Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
Welcome to The Dead Drifters Society podcast, the ultimate destination for fly fishing addicts like us! I'm Andrew Barany, your host from beautiful Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. Join me as we bring together members of the fly fishing community to share stories, tips, tricks, and inspiration both on and off the water. Fly fishing is a lifelong learning experience that both elevates and humbles us. Let's dive into conversations about how this incredible passion has blessed our lives. Tight lines, my friends! Live on and fish on! For more information, email me at deaddrifterssociety@gmail.com
Incredible artwork by Riverwlkr: https://instagram.com/riverwlkr?igshid=MWI4MTIyMDE=
Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
Fly Fishing Insights and Adventures with Trout Tornado
Join us for an unforgettable conversation with Brian, a.k.a. Trout Tornado, as we unravel the secrets of fly fishing's enchanting art. Get ready to understand why the Squimpish Clouser fly is a game-changer for low water conditions and how the balance between simplicity and efficiency can lead to spectacular catches. With 25 years of experience, Brian shares his journey from his college days in New York State.
As we explore the diverse world of fly fishing styles, prepare to deepen your knowledge of dry flies, Euro nymphing, and micro streamers. Learn from Brian's personal anecdotes about mastering fly fishing techniques through dedication and the invaluable lessons gained from seasoned experts. Whether transitioning from rivers to lakes or adapting to seasonal changes, fly fishing offers a rich tapestry of experiences that promise endless learning and fulfillment. Brian emphasizes the importance of presentation, adaptability, and the continuous pursuit of mastery, making fly fishing a rewarding and ever-evolving skill.
In this episode, practical advice takes center stage as we discuss essential strategies for elevating your fishing adventures. From the benefits of meticulous note-taking to the advantages of using two-handed rods, our conversation is packed with tips for both novices and veteran anglers. We also delve into the role of technology in refining casting techniques and maintaining gear, ensuring that every fishing trip is a success. With insights on equipment selection, fly patterns, and the joys of guiding, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone passionate about the art of fly fishing.
I want. It's basically an infomercial for the fly, because I've caught fish on the fly. I believe in it. It's something that I carry in my fly box. I want guys to be able to look at it and go, okay, this guy's not full of, you know, bs, he can actually fish it and it'll catch fish. It gives them the confidence you know that, uh, that they need Um. The water that I was fishing in that video is atypical water to what all my friends fish. There was um particular, two. Two decent brown trout came out of frog water. It's like swampy Wyatt mud. You know you would not fish that water in July and August. If you did, you would catch maybe smallmouth or carp, but you would not catch brown trout. Welcome to Deadly Drip, drip, drip Drip Society.
Speaker 2:Welcome back, dead Drifter. On this episode we sit down with Brian, also known as Trout Tornado. This man has a wealth of knowledge because he's kept a log for 25 years of his fishing journeys and adventures. I really enjoyed my chat with him and I hope you enjoy this episode. Well, welcome to the podcast, brian. How's it going?
Speaker 1:Excellent, hey, thank you for the invite, andrew. I'm super excited to be here and talk to you today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no worries, the thing that got me like when I'm scouring Instagram for guests to come on. You know, I'm not really looking at followers or anything like that. What I look for is either a video intrigued me and I'm like, hmm, I wonder what this person's story is. And that little fly that you tied the clouser, the squimpish clouser. That's something I've been trying so sparse during the spring and that's like basically what it is. It's maybe not tied as a clouser, but I've been having super fun time on it. So, seeing that, I was like, oh, that is a perfect one. And uh, yeah. So I thought, hey, get them on here and look at us now I'm uh, yeah, I happy to be here.
Speaker 1:I'm also excited that you saw the Squimpish Clouser and liked it. You know my tying is really dependent upon different situations that I get into and that Squimpish, you know, was just designed for low water conditions and I don't know about you, but where I am this past year we've just experienced a hell of a drought, so all the rivers that are typically rocking and rolling are low and I love clousers. I just wanted something that would still be able to fish well, fish light and cast with a five weight, something nice and light that everybody has and I think you may have seen, like my eye before you tie it, video it just yeah, it's been rocking it for me too you know simplicity, there's something to it.
Speaker 2:When you're out fishing, I mean, you know I tie all sorts of flies. Some of them take me an hour plus and some of them take me, you know, two minutes and they all catch fish. So, being a guide, I guide out in British Columbia, canada, and I don't have time to tie. You know 21 and a half hour flies for clients, you know, even if they don't lose them right off the bat, which that can happen. So you know, putting a certain amount of time into a fly, I'd way rather the fly be effective than be fancy.
Speaker 1:Right, and yeah, I'm, I'm with you because at the end of the day, like I'm, I'm standing down where I keep all my flies and everything, and when I look at my fly box or fly boxes, you know it's clear that I've gone from complex to uh to simple and really the the presentation, especially when it comes to streamers, really nymphs anything. The presentation is where, when it comes to streamers, really nymphs anything. The presentation is where the rubber hits the road.
Speaker 2:If you have the best fly in the world and you can't fish it you aren't going to catch anything, it's true, and I mean casting, and being able to cast a fly all day long is much more useful than having like a big chunk of meat that you know you can only flip out there once in a while and you don't even get the opportunity to really fish it properly. I played a little. I do a lot of steelheading and and stuff like that. So learning about materials and how to kind of bring down the quantity of material that I put on one fly has really come, and something I've noticed, especially the last year and this year, is how a sparse fly, its movement, is just so much more fluid. Uh, way easier to pull out of the water, easier in the air, get down faster. You're really not losing anything by, you know, reducing the amount of material and just creating that silhouette, or or however you want to put it, so that yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm with you.
Speaker 1:I mean, transparency in the fly is super important. I mean you can. You can build a fly that's super thick and it's not going to have any movement, no matter what materials you put in there. You take marabou, which is probably one of the most fluid materials in the water, and you wrap and pack that too tight. It's not going to move in the water, it's going to look like crap. So having that, you know the, using your materials wisely, placing them where they should be on the fly and allowing them to move, and thinking of water as one of the components in your fly really goes a long way to being simplistic.
