Jason 0:01

In this episode, we wait out there with Taylor Todd from Helena, Montana. Taylor began fly fishing almost immediately upon beginning college at Oregon State. He was a volunteer firefighter and paramedic there, and his roommates at college and his lieutenant at the firehouse left him nowhere to go where fly fishing wasn't a source of learning, camaraderie, and fun on the river. After school, he moved to Wisconsin, where he continued to pursue a career as a paramedic until one summer he decided to head west to the Rocky Mountains and immerse himself in his love for fly fishing. He landed a spot at a guide school on the Bighorn River and a job at a fly shop in Montana. He and his wife made the move and have been living happily in Helena, Montana ever since. Taylor became a guide and eventually started his own outfitter, Mountain Prairie Outfitters, where he fishes the Blackfoot and Missouri Rivers, among others, and also guides bird hunting and dog training in the fall. In this conversation, we talk matching the hatch and no rabbit hole goes unexplored. We cover how and why matching the hatch sometimes plays second fiddle to presentation, when presentation just doesn't cut it, and of course we take a deep, deep dive into the tactics and techniques Taylor uses to pick the right dry flies on his home water. We also share thoughts on why fishing with friends is a special part of fly fishing for both of us. Welcome to the Wade Out There Fly Fishing Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Shefchuk. At Wade Out There, we believe fly fishing is special, but not elite, and that anyone can become a great fly fisher if they are willing to go, learn, and teach. Join me as I talk with other fly fishermen and women about their unique journeys into fly fishing, the rivers they fish, and the tactics and philosophies they practice. For those who can never leave the river in their hearts, this podcast is dedicated to helping you make the memories that keep us all coming back to Wade Out There. Welcome, Taylor. Thanks for being on the Wade Out There podcast.

Taylor 2:05

Awesome. Thanks for uh thanks for having me. Appreciate you taking the time.

Jason 2:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. I'm excited to talk to you. We love talking about Montana on the Wade Out There podcast. I love talking about it. We talked before the show. I spent some time out there as my audience knows. And uh I just think it's a great fishery kind of wherever you are. And uh today I'm excited to talk about Missouri and kind of how you ended up out there and those sorts of things. So I'm pumped. And matching the hatch, we'll get into that too.

Taylor 2:36

Sure. That sounds great.

Jason 2:37

We talked about this a little bit before as well, but I feel like match the hatch, you know, it kind of gets a bad rap these days, you know? It's kind of like yeah, presentation is all about presentation, you know, until it's not. And then if you put the right fly on, wow, that that made a big difference. So I think that's definitely that's exciting for me to like, you know, let's give the match the hatch some love too, and not not just totally blow it off and be like, well, you just got to be better at presenting, Jason. Yeah, because there is so much I could do. I could work on my presentation, but it is kind of nice to know that sometimes if you put the right fly on, it does make a big difference, you know?

Taylor 3:16

You bet. Yeah, absolutely.

Jason 3:19

So I think where I want to start is how you got started in fly fishing. It's kind of what we normally do.

Taylor 3:24

But absolutely, yeah.

Jason 3:25

I was gonna ask you uh kind of a new question that I I don't typically ask, but yeah, when you think back to when you got started in fly fishing, uh is there anything in particular about your beginnings in fly fishing that you're grateful for now that you've been fly fishing for, I don't know, X amount of years and you got your own outfitter and guide service? And when you look back and you're like, dude, I'm really glad that I had that, or grateful that I had that experience or that mentor or whatever it is, something that you are grateful for?

Taylor 3:55

Yeah, that that's an easy question for me. Um, I I just immediately go back to when I first started fly fishing, um, and I I didn't grow up fly fishing, I I grew up, you know, conventional fishing, if you will, and and hunting a bunch uh for big game and birds, waterfowl. Uh so always involved in outdoors. Um, but for me, the fly fishing part of it all started when I went to college uh at Oregon State. And uh it kind of started um right when I started school. And um my the the interesting part about the story for me is uh, and it to answer your question as well is like being grateful for the people that I was surrounded with uh when all of that started. And for me, it was one of those deals where uh you know you go to college, you're away from home for the first time. Um I used to be a firefighter and a paramedic, so I was doing uh stuff with the fire department in Corvallis, uh, which is where Oregon State's at. Um and while I was there doing uh shifts at the fire station, my lieutenant, uh, whose name was Brad was really into fishing, fly fishing and um you know conventional fishing, mostly steel had salmon fishing on the Oregon coastal rivers. Um and coincidentally, at the same time, uh and kind of throughout the next year or so, uh, one of my roommates he grew up fly fishing and his dad fly fished, uh Nick and Jerry, and another roommate of mine, um whose name was Tor. Basically, all of a sudden, I went from this kind of, oh, I was always curious about fly fishing, didn't really uh give it the fly fishing curious. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and then coincidentally, like all of a sudden here I was just doing what I was normally doing, and all of these people surrounded me were really into it. Um and my and we had you know a roommate's dad, Jerry, uh my lieutenant, the fire department, Brad, who were sort of mentoring uh myself and two of my other roommates uh at that time. And uh honestly, I'm just grateful for for them, uh both both my friends who were doing it with me and the you know, sort of people who had been fishing uh a bunch taking the time to teach us how to do it. Um it was cool. We uh I bought you know, like a real simple, you know, college kid didn't have any money, probably bought like a $50 fly rod set up, you know, plastic and everything.

Jason 6:36

Same thing, Walmart.

Taylor 6:37

Yeah, exactly. Just getting getting after it with that. Uh but I actually built, and maybe this is a little more of a unique thing, I actually built my first uh actual fly rod that I still have today uh an eight weight that I built to steelhead fish with uh while I was working at the fire station. So in between calls, chores, cooking, all of that stuff, my lieutenant and I sat at the table on the fire station and he like taught me how to you know find a spine on a blank and wrap all of the stuff and put the hand we did the whole thing together from start to finish while while there. Um and at the same time I was going out fishing with my buddies, and uh my my roommate's dad would come down from Washington and take us out and show us things and taught us how to build leaders and you know tie the knots and and all of that kind of stuff.

Jason 7:26

So yeah, being grateful for the people that helped got you got you into it. Sounds like you were surrounded on all fronts.

Taylor 7:34

Uh yeah, I had no choice at that point.

Jason 7:37

It's I mean kind of like kind of have to probably get hazed at the fire station for not being more outdoorsy. Like hey God it was just happening. Yeah. Uh while you were in college, you were also a firefighter and a paramedic at the same time. Is that am I getting that right? Or is it those two different times?

Taylor 7:55

Yeah, pr pretty much. I mean, that's all that all kind of uh cruised for me. Yeah, I was sort of it's all I mean, it's I guess it's all part of my story. I I I do none of that stuff now. Uh while I was in college, my intention was to go get a degree and then become a firefighter. I was an EMT then. I went to paramedic school after uh I got my degree and started uh to do a career uh in the fire service, and um that sort of got um sidetracked with me becoming a fishing guide in Montana.

Jason 8:31

So were you busy as hell though? I mean, were you just like all the time with school and and working? Yeah, kind of.

Taylor 8:38

I mean, for so basically I was kind of I was a volunteer firefighter and doing running kind of through an intern program that the city of Portallis had that uh was part of their fire department and available to college students at Oregon State. Um the requirements were were fairly low. I'd I'd have to go do a shift here and there, you know, every month uh for me though, because I enjoyed it so much. And I had uh and I was building a fly rod at the fire station for you know stuff like that. I could go hang out with cool people. I I spent as much time there as I could. Um but it wasn't it never felt like it was, you know, I had so much going on.

Jason 9:16

It was it wasn't like I got this nine to five, 40 hour week kind of dragging me down being hard to go fishing. If anything, it was more like a it sounds like more like a better window into fly fishing than had you not had the job.

Taylor 9:29

Yeah, totally. I basically would go see called once or maybe twice a week. I'd go down to the fire station and maybe spend, you know, a night there helping out kind of a thing.

Jason 9:39

It's a good reminder that there's a world out there where you have to make money and not just uh be a work at the end. For sure. Uh what do you remember anything that was challenging for you as you're going out with your buddies, and I assume they're more experienced? Anything that besides building the rod, but anything like tactics-wise that sticks with you that they either taught you or or just something that was like, man, it was so hard for me to get this in the beginning.

Taylor 12:20

Yeah, oh man, uh that I can answer that question in a lot of ways, uh, I think, because it it just seems like uh I think you know, fishing is particularly fly fishing, has its own learning curve and it's different for everybody. Um I think for me, perhaps something that was a little bit unique to what I did, the way I learned. Uh obviously I just explained I have all these people that were mentoring me and friends to do it. Uh, but we were sort of committed to being uh catching steelhead. And uh as anybody who's steelheaded on the West Coast knows, like that's the catching steelhead is often not uh part of the the equation. It's often going steelhead fishing. Um and so I think for me, um doing it, you know, learning to fly fish, casting, rigging, knots, all the details while doing it and not catching fish uh very often. We did go trout fishing, of course, uh, but in Oregon, like when we were in college, that season, you know, yeah, you got to. But that season was was in in May. And uh a little some of some places open in April, but and when we were in school, it would be all winter, we'd be steelhead fishing. And and when I was learning those first two or three years while I was in college, it was like, yeah, man, I I caught like three fish uh in four months, and and you're out there and you start asking yourself all the questions that even I think accomplished anglers who are steelhead anglers ask themselves like, Do I have the this right? Do I have that right? Am I doing me in the right spot? Am I and you're asking it and honestly didn't even I mean it didn't have an answer for any of it. We were just out there grinding away doing it, um, which I think is kind of cool.

