SCOF - Summer 2022 - Issue no. 44

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S.C.O.F ISSUE NO.44 . SUMMER 2022

southern culture

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SCOF summer Fluffer

Photo: IRL, Florida, August 2022, Steve Seinberg

Photo: White RIver, Arkansas - August 2021, Dave Fason

2011

Photo: East Tennessee - 2011, Steve Seinberg

Photo: IRL, Florida, August 2022, Steve Seinberg

Photo: Seville, Spain - August 2022, Peter Perch

8

scof summer fluffer

26 a

letter from dave

30

haiku

36

scof outpost fl:

david grossman

burn it all down

by

david grossman photos: steve seinberg

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doug's fishing hole by jason tucker photos: louis cahill

86 fur

and feather matinee

fishing with jay - no.12

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nocturnal mission

106

stratergizing

114

mrs. vandingham

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the back page

by david grossman photos: rand harcz

family feud edition

david grossman

with paul puckett and mike benson

no. 44

WE DON’T JUST FISH FOR THE FISHING, WE FISH TO FEEL IT IN OUR SOUL. T H AT ’ S W H Y, F O R O U R E I G H T H R E V O L U T I O N I N G R A P H I T E , WE BROUGHT THE FOCUS BACK TO RHYTHM AND AWARENESS— S O Y O U C A N T R U LY F E E L T H E E N E R G Y H A P P E N I N G I N E V E R Y S I N G L E M O M E N T O N T H E W AT E R .

With R8 technology, we enhance that two-way connection from hand to fly and back for greater feel, flow and control.

s.c.o.f summer 2022

issue no. 44

penultimate issue editor co-publisher:

David Grossman creative director co-publisher:

Steve Seinberg

contributors: Dave Fason Paul Puckett Mike Benson Peter Perch Jay Johnson Noah Miller Rand Harcz Jason Tucker Louis Cahill

copy editor emeritus: Lindsey Grossman ombudsman: Rand Harcz general inquiries and submissions: info@southerncultureonthefly.com advertising information: info@southerncultureonthefly.com

cover image: Peter Perch, 2022

www.southerncultureonthefly.com 22

all content and images © 2022 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 SONAR TITAN TROPICAL/JUNGLE CLEAR TIP “The Scientific Anglers Sonar Titan Jungle Clear Tip is my choice for fishing Amazonian Dorado in the Bolivian mountains. Its unique taper turns over big streamers in a single cast – crucial when you face a feeding frenzy or a dorado crossing right in front you and only have seconds to make the shot.”

- Marcelo Perez, SA Advisor

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A letter from Dave, the editor...

SUMMER 2022 How’s your karma? You know, the ancient philosophy of doing good brings good back to you, karma?

Have you recently performed acts of kindness for no other reason than the kindness itself? Have you held the door an extra 30 seconds for an old person, or even resisted the urge to run that old person over as they and their walker slowly elder-spread their way through the entire door, holding up pedestrian traffic to the point of causing psychosis in any normal human? Have you given a drifter a ride down a lonely highway? Or even, moved a turtle out of the path of certain squashing? I am not religious, but I do think karma is either a bitch, or a fairy godmother, depending on how you go through this world.

If karma is the invisible hand in everyday life, then fishing karma is the big foam finger on the end of the shirtless, painted man’s stubby T-Rex arm. The first caveman who threw something at some primordial fish, muttered some sort of guttural prayer to the fish gods beforehand. Those fish gods are karma and karma is the fish gods, and they both grow angry when we act like dicks. You will catch more and better fish by simply acting like our parents and teachers taught us to act. Give people plenty of room on the water. If you see someone struggling, take two minutes to help them out and kick them the right fly.

If you see a guy with a boat on the side of the road, pull over and see if you can help. I don’t do these things because I’m a nice person, or I give a shit about my fellow man. I do these things to sacrifice at the altar of the fish gods. If the fish gods paid dividends on every asshole’s tires I slashed that cut me off in East Tennessee, the sound of hissing from the collective tires I would slash would make the hollers sing with my rage. But unfortunately, fishing karma works on more of a kindergarten model. Fish are only given for good behavior.

