The Wadeoutthere Fly Fishing Podcast
The Wadeoutthere Fly Fishing Podcast
WOT 232: Bull Trout and Glass Fish Art with Martin Gerdin
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In this episode we WadeOutThere with Martin Gerdin, from Aspen Colorado. Martin grew up fishing with a spinning rig and a passion for fish that bled over into an early introduction to the world of glass art.
As Martin began to learn the craft of shaping glass, a fish was first on his list to create. Martin credits his later discovery of fly fishing for helping him maintain sobriety and for bringing clarity to his art and life.
Since he began fly fishing Martin has also become passionate about the native species of North America and has spent much of his free time learning their history and seeking them out with a fly rod.
We discuss how to find and fish to bull trout, the habitat challenges bull trout face, and the process of creating fish from glass.
Learn More:
Instagram: @martin_gerdin_glass
MartinGerdinGlass.com
Sign up for Jason's free email newsletter (WadeOutThere Wednesday) at WadeOutThere.com/Wednesday
In this episode, we wait out there with Martin Gerden from Aspen, Colorado. Martin grew up fishing with a spinning rig and a passion for fish that bled over into an early introduction to the world of glass art. As Martin began to learn the craft of shaping glass, a fish was the first on his list to create. Martin credits his later discovery of fly fishing for helping him maintain sobriety and for bringing clarity to his art and life. Since he began fly fishing, Martin has also become passionate about the native species of North America and has spent much of his free time learning their history and seeking them out with a fly rod. We discussed how to find and fish to bull trout, the habitat challenges bull trout face, and the process of creating fish from glass. 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.
SPEAKER_00It's a fun time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. First of all, congratulations, newlywed. I just found that out.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yeah, this summer. It was uh it was actually kind of a crazy, crazy wedding. I I thought it was normal, but I was told it was unconventional because we actually had our party in the glass studio and there was no dancing, but there was like 15 glass blowers there, so everybody made a body part for whatever animal they wanted, and then we stuck them all in the same trout body. I mean, all of our relatives are like, God, these people are insane. But I mean, for us, it was the most normal thing we could have done at our wedding.
SPEAKER_01So I would say it's non-standard depending on the company you keep, but it sounds like for you it's perfect. So congrats, that's really cool. I'm glad that you could make it your own and make it enjoyable for you, and then off to bull trout fly fishing together. It sounds like after that. That seems like yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, we had some we always have pending orders, but you know, we we worked for a couple more weeks and then uh we took off north and did uh I think it was about a 3,500 mile round trip. Nice and uh hit a bunch of different fisheries, and you know, we we were it was cool because we were essentially following the different stages of the migration, you know. So in the beginning in early July, you know, we were fishing big water as the fish were just first first starting to move up, and then you know, to follow them up in the high country was really cool. And then it all culminated with uh you know doing some uh research outings with some biologists and and actually seeing the giant fish spawn. And you know, they they trapped and tagged some, and it was the first time I've ever seen a a trout that was bigger than 40 inches. And wow it was a good time.
SPEAKER_01That's really cool, man. That's cool that you have someone uh in life to share all that stuff with you. And she also helps with the the art as well, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so she's been blowing glass for four years. Um her name is Indigo, so we don't have to keep calling her she. Okay, indigo, thank you. Um, but yeah, she she didn't do glass before we met. Um, but glass is a very uh it I I call it the extreme sport of the art world. Um it really is a team sport because you know it takes it, it takes multiple people, everybody with different jobs, and the timing has to coordinate like clockwork. Um and so as we are starting, you know, as I was really starting to develop what would become the modern fish, um, I needed someone who could be there consistently. And, you know, indigo, my girlfriend at the time seemed like the perfect solution to that. Um and then, you know, she has since uh, you know, quit her nine to five, so we're both full-time, and she's uh 50% owner in the business now as well.
SPEAKER_01So there you go. Half and half.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and we only argue like a couple times a day.
SPEAKER_01Well, cool. Well, I want to talk to you more about bull trout and kind of your fishery out there in Colorado and the frying pan river, which is uh one that I haven't been too familiar with, but uh I gotta talk about the elephant in the room, man. Like I gotta get it out on the table right away. The the art. I mean, the class, like you said, it is yeah, it's just a unique medium, first of all. And it strikes me as something that, like you said, involves a lot of teamwork, a lot of timing. Uh, and I think that's fascinating. Uh, can you talk a little bit first about how you got started in it and maybe uh because a lot of your work is fish, uh, so where those two met and which came first and fly fishing and or the art or both, or how did that all start?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's the where did the glass fish come from is kind of like chicken and the egg. Okay. Um, but I mean I've been fishing since before I can remember, um, you know, spin fishing. Uh and uh yeah, I I need to find it somewhere, but the my mom has a photo of me when I was three, and I had a little, you know, clothes face reel with Snoopy on it. Snoopy reel, nice I had a stalker rainbow and I was dragging it across the ground still on the line, you know, as a three-year-old. Right. Um but so I mean I've just been entrenched in fishing ever since I can remember. And then um, you know, when I got sober is when I was exposed to fly fishing, which was, you know, a very uh it was uh it was like a match made in heaven because the the spin fishing, you have a lot of downtime, and towards the end of my addiction, I had you know it it had almost become an excuse to drink at that point, and then it's the fishing had become a fishing, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and when I got sober, um, you know, it's like I had a clear head and a clear vision for the artwork for the first time in like you know who knows how long. And um, I was in a a sober house with these um fly fishermen guys, and they looked at my work, my glasswork, and they were like, wait, you you are a trout artist and you don't fly, like you're doing this backwards. Like most people fly fish and then become trout artists for the passion for the sport. Um and so I've I've only been fly fishing for five years, um which is you know not very long in the grand scheme of things. Um but the the fish and the glass have always been tied together because I, you know, have been obsessed with fish ever since I was a kid.
SPEAKER_01That's very interesting. And I must confess I wasn't expecting you to say that.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, most most people are surprised, especially when they see the fish I catch.
SPEAKER_01So you um the glass, how long you've been doing glass?
SPEAKER_00Um so I started when I was 13. Okay, so yeah, and so that was about 19 years ago.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so almost 20 years you've been doing the glass. And has it and and fish have always been part of it. That's just been the thing that even though you weren't fly fishing back then, fish were still a big part of your life and and regular fishing. Uh is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And it was a lot of like uh I mean, we would take like these raft trips as a family, and you know, in the lower Colorado, where you're basically fishing in chocolate milk, and I would catch, you know, these huge carp as a you know an adolescent, and it was just really exciting. But the glass like glass is not like other mediums where you know you can't pick up a blowpipe and like make something on your first try. It's just impossible because you know they say glass is a cruel mistress, it it has a mind of its own and it doesn't behave how you expect it to behave. It's it's somewhere in between solid and liquid the entire time you're working on it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a little dangerous too. I mean, you gotta pay attention.
SPEAKER_00Yes and no. I mean, I tell I tell beginners that if you're gonna be a glass blower, you're gonna get cut and you're gonna get burned. Um, but in 19 years, I've only been seriously burned twice. Um they were both self-inflicted. You know, it's you know, the glass isn't gonna like jump off and get you, you know, it's you grab a piece of hot metal when you don't think it's hot is what is when you burn yourself.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, but being that glass it has such a regimented and proven way to be taught, um, it wasn't until I was 15 that my mentor even let me try a fish. Um, so I'd been working with the material for two years and I was starting to kind of get a grasp on it's almost more of uh figuring out or it's less of figuring out how to control it and more of figuring out how to predict what it's gonna do by itself.
SPEAKER_01Um how do you even find the place to do that? You know what I mean? Like it's just when I'm a teenager or I'm a young kid, I don't know. I I feel like I have to go out of my way to go find a place like that. Uh you know, did you have a mentor?
SPEAKER_00A view, you mean?
