|S.C.O.F ISSUE NO.44 . SUMMER 2022 southernculture
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Photo: IRL, Florida, August 2022, Steve Seinberg
Photo: White RIver, Arkansas - August 2021, Dave Fason
Photo: East Tennessee - 2011, Steve Seinberg 2011
Photo: IRL, Florida, August 2022, Steve Seinberg
Photo: Seville, Spain - August 2022, Peter Perch
8 scof summer fluffer 26 a letter from dave 30 haikudavidgrossman 36 scof outpost fl: burn it all down by david grossman photos: steve seinberg 66 doug's fishing hole by jason tucker photos: louis cahill 86 fur and feather matinee fishing with jay - no.12 92 nocturnal mission by david grossman photos: rand harcz 106 familystratergizingfeudedition 114 mrs. vandingham david grossman 142 the back page with paul puckett and mike benson no. 44
WE DON’T JUST FISH FOR THE FISHING, WE FISH TO FEEL IT IN OUR SOUL. THAT’S WHY, FOR OUR EIGHTH REVOLUTION IN GRAPHITE, WE BROUGHT THE FOCUS BACK TO RHYTHM AND AWARENESS— SO YOU CAN TRULY FEEL THE ENERGY HAPPENING IN EVERY SINGLE MOMENT ON THE WATER.
With R8 technology, we enhance that two-way connection from hand to fly and back for greater feel, flow and control.
summers.c.o.f2022issueno.44penultimateissueeditorco-publisher: David Grossman creative co-publisher:director Steve Seinberg contributors: Dave Fason Paul Puckett Mike Benson Peter Perch Jay LouisJasonRandNoahJohnsonMillerHarczTuckerCahill 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 all content and images © 2022 Southern Culture on the Fly
southern culture SeinbergStevePhoto:
- Marcelo Perez, SA Advisor
“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.”
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Harder coating and stiffer core to maintain SLICKNESS AND ABRASION RESISTANCE IN DEMANDING JUNGLE CONDITIONS • Excellent turnover due to short, powerful head • Overweighted by two line sizes for quick loading and delivery of big flies to distant targets • 15’ clear intermediate tip for stealthy presentations • Slow sink rate gets flies just below the surface • Tropi-Core technology FAILUREanoption
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.
Dave - 2014
26 S.C.O.F MAGAZINE SUMMER 2022 A letter from Dave, the editor...
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.
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.
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. 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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28 S.C.O.F MAGAZINE NO. WINTER2 2012 NO. FALL1 2011 NO. SUMMER4 2012 NO. FALL5 2012 NO. SPRING3 2012 NO. WINTER6 2013 southern cultureS.C.O.FS.C.O.F issue no. 12 summer 2014 we’re better than them Have A FUN Summer Dance FishingRoadsideHardly,TopwaterPoon...DanceTimingTotalitarianismStrictlyMuskyAttractionstheProperPopper-Dropper Disco GangstersShrimpof the PondVon Beard Chronicles Linwood Blue Crab NO. SUMMER12 2014 NO. FALL132014 NO. WINTER14 2015 NO. SPRING15 2015 NO. SUMMER16 2015 NO. FALL172015 NO. SPRING23 2017 NO. SUMMER24 2017 NO. FALL252017 NO. WINTER26 2018 NO. SPRING27 2018 NO. SUMMER28 NO. WINTER34 2020 NO. SPRING35 2020 NO. SUMMER36 2020 NO. FALL372020 NO. WINTER38 2021 NO. SPRING39 2021
29S.C.O.F MAGAZINE 2013 NO. SPRING7 2013 Everything that Matters NO. SUMMER8 2013 NO. FALL9 2013 NO. WINTER10 2014 NO. SPRING11 2014 2015 NO. WINTER18 2016 NO. SPRING19 2016 NO. SUMMER20 2016 S.C.O.F issue no. 21 fall 2016 southern culture ReJigger THE ing NO. FALL212016 NO. WINTER22 2017 2018 NO. FALL292018 NO. WINTER30 2019 NO. SPRING31 2019 NO. SUMMER32 2019 NO. FALL332019 2021 NO. SUMMER40 2021 NO. FALL412021 NO. WINTER42 2022 NO. SPRING43 2022
with David Grossman Haiku The lights have come on. You don’t have to go home but, Please don’t pass out here.
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SCOF Outpost Florida: Burn it all DownBy David GrossmanPhotos: Steve Seinberg
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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.
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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.
52 S.C.O.F MAGAZINE 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.
Scott Fly Rod Company | Handcrafted at 2355 Air Park Way, Montrose, Colorado 81401 | 970.249.3180 | www.scottflyrod.com Fresh, Fast UNFILTERED.& The new benchmark in high-performance, handcrafted fly rods from Scott. Photo: Todd Field
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.
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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.
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.
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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 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.
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.
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 was driving home on a recent Friday night after eating a good dinner in Athens. 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 power 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 been now since I floated with my friend Louis in late winter. My fly boxes are all in serious 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 tie
Athens. 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 is a magic substance inhabited by magic beings, and all of us, no matter and fish, that lacking anything else, they will pay their five bucks and sit in the been MIA lately when it comes to fishing. I haven’t fished in several months serious 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. acre natural lakes, so many that I don’t know all their names. Many lakes that I fishing, even if it’s just for bluegills and pike. Where I lived no one nymph fished tie 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 EP. 12
2017
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91S.C.O.F MAGAZINE www.BigFranksOutdoors.com We Customize. We Deliver. You Play! Maryville, TN 865-233-3330 Locust Grove, GA 470-507-0676 Bozeman, MT 406-595-3799
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.
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 yearning all summer, leaving my Fridays a burning heap of sleepy-eyed struggle. As we come few things. We found stripers at night. Not every night, but we found them enough 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 hear
YOU SUCK!
yearning 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 enough that we thought we were going to every night. Full moons suck. We have on fly. (Side note: wake bait eats are super fun, who knew?). Also, domestic hear it piercing the night than it is in the plain light of day.
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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David Grossman MRS. VANDINGHAM
By
116 S.C.O.F MAGAZINE
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 Intruck.allof 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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126 S.C.O.F MAGAZINE Custom Woodwork By Corvus Wood Company of 15-RodNC. Oak Rod Storage. Fly, up to 13' Custom Oak Walnut Headliner
127S.C.O.F MAGAZINE Storage.OakWoodworkWoodofAsheville,HadlinerFitsSpin/13'and18wtOakandHeadlinerShelf
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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.
2011
www.BigFranksOutdoors.com We Customize. We Deliver. You Play! Maryville, TN 865-233-3330 Locust Grove, GA 470-507-0676 Bozeman, MT 406-595-3799
139S.C.O.F MAGAZINE SCOF STORE SOUTHERNCULTUREONTHEFLY.COM 25% PENULTIMATEUSEEVERYTHINGOFFCODE:
november2022
PerchPeterPhoto: november2022 |no45.. the end
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
