Nov. 11, 2020

S2, Ep 142: Stripers with Henry Cowen and Dave Whitlock

In this episode, Henry Cowen returns to update us on striper fishing on Lake Lanier and to tell us about his upcoming book on freshwater stripers. In the second half of the interview, Dave Whitlock joins us. Dave wrote the forward to Henry’s book and provided several illustrations.

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Fly Fishing for Freshwater Striped Bass: Tackle, Tactics and Finding Fish

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Marvin Cash: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, Henry Cowen returns to update us on the striper fishing on Lake Lanier and to tell us about his upcoming book on freshwater stripers. In the second half of the interview, we're joined by Dave Whitlock. Dave wrote the foreword to Henry's book and provided several of the illustrations. I think you're really going to enjoy this interview.

But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. As we continue to create and distribute more diverse content, you may want to consider downloading our iOS or Android app. We organize our content by category so you can go straight to the content that interests you the most. The apps are free and the links are in the show notes. Alternatively, just search The Articulate Fly where you get your mobile apps. Now, on to the interview.

Well, Henry, welcome back to The Articulate Fly.

Henry Cowen: Hello, Mr. Cash. Thanks for having me back again.

Marvin Cash: It's always fun. I think the last time we had you on, Henry, it was too hot to chase stripers, but I'm sure that's changed. What does your striper bite look like right now in North Georgia?

Henry Cowen: Well, you know, we're finally getting the change in seasons here. The lake is turning over, which means that our water quality is getting better near the surface. Our striped companions are starting to chase little itty-bitty threadfin shad on the surface. So we're starting to see surface feeding going on. That is just going to continue to get better and better as the weeks and months go on.

Marvin, you and I have talked about this. We have a fishery that you can fish stripers 12 months a year on Lanier, but if you want to fly fish for them, it's basically an October till May kind of a deal. Then the water just gets hot and they go a little bit deeper and we kind of lay off of them then so that we don't stress them out.

But if you were to ask me what is positively the best time to striper fish on an impoundment in the southeast, it is clearly from the middle of October until the middle of January are the best three months. So we are right at the front gate of this whole fishery going off for the next 90 days. That's good news.

You go out on the water and in the next three weeks, we'll get terns back. We'll have gulls flying around and diving and fish exploding and boats running past one another to get on to the topwater feed. It's just a lot of fun.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. That kind of sounds like your typical kind of run and gun saltwater experience.

Henry Cowen: It's exactly it. It's a saltwater experience, except the boat doesn't rock. That's the big difference.

Believe it or not, I have a lot of anglers. While I get plenty of young guys as well, it's funny that a lot of my clients are probably men and women over the age of 60 for no other reason than they were dyed-in-the-wool saltwater fly rod fanatics, and they just don't feel as comfortable standing in a rocking boat as well. They don't have that steadiness of foot. So they've kind of transferred on to the reservoir scene and they get that saltwater feel, even though we're 250 miles from the coast.

Marvin Cash: Got it. So you've got this great topwater bite for the next three months or so. How does that progress as things get - I don't know that it ever gets cold in Georgia, but it gets cooler in Georgia in the wintertime and then moving on into the spring?

Henry Cowen: Oh, it gets kicking cold here. Let me tell you, I used to have one - my boat that I take trips out of years and years ago, Marvin was a flats boat. It was basically an Action Craft flats boat. I had to get rid of that boat because December, January, February and March, if I took a morning trip and we had to run 18 or 20 miles in somewhere between 30 and 38 degrees, it would take my clients about 20 to 30 minutes to defrost and thaw out before we could start fishing. So I had to get a big center console because it just made way more sense.

It gets cold down here. As we move into the fall now, we have fish feeding on the top and then that'll eventually progress. The fish will move further north on our lake as the water temps drop and the fish will continue to go on top and we'll get birds added to the mix. Right now, we have no birds. So right now you're just driving around with your binoculars looking for splashes on the surface.

