SCOF - Fall 2021 - Issue no.41

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D O UBLE

ANNIVERSARY

ISSUE southern culture

AN EDITOR'S PICK FROM 10 SOLID YEARS OF YOUR FAVORITE FLY FISHING MAGAZINE IN THIS MASSIVE DOUBLE FEATURE INCLUDING HITS FROM:

JASON TUCKER, MIKE SEPELAK, MATT SMYTHE, ALLEN GILLESPIE, CHRISTIAN FICHTEL, J.T. VAN ZANDT, LOUIS CAHILL, NOAH DAVIS, PETER PERCH, PAUL PUCKETT, JEB HALL, TOM HAZELTON, MIKE BENSON AND DAVID GROSSMAN.

SCOF Fall Fluffer

Photo: White River, Arkansas - September 2021, Dave Fason

Photo: Indian River Lagoon, Florida - October 2021, Steve Seinberg

Photo: Indian River Lagoon, Florida - October 2021, Steve Seinberg

Photo: White River, Arkansas - September 2021, Dave Fason

Photo: Folly Beach, South Carolina - October 2021, Steve Seinberg

V. 1

6

scof fall fluffer

24

a letter from dave

28

haiku

34

white river fever dream by david grossman

62

photos: dave fason

tracks by mike sepelak

photos: darrin doss

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holy city

84

400 words on shit

90

by mike benson photos: steve seinberg by noah davis illustrations: peter perch

dh delegation by jeb hall

108 salt

by tom hazelton

124 wild

things in wild places

by: christian fichtel photos: alan broyhill

142 the by

tailing

david grossman photos: steve seinberg

182 agoraphobia by

V. 2

be damned

david grossman photos: steve seinberg

204 deal

by matt smythe illustrations: peter perch

216 coal

creek crazies

by allen gillespie photos: phil savage

232 atonement

by louis cahill

236 brook

trout on the moon

by jason tucker photos: louis cahill

258 island

by david grossman photos: steve seinberg

286 t​​o

of the damned

the people of tn

re; the dildos

288 coast

by jt van zandt

304 the by

back page journal

paul puckett and mike benson

no. 41

SENSE

NEW

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sageflyfish.com

s.c.o.f fall 2021

issue no. 41

now that's what i call a decade... editor co-publisher:

David Grossman creative director co-publisher:

Steve Seinberg

contributors: Jason Tucker Matt Smythe Louis Cahill Christian Fichtel Mike Sepelak Tom Hazelton JEB Hall Peter Perch Noah Davis Darrin Doss Rand Harcz Phil Savage Alan Broyhill Dave Fason JT Van Zandt Allen Gillespie Paul Puckett Mike Benson copy editor emeritus: Lindsey Grossman ombudsman: Rand Harcz general inquiries and submissions: info@southerncultureonthefly.com advertising information: info@southerncultureonthefly.com cover image: Steve Seinberg

www.southerncultureonthefly.com 20 all content and images © 2021 Southern Culture on the Fly

S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

Photo: Steve Seinberg

southern culture

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FAIL is not an Absolute Trout Stealth Leader “I love to cast downstream and across to feeding fish. When I move my fly into the lane it will often sink, but not with the Absolute Trout Stealth; it feeds perfectly. The tapers on the Absolute Trout are heavier in the butt section for accurate casts, and the material is really supple, so I don’t drag the fly. Combine that with the Stealth olive tint and there is nothing better out there. It’s really made me a better fisherman.”

- Jeff Currier, SA Ambassador

scientificanglers.com

LURE n option 29

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• Tapers specifically designed for trout fishing

STRONGER

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• Heavy butt diameters for powerful accurate deliveries • Supple material for drag-free drifts • Light olive tint reduces line flash for ultra-wary fish • Lengths- 9’ 3-7X, 7.5’ 3-6X

A letter from Dave, the editor...

What does it all mean?

A decade of fly fishing nonsense and what do we have to show for it?

A shitload of money for one—a literal shitload.

(Think Scrooge McDuck diving into a pool of gold coins.) SCOF has made Steve and I very rich men.

With that vast regional digital fly fishing magazine wealth has come certain perks. Our homes are now giant and in those giant homes there are rooms filled with old bamboo and English-made aluminum bobbles. Our fly boxes overfloweth with flies not available in stores from all the most exclusive private fly houses. Those private label flies have pierced the lips of many private label fish, in the thousands of private river drainages and saltwater estuaries we’ve been invited to fish (for free) over this fruitful tenth of a century. You really haven’t fished until you have jumped tarpon hand-fed lobster on the daily in an enclosure in St. Moritz, where amazingly enough, it’s sunset all day.

Super Insta-worthy shit there, folks.

Yes, synergizing the worlds of fly fishing and bathroom humor has been personally

advantageous indeed.

Did you know the media gets waders that have a lining that converts urine to strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups? Or that Steve hasn’t had to tie on his own fly in years?

He has a guy for that now.

One of many in his fishing entourage: There’s the knot guy, the spotter, the pusher, the towel guy, the camera guy, the joint guy, and the drone guy. Honestly it’s amazing some people fish their whole life by themselves. Might as well fish by foot like a common Tom Rosenbauer.

The most commendable thing about this ten years of unbridled professional and fishing success is that we haven’t let it change us. In fact we probably give back more to the community now then we ever did B.SCOF. We now have “the help” pick up garbage every single trip.

We then take that garbage back to the SCOFfice where Steve fashions it into compelling garbage art. We then take that garbage art back to the wild and natural place we found it, and leave it there to inspire others to pick up garbage. I think those garbage angels have really made a difference.

Fall 2021

The big problems are important, but sometimes you just have to go to the creek and help random people on a local scale. Once a month you’ll find me at my local stocked trout stream with what I like to call free and unfiltered involuntary guiding. I roll up my sleeves, walk around, and let people know what they’re doing wrong, and why they’ll never catch any fish. Sometimes when I find a real train wreck, I'll pull up my camp chair and really let them have it, but good.

My results have been varied, but as I always say, if I can help one person catch one fish while verbally abusing them against their will then it’s all worth it.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t thank ourselves for getting ourselves here.

It was surprisingly easy, and required little effort in the end. Also somehow Steve has more hair now than when we started, so he should probably thank someone for that. Probably me. Also where there are thank you’s there must also be, “We told you so’s.” So here we go: Mom, Dad, Tom Bie, Bob Clouser, Kelly Galloup, Don Kirk, Trout Pro, Joan Wulff, my third cousin Daqvid, the neighbor kid, and Sir Richard Attanbourough. Also Lee Wulff, Izaak Walton, Jane Goodall, Henry Winkler, and that teacher in kindergarten who caught me with a girl in the bathroom stall. We told you so, we told you so, we mothefucking told you so. Happy decade to us.

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NO. 1 FALL 2011

NO. 2 WINTER 2012

NO. 3 SPRING 2012

NO. 4 SUMMER 2012

NO. 5 FALL 2012

NO. 12 SUMMER 2014

NO. 13 FALL 2014

NO. 14 WINTER 2015

NO. 15 SPRING 2015

NO. 22 WINTER 2017

NO. 23 SPRING 2017

NO. 24 SUMMER 2017

NO. 25 FALL 2017

NO. 32 SUMMER 2019

NO. 33 FALL 2019

NO. 34 WINTER 2020

NO. 35 SPRING 2020

ve A FUN Summer southernHaculture

S.C.O.F issue no. 12

summer 2014

we’re better than them

S.C.O.F

magazine

still free

NO. 11 SPRING 2014 S.C.O.F issue no. 21

Dance Poon...Dance Topwater Timing Totalitarianism Hardly, Strictly Musky Roadside Attractions Fishing the Proper Popper-Dropper

Disco Shrimp Gangsters of the Pond Von Beard Chronicles Linwood Blue Crab ...and more

fall 2016

olde time fudge shoppe

THE

ReJiggering

SCOF

MAG

STILL FREE

southern culture

NO. 21 FALL 2016

NO. 31 SPRING 2019 26

S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

Everything that Matters

NO. 6 WINTER 2013

NO. 7 SPRING 2013

NO. 8 SUMMER 2013

NO. 9 FALL 2013

NO. 10 WINTER 2014

NO. 16 SUMMER 2015

NO. 17 FALL 2015

NO. 18 WINTER 2016

NO. 19 SPRING 2016

NO. 20 SUMMER 2016

NO. 26 WINTER 2018

NO. 27 SPRING 2018

NO. 28 SUMMER 2018

NO. 29 FALL 2018

NO. 30 WINTER 2019

NO. 36 SUMMER 2020

NO. 37 FALL 2020

NO. 38 WINTER 2021

NO. 39 SPRING 2021

NO. 40 SUMMER 2021

S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

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Haiku

with David Grossman

A decade of SCOF Seems like fourty years on my liver Do you have a spare?

