David Mangum - The Mad Scientist of Tarpon Fishing

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 95 with David Mangum.

Cold Open: Guiding Versus Fishing

David Mangum: I've had so many of those emails too, and I just cut right to it. So do you like to fish? Oh, you do? Well, don't become a guide, because if you actually like the act of fishing, it's not really for you. I stopped fishing with a rod myself years ago. A lot of the emails are people asking, oh, I love to fish and I want to be a guide. Well, those are completely separate things. I think you have to live a life of fishing and get to a place where it's not that important to me anymore to hold a rod in my hand and actually get to catch a fish. You evolve past that. So what's the next step? The next step is somebody coming on the front of your boat, and they are your rod. Your words to them, your guidance to them, that's what you're using to fish now. That's kind of how I explain it a lot of times. This is David Mangum, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Introduction

Tom Rowland: I had the opportunity to stop through and visit one of my friends, a guy who has been in quite a few films and interesting shows. He's known very well far and wide as a guy who pays close attention to details. A lot of people call him the mad scientist of tarpon fishing. He is David Mangum of Shallow Water Expeditions, and I really had a good time sitting down and talking to Dave. I haven't caught up with him in quite some time, so we had a lot of things to talk about: what he's got going on, what he's getting ready to do, and things that make him much more than just a tarpon guide. He's an artist, he's a photographer, he's a very creative person, and I loved catching up with him. We also did a How-To Tuesday, which was really good, on how to feed a tarpon from his perspective, and I really enjoyed that one. It's already been published, so if you haven't heard it, you can go back and listen. But today's episode is a great conversation with my friend David Mangum of Shallow Water Expeditions. Alright, here we are. David Mangum, man, it's good to have you on. Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it.

David Mangum: Absolutely. Happy to.

A Surf Trip to Nicaragua

Tom Rowland: So you just got back from a different kind of trip, right?

David Mangum: I did. We'd planned on maybe doing a little fishing, but mostly surfing. Nicaragua.

Tom Rowland: Did you know anything about Nicaragua before you went there?

David Mangum: I didn't really know anything. About a week out, I started looking online, making sure there were no travel advisories, and I also got some shots on really short notice. Just figured it was probably smart, but I didn't really know anything going in. Some friends of mine just said, hey, do you want to go to Nicaragua? I've done a lot of photo shooting lately, and I thought it was a good opportunity to take some pictures, which it turned out to be, and get some surf in. I've always surfed for a long time. Of course, I was pretty out of shape for it. The biggest day of waves was the first day, and then it tapered off as I got my fitness back into surf shape.

Tom Rowland: So do you surf in Florida a lot whenever it's good?

David Mangum: Yeah, if there's hurricane swell or just the right conditions happen, I do.

Hurricane Michael and Mexico Beach

Tom Rowland: I was going to ask you about the hurricane too, because you must have had a really great year of surfing, which doesn't always equate to a really great year of living for everything else.

David Mangum: Yes. God, what was it? Michael, I guess. I always get the names all jumbled up, but Michael really did a number. If we had been just a little bit to the east, probably about 30 miles, we would have gotten hammered at Panama City and Mexico Beach. I've never seen anything like it, living in Florida my whole life.

Tom Rowland: It's so damaging to people's lives. In the Keys, we've lived through a number of them, some of varying intensity, and Wilma was the one that got me personally. It's hard to even describe to someone who hasn't been there. I'm sure someone in California who's gone through the fires could understand.

David Mangum: Completely changed their life. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: So that Mexico Beach area, is that an area you would fish out of and around all the time?

David Mangum: Very familiar. I fish all around that area, a lot in the summer tarpon fishing. A side story: the hurricane came on a Wednesday, and on Friday, me and another fella took a boat to Mexico Beach, and it was an experience unlike anything I've ever had before. We got over where there was some real shallow sand, and there's a canal that leads into Mexico Beach. It was pretty silent. The wind had died down, and all you could hear was thousands of fire alarms still beeping, just attached to wood and pieces of houses. There was water bubbling up out of concrete slabs where the plumbing was just torn off. It was spooky. I expected to see dead bodies. Luckily, we didn't. My friend that I went over there with had recently built a house, recently finished it, and luckily for him, he had made it pretty bombproof. He's that kind of guy.

Tom Rowland: Was that the only house left?

David Mangum: Not the only, but one of the only. Everything was upstairs. The downstairs, water had come up, I think it was 18 feet above the canal level. It was a surreal experience.

Tom Rowland: I saw a picture shortly after, and there was, like, one single house, and surrounding it looked like it had been cleared off with a bulldozer. There were pieces of roof and stuff around, but this one house had been there. He had built it over code. That's the thing when, after the latest storm in the Keys, we went back down to Duck Key, and you could see one roof gone, another roof gone, and here's new construction and it was fine. The roof was there with the new construction, bringing it up to code. Hurricane Andrew really changed that, because that changed the building code in Florida substantially. But that Mexico Beach area just looked like a giant bomb went off.

David Mangum: That's the term you hear everybody say who drives through there. Bomb went off.

Tom Rowland: What do you think that community's like now?

David Mangum: It will take time before that place ever gets anywhere close to what it was. A lot of the economy right there in that tiny little strip depended on people coming and staying in those beach homes and going to those businesses. Only time will tell if it comes back.

Tom Rowland: I hope it will. I've never seen anything like a hurricane to bring a community together and to bring neighbors together.

