SCOF - Winter 2021 - Issue no.38

S.C.O.F ISSUE NO. 38

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WINTER 2021

on the fly

verboten SCOF

MAG

everything that matters

STILL FREE

Their survival is our angling future. Wild juvenile steelhead jockey for position in Washington State’s Elwha River, which saw the removal of two dams in 2014—part of the largest dam removal project in history. JOHN MCMILLAN © 2021 Patagonia, Inc.

It’s All Home Water.

Fishing Isn’t Free Wild fish and clean water come with a price—activism.

We pay it forward during river cleanups and dam protests. We kick in for conservation, we keep fish wet and we vote for our home water. We organize, show up and raise our voices. We invest in a planet where it will always be possible to experience a wild, beautiful thing.

We Stand for the Waters We Stand In

SCOF Winter Fluffer

Photo: Indian River Lagoon, Florida - December 2020, Steve Seinberg

Photo: October 2012, Louis Cahill

Photo: Charleston, SC - January 2021, Dave Fason

Photo: Indian RIver Lagoon, FL- January 2021, Steve Seinberg

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

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bucket lists

66

water walker

features

by jason tucker photos: louis cahill

104 figure photos:

8 million

dave fason

122 conservation:

nc wastewater notifications system reform by andy hill: watauga river keeper and

Photo: Steve Seinberg

by randy p. permit illustrations: peter perch

hartwell carson: french broad river keeper

8 scof winter fluffer

26 a letter from dave .david

30

haiku

78

fur and feather matinee

82

scof uncovered

90

bench press

.danny

departments

grossman reed

.alphonse

crab .matt callies .deep float .full

term sucker spawn .david grossman

140 stratergizing .number

156 the

.scof

1 advice for number 2

back page

no. 38

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s.c.o.f winter 2021

issue no. 38 verboten

editor co-publisher:

David Grossman creative director co-publisher:

Steve Seinberg

contributors: Dave Fason Jason Tucker Louis Cahill Peter Perch Andy Hill Hatwell Carson Deep Float Matt Callies Danny Reed

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

cover image: John and Yoko (Dave and Stevo)

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

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Photo: Dave Fason

southern culture

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FAIL is not an AMPLITUDE WITH AST PLUS “When chasing the fish of a lifetime, we rarely get more than one shot. Day in and day out in harsh environments, all for that one opportunity. In that moment I have to trust my gear, and my fly line cannot be the weak link. That’s why I use Scientific Anglers fly line. Every cast. Every time.”

- David Mangum, SA Ambassador

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A letter from Dave, the editor...

Winter 2021

Plans. Is it time yet? I certainly hope so. With needles going into arms, is it time we can start leaving our bubbles, with our eyes squinting at the sun, confirming our transformation into a race of socially awkward mole people?

The weirdest, and most demoralizing, part of this past year is the complete void of anything to look forward to.

No big trips, no medium trips, and only the smallest of small trips to local water. I seemed to have taken for granted my life of constant bright spots on a perpetual horizon, and with 12 months of not looking forward there’s only one place to reside, the doldrums of now. Now includes a lot of now. Now hasn’t seemed to change very much for a long time now. “Now” is periodically interrupted by a day of “then,” when I can make it to local tailwater, but it’s mostly just “now.”

I see my family and a few people at work, but they don’t want to talk about fishing, mainly because they don’t fish and a little because they don’t speak English.

Some of this might just be winter compounding my wanderlust. This time of year would usually be filled with many boat drinks in a Carribean locale, taking a welcome reprieve from the depressing grips of another Appalachian winter. It’s really a kick to my taint to be stuck on top of my mountain with six inches of snow on the ground. But no matter, I’m making plans.

I’m not shooting for the stars right off the bat. I’m going to re-introduce myself into the wild, slow and steady.

I don’t want to get the social-cultural bends. I don’t think my general distrust of the mouth-breathing public is going away anytime soon, so planes are out.