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V.1

White River Fever Dream

By David Grossman Photos: Dave Fason

The White River in Cotter, Ark., sits in the middle of nowhere, like

much of Arkansas, insulated from the outside world by a lack of highway exits, and a gaggle of one-light towns seemingly centered on the Dollar General. But the lack of access is easily overlooked once you get there.

Everything in the town seems to be painted in the colors of trout as if its college football team’s mascot was the Leroy’s. Trying to find the ramp requires wandering aimlessly for only a couple of minutes until you spot one of the hundreds of 20-foot endemic Ozark long boats and follow it to the closest access. It’s truly a utopian trout-based community (without any of the weird sex stuff that usually goes along with those things). It’s as if that secret beach in that movie was a river in Arkansas and it wasn’t really a secret.

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Arkansas lies in one of those gray areas of the South, out on the fringes. The people all seem Southern, but every once in a while you’re jarred at the sight of a cowboy on a horse at a stop sign. Nothing quite makes sense in the Ozarks. The boats are too long, there’s more overalls than Gore-Tex, and there are giant brown trout that eat hoppers that don’t reside in the Rockies. If you are the type of person who has to order the egg rolls from Jack in the Box just because they so obviously don’t belong, then hopper fishing in Arkansas might just be your weird jam.

In a place where 20-inch fish are spit upon like lepers, you hear hopper fishing and your mind starts dreaming of lazy western days where 25 feet of

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line buys you every fish in the river, throwing itself at the fly on those magical days. Your mind would be wrong. Casts and leaders are long and takes are more often slurped than exploded on. The hardest part of the whole deal is not pulling the hopper out of the gaping maw of the beast, when a period of no activity instantly turns into bedlam. In this situation, it pays to dull the senses a hair if you know what I mean. Slow is fast, and fast is game over. The trophies you catch will be earned by whatever skills you bring to the table. The trophies you lose will be your buddies' fault as you are an infallible trophy brown trout catching machine with the magical forces of Arkansas running through your veins.

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After a few days of this and more specimens to hand than a human brain can handle, your mind is forced to re-evaluate everything: How bad could it be to work at Wal-Mart? Twenty-foot boats aren’t that bad to row. Is educating my children more important than these brown trout? Really?

This is when you know it’s time to leave, lest you get sucked into the easy rhythm of Ozark hospitality and over-sized trout, and find yourself 40 years down the road penniless with a Cheshire grin ear to ear.

I always leave Arkansas with an undeniable, unshakable sense of, “Holy shit, did that just happen?” There are very few places that can inspire 15 hours of bliss on the way home. Arkansas is a fever dream—a fever dream of hopper-eating brown trout.

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I’d like to thank Matt Stinnett at White River Fly Anglers and Matt Milner of Rising River Guide Service for the invite to fish hoppers and for the best cabin hookup on the White. You know who you are, Gilly’s Cabin (https://www.gillyswhiteriver.com), You can check them out here (https://whiteriverflyanglers.com) and here (https://www.risingriverguides.com), respectively. Also we’d be remiss in not thanking the fellas at Dally’s Ozark Fly Fisher for filling in a few days for us, even though I rowed.

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By Mike Sepelak Photos: Darrin Doss and Mike Sepelak

NO.14 | WINTER 2015

Slate grey ballast, like the fragments of my life, myriad and sharp edged, interlock underfoot, puzzle-pieced, and holds solid. It only turns

particularly true. I walk these tracks because they change me in ways that I need to be changed.

When I time it just right, I arrive as the turbines two miles upstream stop spinning and the reservoir’s release is pinched to a trickle. to loose, jagged scree when I The sparks they’ve spun out step beyond reasonable limits, have sped down the lines into which, sad to say, is often. town where there seems not enough happening to conThere’s a mile of track down sume them. It’s hard times in to Trestle Pool. A mile of rail these hills. along which place and time and perception are transI park the truck and rig up in formed. A modest mile, a the small clearing next to the pittance on the map, but a mill. Nerves still jangling from light-year for the continence. roads and cities and modern I could dip into this tailwater adult life, I try to take it slow, from a county’s-worth of trail- but can usually be counted on heads, turnouts, and small to miss a snake guide in my streamside church gravel industrial haste. It’s the hurry lots, but I almost always start in me that breaks and forgets my day here; not because things. It’s the hurry in me that the fishing is good or it’s an I need to shake. easy way in, for neither is

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And it’s the hurry that sends ballast stone tumbling as I climb to the tracks and start downgrade.

Awkward steps, the ties at odds with my gait, lengths too long or too short, never just right.

Lengths somehow indivisible by stride. Short, short, long. Long, short, long. Short, stumble, shit!

It feels like life. I’d balance the rail like a gymnast’s beam but for the carbide studs in my wading boots. Walk the line. In time, as the river bends to come alongside and I find a rhythm, the cadence becomes obvious; obvious, once I’ve stopped trying to think about it.

The gates have been closed but the water’s still up and roars in concurrence with that which I’ve brought to this place; the pressures of progress and expectation and want. The 10am freight creeps up behind, crawling along at notch 1, adding its rumble to the din and moving me from the tracks. It trundles by and I pitch my frustrations into the open boxcars, sending them like hobos to parts unknown. The temptation to join them is strong.

But as I approach the trestle, the clamor falls away, trains and waters and pressures alike, and recedes into the background as gentle white noise. The frenetic fluid surges, the coal-driven horsepower, the dammed up tensions are no longer required to drive amp or ambition and a natural quiet settles in. I leave it all on the tracks, all the crap, all the churn, and carefully climb down along the trestle’s edge, down along the wetbranch feeder that it sturdily spans, and find my feet at the edge of the pool as the waters fall away and the river is revealed, as am I. I walk these tracks because they change me in ways that I need to be changed. Just a mile. Just a precious mile.

Photo: Todd Field

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The Holy City

By Mike Benson Photos by Steve Seinberg and David Grossman

NO.2 | WINTER 2012

Anybody who’s ever sat in an American History class already knows a few things about Charleston, SC. Mainly that we fired the first

shots of the Civil War. And those who’ve ever lived here for any length of time may tell you a few other things about our city. They’ll tell you about Moultrie, the “Swamp Fox”, John C. Calhoun, the “War of Northern Aggression”, and of course, Hurricane Hugo. Nowadays, fly fishermen from across the country, and in particular the South, are becoming more and more familiar with Charleston as a great place to chase redfish with the fly rod. But if you’re going to come on down and join us amidst the Spartina grass, I ask that you take a second to really take a look around and attempt to take in what is going on around you.

When you’re poling or wading the flats north of town, just stand still and listen for a minute ing hymns in fields long untended. Running across the harbor, you may hear the sound of sieges in modern military history. As you leave the harbor and turn north into the waterway in the creek, and the raw natural forces it took to accomplish that. And when you’re standi stop and pray on for God to turn them into birds so they could fly back to Africa, try your h

e. If the wind is blowing just right, you may hear the low mournful hum of slaves singYankee cannons over the whine of your outboard, conducting one of the longest artillery y, try to picture the Sullivan’s Island bridge completely dismantled and laying on its side ing on one of the “fly away places,” the small cedar islands that escaped slaves used to hardest to keep your feet on the ground.

They call this place the Holy City, and the tour guides in town will tell you it’s because of the sheer number of churches, or our history for religious freedom. But spend enough time being quiet in the backcountry and it’s hard to ignore the natural and spiritual forces that seem to surround this place. So when you come to Charleston to chase the reds, bring your 8wt, a box full of crab and shrimp patterns, and open your mind and your soul.

You may just be surprised by what you’ll catch down here.