Jason 14:17

Yeah, that's super cool. And it shows that you enjoy it for a little bit more than the catching of the fish, but you still want to catch fish. You're not just out there on a nature walk, right? I get that. Totally. Do you think that I mean, I would think having those mentors or having those people around you, they're more experienced, right? Was it ever, hey man, this is just part of the game? Because I the way I think about that is sometimes you know, when I have gone with a guide or something, he'll say, All right, let's check it out, let's go over here and let's cast it in there or something. And he's trying to set me up with something good, right? Sure. And it doesn't come together. And I look at him like, what am I doing wrong? Right. It's reassuring to have someone who's on the water all the time, who it's just his life, blood, right? For that person to look you in the eyeballs and be like, yeah, man, no, that's good. I would have done the same thing. You know, I it's not like I that's what we do, and it just doesn't work all the time. Does that did that help you at all having those people around? Or it sounds like you are still kind of just like, oh man, is this is this ever gonna happen? If you don't have that person, like it makes it really hard. It's good to have a fly fishing buddy or a guide or someone who can just be like, this is it, man, this is the game. You got good days and bad days, and you're in the steelhead game, and that's that's a rough line of work.

Taylor 15:39

It's it is exactly, yeah. And I I absolutely like to answer that question 100%. Uh having people to mentor you, I think, in that situation where you could go to them and be and be like, hey, I'm trying this, and and I had tons of conversations uh with people who were mentoring me um about all of that kind of stuff, uh, details of how to do things. And then I think at the same time, for that scenario there too, my roommate Tor and I, he was also learning to fish. He had he'd grown up in the Northwest and done some steelhead fishing, and we were fly fishing together, and we were we started gear fishing for steelhead too, bobbers and jigs and bouncing quirkies and doing all that other stuff as well. Uh, but having him going through that process at the same time as me was was also huge because you you never felt alone out there. You were never like, Oh, I I'm the I'm not catching any fish. Because he would be like, Yeah, dude, I'm not catching any either. You know, you could be we could we could kind of go through that process together.

Jason 16:43

Um it's like having a gym buddy, and you wake up and you're like, Oh, I don't want to get out of bed and go to the gym. And but dude, Taylor's gonna be there, and if I don't go, he's gonna be like, dude, but where are you? I was doing I had no one to spot me.

Taylor 16:57

Yep. Yeah, I I actually remember specifically, uh it was a few years into this process. We were probably seniors in college or something, and I didn't have class um on like Tuesdays and Thursdays until 11 or noon or something like that. So every Tuesday and Thursday, I I drove over to the Al Sea River, which is only 20, 30 minutes away from where we lived, to go fish or steelhead. And uh I would go to class, and then in between my next two classes, my roommate and I would pass each other because we had to go, we were we'd pass each other every time, different classes, and we were different majors, and every two days he would see me and he would be like, Hey, he he said he we'd see each other walking, you know, there's people everywhere between class, and he we'd find each other and he'd be like, Did you get one? And I'd be like, No, dude, I didn't get one, but river looks good or whatever. We'd chat about a little bit, and then we'd go to class. And finally I had a day where I hooked two and lost both of them. And he said that he could tell from like a hundred yards away, but that I that I had gotten into fish that day. Because I was like in the cars driving. No, well, we were walking. We were walking down across, you know. He's like, he said he could see me walking up and I was grinning. He was like, Oh, dude, I know he he got into him today. Finally, you know, it'd been it'd been like two months or something of nope, nothing, nothing, you know. So that kind of stuff was uh always super helpful, you know, having buddies with you.

Jason 18:27

For sure. So you mentioned that you had these plans, you're in Oregon, firefighter, paramedic, college, you're into fishing. I get that. So when did the guide in Montana detour happen? Was that a enlightened moment, or did that gradually happen and you kind of let go of the other thing? Or did you just say, you know what, man, I don't really want to be a firefighter anymore. I want to do this other thing.

Taylor 18:56

Yeah, that that uh I it kind of not there was no really like enlightening moment for me. Uh after college, I moved to well, I lived in Portland for a year, um, and then I moved to Wisconsin. My um, my now wife, we weren't married at the time, she went to grad school at Marquette, so I followed her out to Wisconsin, uh, started working as a paramedic out there, um, and then eventually it kind of within that first year or so, um, I decided I wanted to take a summer off from doing whatever I was focused on career-wise or whatever, and I wanted to go somewhere in the Rockies because I'd I basically spent my whole life on the West Coast. Um, and uh so I decided to go to guide school. Uh so I went to like a sweetwater guide school on the bighorn. Uh, and that would have been in 2013 in the spring. And uh along with that, I tried to get a job working as a guide or working in a fly shop, and I didn't care where it was or what river or what, I just wanted to do something. Uh and it turns out like that's not an easy thing to do. I kind of thought it would be easy, you know, the fishing world. But it's just like any other professional industry, it's it's a tight-knit group of people. Uh, everybody knows everybody, and there's a ton of 22, 23-year-old call it you know, kids who want to come be a fishing guide. Um, so I ended up putting out resumes, cover letters, if you will, calling people from like New Mexico to Montana, just anywhere in the Rockies, every state. Um and I ultimately ended up getting hired to work uh at a fly shop in Craig, Montana on the Missouri River. Uh Cross Currents is the name of the shop. Um so I that spring I went to the guide school on the Bighorn with the Sweetwater guys and uh drove my truck from the Bighorn up to Craig a few hours away, never been to the Missouri, never seen the place, the the river, or anything. I had like, you know, my waiters, a couple fly rods, fly tie, and stuff, and and just settled in. Um worked in the fly shop for that whole season, kind of through November, um, and then went back to Wisconsin, came back and started guiding the next season, um, and had a few seasonal years of working in the shop a little bit, guiding, kind of easing my way into it, going back to Wisconsin to be with Abby, uh going to school. Uh I worked for Orvis uh in their um, you know, kind of company store in Milwaukee. And uh and then in 2015, so 10 years ago or so, maybe 16, somewhere in there, about 10 years, we moved out here full time and I started doing uh full time. Basically at that point, I I kind of was in and decided that's what it is.

Jason 22:02

Yeah, I was like, this is what we're doing. Slowly waited out there and brought Abby with you. And was she excited for you? And so I mean, I assume she's supportive, but like was she like, oh, this is awesome? Or oh yeah, with did that kind of like, oh cool, let's go to Montana and this will be great.

Taylor 22:20

Yeah, totally. So she's a nurse, so it's easy for her, uh nurse practitioner now at the time she was a nurse, uh, for her to move anywhere she wanted and get a job. Um, and basically, since I'd already been kind of spending the fishing season out in Montana, it made sense for and started guiding here once we kind of got done with school. I was like, okay, let's move. Yeah. Uh move to Helena. Um, it's close to the river, it's a good town. And uh she was pumped about she she likes to fish and and hunt and outdoors and stuff, so it's great, great match for us. Um and basically after being here for a few years, we're like, yeah, this is our place. We love it. You're done. Yeah, I like it.

Jason 22:58

That's a good deal. So when did you uh let's talk about let's finish the story because now you're your own outfitter and you got your own thing. So can you kind of briefly lead me up to that point and then we'll go into kind of the the Missouri and the Blackfoot and some of the waters that you guide on now and and why that's a special place for you?

Taylor 23:19

Yeah, I mean basically from there out it was just guide being a fishing guide uh and learning the ropes uh of how to do that. Um learning the river more. I've still learned more about the river. It's kind of one of the cool things I think about fly fishing is there's always there's always more, you know, it's kind of a never-ending learning curve. Um yeah, I basically I guided for multiple different outfitters. Uh a bunch that I still do some guiding for today, a bunch of them who are still really good friends today. Um I stay uh very connected with and and uh do lots of different things with. And then two years ago, uh I went and got my outfitter's license and started doing my own outfitting, um, mostly working for myself and starting to hire other guides to take clients out for me and and do that whole part of the sort of maybe career progression, if you, if you will.

Jason 24:15

So I will. I will. I'll give you that. Uh all right. Uh let's talk about the Missouri. And we can, you know, we can talk about, we don't have to talk about the Missouri specifically. We don't have to talk about the Blackfoot specifically. What I want to talk about tactics-wise with you is this match the hatch concept.

Taylor 24:35

Sure.

Jason 24:36

And I know that Missouri is a great drive-fly fishery. I'm sure the Blackfoot is pretty good as well. I fished the Blackfoot like one time, I think. But uh I don't know. Yeah, I don't remember that much about it. We can edit that out. I don't really know if I brought that up, but some credibility. That doesn't give me any credibility. I just showed no credibility. So I should have just left that out. But uh yeah, what why do you think do you think that match the hatch gets kind of underutilized? Or when do you I guess let me let me start the question like this like when do you think that it really matters most? When do when do you think that yeah, this is the time that match the hatch is more important than others? Or is there a time like that? Or a season or a time of year, time of day, or anything?