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This is one system you do not want to fight. Fishing is the only of life’s venues where the nice guy finishes first. We all know folks on the water who don’t treat fishing as a sport as much as they treat it like a war. Scorching the flat may buy temporary glory, but being hated by everyone all the time is no way to go through a fishing life. Plus, I’m pretty sure that's how 8 out of 10 fishing-related traumatic injuries to the groin occur.

So think about that the next time you sneakily mark a guide’s spot on your phone when you think they’re not looking (they know by the way, and that’s 3 out of 8 traumatic groin injuries right there).

So fishing karma is pretty simple: Do good things, and catch more and better fish. Be a dick, and get kicked in the dick.

Simple.

Now to the elephant in the boat: Some of y’all might have been shocked by the theme of this edition, the “Penultimate Issue.” Those of you who weren’t shocked should really read more, build up that vocab. Anyway, ‘tis true, we will be shuttering our doors after the fall issue in November. We know you have questions, concerns, a little blind rage maybe? It’s been an amazing run and I swear I’ll give a better explanation of how we got here in the next issue, but until that last rager issue of SCOF, please enjoy this “Penultimate” one.

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NO. 1 FALL 2011

NO. 2 WINTER 2012

NO. 3 SPRING 2012

NO. 12 SUMMER 2014

NO. 13 FALL 2014

NO. 14 WINTER 2015

NO. 23 SPRING 2017

NO. 24 SUMMER 2017

NO. 25 FALL 2017

NO. 34 WINTER 2020

NO. 35 SPRING 2020

NO. 4 SUMMER 2012

NO. 5 FALL 2012

NO. 6 WINTER 20

NO. 15 SPRING 2015

NO. 16 SUMMER 2015

NO. 17 FALL 2015

NO. 26 WINTER 2018

NO. 27 SPRING 2018

NO. 28 SUMMER

NO. 37 FALL 2020

NO. 38 WINTER 2021

NO. 39 SPRING 2

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

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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

NO. 36 SUMMER 2020 S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

Everything that Matters

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NO. 7 SPRING 2013

NO. 8 SUMMER 2013

NO. 9 FALL 2013

NO. 10 WINTER 2014 S.C.O.F issue no. 21

NO. 11 SPRING 2014 fall 2016

olde time fudge shoppe

THE

ReJiggering

SCOF

MAG

STILL FREE

5

2018

2021

southern culture

NO. 18 WINTER 2016

NO. 19 SPRING 2016

NO. 20 SUMMER 2016

NO. 29 FALL 2018

NO. 30 WINTER 2019

NO. 31 SPRING 2019

NO. 32 SUMMER 2019

NO. 40 SUMMER 2021

NO. 41 FALL 2021

NO. 42 WINTER 2022

NO. 43 SPRING 2022

S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

NO. 21 FALL 2016

NO. 22 WINTER 2017

NO. 33 FALL 2019

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Haiku

with David Grossman

The lights have come on.

You don’t have to go home but, Please don’t pass out here.

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Rolled with our most advanced compound taper construction to date, NRX+ S provides the power, line speed, and loop stability expected from modern fast-action rods, without compromising “feel” and finesse for short shots when clouds turn the lights down. NRX+ empowers anglers with confidence-boosting control in less-than-ideal situations.

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SCOF Outpost Florida: Burn it all Down

By David Grossman Photos: S teve Sein berg

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Seven years ago, half of Team SCOF moved

to the east coast of Florida to live and frolic among the tarpon, redfish and snook. With no tides to interfere, Steve was left to fish every day the wind would allow.

In those seven years, rarely a day passed without a call, text, or picture invading my phone to alert me how good the fishing was—how living on the salt was really the only way to take advantage of the small windows when all the elements come together and saltwater fly fishing success becomes possible, if not probable.