David Mangum: There was a lot of that going on all through the area that got hit.

Tom Rowland: So often in the Keys, Key West will get hit really hard or Marathon will get hit hard, and then even just twenty, thirty, forty miles away, it's nothing. Obviously a hurricane went through, but it's nothing like the epicenter. Looking around your neighborhood right here, you wouldn't be able to tell at this point that anything had happened.

David Mangum: We had a couple of trees down, and of course a mess with debris and whatnot. But specifically with this storm, it was like a 30-mile-wide tornado. There was a defined line. When you hit that line with your vehicle, driving just the speed limit, you'd go from just starting to notice to all the trees down in like three miles. It was a super defined line. It's extraordinary.

Tom Rowland: Well, they will rebound.

David Mangum: I always think, people say, oh, you live in Florida, hurricanes. It feels like just about anywhere in the world, there's a give and take to where you live and how great the place is. There's always something there that balances that great place out, whether it's California earthquakes, fires, Florida hurricanes, whatever it is. Everybody's got something.

Red Tide and Florida's Water Future

Tom Rowland: I was here right before with my kids. We came down to 30A and were staying just a week or two before, and there was significant red tide. I hadn't experienced that as much as some other people I was with, but you'd walk outside and within a couple of minutes you'd have this coughing, itchy throat. What did that hurricane do to clear that up?

David Mangum: It moved it around. Pretty much the red tide needs fresh water and heat to proliferate, because it's a little microorganism. As it blooms and grows, it pulls oxygen out of both the water and the air. Along the beach, the reason you cough is that as those waves hit the shoreline, it aerates that stuff, and you cough because you're actually being depleted of oxygen. It's pretty interesting. We had hoped that at least the red tide would be gone, but it was still around.

Tom Rowland: It seems like it'd be like a toilet flushing.

David Mangum: I hope so. The thing that gets that red tide going away is when it cools down and kills it, or we have a lot of north wind that blows it offshore and disperses it enough. But it was still around.

Tom Rowland: Well, I'm very optimistic about the water situation in Florida. Lately we've done a couple of other podcasts with Captains for Clean Water, and then we have the new governor. What do you think about DeSantis and his leadership?

David Mangum: So far, I like it. He's kind of cleaning house, the water board down there in South Florida. Like a lot of things in this whole water war over the years, it looks good for a while, and then things meander away. So we'll see if it stays on track.

Tom Rowland: That was really my question to Chris Wittman when we were having this discussion. We had Steve Davis from the Everglades Foundation, and Benny Blanco was also on. It's like, if there's something bad and super evident, fish kills and all this stuff, it's really easy to get people to give money and get them involved. And then as that goes away, there's still a problem simmering under the surface, but it's not as obvious. I was wondering if they thought the same as me, that the real challenge is coming up here to keep people engaged in this fight when the problem isn't super obvious. And moving toward a situation where the state of Florida, the fishing, the bird watching, everything could be better than anyone's ever seen it in our lifetime if we just stay this course a little bit longer.

David Mangum: Let the natural cycles take place. If we can get there, for sure. Getting there is going to be the challenge. I'm hopeful, but realistically we'll see. It looks great. I'm pretty excited about it.

How David Became a Guide: Art School to Alaska

Tom Rowland: I've followed your career over time. You've done some really cool stuff. There are few people I've fished with that within the first five minutes I'm kind of like, wow, this guy's maybe even a little crazier than me as far as all of these things go. So how did that happen? You're a mad scientist fisherman.

David Mangum: It's funny that I get the scientist thing a lot, because I guess I'm pretty analytical. When I'm fishing or guiding, I'm looking at all the little bits and pieces and trying to put together a puzzle.

Tom Rowland: What in your background got you to that point? Did you always fish?

David Mangum: Always fished, from a little kid, since I could hold a rod for sure. My dad was always fishing. He was into it, so I was always going with him. He started planting that seed for sure.

Tom Rowland: At what point did you think you might do this for a living?

David Mangum: I honestly kind of knew. I went to college for a while, went to school in Austin. I was gonna pursue an art career, and I just had that feeling like I don't wanna stay in school. I felt like everything was moving super slow, slow-mo, and I wanted to get out and do something and live my life right now. So I moved to Alaska. That was early nineties, I guess.

Tom Rowland: Did you know anybody in Alaska?

David Mangum: I didn't. In the back of the fly fishing mags, there were all those little squares that were advertised. I just started calling them, calling all of the numbers, and I got lucky and hit one where the head guy running the place was from Florida. He was a Keys guide during part of his year, and he went up there. We kind of connected on that Florida part, and he said, alright, kid, come on up, just make sure you have enough money for your return ticket in case this doesn't work out, and I'll give you a shot. I said, alright, cool. So I arrived there.

Tom Rowland: Let me guess, this is on the Kanektok River.

David Mangum: No. This was near Naknek. This was King Salmon, Alaska.

Tom Rowland: Who was the Florida guy?

David Mangum: His name was Jess Motter.

Tom Rowland: I was thinking maybe it was somebody else, but okay. So he had his little operation there. I ended up going to the Kanektok and seeing them there. I couldn't get into that outfit, couldn't fish with them, but I'd kind of already planned that we were going to Alaska. I'd had several customers tell me how great this river was. I didn't really know a lot about Alaska, so I'm like, well, we're going there. I ended up going with another outfit. I should've gone with those guys. But anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you. So you get up there and Alaska is new.