Speaker 2:So let's, let's rewind time a little bit. Where did the fly fishing journey start for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's see, I'm in my mid-50s and when I was in my 20s I was still in college and I was teaching environmental education for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and every week we'd get a new group of kids. They would come in, they would stay with us for a week and one of the things that we would teach them about is fly fishing and I had grown up with a spin rod in hand and you know catching bass, pike, walleye. I used to ride my bike to the local trout stream and use spinners and you know worms and catch and keep and it was awesome.
Speaker 1:But when I was at this kids camp, every week they would have somebody come in and teach the kids how to tie flies and teach them how to cast a fly rod, how to build a leader and do all the different knots. And one of the instructors there, floyd Frank, who is a legend, a local legend here in New York, in the Catskills, and he took me under his wing and, just you know, realized that I had the interest. I was the biggest kid in the group, just absolutely loved it, and that's where it all started. So you know what's that? 35 plus years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool. I mean starting off at a young age and just always being in it. That's like my dream for my son, because the life of fly fishing, or life of fishing in general, is just a good one. Um, where did the fly tying come in? Was that pretty quick into it? It.
Speaker 1:So I still have my first fly around here somewhere. Um, and it was tied at that camp. Uh, I couldn't afford fly tying materials and at the time it was kind of tough to uh get into. Um, but I graduated college. I mean I tied some rudimentary flies. I was lucky I was able to steelhead fish. We have a great, we have Lake Ontario and the tributaries that run in and out of that and I went to the School of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse so I was able to be a bomb and go up and fish for steelhead up there. So I tied some steelhead flies, very basic. I was fortunate enough to catch some fish but I really got into it after I graduated from college.
Speaker 1:There's a club that I belong to. They're called Capital District Fly Fishers. It's a small group of guys, got maybe 120, 130 guys in the club itself and there were two individuals in particular who took me under their wing, one actually I think both are nationally published. One is Jay Fishy Fulham. He wrote all sorts of books and articles and fly fishing and fly fishing journals and the other is John Perquorum, who is a commercial tire, and both of them you know they were awesome.
Speaker 1:They took me under their, their wing. They showed me everything from you know, trout flies, nymphs, wet flies, dry flies to streamers and and I had a. I still have another. All these guys I still hang out with um another individual who was with a um a guide and he used to barter uh glasses for a trip on the on the river, and he took me and uh, the guy's name is Bob Hesse and he showed me a bunch of flies and knots and and cool things. So really I owe um everything to those four different guys um who took me under their wing and just helped me see fly fishing and took me out and helped me learn how to fish those flies.
Speaker 2:When you say learn how to fish those flies, that's something that can be pretty easily overlooked when we're really learning. You know it's a layer system in my mind and I teach that as such. You know's a layer system in my mind and I teach that as such. You know you can flip it out and it be in the water and you assume you're fishing. But as the years go on and you really gather information and then start to understand what's going on, start to realize like, oh wow, I used to never fish these flies properly. What are some of the bigger hurdles that you can recall in fly fishing? Any hurdles?
Speaker 1:Oh man, I'm still learning today and there's still a lot of hurdles that I'm experiencing, so I'm by no means perfect. Probably the biggest thing you know I'm fishing some pretty technical waters. We have um, the Delaware river system out by me, which is big and huge, and the, the trout, are known for being real cranky. And you know I I started my journey fly fishing with um dry flies and my buddy Bob Hesse. We would go out in his guide boat and we'd, you know, sit and we'd wait and we'd watch and you know I'd present my flies over and just have refusal after refusal after refusal. And you know, as someone who had used a, you know a spin reel for so many years and caught fish on spinners and then to just be humbled by the trout and the fish, that was a real experience to learn. You know the down and across the reach cast, extending your drift, and how to do that, how to approach the water and be careful and be quiet and stealthy, and you know all those different things.
Speaker 1:And I think the other big was Jay Fishy, fulham. He had a beautiful pond, it was private, we were spoiled. We can go back with big, you know, deer, poppers and streamers, and I think the biggest lesson I learned there was patience with the retrieve of the streamers and just getting the streamer out, letting it and this is more poppers, but letting it settle and then doing very gentle motions and having confidence in your fly and your materials that the fish are going to be fooled and they're going to crush the fly. I think you know those were, you know, some of the biggest lessons that I learned, but I've I've made so many freaking mistakes. It's not funny as have I.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's it's kind of the beauty of fly fishing in itself. I've mentioned things like this before. But you know, with a spinner you cast it out, you know you can use the rod to give it action and and reel it in, but you don't really get it like go home, you know you don't sit at your your spinner tying bench and tie spinners all night trying to crack a code that you may not even get. The same you weather pattern for next time you go, or the same exact scenario. So it's just like you got to take that home, sit down, be like wow, that didn't really look like it was moving because I used one full pack of Marabou.
Speaker 2:Maybe I should dial it back a little bit you know, and then you go out next time and it's, it's, it's looking great, but now you're not getting any um refusals or something. And what's the next challenge? So it's, it's such an engaging way to catch fish. Uh, what's what's kind of your favorite? You know, I'm assuming you like it all, but what's your kind of favorite go-to? I would rather streamer fish or dry fly fish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my favorite today and I'll say that that way is streamer fishing and it's the micro streamers and just sizing and dialing everything down. Sizing and dialing everything down, I've but, you know, taking a step back. If we had had this conversation, you know, 15, 20 years ago it would have been dry flies, and then, you know, 15 years back it would have been a Euro nymph thing. And then, you know, 10 years back, it would have been wet flies. I really I've done some kind of weird things, I would say atypical things, where I've dedicated myself just to one style of fly fishing from anywhere from three to five years, like micro streamers, for example.
Speaker 1:I think this is my sixth or seventh year where you know I'm really focused on streamers and learning how to fish them. Before that it was wet flies, you know, going out with Davey Watton and learning from the masters, and that's kind of what I've done, just to try and hone my skills, going out with awesome guides, because what I realize is you know to be able to proficiently do one form of fly fishing and do it really well, you really have to immerse and dedicate yourself to the books, to videos, to magazine articles, to podcasts, to everything to be able to understand all the nuances. And last year and I know I'm kind of rambling on here, but last year was the first year that I brought everything together, um, you know, carrying wet flies, dry flies and streamers all with me on my, you know, my raft or my water master, so I had all of them available to me and um, it was just, it was just awesome. Yeah, so no, I, that's good, it's good for available to me, and um, it was just it was just awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so no I. That's good, it's good for podcasts to kind of give it more. Uh, it's tougher with the one one short word answer. Um, yeah, I like that because I'm someone that had learned, like on vancouver island, you know and there's other places too that you can do this. But if you follow the hatches, if you follow the seasons and if you follow everything going on, all the different species coming in, come now, whatever you can really do it all. You can go from spay fishing to streamer, to nymphing euro, nymphing bobber rigs, you know all that.