These windows never correlated to my many, many trips to Steve’s backyard by the way. Seven years of “you should come back in the spring” or “it doesn't always blow 20 out of the north, I swear.” No, all the advantages Steve had gained by making the big move were Steve’s and Steve’s alone. Like an insolent toddler, I was begrudgingly shoved a few pity fish over the years.

A well earned redfish here, a slot size blind cast snook there. Just enough to keep me coming back with hopes of Steve opening up his full chest of toys to share with me. But no, the Florida Outpost was a one-way street, and that street dead-ended in Steve’s greedy mits.

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While the benefits of my fishwife living five minutes from the closest tarpon were mostly lost on me, it did not suck having a boat and someone to pole it parked in Florida. For those of you who have never partaken that far south, it’s a lot like South Carolina, except you can see the fish and they might be something other than redfish. In Steve’s time in Florida, I’ve learned a lot of things in my failures: How to spook fish, how to pull flies out of their mouth, and my personal favorite, how to never see the fish in the first place. Yet luckily for me, the lessons from our fishing failures light the path to tarpon redemption.

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When Steve finally acquiesced to his family’s desire to experience seasons beside hot, his seven-year good time Charlie fishing frenzy finally had to come to an end. His return to our Appalachian home was met with open arms and an immediate plan for one last summer tarpon trip down to Florida “to tie up some loose ends for the magazine.” Needless to say, good things come to those who wait. Steve, with a lot of help from our guide buddy Noah, finally gave me what he owed me: the best fishing the Space Coast has to offer, and my biggest tarpon as the prehistoric cherry on top. I’m not gonna say I made the best ever cast at that tarpon, nor will I say I whipped his ass like Seabass (quite the opposite really). But at no time during this, the most exciting encounter with a fish I have ever experienced, did I ever have a doubt that this fish would submit to the universe’s will, as it was not Steve, nay the universe that owed this one to me. No broken leaders, no crab trap bullshit.

The second I let that fly loose, I knew the conclusion. My tobacco-stained digits all up in that thing's grill. Three quarters of a sweaty arm shaking, an hour later it was so, and thus it shall be. My first hundred-plus tarpon, and as soon as I get that first permit and bonefish over 10 pounds, I’ll think about balancing the books on what Steve, Florida, and the universe owe me.

Thanks for the good times Florida. We forgot to turn out the lights, and there’s a chance we forgot to flush. Sorry.

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Steve and I both wanted to thank Capt. Noah Miller for years of servitude, poling two old men around the flats of the Space Coast, staying dialed on the fish so we didn’t have to, and tying all of Steve’s flies for him. Also, for guiding me to my first 100+ lb. tarpon. You could’ve done it without me, but I’m quite sure I couldn’t have done it without you. There’s a handy comin’ your way buddy.

Photo: Todd Field

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2015

Doug’s FishinG Hole

By Jason Tucker Photos: Louis Cahill

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I live out in the northeast Georgia countryside. It's a

rolling country known as the Piedmont, the foothills of Appalachia. It’s all beanfields, cattle pasture, and hay fields, interspersed with patches of forest. Muddy creeks flow in the hollers, stained orange by the Georgia clay. There’s not much water around here. Not a lot of places to fish. Not for the public at least.

About a mile from my place, past Red Hills Farm and the farm implement store, a sign went up last year. It’s hand painted in a barely legible scrawl on a piece of scrap plywood that hangs from a rusty steel pasture gate set askew on its hinges.

The sign reads: Doug’s Fishing Hole.

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Behind this gate is a pond, perhaps 50 feet across that they dug last year. A water hose is stretched out to the middle of the pond and sprays into the air to aerate it I guess. He stocks this pond with channel cats and shellcrackers, and for $5 you can sit around Doug’s Fishing Hole and fish for his stockers. And every Friday night that place is jumping.

Chairs are lined up all the way around, with a lantern or flashlight going at each one. I can see cane poles stuck into the bank (a reel would be serious overkill on this pond); bobbers float languidly in the duckweed.

This place is a source of befuddlement for me, which I have been puzzling over ever since it opened.