SPEAKER_01How did you as a young person have a connection to it, or did you just were you drawn? You're like, I want to figure that out and said something to your parents, or how did you even get your foot in the door? You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00Um so I was always like a wayward kid. Um, I mean, we can talk about this later if you want, but I have um bipolar and ADHD, which is like a wicked combo, because my brain doesn't let me do anything I need to do, but there's infinite energy, you know. And that's what I experienced until I was properly medicated. Um, and so I was actually I was like a straight D student, you know. And so I was skipping a class and actually looking for a place to hide. Um and there was this like you know, old rundown shack behind some maintenance buildings, and it had like a tin roof and like a big sliding garage door. At the school? Yeah, at the school. Okay. Um yeah, it was uh, you know, it was a uh at the time it was an elective class, um, mostly seniors. It was like a lottery system to get in, so a freshman had basically no shot. Okay. Um, but yeah, I was looking for a place to hide, and I slid the the garage door open a couple inches, and there was this guy. Um, you know, there was this classical music coming out of the shack, is what initially it was like, what is this? Okay, and there was this guy making uh clear flowers. Um, and he, you know, he would gather up some glass on like a solid rod we call a pony, um, just a you know, six-foot piece of uh stainless steel, and um he would just shape it with these tweezers and just you know, letting gravity do its thing and flipping and turning and stretching it out and making petals. And you know, he was actually he he he did a lot of farmers markets and you know sold like more production stuff, so like bowls and drinking glasses and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and he was making uh napkin rings, flower napkin rings with the stem, you know, looped around. Um and the the whole process only takes about 25 seconds. So he would take this ball of lava essentially, you know, it's like hot glass is very strange um when it first comes out of the furnace, uh, because it's it's like the viscosity of honey, but it's incredibly smooth and it's hot enough that it puts off its own light. Um and so he would take that and just with one simple hand tool shape it into you know a saleable, you know, beautiful, clear flower napkin ring and put it in the oven. And my 13-year-old self was like, I found a wizard. Like, I don't know what this is, but this is all I want to see for the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_01So it clicked. So you're you're naturally drawn to it. It it's helping you with um kind of finding a place, it sounds like. And it takes a while, but eventually you're allowed to kind of create fish.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, in the beginning it was it was like um it wasn't even about finding a place, it was just a and uh being awestruck by the material itself and like how it moved and its properties when it was hot and just how it looked. And yeah, um, and I I spent every spare moment that I could in that shop um until finally like about halfway through my freshman year of high school, he pulled some strings to get me in the class.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Uh then one thing led to another. I, you know, still wouldn't leave him alone. His name was Dave. And um Dave made me his TA my sophomore year, and then I worked for him during the summers, and then you know, it all kind of snowballed, and it was the summer of my junior year, and I had been I had been egging him to get me to make a f or to let me try and make a fish. Um, but I couldn't do it by myself. That's why he had to be on board, you know.
SPEAKER_01Was that natural instinct just like I gotta make a fish? Like how is just top of mind that's what you put in?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. For ever since I started, essentially. And you know, I had kind of found it.
SPEAKER_01What if I can make a fish out of this stuff?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. I had tried I had found ways around his rules in in other way, uh you know, in other things where he would tell me he's like, You're not ready to make a goblet. Goblets are really advanced. And I was like, Okay, well, I want to make a bowl with a little foot on it, and then I would just like stretch the foot into a stem and be like, ha, I told you, you know. Yeah, so finally he relented and and we made this uh little clear, I call it a catfish now, but I I don't even remember what it looked like that much. Um, but it was about you don't have it still? No, I sold it.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00I sold it when I was 16 for for like 50 bucks and got a video game or something.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Um but yeah, now you it was uh you know, this little lumpy piece of glass six inches long, and you know, we didn't have any fancy tools for making texture or anything, so the fins were just some blobs that we stuck on there and mashed them up with the tweezers or the the scissors or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but and and that I wish I still had it because that was the catalyst for everything you see now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was like the the precursor to what would become an empire.
SPEAKER_01Well, 20 years is a long time to be doing something and and getting good at it over time, and especially if you're kind of focused on fish the whole time. I want to talk more about the process and a little bit more about the team aspect of the medium of glass in art. But I thought um I want to get back to the fly fishing, and you've been doing fish for a while. Did anything change I uh well this you mentioned your sobriety uh around fly fishing? Can you talk a little bit about how fly fishing changed your art or influenced your art or took it in a different direction, or was it just the clarity that you talked about before?
SPEAKER_00I mean, to be to be perfectly honest, I feel like fly fishing paid a played a big part in s saving my life in addition to my art. Um because in active addiction, it's like I was lost. Like I didn't know how to function in the world, I didn't know who I was or who I wanted to be, or or you know, I didn't I didn't know anything about anything. Um I just knew how to destroy things, basically. Um and so I had been sober uh only about three months at that point, and um I was you know living in the sober house, like I mentioned, and it was February, and these guys were suiting up in waiters, and it's like blowing sideways.
SPEAKER_01And this is at 8,000 feet, like wherever you're other gentlemen in recovery as well, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00All you know, mid to late 20s, um, you know, all the how these sober houses kind of function is they're like a landing spot when you get out of rehab, okay. Um, which is excellent, excellent because it helps you like reintegrate into society in like a healthy way. Um and you're not alone. Like that's a big thing. Is they say the opposite of addiction is connection. Um, you know, so it was a huge benefit. Well, it is a huge benefit to any recovering addict, you know, to have people that are going through the same thing. Um, but so they were they it was like February, they were suiting up in their waiters and uh getting their rods ready, and and I basically called them nuts. I was like, what are you guys doing? Like, you know, it's you're gonna go fishing in this. And um I didn't even know what a tail water was. Um, and they were going up to you know, uh a spot called the Flats on a really famous river called the Frying Pan. Uh most people know it for the toilet bowl, which is yeah, it's um uh basically a giant fish factory because there's shrimp dumped out of the bottom of the dam. And so all these, you know, 12 to 25 pound rainbows and browns just sit there. And they they're so weird looking. They look like rugby balls with mouths. Um but uh you know, the a lot of these fish get pushed down um, you know, during during the winter because so many fish stack up in the toilet. Well, the a lot of the big ones just leave and uh go to the section below, which is the flats. Um and uh it's only about six inches deep and it's really wide, but these fish are so tall that when we pulled up, I could see the fish from the car. Like I could see these backs, you know, and tails, kind of like you see like sockeye during the run or something, with just like a bunch of fish that are too big for the water they're in.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so we go down and and we're fishing, uh fishing mice shrimp. Um, I think they were like Myers mice with like orange eyes or something.
SPEAKER_01You're fishing uh oh shrimp, you said. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, mice. Um because that's that's what's in the reservoir. So they're basically just like a little bit of widow's web on like a size 22.
SPEAKER_01I thought you were talking about mice, like mesis, meses kind of thing. Like I think.
SPEAKER_00Those those toilet bowl fish, their mouths are not big enough for mice.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Okay.
SPEAKER_00They're like, yeah, they're like pellet heads in that way with tiny mouths, huge bodies. Okay. Um, but uh, yeah, with just tiny, tiny flies. And I looked at the size of the fish and I looked at the size of the fly, and I was like, Justin, how are we like these fish aren't gonna eat this? And um, he hooked up to it was in it, it ended up being a 26-inch cut bow, probably in the you know, eight to ten pound range. And um this the shrimp kind of turn up their color saturation, and so it was just like the most vibrant, um, you know, spectacular fish I had ever seen in my entire life. And you know, it's it's like 10 degrees, the wind's blowing sideways in a snowstorm, and Justin and I are kneeling in the middle of the river with this fish in the net, and it was I I this feeling came over me that it was almost like this is what I had been like this emotion, this feeling is what I had been looking for in the bottom of a bottle, you know, for 10 years. You know, this contentedness and being at peace with the world. And in addition to that, I saw the fish and I realized it's like, oh geez, like my trout did not really look like trout that much. You know, because I had I'd only ever seen like stalkers. Like most spin fishermen catch majority, the majority of them are like stalkers on power bait. Um, so to see a wild fish like that, I immediately I took a ton of photos, and then I went back to the you know, the house and I went on um the supplier's website and ordered every color I needed to make that fish. And then I I only had like 2,500 bucks to my name at that point, and I spent every dime of it on hand tools.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Like crimps and tweezers and shears and just like specialized sculpting stuff.