But in about three weeks, we'll get our gulls. We'll get a lot of the herring gulls and the ring-billed gulls and we'll have them on the lake and then we'll have our Bonapartes, which are the favorite. Those are the little gulls that we look for. Those are son of a gun, the best fish finders on the entire lake with regards to finding stripers feeding.

We'll get those and then that'll transition into December and January. The fish will go up north and the gulls will follow them up north. But the difference is they won't feed on top quite as often. They may feed on top over maybe a 45-minute period in the morning and maybe a 45-minute period late in the day. That's it.

But then we'll have big schools huddled together in probably 15 to 25 feet over like a 30-foot bottom, and we can find those fish with the fish finders, and that's when you can really start putting numbers in the boat when we start using the fast sinking lines to get those fish that are down 15 to 25, Marvin, are just easy pickings.

So my best - like if I'm going to have double-digit days, it's going to be probably sometime mid-December through mid-end January. That's when we have our biggest - we run up our biggest numbers on the lake on the fly. But this time of year is favored just because you see more fish on top. Guys just love seeing schools of 25 to 100 fish busting the surface. It looks like somebody put a blender on top. It looks like, I wouldn't call it Montauk, but it looks like a mini Montauk. That's what it looks like. It's really good stuff.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, really neat. What pushes the forage north? Is it the water warmer coming into the lake? Or what is it that makes them migrate to the north?

Henry Cowen: Yeah, so the baits - everything on reservoir stripers is dependent on water temperature. Because the water temperature determines where the forage is going to be. The forage runs as the water temperature starts to drop. The forage starts to run further north up on the north end of the lake. Then during the dead of winter, the north end of the lake on Lanier and most of our southern impoundments, the north end of the lake, especially if there's a tailwater or a dam attached to the south end of the lake, because most of our impoundments have rivers running through them.

So what happens is as that water temperature drops out of the 60s and into the 50s and then eventually it'll get into the 40s and the shad become very uncomfortable. But what happens up north is the water on the north ends of the lake are shallower than the water on the south end of the lake where the dam is and where the deeper water is.

So that shallower water, while the water temp has dropped on the afternoon sun, when the afternoon sun hits the backs of the coves on these red clay banks, that water temperature can warm one to one and a half degrees. That's just enough to make the threadfin shad a little happier. When the water temp is 47 or 48, they'd rather it be 49 or 50. So most of our bait at that time of the year runs north, and so the stripers are hot on their tails.

Marvin Cash: Got it. As things kind of warm up in the spring, does that just bring the forage up to the top to basically the warmer water on the edges? And is that where you find the stripers again?

Henry Cowen: So we'll see some topwater in the spring. We do. But the big event that happens in the spring is that forgetting the bait for a moment, forgetting the forage, when that water temperature hits about 57 degrees, that is the magic number for the stripers to think about going and making their spawning run up the river.

So while they're on the north end of the lake, they are now going to go further north. While they don't all go at the same time, they will go in stages. Different groups will go up and run and drop their eggs and do their thing. When they're getting ready for what we call the pre-spawn in spring, those fish put on a feed bag. I mean, they are absolutely ferocious.

The biggest fish on almost all impoundments are caught during the pre-spawn run up the river for stripers. So whether you're in Tennessee or Kentucky or Virginia or Alabama or wherever you're striper fishing in Georgia or South Carolina, your biggest fish are generally going to be caught in that March-April time frame when the fish are making their spawning run. They're just putting on a feed bag. That's when you get the big gals.

Then the fish will run up and they'll drop their eggs and do what they have to do. Some impoundments, the spawn is successful. In some impoundments like mine on Lanier, the spawn is not successful just because the eggs don't have enough time to free flow and become fry and tumble in the river. So they just drop back down to the top end of the lake, get silted over. That's when we depend on our Department of Natural Resources to restock our lakes.