400 Words on...

By Noah Davis

Illustrations: Peter Perch

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NO.33 | FALL 2019 We eat, we evacuate, survivors that we are.

-The Excrement Poem,

Maxine Kumi

I see a lot of cow shit in the lowlands of the Appalachians.

Smallmouth and trout chase my wooly bugger where the river cuts a pasture in half. In May, I stood downstream and watched a Holstein with a brown mask stop and drop an inordinate amount of offal that tumbled over itself past me like a foulhooked brown trout trying to escape.

Dog and goose shit clings to the bottom of my boots when I walk through lawns. If I don’t check my trail across the asphalt parking lot for yellow and green streaks, I’m likely greeted the next day with a truck cab saturated in the stench of scat.

Up-mountain, I take pictures of swallow-tailed butterflies fanning themselves on logs of coyote excrement. The shit is so stuffed with hair I can only think of articulated streamers, and try to reason a connection among offensive lengths of fur and feathers and trout and butterflies.

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While crawling through a laurel hell to a brookie stream no wider than my 6’6” 3wt, I brought my hand down in a pile of deer pellets. The sensation was not unlike pressing my hand into a bowl of softened grapes, three or four loose ovals settling between my knuckles.

A turkey’s turd falling from the crown of a tulip poplar onto the forest floor sounds like a 86

squirrel who missed a branch, violent and heavy.

I can tell the time of year and determine fly choice by bear refuse.

Spring’s tight clumps bound with fawn’s lean muscle: blue-winged olive. Summer’s dark purple pocked with raspberry seeds: royal wulff. October’s auburn pureed with downed acorns: elk hair caddis.

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Two falls ago, at a pond I fish for bream and bass, I flushed a grouse out of an autumn olive. The bird lightened itself as it cleared the cattails, and I watched as two bluegills nibbled on the comma-shaped scat. I couldn’t shake the realization

that this was not the first time the fish of the pond had eaten shit. Of course, I had eaten these fish more than once, too.

A good lesson in the binding nature of commas hovering below the surface.

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NO.17 | FALL 2015

DH

Delegation

By J.E.B. Hall

For many a Southern trout angler, fall trout fishing can be summed up in two words: Delayed Harvest.

Commonly referred to as “DH” by those who stare with bloodshot eyes from behind the scratched lenses of polarized sunglasses, Delayed Harvest streams can make heroes out of even the most inept experts. While this resource is invaluable to the local sport fishing economy, and provides countless hours of quality fishing time for resident and visiting anglers alike, it also breeds a subculture of trout fishers that range from comical to downright obnoxious. This heterogeneous mixture of salmonid-obsessed humans is comprised of some very unique characters who wouldn’t be caught dead in each others’ presence.

That is unless they’re all trying to fish the same hole that they risked life and limb to get to. This DH Delegation can be broken down into the following personality types: the Reelback, the Big Hat, the Greek Squad, and the Flat Brim.

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Reelbacks are the only truly indigenous members of the DH Delegation. Hailing from hollars unknown, Reelbacks can be heard approaching from great distances as their modified early 90’s pickups rumble and screech their way up winding roads just left of the center line.

The typical Reelback fishing technique is to descend upon unsuspecting anglers working a run and perch on rocks directly adjacent to the optimum drift line. Upon placing their 20 oz. Mountain Dew in an upright position, they unleash repeated long casts with a variety of hardware ranging from Vibrax spinners to “broke back” Rapalas. No matter what lure is used, water depth fished, or structure covered, the presentation is always the same steady turning of the reel handle. After a nearly eternal 10 minutes of casting and retrieving, the Reelback usually retreats up the small footpath from which they emerged, leaving only a spooked pod of finless Brook Trout and the aforementioned Mountain Dew as evidence of their existence.

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The most benign member of the Delegation is the Big Hat. As you can guess by their namesake, Big Hats often sport some type of oversized head gear. These sweat inducing skull furnaces can range from felt Fedoras to Martha Stewart Living straw gardening hats. This cranial fashion was most likely inspired by the movie A River Runs Through It, and capitalized on by brands such as Tilley, Filson, and Orvis.

Thankfully, Cialis and Viagra have picked up on the trend and kept the flame of fishing hats burning brightly. Big Hats have a well planned vision of how their angling day will go. From the Two Egg White Senior’s Omelette at Denny’s, to the parking space in which to plant their Yukon XL, everything has been thought out in excruciating detail. Alas, sometimes things don’t always go as planned, and other anglers have to be smoked out of the planned fishing spot through a two tiered

approach of steady wading and menacing glances from furled bushy eyebrows.

Once the nuisance has been removed, new fangled flies such as olive Wooly Buggers are used to entice fish with “The Dance of Death”.

Similar, but in reality, nothing like the George Harvey Slack Line Technique, The Dance of Death involves precise angler and fly placement. This technique involves the presenting angler to stand mid stream, cast directly down stream, and strip the fly back in two inch strips. The fly must have a light olive body with a dark olive tail, or a dark olive body with a light olive tail. The body and the tail can in no circumstance be the same color of olive.

After several hours of plying the chosen water, Big Hats often retreat back to the safety of their gated communities to recount the exploits of the day over a glass of cheap scotch and the comforting murmur of Fox News.

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This brings us to the Greek Squad.

While almost all of these anglers are destined to join the Fedora Fraternity in their later years, Greek Squad anglers remain in a category of their own. Spending somewhere between five and seven years as undergrads at a southern university, the Greek squad makes sure to take time to explore their secessionist sporting heritage on your local Delayed Harvest stream. Greek Squad members typically possess somewhere between 50% to 90% of the necessary equipment it takes to trout fish. Typical attire for a Greek Squad fishing trip includes dad’s 15 year old canvas wading boots, khaki shorts, khaki fishing vest, and last year’s white Tshirt from the fall semi-formal with Gamma Phi Beta. The troubling part about this ensemble is that it is almost always topped off with a high end pair of Costa Del Mar sunglasses, the retail cost of which could have went toward any number of breathable wader options to wear over the oh so functional December cotton wading shorts.

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If BIg Hats are the least of one’s Delayed Harvest worries, then Flat Brims are the most caustic. Referring to everyone around them as Bro, Brah, or “Their Boy”, Flat Brims are on a quest for fly angling fame. Flat Brims are cooler than cool, and it all starts with the SoCal style flat brimmed baseball hat. Oversized, and slightly cocked to the side, the flat brimmed hat brings skate park cool to an otherwise nerdly endeavor.

Flat Brims are very competitive and are often involved in the lucrative worlds of tournament angling, and/or guided fishing excursions. For Flat Brims the river is just a playing field occupied with only targets(fish) and obstacles(other anglers).

The object of the Flat Brim’s game is to catch as many targets as possible while being observed by as many obstacles as possible. If their are no other anglers around to watch, a GoPro must be used to document the day’s adventure so it can be downloaded, set to Dub Step music, and viewed on Facebook by literally dozens of followers. Be warned that Flat Brims will always fish through your water shouting expressions such as, “I’m in a comp”, “I’m practicing for a comp”, or “I’m trying to guide”.

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Delayed Harvest is an incredible fishing resource for the trout fishing community and is always a highlight of Autumn in Southern Appalachia.

DH is a great place for beginners to learn, experts to relax, and for guides to make the magic happen. With that in mind, remember that no matter how early you get to the river, or how well you plan your day, the DH Delegation will always be there to greet you.

Tight Lines, The Hamster

© 2021 Patagonia, Inc.

NO.14 | WINTER 2015

salt

By Tom Hazelton

NO.20 | SUMMER 2016

Sodium and chloride, individually deadly toxic, but when perfectly a

feel like home. Home is lakes. Superior and Michigan. Drinkable seas. Her life. Most of Earth’s life, diverse, furious, pitiless, unfathomable. Fascinatin by which we anglers explore unfamiliar bodies.

But severe thunderstorms ruin fishing plans even here. Flooding and lightn week, no tourists, but still no fly rods allowed. I wander among penguins a

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arranged, critical for organic functions. For life. The Gulf coast does not re in Texas, water and salt are mixed and undrinkable yet aswarm with ng and frightening. Some of it vulnerable to a fly rod, the nine-foot probe

ning chase me indoors at the Moody Gardens Aquarium Pyramid. Midand coral reef fish and crustaceans in ultraviolet tanks.

