Revive - A Quarterly Fly Fishing Journal Revive- Farewell Issue | Page 172

This magazine has brought fly fishing content to the most intelligent and attractive audience in our sport (if you’re reading this, you’re included) for the last four years. To those that have paid attention, you have noticed some of fly fishing’s most prominent writers, artists, and anglers featured here four times per year (give or take). I love opening this magazine and reading about the experiences and discoveries of other anglers, I love seeing the adventures of others in exotic and familiar places expressed here using this common denominator of fishing we share. But the thing that makes it special and so important to me isn’t the photography or the art or the writing, it’s the chronicling of adventures of myself and the group of incredibly close friends I have here at Revive.

Eight years ago someone tapped me on the shoulder in an Econometrics class in grad school, and from there I travelled to Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Alaska. I’ve chased steelhead, musky, redfish, browns and bows, and bass (so many species of bass) as close to and as far from Alabama as you can imagine. And again, if you’ve paid attention, you’ve noticed my transformation from fly fishing poorly to fly fishing poorly with much nicer equipment. Now, when I return to read the back issues, I still marvel at the content, but I revel in the memories even more.

I remember driving to north Georgia one week after proposing to my wife with $200 to my name and somehow coming home with a $300 fly rod. I remember driving to Arkansas to chase browns, 18 hours round trip to fish for a day, maybe 2. I remember driving to Michigan to not catch a steelhead, flying to Alaska to catch more steelhead than I could imagine. Catching a cold in Alaska. Catching so many fish in Alaska that one day we just decided to drink at the bar all day. Sitting on the bank in Alaska and not fishing anymore because fishing became less important than just being there.