybe if he was younger I would have been suspicious of his jeans and white tube socks, but the amount of cotton he was wearing only made him more trustworthy. This guy hadn’t been wet in decades. All he had to do was the same thing he always does: drive to the flat, get on the poling platform, and find some bonefish.
“The Marls” is a sinister sounding name, but it’s appropriate. Getting out of the boat here would mean almost certain death. Your first step off the deck would be your last, and how you died would depend on how deep into the mud you sank. If you were spared from drowning right away, then the stingrays and buzzards would be
the only ones who knew what happened to you. What beauty that remains in the Marls was almost taken with the rest of it in 2019 when Hurricane Dorian wiped out hundreds of thousands of acres of red mangrove forests. Their gnarled gray carcasses now litter the flats. Bonefish and Tarpon Trust has been working hard with locals to propagate and plant new mangrove forests, but the recovery will take decades. It was painful to behold the devastation, even six years after the storm.
“Reach in the water and tell me if it’s cold.” Danny ordered.
“Yeah, pretty cold.” reported Jonathan as he flicked some droplets from his fingers.
Danny lit a cigarette and cursed. “Damn it! Must be too cold. I can’t believe there’s no fish out here. Should be seeing hundreds of them.” He gave one last look around and eased down from the platform. “Okay, wind it up, let’s get out of here.”
I reeled in my line and sat back down on the deck. It seemed to me Danny might not be seeing the fish all that well, since we had definitely already spooked a few with the boat, but I had no idea what to expect. He motored us up through a muddy creek onto a different flat to find fish that wanted to play the game. We coasted to a stop and he climbed up the platform again to light another Pall Mall and look around.
“Okay fish, quit shittin’ around!” he growled through his hard flakey lips, confident that the only explanation for not seeing fish was that they were misbehaving. He poled slowly through the cross wind, and then said in a new reverent tone, “They been feeding in here, see the black
spots?” We could see where the algae film had been rooted away from the seafloor by bonefish nosing for invertebrates, leaving bare black mud in their feeding spots. When hundreds of them have been feeding, there are large obvious patches, but we only saw a few spots here and there. I was looking down over the bow, inspecting each spot we passed when Danny said with urgency, “Look, here he comes, see that fish?”
Danny pointed his push pole at a bonefish that was about 40 yards out and approaching fast from deeper water. I laid out a cast, surprising myself with the length and accuracy. The fish turned on the little tan and orange crab, chased, and then turned away, bolting in the opposite direction. I missed my first chance. Danny was bewildered. “He should have eaten that! Maybe he didn’t like it. Fly looked fine to me.” I said I’d try another couple fish with this pattern and if they don’t eat, I would trade places with Jonathan and tie on a new one. Jonathan agreed to my proposal, “Sure, three strike policy.” The next two fish did the exact same thing, so up went Jonathan onto the bow.
I hadn’t even reeled my line in all the way when Danny pointed out a trio that had suddenly appeared right in front of the boat. Jonathan plopped a cast in the middle of them, and just like that he was hooked up. The bonefish ran straight at a pine tree stump that had been stranded
on the flat by the hurricane, but Jonathan held him back. People extol the bonefish for its power and vitality, but it doesn’t take all that much strength to turn an average sized one around. The fish was in hand in a few minutes, and we snapped a couple photos. No time for glamour shots, just
a grip ‘n grin. Jonathan very generously offered me the bow again, and I jumped up reinvigorated.
“They’re late coming onto the flat today. Let’s go round this corner. Be
ready,” said Danny. I tied on the same pattern Jonathan was using. “Enough shittin’ around.” I thought. We turned the corner and Danny steered the boat directly into the wind. I didn’t know how I was going to reach a fish at 60-70 feet with a head wind, but that was as close
He decided we were better off motoring upwind and drifting back down the bank. I said “I’m sorry Danny, this must be pretty painful to watch” as I let the line collapse beside me, giving up mid-cast. He grinned and said “It’s okay, these fish are not acting right. You’re doing good.”
as we could get to them before they saw us and spooked. Nevertheless, I made some pretty good shots at two or three more bonefish. Each one refused my new fly, and Danny was losing his patience.