Taylor 25:32

Yeah, yeah, that uh obviously that's I mean that can be a huge question. Um, and there could be a few different ways to answer it. I mean, we mentioned just in general, kind of starting like the broad scope of it. Um we talked about the Blackfoot and the Missouri, which are two rivers that I guide on here in out of Helena, um, two completely different rivers. The Blackfoot is a freestone, free-flowing river. Uh, it has all of your big bugs, um, you know, all of your different stone flies and stuff throughout that, you know, kind of spring into early summer, and then a lot of terrestrial fishing. Uh, it's also a river that is kind of a mountain river, it's it's it's not as fertile as the Missouri is being a tailwater. Um, it and it's a cutthroat fishery. Uh, it has other fish in it too. But the the biggest thing when I it's a yeah, it's a it's a very, very cool place. Yeah, it is such a it's such a great river. Um and it to me it's it's a place where match the hatch, it's actually kind of become I feel like it's becoming more important. There's a lot of people fishing that river now, and the fish are getting a little bit pickier, but uh it's a place where those cutthroat, they get they have a shorter season. I mean it's fro frozen over some of the year, and they kind of have to make a living in a shorter period of time, um, and they have a lot bigger bugs to eat, where kind of that match the hatch stuff becomes a little bit less important. It's not as high on the on the equation for me if I'm figuring out kind of tactically how to catch fish throughout a day. Um, I have had some pretty cool uh instances over there where it it really did make a big difference.

Jason 27:12

Um any stories stand out in your brain on the Blackfoot?

Taylor 27:16

Oh man, yeah, I've got a couple of them. Probably one of the cooler ones. Um, you know, the Blackfoot typically is a place where we fish from a raft, drift boat, depending on the the stretch and the flows and the time of year and stuff. But um, I can remember kind of a later salmon fly hatch time. Uh it would have been, you know, kind of that early July in the canyon section, kind of in the upper part of the river, which is you know, the famous part of the river that Norm McLean talked about, you know, the box canyon on the Blackfoot. And and basically that uh that box canyon section, uh, it'll linger salmon flies for a while. So you can you after the main hatch is happening, you can still go in there and catch a few fish uh with the bigger bug on, which is great. Um and I just kind of learned that there's a few pools in that in that canyon where you can pull over instead of just running and gunning and throwing a big bug down the bank or through the good-looking water, um, and actually see some cutthroat trying to you know target salmon flies you see on the water or whatever bug. In this case, it was big old salmon flies. And I had this really nice cutthroat rising. I anchored the boat. Uh, we were very close to it, like 15 feet away, and he was sort of just going after salmon flies that we saw hitting the water, and I tried a ton of different salmon flies uh patterns, could not get him to eat it. Um and what I realized that as as I started watching the and these you know flies are big, so you can really like see them coming down through the riffle. Uh he was eating salmon flies that were only upside down. They were on they were all on their back. You could see their big orange belly sticking out. Really? Yeah, which is uh okay. It's a different you're like, man, this fish is for whatever reason, this specific fish is just keyed in on upside down salmon flies. Uh and that that's like, you know, I've never seen that specifically again. I don't know if that happens all the time. There are probably some guides in Missoula that could listen to this and be like, oh yeah, dude, like upside-down salmon fly. Like that's a thing. You just haven't figured it out yet. I'm guessing that probably isn't isn't uh a thing that happens on a on a regular basis. It's possible but not probable. Exactly. Like who who knows, you know. Uh so this fish couldn't get him to eat. And finally, I'm like, watch, and and it, you know, as these cutthroater eating sand finds, it's not like he's like eating them like sipping a ton, it's like every minute or so you see him rise and eat one. So I kind of keyed in and eventually I saw him eat three in a row that were upside down. Um, and to to argue against you know the match, the hatch, the ending of that story is after exhausting like a you know a bunch of different patterns well drifted over them uh that were big salmonfly patterns, I was like, man, we just gotta try something different. We put on a purple haze or something like that and ended up catching that fish. Uh because it was something random, I guess, that he saw. But that that's just kind of a one of those weird times where you the cool times where you're on the river and you just see something very specific going on with a very specific uh fish, and they're very key to into something about um you know what they're eating is triggering them to to actually make a move and rise and eat something on the surface.

Jason 30:46

Do you think that match the ha do you think that that matters more with dry flies than nymphs? This is kind of a a left turn, but yeah, I it just popped in my brain. That's how I work here, I guess. But I mean it seems yeah, when you mentioned the purple haze and the and the the dry fly story. I don't know. I'm just wondering if what your thoughts are on it.

Taylor 31:10

I think I think the answer is to that is I don't know for sure if it obviously that's that's kind of a subjective one at the end of the day. I would say at the end of the day, potentially you know, kind of an equal thing. I've had plenty of instances on the Missouri guiding where you know you're switching through dry flies to to get to the right one, and then the fish eats it, and then you're kind of locked in, or maybe it's a different fish, uh fish to fish. Also the same thing with like a nymphing rig. Sure.

Jason 31:41

Uh so yeah, I don't think it I don't think I think that's a good answer. I don't think that it matters as much. I mean, I when I went into this part of the conversation, I was leaning more towards yeah, probably more with the dry fly, it probably matters a little bit more. And maybe maybe that does still stick with me a little bit, but I've got so many stories in my brain of putting on you know a different color nymph or a different size or just a different a different fly subsurface, and things start happening for me.

Taylor 32:16

So yeah, dude, absolutely. Absolutely.

Jason 32:20

I don't know if we need like a a preface or like an all like the the point of this conversation is not to say like presentation doesn't matter. Like I think we both agree presentation does matter, but we're gonna go it, but we're going into this other thing. We're going into the time when it when it doesn't matter as much as the fly selection, which I I will I will argue that there are times that it it does matter, it matters huge, it matters more than your presentation sometimes.

Taylor 32:50

For sure, yeah.

Jason 32:51

Not always, but like there are times, and that's what I that's what we're trying to get to here is like when are those times, when does that matter? Specifically with dry flies.

Taylor 32:59

So yeah, to yeah.

Jason 33:01

Sorry for the left left turn there, but that was good.

Taylor 33:04

That was a good thought for that got me thinking a little bit, which is good. I like I like doing that. Um I think with dry flies for me in general, there are obviously times where if you have the right fly on, um and going kind of to the Missouri, uh, where the fish are very hatch-driven and and they tend to get locked in on certain things and key in on specific stuff at times. Um, there are times where I might be guiding an angler who isn't as good, if you will, or is learning and their presentation isn't perfect always, and we have the right fly on, and we're and we're getting some fish on dry flies because we have the right fly on. And that to me, that time frame is more specific to when you get really strong hatches and you have fish that are kind of eating uh with reckless abandon, if you will. You know, they're just like, man, this I we got it, we're we're doing it. Um and those those windows of opportunity are usually small each day, you know, when you have a hatch, uh maybe an hour, maybe 30 minutes, maybe four hours. And on the Missouri, there there are only a couple of them on a whole in a whole season.

Jason 34:13

So uh where those days, yeah. Uh well, and also that guy, that guy or gal would probably catch more fish, even if they had the right flight, if their presentation was better, right? You know, even if exactly even if you had the right fly and you caught some fish, like well, we could have caught a lot more fish if my you know client hadn't not mended when I told him to mend. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That whole thing, you know.

Taylor 34:41

Yeah, and I think I think that that kind of like drives sort of my thought process, specifically dry-fly fishing on the Missouri River, which is for those who haven't been to the river to do it, the obviously you can do it many different ways, and and and there's a lot of different ways that people do do it. Uh, but the most popular way is like we like to you know look for rising fish and target a specific fish or a pot of fish from an anchored boat or waiting. Um so it's not sort of that like Montana thought of, hey, we're floating down the Madison or the Yellowstone, pitching a bug out the side of the boat and floating it next to it. Um, or like with a bobber where you're floating it, you know, kind of off the side of the boat. It's it it's sort of it's we're stopped and we're fishing often um like 80 to 90 percent of the time downstream uh presentation to a fish. Um so it's it's a lot of reach casting and slack kind of line presentations, feeding line and that kind of stuff. Um and it's super fun. Um, and a lot of really good anglers like to come to the Missouri to do that kind of fishing. It's super challenging, it's not a numbers game. Um and so with that in mind, sort of that style of fishing, for me, you know, the match the hatch part um sort of comes just after getting a good presentation. And because we know we have a fish, we're watching him eat. Maybe we uh know what he's eating because we have one bug hatching in mid-July, early July on the Missouri. We're we're doing trichos, we have caddis, uh, we have the tail end of PMDs. We we may have like bug soup going on a lot of days where it's like, dude, we don't really know exactly what each fish is key in on and it changes throughout the day.

Jason 36:32

Yeah, that's the hardest part for me is when there's different bugs. It's not like you just go to the hatch chart for the Missouri River or the black total. It says caddis, and you're like, oh, well, obviously it's a caddis. Like every one of those hatch charts, those those graphs are all overlapping. Like, yep, it's like, well, it could be an elk or it could be a PMD or it could be yep, hopper, or I mean, there's it's like so not as helpful as you would want it to be, I guess. So that's why you have to go out and see for yourself, right?

Taylor 37:02

Yeah, and I think when I'm when you get in there and you sort of start looking at that kind of stuff, and and you're when you're out there every day, I mean that's the cool thing about being a fishing guy is you get to be out there every day and you get to start to if you're paying attention, you'll start to observe stuff out there that um that only people who are out there every day get to see.