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I walk into a glass tube that becomes kind of a Klein bottle, at once surrounded by and outside of a massive seawater tank. Tarpon, permit, snook, jacks orbit me, the first I’ve ever seen up close. Some vitality lost, I’m sure, in their confined habitat, but still heart-quickening to this fly fishing film festival junkie. Deep in the rear of the tank, half in shadow, a shark silhouette. Eight feet long or more.

Next, I consider a California sea lion skeleton in a glass case. Zalophus californianus. Impressive meat eater.

Look at those teeth. A hallway leads to a darker room, heavy damp air, open water and artificial rocks, faint bait bucket odor. A harbor seal swims adorable laps at the top of a deep tank.

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A tunnel winds below the exhibit. A single floor-to-ceiling porthole casts marine blue light into the claustrophobic blackness. I can see the harbor seal playing far above me; the window lenses inward, pulling me into the habitat with forced perspective. My breath fogs the glass.

In a sudden and impossibly huge black flash, a male sea lion comes from nowhere and fills the window with teeth and whiskers, turning aside inches from my face. I jerk backwards and sharply inhale -- involuntary reactions to a full dose of about-to-be-eaten adrenaline.

He swims off with a sideways glance and my ears roar and my fingertips tingle.

I know that I am safe from the great beast behind two inches of aquarium glass. But for an instant a primitive part of my brain overrode the rest of the system because it knew that I was about to be ragdolled by 600 pounds of marine grizzly bear.

Glad nobody was around to see it.

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Fear is complex. In proper doses, it prevents catastrophe. It keeps us fly anglers watching for sweepers, whistling loudly on brushy bear country riverbanks. Over time, experience adjusts these doses to provide us with appropriate levels of risk tolerance.

We love “survival-horror” fiction and adventure stories because beyond the titillation lies a primordial urge to gather and catalogue data about dangerous situations. Our reptile brain can’t weigh the odds of a zombie apocalypse against those of a grizzly attack. It craves all the knowledge.

Yet there will always be gaps in the data, and in those gaps, fear dosages can be wildly off. This is why I am terrified of a harmless surprise like a sea lion mockcharge, and fearless as I check emails at 80 mph on the expressway.

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Later I balance unsteadily on the riprap brim of Galveston Bay. Rod in ha Salty air unfamiliar. Nerves still wound tight. Vaguely aware of hazards he venomous. Unable to meter the proper level of fear. Timid first steps into

The familiar rhythm of casting is reassuring. Tying knots. Double hauls. A unknowns in the actual mechanics. Focus on them.

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and. Stormclouds exiting east. ere, saline and carnivorous and o gluey mud.

As in all things, there are fewer

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NO.25 | FALL 2017

Wild Things in Wild Places

By Christian Fichtel Photos: Alan Broyhill

I’ve been called an elitist by those who know me best. I

didn’t buy it at first, but once you hear something a time or 20, you begin to believe it. It’s not that I look down on anything—I just find satisfaction in doing things a certain way. I have my reasons, of course, but I find these truths to be self-evident: that grouse should be shot with a 16ga. sideby-side, anadromous fish deserve a swung fly, and brook trout are generally superior to all other salmonids.

I maintain that there exists an immense and lasting virtue in the preservation of native species. That things be left as nature intended is a goal worth pursuing even at great cost, and while we may have dominion over nature to a far greater extent than at any point in human history, our role is to protect and preserve rather than to subjugate. The life history of the Salmonidae family can be traced as far back as 20 million years, and more destruction has been wrought upon them in the last 100 years than in all those millions before.

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“The cure is not a pill; it is trail miles, solitude, and the first soft light of morning as the sun crests a ridge and reaches down toward the forest floor. ”

According to the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, brook trout have been extirpated from about 90 percent of their native range. In the South specifically, I suppose we are fortunate that this number is closer to 40 percent; about halfway gone, however, is still a damn shame. When a brook trout habitat is lost, many other native species follow. We don’t simply lose a fish; we lose our forests.

I know that cure for my ills, the anxiety and darkness that can sometimes tinge the edges of my world, can be found in the same places where brook trout can be found. The cure lies in a flushing grouse, the melting tracks of a just-missed black bear in the last snow of winter, and the cold waters of a brook trout stream. The cure is not a pill; it is trail miles, solitude, and the first soft light of morning as the sun crests a ridge and reaches down toward the forest floor.

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“Brook trout are but one small species, a fragile, prehistori that the fortunate are able to encounter in our Southern

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ic jewel mountains.”

In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold wrote, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” I know only that I do not want to live in a world without wild things.

These while things rely upon wild places, and so do I. Brook trout are but one small species, a fragile, prehistoric jewel that the fortunate are able to encounter in our Southern mountains. They are, however, part of a much larger community of wild that we, as advanced primates slipping ever further from our past, cannot afford to lose.

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Photo: Steve Seinberg

By David Grossman Photos: Steve Seinberg

NO.34 | WINTER 2020

Traveling abroad in the offseason for saltwater fishing is an edge that cuts both ways.

Most lodges offer discounts making one of these trips actually doable with the proper scrimping and saving. On the other hand, nothing in life is free. In this case that 20 percent discount might cost you a higher likelihood of crap weather, or a skeleton staff who’s not as excited to see you as you are them. None of this really bothers me. Weather is part of the game we play no matter what time of year it’s played. I also don’t need nor enjoy anyone doting on me. Decent food on a plate, hot water in the shower, and sheets on the bed is all I require. A simple man with wayabove-average intelligence, that’s me. So with a few extra bucks in my pocket and mediocre expectations of permit in my heart, I was off to the Yucatan.

Walking into the enormous palapa at the lodge was a study in awkward silence. There was a bar, a kitchen, a dinner table with thirty chairs, and not a soul to be seen. Have you ever been to a place so quiet that when you talk outloud your own voice seems jarring? The manager’s footsteps coming up the stairs finally broke the silence. He seemed almost startled to see us, further driving home the prior awkwardness. He was brown-skinned and Mr. Clean bald. He immediately took an interest in my traveling companion, Steve. Almost as if they had met previously. He showed us to our room, let us know we were the only guests at the lodge, and informed us when dinner would be. Our encounter was as short as it was strained. I could have been mistaken, but during our brief conversation I picked up on a sense of what can only be described as pity tinged by guilt.

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My sleep that night was fitful. It could have been the newness of laying my head on an unfamiliar pillow or the impending deadlines to get words to paper. At those early moments I couldn’t help thinking that I might benefit from this ghost town of a lodge, robbing me of the social distractions I crave when a deadline is on the horizon.

The next morning, my previous night’s misgivings behind me, Steve and I wandered through the mangrove tunnels to meet our guide at the lodge’s dock. Upon arrival, I was surprised to find not one, but two guides standing next to each other welcoming us. They were dressed identically and were both saying something in Spanish in unison. It was hard to make out at first, but as we drew closer I could make it out:

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“Hola Steve. Ven a jugar con nosotros. Ven a jugar con nosotro Stve. Por Siempre y siempre y siempre”.

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"Steve swore he didn’t know what was going on, but unlike his mouth his face

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never lied.

"

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Weird. How did they know Steve? Why were they talking at the same time? What does “ven a jugar” mean? These questions were not answered until later, or even at all. The whole thing started to seem like a joke that everyone was in on but me. Steve swore he didn’t know what was going on, but unlike his mouth, his face never lied. Something was awry but fish would have to be caught if any writing was to be done. Steve was first on the bow and pulled a small permit within the first few feet of the first flat. As I made way to the sharp end of the boat, the clouds converged and the winds began to rip. Along with the clouds and the wind, my anger began to rise to a level equal to the swells now crashing over the bow.

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The clouds did not part nor did the wind die that da but no permit to hand. Back at the lodge our solitar over the property. The only face I saw was Steve’s. internally he was taking great joy from rubbing my fa write about my feelings. I poured my soul onto the p my margarita from the side table. When I turned my written was, “All bonefish and no permit makes Dav that same line. I knew I didn’t write it but there it wa

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ay. I managed to eek out a couple of nice bonefish, ry existence continued. Silence followed us all He didn’t gloat about his permit externally, but ace in it. After dinner, I adjourned to the lounge to page. With a sense of accomplishment, I grabbed y eyes back to the page the only thing that was ve an angry boy.” Page after page after page of as, like the ravings of a lunatic.

