10.08.26 Oh boy, here we go....

     Things are going to get interesting with this one. I won't take a stance, nor a side, but will report kinda what's going on with one of the legacy brands out there in fly fishing. That company is R.L. Winston and they have set off a firestorm with something they did, knowingly or not. 

     You know over the years I've addressed some of the marketing campaigns that have been introduced in and around fly fishing. They include some hot topics like race, gender, and sexuality. They've also touched on things that are, or were, going on in society, with some labeling things as "Woke". And you know what some say, "Go woke, go broke". 

     So with not knowing all of the facts here's what I do know. There is a women who is an influencer, or content creator. And part of her jam is publishing adult content by subscription. I'm not sure if she is on Only Fans, but it's along those lines. That's a platform where males and females post content, usually of sexual nature, adult stuff, where paying subscribers can see when visiting said sites. Some may call it pornography, and I guess it pretty much is. 

     Her name, maybe it's her stage name, is Lamar Gatz. I don't know much but I saw, while scrolling around social media, that she does her business along with her husband, along with others that join in. That's him in the middle, below. 

Hey, they're adults, it's adult content, there's big money to be made- like a ton, by their own admission on podcasts they say they make about $1.5 million dollars a year. It's legal, there's my body my choice, so to each their own. Searching around it doesn't take much to find images of her at work, um, that's her below.

     Did I post this for attention? No. I included it in this blog for context as to why it has added to the furor of the connection between Gatz and Winston. What could an Only Fans type adult content creator and a fly rod manufacturer have in common? Well, let me explain. 

     Like other influencers, content creators, hell, bloggers, basically their lives are an open book. So you get things across a broad spectrum depending on how much or little they want you to know. Well, it seems, Gatz wanted to learn how to fly fish. That's all good, as a sport we want more people, regardless of age, gender, identity, or beliefs, or how they make a living, in the game. At least that's what I think. We are all different. We all have our own lives, and make our money in different ways, and that can include professions that others may not be able, or choose, to do.

     So it appears Gatz did what other influencer's do. She most likely penned an introductory letter to R.L. Winston stating that she wanted to get into fly fishing and has 700,000 followers and could help further expose, no pun intended, others to fly fishing by telling her story. Sounds innocent enough, right? 

     So like any other company out there the chance to gain exposure, again no pun intended, as they fight for market share sounds like a good investment. Someone at Winston probably saw the introduction, didn't vet her much, and decided to send her out a Winston starter kit, which she posted in video format on her various social media outlets. She also has posted videos about her first fly fishing outings and even her first fish she brought to hand. While yes, those videos are stacked between teasers about threesomes and solos with sexual overtones, it's still fly fishing, and she's an adult in an adult world. Again, just the facts, not my opinions. 

     So, like about anything else, people took to the airwaves, well social media, to give their perspective on the damage this scenario could do to women and fly fishing. It, the comments, delves into the sexualization of women in fly fishing, and probably everything else out there, especially if it comes to market share and money. Let me stay this fact, sex sells, good looking people sell things, both men and women. Look at the ads and the catalogues. Ever see a dude with a body like mine selling anything? Well, of course not. 

     Now when it comes to fly fishing the sexualization, of men and women, kind of gets tampered down depending on what they're selling and where they're selling it for. Most of the time fly fishing is done in freshwater and anglers have on waders and clothes and hats etc. In the saltwater maybe not so much, but the big outfitters have done a good job staying away from selling mens Speedo's and women's thongs to wear while on the front of the skiff casting to rolling 150 pound tarpon. That's the fly rodders, the spin and gear side well they need some work. But I'm not judging.

     I'm only on Facebook but I'm sure it's the same across all social media outlets. When you become part of the algorithm for a topic you just get enrolled into all those types of feeds. So for me, fishing is part of my computer IP address DNA, so I get a lot of stuff like the above. And the more south or warmer climates you see images with anglers with less clothing on, especially from the ladies. I can picture images like these in some old calendar hanging in a tackle shop back in the 1970's but I wouldn't think they would pass todays equality litmus test, but they do. 