To a lot of serious guides, every missed fish is at least a small tragedy, but to some, missing a fish is an insult. The gravity of the insult depends mostly on the size of the fish, and how easily the cast should have been made by the angler. Regardless, a commensurate verbal punishment must be administered to restore balance to the angler-guide energy system. When I broke off on the only bonefish that ate my fly that day, Danny forgave me with Christ-like grace, shattering the energy-system entirely. At that moment, I released Danny from all liability to find me an opportunity to catch a bonefish in the Marls, and I started to actually enjoy the fishing. I stopped trying so hard to do the impossible, and stopped treating the fish like opportunities to disappoint my guide. I just fished the best I could and tried to channel some of the effortlessness with which Danny navigated his wilderness, leaving small tragedies in a faraway mud plume to be forgotten about, even by the stingrays and buzzards.
by Sam Bailey
I’m a gear junkie, always have been. Whether it’s hunting, conventional fishing, fly fishing, camping—you name it—I tend to dive in full force. I love getting my hands on new gear, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. That’s probably why I’ve got boxes of unused stuff piling up in the basement. (Note to self:
At the Atlanta Fly Fishing Show, our booth happened to be set up right behind Riversmith. They were showcasing their new Convoy collection of bags and packs. After chatting with them for a bit, they graciously handed me one of their new Convoy Hauler bags to test out. I’ve been using it over the past few months on multiple trips and let me just say—this thing
The roll-top design keeps everything dry, and the side zipper makes it super easy to grab
smaller items without having to unroll the whole bag. The buckles are sturdy, the materials feel bomber, and when I say this bag can hold a lot, I mean it—pretty sure it could fit a small person.
The first trip I took it on was a two-day float down the Tallapoosa River with the crew from Blue Ridge Boatworks. The bag carried everything I needed, kept it dry, and was never in the way. The second big outing was a sixday backcountry trip in the Everglades. Not only did it serve as my main boat bag—hauling flies, leaders, tippet, tools, and rain gear—but it also carried our dry lunch goods each day. It kept everything clean, dry, and accessible. Bonus: it even made a solid backrest during our mid-day siestas.
After multiple trips, the zippers and buckles are still going strong. It’s picked up some blood, mud, and grime, but it all cleans up well. Overall, I’m super impressed with the Convoy Hauler. I’m looking forward to many more seasons of hard use.
If you’re in the market for a new boat bag, I can confidently give this one a thumbs-up. Check out the Convoy Hauler from Riversmith at your local fly shop.
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RIDGE BOATWORKS
photos by alan broyhill
by Cola
Louden Plantation was established in 1835 in Eppes, Alabama. It began as a 25,000-acre farm and has remained, more or less, in the same family for eight generations. By the time I visited, its proportions had shrunk to around 400 acres. My brother-in-law invited me to a gathering there last year, mostly with his old college friends. At the time, the idea felt like too much social effort for too little return. But with the ink drying on my divorce papers this year, I found myself footloose and not the least bit fancy-free. What I mean is: even though this place was built for the kind of weekend warriors who get giddy over tannerite and gunpowder, I still wore golf shoes the entire time—forgot to pack boots or tennis shoes. There was, fittingly, a patchwork hobby golf course on the grounds, two sets of tees over par-three holes. That suited me just fine. The rest of the weekend was dominated by target shooting with AR-15s, Franchi over-and-unders at the trap range, and blowing up beaver dams with highpowered rifles. It was exactly the kind of absurd, testosterone-charged distraction I needed to forget the mess I’d left behind
The plantation house sat at the top of the property like a Southern Gothic cathedral, its presence undeniable and vaguely haunted. I imagined it once belonged to a man out of Faulkner—a Thomas Sutpen type—who likely fought the Creek Indians and carved out a kingdom in the piney woods. Two flagpoles stood out front. Under different circumstances, I could picture the Stars and Bars sharing the breeze with the American flag. But any
overt gestures to the Confederacy had been removed, probably for our modern politically correct sensibilities. If you listened closely to the owner, Fleet James, you could still catch the scent of the old ways in the corners of his speech. Fleet, 80 years old and full of contradictions, was both a quail hunter and a gracious host. A decorated Vietnam veteran with a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts, he moved back to the plantation full time after his wife Martha passed. She had been the “Mayor” of Louden— population three, if you counted the Shih Tzu, Tara. The house was still in disarray from the transition. But Fleet didn’t miss a beat. He brought us fried chicken from a gas station deli that could’ve earned a SCOF award for authenticity. On Saturday night, he grilled filets thicker than my thumb. In between, he rolled the greens on his backyard golf course and watched the Masters with us like it was a sacred rite.