Jason 37:21

Um there's observation of what's going on, but there's also observation of like what worked. Like I observed that didn't work, and like it's only so many times where you go out and you're not catching fish in the morning until you tie a PMD on and you're like, well, they're hatching in the morning, I guess. PMDs. Exactly. So that little that little graph means PMDs in the morning right now, you know.

Taylor 37:43

Yep. Yep. And I think you know, if you're dry-fly fish in the Missouri and we're targeting rising fish, we're anchoring on them, we know we have a fish there, right? That that we check that box, we can see them rising. Um we're fishing a dry fly so we can see our fly. We know if it's if if the fish can see it, if we're getting it to the fish. And then the probably the hardest part uh and most important part is getting the right drift, uh, which is the presentation part. And for me, I sort of uh I that to me, if all of that is happening, then the biggest the biggest part that we're working on is the match the hatch part of the the equation. Um so it's really fun uh as a guide if you have a good angler who who's good at that kind of fishing. Um and uh it's also fun to have people to teach people how to do this um as well. But if we're gonna like look at match the hatch, it's like, man, if you have somebody who can put that fly over the fish and drift it well over them within the first cast or two, then you're then you're basically you're in the match the hatch mode. You're like, okay, that fish saw that, it was presented. Well, that's not it. We got to switch our fly. And I will switch it immediately. Like, as soon as I know that fish, that fly has been drifted well over the fish.

Jason 39:00

As soon as you meet the variables, right? As soon as you like in your words, check the boxes, you're like, all right, well, we're gonna switch flies now because that that should work. You did a couple fish here and it's not working, so let's let's make a change. Exactly.

Taylor 39:15

Yeah, and that's sort of my that's sort of my philosophy and style. Um, and it and that's that's definitely a trout fishing thing. I mean, going back to talking about steelhead fishing, which I you love, and I've been back to the coast a few times and other places to go catch steelhead, where it's like, I mean, I I went up to British Columbia for 10 days and I fished the same fly the entire 10 days. Like I didn't change my fly once. If they didn't eat it, I was like, they're steelhead, dude. If they're gonna eat it, they're here. I just literally did not change my fly for the whole fishing trip. Versus in trout fishing, where they're you know very keyed in on the food source, you gotta start switching quickly to match the hatch. You gotta kind of you start working through that variable pretty quick. And uh, and so sometimes that's you know, if it's a if it's somebody I'm teaching how to dry fly fish, which I love to do, uh, it might take us 20 or 30 or 50 or maybe a hundred casts to where I'm like, okay, that that was that fly went over the fish, presented perfectly. They're not eating that. Let's let's switch the fly and go to work with the next one. Um, and in and even sometimes, like myself, if I'm out fishing doing it, or you have a really good angler in your boat, uh, some of these fish are rising in real tricky spots. They might be tucked up really tight to a rock where current swirling. And sometimes it it takes a while to get that fly in where it needs to go, and and just because of the conditions of the river that day. Uh but as soon as that happens, we're like we're we're looking at match the hatch for sure.

Jason 40:50

I want to go backwards a little bit. But before I do, I want to put a pin in this real quick. You talked about once as soon as that happens. Do you think about where you know, do you think about trying to get the easy win first? Like, okay, let's let's not try for the hard to get to presentation. Some presentations are easier than others, right? So like you have a spot, you know, like, all right, this is a pretty they should be able to make it happen on this one, you know, like there's not a ton of currents. And uh is that helpful to have kind of like a little classroom where you can kind of say it's easier to check the boxes. We I know there's fish here because I fish here all the time, and this is a good spot.

Taylor 41:33

Absolutely.

Jason 41:34

And you know, it's it's just one kind of constant flow, and we're gonna be able to kind of if I have a more if I have an angler whose presentation uh maybe isn't as good, I can take them here, I can check the boxes, that's gonna help me figure out the flies.

Taylor 41:53

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, that that's I mean that is that's a huge part of I think being a fishing guide um is setting people up for success and teaching them along the way, um and and uh and and knowing your spots where they're gonna be uh able to do that. Um and you do, you know a lot of places. The Missouri's a busy place. There are times where you know you can't get into some of your spots because somebody's already there, so you keep kind of going to other ones. Um and then there are times where you might know a little tiny corner somewhere where there's two or three nice fish that have been rised in the last few days, or you know the conditions for that day, and you're like, oh, I know hopefully, you know, you know sometimes it doesn't always work out, but you have a good good guess of like, okay, here's where we're gonna go um to make this easier for my angler and and give them the opportunity to have some success and learn sort of the ropes. Um at the same time, I mean I have a a lot of people fish with me every year. I've been fishing with them forever since I started doing it. I have a few clients I've been fishing with every season basically since I started. Um, and a couple of those uh folks they actually enjoy the harder fish, so they're like, dude, take me to that one, you know, the one that's underneath that bush that we tried to get two days ago that we spent an hour and didn't couldn't get a fly in there. Like, let's go back and try to get that one today. So we do some of that too.

Jason 43:21

But but those those people are like that's a different problem too, right? Like you're now you're now you're not as worried about or you're not as concerned about like the presentation because that you kind of like I'm they're not perfect, but yeah, they they can they can make that happen. Let's go challenge them a little bit more.

Taylor 43:40

Yeah, for sure.

Jason 43:41

How important do you think the day before, like the night before? You mentioned that you're a guide and so you you're on the water, so you have a better idea, but for somebody who's not and they're like, all right, well, how do I get started on this? How important is your plan? Like the plan the night before or the plan in the morning, and when do you think you need to start changing the plan?

Taylor 44:06

Oh man, that's such a good question. Um for me, you know, being a fishing guide, I think the plan is one of the most important things. Um, and I think about it a lot. I put a lot of time and effort into to that. And maybe it's you know, I specifically know what river to keep the answer simple, we're gonna like eliminate the fact that we're not picking where we're going. I mean, sometimes there's an open feel like, do you want to go over to the Blackfoot? Do you want to go wade fish a creek? And sometimes people will be like, yeah, whatever you think is best, you know, I'm up for whatever and I'm happy doing whatever, make a decision. But a lot a lot of what I do is on the Missouri, uh, and it's specific to that river, and that's where we're fishing most of the days. Um, and during the season, when you're out there every day, I mean, I'm thinking about the minute I get off the water, I'm already scheming the plan for the next day. Um and I start gathering info as as soon as I can. Um, and I think as an angler, or somebody who's going fishing, maybe you have to work a nine to five or Monday through Friday, and you're going fishing on Saturday. Um, or in the case of, you know, maybe it you you know you fish in a place where the flow needs to be specific. Maybe you want to like call in sick on Thursday, you know, or whatever it is, like because that's the day that stuff's particularly if you're fishing for like you know, keep going back to like steel out fishing. But it's like those rivers are.

Jason 45:38

But this is the day, this is the time that we could all get off work and come out here this July and you know, or you know, like this is my kid's spring break, so we're gonna go fishing. Or Yep.

Taylor 45:50

Uh and that that that definitely uh you know, starting to prep yourself ahead of time.

Jason 45:56

Because to me, um, you know, with match the hatch specifically is kind of like where we're going.

Taylor 46:02

Totally. And so uh particularly if you're looking at bugs or whatever, you know, they travel throughout the river system because it you know, hatches kind of happen seasonally based off of water temperature and photo period. So maybe in the lower part of the Missouri, we're already, you know, we have the it's springtime and the blueing dollives are hatching down in the canyon or down towards Cascade, but they haven't made it up towards like Craig or Wolf Creek yet. And we're only fishing 35 miles a river on that tailwater. So we're not talking about, you know, like the Yellowstone, where somebody might be like, hey, I'm going to go down to Columbus or I'm going to be up in, you know, the valley, which is, you know, hundreds of miles of river in between. But the Missouri is a little more drilled down and specific. So what we're doing is, you know, picking the right float for the day, depending on where the bugs are at, can absolutely change the trajectory of your day from the beginning of it. So I think as much preparation as you can do based off of your own knowledge, and I always tell myself, like, I've said this for a long time, I can only be in one section of the river every day observing what I see and knowing what's going on. So having a network of other fishing guides, friends to call and get a fishing report from, people that you know give you good information and that you can ask questions about what they were seeing can absolutely change what where I go and how I do what I do. So like I said, as soon as I get off the river, I might stop by the fly shop on the way out of town, see a few fishing guides drinking beer, stop in, have a beer. Hey, what where'd you fish today? Oh, cool. What did you see? Oh, I saw that. Okay. And then that just sort of gets my brain rolling for what I'm gonna do the next day. Um and then uh on top of that, you know, it's water flow, river conditions, you know, the weather.

Jason 48:04

Let's needle in on those things. Let's go. Let's you mentioned because those things are gonna make a difference on the hatch, right? And one of the things you mentioned that I think is important too is where on the river you're going, and it's not it's not it sounds like you're saying it's not so much like, oh yeah, it's just fishing good here. It's where the hatch is happening along the river, which I didn't understand for a while, but just because there's a hatch, like a salmon fly hatch is the big one that comes to mind. Well, that hatch can move along the river. Like, and I yeah, I guess I used to think that like, well, there's a hatch. So the river has a hatch, so anywhere I just plop my ass onto this river, I'm gonna be quote, in the hatch. Like not true, not true, JC. Like, yeah, it matters where you are. So if you think you're gonna be on the blue winged olives, like it could be better lower than higher. Maybe there'll be some coming off higher, but not as much if you fish down by Columbus, right?