     As I've said good looks, sex, and sexuality sells, even in fly fishing. And that's moreso with women, unfortunately. To me good looking people are good looking people, and I like to see them, doing things I like to do. Hell, there's hot firefighters, doctors, nurses, guides, photographers, bloggers, and fly rodders out there, good for them, wish I were one of you. And when you come across beauty, male and female, and talent, they can make for the perfect storm for advertising and influencing and ambassadorship, which can led to brand recognition and sales. True dat'.

     So from all the comments I've seen out there it's kind of leading to ganging up on R.L. Winston, I guess, the real adult in the room, not the adult content creator. There's a shaming going on for that company for aligning or allowing the sexuality of a women to be brought out into the mainstream, for possible financial gain. In most posts people start off with the gist that they are not attacking the young women or how she earns her money. Fair enough. Below is just one post that I read...

     People are allowed to have their opinions and even put them out into the social media world where they will live forever. They can even choose to boycott a company, or an event, if it doesn't align with their beliefs or are offended in any way. That brings us back to the cancel culture stuff that was a big part of our daily lives just a half a dozen years ago. 

     But then, truthfully, how can you blame one without judging the other? How can you have distain for a company that is supporting a new fly fisher whose career path interferes, or is incongruent, with the image, or likeness, that one gender has worked hard to create? And then does it harm women fly fisherwomen? That's not a statement, that's a question. My respect for fly rodders, of both genders, can't be tarnished by the alignment or ads a company, that they own, chooses to do in their best interest. But I'll recap, I don't think this went down like we are seeing it unfold. It's reminding me of that whole Bud Light drama a few years back. And drama? Well that cost Anheuser -Busch about 1.7 billion dollars in North America alone.  

     So what will happen? Well it'll blow up in fly fishing circles, on social media, and in online magazine blog posts. There will be You Tube videos and most likely some kind of seminars during the upcoming fly fishing shows that kick off in a few months. And then it will go away, just like everything else does. 

      I know someone will want to hang me by my nuts on where I'm headed next. If not for the mere mention of Joan Wulff but by including a picture of her with the others that are in this post. Now Joan Wulff is one of the OG's. She's royalty in fly fishing. Style. Grace. A huge contributor to fly fishing and of course casting. And I might add beautiful, even as she approaches her 100th birthday on October 18th. 

     I found an article in Hatch Magazine published in 2013. The lead image shows a photographer catching Joan mid-cast. Now while her outfit is modest in today's standards what was that standard some 70 years ago? We all know times, people, and limits change, just look at pictures from ladies on the beach in the 1950's and then todays beach scenes. It's about enough to make you blush. 

     

     In the article it kind of leads the reader to believe that fly fisherwomen of today have Joan to thank, "...for making fly fishing hot...". I'll let you read part of it below.

     I'm not going anywhere further with this, but I will say, things evolve. Back then some may have taken offense to the pictures of Joan. Imagine how a wife might have felt if her husband had those pictures posted above his fly tying table? Might someone say that there was a hint of sexuality in between the style and grace of Joan's casting abilities? We can't punish people for being beautiful. But now we can judge, or even punish them, for what they do in on-line subscription only adult websites.

     And that to me is the end. Obviously there's no comparison between Lamar and Joan, and I never intended there to be. But if we're going to open a can of worms then let's open it, and be honest. I think in the end this was just a bad accident, two things meeting at an intersection where they collided. Winston will no doubt separate itself from Gatz in some social media admission of guilt and poor judgement while Gatz's subscription numbers will go up a bunch. But the damage will be done. She'll be shamed and asked to remove the Winston swag from her photos and videos to appease the general population, or at least those who are offended and are voicing their opinions the loudest. 

