We’ve loved SCOF, Southern Culture on the Fly since the day they started! We love them because it’s a magazine that feels like us. It’s about life, about emotions, about what you feel deep down when you fish. It’s not a technical manual telling you how many strands are in your tippet or how thick the feathers on your fly are. SCOF speaks straight to our feelings, and that’s why we can relate to it. Even if the fish are sometimes different from the ones we chase back home, the joy, the happiness, and the frustration hit home, and that’s what we connect with. When we see a photo of guys eating sandwiches on a beach, it takes us right back to our lunch by the stream up in the mountains. It just speaks to us.
And the reason this issue is special is that Dave Grossman, a part of SCOF, has passed away, and this issue is a tribute to him. Below is the text dedicated to him, followed by one he wrote himself.
Dear reader,
Here is the first special edition of SCOF ever published. It’s a tribute to our founding editor-in-chief, David Grossman, who died on April 3, 2026. He would have turned 48 today. If you didn’t know him, you might learn something in these pages. If you did, I hope you can get through this issue without crying (or laughing) too loud in the bathroom. Dave wouldn’t expect you to read it anywhere else.
We’ve gathered photos of him, stories about him, and pieces in his own words to try to show a few of his many sides. You’ll see that nobody talks about Dave better than Dave himself.
If you’re still hungry for more at the end, dive back into our old issues. He was prolific, laugh-out-loud funny, and right about so many important things.
What I especially love about Dave’s writing is that he constantly questions himself. In one of his letters, for example, he meets a 21-year-old guide on the river who has never heard of him. He then confesses his vanity and broadcasts it to the world: “I am now Dave the Anonymous,” he says.
Believe it or not, being famous didn’t matter to him. Sure, his “thing” was partly being the least clueless person in the room, but he cared more about being funny than being the center of attention. Truth be told, he didn’t want to be the center of attention at all. That dichotomy, I learned (from his wife), is what makes Dave Dave. If you were at iCast in 2017 and remember someone putting a rubber chicken in your hands and demanding you choke it for the camera, that someone was Dave. You probably knew that.
But no celebrity was safe from his criticism. He was so comfortable skirting controversy partly because he was the first to admit when he was wrong, and often the first to punish himself. Building a brand on being “unapologetic” mattered less to him than building a community where everyone felt like they belonged.
We’re carrying Dave’s torch and trying to grapple with his loss, without remembering how he smelled when you were literally wrestling him. We invite you to help us wrestle (he was insanely strong), and we hope that if your story didn’t make it into these pages, you won’t hold it against us. Too many people loved David Grossman to fit in a single issue, and that’s the whole point.
Happy birthday, my friend.
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Letter from Dave (SCOF 36 – Summer 2020)
My life of excess has finally come full circle. I now picture each of my vices waiting in a long line, taking turns kicking me in the dick. There’s the 20 years of yellow American Spirits, the questionable chemistry experiments in college, but at the front of the line, apparently, are beer and meat. I don’t know how much beer and meat it takes to get gout at 41, but apparently that’s exactly how much I’ve put away. It started with a broken toe, then quickly swerved left and crashed right into a lifetime of extremely weak willpower in the face of the dark arts of barley and flesh. I was crippled by my own brilliance, and blaming the cow or the old red, white, and blue of a PBR can wasn’t going to change that. No, a round of steroids and a heavy-duty anti-inflammatory did the trick a few days later, but that’s not the point. The point is that my most excessive indulgence is still lurking out there in the tall grass, ready to strike like a junkyard dog that’s been told to go for the balls.
And what’s this excess of all excesses, you ask? Yep, it’s fishing. I’ve given myself to fishing far more than to drinking, smoking, eating, or sex, and it’s not even close. I’ve fished far and wide, and close to home and in skinny water. The only hours that outnumber the ones I’ve spent fishing for real are the ones spent tying flies, scouting spots, and reading and writing about fishing. I’ve skipped family events, torched jobs, and slept in the dirt. None of it can be judged as anything but excessive by today’s socially acceptable standards. If inpatient fishing rehab centers existed, I’d have been in and out my whole life, with nothing to show for it but dozens of relapses despite the best intentions of my friends and family. I’m a fishing crackhead, a fish head, or a crack fish (funny because it works both ways).