Taylor 49:01

Like, yep.

Jason 49:02

So that's something that when you look at your hatch chart and you're like, oh, well, it's blueing olives, where where on the river am I gonna go, depending on you know, and that's temperature and flows and weather, and that's some of the other things I was curious. Like, how does that inform your plan for match the hatch?

Taylor 49:21

Yeah, so I think like if you're gonna go uh specifically on the Missouri, um, you know, the water comes out of Holter Dam where we fish, and it it that that temperature at the dam, the water temperature there could be drastically different than 35 miles downriver at Cascade. Um, so as that hatch is coming on, generally, depending on the hatch and and stuff, it can be, you know, it starts down low and sort of makes its way upriver. And that's typical of most rivers, right? Because it especially in the springtime where you have that um increasing you know water temperature as we go into the summer. Generally speaking, you know, most rivers warmer down lower, cooler up top. So you kind of follow those hatches like up throughout the system. Um and in addition to that, there are lots of other factors, like I mentioned, weather. So maybe you know, tomorrow I'm looking at the weather and I see that it's gonna be windy, uh, which is gonna blow a lot of the duns off the water. And uh, or maybe you know, we're in a in a hatch where we're fishing the spinnerfall, like the trichos, uh, which is a consistent daily spinnerfall for us. If I know it's gonna be you know windy a certain time of day, that might dictate where I go to places where there might be less wind on the river, depending on the direction and how much and the duration and and that kind of stuff. Um so that that definitely can play a role in it. Um and then environment, like knowing your your river too. Uh so like the environmental factors on the river. So uh every river's different, which is what's cool about fishing, right? I mean, we can go to different places all the time, and and there's different fish and different bugs and different conditions. Um, specifically on the Missouri, they did this really extensive bug study on it where they had a bunch of stations set up um throughout the 35 miles that we fly fish on. And they were doing, I don't I don't know if they were doing it how frequent it it was. I can't remember the details, but basically, you know, they put the that information is published, and what you find out is well, like there's different, you know, the habitat for bugs is different in different different sections of the river. The closer you go to the dam on the Missouri um up towards Wolf Creek, you get a lot more bugs per square inch. So there's a lot more food in the water, but the diversity of the species of insects decreases.

Jason 51:57

Oh, that's interesting, man.

Taylor 51:59

It is. It's pretty cool. That's science.

Jason 52:02

Yeah, it's legit. Thank you, biology majors. Exactly.

Taylor 52:07

It's good, it's good stuff.

Jason 52:09

That's cool.

Taylor 52:10

And so, like the lower part of the river, so we have a tributary that comes in the dearborn, so it it brings in uh not a lot of water this year, very droughty, and it really didn't influence the main Missouri at all. But some years during runoff, it could bring in you know a lot of cold water. So you can get weird things where you know the dearborn's at like mile 14, it's like roughly halfway down, maybe a little bit less than that. It's maybe like mile 12 or so. But maybe the dearborn is bringing in muddy water, so that will, you know, that lower half of the river all of a sudden will be affected by that, and that'll change the hatch conditions. Um, or maybe even as simple as like the dearborn's bringing in a lot of cold runoff water later in the year when the Missouri being a tail water is warmer, so all of a sudden you get like the water temps coming down those first 12 miles, or you know, whatever they are to say 50 degrees, and then they hit the dearborn brings in is bringing in a bunch of cold water, and it might actually affect that normal. Oh, the lower river is warmer for a few miles there, it might actually be a little bit colder. Uh so there's all these different kinds of environmental factors, you know, that changed what the bugs are doing that absolutely changes how good your day is getting.

Jason 53:31

Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't mean to put you on spot there, but I did want to narrow in on some of those specific things like temperatures, flows, weather, and I think you did a great job of kind of giving some good examples. But I also think one of the most important things that you said was right at the beginning, because I'm asking you these questions, man, and you know, they're kind of like they're loaded questions, right? Like, well, I mean, every question it depends. But you started with specifically on the Missouri, which I think is important because how do I answer this question without I have to have some frame of reference? And so I'm going to answer it with the Missouri. And for me, the takeaway is not, oh well, I'm gonna the takeaway is how do I listen to what you said? My home water here in Utah, um, the weavers of tailwater, but there's things like that that exist. I have creeks that come in out of the reservoirs or creeks that come in out of the Uintas that are gonna affect things. We have rain and runoff and irrigation and um agriculture that are gonna affect things and time of year and temperatures and different uh dams and different places, so that's gonna affect so there's ways that I can take that information and apply it to the water that I fish, which I think is is kind of what you're you're getting at. It's like you have to take it to your river.

Taylor 54:59

You got to. And I think the the most important thing I tell people this all the time, uh, and this goes for wherever you're fishing, um well, two things. The first part is like every day before you go fishing. For me, if I'm on the river every day, I'm I'm already doing it naturally and I'm there so much it just happens. But if I were to go to down to the weaver, which I've never fished before, the I would try to get some idea of where to go. And the first thing that I would do is I'd go watch the river for a while before I even cast or step into it and try to learn something in 10 minutes that can give me some piece of information to try to like start building down that equation of like, okay, what do I need to do to try to figure out what's happening there? Um and then as you become more you know knowledgeable and intimate with a watershed, a place or whatever, just that continued observation of of what you're seeing around you and what what you can learn as time goes on builds out that sort of knowledge base that helps you make those kinds of decisions, um which is kind of the cool I think one of the coolest parts. Yeah, yeah. That's that really keeps me engaged as a as an angler because it's like, man, there's really no end to it, and you'll see other people who have been doing it much longer than you have, and they're like, man, you know, they see they everybody has a unique perspective, right? So everybody looks at the river differently because of their experiences. And I I've always encouraged people and encouraged myself to like, man, you can't see what you're what you're not willing to see or what you're not looking for. So observation is huge.

Jason 56:51

We've we've kind of gone away a little bit from match the hatch, but in but we're not, but we're still there because we're talking about problem solving, which of course bashing the hatch is. And I think what you're what you're saying is is great. And I don't want to make it sound like you know, the tagline of Wade Out there is fly fishing is special but not elite. So I'm not I don't want to make it sound like some exclusive thing that once you fish this many days on the water, then you have this I I think I think it's true that you do want to be observant and make decisions, but I think what's empowering is that just that everyone has that ability. Like I want to like grab you and be like, you can just do that, right? You don't need to have experience. I think what is hard for people is is the people say, Oh, I'm problem solving, so they're gonna well I'm gonna change flies till I get the right fly, or I'm gonna change dry flies until I match the hatch and I get it. And that's cool. But if we're not making like what is that decision informed by? You know, like what why did I change flies, or why did I pick that color, or why did I if you can like try to observe things that inform the decisions you're making, I feel like that is more exciting for me now. And I and I'm still I still go out to the river and I just like I tie on the same thing I tied on yesterday, and then like I'm not catching fish, and it's like, alright, dude, like let's pay attention here. Like what and actually making it deliberate intentional decisions, uh it can be exciting. It forces you to slow down, which I think you know it's like the number one answer that people give. Like when I ask them how they can um, you know, get better or what they what they would say. I asked a show a question at the end where I say, um, you know, if you could go back and give yourself advice, what would you give yourself and everyone a lot of not everyone often slow down comes up? And I find that now that I'm doing that more often, like it makes me slow down, it just chills everything out, and it's just more enjoyable. But um yeah, I think that's really cool that you bring that up. Like that is this tool that we all have. You don't have to have a ton of experience to to just think through some things, even if it's like and even at the most basic level, like where someone doesn't even want to change their fly, like let's even go there, like hey, yeah, I need to do I need to do something here.

Taylor 59:28

Yeah, and you and you can and and to your point of like, yeah, you don't need um you don't need the knowledge to go fishing. You right you want to gain the knowledge over time, and it's always you know, it's just a long, uh, it's a it's an elongated process, and you can take it as far as you want and try to figure out as much as you want, or you can be perfectly content tying on a parachute atoms on on a leader and like going fishing, and that is totally cool too, you know. Whatever either either way works. It's like it's all about enjoying it, you know.

Jason 1:00:03

Yeah, that's great though. I mean that that that bit that that part that you gave about like that you talked about with the making decisions and that's really cool. And uh it's just it I think people I think you have it, people have it in them more than they think. Like I think that people you know, you if you if you if you look at those things either in the planning, like you said, with the water and the temperatures, I think they have it. So let's go back to being specific. Back to back to match the hatch. Everyone talks about temperatures. Do you have temperatures that you hip pocket use that you're like, hey, Mayflies it's gonna be 52 degrees-ish, Paul Park, or you know, the because if I can keep track of the temperatures on the water, is that you know maybe I don't need to have all the experience to know like I fish this river a couple days, the temperatures down here are better. Is there like a generic temperature window that you're like, yeah, man, it's pretty much this for and is it different for Mayflies versus CADAs versus other things?

Taylor 1:01:09

Yeah, it is. That's a that's a big question. Uh there's a lot of different temperatures to pay attention to. Um some of them are water temperatures, um, and some of them it's air temperatures, like you know, the air temperature hits this degrees that triggers the spin or fall kind of a thing. Um and I think for me, I I don't because that can change so much during the day, yeah. Um I sort of rely on, well, this is kind of happening in sort of my more uh knowledge base of where to go and and what generally is happening, than specifically exact temperatures. I may like go back to those in reflection, which is also kind of an interesting thing that we didn't really touch on. I mean, you asked the question of like, hey, what do you do ahead of time to prepare for a day of fishing? I also think the like debriefing of your day just in your own mind can can lead to some cool thoughts and learning moments uh as well for it for everybody, is like, oh, yeah, we didn't see the bugs today. Like had the right like Do you have a good news story on that one?