David Mangum: I didn't have a captain's license. This was, like, you're gonna be the bottom-of-the-barrel guy. Here's your pack, we're gonna put a tent in it, and you put your people's lunch in it, and here's a gun, and you're gonna get on that plane in the morning. The guy's gonna fly you out. You do a pass over the creek you're gonna fish to see how many bears are on it, and then they're gonna land on the lake, and you fish with your people. Just go for it and figure it out. That's all I do.

Tom Rowland: And you knew something about trout fishing, something about salmon fishing? Had you ever been to Alaska?

David Mangum: Never. Pretty much I just read and did my research. I'd go to the library and look for a few books that had flies and all that. No internet.

Tom Rowland: I talked to my son about that. He just became an elk guide last year. Just like you, he wanted to do this. He's in college, he wants to do this. He asked me what my advice would be, and I said, write a letter a day. Seven letters a week. Just like what you did, you started calling those people. Call someone every day, write a letter every day, whatever. Make this happen, because it's not gonna happen for you.

David Mangum: Focus on your goal and just do whatever takes you up there.

Tom Rowland: I'm sure you learned a lot that first season.

David Mangum: Oh, yeah. Trial by fire, to the extreme. I did that up there. It was a great experience. What I took away was that the fishing was amazing, there were fish everywhere, so the fishing part was very easy. But the place was what I took away. You get on that float plane and you fly out, and there's nothing under you for so far. You look down, and nobody's ever put their foot there probably. And that was so cool. You get back to the lodge and look at this giant map on the wall of Alaska, and you maybe went a quarter of an inch. It's completely different than the Lower 48, a different feeling and a different way of understanding the world you live in.

Tom Rowland: It's one of those things where the more you know, you just learned a little bit, just enough to realize that you know nothing. I explored this much, and there's a map that is literally 20 feet wide, and I did a quarter inch. So where did that take you from there? Did you go back to college?

David Mangum: I didn't. I never did. Let's see, I moved from there to Colorado, back to Florida, went back to Alaska, a different place, out of Prince of Wales Island. I guided there with a buddy, then went back to Colorado, back to Florida, Puerto Rico, here and there and all over the place. And about eighteen years ago, I moved back here to Florida. The whole time I was wandering around, I knew I was coming back here and was gonna get a skiff. I still have some of those first ads of Hell's Bay. When I first started looking at skiffs, they didn't even have a Hell's Bay. A Silver King was, like, the one. I had spent some time scheming and saving up money on how I was gonna get a boat. My first Hell's Bay was, like, 18,000.

Tom Rowland: I went trout fishing not too long ago with someone who has a boat we used to fish out of out west called a Koffler. It basically looked like a dog wash, one of those aluminum things you wash your dog in, with oars on it. It was kind of low-sided, and it was a wonderful boat, and both people sat in it. The guide sat in the middle. Koffler also made regular drift boats, but they made this low-sided thing. People liked it enough, turned it into the South Fork Skiff, turned it into these low drifting boats. Now Adipose has one, and it's much nicer inside. I'm looking at this boat thinking, this is very similar to the old Koffler we used to fish in, except we didn't have all this nice rod storage. I'm like, what does this boat cost? I'm thinking he's gonna say, like, five or six thousand dollars. No, it was more than my first skiff that I bought with a 90-horsepower motor.

David Mangum: Absolutely. They've gone up a little. A lot, maybe.

Coming Home to Florida and Building a Business

Tom Rowland: So you get your first skiff. How did you find out where in Florida you were going to return to?

David Mangum: I just came home. This Destin area is where I grew up. I started trying to figure it out. Literally it's like, let's look at the map. Before I even had a skiff, I was on my johnboat, going over there, looking around, seeing what's going on. Is there any fishing? There was no one to follow, no footsteps to follow in. When I first moved back, a buddy of mine did have a skiff, and he and I fished a lot together. He owned a restaurant here along 30A in Seaside called Bud & Alley's. His name was Scott Wachowski, and we got up and down the coast all over the place. We just explored, went fishing all the time. I was bartending for work. I'd bartend until late at night, and as young men do, drink a little, have fun, and get up in two hours and go fishing. We just did it over and over for years.

Tom Rowland: And then you develop into, okay, I guess I can take somebody for money at some point. But you had to decide that. I'm gonna get a captain's license, I'm gonna turn this into a business. What did that look like?

David Mangum: For me, my dad helped me sign back then for a loan, because I had no credit, just wandering around. He signed on, I got a loan, and I got that first Hell's Bay. It was a Waterman 18. I linked up with somebody here who had started something before me, and he and I worked together for a few years. Just like Alaska, you just grab your belt buckle, tighten it, and go. You drive to the place, you meet your people, and you just go.

Discovering the Panhandle Tarpon Fishery

Tom Rowland: What about this developing tarpon fishery? Back in these days, this wasn't considered the destination it is today. Tarpon definitely swam up here, but most people were stopping their tarpon fishing around Homosassa. That was back in the day when Homosassa was still doing great, and that's where most people were going for their records. So you're seeing some tarpon and deciding, maybe. When did the wheels start turning?