My 15 hours driving rule has now been extended to 20 hours. I have settled on spending a month next winter in the Keys with my family and my boat docked in the backyard. I think it’s far enough out that things might be back to semi-normal, and even if they aren’t, I’d rather shelter in a place somewhere warmer than where I am I am allowing myself to dare to dream right now. It might just be a proverbial of the open road. I know what my test toe in the water, but I now officially water is fishing like. I once again want have something to look forward to to know what your water is fishing like. again. The horizon is no longer quite I wanna get off the oars and on the so dark, and while I’m still stuck in platform. But mostly, I just want to go “now,” “soon” seems right around the to bed thinking about what somewhere corner for the first time in a long time. different is gonna be like. Different and It’s quite liberating, really. distant will be good. The same and local is now the enemy of good in my homebound-twisted mind, no matter what the reality actually is.

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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 28

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 S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

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Haiku

with Danny Reed

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Bucket Lists

By Jason Tucker Photos: Louis Cahill

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There is a river in the Provence region of France that runs clear and cold in my dreams. It is full of huge

trout. Five-pound rainbows slurp mayflies and caddis on the main street of L’Isle sur la Sorgue, where the river is channelized by waterworks built by the Romans. The entire river boils out of the base of a mountain in one giant raging spring at Fontaine de Vaucluse where some of the first paper in Europe was made. Big trout were lined up on the outside of the runs in sight of the old paper mill. Further downstream I played petanque with my French friends (mes amis) while more large trout boiled the river in the background. I still dream of the Sorgue flowing cold around my legs in the arid heat of Provence, of making an upstream cast with a culde-canard caddis and watching it disappear so I can shout “Sacre bleu!” before retiring to a brasserie to sip pastis and insult the French sense of fashion with my waders. That’s on my bucket list for sure.

I’ve had a lot of dreams about fly fishing. Nowadays we call it a bucket list, thanks to that movie starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in which they took off around the world in search of adventure before they died. I’ve been thinking about it a lot in this era of Covid, not simply because of the off chance it will kill me, but because I’m at that point in life where I’m taking stock of what I still want to do while I can still do it. My bucket list is a deeply personal thing and subject to change at any time.

Some things have dropped off the list, some have been added, some have never changed.

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If you’re young, you don’t get a bucket list. If you’re in the prime of your life, smoking, drinking, ingesting controlled substances, and sucking and fucking, you don’t get to have a bucket list. You’re living a bucket list. If you’re on a two-year sabbatical guiding in Colorado to make enough money for that winter trip to a New Zealand summer, no bucket list for you. Bucket lists are for people like me who are counting the final years of able-bodied-ness and calculating exactly how many arduous trips we’ve got left in us. It’s not for young people bungee jumping off bridges who pack a travel rod to unwind after. You can’t plan what you’re having for dinner much less where you’re going to fish in five years.

Your thirties are when you start putting such lists together, but you won’t be ready to embark. Your career is finally getting going, you’ve got two nickels to rub together and you’re still young enough you want to climb every mountain, cross entire oceans in search of Indo-Pacific permit, and still sleep in a moldy sleeping bag on the dirt floor of a thatch hut.

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You’re goal-oriented. You get shit done. There’s just one hitch: you’re likely married with children in that newborn-to-grade-school age. If that’s true, you’re not getting far. You’ll be doing well if you can get a Sunday morning once a month on a local trout stream, and if you don’t live near trout water you’re stuck sneaking off to the bluegill pond. Carp are the height of adventure. If you’re lucky you will spend early mornings on your Florida vacations before everyone wakes up casting in the marina to sullen mullet, and you better not be a moment late when it’s time to go to Frank’s Mermaid Adventure and Gator Safari or you’ll be the worst dad in the world.

Once you’ve reached your forties you can start putting together a bucket list.

At this point you’ve likely got some money and your kids are will be old enough to survive on their own in the wild. Your wife is less likely to miss you, or even notice you went. If you haven’t fallen into complete midlifecrisis meltdown, you are no doubt at least acutely aware of your coming mortality and the need to start tying up some loose ends. You’re going to want to follow some guidelines.