     The shame is, at the end of the day, I believe Lamar was truly excited about stepping into fly fishing and even landing her first trout. And instead of attacking her, or being repulsed by what she does for a living, maybe we should teach her how to handle a trout that's going to be released. You know the trademarked saying everyone used for a while, "Keep Em' Wet", well no pun intended. 

     But somewhere someone got offended at that possibility on how "Keep Em' Wet" could be interpreted, so, after a kinda cancel culture kicked in, it was renamed to a more accurate and fitting, "Keep Fish Wet".

     That way we would never think that the campaign to save fish from dying could be misconstrued in thinking we were somehow talking about a human being and their sexual arousalness. This is all nuts, like nuts, that you eat, not the ones I'll be hanging from after this post goes live.  

10.07.26 Took a ride out west...

      As part of our return trip we wanted, and needed, to swing by the old neighborhood for a visit and to pick up some stuff we still had hanging in the closet at our former neighbors house. It felt weird, almost uncomfortable, being within a few hundred feet where we once called home. We don't know why, but we both couldn't wait to get out of there. 

     I think part of it, at least for me, is the guilt I still have about selling it. In some deep corner of my brain I feel like I committed a crime, and got away with it. Now she's a beauty of an old house, but comes with a lot of needs, and required maintenance just to keep her status quo. I conveyed everything I could to the buyers, who seemed happy the last time we spoke to them, but, still, we avoided them, as to not want to hear, or be accused, of hiding or not relaying something they found out when they got in. 

     When we were planning on selling I came up with a date of May 22nd for it to be put on the market. I knew the house showed its best during May and spring is always a good time to sell a house. When we had our estate sale and planted our "Coming Soon" signs in the front yard

the Zestimate at that time put the homes value at over 1 million dollars. Now Zestimate isn't science, but it is something sellers and buyers use when they surf Zillow. So for us the timing was perfect and we needed to strike when the iron was hot, and we did. 

     We had sat down with a team of realtors who came up with a marketing plan which included listings, and staging, photos and drone shots, and New York Times listings. That would all happen after we had cleaned the place out and had it show ready. I told them that wasn't going to work. This house needed to go-live on May 22nd and, like I said, it would be sold in less then three weeks. They weren't buying it, so we did it on our own, and had an offer on it a week before May 22nd, and we closed in July.

     And we're lucky, well blessed, that it happened when it did, exactly the way it did. If it didn't go in May it would still be sitting for sale. Out neighbor was selling at the same time we were. We had a plan to list them at the same time thinking it would stir up a buzz and help both of us sell quickly. We got out of the gate quicker, sold it ourselves, while she went with the realtors, and their plan.

     Well last week her home, which is stunning, was featured in The New York Times, above. And the real estate market, for now, has seemed to have softened up a bit. Interest rates, time of year, New Jersey real estate taxes, could all be contributing factors. But, for us, somehow, we got it ready and sold just at the perfect time. 

     So while we sat having lunch in my former neighbors house I kept looking over to see the old house, and maybe what they had done with it. I went online and looked up the Zestimate and it's 

now down to $828,000, just about around what the buyers paid for it. You know if that number was it when they bought I don't know if they would have paid even money for it. I guess timing is everything in real estate.

     And of course I couldn't pass by the chance to stop and check out the river. The Delaware River. What seven years I had here. I say seven because we lived in Titusville for 8, but I didn't really fish it this spring. 

That pull off above will not be there one day but I pulled into there countless times to scout, check conditions, relax, and even fish. Just about every morning I made the commute to Essex County College in Newark I would stop and look at the water and see what colors the lettering on the "Trenton Makes The World Takes" bridge were.

     I had so many good times fishing that river and met good people while doing so. And the striped bass. I would have never dreamed that in the heart of New Jersey's capital city I would come to call this my home and favorite water to fly fish for striped bass. One thing that moving to the Lowcountry has reaffirmed to me is that I miss fishing big and moving water. 