But there are many lakes around the country that actually have a very good success of spawning stripers. Lanier is just not one of those lakes.

Then right after that, the fish, when they come down from the spawn and they've spawned out, they are just hungry. They are just eating like banshees. They will just eat really well. So March, April is also really good. But if I had to - we can get some pretty exciting topwater on the pre-spawn.

Trying to time that is very difficult. But it's going to happen somewhere between the 15th of March and the 30th of March and end around the 15th of April, 20th of April, somewhere in that time frame on Lanier.

The funny thing, Marvin, is so O'Neill Williams, who's an outdoor radio and TV show host, not much of a fly angler, but I've had him fly fishing out, once said to me one of the most important pieces of advice, he said, stripers don't know where they live, Henry.

After speaking to anglers across the country who striper fish in fresh waters, that is one of the great statements that I actually agree with and I think is worth noting because what a striper will do in Virginia, say, on Smith Mountain Lake where Blane is fishing versus a striper, say, in Oklahoma fishing one of the lakes there or Arkansas fishing Norfolk Lake - those fish all do the same thing. They can all be patterned the same.

It's just it may be that the water heats up a little earlier in the south in Georgia than it does in the Virginia mountains, but that water also cools down quicker in Virginia or in Arkansas than it does in Georgia. So sometimes in the spring, we're following their pattern. In the fall, we're following their pattern. In the spring, they're following our patterns because we're heating up quicker. So they all do the same thing. It's just a matter of what the temperature is. That's what sets off that next pattern.

Marvin Cash: Got it. That's a really good segue. The last time we had you on, we were still trying to figure out when exactly your book was going to come out, but now we know that Fly Fishing for Freshwater Striped Bass is going to be released on the 17th of November. I wanted to ask you, Henry, just to tell us a little bit about where the idea for writing the book came from.

Henry Cowen: Well, you know, it's funny. So I've had that idea in my mind for many years. One of my very dear friends, Kevin Arculio, used to always pester me and say, you need to write a book. You need to write a book. There's nothing on the subject. I'm like, yeah, I know, but I don't know. We'll see.

Then what ended up happening was about three years ago, I got a phone call from Lefty, and Lefty Kreh called me up and he - we chat. Lefty and I were chatting just about every two, three weeks, we'd get on the phone for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and just talk about whatever.

I got a phone call out of the blue and he's like, Henry, we need to have a book in the industry on freshwater striped bass. There's - I am getting emails and I'm getting letters written to me and people asking questions and the industry needs a book because there's absolutely nothing on how to fly fish for these great game fish. He goes, you need to write the book.

I was very flattered that Lefty would ask me to do it. He said, I'll set you up with Jay Cassell from Skyhorse Publishing. What I think the industry needs is it needs to be a how-to because people just don't know where to begin and what to do when it comes to rivers and impoundments and lakes. So that's kind of how the whole thing started, quite frankly.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. So it sounds like it's kind of geared towards maybe a more experienced angler, but a more novice striper fisherman.

Henry Cowen: Yeah. What's really interesting is while the book probably has a total of, I'm thinking 10 chapters in it, I'm just trying to remember, it's probably got about 10 chapters in it. There is one, maybe one and a half chapters that's dedicated to the fly and what you need to do as far as tackle equipment, flies and all that kind of stuff.

The rest of the book, quite frankly, is more about how to pattern and find the fish. So even though we entitled it Fly Fishing for Freshwater Stripers, the truth is Marvin, we could have entitled it Fly and Light Tackle Fishing for Freshwater Stripers because the meat, the core of the book tells you what you need to do.

If you're getting on a lake or in a river and you just don't know where to start, what do I look for? You go on a lake and it's very daunting when you go onto a big impoundment and it all looks the same. You're like, everybody's a hero when the fish are on top, but the fish are usually not on top. So the question is, how do I find them?