Seriously, what kind of sad sap goes and pays five bucks to literally sit in mud and fish for stockers? How pathetic does your life have to be that you would even consider such a thing? What is the appeal? Why the hell would anyone sit around Doug’s Fishing Hole waiting

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for a nibble? But last night I changed my mind.

There was another place a couple miles further down the road at a spot called Seagraves Mill. The remnants of the old mill still stand there, and so did the mill pond until last year. It covered about five acres. It was owned by old lady Seagraves across the street. You could slip $5 into the steel box out front and fish there, and on pleasant summer nights there were people fishing all around that lake- teenagers, old men, plumbers fresh off the job out there with their kids, and sometimes a small jon boat or kayak. I had every intention of fishing this lake. I was going to take my fishing kayak, a fly rod and some small poppers and fish for bluegills and perhaps the odd largemouth lucky enough to escape that gauntlet, not because it was gonna be so great, but because it was close, and pleasant and accessible.

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Two years ago someone in a jon boat drowned on the lake. The next day the steel box was gone, replaced by No Trespassing and No Fishing signs that ringed the entire lake. Last year she had it drained to discourage the inevitable local kids sneaking in to fish it.

I doubt any fish out of that pond ever made the local paper. It was just a tiny, nondescript farm pond. But it was what we had. How many local kids caught their first fish there? How many memories got made? It wasn’t much, it was what they had.

I was driving home on a recent Friday night after eating a good dinner in Athen way and could see the chairs and the lights, the cane poles and the bobbers, that moment I was struck, not by how sad and pathetic it all was, but by the p lives, or their conception of fishing was, but I had been wrong all along. Water how we go about it, are seeking that magic. People are so drawn to water and darkness and mud around Doug’s Fishing Hole, waiting on a nibble. I have bee now since I floated with my friend Louis in late winter. My fly boxes are all in se where I used to cross several steelhead and trout streams on my way to work There are hundreds of lakes in that area, from small farm ponds to 18,000 acre drove past daily I have not fished to this day. And they all have fabulous fishing because the dry fly fishing was so fabulous—it’s just not worth the hassle to ti

ns. Inevitably we drove home past Doug’s Fishing Hole. I stole a glance that the dark forms of bodies punctuated by the occasional glow of a cigarette. In power of water, fish, and fishing. I had thought I was witnessing how sad their r is a magic substance inhabited by magic beings, and all of us, no matter d fish, that lacking anything else, they will pay their five bucks and sit in the en MIA lately when it comes to fishing. I haven’t fished in several months erious need of an update. I’m busy and tired. I’m also from northern Michigan every day. Brook trout live in every tiny creek you cross wherever you go. e natural lakes, so many that I don’t know all their names. Many lakes that I g, even if it’s just for bluegills and pike. Where I lived no one nymph fished ie a nymph on.

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I’ve also been a few places, though not nearly enough. Nipigon, Labrador, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona for trout. Andros, Xcalak and Roatan for bonefish. But lately I’ve just lost my enthusiasm for the sport in general. I have a garden. We raise horses. My time and increasingly my energy are limited. Running up to the mountains to dunk nymphs seems like a chore. I work outside in the Georgia heat most days, so running to the local bass lake after work isn’t all that appealing—at that point I need to get inside and cool off. And I don’t know, I’ve just been in a funk lately. But then I see the sign for Doug’s Fishing Hole last night, see the bodies clustered around that scummy pond, see the plastic chairs, the lights, the cane poles and bobbers, the glowing cigarettes and I’m reminded—don’t ever forget the power of fish, and the magic of fishing. Whatever you do, wherever you go, don’t ever get jaded. Don’t ever take for granted the privilege it is to fly fish, to fish at all, or to have public access, to have a place, any place, to fish. Whether you’re in the Ontario backcountry after giant brook trout and pike or fishing a local pond, out West fishing the salmon fly hatch or casting a caddis on a local creek, stalking a permit in Belize, waiting for GT’s to crash the flat in some far-flung part of the Indian Ocean or just hoping for a bite at the local fishin’ hole, no matter where the passion and obsession takes you, remind yourself: we’re all out here, waiting for a nibble.

