MIDDLE-AGED MUTANT NINJA SCOFFERS

from SCOF - Winter 2023 - Issue no. 46

by Southern Culture on the Fly

The Back Page

And Hank

SAM BAILEY JOHN AGRICOLA cool dad huge yelawolf fan rare mineral expert too many master's degrees

MICHAEL STEINBERG HANK HERSHEY tenured permit wrangler chill AF smells normal heir to the chocolate throne

WhenTom McGuane found Big Pine Key, he made the major life decision to uproot himself from Michigan and go off the respectability grid in favor of a kind of renaissance for anglers and writers. He discovered the place by reading about world records in Field and Stream. In Guy De La Valdene’s 1973 film called Tarpon, a melange of creatives and anglers living amongst one another pioneered a new form of tarpon fly fishing. They achieved the absolute height of fish pornography as art only to be lost to time and rediscovered, reformed, and truncated by Jose Wejebe in the Spanish Fly. Later on, Will Benson and Dave Teper at fly fishing film company World Angling further compressed the form to just be the eats and the jumps. This rough sketch of tarpon videography covers the gamut from artful origin to steadfast practitioners to modern guide promotion. We at SCOF 2.0 are rooted to the most unassuming place for practicing the fly arts—Alabama—home of the metal flake bass guzzlers of Bassmaster trails. We doubt we’ll ever be held in the same artistic light as Guy and Tom, but we promise to explore more than just the money shots.

As if putting a magazine together wasn’t challenging enough, we are doing it here in “the Sahara of the Bozarts,” to use H.L. Mencken’s turn of phrase. By invoking him here, I’m grinding one axe with tournament anglers of conventional fishing tactics, and also with Yankee metropolitan journalists from the 1930s and ‘40s who pejoratively labeled the South a “cultural backwater.” This insult so assailed writers in the South that they formed a resistance to regional snobbery. The “I’ll Take My Stand” agrarian writers were responding to the perception that Southerners were backwater listless idiots and the prevailing notion that they had very little to say about the world was denied with vehemence. Men like Robert Penn Warren, Andrew Lytle, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson put their creative energies into responding to the contempt many of the literati felt towards them.

We in the modern South are more often trying to prove that we are a distinctive region, one that is unique from the West or New England. We export all kinds of culture from the best football teams to corporate fried chicken chains and the God-fearing Love of Wally World. But in Alabama, we are not only rich in commercial exports but also in biodiversity. If we can keep from polluting our rivers and impoundments in favor of greedy capitalists lured South with cheaper taxes and non-union labor, we may hold onto said biodiversity. But I digress.

“Ayeee,” you might be mumbling, “where is the wistful dreaming for spring that Grossman was so adept at sharing?” For me in Alabama, the dreariness of winter is not here yet. In fact as I write this note, a tornado warning is in effect. There’s no longer time for basking in the glow of heady literature of the Southern Agrarians, or McGuane, or Harrison, or Brautigan. It’s obvious how Florida became the epicenter for saltwater fly fishing. They have the best fish. If it weren't for tarpon, I’d categorize Florida as something other than Southern. Perhaps a New Jersey hybrid designation makes more sense. As it is for this magazine, I am damn glad we can call the home of tarpon, snook, permit, redfish, and bonefish a Southern locale. This prime example of cooptation is what we Southerners do best.

SCOF’s mini-renaissance in Alabama is significant because trout are not necessarily the focus for Southern anglers in Alabama. You’re far more likely to hear redeye talk, or redfish talk. Hell, even a Jack Crevalle can come to play in Alabama waters. Perhaps an Alabama tarpon is something to put on our individual bucket lists. Sure, trout is the most popular species for many fly fishermen. Then again, most trout don’t belong where we catch them (it’s an invasive species 90% of the time). So if there’s a halo over trout, it’s a broken one. Most Southern anglers are different because in addition to our overactive imaginings of carp as bonefish, or gar as ‘cuda, there is the love of striped bass that requires being present and ready for a fight over distantly imagining some other quarry in its place. Redfish keep winters interesting and we visit the Carolina low country and Hopedale, La., in this issue. Not to say we won’t wander far and wide from time to time, dip our toes in alien waters. But we are going to keep the local in our scope as often as we can. And from a Southern perspective, always. Gadsden, Ala., will never be the Keys, but there’s just as much biodiversity throughout our state. If you squint and cock your head just so, you’ll start to see nervous water. No reason we can’t achieve an awakening here in the sticks, see the treasures of our everyday life, and maybe even inspire us to protect our truest birthright. We hope you’ll come with us on this endeavor. If the Nunnehi can thrive in our hills and hollers, so can you. So buck up, and practice your craft. It’s worth it.

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