Jason 1:02:29

Like a debrief moment where you came off and you're like, yeah, and then I don't know if I have anything specific off the top of my head on that one.

Taylor 1:02:37

I it it's something I do every day. I mean, uh we I drive, uh, I got like a 45-minute drive, yeah. A lot of times we meet our anglers out in Craig, so I got a 45-minute drive from home to the river uh and uh you know to and from on on both ends of the day. Um and often that time in the morning is reserved for preparing uh uh of where I want to float, what I want to do, and thinking about that. And on the way home, it's sort of debriefing what I saw. Um, and sometimes there's there a lot of times there's information out there. You might be like, man, the fishing really at 2 p.m. it just stopped today. And you're like, what happened? Um, because my sort of instincts are telling me otherwise, right? Like it's a time of year where at 2 p.m. it should be good fishing and the weather looked good, and it's like, oh, pop on the phone, look at the USGS website. Oh, they bumped the flows out of the dam 15% at 2 p.m. and it that knocks the fishing down. So that sort of like after thought process, sort of trying to like look at some of those variables to what you observed can can can kind of help you see some things too.

Jason 1:03:54

Let's go let's go back to in the moment now where we'll stick with the Missouri. I do want to talk uh Freestone a little bit, but you know, now that we're there, we've checked the boxes. Do you have what's your hierarchy or what do you go through with match the hatch? Like, am I sure that it's Mayflies? Am I sure you know you could probably see the fish are eating what type of fly? So maybe maybe that's something people pay attention to, or you know, what what do you now do to match the hatch? What's your first? I'm gonna go smaller. I hear a lot of people say go smaller or color or shape or how it how it rides in the water, or people overlook movement. There's all kinds of things that go into match the hatch. So what do you what's what's Taylor's kind of uh plan A, B, C?

Taylor 1:04:46

That's a great question. Uh a lot of different ways to approach that. Um obviously, if I've narrowed down what bugs I'm dealing with, what I see, what I'm seeing, and I start going down that path. Um, and then you know, what bug do I see? Say we got a mayfly, and then what uh what are the fish doing? Uh, you know, start looking and reading rise forms and looking at, okay, are we sipping? Are we you know splashing? Are we actually not eating on the surface? Are we like just below the surface?

Jason 1:05:20

Is that the rise form? Is that what rise form really means? Is like the form, like how it's rising? Yeah. Aggressive or light or yeah.

Taylor 1:05:28

Yep. Or are you seeing like nose? Are you seeing little mouths? Are you seeing dorsal fin, tail fin? And you start reading that, and you're so now we're like, okay, we know we got amazing.

Jason 1:05:39

I've heard that word so many times that I've never thought about what it means at all. Yeah, you got it. Rice form. Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It is exactly like it sounds.

Taylor 1:05:49

You can go deep, deep into that. I have a friend who teaches, uh, who owns a uh deal called the Anglers Academy. His name's John Hudgens. He's down at the Henry's Fork, and that's another place like the Missouri that's a very match the hatch kind of you know, fishing to rising fish type of place. And he uh uh comes up and and helps out with this fishing school I'm involved with uh on the river. And he uh he has a whole like presentation on Riseforms where he has a slideshow of pictures of rising trout talking about what all the details that you can pick out of out of those, and it's it's actually pretty cool stuff.

Jason 1:06:27

Let's try and get him on the show, man. That'd be cool to talk about.

Taylor 1:06:29

Yeah, he's a he's a real good, real good guy, no uh knows a ton of good stuff. I would love to learn about that.

Jason 1:06:36

That's cool.

Taylor 1:06:36

It it is it is super uh super helpful if you can figure out by looking at your fish and seeing kind of you know, trying to gain that little bit of information.

Jason 1:06:46

Well, how does that rise form inform your fly selection? Are you talking about you can you see the fly, or how does the action of how the fly is taking it, how does that feed into like, well, that means I need to put on a bigger fly or a smaller fly? Like, what's that?

Taylor 1:07:02

Usually, I would say most of the time, and not all not exclusively, but most of the time, uh the way the fish is rising will give you information on whether or not you think they're eating an emerger, a dun, or a spinner. So it'll kind of like send you down the path of hey, this is um this is what we're doing for for our sort of life cycle stage. It also may, you know, maybe you have multiple bugs hatching and you're like, oh, that was an aggressive, you know, caddys emerge. We have caddys emerging right now, depending on the type of caddis and what the way that that catus is emerges, it may, you know, you may see a splashier rise. Or so basically you can look at that rise form and it'll sort of send you down the path of what life cycle, you know, what stage of the bug are we are we looking at? It also might tell you like, are they feeding aggressively? Are they you know, maybe you got a fish that's rising once every 30 seconds, and maybe you have a few different bugs hatching. So now you look now you look at the water and you go, well, there's a million trichos spinners on the water. And there's every once in a while a size 14, you know, big rusty PMD spinner. So now I'm now I'm automatically going like, okay, that fish is only rising every once in a while. He could still be eating trichos. Maybe he's keyed in on clustered up spinners of trichos. But decent chance that fish is probably keyed in on that bigger PMD spinner. So then I'm going, okay, we're going, we're good. That's where we're going to start. We're going to start that bigger one.

Jason 1:08:47

Sounds like you're saying that the rise form can tell you a lot about matching the hatch or fly selection when you have a lot of options. When there's more, when there's when it's lots of different, I forget what you called it earlier, but like you've got a bunch of different hatches going on, and you kind of got to decide what this fish is eating.

Taylor 1:09:08

Yep, totally. And and let's say, you know, for simple form in a more simple like example, you're on a small creek, uh, there's one bug hatching. It's like you know, early or late in the season. There's not, there's midges maybe around and blueinged olives or something like that. Be a common mix to see like in March on a creek or something. Uh and so you kind of you kind of know what bug you're dealing with, but you know, a great example that you see a lot of uh maybe you're seeing a fish rise and you're seeing the water move, and then you're seeing that uh dorsal fin come out and that tail fin, and you're watching that. That's that pretty much means that fish is actually eating just below the surface and not on the surface. So we can we can then guess, okay, that fish is probably eating emergers. We also can, depending on the place on the Missouri, that fish often automatically becomes very difficult to catch because now they're not actually eating, they're eating something just below the surface film. And so now putting on a spinner or something on the surface is they're not gonna touch it. They're not that's not what they're that's not what they're keyed in on. So you can kind of get a little bit of that uh part, too. Yeah, that's awesome.

Jason 1:10:26

All right. I never would have thought of that, but that makes perfect sense. The big one that comes to my mind is like the big trout that's just coming up and sipping the little flies, right? Like probably not a universal truth, but like big giant grasshopper, big aggressive eats, tiny little mids, like soft little eats. That's that's a trick. That's a oh yeah, that's a clue, maybe. Yeah, right? Or caddys maybe somewhere in between. Yep. Um, okay, what else? What what else besides rise form?

Taylor 1:10:56

Yeah, so you find your fish, you get a rise form, you kind of head down that path. And then fly selection wise for me, uh, I'm always I'm kind of a fan of the old school like size, shape, color in that order for me, in order of importance. You know, if you're if you're at least in the right ballpark for the size of the buggy or eating, you you got a chance uh of of catching that fish with a good presentation, uh, and then getting in the right like shape, you know, is it we go on caddis, mayfly, spinner, whatever. Um, and then color probably, you know, last on the on the importance scale. Um I think a lot of times um you can automatically end up in a place where you're like we're kind of talking about, we're sort of hitting on this a lot with the match the hatch type stuff where it's like, yeah, I know the I know we're eating this size and this shape. I know we're eating caddis right now. Um and then and then people dive into that color part a lot. You know, it's like, oh man, you gotta have a purple body on it, or peacock. Purple haze, yeah, or whatever, you know. So uh color gets talked about a lot. I think I think it's maybe one of the least important things. Not always. I think I think it gets talked about a lot because we often find ourselves in that area where we got it's easier to pick the size and shape because we can observe that, and then yeah, sort of that color factor often seems to be you know can tip the scale for us a lot of times.

Jason 1:12:28

Right. Unless you break the binos out, man. Figure that color out with the binos.

Taylor 1:12:33

I actually do that uh.

Jason 1:12:35

I was gonna add a little note. I was like, am I gonna ask him about binos? I don't know. No, I'm I don't embarrass myself.

Taylor 1:12:40

No, nope, nope, not embarrassing at all. I so during the summer, I have I usually keep binos in the boat for looking at whatever, you know, while that's my dad's job.

Jason 1:12:51

He brings the binos everywhere he goes. The binos Pop's got the binos. He's oh yeah, but we don't put them on the the flies, and we're gonna start doing that.

Taylor 1:12:59

Like, all right, Pop, tell us you have you absolutely should. It's super, super fun. It's it's really cool. You can especially if you have a fish rising and you're you know, say 20 feet away, you can put the binos up on that on that guy, and maybe you have a bunch of different bugs, and all of a sudden it's like you are literally inches away from this fish, and you're like, Yep, he's eating on the surface, he is eating caddys, he is not eating trach spinners. Uh, and then if you're not the one fishing and you're just watching through the binos, you can like watch that person's fly land and track it and be like, oh, you ate right next to it, or all it's actually really I'm surprised more people don't do that actually. It's pretty fun, it's super cool.