SPEAKER_01Now, did you not have that ahead of time from the other fish you were doing? Or you need it like what about a fish caught with a fly rod requires different tools than a fish caught with a spinner?
SPEAKER_00Well, it just it it changed the way I looked at fish in general.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um before, I mean, the fish were always like a passion project, but they were they were very stylized, and I had no ambition to change that. Um, like, yeah, you could kind of say that they looked like trout in certain ways, but what I wanted to do is I wanted to turn that fish that I had seen into a piece of art. You know, with all the details and all of the, you know, ever like everything that had astounded me about that fish, I wanted to represent.
SPEAKER_01And the experience, I would imagine, like the part of you, right? When you make art, you're making something for yourself. You're you're giving, sharing this experience, I would, I would think, right? So at least it's kind of the way I look at it from my perspective. But now that you've had the experience, it kind of changes what you're presenting, right? You're you're changed, and so what you're making is changed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I mean that brings up a I feel like a strong drive for artists is an emotional experience. Um like a wise man once told me that the purpose of art is to create an emotional experience in the viewer. And so that's the essentially the dragon that I've been chasing ever since is how do I create that feeling in someone who looks at my work?
SPEAKER_02Cool.
SPEAKER_00Um and uh yeah, you you you mentioned that. you know, how do you need different hand tools for a for a pellet head versus a wild trout? And it's curious, yeah. It's more of just like uh glass is such an equipment heavy activity that you're really limited by the the the things you have. Um you know so now like to make one of our modern trout I'm using you know probably 80 different hand tools throughout the process. Wow um and a lot of which probably 30 of which are the ones that I bought on that Saturday afternoon with my last money to my name at the time. But you know I had a dream I essentially you know hit checkout with all the tools and I was like well you know this this could be something either I'm gonna be a fish maker or I'm gonna have to go get a job.
SPEAKER_01You know no that's really cool man. And from that moment forward did you find that there was an obvious change in the way that your art progressed was it immediate or did you just start going in a different direction as far as like your ability to capture a trout with the with a fly fishing perspective? I don't know if that is a if that question makes sense to you or not.
SPEAKER_00I mean that again it's the way that glass blowing functions you know as a medium like as a painter you can uh you know look at a reference material and then just take your time and you know change things as you as you wish right yeah that's one of the questions I had to do whereas with with glass everything is skill based absolutely everything you know so I'm I'm essentially I have to build up build myself up so I can stand on my own shoulders if that makes sense. You know so the the first the first big challenge and before that the trout didn't have faces like that was the the first big change that I wanted to make oh cool is because you know we're connected to a blowpipe right so you know the the beginning of the process is very Italian. It's you know we gather up some glass we we put color on in layers and blow it up um squish it but then at that point the fish's mouth is essentially stuck on the end of a blowpipe so like round you know yeah and what I had done previously is I would put the fins on at that point and then just crack it off the pipe and heat it with a torch and then just put like a like kissy lips or or like a little knife lines in it or something. But I I realized that to make a trout with a jaw or to make a fish with a jaw I had to somehow get it off of that pipe onto a second pipe so that I could work on the other end. And that that in itself was a massive massive challenge that took me probably a year to to really figure out how to do and then another two years to dial in. Because it's you know on a drinking glass or a bowl or any kind of normal glass fulling object like anything that's not as ridiculously difficult as a fish is you have a nice flat bottom bottom that is a perfect place to attach another piece of steel. You know and a fish doesn't have that you know so we had to develop you know different ways of attaching a second blowpipe and the the solution that we eventually came to um which you see in the Instagram videos is it kind of looks like a clear suction cup thing that's stuck to the side. But so that's just one example of how it was a a long it was probably three years after going back to the drawing board to redesign the trout to the point where I actually made one that I was proud of.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well that's awesome you stuck with it. Yeah well it's that addictive mindset you can't get me to do anything halfway I want to talk more about the art and uh the process of that but uh I want to put a pin in that come back to it and talk a little bit about the frying pan a little bit about your home waters and your fly fishing experience uh is the frying pan river special for you because of that initial experience are there other things about the frying pan river that you think uh maybe are uh people don't understand or are surprised by when they come out to fish?
SPEAKER_00Well I mean the frying pan is a cool it's just a cool place in general um I mean it's uh it's all the rocks are part of the maroon formation so it's just like huge red sandstone towers around the river um and it's a it's a tailwater so I I I'm able or I was before I moved I was able to fish it year round um was that helpful for you to be able to be year round since it sounds like this is a big part of your addiction recovery.
SPEAKER_01So you have something every day that you're not like you know muscled out of and yeah in the first year I fished twice a day you know for sometimes up to six hours.
SPEAKER_00Yeah um and uh you know that's it also you know COVID was starting to come out and so you know just a bunch of people fresh out of rehab with fly rods and no jobs like what do you expect um but the you know every they're all tributaries of the uh Colorado River um over in that in that valley um so the frying pan was always there and it was like the great equalizer like if if the conditions were bad anywhere we could go to the frying pan but the my my favorite river in that system is the crystal um and uh you know they con the the crit so the the frying pan is a tributary of the roaring fork the crystal is a tributary of the roaring fork and the roaring fork is a tributary of the Colorado so like these are pretty big systems yeah um and where the sober house was was right at the confluence of the crystal and the Roaring Fork. So in my early recovery, you know I had two rivers to choose from right out my back door. And uh you know I I didn't know what a whitefish was. Like I I kept catching these things like I just called them the weird things or the you know the sucker fish or whatever um until I was asking one of the guys in the fly shop I was like what is this and I showed him a picture and he was like oh that's a whitefish that's a native fish it's like they're really great and I was like it's just like a cucumber like a Caesar cucumber like I don't understand why you like them. And then he he asked me he was like well what do you know about native fish and I was like well I know that you know that we have native rainbows and native browns and I guess these native whitefish and he was like explaining to me that brown trout are from Europe and rainbows are from the Pacific Northwest and then it just made me start thinking I was like well why is that the way it is you know why like and then I started doing research and I you know I like you you guys are gonna laugh like everyone listening but I thought at that point I thought a brook trout was a cutthroat. Like I thought a cutthroat was any fish with a white line on its fin.
SPEAKER_01We're not laughing at you Bern everyone everyone starts somewhere everyone learns there's nothing wrong with just asking questions.
SPEAKER_00And uh I I started like doing research on like okay well what should be in the Roaring Fork and what should be in the crystal and what should be in the frying pan. And I started learning about like our native Colorado River cutthroat and uh I saw photos online and I was like these fish are even more incredible than that cupboard. Like where are they? Like where I want to go catch a giant fire truck.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you know I I I started asking around and at that point I had quite a few um you know fishing friends and I had made friends with the guides and um some of the local fly shops were carrying the glass fish so I kind of had an inn for the spots that the guides didn't tell anybody about. Oh your art was in the fly shop you're saying yeah yeah yeah that's kind of like where the you know because at that point I only had like a hundred Instagram followers and uh you know so almost all of the sales were people who had had like like the frying pan and ring fork are like big destination fisheries like people come from all over the all over the country to fish them.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00And so a lot of it was like you know wealthy people on a trip to aspen they fish the fork and they like buy a piece of art to take home with them or whatever.