      Over the years I was always hesitant to post trip logs with pictures as to not blow up a spot, or even that the fishing was good. It's a place that you really can't just go to and be productive. You have to put in your time, learn, and be dialed into. And by the time we moved I can say I had it down pretty good. So if you were to ask me if I'd rather have a day to fish the spring on the Delaware, when the bass are on the herring, or a fall day, when the bass are on the peanuts on the beach, I'd would pick the former. 

      And since this post is all about Mercer County I figured I'd share some Trenton news. It wasn't my scene, but was a huge Jersey music scene venue. It was called City Gardens. It was a 

nondescript rectangular masonry building that was a mix between a club and concert hall. It was one of the most popular places for the hard rock, punk, and alternative music fans to go to from 

the 1970's through the 1990's. I never knew of it until I saw and article that a car had driven through the vacant structure a few years back. It was a place that I drove past on Calhoun Street on my way to work at Capital Health. 

     There was a push to save the place but it was deemed uninhabitable and ordered to be torn down. Well, yesterday on October 6 , 2026, it met the proverbial wrecking ball. I saw on-line that people drove to be there when it went down and to grab a brick or something to remember the place by.

     Knowing the place was historic I took Erin there on December 27th, 2022, to take a tour and some pictures. By then the place was wide open and the vagrants and scrappers had moved in and called the place home, or work.

     The place was big, and I can imagine only if it's walls could talk. There was nothing we could find that had City Gardens on it so we just settled for some pictures before leaving.

     And while we were down south last week the north got beat up pretty good with the weather. Now we're up here, and it looks like home may get one of those fall tropical storms, or at worst, a hurricane. 

     Right now it's churning it's way north from Mexico. If the path doesn't hit you the rain just might and it looks like the southeastern part of the country is going to get hammered. 4-8 inches of rain is a lot of water and the higher to lower elevation areas don't do well with monsoons.  

     But for now we're back in Cape May, freezing our asses off, but enjoying the crisp fall weather. It's empty down here as most people have stopped vacationing or returned to their primary residences. Closing up shop here and heading south back can't come soon enough. I've got used to shorts and t-shirts in the short time we've been down south. I'll trade in a light jacket if it gets down to 50 degrees in South Carolina over $6.00 a gallon home heating oil prices any day of the week. 

     And that brings me back to the old house, and that old oil burner. The new owners have no idea how hungry that thing gets, and the frequency and costs that comes with visits from Stockton Oil. We kept our thermostat at 60 degrees, and it took everything she had to hit that mark. I guess that's where the guilt comes in. You don't know until you know.....and they're gonna know soon enough.

10.06.26 Checkin' things off the list...

 

     It's weird coming back home. We haven't been gone long enough to be missed or feeling like we haven't been back in a long time. While it does feel good to visit and be back, I'm ready to go back south. Whatever groove we were in since we settled in down there definitely will get derailed by being away for some time. But it's all good.

     How could I complain? I got to attend the Giants game with Erin on Sunday. That was after we checked off the box for wedding number one. If you haven't been to the Park Chateau in East 

Brunswick I hope you get an invite for an event there one day. And that's coming from a grump who'd rather attend a funeral then a wedding. And me and my $36 black suit fit in just fine, but in the end the emergency hemming of the pants set me back $45. 

      And then we were off to Manhattan and Mt. Sinai for another round of 9/11 tests and Doc visits. This time it was the dreaded pulmonary function test (PFT). If you've never done the 

whole shebang it's not something to look forward to. You basically sit in a box with your nose pinched off and your mouth wrapped around a pipe. And when instructed you blow as hard as you can until you either see stars, soil yourself, or cough to death. Luckily between the CT scans in August and the PFT's yesterday everything is status quo. I used to complain about the drive from Mercer County to NYC for the appointments, now I have to plan for them coming from South Carolina. In the end I'm grateful the program was started, is still funded, and will be around until I no longer am. 

