Southern women are crazy. I didn’t make that up — I just stopped arguing with it.
For about the last ten years, people have called me the Southern Harley Quinn. It started as a joke, the way most good nicknames do, and it stuck the way most good nicknames do too. At some point I quit correcting folks and started answering to it. A comparison I wear with pride, as I’ve said more than once.
I grew up in a small rural community in North Carolina, the kind of place where fishing isn’t a hobby, it’s just what you do on a Saturday. My uncles took me offshore every chance they got. In 2001 I won a Lady Angler King Mackerel tournament, which I will be bringing up at dinner parties until the day I die.
Then life did what life does. I graduated from Campbell University School of Pharmacy in 2005, went to work, and the rods went in the garage. Not on purpose. You just look up one day and it’s been fifteen years since you smelled a boat motor.
Getting back on the water
In 2021 I got back into fishing — bass, this time, on NC lakes instead of out past the inlet. In 2023 I bought my first boat, a 21’ Avid FS MAGNUM in Mossy Oak Bottomland camo. She’s not fancy. She runs, she floats, and she’s taken me to more sunrises than I can count.
Here’s the part I didn’t expect. The fishing was never really the point. The point was four hours where nobody needed anything from me, where the phone didn’t work half the time anyway, and where the worst thing that could happen was not catching anything. I came off the water different than I got on it. Every single time.
No agenda. No pressure. Just water, peace, and maybe a fish or two.
That’s what Southern Harlequin is. A name I earned, a few hats, and a whole lot of mornings on the water. Glad you’re here.
Take your meds, drink some water, you matter. — Gina