SPEAKER_01How do you get in their art in front of these types of people nowadays? No back then I mean oh just fly shops? Oh there it's in the fly shop and then they see it and then okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and then either they'll buy that one and they buy another one wholesale or the fly shop buys another one wholesale or I gotcha or they you know say oh I caught this fish on this trip can you make this and then I would make something that looked nothing like it but I would tell them it did. You know because at that point it was a skill issue. Like it's so it was so hard for me to make a fish that looked nice in the first place. I didn't really want to you know try and change things if things were going well um right yeah in the studio. But and but yeah back to uh the Colorado River cut um you know they they told me where I could find them and and this was still in my first year of fly fishing and I had this this old beater subaru outback and um and I loaded everything up and I drove it where it should not have gone like way up onto this pass um you know like basically rock crawling in an old outback and then you know hiked for a few miles and I found a lake with genetically pure well I found the lake they told me about with genetically pure Colorado River cuts. And you know it from that point on like the native fish conversation has been so like it it almost gets more important the more I think about it and the more people I meet. Because like I I I then proceeded like that year to continue to fish the fork a lot and the frying pan a lot. But I started going you know traveling around Colorado to like the different fisheries here. So like I I fished you know I came to fish the Gunnison and the Taylor and the blue and the animus and like all of these places every single place I went in Colorado I found the exact same thing in rainbows and browns. Cutthroats are gone whitefish are gone in most places. Whitefish too yeah I'm always catching whitefish seems like but yeah well I mean and that's it's just like the whitefish are the are the the hardiest of the native fish. So if the whitefish are gone too like that's it speaks to a a bigger issue. You know if if the cut the like the like the big predatory fish go first. Like Colorado used to have an endemic species to the Twin lakes called the yellowfin cutthroat and it was the like a sister species to the Lahontan cutthroat. Like these fish got up to 60 pounds you know they were just huge lake predators in twin lakes yeah and like those fish disappeared. I think the last one was caught in 1904 I think is the last time they saw one you know so though they go first then the greenbacks go then the Rio Grande go then the Colorado Rivers go. You know and it's just this this cascade effect until all you have left is whitefish and invasives and then in some cases the whitefish go too um you know and it it really it really made me want to go see an intact fishery. So that that next summer so the second year I fly fished my dad and I took a cross country trip to the Pacific Northwest. Oh cool um and it was great. I mean we saw steelhead and we saw um you know tons of west slope cutthroat and you know sea run coastal cuts and just like all of these super cool fish and you know I didn't see a I didn't see a brown trout for like the entire trip. And then just before we were going to come back um this was like you know early August I want to say um the bull trout run started. I didn't know what a bull trout was and I was in the fly shop and where where you're back in Colorado now you said no no this was like on the tail end of that that trip because I I just wanted to go see native fisheries and it was also a great opportunity to like you know kind of like for my dad to get to know me as I was then because I had been sober like more than a year and like I was starting to have my head screwed on straight. Um good for you man that sounds really special yeah it was it was it was interesting.
SPEAKER_01Is he a fly fisher as well?
SPEAKER_00No he didn't catch a fish the whole trip we were gone for three weeks.
SPEAKER_01But he was but you were happy and he was happy that you were happy and to be with you.
SPEAKER_00So that's he tried to catch fish but yeah it was I mean it was it was a really good good experience um you know relationship wise.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I could tell that bull trout are a special species for you uh just from some of the things you posted and some of the artwork that you've done uh and that's cool I think that you can use your art to help kind of pursue or progress in your passions in fly fishing but also the species that's important to you. I want to read something if that's okay with you that you you wrote about bull trout and a specific bull trout and I hope that maybe you could tell the story after I read this you said I've caught many fish in my life and this fish is easily my favorite of them. A prehistoric relic this thirty two and a half inch bull trout ate a mountain whitefish whole as I was bringing in the smaller fish. Aggressive sleek and almost too powerful for my gear the rod took some damage during the fight. It's moments like this that we all hope for as anglers. The chance of the fish of a lifetime is what keeps me coming back to the wilderness but I've realized that fish aren't what I'm hoping to find. The net was recovered. So there's a lot of stuff in that quote and I wonder if you could just first tell the story and then break down some of the other things uh the more implied parts of the story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah so the um that was uh in this past July um and we were we were on our honeymoon. Okay good yep and we were at a super special spot um in North America is about as much information as you can get out of me uh and you know bull trout are nocturnal not a lot of people realize that so they move and hunt at night most of the time um so I've I've found through my bull trout trips or expeditions um studies yeah um that that the earlier you get up the the better chance you have at at the big bull trout especially the big males um because they you know they have an an evolutionary behavior where they will actually like the biggest ones will actually jam themselves upside down underneath rocks during upside down yeah it's really really strange what's the point of this have you figured that out because they're so big and they're they're so like nutrient dense that predators go crazy for bull trout um like otters eagles ospreys bears um so have you witnessed this or you just read about that I've seen it yeah and so they're upside down in the water yeah yeah so if you're on a bull trout stream during the run um look for tails sticking out from rocks like it's it's the strangest thing I've I've it's the only fish with species of trout that I've seen do that or species of char. Oh that's cool. Um but and so I found that the earlier you wake up like if you're at the water as dawn breaks those fish are still out there and moving around.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um and so and my wife does not like to get up before dawn. So I was I was by myself she was still sleeping you know in in the truck and um we were we were in this in this canyon um really steep walls okay and the river was probably a quarter mile vertical descent down from the closest point we could get to it. Because this is it's you know they and you're by yourself at this point because she's she's she she's sleeping yeah so you're by yourself all right my dog and I scale down the ravine and um and they actually they're people will tell you not to go to this specific area because of the grizzly bear density. And so I and I've been there every year um since I discovered it. But we like the grizzly trails are the easiest way to get around um so that's why if you do go bring something that can smell better than you can. So that's why even though it's not a great place for a dog like it just made us both safer. And I don't really like fishing with a gun like if if you know accidents happen and I'd rather leave the gun in the truck. But so we scaled we scaled down this ravine and uh and it was it's like a drop pool um river. So like big big waterfall uh you know with a really deep and just crystal clear ice cold um and so when I when I fish for bull trout I kind of move from pool to pool and just observe uh because typically you'll see them before you catch them. Yeah it seems like a lot of sight fishing you know yeah but they're they're huge and and they look like logs at the bottom like because they and another strange thing about bull trout is they actually rest on the rocks. Like they don't they don't hold in the current they just like lay down on the bottom and um and so what they'll do is they'll typically wait at the bottom of a drop pool um and they they're almost entirely passivorous after they get to 14 inches. So they're they're looking to eat fish. And so they wait at the bottom of these little waterfalls for cutthroat like little cutthroat and little white fish to get tumbled down and get disoriented and then they'll just you know come up out of nowhere and take it. And so I do my normal morning bull trout routine where I'm fishing a streamer that's about 10 inches long, you know just a big white articulated thing with you know rubber legs and just you know to you kind of throw it in and jerk it around is a distressed fish. And if there's a bull trout that wants to eat it it'll happen right away.
SPEAKER_01Is it that's I was going to say is it pretty it's gonna happen or it's not going to happen. So you just kind of move a lot.
SPEAKER_00It depends on the water temperature a lot um because they and another reason or another very fascinating thing about bull trout is they are um they function better in colder water than almost all other trout. So bull trout are at their prime at at like 39 degrees. Colder the better for these yeah and most fish get sluggish around that temperature so in the winter they just gorge themselves because everything else is too slow to run away.
SPEAKER_01Ah yeah okay and um and so I'm like moving from pool to pool and you know I I see the occasional bull trout moving around but you know nothing's taking the streamer um you know so I I switched to nymphs like I I had brought a a second rod a Euro nymph rod um a 10 foot nine inch three weight which is not a good rod for a bull trout doesn't sound like it would be I assume there's other fish in the river then right so yeah you're fishing for other things but you're in a tre a a a river with bull trout so yeah and and the height of the run.
SPEAKER_00So every pool usually has at least one bull trout in it. But they're you know in and that early in the morning they're kind of focused on moving upstream. You know they're active but not all of them are eating.
SPEAKER_01Can you talk a little bit about the run? Because I I'm not familiar with run with regards to bull trout or I mean is it like a run like salmon or steelhead?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01From the ocean?
SPEAKER_00Well it depends.
SPEAKER_01Okay this is ignorance on Jason's part here but I just didn't see them in that uh in that way I guess I didn't associate them that way.