There's so many patterns that evolve through a season. So we've kind of just gone from A to Z and the best way I can equate it to you, Marvin is when you look at these guys that bass fish professionally, or guys in clubs that bass fish lakes, how do these guys - how does a guy from Texas go to a lake in Florida and place so high in the tournament when he's never really fished that lake before.

The key is he's figured out the pattern. He looks at the water temperature and found out when the water temperature is X, the bass and their forage should be over here. Whether here means they're in blowdowns or they're in pockets or on the creek channels or they're in the backs of the coves or they're heading up the river or any of those places. That's kind of what they're - that's kind of what that does.

So that's how they're so successful. It's no different for striper fishing. You've got to know where the fish are.

Marvin Cash: Got it. I always ask all of my authors, Henry, to tell me a little bit about the writing and the editing experience and what was that like?

Henry Cowen: Oh, well, you heard the deep sigh.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I get that a lot, by the way.

Henry Cowen: I'm going to tell you, I don't know how Lefty Kreh wrote 33 books, Marvin. I don't know how he did it because I've been writing articles for magazines and I've been on many a masthead of many a magazine over the last 20 years. Writing an article, which is generally 2000 words about whatever the topic is, that's one thing.

But the idea of having to write 65,000 words, 70,000 words, I mean, now you're talking about writing 30 to 35 articles. That's the way I broke it down in my head. In the beginning, it's hard to get motivated because you don't know where to begin.

But you start with your outline and talk about it. Then flesh out your outline is detailed by chapter. In the chapter, you have sub headings. Then each one of those becomes an article. Somehow in a few short months, you seem to get through it. You just cram it in and you get it done and you do it.

I will tell you, I don't think I'll ever write another book again. I will just tell you when you're staring at 65, 70,000 words in front of you, it's just mind blowing to think how - I wrote 20% of the book and I'm really proud of what I got in there. I'm like, geez, Louise, I still got another like 50,000 words to go. What is this ever going to come to an end?

So it's not easy. I'll tell you, for me, though, the truth is the writing, while it was a big, daunting task because it's just so much and you don't want to be repetitive and you don't want to - you certainly never want to repeat yourself much because I feel like then you're cheating the reader just because you're trying to make something longer than it needs to be. So you want to be as concise as possible.

To me, the hardest part was actually not the writing. The hardest part was pictures, getting good pictures in a book. That's the difference to me of a coffee table book that you're proud of, that you want to keep out to look at again and again and again versus just a book with hero shots.

I was fortunate that I had Josh England, who is a very close friend of mine. Josh happens to be an outdoor photographer and has written, has had a number of photo essays in just about every fly fishing magazine out there. You name it, he has had photo essays in it. He happens to live in Georgia. He happens to be - was a client of mine at a very early age before he was carrying around a camera and doing this professionally. I caught his first striper on a fly.

Over the years, he became addicted to the sport and is now a photographer doing basically anything fly fishing lifestyle, so to speak, saltwater, warm water, cold water. But he has an affinity for stripers. So he opened up his entire photo log for me to have any picture I want. He's so creative with the photos that I would say 75% of the photos are Josh England's photos. So I was very fortunate to have him.

Then I also had David Cannon, who's another very popular and famous outdoor photographer. He does a lot of shoots for Cabela's and the likes, and he opened up his library to me for stripers too. Again, David is someone I met who used to work for Grays and American Angler and those guys at Morris Communications. I caught - I got him his first striper on the fly again, long before he carried a camera around with him. So I was fortunate to have these guys as friends, and that's really what got us over the hump.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very neat. Obviously it wasn't a painless process. So I also like to ask my writers and authors to share what they learned about themselves going through the process.

Henry Cowen: Well, what did I learn about myself? I learned that I'm never going to write another book, but I am very glad that I wrote this one. I hope people will like it because stripers and freshwater are passionate to me.