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When I turned my eyes back to the page the only thing that was written was, “All bonefish and no permit makes Dave an angry boy”.

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While my rational mind spun, my gut screamed it was Steve, or maybe that weird manager. Feeling the slightest bit discombobulated by this latest Stevian betrayal, I decided the only thing left to do was to confront him in a calm, reasonable manner.

I grabbed the machete by the shed and made my way to our room. I planned to ask Steve to join me for a beachside fire. The machete was to cut firewood. Obviously. But once Steve saw me he really started freaking out. I could see him through the window running around the room frantically with a wet pant leg, screaming something or other about not wanting to die. I tried to open the door but that rascal Steve had chained it shut. I was barely able to squeeze my head through the door and say, “It’s me, Dave.” I told him if he didn’t calm down I’d have to hack the chain lock off with my machete.

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Well this did nothing to ease his mania, so that’s exactly what I did. I hacked that chain with a single mighty hack. I burst through the door trying to tackle Steve so I could hug him tightly like an autistic child in the throes of a tantrum. Sadly Steve is not only wiry but slippery, like a watermelon covered in Crisco. He was able to squeeze past me and make his way into the mangrove jungle behind the lodge. I gave chase using the machete to hack my path all the while screaming, “Here comes Dave,” thinking the childlike language might soothe him. It did not. The last time I saw him, he was getting into the manager’s car, painting the jungle red with taillights bound for Tulum.

The next day I took the shuttle van back to Cancun with no permit, no Steve, and a burning desire to fish the prime season next time.

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Agoraphobia Be Damned

By David Grossman Photos: Steve Seinberg

Fly fishing is generally either solitary or up to a thr

up atop of my mountain of solitude. Of all the things that were given up, fis then fishing bubbles were established. Eventually those bubbles popped a here meant some stuff had to be reshuffled in the old brain box. I still have constantly evaluate everyone around me for chinks in their immunity armor but thinking about taking part in anything macro these days definitely still g

I have found myself at a crossroads. Do I retreat further into my tortoise sh respond to the salutations of my fellow fisherman with flashing crazy eyes, brain again to crave the community of more than three fishermen in the sam manner surrounded by my fishing peers?

reesome. This was my saving grace these past long months, holed

shing thankfully was not. Trips to the river continued, first in separate cars, and fishing almost felt completely back to the same old song. Getting third thoughts about shaking peoples hands, can’t stand crowds, and r. This mental fatalistic German opera doesn’t play out on the micro level, gives me pause.

hell and embrace the stoic, lonely side of fishing to the point where I hissing, and scampering away into the underbrush? Or do I retrain my me place at the same time? Hermit or old me? Die alone or in a viking

To find the answers to these, and many other questions of inadequacy, I entered The Charleston Fly Tournament.

It seemed like a safe space.

The thought of spending a few days in a convention center with poor ventilation seemed like too much, and the show organizers agreed and canceled the thing anyway. A Lowcountry redfish tournament is the perfect locale for moistening my big toe back into the world: Social interaction, but not too much social interaction, old friends and dudes I met digitally last year and have never put a name to a handle, and the chance of winning the whole damned thing.

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After the first day, that chance stood at zero. The second day of the tournament didn’t do anything to change that. Luckily, losing to redfish is a look I wore well prepandemic and one I will probably still sport long after these dark days are a distant memory. Mercifully, it was a matter of very few fish seen and not operator error this time around, which is a moral victory in and of itself.

Tongue out of cheek, fly fishing tournaments have never been competitive in most of my circles. More just an excuse for the clans to gather and celebrate something, anything. They nicely make the micro into macro and remind all of us that while our numbers are not many, they are all a little lovably off. Being a part of something is human, and whether we like it or not we’re all stuck with each other.

I honestly can't stand to hang out with anyone else anymore. At least we still have something to talk about.

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I’m still apprehensive of the outside world, but heading down to Charleston being amongst the like-minded felt pretty damn good.

I don’t think any of us got into this weird world of disadvantaged fishing to be the most popular kid at school, but on the other hand, if no one’s around to look at that picture of the fish on your phone while standing around a brewery parking lot, did you even really catch it?

After my little social experiment I’m craving time spent amongst our tribe more and more, but let’s just agree to keep it fist bumps for now.

Editor’s Note: I tested negative for Covid when I got home after the tournament, but mysteriously wound up with a wicked case of gout. Thanks, Obama.

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deal By matt smythe art: Peter perch

NO.36 | SUMMER 2020

When I was four or five, I watched my mother carrying me into the hospital.

From above, like the blackbirds floating against blue, heads cocked, I watched.

Fading into and out of the dark.

The sun is barely over Bare Hill. Certain thoughts should not be given this much light.

Summer is over at the speed I'm driving.

This road heads south.

At the end of this backbone will be the promised land, I'm sure.

Signs in truck stop windows tell me on the way in, cleanest rooms.

On the way out, please come again!

I can't say I won't.

I've been here before.

Oh to reach that promised land.

Oh to drive until daylight's gone.

Oh to drive all night.

Oh to find cheap gas.

Oh why the hell am I leaving?

Oh road (you'd better be worth it).

12:38am somewhere between Beckley and the Appalachians.

The waitress smokes between tables.

Seven truckers use payphones.

Two elderly couples are having eggs, toast and sausage.

My coffee is half gone. The waitress slides over with a refill, winks. She never brought the bill.

I left $2 and an empty mug.

Dreams come. Almost always they involve great heights.

Rooftops, cliffs, mountain tops, bridges.

I'm always surrounded by people I know but do not recognize.

There's always a woman. Always a woman there.

I wake as she allows me to touch her. It is never daylight.

This time I'm parked at an abandoned gas station.

Columbus, Georgia.

The old bar hasn't changed except for the employees.

It's been 10 years. A beer for old-time’s sake.

A second for the emptiness.

It’s an off night. Stale and overwhelmingly quiet.

I wanted the place to be packed like it was when I left.

Once I saw a gator snatch a deer by the head and drag it flailing into a small lake near here.

We were fishing for bass in a 15-foot jon boat along a weed bed 50 yards from the explosion.

The deer was quietly sipping at the shore.

We left the water ringing with the growing concentric silence and blackbirds lighting out from the trees.

Years later blackbirds still remind me.

I don't drive through Fort Benning to my old barracks.

I don't stop for cheap gas or to buy an air assault sticker from the US Cavalry.

I do make a couple phone calls to answering machines.

I forgot everything just across the bridge in Phenix City (Alabama).

Iforgetting was used to in these parts.

I was used to forgetting in these parts. I had been this way with Eric (road trip, Memphis).

Graceland would set us free and his Honda Civic would get us there.

He hadn't changed the oil in almost 10,000 miles.

It was dead Elvis week. We forgot about the Army.

We drank all the way. We mocked the King.

We stumbled down Beale Street.

Beale Street at night. It hadn't moved, but something in me did. Everything did.

I sat down on the curb. I was 100 years old right then.

Left over and full of nothing. That night I made a deal with myself over the toilet.

I had made this deal before with whiskey and beer.

There's something empowering about making a deal.

The finality is settling.

When sleep came, it was like I was dead.

Blackbird-black and real quiet.

I’d like to believe that. When you die nothing comes and gets you.

Nothing snatches you away screaming to the fire and pain.

When I die, I’ll just slip back into the dark like a bass returned to its shadows.

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By Allen Gillespie Photos: Phil Savage

A TWRA officer once confided in me that th Orchard Access after dark on summer nigh

Clinch River except for a few hardheaded fools chasing imagined glory d It’s not that our Southern Appalachian winters are overly harsh, they’re n mains long after the kudzu has been rolled up to reveal all of East Tenne uary days that descend upon us like an epidemic. What’s worse, the hill ward and grab any eastern bound weather front and wring it of its conte lingers for months on end.

razies NO.6 | WINTER 2013

“The dam is bare, and immobile, and lonely, just standing there.

Norris Dam is what it should be: finished, unromantic and working.”