Speaker 2:Hit up lakes, and I like that aspect because you know, oh, river's blown out, but it's early April. Chronomid fishing in the lakes, let's go. You know, you can just bounce back and forth. Oh, salmon eggs are starting to hatch. I guess the sea run cutthroats are going to start moving in. Let's chase those today. Oh, that didn't work, we're going tomorrow. Well, let's go see what the river's like. Oh, now we're throwing clouser minnows, you know, around, and no matter what the scenario is, you kind of got a picture of what you need to do. Is you kind of got a picture of what you need to do? I do really like how you're saying that you kind of immerse yourself.
Speaker 2:Uh, I've been doing that with streamer fishing the last few years and it's it's been a wild, awesome road getting some. You know, yeah, really breaking down what, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, and starting to see the patterns of like, okay, you know, like I'm pretty confident if I do this and this, run the whole way through, I'm going to get something, because I know that, that you know bait fish, the way it's going to swim across. You know, I have confidence in that, in, in that tie, and they're hungry. They've been fishing good. Today, like you kind of know, it's going to happen. You don't know the scenario, so it's exciting, right. But when I first got into streamer fishing, how many days of you know thinking I'm doing the right thing, and then, oh, yeah, really, I'm not even getting it down or I'm not letting it rest or whatever the scenario. So, immersing yourself, learning about a lot.
Speaker 2:I fish with a lot of different people through guiding and just like friends that you know. I've met people and I'm like watching them, I'm rowing them and I'm like what the heck are they doing right there? And then they get a fish and I'm like, oh, whoa, okay, well, then they do it again. And I'm like, who are you Like? This is awesome. So, yeah, there's always more to learn about it. You can always take in something, and I mean I've I've had a 14 year old. I talked about this on the last podcast. I watched a 14 year old just shredded on the streamer. He could catch any fish that came close to the boat. You'd get it. You'd get a bite on it, like rip it out of the water, flip it behind himself, get that fish. And I was just like this kid's going to be a legend, you know. So it's cool. Um, it's really cool. So micro streamers for you. Do you like big streamers? Are they just hard to toss? Like what's your? You just like the small stuff, because that's more what fish are eating.
Speaker 1:No, it's well. So I started, I think, like anybody that gets into streamers they, you know, watch Kelly Gallop and read his book and you go, holy shit. I can recreate that on my own stream and my own river. Um, and I fished for an entire year using the Gallop setup. So I had, you know, my seven weight. I had my shovel line, you know the sink tip, the big giant flies, and I think I turned one fish in a solid year of just dedicating it, you know, dedicating myself to it.
Speaker 1:And I I went down to in, uh, on the East coast, we have a fly fishing show that's down in Jersey and, uh, it's called the fly fishing show. That's down in Jersey and it's called the Fly Fishing Show. And George Daniel was doing a little presentation down there and he fishes streams that are similar in size to mine. So you know, you can have. You know some of the rivers are big, but some of them are only 15, 20 yards across. You can't cast a gallop sex dungeon without a back cast. If you're in a drip boat, yeah, okay, I get it, but in these tight quarters you can't.
Speaker 1:And george was talking and he showed some videos about, you know, fishing small waters and fishing smaller flies, and the light bulb went on and I was like, yep, I can do that because I can roll cast like a mofo and I know where the fish are right, Because I caught them on streamers and wet flies and nymphs. And so I went out, I got all excited, I got some of the you know the heads that have that big heavy front end on them and I was able to roll cast smaller flies and all of a sudden I started connecting with fish and so it was based more on a desire to catch fish and a desire to be able to fish my smaller rivers and to be successful, because I knew the trout were there but man, they just did not respond to those big streamers at all I find and maybe you might be on the same page anything under three inches is a pretty good likelihood that you'll catch almost anything in a river.
Speaker 2:Then when we get to like the four to five inch streamer, uh, we're looking for kind of a crazier fish and then the like six inch streamers plus that takes a special psycho. That's out there. They're out there, but did you get that fly to his face and entice him? So I had the similar thing where, like you know, vancouver island, um, bc, in general, if you're standing on a bank you're probably not having a ton of back cast room. Obviously there's systems with nice runs that you'd have plenty of room to do so, not so much in my scenario. So when I, prior to having a water master or my, my three man raft uh, there I didn't streamer fish, I maybe like did micro Euro streamers, but wasn't actually like doing it and it was the same reason as you're saying didn't have the back cast room, I'd lose a lot of flies. I didn't know enough about it. I'd caught them on nims, I'd caught them on dries, but like it just wasn't, you know, linking up so being able to cast a fly or roll, cast a fly out and get a swing in and and work. It kind of came more once I really was doing the, the spay fishing and then messing around with not just putting big steelhead flies on or specific steelhead flies on and putting more like minnows and and small sculpin patterns. Then I started getting trout and I was like, oh yeah, well, that's crazy. And then I started getting trout and I was like, oh yeah, well, that's crazy. And then I started, you know, swinging for brown trout in Alberta at night and and just a slow swing, no bumps or anything, or not a ton, and getting these massive grabs from these browns and I was like, all right.
Speaker 2:So now when I streamer fish, I'm doing a little bit of everything. I'm swinging runs, I'm doing gentle bumps as it goes through the swing, doing a rapid retrieve off of the slow swing, doing a slow retrieve the next. You know, I'm really in my mind, I'm trying to imagine what's down there and what someone saw and that didn't work for him. Okay, next cast. Well, this is going to work for him, because it's going to be different.