I learned more about the species in writing this book. I just learned a lot more about the species having spoken with folks around the country who chase stripers and have the same burning desire that I have and have been doing it for as many years in some cases more. Guys like Dan Blanton and Dave Whitlock and Bill Butts these guys were chasing stripers in fresh water while I was chasing them back in saltwater as a youngster these guys were doing it in fresh water so they've got 10, 15, 20 years on me on doing this and I was - what I learned more than anything was going back to O'Neill, stripers don't know where they live. So that's what I learned about it more than anything.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very neat. So the release date is November 17th and I know it's available for pre-order on Amazon because I've got it, I think in the show notes to our original interview, but where else can folks find the book and pre-order it so they can make sure they get it as soon as possible?

Henry Cowen: Yeah. So Amazon will have it. Books-A-Million will have it. Target has it. Barnes & Noble has it. Flymen Fishing Company, our friends over at Flymen, Martin and Flymen, they'll have it as well. I believe Renzetti is going to be carrying the books for any shops that want to get it. They'll distribute it as well for some because Renzetti does on top of the great vises that they do. They also are the supplier of Just Add H2O materials. So they supply a lot of stuff and a lot of great materials that come out of South Africa to the shops. So I believe they're going to have the book as well.

So there's plenty of places where you can get it for sure. Hopefully some of the fly shops will feel that it's worthy. And they'll carry it as well, I hope.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well, I imagine people will be able to find it at the Fishhawk, right?

Henry Cowen: Fish Hawk will have it. Unicoi Outfitters will have it. Alpharetta Outfitters will have it. I hear Orvis Atlanta is supposed to be carrying it. I'm hoping Cohutta Fishing. So all my local shops in Georgia should probably carry the book. If they don't, I'll be outing them, none of the owners will ever get a busman's day with me on the boat again if that book's not in their store.

Marvin Cash: You heard it first here, folks. Obviously everything's still kind of up in the air with Covid. But do you have any kind of upcoming appearances or events that you're going to be promoting the event at in Georgia?

Henry Cowen: Really this is it. This is my appearance. This is going to be - unfortunately, no, I don't. I don't know if we talked about this the last time we're on, I'm immune compromised. So I have to be really careful. I'm on a drug that suppresses my immune system. Because of that, I have to be super careful. So I am not going to be doing any of the shows this year or not that I think there's going to be any shows to begin with. I highly doubt it. That's where we do most of our promoting.

So that's unfortunately a bummer because when it comes to like The Fly Fishing Show and Ben Furimsky's shows, I was planning on doing more shows with him this year. I just can't tell you how much I love doing that show every year. I think if there's anything that's going to make me a little depressed this year, it's going to be not going to his shows. I think a lot of us are going to feel that way.

So the only thing I'm doing right now is I'm doing some virtual stuff on Zoom, I'm doing some club meetings and things like that from some of the clubs around the country. But other than that, not a whole lot of promotion to be done. So this book's going to have to sell on the merits of is striper fishing and fresh waters becoming more popular was Lefty right or is Lefty wrong? That's what we're going to find out.

Marvin Cash: There you go. If I remember correctly, I think we've talked recently and that you're, even though you won't be doing shows, you're doing a little bit of limited guiding. Do I remember that correctly?

Henry Cowen: I am. I made a decision about a couple months ago. Normally most of my clients, I put two guys in the boat and I'm out of a 22 foot bay boat. What I've decided is just to ensure my health, I'm only taking single anglers this season. So I've cut my guide numbers back a lot because most of my trips are two guys that want to split the cost of a trip, which I totally get. But with a single angler, I can have one guy sitting behind me for the trip. Then when he gets up to where we're going to fish, he gets in the bow of the boat. I'm 16, 18 feet behind him working the trolling motor. I feel very safe doing that.

So I am going to be - I am guiding. Matter of fact, I actually - I just canceled a trip for this coming week because we're supposed to be getting - you ready for this, Marvin? We're getting gusts of 40 miles an hour. That's what's coming. There's a hurricane coming up the Gulf Coast. I don't remember the name. Zeta or something.