SPEAKER_00So there's three different life histories for bull trout and a life history uh when you're talking about fish is a a a plan for how they function throughout the year basically um so there's the resident life history which are fish that they don't get as big they get like you know up to 22 inches but they they stay in whatever system in the same pools and runs throughout the year and feed and you know eat bugs they though those bull trout will eat bugs too. Okay. And then you have the adfluvial life history um which are you know they're they they act anadromous but they come from large lakes. Um anadamis can you display that anadromus anadromous anadromous is um uh the salmon are anadromous steelhead are anadromous um so they anadromus fish live in salt water and then come up to spawn in freshwater thank you um atlantic salmon are anadromous um so ad ad fluvial is is like anadromus but for large lakes for lakes okay yeah and we did fish some ad fluvial uh bullies this this summer and actually one of the biggest ones I saw I tried to catch it but he didn't want to eat um but the adfluvial fish usually get the biggest
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, because there's so much forage in the lakes. All right. Um, but the fish that I was fishing for are fluvial, um, which they do the same thing, but instead of a large lake, they come from a large river system.
SPEAKER_01Um so a large river system into small smaller.
SPEAKER_00The Columbia in this case. Like the Columbia is huge.
SPEAKER_01So they'll go into not a large lake, but a large river, and then they make their run back up into the smaller streams.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So these these fish that that And that's called fluvial.
SPEAKER_01Sorry to interrupt. Fluvial.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01All right, cool.
SPEAKER_00I love it. I'm learning so much, man.
SPEAKER_01This is awesome.
SPEAKER_00I know. And this is this is this is what I mean, though. Like, I just I'm an information sponge.
SPEAKER_01I'm loving it. You keep it coming, Martin. This is great.
SPEAKER_00And so, yeah, these these fish are fluvial. Um so that's what I mean when I say the run, is because you can like if you Yeah, that makes sense. You can almost look at a a calendar and look at a map, and I can tell you where the bull trout are gonna be on what date. Um and another fascinating thing about bull trout is their um their wander rate is two percent, which with salmon, it's about twenty percent.
SPEAKER_01What's a wander rate?
SPEAKER_00So for uh, you know, any any migratory fish like that that that migrates to spawn, yeah, a certain percentage of them go somewhere random. Um so like that's how they're not they don't get back to the same.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00That's how salmon, like the the same genetically identical salmon populate the entire west coast.
SPEAKER_01Because it's nice.
SPEAKER_00Because over time, you know, 20% of those Chinook salmon are gonna go find some random river. And if another another Chinook has found the same random river, then suddenly you have a new population. Umas bull trout, their wander rate is two percent. Um so almost every single bull goes back to the exact same spot to spawn, um, which is very such a low, low rate is very strange. Um, they're the only fish I know of that has such a low wander rate.
SPEAKER_01Well, it would make sense then too that they're sensitive to um some of the problems you discussed earlier because they're not able to kind of uh bounce back as easily, right? They're not able to kind of go to more areas because they got one little niche place that they go to. If that place is gone, like they're not it's not gonna they're not likely to go to the new places or as likely. I don't I don't know if that logic makes sense or puts it.
SPEAKER_00Oh 100%. Yeah, one one dam can ruin an entire population.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because they're not gonna just figure it out and go someplace else because they're in the two percent club, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and in addition to that, populations wink out more often. Um because like say, like some when we were with the biologists, the the one of the populations that we helped them study, there's only 20 adult males that come or 20 adult fish that come back every summer.
SPEAKER_01What about what they eat? I mean it seems like if you're a bull trout and you're eating mostly other fish, you're pretty sensitive to that river's fish population, right? Versus bugs. It seems like there's more bugs in a river than fish, right?
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, well, nowadays there is. Like the um in in you know, historically, bull trout's forage has mostly been salmon smolt. So that also has a huge impact on them, is the um the reduction in the salmon populations.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, we can take a break from educating me. Let's get back to your story. Yeah, I'm gonna ask a bunch more questions, but let's let's let's get back to the you're going from you've started Euro nymphing. You're you've given up a little bit on the bull trap for now.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I'm just you know, kind of picking from pool to pool and you know, catching, you know, a couple whitefish here, a couple cutthroat there. And um, I get to this, you know, this one one big pool, um, and it's just at the bottom of a riffle. It doesn't have a fall or anything, and it's so deep that I can't really see the bottom. I would say it was probably 30 feet deep, um, and just like crystal blue water, just like an abyss. Um and uh, you know, so I I I nymphed a a pretty sizable white fish um out of the run up uh up above, and it ran me down into the pool, and it was probably in between 14 and 16 inches. Um, and the bull trout came out of the pool like a torpedo, and the the white fish was almost at the surface, and the bull trout hit it with so much force that they cartwheeled together. And and then, but he wasn't hooked, the bull trout wasn't hooked. He held on, he had the whitefish t-boned.
SPEAKER_01Because you caught the whitefish, and now the bull trout is going for the white.
SPEAKER_00I hadn't landed the whitefish. I was in in I was yeah, I had the whitefish.
SPEAKER_01Whitefish is on you got him on the line. He's on the hook. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00And so this this bull trout had this whitefish t-bone.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know, you're just holding him by the side like a dog holds a bone.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And but he was letting me fight him that way. Like he wasn't letting go, even though he didn't have a hook in him.
SPEAKER_01You gotta be losing your mind, dude.
SPEAKER_00Well, this this is so exciting. It's because it's like it's just all whatever until suddenly it's on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and uh, and you know, I knew I knew that he probably wasn't gonna get hooked based on how he was holding the whitefish, so I knew I had to land him in one shot. Um and so what I did is I cranked my drag all the way down and just put as much pressure as I possibly could on him. Um and I I I walked out to the edge of this rock ledge over the pool and I hoisted him up. And at that point, the fighting butt came off the rod, and so the reel wasn't attached anymore. So the reel got sucked up to the front guide or to the to the stripping guide, and I netted the fish. Like, and it it the whole the whole thing took about you know, it was like three minutes from when he hit it to when I netted it because I knew that I was gonna lose him because he one, he wasn't hooked, and two, I was on a three-weight. Um and then uh yeah, and I wanted to get a video and had a little tripod, and so I set up um set up the tripod, and then I actually fell in the river, but I was like on this on this rock ledge, so I I s and you I posted the video on Instagram. I wasn't gonna post it, but my wife told me to. Um, and my foot slipped off the ledge into the pool behind me, and instead of like falling in over my head, you know, I just kind of laid flat.
SPEAKER_01Um just settled down into it, accepted your accept your fate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um yeah, and I got, you know, I got the the video that I wanted. And and part of that is, I mean, I I have a you know a big Instagram following that I like to, you know, put the cool fish on. But also for morphology reference for me, um, you know, it like when you handle a fish, you get such a different view of every angle. Like one of the angles that you can't find photos of is fish from directly underneath. Um, it's really hard to find a photo of a fish from directly underneath.
SPEAKER_01Which you as a three-dimensional artist, you know, that's important.
SPEAKER_00It's really important, yeah. So I usually I usually have a GoPro in my waiting, you know, my waiting pack. And, you know, so I'll have them in the net and I'll do like a bunch of 360 videos under the water and you know, yeah, measurements and really try and wrap my head around the dimensions of a special fish.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, perspective I would think is important too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, another another really important one is looking directly straight on into the mouth. Um, that's another photo that's really hard to find. Um, but it all it all plays into like 3D art. It's like if it's off in one dimension, it looks wrong from every every dimension.
SPEAKER_01I can see that. Um so then you release you fall in, you get your videos and photos that's gonna help you with your art too, I would imagine. And then you release them and yep, and uh, yep, I release them. You shaking, you're you're like, I can't believe that just happened. You keep fishing, you go back to camp.
SPEAKER_00I I I hike back. And this this was this was probably at about noon at this point, which is not it's not you I mean, I know people catch a lot of bull trout in the middle of the day, but it's very rare for me to catch one in the middle of the day because they're usually, especially the big males, they're usually stuck upside down under a rock.
SPEAKER_01More like what you're saying. Now when they're st oh yeah, during that time of day. And so you're saying like closer to night that you get in the morning. What about night?