Ernie Pyle

he devil dances in the gravel lot at Peach hts. This time of year don’t nobody dance along the banks of the

dredged from the swift currents belched from the belly of Norris Dam. not. It’s just that the same humidity, which thrills the devil in July reessee’s warts and scars, and it chills you to the bones on the short Janls surrounding the Clinch River valley in Anderson County reach skyents making humidity a bona fide fact in the form of precipitation, which

A scant six miles upstream from the devil’s dance floor at the Peach Orchard ramp, Norris Dam sits in silent occupation; a coldwater factory built on the back of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. The first project of TVA, construction on Norris Dam began in October of 1933 and was completed some 886 days later as concrete evidence of Weber’s central tenant. Norris’ linear façade sits in stark contrast to the natural lines of the surrounding hills. Its speckled and streaked surface now resemble the belly of a shoat hog laid out in an early spring sun. Trapped behind the concrete is a catchment area of 2,912 square miles with a capacity of over 2,552,000 acreft. Some 3,000-odd souls were displaced by the rising waters, which covered one of the most fertile valleys in the area, a fact which still finds its way into our conversation nearly 100 years later. At 265 feet high, Norris is not the tallest of the regions’ many dams, but it is sufficiently deep to churn out a conveyor belt of oxygen-infused water, which is chilled yearround to a near constant 50 degrees by the darkness lurking at the bottom of Norris lake.

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photo: Louis Cahill

I grew up fishing the Clinch and have seen it in every season and color. Perhaps due to this intimacy I have always viewed the Clinch as the most manufactured of TVA’s Southern tailwater fisheries. At low flows, the Clinch consists of ten miles of pools interspersed by perpendicular monolithic shoals. It is nearly devoid of any resemblance to the freestone rivers one typically associates with prime trout waters, and as such can test the abilities of even the most seasoned angler. It may also be the most productive water you’ve ever fished, depending on the day, and that’s what keeps you returning for more. If the Clinch had a more constant flow it would arguably be the best tailwater fishery in the country. Unfortunately for us tortured souls, TVA isn’t in the business of growing fish and the river ebbs and flows with the vagaries of the valley’s power demands. While bucolic in nature when off, at full pull, with both turbines turning, the steady relentlessness of the flow belies its industrial origin. And at 8,350 cubic feet per second, it’s a fool’s game to even attempt to chase trout, particularly with a fly rod.

Fools and optimists still abound in East Tennessee. On cold, dreary J and threes, emerging from trucks with hippopotamus-colored bags s and bottles of bonded whiskey. Tin sleds are loaded in the muffled sil penance for the sins lying in the darkness upstream. On most days ev a condolence, and to ease tired shoulders and sore elbows. Every so the river becomes whole again in the exuberance of the moment.

January days they make their ways to the edge of the Clinch in twos slung over shoulders and overflowing with monumental yellow boxes lence of the swollen river and a routine set about in order to pay ven well placed offerings go unnoticed and so the whiskey serves as o often, however, golden absolution is ripped from the slipstream and

other photos courtesy of the Library of Congress

COHUTTA FISHING COMPANY WWW.COHUTTAFISHINGCO.COM 490 EAST MAIN ST | BLUE RIDGE, GA | 706 946 3044

GUIDED TRIPS AND TRAVEL

Atonement

By Louis Cahill

It was the mid of summer, and the old people said they could not remember one hotter. The

man’s work was hard and honest. He toiled like a revenant with the pressure washer as if, along with the soot and grime, he might also wash away his sins and be clean. He thirsted but he did not drink. He hungered but he did not eat.

He had spent the whole of the night before arguing with the woman. She was angered by his fishing and could not understand his helplessness in the situation, nor that fishing was a thing he must do and had no choice in. Today he would fish again, and tonight the woman 232

would again be angry.

On the boat his stomach growled and was empty but only whisky did he offer to quiet his troubled gut. He explained, at great length, to his companion about the woman’s unreasonable nature and how she loathed the fishing, and the more he explained the less he understood and the more he looked to the whisky for answers.

There came a time when he had done so much explaining that he could no longer cast the rod he held and thought his drunken hands best put to work pulling the oars. He sat in the rower’s seat with the whisky and he pulled both on the

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oars and the bottle until all was black, and in fear of his life, and what might become of the vessel, his companion had to run back and drop the anchor.

He was not small of stature and his companion, thinking he would move the man to another seat, managed only to place him over the cooler, his face against the hull and his haunches thrust to the sky.

At the takeout, his companion thought of moving him from the boat, but feared he might only drown the man in some unholy baptism and so left him there, hailing an Uber to where they had left his rig. If upon his return, the man was still intact, and his pants undisturbed, he would tether the boat and wench it with the

man aboard.

So it was done and he took the man to his house where he would rest fitfully upon the couch and dream of fishes. In the morning he would awake with suspicion and regret about his actions. He would make apologies to his companion’s wife and he would make the long drive home in silence, thinking of the cruelty of time in its persistence and how he must make a full accounting of his actions, first to the woman and again to his employer. He would set about atoning for his sins and he would promise not to fish and not to drink, though he knew he would do both.

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NO.29 | FALL 2018

Brook Trout on the Moon

By Jason Tucker Photos: Louis Cahill

They say there are brook trout on the moon. Neil Armstrong didn’t talk

about it, but he fished for them. If you look really close in those grainy videos, just over his shoulder you can see streams in the mountains in the distance.

To get there, you must climb back into your lunar module and take off for the dark side of the moon, and land in a spot called Georgia. Then you drive north into the Smokies.

You will drive a bad switchback road up to the top of the mountain, and then hike a worse switchback trail back down to the creek. It won’t be a river.

I know you’re thinking, “Hey man, Georgia isn’t on the moon!” That’s a sign you’ve never been to Georgia. Ask the brook trout and they’ll tell you. They rode a glacier here at least 10 thousand years ago and have been stranded ever since, a northern fish in the Deep South, surrounded by a steamy hot subtropical jungle full of bears, snakes and hillbillies, cut off from their brethren in neighboring creeks, with no hope of getting home. Like that Martian guy, they’ve settled in and made the most of it.

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I crash landed in Georgia a few years back, a Michigan man of southern roots, like a young bird migrating to a place he has never been. It is in the nature of man to yearn for home in the place of his removal, and so it was that I sought out the brook trout in their southern redoubts on the dark side of the moon, in a place called Georgia.

On my first outing, I performed no propitiations, an agnostic in search of empirical truth. I caught nothing but brown trout.

A kindly wood fairy told me, “Go further up the mountain, dumbass,” and I tossed her a Jolly Rancher as an offering to no avail.

If you have ever fished for brook trout, you know you can’t just go after them—there are gods to appease. Up north I knew the lucky charms, the incantations, the alignments of planets and stars, and where to leave gifts for the wood elves and nymphs.

“Do you have the Parodis? You need to offer blackberry brandy. Chant some lines from Traver.

It doesn’t hurt to read aloud from the book of Geirach.”

Before heading out again, I consulted my friend Alex, a brook trout shaman of the North.

“Which chapter and verse?”

“Pick one.”

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Heeding Alex’s advice, the next Sunday I drove around and read the religious signs in people’s yards in lieu of church on my way to the creek. I caught one beautiful male brookie at the culvert—not the success I was hoping for. There it was at last: the Southern Appalachian brook trout. This was a good omen, but here in the devout South I wasn’t so sure. What if there are other Southern gods to appease? Are there mountain gods? College football wood elves? The Baby Jesus fairy? The Real Housewives of Atlanta nymphs? Joel Osteen?

On my next trip I wore my lucky Two Hearted Ale t-shirt with the brook trout on the back and donned my lucky hat. As my feet touched the waters, a brook trout the color of flame appeared, beckoning me to follow upstream. I caught several fish, and yet still something was missing. I took counsel to consider my ways.

I called Louis Cahill, a high priest of the Southern Brook Trout Church.

“You got any tips for me?”

“Yeah, man. Have you ever been baptized?”

“Sure. Wait. What? I’m not really. . .”

“I can offer you tips all day, but until you’re baptized in a brook trout stream, you’re not saved. I’ll be in Blue Ridge Saturday if you want to get this done. Until then, good luck.”

So it was that I met Louis, priest of the Most High Brook Trout and received my salvation, to Fontinalis be the glory and honor forever and ever. Amen.