Speaker 2:And submerging myself mentally in the water, I find has really you know what I mean has really brought up the fish count, because now it's it's not so much just like I do this repetitive motion and sometimes it works out. Now I'm actually down there. I see a boulder. I'm like I'm going to let it swing so gentle to that boulder and I'm going to rip it away from that boulder as fast as I possibly can. All of a sudden I get this massive chase and you know, fish climbs on or he misses, whatever, but it's you know. The more you think about what you're really doing down there and like, oh, it gets deeper on that back side. Well, give it more time, pay patience on that right yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean the other.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I've thought through a lot and adapted is the type of line that I use to get that presentation out. So let me just give you an example, like if you're in a small tight stream and you have a Skagit head on and you throw that Skagit out, or you have a client cast that Skagit and they don't know exactly what they're doing and they can't create a tight loop to drop your fly ahead of your fly line and your leader, you're going to get this crumble and massive crap that goes on to the water and if the water levels are low enough it's going to scare every fish within. You know 50 feet of where that cast landed. So I've learned like high water, I'll use Skagit, skagit lines. Lower water, I'm using Scandi lines, or I'm actually using my old you know five weight that I've nicknamed the evil Knievel because I broke it so many times on big fish.
Speaker 1:You know it's just. You have to adapt the line and the presentation for the fish. The other thing that I'll mention too is that I do a lot of manipulation. The majority of the big fish that I catch I start my cast it's not typically a down and a cross, it's more of an upstream cast and bringing my flies down and a lot of that has to do. You know, I heard you talking about the boulder and the positioning of the rock and mentally picturing where those fish are, and you're absolutely right. Like I think of that as like the kill zone, right, if you've got that rock, there's like that five foot area around that rock where that big predator fish could be sitting.
Speaker 1:A lot of the time what I try to do is get my fly at least 10 to 15 feet above that.
Speaker 1:If it's in faster water, I'm going to cast further upstream so that my fly is coming down and then I'm going to try to manipulate my fly. I call it like the J hook where it comes down, if you can vision like a J on the water where it comes down and then it kind of swings out and it almost stalls right in front or right behind that that rock Um and those upstream, downstream, manipulating presentations, the fish don't typically see them and so they respond, you know, very positive, because it's, if you look at the majority of the guys, at least by me I don't know about you it's that I'm going to cast down 45 degrees, I'm going to strip or manipulate my streamer, settle it out, take two, three steps down, cast, do that kind of thing again. But if you can change it up and be creative with your casting, with your angles going, you know, crazy upstream, you know you may just uh find a new class of fish that you didn't know were in those same runs, because you're presenting something completely yeah, 100, yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:I agree with that. You know, when I'm pounding the banks off of the raft, a lot of the times I'll cast straight across, throw an upstream men and start stripping. Well, I'm in motion on the raft, or assuming I'm rowing, I'm not, Anyways, anyways, that fly lands basically straight across, then upstream, then it gets turned upriver and then we start stripping it and it turns downriver. I think of things as presentation. Well, we should all be thinking about it as like how we're present presentating our flies. But the more you can do in one cast, so let's, let's use your own infing as an example. You cast out, you get the drop, now you're getting a dead drift and now it's starting to rise and swing across into a hang. You know, four to five presentations have happened. Sometimes you get them on right when they hit the water. It's dropping, boom, fish eats it. Then on the drift, dead, drift, boom, eats it. It starts to swing out and rise, it eats it. It's hanging there, just fluttering on the hang, it eats it. So there's so many different opportunities and you might not visually get to see which one enticed it or got it to move, or got its curiosity, get its attention. But the more you can do within one cast, but also keep it in the water right, the longer you have it in the water. That's something I'll fight some people on because they'll they'll start to dead drift and then pull it out and cast again and I'm like hey, relax, like we got time.
Speaker 2:Today. It's, you know, the first hour of our eight hour day. Like, let it in there. You know, I've seen, I've seen fish hit things. People are talking to me like well, what do you think? Like where do you think like the fish would be sitting and their rods kind of behind them with the fly in the water, and all of a sudden they're like oh, I got a fish. And I'm like you don't know, man, like you can have a pretty good idea, but if your fly's not in the water as long as possible, so I'd rather like leave, leave it in the water, the hang, play out the hang.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, if you got a little bump on a certain kind of scenario, I would try to replicate it and orco, completely different. So, like if I was down swing and I got a grab, maybe I'm going to move down a little bit further and cast up and rip it down. You know, change it up, because a lot of the times you know if they're going to eat again or get curious again. It might not be from the same thing. So, just playing around with it and you start to notice these things over the years and then you realize like wow, like that 14 year old kid, his dad was a guide so he got to go out with guides all the time. So he fished scenarios that you know multiple times and he's seen it work. So he knows when we were like passing a spot, tight quarter and he like flips it in and raises his rod and just starts dead drifting and he got a bite and then he throws it behind himself Like it's not even a cast and then gets the fish. I'm like that kid gets it, like he's seen some shit happen that he's able to replicate some of that over the years.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and not being robotic about it, you know maybe steelhead especially, I haven't fished out on the East Coast. So out here on the West Coast a lot of the times with our winter steelhead it's, you know, very slow, methodical swings, getting the right depth, patience. You know not rushing it, whereas with some streamers sometimes it's a little bit quicker pace and other days they like it a little bit slower. But you'd only get to know that if you're trying multiple things in a day, you would. You'd lose out on a lot of fish if you always just I have to cast it down on this one angle and wait till the end of my swing to retrieve. You know, change it up, be, don't be a robot yeah, there's.
Speaker 1:There's a couple things to that that you made made me think of. One is my my fly box selection. So I used to just have a single fly box that had streamers in it. Today I have three different key boxes that are loaded and ready to go and of course I have others that are backup. But the three boxes that I have, one is dedicated for low, low water conditions, another is for medium and another is for high, and in those different boxes, like clousers right, we started with the squimpish clouser that was, as I mentioned, created for low water conditions.
Speaker 1:I have another fly that's called an M&M, which is a very small game changer. It's only about an inch and a half. That's in there. I've got another that's called the Mini Dalai Lama. That's also in there, very small light, designed to suspend, designed for that shallow, you you know, and low, low flows, and then medium. You know, I start getting into laser legals and peanuts and variations on those. I've got, um, a video on a fly called the copper top. It's a take on gallop's laser, um, which is just, it's a killer color combo. And then I get into my high water stuff and it's, you know, big peanuts. It's a drunk Drea's. It's big closers, um, you know, and if, if you go out onto the stream and you're always bringing the exact same streamer box and the exact same streamer presentation and line and everything else, you're going to miss out on some pretty good opportunities.