SPEAKER_00Is it closer to night in the um they're so sensitive to temperature fluctuations? So normally as the water warms up, like they they're unless it's an ice cold system, like a glacial system or something like that, they're gonna be pretty shut down in the night.
SPEAKER_01So that early, early morning thing is kind of a good time to kind of go for it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, on that on that trip, like and it was a month-long trip where we bopped around to a whole bunch of different systems. I probably caught 60 bull trout, and every single one, except for that one that was over 30 inches, was at like five in the morning.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And you know, I caught I caught plenty of like 18 to 27s, you know, in the middle of the day, but the 30, the 30 plus is like the truly monstrous fish. Um and then and then the 40 pluses, they're like they're like ghosts, you know, you'll see them swim past and then you'll never see them again.
SPEAKER_01Or if you had to give somebody two tips for catching bull trout, uh that would be useful for them that doesn't have to do with like where they're going or whatever, just more like tactical like tips. Do you have any of that type of advice?
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, I mean, so obviously big white streamers is pretty well known, but a pink squirmy wormy works really, really well for bull trout. I don't know what it is, but if they're not eating streamers, just try drifting a squirmy past them and they might eat that.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um squirmy worm. That was my next question. Is kind of like, is there any like basic flies that are easy to tie that you can use for bull trout?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, squirmies. That's I mean, I've I've seen them eat fish and I've seen them eat squirmy wormies. That's it.
SPEAKER_02All right, sounds good.
SPEAKER_00And then uh, but bull trout in general, like you really gotta get the information um because they migrate so far and they move so fast that even you might be in bull trout water and a week late and you won't see a single fish.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, let me ask you this. And I know you're sensitive to this, so I'm not trying to go a place that you don't want to go, but what advice do you have for somebody who's listening to this, maybe, and they're like, I'm sold. Martin, I'm sold. I want to experience this, I want to have this appreciation for bull trout. Where do they start or where did you start with your exploration? I guess. Not saying like where, but like what resources can you go to to kind of like help you learn?
SPEAKER_00So I started with scientific journals.
SPEAKER_01Is that a fair question?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I just yeah, no, I mean it's yeah, it's it's such a deep rabbit hole. It's like, where do you even start?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but I started with scientific journals, um, where there's a lot of really great ones published by uh Washington um Department of Game of Fish, Idaho Fishing Game, um, Montana, you got to be careful because you can get arrested for targeting them. Um but uh well not arrested, but ten thousand dollar fine is not fun either. Yeah. Um but yeah, start with scientific journals. If you can find red data, that's that's key.
SPEAKER_01Um what's red data?
SPEAKER_00Red, I mean a red is a trap. Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So if you can if you can find red money, not the color red, the reds.
SPEAKER_01I gotcha.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Um if you can find red maps with it, doesn't even matter where or what uh what time period they're from. Like a lot of the red maps that I was looking at were from the 60s.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, but they have such a low frequency of going somewhere else that if there were fish there, you know, 50 years ago, unless they're uh unless they've all died off, they're still gonna be there.
SPEAKER_01That's cool.
SPEAKER_00Um and then, you know, look at so first find where they're going.
SPEAKER_01Then fish and game is a good place to start. Fishing game.
SPEAKER_00Um a lot of good information. Figure out where they're going. The next most important thing is water temperature. Gotcha. So a lot of systems have a temperature barrier that stops the migration halfway through. Um, so if like there's this one particular system in mind that I fished a few times, that there's a spot with a spring coming in where the water gets up to 71 degrees at that specific spot, and all of the bull trout will stop. Like, I and I went, I found the school, and there was like 180 bull trout, you know, all stacked up, and like it um, so that like that's another if you're not finding them, that could be another thing is a temperature barrier. And then the third thing is this the the calendar. Um, so the earliest fish start moving in May, and the latest fish start moving in July. Um, and once September hits, stop fishing for them because they're dropping eggs. Um but so if you can kind of say, okay, this is a 180-mile migration corridor and it's July 30th, you know, if I'm two-thirds up this corridor, that's probably where the fish are. Um and also they're huge. You can see them. Like you don't have to fish to find out if they're there. So, like, you know, if there's a road that goes 80 miles along the river, just like stop at every pool and just look for fish.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's been clear water, and yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00And that's that's another thing is they need, you know, really, really clean water.
SPEAKER_01Do you uh remember any kind of I don't know, light bulb moments or breakthroughs in your bull trout fly fishing experience where you kind of said, ah, and that kind of helped your odds of catching them or you know, helped you take it to the next level when you're fishing for bull trout?
SPEAKER_00Um learning that they were nocturnal made a lot of things click into place. Um because I knew so I I I always knew that they moved really consistently, like, you know, regularly during the run. Like there might be a fish in a pool one day and then the next day it's not there, but I've never actually seen them moving. Yeah, you know, you always see them kind of hunkered down. And so it was always like a weird equation. It's like, well, I want to I want to find them in this choke point. So I would like fish a streamer in a choke point for hours and just have nothing. Um, but when I learned that they move at night, it made it a lot easier. You know, you get up early while they're still active, like while they have that adrenaline going from the move, yeah, they're much more likely to chase something and eat it.
SPEAKER_01So even if they are kind of done moving, they're still as they're still amped up enough to to go for yeah, they're still they're still turned on.
SPEAKER_00I mean, bull trout have two modes, you know, they're like huskies, it's like they're either on or off.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so you might find a pot of you know, 15 fish and they're all just laying on rocks, and you can drift everything you can think of past them, and they none of them will move. And other times, you know, the first as soon as a streamer hits the water, a bull trout will eat it, and then you got seven other bull trout trying to eat that bull trout. Gotcha. Okay. Whereas in that happened once on this trip too, which was incredibly exciting because my wife was there.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's right.
SPEAKER_00I had I had like an 18-inch bull trout, and three like 36 plus were fighting over him.
SPEAKER_02Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00And the 18-incher was like shredded when it when I got when he got to me. And when I released him, he immediately got eaten.
SPEAKER_01Oh man. Um that's crazy. It seems like they are just vicious, vicious fish.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, they're sharks, dude.
SPEAKER_01Super exciting. What are we missing? I want to get back to the art a little bit more before we wrap up. Uh, I had some questions about that, but what else can you tell me about bull trout that before we move on, you're like, I gotta, I got we we can't move on without this, Jason.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, I feel like and hopefully the listeners have like heard the passion for bull trout shine through.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's there, brother.
SPEAKER_00And um, you know, I'm in a unique place in our industry where I'm I'm not exactly a fishing influencer, but I have a wide reach. And so I feel like my my things hit a little differently than an influencer. It's like you see fly lords post something, and you're like, oh, you know, there's like a marketing machine and like blah, blah, blah. But when I post about fish, it's because it matters. And I want to use my platform to raise awareness of species like bull trout and species like Tyman and Arctic Char and Dolly Varden and the white-spotted char and all of these keystone species, like these incredibly important fish for our ecosystem, um, that I'm worried will be extinct by the time I'm old. You know, like that's a big fear that keeps me up at night sometimes is like, what if, like, what if I go back to one of my, you know, favorite bull trout fisheries next year and the population's gone?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, what if they built a dam? Or what if, you know, and the the conversation about um, you know, native native fish in their native range in general. I want to use my artwork um as a loudspeaker for that conversation. Um, because I I also reach a lot wider of an audience than you know, conservationists can. You know, like um politicians follow me and famous comedian comedians. And I mean, like Joe Rogan showed our Muskie clip a couple weeks ago. And it's like, you know, I have I have an opportunity to help save these animals and pivoting my artwork more in that direction. Um, so I don't know. Have you seen my Ghosts of the West series?
SPEAKER_01No, sir.