David Mangum: The wheels started turning well before I really knew too much about the tarpon here. It was something I was gonna come do. Those exploratory trips moving around the coast with my friend, I found a place where I was seeing these tarpon in the summer. That was kind of that electric moment for me where, okay, this is it right here. My first tarpon I caught was on an eight weight. I didn't even have a twelve weight. Just some big fly like I'd seen in a book or magazine, with lead eyes actually, which I don't really do anymore. It was just trial and error. I look back at that time and go, oh my god, I wish I could be back there knowing what I know now.

Tom Rowland: But don't you think... I hear this all the time from people who have made whatever life they've made, and they look back at the times when they were making it. God, man, I remember those times of living, like, ten people in a house, having fun at night, fishing all day, and just trying to figure out what in the world you're gonna do. So many times it seems like there's no hope, this is not gonna work out. And then you look back at these days and you're like, that was the best time of my whole life. What I wish is that I could have known back then that these could be the best days of your life. Like, soak it in.

David Mangum: Just the fact that you're eating ramen noodles and you don't have any money might be the greatest blessing. Soak it in. Be in that. Live it right now. Everybody says, I'm working toward the future so I can get more relaxed, more money. But those moments are the ones where you look back and go, oh my god, wish I hadn't been worried about all that other peripheral stuff.

Marriage, Family, and the Guiding Life

Tom Rowland: How old are you?

David Mangum: I am 46.

Tom Rowland: I just turned 50 this year, so we're close. And you've been married for a long time?

David Mangum: Fifteen years now.

Tom Rowland: I've been married for twenty-three years. I have three kids, and I just met your daughter a few minutes ago. As your life moves on, you move into these different seasons. You're developing this for yourself, you're learning, all of this is super fun. But of course the family is super fun too and super rewarding in a totally different way. And then there's looking back and being like, wow, I can't even believe all of this has happened. Now you're in another season of your life. One of the questions somebody sent me the other day was, I'm thinking about being a guide, and I'm also getting ready to get married. He was asking if I had any advice.

David Mangum: Is he wealthy? It's a good way to make a small fortune, start with a large fortune.

Tom Rowland: I was kind of like, I don't even know if I'm qualified. Yes, I've been married for twenty-three years, but how do you answer that in a way that you could pass that kind of knowledge over? What's interesting about that question, and I want your take, is that in order to do what you've done or what I did in the Florida Keys, going to a place where you know nothing and learning all of this stuff enough to be someone people want to pay money to go fishing with, there has to be a period of complete obsession. And I'm not sure the part-time part covers it, really.

David Mangum: I think it has to be even more than that. Not just obsession, but obsession for a long period of time.

Tom Rowland: I do know what you mean. When I'm trying to formulate a response to someone who really wants advice, and he's obviously thinking the right way, I want to be a guide but I also want to be married, how do those two fit together? It's very difficult, because there has to be this long period, like you say, that's beyond obsession to where that's all you think about. I know plenty of guides, you know plenty of guides, where the marriage didn't survive that. I also know other people where the fishing didn't survive that, who decided, you know what, if we keep going like this, we're not gonna be married much longer, and that's more important to me. So they packed everything up and left. I saw that happen lots of times.

David Mangum: I have seen it happen in my guide service. Yes.

Tom Rowland: And kudos to them. They figured out what was most important and did it. How do you create that balance or maintain it? For a long time, if I hold my hands out like a scale, it looked like this for a long time, fishing holding everything down, and everything else is up here. There might be time to make a phone call or pay the bills, but fishing was everything. Then at some point you start to figure out how to spend a little more time, but it's a fine balance.

David Mangum: It teeters back and forth constantly. It never maintains that straight line. It's either this way or that way, and, oh, it starts tipping that way, then you gotta put some weight back on the other side. You hope to make it through that violent seesawing for many years. I think the most key ingredient, as far as marriage goes, is you have to have somebody you're completely in love with, or they love you. That love is the only thing that's gonna really glue all that together. If that obsession takes over, which has to be there, you've gotta have somebody that's really great. And I did.

Tom Rowland: Well, I did too. I'm married way out of my league. It's funny, because I don't know that if I was in her shoes, I would have been as understanding that you just can't stop thinking about anything else. Like, what about me? I don't know that I could have been as patient and understanding as she was, and it hasn't always been super easy. We had some real rough times. And then you throw kids into the mix too.

David Mangum: Yeah, that's a whole new thing. You went before me on the kids, I think. We waited, and if we hadn't, I'm not sure where everything would be. Luckily, we waited till things got a little more even on the seesaw, and it's been great. I used to think fishing was the greatest part of my life, but it's my child now. Anybody that has kids knows that one.

Tom Rowland: For sure. But then there's the balance. Once you make this your career, now you have to have time for both.

David Mangum: That's very difficult. I'm not here a lot.

Tom Rowland: It is very difficult. So I didn't know how to answer that in an email. I was like, boy, I don't know.

David Mangum: I've had so many of those emails too, and I just cut right to it. So do you like to fish? Oh, you do? Well, don't become a guide, because if you actually like the act of fishing, that's not really for you. I stopped fishing with a rod myself years ago. A lot of the emails are people asking, oh, I love to fish and I want to be a guide. Well, those are completely separate things. You have to live a life of fishing and get to a place where it's not that important anymore to hold a rod in your hand and actually get to catch a fish. You evolve past that. So what's the next step? The next step is somebody coming on the front of your boat, and they are your rod, and your words to them and your guidance to them, that's what you're using to fish now.

