Brevity
In A River Runs Through It (whether the movie or the novella I don’t remember – I sometimes confuse scenes from the two), Norman Maclean tells of how his father valued brevity in writing. Reading through my post about online fishing magazines, I realize this is something sorely missing from my own writing style.
The latest issue of Fish Can’t Read was just published. It’s full of good material. I like it. I also like Catch magazine. Between the two, you’ll find just about the best fly fishing content on the web. I’m just not sure the periodically-published flipbook style will persist. I think more regularly published high quality content will eventually prove more successful. There – that’s really all I wanted to say with that bloated post from a couple weeks back.
Jason fishing a small North Alabama stream in early morning light.
Brevity is also of use in reporting on the fishing trip Jason Kelley and I took over the weekend. The plan was to scout lots of potential smallmouth streams in our area, and catch some good fish to end up the season. We did scout several streams, some of which looked very good. We didn’t catch many fish. No smallmouth. We tried everything we could think of to no avail. The weather was great. We sampled several good beers. Dinner at Logans Roadhouse was good, and both Alabama (for me – Roll Tide!) and Arkansas (for Jason – Go Razorbacks!) won big in their games on Saturday night. We decided that we didn’t face enough adversity to deserve to catch any fish. With that in mind we plan to take our next trip during severe storms, only drink Natty Light, eat turkey dogs charred over a campfire and be Vanderbilt fans for the night. To the left is a shot of Jason fishing the first creek of the morning. I’m still editing photos, and I’ll post a few more as I finish them. I imagined how I wanted this shot to look when I snapped the photo and came pretty close to getting it there in the post-processing.
Take care,
Nathan
Tags: beer, brevity, fly fishing, online magazines, Smallmouth
November 18th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Well, at least you had great subject matter for the photos! These two look good. I cant wait for more. I need something to frame.
November 19th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Jason,
I think I have a couple more pretty good ones. I think one of them would have been really cool if I’d had a longer lens. Don’t know if you’ll want to frame any. Would have been nice if we’d had some with fish in them…
If you want any of them in high resolution for printing or whatever, just let me know which ones.
Nathan
November 20th, 2009 at 9:49 am
My God, are you people fishermen or photographers/models? I have this sick vision of Jason posing for various shots while Nathan says, “Yes! Yes! That’s it. Work it. No! No!” – a.k.a. Austin Powers style…
Jason, put some clothes on an FISH, hombre!
November 20th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Matt, I thought you liked it when I wore nothing but hip boots with suspenders and a fedora?
November 20th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Holy crap, I’m glad I was late meeting you guys that morning on the Flint.
Matt, I don’t know if we’re fishermen or not. Do you have to actually catch a fish to be considered a fisherman?
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:49 am
You Arkansas boys are really weird…
Thanks for the visual, BTW. It’s been a long time since I threw up.
Nathan – no, absolutely not. It’s called fishing, not catching, for a reason.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:40 am
Good, I feel better now that the pressure’s off. I can just go on not catching anything forever and still be a fisherman. Cool.