The first thing to remember about a bucket list is that it is aspirational.

We live on a planet covered in water, scenery and fish. You’ll never get to it all. Give yourself a ten-item list, but only commit to one item at a time. If you check off three items before you cash in your chips, you did pretty well.

arapaima in Guyana; to current me it sounds like a lot of mosquito-bitten hard sweaty work, a trip probably worth it for the cultural experience more than the fishing. Now I’m more likely to lust after the north shore of Lake Superior for musky and coaster brook trout than the depths of the Amazon.

Fourth, let some of the Second, don’t let your bucket list come to you. bucket list rob you of your One of the best trips of joy. If you fly fish at all, my life came from a lastyou are in a lucky minority minute invitation, from on this planet. If your life guys I didn’t know, to is weighed down with the Algoma District of bills, dirty diapers, and Ontario. We saw three after-school activities, bears on the way in, count yourself lucky that on the roughest roads I you can step out on a had ever witnessed. We Sunday morning and spent a long weekend catch some bluegills. Your bushwhacking into remote kids should be on your lakes for big brook trout, bucket list, too. and we found them. At night we howled at the Third, remember that it’s moon around a campfire a fluid situation. Former and ate grilled walleye we me may have lusted for caught in front of camp.

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Fifth, pick species that will take you to unexpected places. That is why bonefish are one of the best bucket list fish. Bonefish are found around the world from state parks in Florida, to the limitless flats of the Bahamas, to small island and atolls of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

They’re as close as a quick flight to Cancun, and as far-flung as St. Brandon’s and Cosmoledo that require days-long boat rides after a flight around the world.

Sixth, roll deep. Catching a bonefish was fantastic. Watching Louis Cahill make a cast into a 40-knot wind and land a bonefish was epic. A trip I took to Navajo Dam to fish stocked tailwater trout was made perfect by going with a good friend. The memories you make with your buddies will far out-strip any exotic fish or far-off destination in value. If you combine the two, so much the better.

Maybe the movie had it wrong. Maybe you shouldn’t have this list of things to do before you die or you’ll somehow feel unfulfilled.

Remember, if the religions of the world have it right, once you die you will have passed on to something far more fulfilling; fishing will have been something you did to pass the time without being miserable in this mortal husk. It’s in our nature not to go to our graves feeling unfulfilled. Are you really going to die in agony and tears because, yeah, you caught some fish, but that ONE species or destination ultimately eluded you?

Yes. Yes you might. You’d better get going.

Photo: Todd Field

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dear Water Walker

By Randy P. Permit Illustrations: Peter Perch

Dear Water Walker, I hope this letter finds you well. Though it has been a while since we’ve seen one another, I still remember fondly those halcyon early days of our non-consummated flirtation: those first sensual flicks of my sickle tail in your general direction, the soft plop of your fly on the outskirts of my zone. The fin-titty-lation was unbearable. The long interludes between our animalistic encounters only served to increase the tension.

Before we met, I was swimming around wrecks with a bad crowd, looking for any live crab that came my way. Many Water Walkers came and went, in an endless procession of meaningless one-crab stands.

I didn’t value myself, or my body. That life could only lead to one place: the bottom of a Water Walker’s cooler. Your dogged determination and constant, unfaltering, failure helped me understand what a permit was really worth. Thank you for that. I will never forget it, or compare myself to a jack ever again.

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We certainly had some ups and tumultuous time together. Do y Mexico when I spit the hook at night, the Federales found you p nothing but a sombrero, gripping in one hand with a dozen Mexic anus? Or how about the time off on the coral head and you Walker in the bar in San Pedr the hospital for five days after the dental reconstructive surger the countless times in the lower just to leave without saying goo Do you remember where in the of that attendant from the C ask you if you caught anything, a beautiful, brown Water Walk

downs throughout our you remember that time in t the boat and, later that passed out on the beach wearing g an empty bottle of mescal can Oxycontins shoved in your in Belize, when I broke you tried to fight every Water ro? Do you remember being in rwards? Do you remember all ry? Because I do. What about r Keys when I would show up, odbye after a confrontation?