Of course, when I say Fleet “had help,” I mean men who seemed frozen in time. Black men. Men who had worked the land their entire lives with no real access to education or escape. Buster, somewhere north of 80, was the golf course superintendent. Another man, maybe 65, swept the porch, ran errands. He was kind, deferential. At one point, someone in our group asked what Fleet paid him. Fleet hedged, then admitted it was $8 an hour— plus two packs of cigarettes each week, because, as he explained, he had to drive 30 minutes to pick him up every morning. The answer settled over the group like the humidity before a thunderstorm. That Thursday evening, with my brother-in-law and his son, McKee, I
wasn’t sure I could post about this place without betraying something unspoken. There were two cemeteries on the grounds: one for the white family, another tucked off behind the trees for the Black families who had worked this land for generations. No signage. Just headstones fading into the dirt.
Fleet’s charm made it easy to forget things you probably shouldn’t. Ask him anything—whether you could mud the trails all night or fire off a few more rounds—and his answer was always the same, delivered with a drawl and a shrug: “That’d be fine.”
The South is full of these time capsules—plantation homes tucked just beyond the reach of development, places untouched by progress and still tethered to a past we don’t quite know how to face. In the 1930s and ‘40s, people came to mineral springs to bathe their ailments away. Now, we seek places like Loudon to remind us of something else: how people once lived when fishing fed the table and hunting meant survival. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s also a complicated one. And that complexity, like the weekend itself, lingers long after you leave.
WILL IS COOL. WILL WEARS
WEARS SCOF MERCH. BE LIKE WILL.
BOOK REVIEW
BY
SANDRA AGRICOLA
Searching for Home Waters: A Brook Trout Pilgrimage by Michael Steinberg is a gorgeous coffee table book with an environmental message—“When I have a brook trout in my hand, I know the water in which I am standing is nearly pristine.” Steinberg is a professor of geography at the University of Alabama.
His book takes its readers on a pilgrimage from Georgia to Labrador in search of his beloved brook trout. But more than a journey to find fish, Steinberg,
like so many other great outdoor writers, understands that his search is a zen-like quest to find present moment stillness. Diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 33, Steinberg culls a positive mindset from his diagnosis—“My illness contributed to my sense that my personal geography is chaotic. Writing this book about my travels to fish for brook trout…is one way I have taught myself to slow down and be mindful, to be present in a specific place and a specific activity.” I love that a teacher of geography also understands that there is an internal landscape within us that must
be understood and embraced. We ignore and spoil our beautiful inner and outer world at our own peril. When he holds a wild brook trout in Georgia or South Carolina, he understands that during the “past ten thousand to twelve thousand years, as ice sheets receded and the climate warmed, such individual species as the brook trout, and entire ecosystems associated with colder temperatures, became stranded at higher elevations or disappeared.”
The cover art, original watercolors by Maine artist Karen Talbot, is so stunning that it draws people to comment. I was
reading the book at The Beautiful Rainbow Cafe in Gadsden, Alabama when a young man who works there came to the table and started a conversation—“I used to fish,” he said.
“Why do you say used to?” I asked. “Because,” he answered, “my Poppy used to take me and then he died.” Home Waters as Steinberg writes, or Topophilia, happens when we develop affection or love for a place or a specific species of a place. Smells, colors, physical features all interwoven to develop our home water. For Steinberg his home water is the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from Alabama to Maine and back again.
The beauty of hearing this tale of brook trout from a geographer is that you learn so much about the land and its people, both present day and far away. If you want to fish for brookies in South Carolina, for example, take the book with you and learn about the Chattooga River watershed and the Cherokee Nation. You’ll learn about Blackburnian Warblers and information on forest biodiversity and how stressful drought cycles impact these fish populations. You’ll also learn that brookie fishing in a maze of rhododendron “isn’t contemplative. No elegant casts. No zen rhythm. The shrubs see to that.” It took him three visits to South Carolina to catch a brookie. “Even so,” he says, “it’s strange that the small but mature six-inch brook trout I caught in the foot-deep clear streams in South Carolina are the same species as the giant twenty-incher I caught in the deep-black rivers in Labrador. Geography matters.”
