Category Archives: Open Ended Appeals To The Masses

Jul 31 2012
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Open Ended Appeals To The Masses, Uncategorized

Access Alert

Got a recent email from Dwayne Hopson about disturbing recent events on the Nolichucky. Read on revolutionaries;

“This past week the US Forest Service installed three metal posts which blocks access to the Poplar Boat Launch on the Nolichucky River in North Carolina.You can no longer back a trailer to the river to load/unload a fishing raft. This eliminates the ability to float the river from Huntdale Road/Sams Branch Road to Poplar as well as Poplar to Erwin, TN. This eliminates about 12 miles of river access to fishing rafts. While they blocked the access they also improved it by putting down gravel all the way to the river. Why improve it, then block it????

 Please contact the US Forest Service in Burnsville, NC and ask them to remove the posts.

 Appalachian Ranger District

District Ranger, Tina Tilley

P.O. Box 128

Burnsville, NC 28714

(828) 682-6146

appalachianrd@fs.fed.us

 This decision is detrimental to some people’s businesses and livelihood and to some people’s ability to simply enjoy a great section of river.

 Thanks for your help.

Dwayne Hopson“

Do with this what you will, but I for one am kind of sick of access’ with ballards making it an absolute pain in the ass to float and fish on a lot of rivers around here. I’ve been told Squeak Smith is on it, so you know someone’s already getting an earful.

- Dave

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Feb 21 2012
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Open Ended Appeals To The Masses

Stuff, Stuff, And Shots To The Junk

Tie-One-On-A-Thon: We are in the homestretch with the event coming up this Sunday. We will have tickets at the door but if you’re in Hunter Banks between now and then go ahead and grab one there…just ten bucks for a great cause. We’ve got more tiers this year, and a whole lot more stuff to give away. Thanks to our sponsors, this year is going to be swag-tastic. So come on down to Steve’s studio this Sunday, and hang with some cool folks….you will probably walk away some free stuff to boot.

Enough Free Stuff To Choke A Donkey

The Store Has Been Renovated…And Now Looks Like “The Limited” At The Mall: Through a lot of hard work, and a lot of Guatemalan dry wall crews, we have managed to completely change the look and functionality of our store, so you might want to give it a  look. If you’re over there, check out the new Trucker Hats Steve came up with…sicky sicky gnar gnar (thanks James…best saying ever). Buy them while they last.

A Reward For Reading All The Way To The Bottom Of This Post: Almost four straight minutes of nut shots…

- dave

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Nov 02 2011
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Open Ended Appeals To The Masses, Uncategorized

The Aftermath

The image above is just hilarious it has no relevance to the post.

It’s funny, you would think after releasing the first issue of our magazine I would be somewhere fishing, sipping on a PBR, surrounded by the Fly Girls from In Living Color, but alas no…I have been dutifully performing shop monkey duties for the past three days. Being a shop monkey does however, put me in front of the computer when customers aren’t in the shop (that’s for you Jeff…my boss), and the first issue has been blowing the f* up. We have been mentioned by a lot of national fly fishing media outlets (thanks Orvisnews and Midcurrent), prominent blogs (thanks to all you guys…you know you are), as well as message boards across the country. My personal favorite has to be the folks that have personally called me…on my phone…to tell me how SCOF has finally filled the void of a great magazine about where we fish. The stats keep racking up and we are adding a ton of subscribers. For all of this, we would like to thank all of you.

This weekend we are going to have a booth right by the casting pool at the Western North Carolina Fly Fishing Expo. We hope everybody will stop by and say hello. We’ll have a some of the contributors from the issue hanging out, Thomas Harvey tying intermittently, and I’ll be there drinking PBR out of a coffee mug into the wee hours of the early afternoon.

If we don’t see you there, thanks again for giving our little magazine a chance, and if you really like it…don’t be afraid to tell everyone you know via all of the intra-web tools available to you.

- dave

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May 17 2011
10 Comments
Open Ended Appeals To The Masses, Uncategorized

There Is Nothing Pro About Bass Pro

The rumors have been flying around my little neck of the woods that we are  getting a new Bass Pro Shop, and every fly shop owner in WNC has probably pooped their pants a little. I am not going to say doing your shopping at Bass Pro is un-American or anything like that, because having the choice to shop at Bass Pro is exactly the definition of American.  Unfortunately every dollar you spend at Bass Pro is money that isn’t spent at a local fly shop (if you don’t have a local fly shop you are excused), and I guarantee you that the guy who owns the local fly shop is a whole hell of a lot more passionate about the sport than the counter monkey at Bass Pro who gets eight bucks an hour whether he knows what he is talking about or not. I happen to be a local fly shop counter monkey and have on more than one occasion been asked to spool Bass Pro and Cabela’s outfits at no charge. I do it with a smile on my face because that’s what a local fly shop should do. Offer their expertise to anyone who walks through the door and asks for it. Unfortunately that same guy will probably go to Bass Pro next time he needs something because he is under the false assumption that bigger means cheaper…well not in the fly fishing industry. Cabela’s and Bass Pro aren’t allowed to sell a Sage rod or Simms waders at a discount unless every other retailer is (usually older models about to be replaced)…it’s written into their contracts. This misconception is what has been killing local fly shops since the advent of “big box stores” and unfortunately it continues to do so to this day. What this whole deal is gonna mean for local Asheville fly shops still remains to be seen, but I got a feeling I’m gonna see a lot more White River crap walking through the door in the not too distant future.