Everglades you buried the body Cheeca Lodge? All he did was for God’s sakes. He was just ker that didn’t deserve to die.

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Even with this behavior, I could’ve forgiven you if it weren’t for all the tailing loops. You have spent so much money, time, and emotional capital to chase me across the far-flung corners of the world.

Don’t you think you should at least learn how to fucking cast? I mean really, you weak-wristed, walter-waking pussy. I can’t even begin to count the times I was willing to eat whatever you were throwing at me, and you just couldn’t perform. In case you were wondering: no, it does not happen to everyone. There are plenty of Water Walkers out there with big enough rods to put a permit in its place—especially when it’s begging for it.

This was never going to be easy, but we both knew this outcome was inevitable. Our seductive dance must now come to an end. Much like a sandbar shifting with the changing of the currents, so has our meaning to each other. We will never have what we once had, or what we could have had in a perfect world. No matter how many small, schoolie permit you find mudding at the end of your rod tip, it will never be the same as our tortured tryst.

With my giant eyes, I can see into your soul and now know that it is as empty as your fly boxes.

In conclusion, please know that it is definitely you, and not me.

With continued indifference, That Goddamned Permit S.C.O.F MAGAZINE

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Fur and feather matinee Matt Callies - Loon Outdoors

Alphonse

Crab

SCOF UNCOVERED Deep Float

“Fly fishing dies in darkness.�

- Deep Float FLY SHOPS VS. JOHNNY LAW In a bombshell discovery by our wellplaced source Deep Float, SCOF Uncovered has learned that a host of fly shops throughout the country have resorted to increasingly illegal means to supplement their income during the pandemic. While these Machiavellian displays of wanton criminality and unscrupulous business practices are common in other, more unsophisticated industries such as golf, these actions were previously unthinkable in fly fishing.

Among the many sordid stories we are tracking: • A prominent fly shop in a destination trout town has transformed its stockroom into a high-stakes casino, featuring a Russian roulette table. Due to lowered inventory, the shop made the decision to host various card, knife, and firearm games in its empty space. While the body count remains unconfirmed, we can verify that at least four lives have been lost via Russian roulette. With hundreds of thousands of dollars swapping hands nightly, this fly shop continues its facade as a struggling fly-fishing retailer while raking in the profits off the books.

• Anonymous sources have also confirmed to Deep Float that several larger fly shops in a large metropolitan area are trafficking hundreds of third-world children to be used as free fly-production labor. These same sources state that the shops force the children to tie thousands of Parachute Adams before they’re auctioned off on a site on the dark web. “Once these children are sold,” the source tells Deep Float, “you won’t see them again until they’re demonstration tyers at The Fly Fishing Show. Or just sad teeneagers walking around with nubs for fingers.”

• While the idea of fly-shop employees occasionally selling weed on the side is not a new one, sources have confirmed a once-heralded shop in a high-tourism area is now selling hardcore drugs over-the-counter.

In addition to manufacturing and selling methamphetamines, this shop also deals in the flesh-eating drug krokodil, something they’re calling “super heroin,” and the previously mythologized jenkem—a hallucinogen made from human waste. “You wouldn’t believe how many dudes are going back there and huffing shit,” a source tells Deep Float. “Like, literal, fermented shit. The high feels like 10,000 bowel releases at once. I like it.”

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We will keep you up to date as the story continues to unfold, but just know the next time a fly-shop employee tells you should check out something in the back, it might be more than just a set of waders.