For my next trip, I wore the lucky hat and tee. I drove around and read church signs with the radio playing gospel. I brought the appropriate libations. I went to Golden Pantry and bought communion biscuits (gas station biscuits being the wafer of choice around here). I left offerings for the elves and nymphs and burned Parodi incense at the top of the mountain. I paid my tithe at the Dollar General. I uttered dark words it is not lawful for a man to speak to the rulers of the shadowed valleys, and muttered oaths at the shrub gods who guard every hole and lie. I chanted Traver and read Holy Scripture aloud from the Book of Geirach. I made blood sacrifices to the mosquitos and bullwhip vines. Then, and only then, did I descend to the creek to fish.

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I fished and I flailed without success. In a frenzy, I cursed the valley and stream. I implored the heavens at the top of my lungs and profaned the holy mountain. Then it was that I slipped on the curved bedrock beneath, and falling backward was immersed. For long moments the current held me in its thrall. Fearing it was I being taken in sacrifice, enclosed in darkness until I beheld the Abyss; then was I miraculously released from that icy purgatory and washed out into the hole below. Arising from the waters humbled but unharmed I realized the truth. Brook trout, like grace, cannot be bought or earned, only attained. The important thing is to keep going up the mountain.

Maybe that’s why Neil Armstrong never went back to the moon. Everyone knows he played golf on the moon; very few know he fished for brook trout. He never spoke of it. Even Neil wasn’t going to give up a spot like that.

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island of the

damned

By David Grossman Photos: Steve Seinberg and Rand Harcz

NO.30 | WINTER 2019

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Looking back on the totality of what happened, I should’ve seen everything going off the tracks long before the whole thing actually derailed. There are

always signposts you blow by on your way to wherever the hell it is you wind up. One of them would have been the forecast of cloudy days with north winds. Another would’ve been the whole case of the wrong beer bought mistakenly. Even with bad weather and undrinkable beer, I have never seen such rapid devolvement of a recreational situation. Little did we all know, when we beached the boats on the island, one of us wouldn’t be leaving.

The plan was beautiful in its simplicity: Head down to Florida and escape winter’s cold shoulder. We’d meet some friends who live down there, claim an island in the lagoon, and enjoy a few days on easy street. When one occupies an island for multiple days, certain rules must be followed: Flats must be close, the beer store must be close, and anyone else must be far away. Other than that the general rules of a civil society apply. At least that was my belief before I reached the island.

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“When we awoke, th mildew in its wake. may have been more

There were eight of us. Four from the mountains: Galen, Rand, Brian and I, and four from the beach: Noah, Josh, Steve, and Big Dave. After the boats were unloaded and our backs broken by the weight of booze, poultry, and pork, we spent the rest of the evening in the throes of revelry as if we were really conquerors or pirates taking an island by force (not by 60 horses, as was the actual situation).

Our sleep was deep, and filled with hope for the days to come.

Late that night, a strong storm roiled our camp and soaked everything not under cover. When we awoke, the rain had passed leaving only the foul odor of mildew in its wake. That mildew pervaded everything in a way that may have been more than natural, but less than supernatural.

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he rain had passed leaving only the foul odor of That mildew pervaded everything in a way that e than natural, but less than supernatural.”

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The fish were hard to find that first day, and when we did occa as possible out of our sight. It was almost like they could sme poled, and scanned for hours with nothing to show for it. Pulli tive, but I could tell the beach folk were just on the edge of he are commenting on how awesome it is, “just to be out,” and h campfire. When everyone on a fishing trip is talking about any

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asionally find a specimen, they avoided us moving as fast ell the mildew of doom on us. We reeked of it. We motored, ing back into the island that night, the mood was still posiedging. I’ve seen this whole scenario play out before. People how the barbecue is “extra moist” when enjoyed around the ything but the fishing, you know where things are heading.

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“I tried to restore balance to the island with reason and more whisky.”

The next day was much as the first—searching, losing, more searching, and finally despair. The emotional state around the fire the second night was unmistakably more somber than the first. The weight of the fishing pressed down on all of us and made each man around the fire feel as if he was a powerless boy again. Nothing to be done and no ability to change fate. At some point in the evening, things started getting really weird. A level of distrust had been building between the mountain tribe and the beach clan. Mountain folk are distrustful by nature, and beach people tend to talk about how good things are all

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the times when you’re not there. Rounds of whiskey, four beer can chickens, various holistic and medicinal berries, herbs, and fungus foraged from the island were consumed and the flames grew. I’m not sure the precise moment the levee broke, but what at first was just under the surface suddenly erupted all over us, like a Mt. Vesuvius of indignities. Threats were flying as freely as the shirts off the beach clan’s backs. As the only bridge between the two parties, I tried to restore balance to the island with reason and more whisky.

Both sides were quiet until the whisky was poured, and it looked as if things would hold for the night. This turned out not to be the case.

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“The pressure of no fish and tribal warfare must have been too much for the young lad. We tried to coax him out with various carrots of bacon, beer and the like.”

I wasn’t sure who lit Rand’s tent on fire in the middle of the night, until the next morning when I saw him scurrying through the woods in what was left of his board shorts fashioned into a sort of crude loin cloth. Damndest thing I ever saw. Rand was always the good-natured one, never a mean thing to say and always quick with his infectious giggle. I guess the nicest ones always break the hardest. The pressure of no fish and tribal warfare must have been too much for the young lad. We tried to coax him out with various carrots of bacon, beer, and

the like. But it soon became apparent that island Rand was not a benevolent marine creature.

It started with defecation of the boat hatches, and urine-soaked flies in boxes. The beach clan were the first to abandon ship, or island so to speak. We really had no expectations that they would be of any use. You know, beach people. I heard they went north and caught fish...typical. It was now down to the three of us to somehow bring Rand back from way over the edge. We spent the next 12 hours in what can only be called a chess match of jungle warfare.

Traps were set, fluids were flung, and the three of us came to know what true horror looks like: a quarteracre island in the middle of the Indian River Lagoon. I won’t recount the atrocities that Rand committed that day upon us, but the sheer brutality of the affair still leaves me screaming in the nights. We weren’t proud of ourselves but we had to leave Rand on the island.

The five-minute ride back to the boat ramp was silent save the drone of the motor. But in that silence we all knew leaving Rand scurrying about the island was the only choice. What he had become could not be released on the rest of you.

I know some will find leaving Rand in that state unacceptable in their eyes. All I can say is that their eyes didn’t see what we saw.

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Word has it some locals have been hearing strange things on the island since we left, and a few have even claimed of spotting what they referred to as a “skunk ape” skulking about the island. As I write these words describing this horrid affair, I know this tale sounds too tall to believe. But this is the story of the island of the damned exactly as I remember it. (And Rand’s still on the island. He texts. A lot.)

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To The People of Tennessee Re: The Dildos

NO.29 | FALL 2018

Dear Neighbors of Tennessee,

table to the river, do they? Y’all have been throwing them in We, on this side of the mountain, there, and at an alarming rate. I feel like it’s not plausible to think truly enjoy fishing your very fertile waters. Your rivers and lakes you’re just driving down the road with a dildo in the passenger harbor trout, musky, and bass seat, happen to see a bridge that we not only covet, but care and say, “Hey, I should throw my for deeply—some of us even more than our own tar heel vari- dildo out the window.” No, these eties. We share the water, beers, are planned abandonments of your dildos. Why? You don’t lies, and a love for these mounhave to be ashamed for owntains. With all of this common ing a dildo, but you do have to ground, we consider y’all famstop throwing them in the water. ily (like rowdy cousins from the other side). And as family, I think I’m quite sure that a dildo will freak fish out. It certainly freaks it’s time we talk. We’ve noticed over the past couple of years an us out. Why can’t you dispose alarming trend in your backyard. of your dildos in the trash like normal people? Sometimes we Dildos, Tennessee. Dildos. Note just don’t get you. So I think the plural here. In the past two what we’re trying to say here is years, we’ve found at least five if you guys are into dildos, that’s dildos in your waters. Five. The okay. None of our business. Let’s first one near McMinnville came with a strap attached. We raised just maybe dispose of them in a way that we, on this side of the our eyebrows, but what you do in the privacy of your own homes mountain, don’t have to keep finding them when we’re fishis none of our business. (Even if it is some really kinky shit.) Then ing. That’s fair, right? Maybe we another one and another one. By change that UT orange to a nice non-offensive beige while we’re the time the pictured specimen was found in the Nolichucky this at it. Too far? Okay. summer, we decided it was time for a chat. What’s going on here, Sincerely, Tennessee? I’ve never found a Your brothers from another dildo in a stream in North Carolina, only on your side of the line. mother in NC Why is that? Dildos don’t grow feet, and walk from the bedside

coast

By J.T. Van Zandt

NO.9 | FALL 2013

The Gulf Coast of Texas offers an unexpected beauty to those determined enough to discover it. It’s a harsh beauty that exists deep in the under-

standing that the sea will eventually claim everything that hasn’t already been destroyed by the salt and sun, and sometimes you wish Mother Nature would speed up the process.