Guiding as an Art Form

Tom Rowland: I think that's where you see the difference between good and great, that some people look at guiding as an art form that does not include fishing. I learned that right away in the outfit I worked for out west. This old cowboy, Verne Bressler, I've told this story before too, but he just said, you know what, you don't fish. You never fish. And I was like, dang, man, I'm like 20 years old, that's the only reason I wanted to be there. So I never fish? He goes, you fish on the days you don't have clients. But the worst thing you could ever do is bring your clients back to the shop, and we say, did you have a good day, and they say, I don't know, God caught a huge one. He was telling me, that's it, you'll be gone, you'll be fired immediately if that happens. So I realized, oh, okay, I'm doing something different. Nobody cares if you can catch that fish.

David Mangum: Nope. They only care if you can help them catch that fish. That's guiding.

Tom Rowland: That's the art form. The craft.

David Mangum: The craft, yeah. I agree. It kind of sounds corny to say. You don't want to put this guiding thing on a big pedestal, but it truly is. If you dig deep enough into anything you can do in life, it becomes an art form, if you dig down into the bones of it.

Tom Rowland: You're right about anything. It could be any sort of business, anything. What's interesting about fishing, and why a lot of people are interested in guides, is that it's a microcosm of the world, and things happen very quickly. We were talking about David Goggins' book. The same thing is true about the SEAL books, that a lot of the things they're doing are very similar to other things in the world, like running a business or being a parent. But the repercussions of making a mistake are life and death, and it's way more important and way more immediate. If you make a mistake, you're gonna know about it instantly, or maybe you won't even know, you're just dead. So to hear from those people who have survived that and taken that type of leadership to an art form, it's kind of similar with the fishing guys, because there's so much communication that goes into talking with your client and talking them through what they're about to do.

David Mangum: It's the same thing, like you said. It's leadership, it's communication, and thinking of fourteen, twenty, thirty, fifty things at once. You gotta think of a million things at one time.

Photography, Video, and the YETI Film

Tom Rowland: When we were first talking, you were talking about your photography. How has that become more and more of a part of what you're doing?

David Mangum: When I first started guiding, in Alaska or wherever I was, you're looking around, and it's hard to explain why you want to document it and share it with other people somehow. Whether that's a client or somebody else, through an image, you have that feeling of, I want to show this to other people. That's where it started for me, whether photography or video. Then I figured out, wow, people really like this photo, and they're really fired up about it, and they want to experience what they see. It certainly became a marketing thing down the road as I tried to get clients to come fish with me. Here's what this looks like, come check it out.

Tom Rowland: You seem to have toyed back and forth between photography and video. You've come up with some really cool stuff. That YETI film you did was awesome. What did that look like? Did you have a vision of what it was gonna be, or did you partner up with some people?

David Mangum: Mostly that was a couple of other guys' deal. The black-and-white YETI film we shot, I had a little bit of input, but that one was Ben and Travis from Felt Soul Media. Some of the other video stuff I've done, it's just another challenge, something else to learn. Sometimes my wife thinks I have way too many things I'm working on to try to learn and master. But I guess that obsession thing goes with anything, whatever's in front of me at the moment. Whatever you really get into, you're like, this is it for this moment.

Tom Rowland: Well, I know. I had a discussion with this other guy, an MMA fighter. He calls himself the best fisherman in MMA. His name's Gregor Gillespie. Even when he wins a fight in the UFC, he's like, I'm the best fisherman in MMA. So I was like, is that real? I checked out a few more of his fights and had him on the show. He has a tattoo I asked about, and it says one or a hundred right here on his neck. I was like, one or a hundred, I wonder what that means. His response was exactly what we're talking about. I'm either all in or I'm all out. I find that to be a common thread between a lot of the fishing guides I know, that it's either all or nothing. If those guys get into hunting, oh boy, watch out. If they get into archery, they'll be shooting 200 arrows a day. If it's video, like yourself, then it's just, okay, what's next, what's the best camera, how do I learn how to do this. What you seem to have done is figure out these things you're interested in, which are complementary to your business.

David Mangum: You kind of just put it all in a big ball and squish it all together, and it seems to have worked out so far.

Tom Rowland: Where's the relaxation come from?

David Mangum: I don't do it. You just went surfing, is that your deal? My wife was like, how was it? Well, at four in the morning when I walked out of here, I just relaxed when I got back, when I went to bed. It was go, go, go every single second when we were there. I'm relaxed if I'm not relaxed, I guess. If I'm sitting still, I'm thinking about what I need to go do or what I want to do. When I was young, I have Tourette's, and it was pretty bad. Part of that, kind of a sidecar with that whole Tourette's thing, is some OCD stuff. I think that's part of the alchemy of that.

Living With Tourette's and OCD

Tom Rowland: So you really have Tourette's?

David Mangum: I sure do.

Tom Rowland: How has that affected you in your life? Because you seem to...

David Mangum: I think it helps me. The OCD part of it, at least, is definitely a help.

Tom Rowland: Does Tourette's manifest in different ways other than, obviously there have been some athletes who have Tourette's and they shout things?

David Mangum: There are definitely different manifestations. When I was a kid, it was pretty bad, but as I grew up, it eased, and I learned how to have it manifest in ways that most people wouldn't recognize, like I'm clicking my teeth all the time, or every time I go down the road, every mile marker or something, weird things. Very rarely do a lot of my friends see it, because they know about it, but it manifests in ways that it still has to happen. It's like an itch that has to be scratched. The reason I mention it is because a lot of times the OCD thing comes along with that Tourette's, and that's certainly been a big part.