Speaker 1:And I think we also started talking about, you know, simplicity in flies. You don't have to be complex in your flies to be successful. I do. I don't know what your thoughts are, I'm interested to hear.
Speaker 1:But you know, as far as color, you know I've got a rainbow of flavors in my fly box as well. So, you know, streamers, I've got olives, blacks, browns, ginger, white, you know. And then some variations and combinations of those, those, but those are like my primary colors some chartreuse and again, if you go and you think about it from water conditions first. So if it's low, I'm going to show up with a scandi line, a long leader, and my light flies. If it's, you know, medium or high, I'll show up with my mediums and highs, I'll use my Skagit. I'll use a different leader, one that's a little bit shorter, a little bit heavier, and I don't know. You start thinking it kind of in that way, systematically, for me at least, it gives me. When I get up in the morning and I look at the usgs flows, it gives me an idea of saying okay, water's high, this is where I need to start, and then at least you have a foundation to go from.
Speaker 2:From there, I, I agree, I got in my uh streamer box. It has everything from outrageous like you shouldn't eat that if you're a fish to. You know micro stuff that I'm like curious if they see it. I know they do. But like you know, like my mind, I'm like there's a little bit of everything colors have been a big thing uh you know, there's.
Speaker 2:There's been days where I've had clients and a white streamer you just can't compare anything to it that day. And then the next day someone's like, oh, I'd love to try streamers. And I throw on that white one and it's just not doing it. And then I go to a 10,. You know, I tie up some mini Dalai Lamas as well. That's at least what I call them. It's just rabbit with some flax, super simple, though Takes me less than five minutes. I can tie, you know, 20 of them real quick and but they're so effective. And then I got multiple sizes going. So I have, you know, if I find a pattern that you know, these mini Dalai Lamas, a normal size Dalai Lama, we know they work. And then I have some more complex things that I like to fish on my own. I'll let clients fish them too.
Speaker 2:But you know, if someone's already lost five flies, maybe I'm not going to put on a half an hour tide fly, you know. So play, play within your means. It's like gambling. You never know what you'll get. So you know, I, I, I'm still new enough to fly fishing. I mean, I've been fly fishing. So my more successful years if we only really counted them, like I could easily say like I've only understood a portion of what I'm really doing out there in the last four years, and that's you know. With so much time on the water it's been, I've been learning quick.
Speaker 2:But the movement of a fly, I think, is really important. So if I can't cast it, what's the point? Or if it's going to cause, you know, I've tied flies that have, you know, some kind of popper head, even though it's a wet fly. So it's not a popper head, but like something that's pushing an extreme amount of water. Well, halfway through the day my shoulder's basically blown up. I'm tired, I don't, you know. Oh, there's the spot coming.
Speaker 2:My cast is terrible. It balls up. I don't present it well, haven't caught a fish on it. It looks damn good and the theory's there. So then I do, you know a mini version of that that's pushing way less water. I can cast it way easier. I'm confident with it all of a sudden, because I'm able to get it into the spots easily. I'm able to fish it all day. So I learned how it, how it moves, you know. So I have the the privilege of being on the water, you know, quite probably over 200 days a year, and not all of that is me fishing. But now I'm watching all different anglers fish so I can see when someone knows what they're doing and then I can also see when someone has no idea what they're doing. They might and they and they might both catch fish yeah.
Speaker 2:And one might be catching fish because he knows what he's doing and the other is catching fish because he has no idea what he's doing. He's like, should I strip? And I'm like yeah, and then he gets a fish. He's like well, and I'm like, uh, yeah, and then he gets a fish.
Speaker 2:He's like well I didn't even move it and I'm like, yeah, that works too, don't worry about it. You know, the one species that I have the overthinking bug on is is steelhead. I overthink it all the time. I ask people I'm like that I've been fishing with for years. I'm like you think I should just leave it there. And they're like, I don't know, man, your guess is as good as mine.
Speaker 2:But you know the the confidence comes with time and knowing what you're doing. So when you're talking fly selection, uh, you know, I'd I'd rather start with one pattern that I tie in multiple colors, and I learned to work it. Cast it upstream, cast it downstream, yeah, cast it. You know, sometimes when I'm standing above, let's say, a corner or some riffles or something, I'll cast it across stream, whatever, upstream, I don't care, let it swing out. And then I'll hold my rod to the right and then, as it's done, swinging all the way to the right, I'll bring it back to the left and maybe give it a couple twitches as it's going back to the left. What that fish is seeing is something just passed its nose. It looked at it. It was like, yeah, that was good. And then it's coming back around, you know. So, like I'm, I'm trying to get into the psychology here. I'm trying to, I'm trying to mess with those fish to think like, why wouldn't I eat that?
Speaker 1:It's right there yeah, I, I'm with you, I mean, when it comes to fly selection. So I have I'm staring right now at my um, I have a computer database, so I'm uber nerd about this stuff, and I have, uh, 25 years worth of fishing trips on this database and in it I've got got notes and comments. So you know where did I go, what was the flow, what were the conditions, what did we catch. So that's, you know. That's one. The other is lessons learned, right? Because every time I go out I learn something, whether it's about the water, about the fish, the fly, the presentation. So what did I learn? So I can, you know, I don't want to learn it twice If I can keep a note and pay attention to it, I'll go back to it. Then I've got and I mentioned, I've just been doing streamers for the past six years.
Speaker 1:So I have my streamer tracker and I've probably tried about, I would say, 100 different fly patterns not, you know, exaggerating and every time I would take one out, probably, like you right, you bring a new fly out, you test it, you try it, you see how it does, either give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, right, you go through a river and you're like. I know I fished the shit out of this fly. I didn't even get a fish to turn on it. It looks great, like you just said, but I'm never gonna use it again, right? So those are the flies I give away. But my streamer tracker has all those different flies in it. Then I've got it by month, so you know January through December and then what fly work during what month. And let's say, for example, it's the squimpish clouser, so I'll have that in there, but I'll have olive, I'll have black, I'll have chartreuse yellow and, believe it or not, depending on the you know the time of the year and the month, there'll be different colors and different patterns that work better than others. There's some other stuff in there, because I heard you say watermaster, I drift. I love my watermaster too, so I've got float lengths in there. And then the last part is river location. So every river that I go to we have different names, just like you, for all the different pools. And it's very interesting again, depending on the time of the year, the water temperature etc. The fish will migrate and be in different sections of the river.