Twisted iron remains of industry and discarded dilapidation of every sort create habitat for clinging barnacles and oyster shell amongst vast nothingness that quietly awaits the next storm to be slightly rearranged. Roaming mud flats appear as a desert covered with 10 inches of water wherein during a low tide more life can be observed in one scoop of the black, pitted, wet earth than is exists in all of Houston’s Harris County.

Being familiar with this place is to understand Texas on a deeper level. One of the most fertile and productive systems of bays and estuaries in the world until we deemed it and all of its contents unsuitable for human consumption─at least in any quantities exceeding one 8-oz filet a month per adult male beyond reproductive age.

A sad truth that confirms mankind as the mindless monster that it is.

There are scant few postcards from this region and there are not any convincing billboard signs stating that you have arrived in paradise. Your significant other is unlikely to be chomping at the bit to return anytime soon after you’ve abandoned her in the heat, stuck to the moist sand with a stinging sensation from having tried to enter the water for relief from the relentless oppression of waiting for you to return from your pursuits to the car parked off the causeway near a canal. Being left alone to navigate the terrain of the locals should not be attempted.

Oh, the days of my youth and how I was introduced to those ghosts of the flats. Skating through the slick black mud with the cumbersome grace of a novice rollerblader, pushing endless schools of mullet with an 80-foot cast overhead until my active silhouette disappeared into the sunset only to be seen again by nightfall as a slumped figure in a shrimper bar wondering how could I have been so sure that there were redfish all around me and not catch any? The truth that I chased them all away took me years to realize.

The typical sportsmen of this area are a product of the harsh environment, and are no friend to this place.

An obvious bunch of roughneck descent whose presence creates an uncomfortable and unfortunate vibe that fits right in with the likes of an uncontrollable wild pig population.

Flailing around in this aquamarine wilderness with an obscene disregard for all living things. Overpowered outboards screaming for relief from their redlined existences, all the while carving deep lines through the delicate balance with their props like the devil’s claw, thus ruining everything God ever intended. To view the prop scars created in the seagrass by satellite imagery is to study the

course the worm tracks as it randomly devours its host.

These are not bad people, just uninformed. It is unfair to generalize, as all of our hands are soiled here.

Most are as good as any conservative Christian who has manifested their lack of true knowledge into a belief that everything is theirs for the taking, an entitlement of bounty provided by Christ. They are intent on defending that belief relentlessly with resistance to any form of intellect or reason. We blew our only shot at true understanding of this estuary system when we massacred the Karankawas before studying the ways that they had successfully fished the Texas coast for thousands of years by canoe. It was way too important to exterminate a peaceful people than to study their indigenous ways, so here we are without understanding and thus, whatever catch these misguided anglers are able to entice with frozen shrimp and cut bait are plucked from the sea, frozen into bricks and stacked high in the box freezer like a file of a soon-to-be forgotten species, piles of which are then simply to be added to the next weekend and so on and so on. Takers that take, and take, and take.

Luckily for the Fly Fisherman, these boats and their over-weighted corpulent i equipment failure) to several feet of water, anchored in open bay and forever b and shoreline for the Fly Fisherman, and without a doubt driving fish deeper in

Once in the marsh and beyond the early stages of your learning and the misfo up the idea that anyone is going to help you to learn to fly fish on the Texas co means possible and have learned the subtle differences between the disturba laser focus on a level equal to your forefathers who depended on it. All the flo fore the sun will be far beyond you. All of that fueled ego and smell of gasoline graphite under load and heaving from the bay chop and inconsistent revving o mosquitoes in your ear and the occasional biting black fly at your calves.

Your eyes twitch back and forth as you pick up quivering movements from a c reflective world and you can’t breathe in it. And there it is, finally, an obvious f great blue heron hunting bait to your side. No more 80-foot casts, you’d line 1 and you spook a redfish within a foot away. A flush of disaster drains your lun mud and grass until it shot like a bronze torpedo without a target across the fl sive croaks of alarm vibrating through the water, up your legs and into your ch

inhabitants are eventually committed and thankfully confined (usually due to banished from the shallows, thus leaving millions of acres of shallow marsh nto the shallow marsh with a desperation to escape all of the commotion.

ortunate minglings with the previously mentioned crowd, once you’ve given oast, once you’ve learned to get deep in the marsh on your own by whatever ances of mullet schools and single redfish, you’ll then discover an ability to oating fish carcasses at the marina, and the odd tongue and the laughter bee gone and that horrible distraction of enraged rattling corks slapping bent of engines now of no more consequence to you than the constant buzz of

complete food chain in a periphery that feels like a giant balloon around your feed 100 yards away, but you know better than to move any faster than the 10 fish you haven’t seen yet. Blood is pounding in you like a demon tied up ngs and slumps your posture. Invisible in gin clarity lying camouflaged in the flat leaving swirls of black silt with every propulsion. You could feel its percushest cavity.

As you recover each nerve individually, a strange curved line of light vs. dark appears beyond the glare of the surface 30 feet away. It is there because you believe it to be. A strange natural serpentine of contrast like a giant dragon kite in a Japanese parade dancing in the translucent overlaid mirror image of billowing thunderheads above. You beg for forgiveness for having judged the locals so harshly; you now realize that they are as vital as the prickly pear and the fire ant to keeping this marsh undiscovered. There is no visible horizon. A beam of sunlight reveals an iridescent bluish pink fin that brushes through the surface film like fingers emerging from the grave.

You forget what you’ve learned about casting but your leader twists out with a delicate unpredicted intention. You see a flare of aggression as your line is straightened and tightened by the animal of your dreams and you’ve done it! No one can take it away and you return to the shrimper bar as happy and content as you can remember with the beauty of the Texas coast suffusing throughout your being.

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Photo: Steve Seinberg

FEB2022|no.42

Photo: Dave Fason

The Back Page

with Paul Puckett and Mike Benson I haven’t fished in months, and somehow that doesn’t matter (the first time in my life I can say that). Most of my friends have been stuck in their homes, many have had time to sneak off and find a piece of water to themselves, or with a strategically distanced friend. But due to the nature of my job as an ICU nurse, I’ve been working more than ever.

My city hasn’t been hit hard in all this mess like others, and I haven’t been working with the COVID-19 patients as much as I’d feared in the beginning, but I’m still pulling four 12-hour shifts per week with sick and dying patients, and now, without the escape that fishing has offered in years past. I keep myself isolated from my friends, because I love them too much to put them in harm’s way just because I want to wet a line. I could fish solo, but while casting to fish and poling at the same time is doable, it’s not what I would call enjoyable. Normally I’d make some attempt at a witty, introspective point of view on this to share with you here on the back page. But I’ll be honest with you—I’m tired.

NO.35 | SPRING 2020

I’m tired of the isolation, tired of being afraid, tired of what I know, and tired of what I don’t know. The world seems dark and ominous, like an afternoon thunderstorm rolling in from a distance. You can see it on the horizon, hear its rumble, smell the rain on the air. When it hits, it's all chaos and terror. But I’ve lived through enough storms on the water to know that after the rage comes the quiet. The sweet, cool, fresh air filling your lungs, the restless water settling into a flat mirror sheen. A peace settles in to calm your nerves and you even get a free boat wash out of the deal. And let’s be honest— is there a better beer on this planet than the one you crack open to watch a sunset over the water after an evening storm?

The storm is still here, still raging, it's hard to see the end of it, but there is an end. There is always an end. So, go ahead and put some beer on ice. It's gonna be one hell of a sunset.

S.C.O.F Magazine | issue no. 41 | fall 2021