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Fur and feather matinee Jay Johnson

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2017

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www.BigFranksOutdoors.com We Customize. We Deliver. You Play!

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NOCTURNAL MISSIONS

By David Grossman Photos: Rand Harcz

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I know exactly how I wound up on the night shift of fly fishing this summer, and Rand is singularly

to blame. My boat buddy, my brother of the sticks, went and had twins last year on top of the toddler he already had. While this wildly irresponsible behavior may have forced our hand, the notion to commit ourselves to the fish of the night had been on our minds the last few seasons. Our beloved tailwaters have grown more crowded, and the pursuit of 12” fish on size 26 flies (in a crowd no less) was making it less and less desirable to grind through the summer. During this same period of time our obsession with the transient river striper from the lake became a constant topic of debate, pontification, and eventually a burning need to stab them in the face. So on most Thursdays this summer (Rand has Fridays off) we left the house. We passed all the guide boats, with all the sleepy clients heading the opposite way. We had committed ourselves to becoming creatures of the night in pursuit of nocturnal encounters of the striped variety.

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Stripers are weird and wonderful fish.

They live wild and free in the salt, and chemically castrated in the fresh. I can honestly say I have no preference between salted or sodium-free. Either way, stripers are pure badassery every time they eat. Other than the fact that I love them, I know very little about them. They appear and disappear, but not in a creeper way like your average birthday party magician—more of a Kool-Aid Man busting through the wall.

Ohhh yeahhh. Folks in the know will tell you that you have to find the bait, to find the striper. Unfortunately bait seems to move constantly, so your guess is as good as mine on that one.

The one thing we have been able to figure out is that our local stripers value the cold water in the river as much as they do the stocker snacks that reside there. Knowing they are there hasn’t really increased the catch rate on the fly. Not that we haven’t tried everything under the sun (literally everything during daylight hours). A random striper here, a freak one there, but nothing that we could hang our hat on and say we had them figured out.

So there I found myself, a combination of babies (not of my making) and a year all summer, leaving my Fridays a burning heap of sleepy-eyed struggle. As we c few things. We found stripers at night. Not every night, but we found them enou scientifically proven it. It’s way easier to catch stripers on spin gear than it is on abuse on the banks of East Tennessee is weirdly scarier when you can only hea

rning for striper knowledge conspiring to put me in the boat Thursday nights come to the end of the river striper season in my backyard, I did accomplish a ugh that we thought we were going to every night. Full moons suck. We have n fly. (Side note: wake bait eats are super fun, who knew?). Also, domestic ar it piercing the night than it is in the plain light of day.

Y OU S UC K !

The older I get, the more willing I am to forgo catching fish when I go out in order to figure out how to catch the fish when I go out. Even after a summer full of nocturnal missions, the striper on fly still eludes me in my own backyard.

I’m definitely closer… or I might be further? Stripers are still a weird and temperamental query. Gluttony and comfort dictate one push of the tail to the next. Those pushes are just as likely to lead to where you aren’t, as where you are. Closer than last season, at least I feel like I did something this summer.

What that is, I have no idea.

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MRS. VANDINGHAM

By David Grossman

The pursuit of the perfect fishing vehicle is as complicated and noble as the fish they’re built to chase. CChoices are endless, and priorities,

budgets, and spousal tolerance inevitably lead to compromises. Seats for the children that meet all DOT guidelines and standards seems to be an important one, also rod storage…lots of rod storage. Over the years I have tilted at this windmill in many shapes and forms. I’ve tried station wagons, SUV’s (large and small), trucks adorned with racks and rod vaults. Once, due to a blown motor, I drove from Texas to North Carolina with my drift boat hooked up to a 28’ Budget rental box truck.