I have a pretty good idea of the personal damage all this fishing is going to cause. Friendships, marriages, bankruptcy, dying alone on a riverbank somewhere: it’s all already baked into the equation. But if […] I end up with something called “tennis elbow,” I’m going to lose my mind.
David Grossman
Haiku
The Man with the Surly Monkey Tattoo
by Lindsey Grossman, circa 2014
In case you’re wondering, a tube of tattoo ointment can look exactly like a tube of travel toothpaste. Luckily, I figured that out before it was too late. I can’t say the same for the time I mistook a can of pepper spray for a lighter. I’d planned a romantic evening (a rare thing) for Dave and me, and I was trying to light the candles with what I thought was a cute lighter I’d found in one of our three junk drawers. Instead of coming home to a candlelit dinner, Dave came home to me coughing, crying, spitting, and puking on the couch. It was great.
But back to the point: why is there tattoo ointment on our bathroom counter? Because of the tattoo Dave got behind my back while I was in Palm Springs with my college friends, that’s why.
“So, I got a tattoo,” he tells me once the kids are in bed. At least he waited until they were asleep. This isn’t the first time I’ve come home from a trip to find a new tattoo on my husband. The first time, he announced it in front of a group of fly-fishing guests I’d just met, and in front of our son, who was five at the time. He’d just stepped off a seven-hour drive, and I was either very pregnant or had a newborn. So, hey, points for telling me in private this time.
“Is your bottom lip trembling uncontrollably?” I asked after a long silence. So many things were running through my head. I was trying not to say anything I couldn’t take back.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Do I need a drink before I see this?”
“It’s not that bad,” he pleaded, as if a spur-of-the-moment tattoo in Florida could ever be justified. (For some reason, the fact that he got it in Florida makes it feel even worse.)
I felt my body relax a notch or two and asked to see it. I really did need a drink first. Maybe seven. What he unveiled was Surly Monkey, a Dave creation that serves as his magazine’s mascot. It’s creative, it’s funny, but I don’t think it belongs on his torso for life (hip to armpit), holding a fly rod and flipping the bird. I reminded him that we have kids who will see it at the beach. And at the pool. And on Shirtless Sundays. Which don’t exist at our house, but now never can. Thanks, Dave.
And I’d just been thinking about how cute it was that, while Dave was in Florida and I was in California, we were both shopping for a white Speedo for him at the exact same time. Because that’s what couples who’ve been together as long as we have are like. We finish each other’s sentences, we look up at the sky from opposite ends of the country to wish on the same star, and we shop for mankinis at the same time.
It just goes to show that right when you think it’s all hearts and white Speedos, a surly monkey shows up and gives you the finger.
It’s now been more than six months since he passed, and not a day goes by that I don’t think about how I’ll never be able to replace the relationship Dave and I had. His friendship, his humor, his mind were so one of a kind, and I was just lucky enough to be part of it for 15 years. We had a mysterious connection and understanding that grew into a terrific creative partnership, and somehow it drew in a community of great people to share it with us. Turns out he taught me a lot, for better and for worse. Our trips together made for truly epic memories that will stay with me forever. Every single one of them. What I know is that none of it can ever be recreated. I miss him every day, and I’ll always love him like a brother.
Steve Seinberg
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David Grossman’s Blue River Jurassik Park Dory First Descent
by John St. John
The Jet Boat Story
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All the Legends Are True
An Ode to the Late Dave Grossman
By Jason Tucker
David Grossman
October 24, 1978 – April 3, 2026
My friend and mentor, Southern Culture on the Fly cofounder and former editor-in-chief Dave Grossman, died suddenly on Friday, April 3, 2026. Here are a few woefully inadequate words in his memory.