Speaker 1:So if I can go back and I can look at my notes and comments, I'll be like, okay, I'm going out tomorrow, it's January. This river is the one that I've done the best on. This is the pattern that's knocked it out of the park. For me, you know, for the past couple of years this is the color that's been the best. Again, it's uber nerdy, but it gives me a leg up. So I'm not starting from fresh. When I get out there, I'm at least saying this the rod, this is the line, this is the fly, this is the color. And then, you know, I can look at what my top three or so are and really get a strong vantage point. So I try to use a little bit of uh, you know science to help me when I'm trying to, you know, figure out where I'm going to start when?
Speaker 1:I'm on the river. Um, yeah, yeah, it's. I did it when I was fishing wet flies too. Um, I found it incredibly helpful. Found it incredibly helpful, it's just helped me to focus what, focus what I've learned and ensure that I don't forget it, because, you know, I'm not a rocket scientist. I don't have the memory of a brain surgeon, right, so if I don't write this stuff down, I'm gonna lose it. And it also helps me like my, my YouTube channel, you know, trout tornado. All the flies that I put up on there are flies that I really fish and that I really love.
Speaker 1:I'm not in this to make, you know, money. I'm not in this to be famous. I'm just in this to share. You know, like in the In the beginning of the podcast I mentioned, my love of fly fishing came when I was teaching environmental education. I still teach kids. I do a Trout Unlimited camp for a week to teach kids. That's pretty freaking cool. And then I did casting for this year, which was super fulfilling. So I only do this to help people learn and to get better, cause, you know, I don't, I'm not here to sell anything. Um, I just want to help people. I don't know, it's like you just want to teach, and I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2:It's. You know you're talking water levels and temperatures and they go over here at this time of the year and they're not really in that one run at that time or that runs always way too high. You know water changes, things happen, you know, you know. So there is spots when I'm going down the river and I'm like, hey, guys, this is just a spot to take a, take a break, like relax your arm. If you want to keep fishing, go for it, but I can almost guarantee this full run you won't get a bite. Whether it could happen, I get it, it could happen. But just over the years I'm like, okay, you know, we get salmon in our rivers. When the salmon come up, the trout turn onto eggs. They're following the salmon.
Speaker 2:If the salmon ain't holding in a certain section, chances are very slim. You could literally be at one, at like the head, and I'd be like, okay, this is the one hole, boom, you got them All right. Now, for the next 10 minutes you're probably not going to see anything and they'll fish it hard and they won't see anything. And then I'm like, okay, this one seam over here, boom, fish on. And it's, you know. So I've.
Speaker 2:I call them spring runs and winter runs, because I know, and some of them overlap, that's no issue, that's great news.
Speaker 2:But there are runs where I'm like, at this water level, let's not even sit here. We can sit at the very end at this one spot, try a handful of casts, let's move on. So that has really been like a picture that's been painted in my head at this point. Seeing, I see one section on my river the most uh, it's where the majority of the trout population is. The bigger trout can kind of spread out lower throughout the river and then there could be sections lower down where you'd see no fish and you know, another month you'd see an insane amount of fish. So it is keeping track of your fishing records. I did it a little bit more. I was never really good at taking notes, so it's not something I did dramatically, but I do have a pretty good memory when it comes to like oh yeah, I remember I was in this run and I did this and it worked. And then I try that and it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:And then I go down a little lower and then it works and I'm like, okay, there's something there. But like you're saying, you know, if you're just getting into fly fishing and you have no one to mentor you, or you know, know you, you don't do a ton of research, you just want to go out and throw things around, your best friend in five years is going to be your little black book. You know, if you can look back to some notes and be like, oh, 1.6, this, this section fish so good, and you go back there and it fishes good again, you got the cheat code right. If you can cancel out I mean no guiding, I can kind of already just do that, because I see the water enough. I have a good idea of what's next. I've seen enough scenarios. You know I've tried weird stuff and it's worked out and and all that.
Speaker 2:But if I would have kept fishing records the way you have? Well, you know. So I always suggest to people, like, write some stuff down, write your air temp, write your water temp, write your water level. Was it a bright day? Was it a cloudy day? Was it a super sparse fly? You know very flashy fly. These things are going to come together in a year or two. After a year. You can start using your notes after two years. You got a log going five, ten, twenty years. You got, you literally got something you could hand down to someone and blow their mind right, whether it's your family or you know a fishing buddy you've had for a long time had a kid and you want to give his kid just the so much knowledge. Those things are, you know, basically priceless. How would you price? Price that you can't, because it's like that's, that's an insane amount of information. So keeping little notes, even if it's simple notes, it's so worth it, you know. I mean, like you said, you said you had 25 years of that.
Speaker 1:That's that is crazy. 25 years, it's crazy. That is crazy. 25 years, it's crazy. I was looking at it this morning, like you know, I'm in what the heck is it? Google Sheets and it doesn't automatically sort. I've got 6,803 lines of fly fishing notes that are in there, every river, every place that I fish 20 years. And I have some pictures that I have mounted in my fly tying area and I was talking with my wife, you know, I'm like I can't believe it. That was from January of 2000.
Speaker 1:It was a it's a steelhead. It's a steelhead that's on, you know, and he's got a Framus which is a simple, simple little. It's a chartreuse body on an egg hook with a little orange wing on it and it's sitting up there and I'm like, holy crap, that's from, you know, 25 years ago, almost to the date. Um, yeah, to see that stuff, I don't know, it's just, it's made my life easier. Um, I'm a competitive person. I don't, you know, I don't like to lose, I like to beat the fish and anything that can give me that little bit of edge or advantage, it just feels good.
Speaker 1:So I heard you say something else which made me smile. You know, you said, you know, you got your single hand rod and you know you're casting all day and your arm gets sore, and you're you know you're a young guy, so you know me in my mid 50s, you know I can't throw those giant flies anymore. You know that's one of the benefits of using the micro flies as well and the. The other thing that I've turned to and I've done this for the past six years is use a two hand, two handed rod as much as I can. Um and I'm sure you know but I don't know if your listeners do if you guys haven't checked out like a two handed rod and I'm talking a three weight, which is a seven weight in single hand rods, so you add like three or four to it. They're pretty light and they're pretty amazing rods.