Jason 1:13:41

All right. Yeah, all right. So bring your binos if you want to have a good time or get some more detail. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. So size, shape, color. I've heard that before. Size. A lot of times I hear like, you know, when they come up and nose it, that's usually a size thing. Like, hey, sure. Maybe you need to go down in size. I don't know. If you think that, or if that's a because it could be they don't they don't want the shape too. When you say shape though, are you talking about it sounds like the way you're using shape is the type of fly, like it's a caddis shape or a mayfly shape. Are you is that the big shape for you, or is there shapes inside the species of bug too that you care about?

Taylor 1:14:22

Uh f the answer to that is yes. First, you know, shape to me is sort of the species. So you know, then we go, we're going like, okay, stone fly, uh, or maybe let's use Mayfly for example. So we go shape, okay. We know we're mayfly. And then the next kind of shape question there is is it a spinner, is it a dun? Is it a merger, a cripple? What you know, what kind of sort of shape of of that are we looking at? Okay.

Jason 1:14:50

Yeah, that makes sense.

Taylor 1:14:51

So that's that to me can kind of be the the shape part of the equation. Um yeah.

Jason 1:14:56

What else about uh size do you think is undervalued?

Taylor 1:15:03

Yeah, so I and actually I I was uh when you mentioned like going smaller to that, I'm a fan of that as well. Um if I have a fish that isn't eating, I often find myself going to a smaller size. Not always, though. There are times where um, and I actually uh I call this and I this isn't something that I invented or came up with on my own. This is something I heard when I was working in the fly shop a long time ago.

Jason 1:15:30

None of us have invented anything.

Taylor 1:15:32

No, no, none of all these theories are all learned from somebody else.

Jason 1:15:35

Just a disclaimer for the Wait Out There podcast, anything you hear was not invented.

Taylor 1:15:40

That's right, that's right.

Jason 1:15:41

There's no adorable ideas.

Taylor 1:15:44

That's right. And uh I have a friend who actually who who does this a lot, he lives in Oregon now and fishes over there quite a bit, but we used to hang out and fish a lot in Craig. And uh this guy came in to the shop and he called it the cookie plate theory, and uh, which I thought was pretty cool because it the theory is basically um, you know, if someone hands you a plate, if you know, you you're at a party, someone throws a plate of cookies out there, and you go up and you look at it, and there's a dozen cookies on there. Well, which one are you gonna grab? You're gonna you're gonna grab the you're gonna get the big one, right? Like you're gonna reach for the one that's a little bit bigger than the other other one. Yeah, yeah. So I always I always kind of do the the same thing of like uh basically doing where you're like, okay, so sometimes that's not going that theory says like, man, you might want to go a little bit bigger sometimes and uh do uh the the one size larger, and that might you know trigger the fish to to eat that one. So that theory exists out there too, and there are times where I I'd go down that route as well, you know.

Jason 1:16:52

Yeah. Um yeah, it can't always be the answer is smaller because then we would just throw the smallest fly to start with.

Taylor 1:17:00

Exactly. Yep, exactly.

Jason 1:17:02

It's only yeah, it's only the hot fly until it's not, right? It's only it's only hot when they came back from the river and they said, Oh man, I was killing it on a size 14 black caddis. Exactly. One of these days it's not gonna be that anymore. You know, it can't always be that forever.

Taylor 1:17:20

Yep.

Jason 1:17:21

All right, so size, shape, color. What are we missing? What are we we've talked a long time here? Is there anything that we are not covering with Match the Hatch that when you're out there that you do that we haven't talked about that you want to bring up because hey, if I don't get this out there, I I haven't really covered the full spectrum of what I think about.

Taylor 1:17:45

Um, I think that mostly covers kind of the general stuff that I think about. Um I think um, you know, on top of all that, just generally having a plan uh as you go fishing to work through if this isn't happening, and then I start doing that. Um obvious, you know, specifically going with match the hatch stuff, there's obviously presentation stuff to think about, tippet size, leader length, weight if you're nymphing, distance above, all of that stuff. But that's that's a whole nother that's a different podcast right there.

Jason 1:18:19

No, we went down, we went down in the weeds on Match the Hatch, which is cool.

Taylor 1:18:23

So so Matt but for Match the Hatch, uh I yeah, just having a having a specific plan and then a willingness to follow that plan and and change and adapt with what you're seeing. I mean, you gotta be quick to adapt. Some of the best fishing guides I know that are that are good at catching fish, uh, anglers, you know, you know, whether they're guiding and and getting people into fish or catching fish themselves, are usually pretty quick to start changing fly selection if something isn't working. Yeah. Um it's like, hey, we know this isn't working, so there's no reason to keep doing it, specifically with trout fishing, you know.

Jason 1:19:06

Yeah, I think that that is super valuable and super underappreciated, and and I'm a guilty as charged, you know. I mean, if you have a good plan and you, you know, it it's it's like I was talking about earlier, like it's the hot fly till it's not. So we went out there, we thought this was gonna work. Turns out it's not working. So now now what? And yeah, the more efficiently, I don't want to say fast, but like the more efficiently you can adjust to those situations, the I think the better off you're gonna be. They got to be because it's not very many days where it's just caddis all day long, or we're just crushing them on hoppers on the Yellowstone all day long, and it's that's all we do. Or we're steelheading, and like you said, we're not changing flights. Like we have to kind of bring Match the Hatch into the cross check, I think. Yep, absolutely throwing some love to match the hatch on this episode.

Taylor 1:20:01

Yep, exactly.

Jason 1:20:02

Uh and I agree, all the things that you brought up are definitely super duper important. We've really covered, I think we've done a really good job. I'm proud of us today. I like it. I like it. Match the hatch. The only other thing I would like to do is circle back to the freestone and maybe uh talk about the plan, how the plan changes and how you change like are there differences? Are there things that you go into planning or go into execution? Are there differences, or is it just kind of the same things, only not as comp not as difficult to manage because the food source is kind of you know the the whole it's a free stone, so they're super hungry and they have to get fed before the winter story, right? You know the story I'm talking about.

Taylor 1:20:51

Yep, I know that that and because that it that kind of is the story. I mean that that that theory is is great. Um I would say for me, there's the process is the same. Uh tailwater, spring creek, freestone. Um it's it's basically all the same sort of approach to a day of fishing. Um it would just be knowing the different variables um and factors that that could affect that. Um freestones pose different challenges than a tailwater or spring creek. You know, it's the inconsistency in flows, muddy water, um, you know, muddy water coming in from creeks, warm water. Uh a lot of times, you know, spring creeks have springs. They're often generated from one large spring, and then a lot of times there are more springs feeding into it. I can think of a couple freestones around this area that have little springs that seep into them. So, you know, and it's an example is like, well, it's getting kind of warm, we'll go to where that spring pops in and then the water temperature drops, and maybe that affects sort of you know, bugs and fish and stuff like that. Um but but generally speaking, it's a kind of the same program.

Jason 1:22:06

Yeah, just different variables and different things. And then there's still hatches on a freestone, just like a tailwater.

Taylor 1:22:15

Absolutely. And you can still find yourself down that same, you know, maybe it's a busy river with pressured fish, and uh or or it's a uh you know, situation where there's a really good hatch going on, and fish are keyed in on specific things, um, you know, specific aspects of the presentation or your your hatch, you know, fly selection. So you just gotta kinda still do the same thing. Sit down, observe, try to learn something, and and head down a path that can try to help you out.

Jason 1:22:45

All right. Let's close we'll close the chapter on uh thank you for for that. That's great. Uh I wanna we've talked a long time. We'll start wrapping it up, but I do want to give you the opportunity to talk about uh the social aspect of fly fishing that you enjoy. Sort of talking about how it got started for you and how you're surrounded by these friends and kind of you are molded into the fly fishing space through them, through Osmosis. You are now a fly fisher. And now it's your livelihood. What how do you continue to find opportunities to enjoy that part, that social part of fly fishing? Is it just having the people in the boat, or what else is it that you not just you, but you think that other people could uh find in fly fishing? Because fly fishing usually gets this I'm going out by myself on the river, and and yeah, I think when people are getting started in fly fishing, they imagine that. And maybe for some people that's that's not cool for them. They're like, I don't, I don't know. Maybe fly fishing's not for me. Let's pause that thought and introduce your ideas about like the social aspect. And I don't want to put you in a box and say like you only fish with people all the time, you don't like to fish by yourself. I'm sure you have a spectrum of fly fishing that you like. But yeah, like for this conversation, let's talk about that social aspect.