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GUIDED TRIPS AND TRAVEL

bench press David Grossman

fullterm

Sucker Spawn

David Grossman full

term

Sucker

Spawn

The egg-volution, as they call it in the biz, has been moving along at a staggering pace here in the South. Our stocked trout fisheries are beyond compare when one is looking for a vast laboratory to push the line in cutting-edge egg design. What started with glo bug yarn moved on to bi-color Y2K’s which then spawned sucker spawns. Yes, a lot of trout wound up with egg on their faces and my hemos in their craw. While all of these patterns caught fish, I’ve been working on a sort of super egg that would combine all the best traits of all these patterns. One egg to rule them all: The FullTerm Sucker Spawn, featuring the split-shot-eliminating tungsten weight of a Y2K in the time-tested and proven yellow and orange, with the red tungsten acting as a blood dot when the egg is wet, like a glo-egg, along with the best egg profile in the game, the sucker spawn. Dang man, that’s one helluva egg. Free range chickens ain’t got shit on me.

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Material List: • • • • •

“Whatever” curved nymph hook 2x thick, sizes 8-10 Egg Yarn Colors: Cheese and Orange Bead: Tungsten Red Sized to Hook Yellow Thread (Forgive my vagueness, but these are just eggs)

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Step 1: Put the bead on the hook, and the hook in the vise.

Step 2: Tie on behind eye of hook and wrap backwards to just above the point of the hook, about half the shank.

Step 3: Position bead at thread and overwrap bead, towards the rear of the hook. Create a small thread dam behind the bead so as to prevent slipping and end your wraps as far down the hook shank as your vise and physics will allow.

Step 4: Prepare your yarn by separating a strand of both cheese and orange yarn. Then divide both strands in half and then marry half strands of each color together. This may take some minor adjusting, depending on the brand yarn you are using. After a few, you get the feeling for how thick a frankensteined egg yarn strand you need for a full-looking egg. Tie in your bi-color yarn at the bottom of the hook where you left your thead.

Step 5: Over wrap yarn to just behind the bead, making multiple passes to make sure the yarn is secure. Leave the thread where you originally tied in the yarn at the bottom of the hook.

Step 6: Pull yarn forward and make two semi-tight wraps.

This will leave a small fold of yarn starting the egg cluster.

Once you make your wraps, pull the yarn back away from the eye of the hook to position the fold as far back as possible without it losing shape.

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Step 7: Create a second fold by creating a slightly larger fold in the yarn than the previous one and pinch wrap a few times semi-tightly. Your second fold should end right behind the bead.

Step 8: Advance thread to in front of the bead. Fold yarn over the bead, securing just in front of the bead with a few semi-tight wraps. This will be your tallest fold.

Step 9: Fold yarn forward, creating a slightly smaller fold than in Step Eight. Secure.

Step 10: Pull yarn forward and clip close to eye. The remaining yarn will create the appearance of your small forward fold.

Step 11: Push all yarn back and wrap a few times in front of all yarn. Whip finish.

Step 12: Slay.

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Photo: Steve Seinberg

figure 8 million Photos: Dave Fason

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Every winter a few brave souls among us emerge from their primitive hovels and take to the rivers of Virginia for musky season. Nobody

knows why they hurl themselves into this unseemly time-suck like lemmings flinging themselves off a cliff. The lure of the river wolf is a siren song that they cannot resist, no matter the obstacles in their way. The main obstacle is the mind-numbing boredom experienced while swimming a fly to imaginary dragons for days on end with nothing to show for it. Musky is the fly-fishing equivalent of windmills in Quixoteworld, to be tilted at but not conquered.

But shit does happen every once in a while that makes that windmill seem a little closer on the horizon. Happy hunting, musky people. You fuckin’ weirdos.

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COMMITT

FLORIDA’S M

Photo by Gary Gillett

WAT

TED TO PROTECTING

MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE:

TER JOIN THE FIGHT CAPTAINSFORCLEANWATER.ORG Captains For Clean Water is a Grassroots Nonprofit Organization Advocating for Clean Water & Healthy Estuaries Across Florida.

what's in your water?

By Andy Hill: Watauga Riverkeeper and Hartwell Carson: French Broad Riverkeeper

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The waters of the Southern Appalachians are worth protecting.

Not only are our rivers, streams, and lakes part of one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, they are also economic engines for our communities. According to data compiled by the fine folks at North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission, trout anglers spent $239.8 million in North Carolina in 2014. The total economic effect of trout fishing is estimated at $383.3 million, supporting nearly 3,600 jobs.