A few years ago, Dave confided in me that it was time to put an end to Southern Culture on the Fly (SCOF), the magazine he’d cofounded with the renowned artist Steve Seinberg, after about ten years of publishing. He wanted my help planning their final year, in which we’d run stories so offensive and so countercultural that he’d lose every one of his sponsors. It wasn’t out of disrespect for them: it was a gag, a giant hoax, a way to take SCOF out in style. I think it was out of respect for his sponsors that we never went through with it, and that he sold the magazine instead to a bunch of good guys, who’ve kept the everyman spirit and the Southern twang of Southern Culture on the Fly alive. But that was Dave. He wasn’t weird or rebellious. He was just himself, a man who single-handedly made the world aware that fly fishing in the South existed, and that with a little gas station food and roadside moonshine, it’s actually a whole lot of fun.
“I’ve often been asked (mostly by Yankees and Californians, no offense) why I wanted to start a fly-fishing magazine about the South. My answer has always been: ‘Because that’s where I fish.’” — Dave Grossman, in the first issue of SCOF
The second-best thing Dave Grossman ever did for me was to drop anchor, stand up, take the rod out of my hands, spend ten minutes rerigging it, and put me back in business. I’d gone almost half a mile of our South Holston River float without a single bite, and Dave wasn’t going to stand for it. From there on, I was catching fish as fast as I could unhook them, release them, and get my flies back in the water.
The best thing Dave Grossman ever did for me was to publish my writing in Southern Culture on the Fly. Over several years, he ran eight to ten of my pieces, often with barely any edits. I’ve come to accept that I’ll never be the next Hemingway or Harrison, but having someone who appreciates your writing and gives you the encouragement you need to keep going is priceless.
SCOF was, in its own way, a countercultural statement against the more buttoned-up fly-fishing press. Where the slicker magazines catered to anglers chasing high-end destinations, exotic fish, and wildly expensive rods, the spirit of SCOF, cultivated very deliberately by Dave, was dedicated to the rest of us: the grinders, the dudes, the gals, and the guides, in patched, leaky waders with mud in the bottom of the boat. You were infinitely more likely to read stories about stocker trout, Southern largemouth, carping in the muck, or waking up still in your waders to head back out after a long night around the campfire than an article about some fancy bonefish resort or Northwest steelhead. When you’re a working-class fly fisherman, it feels good to be not just recognized but celebrated.
Thanks to that spirit, Dave let me be free as a writer. He happily published my strangest, most offbeat work. At the peak of my writing career, at least in my own eyes, Dave ran a piece I’d titled “The Book of Taunts,” in which anglers and fish trade pre-battle insults, medieval style. I’d written it in five chapters that I planned to spread over several issues, and since it was so far out there, he could drop it if it didn’t land. Instead, he published the whole thing, 6,000 words, embellished with art by Steve Seinberg. It took up half the issue. That willingness to be weird and take risks is what set Dave apart and made Southern Culture on the Fly special.
The first time I met Dave was at a fly-tying night in a pretty big brewery taproom in Asheville. The place was packed with two hundred eager anglers, men and women, mostly young, proof of his ability to bring people together. I was there to talk to Dave about my writing for SCOF. He’d already published two or three of my pieces, but we’d never met. We talked for a while, then I mentioned I needed to hit the road for home. He perked up right away. “You’re driving all the way back to Georgia tonight? No, man. Have a few beers and crash at my place. You’re not going home.” And that’s what happened. I met a ton of great people, had a great time, then Dave showed me to a guest room in his basement. He was just a good guy, kind, generous, and hospitable.
I don’t want to overstate my relationship with Dave, but I do want to underline what it meant to me. We fished together four or five times, and I stayed at his house almost every time. His wife, Lindsey, was always welcoming and warm, though I doubt she could pick me out of a lineup. Dave introduced me to one of his best friends, who lives a few miles from me, and my friendship with Mike Farfour, a restaurateur in Athens, is one of the best things about my life here. An army of people were better friends with Dave than I was, and knew him better.
