S.C.O.F. Summer 2016

Throwin' down HERE.

S.C.O.F., Spring 2016, The Mix Tape Issue

Hit "Play" HERE.

S.C.O.F. No. 18

There's no culture like this culture. Get it HERE.

S.C.O.F. Fall 2015

Keep 'em dry right HERE.

Southern Culture on the Fly, Summer 2015

More goodness coming in on a southern breeze. Get it HERE.

S.C.O.F. Spring 2015

Something good for everyone. Go HERE.

S. C. O. F. Winter 2015

Just when you need it, here it is. Go south HERE.

Southern Culture On the Fly, Fall 2014

More Recommended Reading

Click HERE for High Country Angler, Summer 2014.

Click HERE for Southern Culture on the Fly, Summer 2014.

S. C. O. T. F. Spring 2014

Enter HERE.

S.C.O.F. Issue No. 10 -- Winter 2014

The Road Trip Issue, HERE.

S.C.O.F. NO. 9, Fall 2013

Another good one...

Southern Culture On The Fly

S.C.O.F. NO. 8

Oh yeah.

Get it right here.

S.C.O.F. No. 7, Spring 2013

Catch it HERE.

Oh Boy

SCOTF, Winter 2013.  Good for the January doldrums. Check it out HERE. And try this on for size, from its bountiful pages. So, so nice.

Getting Out from Southern Culture on the Fly on Vimeo.

Southern Culture On the Fly, Anniversary Edition

These guys do it right. Click here.

SCOTF, Summer 2012

The Summer 2012 issue of Southern Culture on the Fly is here.

Some Things You can't Put a Price Tag On

Tom Chandler over at The Trout Underground makes note of a broad hint in the new Catch ezine that it will soon go from free to a paid subscription basis. It will cost you twelve bucks a year (six issues) to go online and look at all those pretty pictures of places you can't afford to go.

Or is that just me?

I guess there are two issues here. No, three. The first is my own cultural bias--I admit it--against anything that smacks of elitism. I wish the fly fishing world was immune to it, but it sure ain't. Catch seems to me to be appealing to the moneyed crowd for whom exotic destinations and high-end equipment serve as just one more status symbol. It's a kind of country club mentality that puts me off. Big time.

But, maybe that's just fine for some people. I wouldn't want to be accused of "the politics of envy" or anything like that. And that gets us to the second issue. I don't envy that approach to the sport I love. I simply have a different set of values when it comes to why I love it. It starts with the natural world and the fish that live in it. It ends with people like you and me who hear the call of that world and want to be out in it fishing. The experiences we have and the equipment we gather along the way have nothing to do with status. The fishing is what matters; the equipment is simply a means to that end.

Neither are the places we fish chosen for their status quotient. Most of us fish most of the time close to home. We search out our home waters and we learn as much as we can about them and their fish. We immerse ourselves in that world. It becomes a constant in our lives, experienced on an intimate level, face to face and hands on, rather than through the intermediaries of travel agents, lodge owners, and guides.

When we are on an intimate basis with the world of our home waters we quickly learn that we cannot impose our will on it. Rather, we need to be open to what that world can teach us. The more we learn from that world, not just about that world, the more we learn how to connect to it. And one of the most powerful connections is when everything comes together and we catch a fish. And then let it go again.

Along with that learning comes a deep appreciation--even a love--of the natural world and the cycles within cycles within cycles that make up the miraculously intricate Cycle of Life upon which all things depend. Including us, we suddenly see. That changes us. We learn that we are just one part of that great cycle. And we seek more and more not to intrude on it, or exploit it, but to fit into it. For many of us the deepest satisfaction we find on the water is that sense of belonging, of having found the place in all the universe where we fit.

You can find that on Christmas Island, perhaps, but it's important to know that you can find it right at home. And my guess is that if you haven't found it on your home waters you won't find it anywhere.

Finally, when you have found your place--and your self--in the world of fish and their waters, you want to do everything you can to nurture, sustain, and protect that world. It becomes sacred, as life itself is sacred.

That gets us to the third issue. Can Catch magazine charge for its photos and for the view of fly fishing it is promoting? Sure. Go for it. If you believe fly fishing is a commodity that can be sold for a profit, then have at it. There are many who think that if you can't pay for something it isn't worth anything, and that the more you pay for something the more worth it has. I'm sure they'll snap it up.

I won't be getting a subscription myself, though. Instead I'll continue to visit the websites and blogs--and ezines--of those people who love fly fishing for what it is, and want to celebrate it out of the sheer joy of it, and who love to connect with anyone anywhere who loves it, too. There is plenty of that bubbling up all over the place.

Like, for instance, this one:

This is Southern Culture on the Fly. Read the editor's column in which he exclaims that it would be nice to see photos in a magazine of a place where he could actually go and fish. Amen, brother! And notice the price on the lower right hand corner of the cover. Yes, yes, yes! They get it.

There are some things worth far too much to put a price tag on.