Tom Rowland: Do you think that has contributed to any success you've experienced, or has it been a negative?

David Mangum: It's a help for sure.

Tom Rowland: Was it a help all the way through your life, or were there times before fishing that it was not?

David Mangum: When I was a kid, certainly, if you're young and you have something like that going on, the other kids aren't really great about it. But when I was young, I did a lot of art. I drew and painted and did a lot of stuff, and I think it certainly helped with that. That's where, as I moved on to school, I was gonna pursue an art career.

Art as the Root of Everything

Tom Rowland: Did you have a certain medium that you were really interested in when you went to school?

David Mangum: No, I didn't. Art was the all-focus, whether painting, sketching, charcoal. I loved art history. Everything about it, I was just like, gonna learn everything about this. And I still paint.

Tom Rowland: Were you able to have an outlet for that in high school?

David Mangum: Not past your regular art classes. But fishing, that was my thing.

Tom Rowland: I'm just interested, because my son goes to Belmont, and he's interested in art. He had just enough art in high school to be like, oh, I'm good at this, and I kind of like it, and now I'm gonna go to school to do it. But it was even hard for him to be like, well, what kind of art? Does art mean photography? Does art mean video? Does art mean painting? Does it mean charcoal? Like you're saying. So your original intent was just to have a general art focus?

David Mangum: I had no idea. Just like your son, what kind of art? I just knew, alright, start moving in this direction, let's get the momentum moving, and I'll figure out the path, just like a lot of people in college. It's one of those itches you have to scratch. You feel like you have to be creative and create something. I really truly believe a lot of my guiding and fishing, I'm doing the same thing, creating a situation for the person that helps them catch a fish, or I'm thinking about all the little variables and figuring out how to create another situation. That itch of that obsession, if you refine it down, everything kind of comes down the funnel to creating something.

Tom Rowland: As a guide, do you feel like you're creating daily?

David Mangum: Yes. And if you're not, you get real bored. Definitely some days, hey, I know I'm gonna go to this spot over here, that's my spot, and I'm gonna get my day done because it's blowing or it's cloudy or it's tough. Or even if it's nice, I'm gonna start over here, but then we're gonna go to I don't know what. That's the most fun as a guide that I can have, going and doing something, pointing the bow in a direction where I don't know what's going on over here, let's go look. Those days that you find something new, I've got a bunch of those in my head, and I can tell you all those days. There's a lot of days I don't remember, but not those.

The Mystery of Finding New Water

Tom Rowland: It's funny how, in my experience, oftentimes when you happen upon something, the first time you find it is the best you ever see it.

David Mangum: I agree with that.

Tom Rowland: And I don't know why that is, because you can go back and think, okay, this is what the tide was doing, this is what the wind was doing, I don't even know why these fish were here. Then you look at the map, oh okay, now I'm starting to put it together. If they're here, they should be over here, and when they leave here as the tide drops out, they should go over here. You start to put all these things together. So you should be thinking, I'm gonna go replicate this even on better conditions, because it was blowing 20 out of the north when I found that. So now if we go and it's a nice day, imagine how great it's gonna be.

David Mangum: Waters may have been better. Water temp is spiking.

Tom Rowland: And then you go there, and it's only marginally as good as the first time you found it.

David Mangum: Or maybe that's why you found it, because it was so good that day.

Tom Rowland: But I just wait for an answer on that. Why did I happen upon it?

David Mangum: Sometimes it's great that you don't get the answer there. Then you're just looking for another answer somewhere else. That's what's awesome. I love that.

Drones and What the Fish Really Do

Tom Rowland: As things happen, I came across one of your videos the other day on Instagram. It was somebody on the bow of your boat casting a fly rod, and two tarpon are coming, and in a little muddy water you see the fish turn, and then it takes off. It's from a drone directly overhead.

David Mangum: Oh, no, that was somebody else's, but yes, I know the shot you're talking about.

Tom Rowland: Okay, I thought it was yours, I'm sorry. But anyway, any shot like that, today we have this drone technology that you can see that. Recently we were filming a sailfish show where we were trying to catch sailfish as they're spraying ballyhoo. There's a cool thing that happens when the ballyhoo migrate in and they're everywhere, and a sailfish comes under them and they shower. They spray, and they do it in a certain way. When a jack comes and gets them, they spray and all go in different directions. When a sailfish comes, they all go in the same direction. You can see it from a long way away. That's what we're looking for. So we have the drone up on this one, and we go there and stand up on the bow, and it showered, but we don't see anything because we're standing at water level. The drone's up, but we never saw the sail. But he didn't go down, because we go back and look at the footage later, and there were two sailfish right there that we just couldn't see. They're three or four feet under the surface. If they were one foot under, maybe we would have seen them. I can remember so many days thinking, I'm so obsessed with what these fish are doing and where they're going and why they were just rolling right here and now they're gone. Where would they possibly have gone? I was like, man, when I die, these are gonna be the first questions I ask. I'm gonna know where those fish went.

David Mangum: I've got so many of those questions. They show right here. Okay, where were they before they were all right here? I just need to know that.

Tom Rowland: And now with the drone, some of those things, you're actually getting those answers.