Geography matters. This book matters. If you are a serious angler, it matters for you too.
In defense of bonefish
By Dr. Professor Mike
Bonefish, although part of the saltwater “grand slam,” are sometimes maligned by seasoned saltwater fly anglers. For beginners or non-salt anglers this may seem surprising given that bonefish are part of the grand slam holy grail, but I've had many conversations with absurdly annoying anglers who turn their nose up when you discuss your fish at the end of the day and you include anything but permit. I’ve fished with many guides who tell me about clients who simply won’t cast to a bonefish, been there done that apparently. It's as if casting to bonefish somehow spoils the flat and the soughtafter glory of a permit (unless a grand slam is at stake perhaps). Yet I’d argue that bonefish take up more “space” in the larger universe of saltwater fly angling than any other species. Maybe this is due to simple numbers. There are more opportunities to
catch bonefish versus permit, and they feel like less of an investment than tarpon (that may be debatable). It's a smaller leap to go from casting a six-weight trout rod to an eight-weight bonefish rod versus a six to an 11 or 12-weight tarpon rod. But beyond the numbers and equipment, I’d argue they are also the perfect gamefish in a perfect environment.
I was reminded of this perfection while in Belize for a few weeks during a recent field course I annually teach through my university. The two field sites where I stay sit on or near two bonefish flats, not an unplanned coincidence. I have in the past lamented in this very space the increasing pressure on these flats and some of the changes in the fish that I’ve witnessed over the years. I think seeing others discover “my” flats and the changes this has brought about has made me take them a bit for granted. Although I never stopped fishing them, my time with an actual fly in the water declined. Frankly,
there were days after seeing what seemed like an endless line of boats that I wanted to give the fish a break, and I probably knew my odds weren’t great because the fish had already been harassed. Even though I know better, maybe I had fallen into the permit trap. But this year was different. The flats and fish reminded me again of their perfection.
It's been a hell of a year. Last fall I was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease (cancer). I didn’t know if I had six weeks or six months to live. I still don’t really know the long-term prognosis because treatments and outlooks have changed for the better and cancer is an unpredictable beast. But one of the first things I did when I was diagnosed last September was to set a couple of longer-term goals. The first of those was returning to Belize with students to continue my field course. I don't know if I was being realistic at the time, but it gave me a concrete target of 9 months out. My doctor didn't discourage me, so I took that to mean it was a possibility. I reached that goal this past May and celebrated by spending more time on those flats than I had in the past several years combined. While it might sound like mere enthusiasm for an article topic, I truly did see those flats in a different light this year. As I slowly walked their length, I never hurried, I never stumbled or grew frustrated with the unwillingness of the fish to eat my fly or even make an appearance, which on some days they did not. I caught a few fish, lost a few fish, and spooked even more. But there was a new appreciation for this perfect gamefish. It is a powerful feeling when one scans a large seemingly empty flat, and then, out of nowhere you glimpse a group of small fins reflecting in the fun, sometimes at a great distance. Lifeless
suddenly becomes full of life. You then plan your next move to meet those fish taking into consideration the tide, wind, angle of the sun, etc. Many times, they would disappear before I reached them, but the anticipation and strategy of the hunt never disappointed. It still amazes me fish can seemingly disappear in less than a foot of water. I sometimes wonder if I ever saw the fish at all.
I used to think that if I was ever told that I had a finite amount of time to live that I would naturally develop a bucket list (I loathe that phrase by the way) of BIG adventures – Paris, Rome, the Seychelles! And maybe Belize fits under that title, although I’ve been so many times it doesn't feel out of the ordinary to me. But what I realized instead, standing on those flats, was that living and enjoying whatever time we have left on this planet doesn’t have to be made complete by a grand event, but instead by simple observance or acknowledgement of important things we’ve enjoyed along the way, the entire time. Seeing those fins, seeing a large single bonefish slither by at low tide, watching eagle rays glide just underneath the glassy surface, and many more, those are the things that brought me to saltwater flats angling from the start. Being a silent witness to life on a flat fills up multiple bucket lists for me.