Taylor 1:24:14

Totally. And and like you said, I mean, there are times when I like to go out and fish by myself. I just want to go have a few hours to myself and hang out and sort of therapeutic, you know, relax and and just enjoy what's around me, uh, the river, the fish, the birds, all of the stuff. Um, but for me, I remember one defining moment going back to kind of the earlier story about when I was learning to fish. Um, and it was catching, you know, learning to fly fish and catching a steelhead and being by myself and sort of you know releasing that fish and being just insanely excited, right? I mean, like way, way excited. And then real quickly realizing like, dude, I wish my my buddies were here. We'd all be high fiving right now. Like, we'd all be so excited for each other in in these instances. You know, we were we're all in it together uh in those time in those days. And uh and sort of that uh in that moment, I realized I was like, this is more fun if you're sharing it with other people. Um even if it's you know, fishing together, or you know, hey, I'm gonna be on in this hole and that hole, and I'll see you in an hour or whatever, and then comparing notes and talking, eating lunch on the tailgate. Um for me, it's just and having having someone to share it with is adds to the adds to the whole sort of you know fun factor of fishing. Um and uh and same for guiding for me. I mean, I often uh my the way my brain works, like a lot of the memories I have are based off of the people in my boat uh when I'm working. And like I I don't remember um, you know, early May is this this patch, and this my brain automatically goes back to like, oh, I remember when I was with Jim, and like Jim always comes the first week of May, and this always seems so for me, it's like I go to the people first, it's just kind of the social part of it for me. It's like, oh yeah, I remember that because of this person did that kind of a thing. Um, and so that's that's a big part of it too. And as uh in the guiding part of it, uh it's it's always an ever-changing factor. I mean, we get new people to come and fish with us. We have clients that we've been fishing with forever that have become really good friends, um, looking forward to seeing them every year, and then meeting new people through work, uh, meeting new fishing guides that come to the river, um, and all of that kind of stuff is always sort of fun. I mean, it's it's like any other uh job that you do. You know, when you're on the river 100 days in a row, you're in the same place every day and you're fishing, but every day the people are always different, and that always keeps it really refreshing and exciting and that kind of stuff.

Jason 1:27:07

For sure. That's something that is plainly obvious to me because sometimes I have people on the show. I've had a ton of people on to talk about the Missouri River, right? Like you would think, oh, another episode about the Missouri River, you know, like but it's never even close to the same conversation, it's never close to the same answers. It's not I mean, maybe someone listening is like, yeah, it's kind of the same, Jason. Maybe you need to switch it up. But in my brain, you know, there's like all different seasons you could talk about, different uh stories, different answers that everyone has to the same question. If I ask someone else that fishes the Missouri about flight selection or match the hatch, they're gonna have other opinions, absolutely stories, and stuff. So I think that that is totally valid. And I also think something you said that really resonates with me is how you fish with your friends. You can go fishing with your friends and still have a relatively solitude experience. You can totally just see you at lunch, dude. You know, like I'm going this way or you're going that way. Yep. And I I I am I think I fall right around you on the spectrum of like fishing with friends. I enjoy fishing by myself some days just by myself. But most days I like to go with another person. Just I like to share the joys and the heartaches and the and I learn I'll learn from them probably more than if I went by myself. I'll get something out of that conversation on the drive home, yeah, or or to the river, or something like that. And I just I think that it's important for people to understand that it doesn't have to be one or the other. It's not black or white, it's not by myself all the time, or floating down the river in the raft, cracking beers and playing the turtle box. Like that's yeah, that's a whole different that's those are two different things, and they don't have like you can you can separate even in a drift boat, you can stop and get out and fish different spots or whatever.

Taylor 1:29:17

So um yeah, that that's that's exact. I hadn't thought about like you know, with a drift boat. Like, if I go fishing with a buddy, one of us is only fishing, the other guy's rowing the boat in the boat, and we're I'm enjoying just the social part of it while I'm rowing and then enjoying the fishing while I'm doing it, and netting fish for them and trading off that stuff. I mean, I'll even go wade fishing with a friend, and we'll just take one rod and do the old like switch off.

Jason 1:29:44

That's cool.

Taylor 1:29:44

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna walk together and and BS and and trade off who's fishing while the other guy watches and you know, you get some like heckling going on and it can be pretty pretty fun, you know.

Jason 1:29:56

Yeah, that is cool. Um all right. I don't know that I have too much more to say about that, but uh is there anything else that you think uh people should know or keep in mind about fishing with friends?

Taylor 1:30:08

No, no, I think I think that's it. You know, just enjoy it. You know, enjoy your enjoy your people.

Jason 1:30:14

Yeah. All right. Taylor, start wrapping it up. But before I ask my last question, sure. How can people find out more about you and uh maybe follow along in your fly fishing experience or schedule a guided trip or just anything that you want to get out there to folks so that they can learn more about you and what you're up to?

Taylor 1:30:34

Yeah, I mean if you anybody wants to reach out to me and and chat, fish in Montana up here. Um I I have a business called Mountain Prairie Outfitters, um, and websites mountain prairie outfitters.com. Email is Taylor T A Y L O R at Mountain Prairie Outfitters.com. Um you can also follow my Instagram, uh, which is the same Mountain Prairie Outfitters. Uh so kind of a common theme. If you just get online and want to want to reach out to me, go down that route, and I'd be happy to chat with anybody who wants to talk fishing. We we like doing that.

Jason 1:31:09

All right. We'll link to all that stuff in the show notes. Is there anything you're excited about with your personal or professional fly fishing? Or I know you you do some hunting with the outfitter as well. Uh anything that you want to share with folks?

Taylor 1:31:23

Um, yeah, you bet. Uh I I also uh guide up on bird hunting in the fall and September and October up here in Montana and train some pointing dogs as well. Um and it's off season for us right now. We're kind of wrapped up with everything uh work-wise, other than office time. Um, and I am looking forward to here in probably, I guess, what are we at now? About three weeks or so. I'm I'm going on an annual uh bird hunting trip to Oregon with a group of buddies. Um and uh so that would be super fun. It's kind of a something I always like having a hunting or fishing trip on the horizon to look forward to.

Jason 1:32:01

So I that's that's the next big one, and and I'm I'm getting ready to there's a lot of joy in life that comes from the looking forward to the next thing.

Taylor 1:32:11

I I almost have to always have some fishing or hunting trip, whether it's six months from now or six days from now, something uh on the horizon to be to be looking forward to.

Jason 1:32:24

Yes, it's important to have it on the calendar too. My my I have a like when I stopped flying for the Air Force and joined the reserves. Well, I still flying in the reserves, but you know, I stopped flying full time. I want to spend more time with my family, so I started we started doing this rendezvous with uh my dad and my brother because I had just didn't see him that much when I was in the Air Force. So uh every time we're on the rendezvous, we're planning the next rendezvous, and the goal would be to have the next one planned or at least like dates on the calendar because of exactly what you said, because then it's like there it is, I see it. And we usually do one in the winter, one in the summer. Summer's usually fishing, winter's usually hunting, fall, something like that.

Taylor 1:33:09

But yeah, absolutely.

Jason 1:33:11

The more of those I can fit onto my calendar, the better, I think.

Taylor 1:33:14

Absolutely.

Jason 1:33:15

All right. Last question, Taylor. You ready? Yep. If you could go back, we've already hinted at this, but if you could go back to when you first started fly fishing and give yourself two pieces of advice, one more tactical advice, one more philosophical. What would you tell yourself to help you progress at fly fishing?

Taylor 1:33:37

Oh man, one more tactical wise, um, would be the harder one for me to answer. I would say uh I'll answer the the philosophical one first, and and that's just to uh to enjoy the process. Um I think when I first started fishing, I was uh a little like I was goal-oriented uh and sort of wanting to improve and get better. Um looking back on that and what I do now, I've kind of come around to appreciating that is yeah, this is all you this is all a process, and this you know, learning how to fish, you can never finish learning. It's always uh something that keeps going. So you gotta enjoy the process, um, which which is super important. And uh I wish I just wish I started doing that sooner. And uh and then tactical, tactical-wise, um I'm usually pretty pretty good. We we did hint on this a little bit earlier, maybe um, of asking uh questions to people, but I would say um early on uh I always like to figure stuff out myself, and we talked a little bit about this. I mean, now I'm a guide. Um, and I would hire a guide now to go fishing. Um if I and of course when I was learning, I was in college, I couldn't afford to hire one. Um but just asking questions and figuring that out. There's a there's a lot of enjoyment um in the journey and learning on your own, but um you your tactics can can improve quicker by asking more questions and not being afraid to reach out to people to to get that help along the way.

Jason 1:35:20

Yeah, that's good. That's really good. There's gonna be lots of opportunity for you to flounder and flail, figure it out on your own. You might as well, like, when you get a chance, like ask a couple questions. It's not like you're you're not cheating, like it's not like it's part of everyone can do it. It's good. That's a good answer. I like that. All right, Taylor. Well, I think we're done. Thank you for being on the show. I really enjoyed talking with you. I'm I'm so excited that we got in the weeds on Match the Hatch. And like I said, gave it its due respect and place in fly fishing. Uh maybe not everyone feels this way, but I do feel sometimes match the hatch kind of gets like blown off, like, oh man, presentation just matters. And totally but uh it does until it doesn't matter till it does, and then it matters a lot, I think.

Taylor 1:36:10

So absolutely. Yeah. Well, uh, thanks for uh having me on as well.

Jason 1:36:15

Yeah, I appreciate all your time, and uh it's been super fun talking with you, and I wish you all the best and luck with your outfitter up there, and thanks for being on the show.

Taylor 1:36:23

Great, thank you.

Jason 1:36:30

Thanks for listening to the Wade Out There Fly Fishing Podcast. You can learn more about some of the topics we discussed in today's episode show notes. For more fly fishing ideas, stories, and artwork, check out my blog and online gallery at WadeOutThere.com. If you want to make Wade Out There a part of your own fly fishing journey, please subscribe and share. Until next time, Wade Out There.