Marvin Cash: I think it's Zeta. I think we've already gone through the alphabet twice this year.

Henry Cowen: Yeah. So that hurricane is coming. On Thursday, we're going to be having 40 mile an hour winds. So I've already canceled my trip Thursday. I will likely be canceling my trip Friday because that'll be the post front and the fish generally - it's funny. We always talk about, we never know when the fish are going to feed, but we almost always know when the fish aren't going to feed. If you're on the backside of a front, you can almost be assured the fish are going to be swimming with their fins over their mouths. Just not eating.

So the likelihood is we're going to rebook on Thursday and Friday, but we are guiding and I'm happy to be guiding because that's one of the things I truly look forward to. That's a happy moment during a tough year with the pandemic.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. So why don't you let folks know where they can find you so they can book you and maybe fish with you.

Henry Cowen: Well, if they want to book us, they can either go to my website, which is henrycowenflyfishing.com or they can get a hold of us at 678-513-1934 and they can call us to book a trip and what's great is this year unfortunately because of the pandemic I am usually eight weeks out on all my bookings and I can book people next week if need be so we've got a lot of openings and so that's what's just got to be until this thing passes.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, folks, you owe it to yourself to, one, pre-order the book, and two, book a day with Henry. I'm going to go ahead, Henry, and I'm going to grab Dave right now.

Henry Cowen: Okay.

Marvin Cash: Well, Dave, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Dave Whitlock: Thank you, Marvin. Good to be here.

Marvin Cash: I'm excited to have you. I'm really honored. We have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. We always ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

Dave Whitlock: Well, that's probably about five years old or six years old with a cane pole. A lot of young kids get started with catching a few sunfish in the ponds of Oklahoma.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. When did you get lured to the dark side of fly fishing, Dave?

Dave Whitlock: Well, I was born and raised here in Oklahoma, which is basically in those days the Sahara Desert of fly fishing. There were no fly fishermen here. I discovered fly fishing when I was about eight years old in the pages of the L.L. Bean catalog. I saw this beautiful rod laying on the centerfold of the catalog and reel. There were some hooks there and they had feathers tied on them rather than a worm or a crawfish.

I asked my granddad, I said, Grandpa, what is this? He said, Dave, that's fly fishing, not for us, only for rich people. That was when I was eight years old. In 1980, I became the head of the L.L. Bean fly fishing program and wrote three books on fly fishing. That was about as unlikely as someone being the best swimmer in the world from the Sahara Desert.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. Who are some of the folks that mentored you on your fly fishing journey before you became a mentor to so many of us?

Dave Whitlock: Well, Joe Brooks was probably my biggest mentor. I just idolized that man and his writings at Outdoor Life, especially about Montana and about South America. He was quite a role model. Another one was Lee Wulff. I really learned about catch and release and about the conservation of our fish and stuff from him. He was quite a mentor. Al McClane and Ted Trueblood, they were great mentors of mine too, and so was Dan Bailey.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. Kind of when I think of you, I think of you as one of the pioneers for chasing non-trout species on the fly. What attracted you to fishing for stripers on the fly?

Dave Whitlock: Well, I caught a couple of stripers in Oklahoma before I moved to Arkansas below Keystone Dam. I wasn't really impressed with how I had to catch them and where I caught them. So that didn't really stick. But when I started working for L.L. Bean up in Maine, I started fishing the coastal rivers for stripers, and I just fell in love with them. They were gorgeous, wonderful fish. They were big and beautiful. To this Oklahoman, really exotic.

When I came back home, after about the third year of my tenure at Bean's, I spent four months up there each year working with their schools, I discovered five miles from my house was a lake called Norfolk, and it was full of big stripers. So after a couple of three years of chasing them, I began to catch them pretty regularly. They averaged 18 pounds. It was all any fly fisherman could ever want.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. Is there a particular day on the water chasing stripers that stands out in your memory?

