About Southjetty |
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I have a trusty Lance truck camper on a three-quarter ton Chevy, a seaworthy C-Dory Angler, quality camera gear, camping & backpacking equipment, fishing gear suited to virtually every species of fish that swims and the writing skills to capture a story's essence. Feel free to send queries. I am available for assignments, team projects and collaborations.
Bio, Mission and Vision
Launched in 2016, Southjetty is a media outlet dedicated to writing, photography and video about subjects important to me. Fishing, in all its diverse, ingenious and fascinating forms, is the wellspring from which related interests have grown. My first experiences with brook trout from the Allegheny Mountains of my native western Pennsylvania spurred a desire to honor the fish I didn't release by learning to cook them properly. Thus, while not all recipes and dining experiences on this website involve fish and seafood, many do, because that is the cooking and dining I remain most enthusiastic about.
A tour in the U.S. Navy and a degree in creative writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder took me away from my hometown for a number of years. One of the first things I did when I returned for a long overdue visit was to string up my fly rod and head to a favorite native brook trout stream - only to find its banks lined with newly-built homes and vacation cabins, the dense forest that had once shaded its waters reduced to fragments, and the varicolored pebbles that had been home to a rich population of aquatic insects (and brook trout redds) a silted mess littered with beverage cans and plastic. That was my "come to Mother Earth" moment, and I have been passionate about wildlife conservation ever since.
While writing, fishing and a love of food and travel have long been part of my life, that's not been the case with photography. My marriage to Barbra in 2007 rekindled a long dormant interest in this art form, and with her patient guidance I began to learn something of the complexities of digital photography.
I believe in having heroes. Among mine are my high school track coach, Bob Bowersox, the man who taught me to tie flies and cast them to bluegills and trout, Bill Kodrich, and personages who are better known: Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Chuck Noll, Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Berry, David Attenborough, Paul Newman and Albert Julius McClane. On a regular basis, I draw from the wisdom these people have imparted.
I was 12 years old, alone in my father's den when I discovered A. J. McClane's groundbreaking tome, McClane's Standard Fishing Encyclopedia and International Angling Guide. Gingerly pulling it from the bookshelf, I knelt on the den's hardware floor, opened this magnificent book, and entered a world I hadn't even guessed at: a world where the angling arts were much more than a mere hobby, but were a passion embraced by millions of people all over the world. In McClane's I discovered a universe that went far beyond the bait-and-bobber fishing my father had taught me. There were fly-tying recipes, tackle theory, fish anatomy, Latin names, aquatic entomology, fish cookery (even directions for making a smoking shed!) and descriptions of the fishing in every state in America and virtually every country around the world. And the writing! Many of the passages were the most crisp, jaunty, informative pieces of angling literature I'd ever read. Later, I came to understand that those passages were the ones penned by McClane himself. When my father came home from work that day, I timidly asked him if I could take the volume to my bedroom and keep it there for awhile. To my surprise and joy permission was granted, and there McClane's remained for the next several years.
Angling is tightly woven in a fabric of moral, social, and philosophical threads which are not easily rent by the violent climate of our times. A. J. McClane in Song of the Angler, 1967
It seems to me that McClane's observation remains relevant. Fishing, in all its diverse forms, and the celebration of wild fish in art, literature, photography, food, and a shared appreciation of the wild places where fish live, has been threaded throughout the cultural fabric we humans share. It connects us to each other, to our traditions and to the oceans, bays, rivers, lakes and mountain streams fish inhabit.
The mission at Southjetty is to celebrate, educate and, perhaps, to occasionally create art connected to the world of wild fish and to all of us who value them.
Jack Donachy
January 8, 2016
A tour in the U.S. Navy and a degree in creative writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder took me away from my hometown for a number of years. One of the first things I did when I returned for a long overdue visit was to string up my fly rod and head to a favorite native brook trout stream - only to find its banks lined with newly-built homes and vacation cabins, the dense forest that had once shaded its waters reduced to fragments, and the varicolored pebbles that had been home to a rich population of aquatic insects (and brook trout redds) a silted mess littered with beverage cans and plastic. That was my "come to Mother Earth" moment, and I have been passionate about wildlife conservation ever since.
While writing, fishing and a love of food and travel have long been part of my life, that's not been the case with photography. My marriage to Barbra in 2007 rekindled a long dormant interest in this art form, and with her patient guidance I began to learn something of the complexities of digital photography.
I believe in having heroes. Among mine are my high school track coach, Bob Bowersox, the man who taught me to tie flies and cast them to bluegills and trout, Bill Kodrich, and personages who are better known: Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Chuck Noll, Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Berry, David Attenborough, Paul Newman and Albert Julius McClane. On a regular basis, I draw from the wisdom these people have imparted.
I was 12 years old, alone in my father's den when I discovered A. J. McClane's groundbreaking tome, McClane's Standard Fishing Encyclopedia and International Angling Guide. Gingerly pulling it from the bookshelf, I knelt on the den's hardware floor, opened this magnificent book, and entered a world I hadn't even guessed at: a world where the angling arts were much more than a mere hobby, but were a passion embraced by millions of people all over the world. In McClane's I discovered a universe that went far beyond the bait-and-bobber fishing my father had taught me. There were fly-tying recipes, tackle theory, fish anatomy, Latin names, aquatic entomology, fish cookery (even directions for making a smoking shed!) and descriptions of the fishing in every state in America and virtually every country around the world. And the writing! Many of the passages were the most crisp, jaunty, informative pieces of angling literature I'd ever read. Later, I came to understand that those passages were the ones penned by McClane himself. When my father came home from work that day, I timidly asked him if I could take the volume to my bedroom and keep it there for awhile. To my surprise and joy permission was granted, and there McClane's remained for the next several years.
Angling is tightly woven in a fabric of moral, social, and philosophical threads which are not easily rent by the violent climate of our times. A. J. McClane in Song of the Angler, 1967
It seems to me that McClane's observation remains relevant. Fishing, in all its diverse forms, and the celebration of wild fish in art, literature, photography, food, and a shared appreciation of the wild places where fish live, has been threaded throughout the cultural fabric we humans share. It connects us to each other, to our traditions and to the oceans, bays, rivers, lakes and mountain streams fish inhabit.
The mission at Southjetty is to celebrate, educate and, perhaps, to occasionally create art connected to the world of wild fish and to all of us who value them.
Jack Donachy
January 8, 2016