Of course, I‘d rather not have needed cancer to wake me up to the perfection of the flats and bonefish, but if it takes getting coldcocked to truly appreciate what we have around us, perhaps in the long run it's all been worth it. Sometimes even a poison pill can provide gifts.
The Livery
SORGHUM SOUR
by Kendall Mayers
The Sorghum Sour is a drink that was born out of a general distaste for the disgustingly sweet and artificially flavored whiskey sours that are currently being served (and consumed) entirely too often. Nobody likes the bubble guts, especially when bourbon is involved, and that’s why this particular cocktail uses no artificial sweeteners. There is simply no better basis for a cocktail than bourbon and lemon juice, and replacing artificial sweetener with a sorghum syrup gives the cocktail a nice, easy finish.
Sorghum, like many Southern culinary staples, is native to West Africa. It was historically grown throughout Tennessee and Kentucky, and although its prevalence in production and every day consumption has declined, it still remains a uniquely and unapologetically Southern ingredient. In terms of cocktail making, sorghum has a wide variety of uses. You can make a simple syrup with sorghum, just like you would with regular sugar. This syrup is incredibly rich and is perfect for sweetening bourbon cocktails. Simply mix the sorghum at a 1:1 ratio with boiling water, and store in the fridge.
Recipe:
1oz. Lemon Juice (fresh squeezed - don’t be lazy) 2oz. Woodford Reserve (you’re too old to drink bad bourbon) 1oz. Sorghum Syrup
Pour into cocktail shaker with ice, shake well, and strain over one large ice cube. Garnish with a cherry.
The Back Page
REAL FANTASIES OF A FLY ANGLER
Cola’s farm sat cradled in the bowl-like terrain of Sand Mountain, a geographic quirk that had somehow spared this patch of Alabama from the worst of the radioactive winds. By the time the rest of the world had gone up in a plume of mushroom clouds, Boaz remained an unlikely sanctuary, its trailer parks and shotgun houses clinging to the edge of oblivion like rusted tin roofs in a summer storm.
The end had come with all the fiery spectacle promised by 20th-century pulp fiction—ICBMs carving arcs into the heavens, nations crumbling like wet clay, and the world’s currencies reduced to confetti. But for Cola, the final act of humanity had a distinctly local flavor. He had inherited 500 acres of rolling pasture and hardwoods, the perfect proving ground for his survivalist nihilism. Here, he had amassed an arsenal of duck shot, high-powered rifles, and machine guns, ready for the zombies he assumed would one day wander out of the radioactive wastes of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia.
Cola had even made it rain cash for a while at Foxy’s Lounge, the only strip club in the area that had managed to keep the neon buzzing long after the last grid fell. The dancers tolerated his presence in the darkened corners, where the glow of black lights made their fishnet stockings look like electric spider webs. He envisioned himself as a kind of Appalachian Moses, leading a harem of neon-lit apostles through the fallout. When the power finally cut out at Foxy’s, the strippers had little choice but to stumble down to Cola’s compound. He welcomed them with open arms, promising venison, squirrel stew, and fly-fishing lessons. He had grand plans for a post-apocalyptic harem of fly fishing women, a neon-lit kingdom built on duck shot and pond water.
But the women were not impressed. They came armed—knives in their boots, Derringers tucked into their lace garters, eyes cold as the barrel of a Remington 870. They had no intention of trading their independence for Cola’s survivalist fantasies. Strippers were not made for this. They thrived on the heat of stage lights, not the cold glare of a solar flare.
When they finally gave up, it wasn’t from lack of will but a kind of existential exhaustion. They banged their heads against the edge of the pool table, one by one, like spawning salmon meeting the dam. Cola watched them fall, his disappointment tinged with a vague, academic curiosity. In the end, only the deer remained, their eyes glowing with radioactive light as they slipped through the woods of northern Alabama.
Cola adjusted his grip on his shotgun and sighed. He was alone now, a man with more ammo than friends, a king without a kingdom.