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Unfortunately, we have a sewage problem. Population growth, development, bad agriculture practices, failing or insufficient infrastructure, stormwater runoff, straight piping, and failing septic systems are putting our rivers and many livelihoods throughout our region at risk. Between August and November of last year, 21 million gallons of sewage overflowed into the waterways of North Carolina due to insufficient sewage infrastructure.

From the mountains to the coast, North Carolina’s 15 Riverkeepers routinely test across the state for E. coli.

And far too often, fishing and swimming holes fail to meet basic water-quality standards for swimming. The results for the French Broad River Watershed are especially alarming. Last year, the French Broad River had the worst water quality since we started testing five years ago. The results are trending for the worst, and now the

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French Broad has the highest levels of E. coli in the state of North Carolina. Many of our French Broad testing sites fail over 70% of the time with levels of E. coli that are hundreds of times above the safe standard.

This alarming trend isn't limited to urban rivers like the French Broad. We are seeing declining water quality in the mostly rural Watauga River Basin in western North Carolina’s High Country. The Watauga River is classified as Outstanding Resource Water or High Quality Waters by the Division of Water Resources due to exceptional aquatic health.

Healthy forested riparian buffers support old clean water, high-dissolved oxygen, and a healthy benthic community that all help make the Watauga River an incredible trout fishery and destination for anglers from all over the world.

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Now, poorly managed development and sewage spills and leaks from old or failing wastewater treatment plants and septic systems have caused spikes in bacteria in many of the Watauga’s normally pristine trout streams.

As more bacteria and nutrients make their way into our rivers, our ecosystem is being thrown off balance, and we’re seeing more nutrient loading, habitat loss, and harmful algal blooms.

If left unaddressed, this could cause higher water acidity and lower oxygen levels­—which can lead to an ecosystem crash. Already, we’ve observed a decline in key populations of benthic macroinvertebrates— water bugs that act as canaries in the coal mine when it comes to river health.

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Fifty years after the passage of the Clean Water Act, we still haven’t met the goals for all waterways to be fishable and swimmable. For too long, we have been picking around the edges and it is time for bold solutions.

To save our rivers and reverse these worrying trends, MountainTrue and our team of four Riverkeepers has launched the ILoveRivers.org campaign. As part of this campaign, we’re calling on public investment to fix our sewage infrastructure, regulations, and funding to keep animal waste from washing into our rivers, public notifications for sewage spills, and vegetated stream buffers to protect our waterways. We can and must do better, which is why we urge you to visit ILoveRivers.org and take action today.

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stratergizing

number 1 advice for number 2

By David Grossman

Before my kids were born my wife and

I bought them a book when we were in Yellowstone together. The title of the book was, Who Pooped In the Park? It was a cute guide to the different animals in the park and how to identify them by their unique poops. Well, with the increased usage of our great outdoors, during this life in the time of Covid, I don’t need a guidebook to tell you who pooped by my water. It was you. That poop belongs to the world’s filthiest animal, homo shittian. The amount of human shit that has been spotted in shockingly close proximity to trail heads, fishing holes, and boat ramps this year is enough shit to fill up a giant bag of shit, like those really big construction garbage bags, if the bag was as big as your house. Some of it’s ignorance, some of it’s laziness, but it’s all shitty.

Laugh if you must, but over my guiding career the question of, “Where do I poop?” is easily in the top three. The old story of the lady pooping in the live well of the skiff came from somewhere, and that somewhere was not anywhere any of us with livewells want to find ourselves. So for the benefit of everyone, both the poopers and the pooped on, I would like to review various pooping strategies for a multitude of shitty fishing situations you might find yourself in.