     I might have to make a return trip to NYC to see the ophthalmologist before I go because my eyesight has gone to shit over the last year and the Doc said there's a connection between sarcoidosis and the eyes. So it's either ocular sarcoidosis or just another symptom of getting old. Regardless of the cause I know I need glasses 24/7 as my Clic 3.0 readers aren't cutting it anymore. Once I get outfitted with a new pair of specs maybe I'll finally be able to see those redfish on the flats that have been so elusive. 

10.03.26 Good to be back at our happy place...

 Hilton Head is great but there's nothing like Cape May. Nice to wake up on day one of our 30-day return trip to New Jersey with perfect fall weather. We both agree it would be hard to give up our place here and it only takes being back about 10 minutes to reinforce that in our brains. Sometimes once you give something up you never get it back, so this is worthy sticking with. 

10.02.26 Lucky we left when we did...

       We left Bluffton at 630 and headed north on Interstate 95. It was an easy ride and when we got to Bucee's in Florence we got a text from Lauren asking us if we were involved or stuck in the big accident that happened on the bridge over Lake Marion in Santee, South Carolina. The accident involved about 40 vehicles, including 15 tractor trailers. 

     Amazingly no one was seriously injured and there were no fatalities. We were trying to figure out where we were when the accident happened and I was able to check the lone picture, below, that I took as we drove through that area. 

     That picture was taken at 757 am and the accident occurred, at that spot, a little after 9 o'clock. Interestingly, the fog must have got worse which probably was a factor due to visibility in the area. You just never know where and when stuff like this is going to happen. Lucky for us the entire ride was uneventful, and actually enjoyable. We decided to head to Cape May and made plans to drive to Lewes, Delaware, and reservations to take the ferry over to Cape May. 

      The directions said it would take 10 hours and 45 minutes and it was pretty much spot on, plus the hour and half for the ferry ride over to New Jersey. This route took us off 95 as soon as we crossed over into Virginia. It was there we both first saw our first cotton field. 

       We got to Norfolk and then made a left and headed north towards the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. It would be another first for both of us. The bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge is an engineering marvel. It's located at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and is 17 miles long and takes about a half and hour to cross. 

      I was amazed when we approached the first, of I think three, tunnels, which have long spans between them. You can see below how one of the tunnels sits between two bridge spans.

     As many times as I've looked at the map I never realized how wide the entrance to the CB was. I shouldn't have been surprised as the opening of the Delaware Bay is 23 miles wide. When we hit the other side we went looking for food. There was nothing around Cape Charles but we did find a local fish market and kitchen. It was crab cakes, shrimp, hushpuppies, fries for us but what the lady ordered after me made me do a double take, "Two pounds of toads please". 

     "Toads, like frogs?", I asked. No these are a Virginian-Eastern Shore delicacy and are called the "chicken wings of the sea". They are actually called Sugar Toads, because they taste sweet like sugar and are as ugly as toads. They are actually fish, the northern pufferfish. 

I know we have them in New Jersey but down here it's a thing. I've never tasted them but if they had them on the menu I would have tried some. 

     We dined as we drove not wanting to miss the ferry at 745. Taking this route was like taking a tour across the heartland of America, not that I've ever been. Long, flat roads, with minimal lights or traffic, that takes you through farmlands and small towns. And while it was scenic after 11 hours of driving we were ready to be back in Cape May. So we were happy when we rolled into the ferry terminal.

     Taking the ferry over reminded me of the ride out of Woods Hole over to Martha's Vineyard. It's pretty much run the same way as the Steamship Authority does it. I guess a ferry is a ferry. We drove on and seemed to have been loaded by car color as they were all white on the one side, but overall the ferry was pretty empty.

      It felt good to roll into Cape Island and get into the house. It was about a 13 hour day but again luckily we missed the accident, had an easy and stress free drive, and saw some pretty cool things. We'll have a day and a half before the weddings begin, but I can say it's nice to be back in New Jersey.