Speaker 1:Echo makes some dirt cheap rods and I'm not sponsored by them, but they just make some kick ass rods for the buck and you can get your Skagit head, your running line, your leader and your fly out easily 60 feet with very little effort at all. And I would just strongly recommend it because you can manipulate, you can strip, you can swing, you can trout spay. It's just so versatile and it allows you to fish tight quarters. It allows you to get that fly out there and when you're, you know, fishing streamers or wet flies really yeah, streamers or wet flies. The further you are able to maintain a decent drift, the better your chances of getting.
Speaker 2:A lot of my listeners are on the west coast and the other day, yesterday, I posted something about what questions should I ask on the podcast and a lot of them came back, something steelhead related or swinging flies. It's a big thing. Out here I'm working on saving my shillings so that I may purchase a trout spay, because I got a seven weight. Uh, spay rod, um, I had an eight weight but I sold it because I just wasn't using it. The seven weight works well for anything, that is, you know know, 20 plus inch trout, wise, um. So salmon, steelhead, big browns, no problem, that's a good time.
Speaker 2:Once they get down a little bit, it's, you know, overpowered. So a four weight is what I would like to go on. I kind of heard it was more like two rod sizes up. But I digress, not a big issue. Either way, I want to go to a trout spay for that reason. You know I could go be against some bushes. Put on a micro streamer, a nymph heck, I could even throw a dry and get that control at that distance. You got a longer rod, you know, let's say somewhere around 11 feet, and you're able to mend, hold your, your running lineup. Um, my buddy calls it grease lining, where you hold it up. I thought that was funny.
Speaker 2:He also he mentioned uh making it a real toot that's what his buddy calls it when, uh when, it pulls a little line out, it gives it a little toot, but that's good.
Speaker 2:Two-handed casting is so therapeutic in itself that it is my favorite way of fishing. Um, it would go to hand streamer and I. I can do single hand spade casting as well. I'm not amazing at it by any means, but you know, being able to be on you know, my raft and be against some bushes and quickly just do a spade cast out to get, you know, 40 feet from the boat and control it and then hop onto the bank, grab my two-handed rod, swing a run, get a fish, get back on my boat, start going down. Oh my God, there's some dry fly action happening. There's some dry fly action happening.
Speaker 2:So I always suggest to people when they're buying a rod, I'm like, hey, you know, if you can get spare spools. Like, uh, um, Lamsen makes those packages where you can get a reel with two spare spools, get that. You know, if you're just starting off, the last thing you want to do is need to buy five different reels for one rod just so you can fish all these different styles. But having a trout spay has, I've always imagined it, and it just finances that have held me back. Um, so at this point I'm I'm like, okay, now I'm ready and, yeah, I'm super excited. So for your trout spay, what are you running? I love echo as a brand. Um, I know you called it cheap, I call it inexpensive. It's same thing, my mom.
Speaker 1:I don't mean.
Speaker 2:I don't mean that in a negative way, Put that into my mind that you know cheap things and inexpensive things are two different things. Echo's an inexpensive brand. You know they're. The owner still owns it. He's out there wanting people to get into fishing. So if you need a good rod, you don't need to spend, like you're saying, a million dollars to get into it. You could get into a rod reel line for a good price. You're in the us.
Speaker 2:I would have had if you would have started throwing numbers out there, I would have had to put a disclaimer for our canadian listeners hey, don't go to the store expecting these prices. But you know, being able to be versatile and see a condition, like you know, water's coming, came up over a few days and you finally get to go fishing again. But when you last one out, every run fished great. And now you go out and you almost catch nothing. Well why, you know well, you know.
Speaker 1:You know what's funny it, it cracks me up. So when I first got into fly fishing, you could get shooting heads. So you'd get your running line, you'd get your shooting head and for I don't know 75 bucks you would have six different heads. You'd have a floating, a clear intermediate, a medium intermediate, deep right and then a deep sank. And it was great because it gave you the versatility of being able to fish different water columns at an inexpensive rate to get in.
Speaker 1:Now you'll notice that a lot of those I can't, I don't even think they're out there anymore. You know shooting heads or um, what did they call them? Shooting heads, shooting lines, anyway, they're not even out there anymore. Now you have to buy five or six different fly lines to be able to get that same versatility thing about the two-handed rod. You have your floating skagit, but then you can put your different tips on that. That'll give you that same versatility. And that's been nice too, because the Echo that I use I use an Echo SR3. It's a Steve Rajef three-weight. I have a five as well that I would use for high water and then I've got a 275 that's paired to it. It doesn't matter what 275 you use.
Speaker 1:You know OPST Rio, scientific Angler. I've used them all. And then you know those airflow 10-foot tips and some ultra-green maxima off the end of it and it's a. It's a very simple system and it's just, it's just great. So I I would recommend anybody and I use that very same system for steelhead. So I was out um two weeks. The day started at 18 degrees. We kayaked about a mile or so downriver to get away from everybody, got out, started casting the three weight. I was using my Squimpish Clouser. I caught three steelhead doing that, doing some pretty decent manipulation.
Speaker 2:I caught three steelhead doing that, doing some pretty decent manipulation, but my favorite fish I had cast basically what did you call it? When the real fish comes tight, a real toot, a real toot, yeah, the real tooted.
Speaker 1:you know when it snaps and it comes tight and everything just laid nice and gentle and two strips in um and this big old buck, steelhead, like 31, 32 inches, just blew up on it. Um, it was the best fight that I've had all year, just running me all up and down the pool just a a hot fish. And yeah, I think I told you about my five-weight that I nicknamed Evil Knievel because I broke it so much. And this rod, the SR3, has survived steelhead. I also use that rod for striped bass. I do a lot of striped bass fishing in Cape Cod in the in the springtime and you know it's survived. Uh, 26, 27 inch striper. So I haven't hooked anything huge on it, but it's got some backbone. Uh, it's a pretty good, pretty good rig.
Speaker 2:There is a handful of rods that I own that I've landed fish that I had no business landing, and I did it quickly because I applied, you know, the proper pressure. Um, you know, obviously I didn't stress the rod out to the point of breaking. But you know, echo, my three weights. I've pulled in some large fish. My four weight single hands.