David Mangum: A little bit. Certainly there are some things, I love to fly the drone and find a school of fish, and then you put it up and see them from a different angle. I wouldn't say there are any big discoveries I've seen on that drone, I'll tell you that, but I love that different perspective. It's fascinating.

Tom Rowland: The discoveries I've made on the drone are that it's simpler than you thought. I'm thinking, okay, four tarpon rolled over there, we've cast all in here, there's a cloud overhead now, we can't see, so they're gone. And if there was a drone up there, you'd see they're not gone. They're just sitting exactly where they were, and they just don't bite. There are plenty of times when you could see them and throw at them, and they don't bite, most of the time.

David Mangum: The biggest takeaway so far with the amount of drone flying I've done is that the fish are more aware of you than you know. That's something I've noticed. Since you can watch them further away, something you would notice from standing on the boat or the platform on the back or the front, you squeak or do one little thing or even move your weight around in the boat, and you can watch those fish react to that, something you didn't think. That's the neat thing I've seen with that drone. I wouldn't have thought that school of redfish 250 feet over there is aware of us, but they all just flinched when this happened. They knew.

Tom Rowland: And that's why when they get up to you, they're already on the edge. You're thinking, something's wrong here. And yeah, something's wrong, and you caused it, unknowingly, before you even knew those fish were there. I think that's pretty interesting. I haven't gotten to where we fish with the drone. We just use it for filming, and then going back at the end of the day and looking, and you're like, wow, that's interesting, they were there the whole time.

Technology, GPS, and the Changing Fishery

David Mangum: It's interesting the direction technology is going. Do fish stand much of a chance in this war? GPS, everything.

Tom Rowland: Where do you see that going? Does that make fishing easier, or does it make fishing harder?

David Mangum: Both. It just changes it. It's always changing, though, right? Ever evolving. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. Those are the questions, aren't they?

Tom Rowland: With the technology, on the one hand it makes some things easier, and it can make some things more difficult. As your sonar is popping, if all you gotta do is go snorkeling under your boat one time and listen to that, and it's popping and making a sound.

David Mangum: Oh my god. Click, click, click, click, click.

Tom Rowland: So while that is making it easier, maybe it's also making it much worse for the fish.

David Mangum: There are a lot of things like that in today's world where we're not doing it any favors.

Too Many People

Tom Rowland: Like what? What comes to mind?

David Mangum: Don't get me started on that rant. I have a little rant that everybody who knows me knows my little saying. It involves some curse words, but basically every problem in our natural world comes down this funnel, this big graph down to a point. And the thing at the bottom, the thing that covers everything, is basically too many people. There's a whole bunch of us, a lot more than there used to be, and that's probably not good for a lot of things on this planet.

Tom Rowland: And that's what everybody knows about you, that you think there's too many people in the world?

David Mangum: There's definitely too many people.

Tom Rowland: Do you think you have a misanthropic view of the world? Would you say that?

David Mangum: If I knew what that meant. I'll be honest and tell you, I don't know the definition of misanthropic. I don't know the word. Some might call me that.

Tom Rowland: I'll tell you why I know it, because I was once accused of being a misanthrope, and that is a hater of man. I was like, misanthrope, what is that? I went home and looked it up, and I was like, a hater of man. That guy thought I was a hater of man. What am I doing? Basically it's like, oh, there's too much development. I became more aware of it, like, okay, maybe I can feel that way, but does voicing that really do any good, especially around my clients or anyone else? Is that helping me or hurting me? And do I really hate man, or am I just making an observation that there's too many in certain places?

David Mangum: I definitely make the observation, and I like having the discussion, because I think the discussion warrants having it and saying, let's look around at what we're doing. We should be paying a little more attention. That's my main point when I have that conversation.

Tom Rowland: I think there are certainly signs that we are.

David Mangum: There are. There are signs that we're at least pondering the questions that should be pondered. I think it's gonna take a lot more time for us to actuate those things.

Tom Rowland: Awareness is the first step, and then education is the second step. With the water issues, if it wasn't for Captains for Clean Water and other organizations bringing awareness to this and then doing a good job of, here's all the resources you need, educate yourself, make your own decision, not pushing you one way or another. Look, this is happening, it's in your backyard, would you like to know more or not? If you don't, that's fine, somebody else wants to know more. Those are the things I'm seeing now.

David Mangum: Nobody likes that stuff shoved down their throat, hey, you should think this way or that way. I'm certainly not doing that with my little saying, but I just like having the conversation, because I would like to bring everybody aware of that fact. In 1920, less than a hundred years ago, there were 2 billion people on planet Earth. Today there are 8 billion. That's a lot more billions in a real short amount of time, less than a hundred years. I notice on the boat, anytime somebody's talking about, oh, the fishing over there, or I used to go hunting here, a lot of those stories, it was really good, but it's not as good now, or there's not as many of these things over here, there's more people there now. I think we all see it. I just hope we're all aware of it. That's all.

What's Next: A Tarpon Coffee Table Book With YETI

Tom Rowland: At this point, what are you the most interested in as you move forward into 2019?

David Mangum: I've really been into photography lately and doing a lot more of that than I have in the past.

Tom Rowland: Is that mostly fishing photography or all types?