In all of these instances, the truck in the end was just a truck. While they were all okay to get me where I was going, when I got there I was either sleeping on the ground, curled up in the backseat like a contortionist, or paying heftily for a roof over my head. Then like lightning from the sky, the sage screamed words of the revered philosopher Christopher Crosby Farley, “...you’re gonna be living in a van down by the river!”

With that, the idea of Mrs. Vandingham was born. What began as a random reference to the 90’s show, The West Wing, has turned into the proverbial thread of the proverbial needle of fishing vehicles. It carries all my stuff inside, and I can sleep at the ramp in comfort on my big fat wallet, made fat by all the money I saved not staying at the hotel.

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The amount of people who are really into vans is staggering, even more stunning is the time and effort these people put not only into their vans, but the time and effort they put into talking about their vans on the internet. Three quarters down this rabbit hole of 12v microwaves, and baltic birch paneling I realized, I didn’t really need any of that shit. I have a home, I have no intentions of permanently or semi permanently residing in my metal hotbox. With this realization I no longer had any need for debates on synthetic insulation vs. lambswool vs. recycled denim. I will let the 20 something on youtube hash that one out like the ancient roman senate. No, all I needed was a super rad metal tent on wheels. Just comfortable enough for a week or two, but not so comfortable I started getting ideas about never going home by week three. That is exactly what I have built myself.

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My whole goal was to keep things as simple and as cheap as I could do it. I scrounged all the usable parts of my old truck before I traded it in. The new parts and pieces I have bought are all modular in nature.

In, out, and around.

Everything can be moved as necessary and secured for travel.

The inside of the van is now pretty close to what I had in mind. In part two of the van build I’ll be taking care of some exterior stuff (i.e. lighting, roof rack, and awning) and taking the van out to Wyoming with some friends to shoot antelope and molest trout...camping out iof the van the whole time.

So stay tuned for the next installment, my fellow van geeks.

We would like to especially thank, Traeger, Yeti, and Corvus Wood Company for their donations to the Mrs. Vandingham project. They will be used for the forces of good and justice, and in no way for evil doing…we swear.

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o v e m b e r 2 0 2 2 | n o 4 5 . . the end

The Back Page

with Paul Puckett and Mike Benson

One of the many things that Yankees will never understand about the south, or about living in the south, is humidity. Don’t get me wrong—it can get humid up north at times, and to be completely fair, even in the south humidity can vary in intensity and frequency. A sticky afternoon in Boone is nowhere near an average morning in Miami for example.

But the part that people fail to understand or comprehend is the love/ hate that us southerners have with it.

As a kid I spent every year traveling to the Bahamas, which usually meant a drive from the mountains of North Carolina down to Ft. Lauderdale, and a quick island hopper flight across to the islands.

We usually made the drive overnight and would arrive in south Florida early in the morning. The very first thing I would experience was stepping out of the air-conditioned car and into air so thick you can feel it parting around your body. An invisible flow of water-infused air, warm and thick in your lungs. Even now when I make my annual tarpon runs in May, before the humidity has set in here in Charleston and I've had enough winter to forget that old familiar friend, I get taken aback with the first lung full of sweet, thick air. I love it, always have.

Of course I don’t enjoy feeling sweat roll down my ass crack at 8am any more than the next guy, and like any good southerner, I spend my allotted time complaining about it, wishing for cooler seasons.

But when it comes right down to it, every good fishing memory I can draw out of the convoluted bundle of neurons I call a brain all have one thing in common. In the mountains, it’s the warm sticky air on a summer morning, infused with the smell of rhododendron and rotting vegetation. Ice cold water rushing between your calves, sweat beading up on your brow. Those pre-dawn boat launches, sweat already making clothing stick to you in unfortunate places, the smell of salt, mud, mangroves, and limestone. These things are completely and irrevocably tied to my memories, and the very essence of what it means to be alive. I love the south, all of its glorious attributes and its shortcomings as well, but like the old timers always say, “it’s not the heat that’ll get ya, it’s the humidity.”

S.C.O.F Magazine | issue no. 44 | summer 2022 | penultimate