SPEAKER_00Um, so I've been making like bison skulls and bighorn sheep skulls. Oh, yeah, I've definitely seen that.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna ask you about that because it's not fish, but yeah. Well, it's that also looks tremendously difficult to do.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's so much harder, but it's so cool. Like they are so, so badass.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're cool. Um and yeah, the skulls and the horns and antlers and stuff. Yeah, I've seen that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that that's actually a precursor. It's it's kind of like a trial, a trial thing um for the next series I want to do, which is Ghosts of the Past. And I want to start making, and this, I don't expect sales to be big for this, but you know, we're in a place now where we can kind of make what we want and still, you know, make a good living.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but I want to start making animals that have gone extinct in North America in the past 10,000 years. Um, you know, there's obviously like the big ones that everybody knows, like the giant ground sloth and the woolly mammoth and the saber-toothed cats, and you know, all of these things essentially were hunted to extinction by primitive humans. But it's still happening, is the problem. The elephant cutthroat went extinct 100 years ago. You know, the Lahontans were almost gone.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know, it's it's still happening, it's happening less frequently on land. And I feel like that's another part of the problem for the fisheries is because people don't care about or don't even realize about fish like they do animals. You know, Colorado's fisheries are a great example because everybody's like, oh, you you know, have you these these giant, you know, invasive brown trout that are so huge and cool, and you know, and I want to go to Colorado to fish, and but I'm like, well, yeah, but they're invasive. Like the the analogy that I use is like, what if people took like destination big game hunting trips to go shoot like a horse in Kentucky, you know? It's like the same concept to me. You know, it's like what if all of the deer and all of the elk and all of the moose were gone and replaced with like domestic goats, and everyone was like, Oh, look how cool these goats are. You know, but I feel like it just doesn't hit the same because it's under the water and people don't see it. Like people people aren't aware that this is happening to these species.
SPEAKER_01Well, you've definitely shared a lot of your passion for today, so I think that's cool, man. And I think it's really cool that your art is a way for you to do that. So good for you, dude. Let's talk a little more about your art. Can you talk about the the teamwork aspect of it a little bit? And um I don't know if you're really using teamwork that much when you're fly fishing, but it just seems like a lot of the people that you're making art with are people that you like to fish with, and how does that play out for you as like a fly fishing artist?
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, I do fish a lot by myself. Um and I think it's because I'm so obsessive, like not many people want to put up with it. Um, but the the glass, you know, and there's a parallel for that too, because all of the prep work is solo. Um so like just this morning, uh funnily enough, I made a set of timing fins for the first glass timing.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um but yeah, I was just down there listening to podcasts, you know, with my headphones on and just making a bunch of fins. Um, and then, you know, all of the the finishing work is solo, you know, so I carve off that clear attachment. Uh, I make the stands, so that's all solo. But the the exciting part that everyone cares about is Is impossible to do by myself. Um, so the main the core team that we have is um uh our my wife and I's best friend, whose name is Kaya, who's the the taller guy that you see in the videos. Uh well I I'm the taller, he's six five, so he's pretty tall. Um and then you know, my wife Indigo, but she's usually behind the camera. Okay. Um, and then me. And it's it's uh it's almost like a pit crew kind of situation. Like one guy holds the tire, one guy holds the tool, and one guy, you know, does something else. Um, you know, because we all have roles that have to be played. So Kaya is like our main heavy lifter. Um he he sort of steers the piece. Um, in a way, he's almost more in control of the timeline and the direction of it than I am.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um because I work up the bubble and it it you know it takes it takes a lot of like wrestling with with uh you know the the piece, Kaya and I together to get it, you know, to where we can transfer. But once we transfer it onto the second blowpipe, Kaya's in charge, essentially.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00You know, my job is making the shape. You know, I have the hand tools, I have the hot torch, I work on the details and really just focus on a square inch at a time, essentially.
SPEAKER_01How much time limited? I mean, I would imagine you have to kind of like ready, ready break, like come up with the plan. This is I mean, I would there's probably similarities that it's kind of gonna happen a certain way each time, I would imagine. But how much like game planning do you have to do ahead of the action, you know?
SPEAKER_00Uh it depends on the fish. Um, so uh tall body fish have much more planning that needs to go into it.
SPEAKER_01Tall body fish with like a permit. Okay, gotcha.
SPEAKER_00Um, or something like that. Oh yeah, that seems but it's it's so much more challenging, and there's so much more that can go wrong um that we we kind of have a team pow-wow. But for trout, I mean it's like it's we don't even really have to communicate. It's almost like we communicate telepathically.
SPEAKER_01Okay, um you know, you've done it, you know, you got the system.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Kai, I mean, Kaya, indigo has helped with probably the past 500 fish. Okay, and Kaya has probably helped with the past 350 fish.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so it, you know, it in the beginning there was a lot of like verbal communication back and forth, and like this needs to happen now, and are you ready? And but now it's just we just read each other's body language and you know, that's cool, man. Go with the flow. Another thing about the teamwork is there's a guy um named Raven Sky River, who uh you know, he is in my opinion, the best glass sculptor in the world. Um, he's been uh when I was actually before I made the first fish, he made a sea turtle at one of the museums, like a life-size sea turtle, like photorealistic. And um, I actually got the chance to meet him three summers ago, and he watched me work, he watched me make a fish, and I asked him afterwards, I was like, if there's one thing that you could say I could improve on, what is it? And he was like, let your team do their job, you know, because like before that point, I was like, oh well, I I'm you know, it's my work. I have to be, you know, aware of what Kaya's doing and you know, makes her indigo's on schedule. But once he told me that, it was kind of freeing. You know, I was able to take a step back, focus on the shape, like the sculpting, the detail, the lines, the where things go, the proportion, and you know, Kaya and Indigo are the engine that makes everything work.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes it's important who's telling you, who's giving you advice, right? It's like, well, if this guy who I really look up to is telling me to chill out on with my team, then maybe that's a little bit different than just introspection or listening to somebody else, right? It's kind of like I could tell my kids to do something, uh, but it has a different it it's it lands differently when their coach tells them, right? It's like just a different perspective, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like because you're their yeah, you're their dad, you have to tell them to do things, but right it's almost like the experience when somebody you don't know buys a piece of artwork versus somebody you know. Yeah, I know that feeling, yeah. It's you know, I I do and I I don't really like selling work to people I know because they're really expensive, and sometimes I feel bad and I'm like, I don't, you know, you don't have you don't have to fork out 4,500 grand to to to support me. Like, you know, we're doing fine. Um but when somebody that's a complete stranger, you know, goes on your website, you know, sends you an email and and wants to to put a pair of trout in their house, you know, just because of the way they are, is yeah, it hits different than you know it's a confidence booster because you know that it's um reaching people that maybe you weren't expecting, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Or I I I don't know how to explain it, I guess, but I definitely have that feeling. I know what you mean. It's yeah, it's different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's I mean, and this might sound bad, but it's uh it's it feels more meaningful than when somebody you know buys your artwork. Because there's always that thing in the back of my head where it's like, are they doing this out of sympathy because they think I'm some schmuck that can't make a living, you know?
SPEAKER_01Well, I don't think you're a schmuck, and I uh that's just trying to make a living. I think it's beautiful artwork, and I really appreciate you sharing it. There's a couple other things I wanted to ask. Um the decisiveness. So it seems like you're operating really fast uh at certain points. When when when you're the one, so now you're you're moving, you have this medium that is finite in time, yes, no? I don't know if that's true even. Maybe maybe you have all the time in the world, but it seems like you have to kind of it's not like you can just sit there forever, right? You gotta make some decisions. Does that is that something that you've is that something you think about? Is that something that evolved? Is that something that when you were fly fishing changed at all when you had the new tools?
SPEAKER_00So um glasses on a loop. Like the timeline of a piece of glass is on a one minute and 20 second loop, right? Because you get it hot and then it cools and then it's hard, and then you get it hot and it's soft, and then it cools, and then it's hard. Right? So everything you do has to happen within the first 30 seconds of a heat, otherwise it sets up. Um that's why we need to make our moves in the studio fairly quickly. Because if I spend too much time farting around in my own head, it's gonna be cold by the time I touch it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, and that's you know, we I could do that infinitely and never get anywhere. You know, heat it up, think too much, and then it's cold. Heat it up, think too much, and then it's cold. So you really kind of develop this um, it's like almost like a gut instinct of where you need to go with what tool.