- Dave

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Apr 25 2011
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Ding...Ding...I Have An Announcement To Make, Open Ended Appeals To The Masses

The Spring Preview Issue Is Alive…and Awesome

Click On The Cover To See The Issue

It has been a veritable log flume around SCOF headquarters for the past week.  The lows have been truly low and the highs, well the highs have been better than huffing a bag full of glue out of a meth heads belly button. After switching providers at the eleventh hour and fifty ninth minute we have had a week to tweak everything…like a purple nurple on a fourth grader with glasses. We are proud to announce that the issue is 100% complete (unless someone finds a typo…which please don’t tell us about if you do…Steve might not make it through another issue upload), and all the links, video and mobile platform work.

So a little housekeeping is in order.  Ryan Dunne’s video Bluelines and Banjos video opens in a separate window from the issue, and be warned it takes a minute to load. We wanted to present it in the highest definition possible and figured a little bit of load time was worth seeing those wild fish in full High Definition. If you’re severely ADD and the Ritalin just isn’t helping, hit the video and browse the rest of the mag while it loads…it’s worth it. We have linked everything in the issue we could think of so when you are flipping through don’t forget to give every page a thorough cavity search and the links will light up when you hover over them. Last but not least we have made SCOF mobile. You can down load the issue through our website on the iPhone and iPad. We have optimized the issue to be viewed in iBook so you can still watch the video and explore all the different links. If you are on the Droid operating system download the Issuu app and search Southern Culture On The Fly.

Steve and I would like to thank all of our great contributors (click their bios in the mag to check out their professional sites) for giving up their time and skills helping us make a magazine that we hope Southern Fly Fisherman can be proud of. We would also like to thank Curtis Wright Outfitters and Hog Island Boatworks for going out on a very long, thin limb and becoming our first paying advertisers. Steve and I put a lot of ourselves, and more than a little bit of our sanity into this project, and we are pretty confident that the magazine is only going to get better as we move forward (Fall Issue drops October 2011 with more features and departments). So, if you have suggestions, criticisms, story ideas or any other feedback please share, but just remember…I cry a lot…for no reason…sometimes for days at a time.

-Dave

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Apr 05 2011
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Open Ended Appeals To The Masses

An Open Letter To The Guy Who Defiled The Restroom Last Saturday

Dear Sir,

What is the matter with you? I mean really, have we as a society devolved to the point where it has become acceptable to leave that kind of mess in a restaurant bathroom. I am not a prideful man but I have to work at a horrible job for very little money, I haven’t been able to get the smell of wings out of my nostrils for weeks now, and I do all of this because I love to fish and not much else. You sir apparently like to crap yourself in restaurants and rely on the servers to clean up your mess. I have often asked myself if pursuing my passion is worth all the crap (both literal and figurative) that I have to put up with. I mean when you work in an office I am pretty sure no one asks you to dispose of their recently soiled underwear (I might be wrong on that one it’s been a while since I worked in an office). So last Saturday you really forced me to examine what I am doing with my life…yesterday I went fishing.  I would like to thank you for really bringing my life into focus with your unfortunate poopy accident. I can finally call myself a hardcore fisherman, because if I am willing to pick up another man’s stained drawers to keep fishing I am pretty sure that qualifies me.

If I ever find out who you are, I will punch you directly in the throat,

Dave “Super Hardcore” Grossman

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Mar 17 2011
7 Comments
Open Ended Appeals To The Masses, Uncategorized

NC House Bill 353…It’s Way More Exciting Than It Sounds

Yesterday a few of our state politicians introduced a bill that would give Redfish, Speckled Trout, and Striped Bass game fish protection in the coastal waters of NC. For those of you not familiar with game fish status it basically means that these fish would no longer be able to be harvested for commercial purposes and would now exist for strictly recreational fishing purposes. No more culling hundreds of Stripers, no more Redfish in gill nets, this is a good thing people. So it is once again time to write an email to your state representative and let them know these fish are too important to us to let them be eradicated by over fishing and netting, and just to show that we here at SCOF aren’t all business enjoy the Redfish Can’t Jump Trailer which some might say (including us) was a major influence in getting our state fish the game fish status that Redfish so badly deserve. Click here for more info on the bill and to find out who your state representative is so that you can take up personal residence in their inbox.