Dave Whitlock: Probably the first big one I ever caught, and I caught it by myself in the middle of the winter off of a little small bass boat. I had been trying to catch them, and they'd rise, and I'd cast to them and couldn't get them good. Finally, one day, I was out about 11 o'clock in the morning, right in the middle of the winter, freezing weather. Just as I went to pick up my streamer, this huge fish just appeared and swallowed it and took off.

Man, it was taking backing like I couldn't believe it. Pretty soon, it stopped. While it stopped, it had run 200 yards of backing off my System Two fly reel. I saw it roll 200 yards away as it came to the end of the backing. I finally got it back to the boat for 15 or 20 minutes of give and take. Then it was so big, I was afraid to pick it up. I thought it might pull me in. So I motored to the bank and got out of the bank and beached it. That was - I'll never forget that. That was so exciting.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. Over your career, you've touched so many anglers. Tell me a little bit about when you first met Henry.

Dave Whitlock: Well, I'd rather not tell about that. I'll tell you, I knew Henry before he knew me. I really admired that young man. He was everything a gentleman and a good fly fisherman should be. I attended several of his programs when he was giving them at the different shows. Finally, I got nervous enough to come up and introduce myself to him. We've been pretty much soul brothers ever since.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, Henry, what do you remember?

Henry Cowen: I remember when I shook Dave's hand the first time. I was missing my wedding ring after because I always wore it on my right hand. It was gone. David had taken my – no, I'm kidding.

No, listen, think about what it would be like when one of your heroes comes up and says I'd like to talk to you about stripers. I'm sitting - I guess it would be like if I was a New York Yankee and so to speak Babe Ruth came up to me and said let's talk about hitting and I'd be, you want to talk about hitting with me? That's the way I kind of felt. So I was delighted.

Then I was very fortunate to have met Dave at the shows and we just became very close friends over the years, both him and Emily, his wife, and they just become two very important people in my life. Who would ever think that a striped bass could bring people so close to one another. It's unbelievable.

Dave Whitlock: I agree, I agree.

Marvin Cash: It's great because we finally know when Henry's book is going to come out and we've got about three weeks give or take to wait. Dave, I know you wrote the foreword. Tell us a little bit about how that came to be.

Dave Whitlock: Well, I was honored to get to write the foreword because I think he's such a special man and there's been a lot of books and articles written about stripers. But I think why I got excited about Henry's book is not because of just the stripers, but because such a unique, wonderful guy was going to write about them.

I think what makes a really good book is the quality of the author that writes it, not necessarily the subject of the book. When I got a chance to say some sweet, nice things about him in the foreword that were absolutely truthful, I was just overjoyed.

Henry Cowen: Marvin, I have to tell you, as fortunate as he felt to write the foreword, I was over the moon when he told me he would be happy to write it. Then he offered to do illustrations for the book that just was basically putting on the sprinkles over what was already a good-looking ice cream sundae. I just added it over the top to have Dave Whitlock's illustrations in there.

Dave Whitlock: It was fun doing them.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, tell us a little bit about the - because I understand from Henry that you contributed about five or six illustrations. Tell us a little bit about them.

Dave Whitlock: Well, the two main ones, the two color paintings that I did - one was of the five forms of the temperate bass, which the striped bass is the major one, and it shows all five of them in color and in size and proportion to what you'd normally catch them. So I think that gives Henry's book a good proportion of what the temperate bass and stripers look like in the family they came from.

Because a lot of people don't realize that there are five different fish in that temperate bass family. They're all real special, but the stripers are the King Kongs of it.

Marvin Cash: So, Dave, are those prints available on your website if someone saw one of them in the book?

Dave Whitlock: They are, yes, they are. The other illustration that I like is I tried to capture that - because Henry and I are both freshwater striper fishermen now on lakes. Getting out early in the morning and getting into a really blitz of shad and stripers about sunup, I think that's the classic experience in striper fishing, in freshwater with a fly rod.