But Dave was a gravitational force that pulled people in, a galaxy he tended with wit, charm, and affability. I don’t think he ever got enough credit as a writer. He was excellent. He was also a respected fishing guide, a gifted fly tier, a loving husband and father, and, of all things, a home builder.
“It’s hard to believe that if you ask anyone else about fly fishing in the South, you get a puzzled look followed by: ‘There’s fly fishing in the South?’ For way too long, all the good stories and all the beautiful pictures have been about other places. Those faraway destinations are great in their own way, but they’re by nature out of reach for most of us. Let me be the first to say that the grass isn’t always greener somewhere else, and that the grass in your own backyard is the greenest in the neighborhood.” — Dave Grossman
So Dave, I’m saying goodbye. Thank you for the time, the wisdom, and the floatant you shared, for the days on the water, and thank you for making us appreciate the ordinary, what’s right in our own backyard, the beauty and wildness all around us. And above all, thank you for reminding us of the joys of cold fried chicken, a warm PBR, and the sound of oars biting into a fast mountain current, with your gravelly voice echoing off the canyon walls.
Shine on, my friend. . .
originally published on Jason’s blog, Fontinalis Rising, April 6, 2026
I like that : Anything less than blood is BS!
The Tailing, by Dave Grossman and Steve Seinberg
Dude, if you’ve never fished the tropics, you’ve got to go to Punta Allen in Mexico, at the very tip of the Yucatán Peninsula. You’re going to lose your mind! The story of that adventure in SCOF matches exactly what it’s been like every time we’ve been there. Our only regret is that we weren’t there at the same time as Dave and Steve. We would’ve had a blast! But that place is Paradise! Permit paradise, bonefish paradise, snook paradise, and tarpon too if you hit the right season! And the village, man, the village is the friendliest place you’ll ever find!
Black Caddis and Ether Dreams –
This black caddis hatch has become the proverbial popcorn kernel stuck between my editorial molars. Every year, I put it on the editorial calendar, and every year someone asks, “Why do you keep bothering with that?” This year, I’m out of answers.
If you don’t know about the black caddis hatch on the Watauga River in East Tennessee, you’re not from around here. It’s the hatch that produces the biggest bugs the tailwaters have to offer, in such numbers that the water gets covered in size 12 wings fluttering around clumsily. Every fish in the river knows what’s going on and showed up to the party well in advance. Brown trout you never see during business hours lazily chase caddis on the surface, in broad daylight, in front of everybody. The fish you hook often cough up caddis from their bloated gullets, as if your boat were an Uber on a Saturday night in any major city in the world. Or at least, that’s how it’s all presented, packaged, and sold by every guide within a hundred miles. That’s not the guides’ fault, though, because that’s how everyone talks about it who’s lived the right day, at exactly the right moment, smack in the middle of the hatch.
Island Of The Damned
Looking back, taking in everything that happened, I should have seen that things were going sideways long before the whole thing went completely off the rails. There are always warning signs you blow through on the way to wherever you end up, who knows where. One of them should have been the weather: cloudy days and north winds. Another, that whole business of the bad beer we bought by mistake. Even with lousy weather and undrinkable beer, I’d never seen a recreational situation go south so fast. We had no idea, when we dragged the boats up onto the island, that one of us wouldn’t be leaving it.
The plan was beautifully simple: head down to Florida to escape winter’s cold shoulder. We’d meet up with friends who live down there, claim an island in the lagoon, and enjoy a few days with no stress. When you’re occupying an island for several days, certain rules apply: the flats have to be close, the beer store has to be close, and everybody else has to be far away. Other than that, the general rules of civilized society apply. At least, that’s what I thought before I got to the island.
That’s without a doubt one of the finest tributes SCOF could have paid to Dave. We’re sure he’s cracking up reading all of this from wherever he is! Thanks, guys!