-dave

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Mar 09 2011
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Open Ended Appeals To The Masses

It Is Officially Take A Hipster Fishing Month

Here at SCOF Headquarters we believe in giving back, and with Suzanne Summers cornering the African angle early on, and the guys at Fishy Kids picking up the slack for our kids, we decided that we want to help a group of folks that may not get the attention that these other groups garner, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need help…and a lot of it. So today we are announcing our little contribution to society, SCOF Take A Hipster Fishing Month.

For those of you not familiar with the recent scourge of the Hipster Movement, it involves men wearing clothes that are undersized (notice the boy size jeans on the grown man), also accessories (I don’t know how else to explain it, but when you see the matching purple chucks and bandanna you’ll know what I’m talking about). This weirdness has to stop or we might have a whole generation of spiky haired douche bags on our hands. So, the next time you are on your way to a day of fishing and you happen to see one of these ineffectual man boys lurking about; pull over, throw them in the back of the truck (by force if necessary), and take that Hipster fishing…because in the end you can’t look like a douche when you’re wearing waders and boots, and wielding a six weight.  For more info on the plight of the Hipster click here (seriously you’re gonna want to click that)

- Dave

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Mar 08 2011
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Ding...Ding...I Have An Announcement To Make, Open Ended Appeals To The Masses

Trout Vs. Old People…You Decide

So last week we reported that the Federal Game and Wildlife Commission was planning on shutting down a total of nine hatcheries, and lucky us, six just happen to be in the South. One of these hatcheries even feeds fish into the tail waters I fish and guide on. So let me be the first to say that closing these hatcheries is kind of like kicking a homeless guy.  He’s already homeless do you really need to kick him?  It’s not like Appalachia has ever been known for it’s thriving industries…we have tourism and we have old people. If you take away the fish, I’m pretty sure, all we’re left with is old people, and old people smell funny.  The petition has been made and awaits your signature. Even if you don’t like trout you should sign anyway because nobody likes old people.

  • Target: U.S. SENATE,  HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, and DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
  • Sponsored by: CONCERNED TAX PAYERS

The federal government is planning to eliminate funding to nine Federal fish hatcheries in GA, TN, KY, UT, MO, ND, and AR, which will result in their closure. The closure of these hatcheries will have a lasting impact on local, State, and federal economies. These facilities also provide enormous ecological and social contributions to local and state communities. Nearly 7 million fish are stocked in waters across the country from only six of these hatcheries. The economic impact is tremendous – over 3,000 jobs created and a total economic output of nearly 300 million dollars is generated by privately owned businesses selling food, lodging and supplies to trout fishermen. For every dollar spent on these fishery programs a return of $67 dollars is generated in the private sector, and for each tax dollar spent producing trout, $2.34 is returned to Washington in federal tax dollars generated from private business.

It is ironic that the Fish and Wildlife Service is celebrating the 140th year of their fisheries program; the oldest program in the agency. They are celebrating this historic event by cutting the entire fisheries program by 12.4 million dollars. They are getting a 47.9 million dollar increase in their overall budget, but have chosen to spend that money on other programs and new programs, and scrap a program that brings revenue into the federal budget at a 2.3 to 1 ratio and supports over 3,000 jobs in the private sector!!!   DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN; STAND UP AND BE HEARD!

Click the here to sign the petition.

- Dave

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Feb 13 2011
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Ding...Ding...I Have An Announcement To Make, Open Ended Appeals To The Masses, Tying Your Life Away

Tie-One-On-A-Thon Update

So the silence on the blog has been eerie hasn’t it?  I thought I saw a ghost on the about page, but it was just my reflection in the screen.  I do hope that it wasn’t to off-putting, but in our defense we have been kind of busy finalizing the details for what I think will turn out to be, the greatest fly tying event ever held in Steve’s Studio…I mean ever. Check out the webpage for the updated tiers and sponsor lists.  I will say that we have crafted an entertainment equation as such:

Expert Fly Tying + Local Microbrew Beer at PBR Prices + Charred Flesh Of Swine + The  Chance To Ask Your Favorite Tier Why He Makes Three Turns Instead of Two With His Wire Rib = One Rip Roaring Good Time

So tickets are going to be ten dollars and beer and BBQ will be depression era priced with every dollar going to Project  Healing Waters.  Tickets will be available at all Curtis Wright Outfitters locations, at the door, and will called by emailing me with all of you personal information (trust me I know what I am doing)…on second thought you should probably just go to CWO.  There will be an am session ticket and a pm session ticket with both sessions being topped out at fifty tickets…so get your tickets early and often folks.

Check back, as we will be updating the event info right up until the event with more giveaways, tiers, and sponsors.

- Dave

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