July 24, 2025
Dear Lowcountry,
You are beautiful, charming, and truly one of the last great places. You also have a special way of showing off your beauty during an evening flood tide in summer with an orange, red, and pink sky which brings out purple and pastels as the sun sets to the West. You have also been my home for most of my life and I am grateful for that.
Fly fishing is the reason my old friend Brent Watts and I were out on the water, and one could argue that fly fishing is just a silly sport, but fly fishing is much more than a sport. It’s the sound of cicadas humming on a hot summer night in the Lowcountry and Atlantic Ocean waves crashing on the shoreline of a distant barrier island. It’s Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons observing me and Brent, a best friend since we were twelve years old (we are now forty-two) to find some shade next to an island hammock filled with palm, oaks and pine trees because the heat index is 110 degrees in July. It’s the smell of pluff mud and the taste of salty boiled peanuts as you wait for the incoming tide to get high enough during the new moon to flood the flats. It’s the nervous excitement of getting in casting distance of a happy redfish wagging its tail out of the water as it feeds on crabs. Finally, it’s being completely consumed in the present moment as my line comes tight and the redfish peels off some of my fly line. No more dwelling on the past. No more worrying about the future. Just immersed in God’s beautiful creation. And then, I let it all go by releasing the redfish, hands still shaking, and grateful to be alive and lucky to live in such a beautiful place.
The Lowcountry of Savannah and Charleston have been my home for my entire life, except for a four-year stint in Colorado and Wyoming where I was first introduced to fly fishing, and while the beauty of the Rockies and the Tetons are undoubtedly their own awesome beauty, the Lowcountry is hard to beat, especially after you have just released a ravishing redfish as the sun paints the sky and you exit the flat with a heart full of gratitude, redfish slime on your hands and good company on the skiff. Ain’t life grand?
It is moments like these that remind me of why I love fly fishing and why I started my company, Emerger Strategies and The Sustainable Angler podcast. To protect what I love by helping fishing and outdoor brands measure & improve their sustainability performance.
If you are a like-minded business owner, let’s go fishing and see how we can protect what we love, together.
Protect what you love,
Rick