So the illustration I did depicted a couple of folks in a boat, casting to a school of rising stripers in the foreground. They're chasing shad, and the gulls are diving right into the middle of them. So I got all the action of both the anglers and the sun coming up and the stripers and the shad and the gulls all in one picture.

Marvin Cash: Very, very neat. I'll put a link to your website in the show notes. I'll see if I can find those images and link to them directly, too. That'll make it easier for folks.

Henry and I were talking about this a little bit earlier. As we kind of move deeper into fall, we start to think about show season. Obviously things are a little bit different this year. Are you planning to be on the road in 2021? Are you going to kind of take a break?

Dave Whitlock: Well, you told me that you might ask me that. At this point, no. Until - because I'm 86 and I just don't have any business coming in contact with that virus if I don't absolutely have to. So we're going to hold off on doing any big public appearances until we get a vaccine. It just doesn't make any sense for me and my family and what have you to catch that thing. So we'll do what we can do here with our schools we have here and my art and writing and the things that I do here in my studio until that clears up.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. So I assume, Dave, if people come to your website, they'll be able to see if you've got clinics or maybe you're doing something a little bit closer to home?

Dave Whitlock: Yeah. We can control the environment here at our place because we live on a ranch. It's very isolated from the outside. In fact, I have really not been in town since March. I've stayed here basically on a ranch in the county. I've gone to the health club or gone to the grocery store or anything. It's kind of surrealistic not doing those things that you do every day like that.

But I've got plenty of good things to do here. I'm something of an introvert with the work I do, with the art and the fly tying and the writing. I could get pretty much in that world and not really feel the need to get out and be around a lot of people and be doing a lot of things in cities.

Marvin Cash: It makes a lot of sense, and Dave, what's the best place for people to kind of keep up with you and follow your art adventures and your angling adventures?

Dave Whitlock: Well, our website is undoubtedly probably the best. Then Emily has a really good Facebook that she stays relatively active on. I'm getting ready to do a series for our website. It's called "What I Found Out and What You Need to Know." It's just a series of little essays about all the little good things that would help you enjoy fly fishing better.

Marvin Cash: Very, very neat. Henry, you got any last-minute questions for Dave before we all go?

Henry Cowen: Dave, when are you coming with Emily to come fish with me in Atlanta? Are we going to have to wait for a vaccine, I guess?

Dave Whitlock: Yeah, that's the best thing. I'm going to try to go down to Rob Rogers, Deep South Fly Fisher's as soon as we get a vaccine to do some redeye fishing with him, and then probably on that same trip we'll drop down and fish with you if you're not too busy.

Henry Cowen: Oh, I won't be too busy for you guys.

Dave Whitlock: Maybe not at all. Also I may have a new paperback book, and I may have you autograph it for me, Marvin.

Henry Cowen: This is where we should cut it off right now.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely.

Dave Whitlock: Oh, my gosh. Henry, I love you. It's been good talking to you, and you too, Marvin.

Marvin Cash: Absolutely.

Henry Cowen: Dave, you're the greatest. You are the best. I really appreciate all your help and your sage advice through the writing of the book, Dave. It's meant the world to me. Really meant the world to me.

Dave Whitlock: Good. Well, it comes directly from my heart for you, bud.

Henry Cowen: Well, I know we'll sell at least 10 copies. So we'll see what happens after that. Anything over 10, it's a home run.

Dave Whitlock: Well, I guarantee you will win the World Series with that book.

Marvin Cash: Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for spending some time with me. I'm really honored to be able to participate in this conversation with you.

Dave Whitlock: Well, you're more than welcome. It's been nice doing it for you. I'm glad that you're at it. It's an honor.

Marvin Cash: Take care, gentlemen. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend, and please subscribe and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.