SPEAKER_01I feel like that's a gift as an artist as well, because your medium is limiting your you know, you have to do something, you know. You can't just stare at it and not paint. You can't just you know, like, get it done, dude. Let's let's get moving.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, okay, so that brings up the it drives me crazy when people say I'm talented because I'm not, I'm skilled.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00You know, you're not a talented painter, you're a skilled painter. The first time you picked up a paintbrush, was it amazing?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, so that's the difference between talent and skill. I don't have a gift for doing that. It's just, you know, 10,000 hours of practice has has wired my brain to to so that I can do it, you know, in a way that looks talented.
SPEAKER_01That's cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think that's that's that is something I I don't know. I I know some other artists feel that way because I've talked to them about it. But when people say, Oh, you're so talented, it drives me crazy.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know what they mean, but I understand your point. Yeah, and I and I would agree with you. I I it's one of the things about art and fly fishing that is appealing to me is the concept that with time and energy and practice and like focus, and like it's one of the reasons I have the podcast. I get to talk to folks like you, learn about things. Like I know more about fishing for bull trout now, and uh learn more about art, and it makes me a more skilled angler, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was gonna say that yeah, glot or fly fishing is not a talent, it's a skill. Like the last time you've ever seen anybody pick up a rod for the first time and make a cast.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Nobody's born with a talent for casting a fly line.
SPEAKER_01That's a wonderful um way of looking at it, and I really appreciate you saying that. Uh, not just for the artists, but the fly fishers out there, because I think, especially on this show, that's one of the things that I emphasize is the the long-term journey, the progression, you know, the the learning from your mistakes or learning from the bad days on the river, the skunks, the days you go out and don't catch fish. So I think that's cool. And I think it's cool about your art that you have this medium, like I said, that you it almost forces you into like those reps. You gotta get going, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And the the glass has memory. So like if you screwed up, like it you can't undo a move. Um, you know, you can kind of melt things out a little bit, but it every every time you touch it, it will it will show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Martin.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna start wrapping it up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Are we doing okay? Did we go in a total tangent direction or kicked ass, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I wasn't expecting to talk as much about bull trout, but I'm glad that we did.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, I I think I mean, and the reason that I'm so willing to talk about bull trout is because that's the the the people who create those conservation dollars are the anglers. Yeah. Um, you know, the people who create the demand for the conservation are the people who are going out and trying to catch these fish.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I it's something that I've figured out not just about angling, but hunting as well, you know. That's yeah, and people care about it, you know, they want that resource to remain, and it's um it's not always you know, a hunter or a fisherman isn't necessarily just like they could be very good stewards of the resource, I guess, even though they are hunting and fishing the creatures that you know could possibly be in danger of being extinct, like you talked about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the you know, I I do get asked pretty often, well, if you care about you know these threatened fish so much, why are you sticking you know fish hooks in their mouths? Um, but uh and I use the uh the anti-poaching measures in Africa as like the ultimate example. So elephants and lions are threatened, but they give out tags, you know, extremely expensive tags that bring tons of money into these small communities and they they mobilize the local population to change, like you know, if if like the poachers are threatening the locals livelihood, they're much more likely to you know take action on a small scale. Yeah, and like I feel like that's the thing is if it's some some dude in a you know in a suit on uh you know trying to pass a bill for bull trout protection, that isn't gonna do anything. It's it's the local communities that care about the animals and want to see them, you know, survive. That's what's gonna stop the dams. That's gonna what's gonna get the dams taken down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, that's that's what's gonna help these species survive, not you know, not some nebulous, you know, conservation effort with politicians and whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_01I I understand what you're saying. Martin, how can people find out more about you, find your art, and just check out what you're doing, maybe buy a piece or or see what you're up to? Where can people uh check you out?
SPEAKER_00Um, so the best place to go is my Instagram for sure. And are you gonna link stuff or yeah?
SPEAKER_01That's why I'm asking. Put all this in the show notes. So go ahead with everything you want people to find.
SPEAKER_00Cool. So the best place to go is my Instagram, which is at Martin underscore Gurden underscore glass. And um I usually try and post uh about once a day, um, except for you know when things are going on in my personal life. Like I just had surgery, so I didn't post for a couple weeks. Um and then if you want to purchase something, uh my website is martingordonglass.com. Um, you can also just shoot me a message on Instagram. But if you want to see like the exciting, you know, highlight reel from the studio, the the videos we post on Instagram are the place to be. Um also we're I mean, we got a ton of exciting stuff like coming down the pipeline. We're making the first time. Uh we're actually making okay, we're making the first largemouth bass. Cool, man. I am shocked that we've never had an order for a largemouth bass before.
SPEAKER_01You would think.
SPEAKER_00But well, it's I think it's where like how much the toys in each different fishery costs. You know, because for a trout fisherman, you can get the whole shebang for 20 grand, you know, drift boat, waiters, tons of rods, whatever. You know, but for a bass fisherman, you got you don't you're not gonna buy a glass bass because you got the eighty thousand dollar boat to save, you know.
SPEAKER_01Maybe, yeah. That's one theory. That's a theory.
SPEAKER_00Have you done smoglies? Um yes, but um, it was a long time ago, and so I actually took it off everything. I you know, okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, we're venturing into bass. I think that's cool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. The sunfish in general are something I'm really excited for. Uh bass or sunfish.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if yeah, lots of colors and stuff too, with the with those fish. Any uh any plants for like tropical fish or you um you already done that?
SPEAKER_00Less less tropical and more uh blue ocean. Um so I actually this morning I made the fins for yellow fin tuna.
SPEAKER_01Cool, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, so tuna, we made the first Mahi a couple weeks ago. Um really want to get into swordfish, marlin, um, manta rays, whale shark. Um, you know, unless less like, you know, I'm I'm I'm more interested in again pivoting into the not species that people are targeting, but more like species that need our help, like whale sharks.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, we'll link to that stuff in the show notes so people can find it, and I'm excited for you, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, me too.
SPEAKER_01Last question. Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If you could go back to when you first started fly fishing and give yourself two pieces of advice, one more tactical, one more philosophical. What would you tell yourself to help you progress as a fly fisher?
SPEAKER_00Um one more tactical is fly lines are more important than rods.
SPEAKER_01Good.
SPEAKER_00Not like and then personal would be uh I don't even know though. I'm just like so content with how the journey is going.
SPEAKER_01It's not a regret, it's more just like advice. Like if you could go back and look at yourself and just say, hey man, like an example would be enjoy the time fishing with the people that you care about, you know. Or another one might be make sure you have fun, don't forget to have fun, you know, don't take it too seriously. Something like you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I guess I guess it would be big fish don't matter.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, because in in the quote that you read that I I had written is at the end, it's like I you know, I realized that fish aren't what I'm looking for. And I when I think of like the memories that I have from these trips I take, like this summer, you know, obviously that one specific fish and that one specific take was a wild ride. But you know, I'm I I think about you know, my wife and I in the backcountry, you know, with the truck set up, cooking out, and you know, the hikes that we did and you know the vistas that we we went to, and you know, that like that's that's what I take home with me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's like that, like that's what you know is like the the sustainable stoke, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Sustainable stoke.
SPEAKER_00You know, because if you're always going after that big fish, you're not gonna be happy unless you get the big fish.
SPEAKER_01But no, that is a great way to end it, man. Keep that sustainable stoke in mind. I like it. Yeah. Martin, it's been a real pleasure talking with you. I've really enjoyed learning about Bull Trout and like some of the stories that you told, and then just the some of the tactics that you shared as well. I think that's super cool. And uh, man, I'm excited for you. Uh, your art has always been exciting to me. It's been a pleasure talking to you about it, learning about it, and I'm excited for other people to see it. And mostly I'm just happy for you that you found a place in sobriety with fly fishing in your art and clarity, and you're you're married now, and it just seems like a great place for you, dude. So I'm genuinely happy for you. So thanks for being on the show, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thanks so much.
SPEAKER_01Thanks 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 waitouthair.com. If you want to make Wade Out There a part of your own fly fishing journey, please subscribe and share. Until next time, Wait Out There.