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Wade Fishing This really is the least-limiting kind of fishing for your pooping pleasure. The woods are literally your sloppy oyster. If you’re car-hopping holes, and indoor plumbing is a viable option, by all means use that toilet. If this is not an option due to either distance or turtlehead, find yourself a spot in the woods for your relief. A couple things to remember when looking for a good spot in the woods to poop. Think about the bear, and pick a spot away from everyone you’re with and also away from anywhere anyone might want to be. This includes just off the well-worn path to the established fishing hole.

Make the effort to walk away from there deep into the woods to deposit your shame on the ground. A hole, dug or natural, is preferable, but after you’re done try to conceal your deposit as best you can with rocks, leaves, and branches. A poop unseen is a day made better for someone. On a side note, if you find yourself on a grand western adventure on a high-alpine lake above treeline, you might have to employ what the National Outdoor Leadership School has deemed non-ironically the “Alpine Smear.” In this maneuver, not having the option of digging a hole in the fragile rock-strewn terrain, one lays a dump on a large flat rock and than smears said dump with another large flat rock until only a thin layer of said dump is left on the rock, allowing it to dehydrate and blow away with the wind. One of the many reasons I choose not to fish above the treeline.

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Fishing From A Drift Boat The same general rules apply for pooping from a drift boat as they do wade fishing. Inform the rower of your incontinence, and they will find a place to pull over where you can go far from the boat and deuce in peace.

Under no circumstances should the “airmailing it” maneuver ever be attempted from a moving or stationary drift boat. Not okay, people. First there’s the safety concerns, not to mention the trauma a rower receives after turning around and seeing you inflagrado off the gunnel. You never unsee something like that.

Never.

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The Saltwater Environment This is where things get tricky. When pursuing fish on the flats and feeling the brown gremlin stirring deep in your gut, what is one to do? There’s no cover; you are quite literally exposed. This is where willpower really counts. How long can you hold it? It’s mind over anus, and your shorts lie in the balance.

Pooping off a dock is an option, but you better make sure no one's home. There is nothing worse than being chased down a dock by an irate homeowner with a dingleberry dangling. Your best bet is a nearby marina, or boat-up restaurant. If all other options have been exhausted, and you have lost the battle against your own intestinal fortitude, then this—and only this—is the time to airmail one off the back of the boat into the deep, blue beyond. I personally like to talk to the people on the front of the boats with their backs turned to me in disgust. It really cranks up the awkwardness of the moment to 11, but that’s me. Once the deed has been completed your boatmates will avoid your gaze. That’s to be expected; this level of intimacy is not often seen in male, heterosexual, fishing-based friendship. Don’t worry. Things will go back to normal. Eventually.

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Hopefully this guide will help you cover all your scatalogical bases on your next adventure out into the great, wide world. But if I may, let me leave you with this: the best fishing poop you will ever take will be the poop you take before you ever go fishing at all.

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Photo: Steve Seinberg

Photo: Steve Seinberg

may2021|no.39

The Back Page

I have traveled this land far and wide and, in my travels, I've seen many wonders and met characters of people that Dickens could not have imagined in his most erotic fantasies. But nary a soul has haunted my thoughts with a predatorlike persistence as this one fellow I crossed paths with one moonless night many a fortnight past. I was taking a respite by a brook after the evening hatch. I had just lit the kindling to heat the rum for my apres-fishing toddy when this rather wild chap emerged from the brush with a plump bull frog in each of his well-worn hands. The eau-de-petrol was faint but present and what at first seemed like wildness, I quickly realized was a oneness with all things rad as shit. The hours of the night passed as he recounted tails of mythical beasts, as well as all manner of critters scurrying to and fro. As well-versed in motorcycle maintenance as he was steady with a slingshot, his knowledge was as wide as it was deep. When the evil grey began to break, he took a long breath, seeming to breathe in all things at once. He then stood and left the fire.

I called to him realizing I never received a proper name to call him, He looked back over his shoulder, and quietly uttered, Robert.

In my failing health due to the onset of my forties, I feel like I can no longer keep the treasures revealed to me to myself. So I will tell the tales as told to me by the most interesting man to ever roam the hills and swamps, Robert.

S.C.O.F Magazine | issue no. 38 | winter 2021