holy jesus! HAGFISH!

WHO KNEW? Eastern Fly Fishing Mag plays dumb re. Donny Beaver

UPDATE!
We received plenty of responses on our piece yesterday "letters to other editors" wherein reader Steve Bacon sent a letter to John Shewey, Managing Editor of Eastern Fly Fishing questioning the propriety of featuring the Spring Ridge Club within the pages of the magazine. Here's Shewey's response:

Our intention with “Exposure” is always simply to present a spread of great photos. Certainly we had no idea of the issues surrounding the Spring Ridge Club—we simply received a query from a freelance photographer suggesting an Exposure piece on “Pennsylvania Spring Creeks.” Seemed like a good topic, photographed by a great photographer, so we accepted. The normal process is to have our art staff choose the photos and then ask the photographer to provide captions; obviously we made a mistake in using one of the captions to provide a website plug for the club—thanks to your email, we realize now that our policy in the future should be to not provide plugs for private businesses photographed in the Exposure section. In some cases, we do run feature and short articles about private fee fisheries and in all such cases we disclose the fact in the text. As I said, however, in the case of Exposure sections, our aim is simply to provide our readers with a spread of great photos, captioned appropriately. We’ll pay closer attention to those captions in the future!

Thanks for you input.

Regards,
John Shewey
Managing Editor

letters to other editors

A Kollecktive reader submits this note:

To Steve Probasco, Editor-In-Chief--Eastern FlyFishing,

A faithful reader of Eastern FlyFishing, I had not noticed there is no "Letter to the Editor" Section. Until now I had not looked. The May/June 2007 Issue featured a photo-spread on fishing Pennsylvania Spring Creeks. Photo captions, and the featured angler's hat, referenced the Spring Ridge Club. A caption also referenced its web site. Recently, a Pennsyvania Court found that the Spring Ridge Club and its proprieter, Donny Beaver, were illegally keeping anglers off public water. In some instances by stringing wire cables across streams. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07031/758103-358.stm (Post-Gazette Article) Beaver has also engaged in efforts to turn Ohio's steelhead fishery (a resource created and maintained with public funds) into a pay to fish "destination".

Does Eastern Flyfishing condone these activities or other efforts to keep the fishing public off of public waters? I noticed that you accept advertising from an "outfitter" that in Beaver's own words, acts as a "trojan horse" to allow Mr. Beaver and his club to see if individuals fit the "club profile". If someone fits the profile (the membership fee is over $80,000.00) they can be taken to the "inner sanctum" at various flyfishing shows and be shown what life can be like when you exclude the people from what is rightfully theirs. http://troutunderground.com/pdf%20files/springridgenewsletter.pdf

There was no disclaimer in the issue calling the "article" an advertisement. Please advise as to whether other waters featured in your magazine require an over $80,000 deposit to fish. If this is a requirement on waters you feature, you should disclose such a fact. I imagine that most of your subscribers do not fit this demographic and would appreciate such a disclosure up front. I am not against a property owner exerscising his or her rights. I am against a property owner hijacking a public resource for profit and calling it conservation.

Steve Bacon

donny beaver's "trojan horse" strategy

Thee Kollecktive recently received a copy of the Spring Ridge Club's member newsletter wherein Mr. Donny Beaver lays out his current recruitment plans in the midst of what he calls, "a lot of controversy about private property rights as they relate to fly-fishing. In particular, there has been some animosity directed toward the Club and to me personally over the years."
How does Beaver intend to handle this controversy? "We have found that the best tradeshow protocol is the “Trojan Horse” approach . . . in other words, have the Club blend into someone else’s booth."
For a few years, Beaver and Spring Ridge worked with two companies, "Angling Fantasies" and "Frontier Travel," offering anglers a few days on the river for premium prices.

Three years ago, we dropped the “outfitting angle” and decided that people had to join the Club or not fish with us. Well, that really brought out the worst in the “public.” They’d say, “You’re the greedy SOBs who charge $80,000 to join and keep us poor working slobs off the water.” So, for the past few years, we just stayed away from trade shows completely. However, we discovered that ever since we dropped the outfitting “front end” of the business, our membership recruitment pace has not grown as well as we had planned. It seems as if there is this huge perceptual leap of faith from “zero to $85,000.” On the other hand, we have tested a couple of important things in the past twelve months. • Revive the outfitting business in the East — In 2004 and 2005, we began to acquire private water MUCH faster than we could recruit new members. As a matter of fact, we have about ten miles of water lying “fallow” right now and another ten miles of water that is grossly under-utilized by Club members. For the past twelve months, we have been experimenting with controlled outfitting on our “emerging” waters (Spring Farm, Willows, Eddie’s Stretch, etc.). The name of this business is Sporting Club Exchange, what we’re now calling Logan Outfitters, and we limit access to the underutilized stretches on a strictly controlled basis. This has helped the Club in significant ways: — We have brought in nearly $100,000 in new revenues, which help to underwrite these fallow properties. —We have recruited two new members who would not have joined if not given the chance to fish for three or four days. •
Partner with Gorsuch Outfitters in Colorado — This year we also realized that actively working with an outfitter who handles highend clients could help significantly with Club recruitment. We anticipate attracting at least 25 new Club members to the Colorado Club in 2007, thanks to this relationship. To make a long story short, we have decided to make Gorsuch and Logan Outfitters the “face” of our trade show booths for 2007 (in Denver, Somerset, New Jersey, and Marlboro, Massachusetts). The “inner sanctum” in the back of each booth will be our “Club headquarters” at the shows. It will be closed off from the general public and be open by invitation only to potential Club members. We will be running our DVD on a loop, we have Club literature available, and we will have a scrapbook of photos available for viewing. This is also where we can use your help. If we do have people come into the Club Room, it will be most helpful if a current member is available for conversation by potential members. We see the “front of the booth” as this busy, active, bustling outfitter face and the “back of the booth” as a quiet sanctuary where we can discuss the Club concept with folks in privacy.
IMPORTANT POINTS TO REMEMBER: —Outfitter customers do NOT fish our Legacy waters; only those stretches of under-utilized or emerging waters not typically fished by members.