What does it all mean? A decade of fly fishing nonsense and what do we have to show for it? A shitload of money for one—a literal shitload. (Think Scrooge McDuck diving into a pool of gold coins.) SCOF has made Steve and I very rich men. With that vast regional digital fly fishing magazine wealth has come certain perks. Our homes are now giant and in those giant homes there are rooms filled with old bamboo and English-made aluminum bobbles. Our fly boxes overfloweth with flies not available in stores from all the most exclusive private fly houses. Those private label flies have pierced the lips of many private label fish, in the thousands of private river drainages and saltwater estuaries we’ve been invited to fish (for free) over this fruitful tenth of a century. You really haven’t fished until you have jumped tarpon hand-fed lobster on the daily in an enclosure in St. Moritz, where amazingly enough, it’s sunset all day. Super Insta-worthy shit there, folks. Yes, synergizing the worlds of fly fishing and bathroom humor has been personally advantageous indeed.
Did you know the media gets waders that have a lining that converts urine to strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups? Or that Steve hasn’t had to tie on his own fly in years? He has a guy for that now. One of many in his fishing entourage: There’s the knot guy, the spotter, the pusher, the towel guy, the camera guy, the joint guy, and the drone guy. Honestly it’s amazing some people fish their whole life by themselves. Might as well fish by foot like a common Tom Rosenbauer.
The most commendable thing about this ten years of unbridled professional and fishing success is that we haven’t let it change us. In fact we probably give back more to the community now then we ever did before SCOF. We now have “the help” pick up garbage every single trip. We then take that garbage back to the SCOFfice where Steve fashions it into compelling garbage art. We then take that garbage art back to the wild and natural place we found it, and leave it there to inspire others to pick up garbage. I think those garbage angels have really made a difference.
The big problems are important, but sometimes you just have to go to the creek and help random people on a local scale. Once a month you’ll find me at my local stocked trout stream with what I like to call free and unfiltered involuntary guiding. I roll up my sleeves, walk around, and let people know what they’re doing wrong, and why they’ll never catch any fish. Sometimes when I find a real train wreck, I’ll pull up my camp chair and really let them have it, but good. My results have been varied, but as I always say, if I can help one person catch one fish while verbally abusing them against their will then it’s all worth it.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t thank ourselves for getting ourselves here. It was surprisingly easy, and required little effort in the end. Also somehow Steve has more hair now than when we started, so he should probably thank someone for that. Probably me. Also where there are thank you’s there must also be, “We told you so’s.” So here we go: Mom, Dad, Tom Bie, Bob Clouser, Kelly Galloup, Don Kirk, Trout Pro, Joan Wulff, my third cousin Daqvid, the neighbor kid, and Sir Richard Attenbourough. Also Lee Wulff, Izaak Walton, Jane Goodall, Henry Winkler, and that teacher in kindergarten who caught me with a girl in the bathroom stall. We told you so, we told you so, we motherfucking told you so. Happy decade to us.