David Mangum: A little bit of all. Right now, I am working on a coffee table book backed by YETI. It'll be their first YETI Presents in print. It's gonna be pretty cool, and it's on tarpon and the culture that surrounds the fish. I've been working hard on that. I've got about 25 different photographers contributing. I'm just kind of the librarian of the project. I have a lot of my photos in there as well, but I'm the guy gathering it all together.

Tom Rowland: And is that about history too, history of the sport?

David Mangum: Not so much history. It's more, most of the photography, some of it maybe you've seen before, but most of it is newer.

Tom Rowland: A coffee table book can be a pretty big undertaking. Hundreds of pages. Have you ever written a book before?

David Mangum: No. We're gonna have a few writings, but it's not gonna be much of that. It's mostly an art book, visual. It's been pretty cool. I was on the boat with Roy Cedars, and he just said, hey, you ever consider doing something like this? I said, man, yeah, that's like a dream project. He's like, let's do it. Here we are.

Tom Rowland: It's been a good relationship for you with YETI, right?

David Mangum: Absolutely. Wonderful company. Out of all the companies I've worked with over the years, they walk the walk. They do what they say. They do a lot of great conservation, and their stuff does what they say it does. They're great.

Tom Rowland: They go a step further and want to be a part of the culture of where their products are being used. It's really interesting in them wanting to back that book. They want to be a part of the story.

David Mangum: That's where their success comes from. They've created a brand within all these different small cultures of the outdoors, and I think that's the root of their success.

Tom Rowland: Does the amount of time and effort you're spending on the photography change anything else? Do you just fit it in, or does it come at the expense of something else?

David Mangum: Some of it comes at the expense of days on the water, but not much tarpon fishing at all. That can't happen. But other days of the year, where maybe I'm just redfishing here around my home, a day charter, I have 11 guides with my guide service, so those trips go to those guys if I'm off taking photos somewhere.

Tom Rowland: Have you been moving around to all the different tarpon locations?

David Mangum: Yeah. I was in the Keys a couple weeks ago taking some photos, and I'm probably gonna be down there around April for maybe two to three weeks. Doing a lot of portrait work with different folks in the culture. A few other photographers and I are gonna go down there and kind of attack everything we see up and down the Florida coast.

Tom Rowland: When do you expect that's gonna come out?

David Mangum: I'm not sure if I can disclose that. It'll be a little bit down the road.

Tom Rowland: Years down the road?

David Mangum: Not years, but it'll be down the road.

Where to Find David and His Guide Service

Tom Rowland: What about your guide service? Where do people find you if they want to go fishing with you or your people?

David Mangum: Our guide service is based here on the Panhandle of Florida, kind of the 30A, Destin, Santa Rosa Beach area, Panama City. That's kind of the epicenter where most all of my guides live and fish. We also get to Louisiana for a couple months of the year. We've been doing that for over fifteen years now. Me and a few of the other guides go over there out of Venice, Louisiana. Saw you down there not too long ago. That's what we do. So if you're coming to the Panhandle of Florida, pretty much all up and down this coast, if you're looking for a guide, we can do it.

Tom Rowland: What's your website?

David Mangum: Shallowwaterexpeditions.com.

Tom Rowland: And can they find your art there too?

David Mangum: I don't have any of the art up. I used to have it on our old website, but I took that off. People started buying too much of it, it started to disappear.

Tom Rowland: So what do you do with your art these days? Is it like a private commission type deal?

David Mangum: I've done some commissions lately, which is pretty cool. Dave Perkins, I did a commission for. Tom Evans, who's a kind of famous tarpon guy, I did one for him not too long ago. That's the last thing I worked on. I've worked on a little bit of painting this winter. It seems like wintertime, that used to be my off time, is getting busier, so not as much time to work on painting.

The Podcast and Real Conversation

Tom Rowland: You sure are cramming a lot of stuff into the same amount of time. There are only 365 days in the year. And now you're doing more painting, a coffee table book, you're guiding, you've got 11 guides, you're married, you have a child. You keep piling it in. And here's your podcast that you're doing right now. Was this everything you thought it was gonna be, with all the crew and everything else that I got here?

David Mangum: I don't know. I never thought all these guys were gonna be standing here in my backyard.

Tom Rowland: Just because there's no video here. It's just me and Dave right here. That's what I like so much about the podcast, that I just show up and sit down with people and talk to them like we used to before there were cell phones. Nobody comes with me. A lot of the interviews cancel, and then I pretty much pick up another one in the same day. I'll drop by, I'll be there in a minute, let's sit down and talk. I've been doing this now for a year. The first one launched February 27th last year, and it just started as, I'm gonna sit down with a couple of my friends and talk. I've learned so much talking to people who are interested in the same things I'm interested in. It's incredible how much I've learned in a year of just basically sitting down and talking in a way that doesn't happen that much anymore, unless you're around a campfire.

David Mangum: It's true.

Tom Rowland: What I found is that when you put these headphones on and hit record, it's very similar to a late-night campfire conversation.

David Mangum: Right. It's not just making conversation to fill the void. It's actually having some conversations about something that matters.

Tom Rowland: Well, you hope so. Some of the ones we've done have not been very good. But no, this has been good, man. I really think it's a little deeper dive into Dave Mangum.

David Mangum: Oh, yeah. I don't know how deep we want to go.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's probably deep enough. But, man, I appreciate you sitting down and talking with me.

David Mangum: You too.

Tom Rowland: We'll do it again. Alright. See you, Dave.