Speaker 2:I've pulled in some large fish and I've had you know, I don't really want to name drop but I will sages. I've had sages blow up when they're like an eight weight on a coho and then I pulled in a fresh coho on my four weight, echo. So what it tells me is you know, the quality of materials that a rod company will use is so important and if you're just buying it for the brand name, go ahead, no problem. But if you want a really good rod, they don't always come with, like the best brand name, a lot of the, you know, echo, tfo, uh, even some of the orvis they're, they're lower um price rods, the clear waters and stuff they're such great rods, you're getting into fly fishing.
Speaker 2:Yep, the the thing that I dislike seeing is or hearing about, you know, is someone will come on a trip with me and they'll be like yeah, yeah, I tried to get into fly fishing like 10 years ago, bought all the gear and I got out there and I just didn't know what I was doing. So I never did it again and I'm like that sucks, man, because I did the opposite. I had no idea what I was doing and I kept trying and trying and trying and trying and trying till it finally started. Something worked and then you know good example is one of my first flies I ever tied. I go, went out there first, cast, got a fish, cast it for another three hours, decide to wrap it up. I only had a bead on with like a little bit of thread holding that on less than their tie better flies.
Speaker 2:But you know that hurdle that you got to jump. You're also dealing with your family. You're dealing with work, like you know. So some people, if they get discouraged, it might not get back into it. So like it might not get back into it. So like spending a million dollars on getting everything and then not liking it or not.
Speaker 2:Pursuing it is is sad to me because we live in an age of expensive things, you know, and if you, you follow someone that is walking around with a sage rod and sage reel and a you know top of the line line, and then you go out and you buy all that same stuff, thinking, hey, I'm going to catch fish this way. It's not the gear. Yes, all that stuff helps, yeah it it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're 100 right, it's not the gear, it's what you do with it. And it's funny. You know you can and you're a guide. You can pick it off just as quick as I can. You pull into a spot or you're on the river. You spend 10 seconds watching somebody cast and you know what their level of experience is. It's very easy to understand with their cast how they manipulate, how they hold their, their fly line. And these guys, I see it all the time. I try to avoid it like the plague because I'm not into the the whole. I've got the best gear show, um, but you know I'll, I'll go into um. You know restaurants at night, you know after you know a long uh day on the river and you see these. You know these cats all dressed up in their you know fancy gear and fancy hats, and you know you see them on the river with those fancy rods and they still can't fish. So it's not, you're a hundred percent right, it's not the gear, you know. I would just say you know, for anybody that's trying to learn how to do this, get together with someone who wants to share. So, whether it's a club or it's an individual, um going out with guides that know their stuff is priceless. Like I think I mentioned, um, you know I did wet flies for three and a half years and that's all I fished were wet flies.
Speaker 1:And the guy who's the grandmaster of wet flies is Davey Watton. He lives down on the White River. He was originally from the United Kingdom. He has some amazing videos out there if you're into it. Wet Fly Waves is one of them. Countless articles, amazing patterns. There's one called the Catch All Caddis that he ties. That is on the Ozarks YouTube channel, which is amazing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I went down and I fished with Davey three different times on the White River and it wasn't at all about catching fish. I just said to Davey I'm like hey, I want to learn how to wet fly fish. We all know. You know you're the freaking grandmaster, so just help me understand how the heck to do it. And he was happy to share and you know he kept. You know he's like well, do you want to go, nymph, do you want to? And I was like no, I want to learn how to fish wet flies because there's nobody else in the United States that can teach me how to do this.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure you know you spent 200 days on the river. You understand that river better than anybody else, and if somebody wants to learn how to fish that body of water or that region, it would be wise to get together with you. And you just learn so much by hanging out with people that know what they're doing. And there's some guys that are categorized as curmudgeons, right, they won't share a damn thing with you. They'll. They'll tell you that had a great day and they won't tell you what they did or how they did it. But then there's guys like me and obviously like you, right, doing this podcast, where we want to share. We want to help the next generation um, you know, get good and learn how to do this Like.
Speaker 2:I. I was telling my good friend I was when I had my son out. He got skunk. Last time he was five years old and every time prior to that skunking he had caught fish when we go out because I ensured it would happen. But this time he didn't want to listen to me and I let him get skunked and at the end of the day I explained to him very clearly that he was not listening to me and that I teach this stuff and I was like I was fine. I told him he's five and I was like I was fine with you not catching a fish.
Speaker 2:If you wanted to catch a fish you could have listened, tried something different. He was trying to Euro with a floating fly. You do you. You do you I. You know, know, I can only help you so much, but it is you know I. You're going to learn something like, let's say, you come with the day with me and you're on the boat.
Speaker 2:I've never had someone not catch a fish. I've had someone not land a fish, but I've never had someone not catch a fish. And then you go fish by yourself and it doesn't work out very well because you're in a different scenario. You're not on a raft, you're not having someone point to you. So if I have someone on my raft, that is like, yeah, I'm getting into fly fishing. I've come to this river four times and caught nothing.
Speaker 2:I'm like, all right, today is no longer just a fun day, fly fishing. I've come to this river four times and caught nothing. I'm like, all right, today is no longer just a fun day. Okay, this is going to be a work day. You're going to be listening to me talk so much You're probably going to hate it but love it at the same time and I will pull off. We will hop out of the boat and I will walk them through how they should approach that run out of the boat and I will walk them through how they should approach that run, because that information is going to be way more valuable in the long run than a full day of you just hooking fish constantly, not knowing why. So it's. That's right.
Speaker 2:To me, it's very much like what does this person need out one out of their day? Is this just like you fish once a year and you want to be catered to? Great, I respect that man. You're working hard. You just want a good day. Let's deliver that.
Speaker 2:If you're trying to learn fly fishing, there's going to be a lot of theory talk. Okay, I'm going to break down the columns of the water. What we're trying to do Are we fishing a nymph? Are we fishing a streamer? And they're like oh well, I really want to learn streamer fishing, but I want to catch a lot of fish today and I'm like pick one, pick one, because you want it all right now. Respectable, pick one. Do you want a fish that you're going to be ecstatic about or do you want 20 fish that you know? We talk about streamers all day and you didn't try streamers.
Speaker 2:The amount of people that have tried you know. Let's say, they want to do dry flies and I'm like it's not a dry fly day and they're like I really just want to learn how to mend. Let's do it, let's go. They probably probably still got a fish and they probably were super excited because things happen out there. So it's. You know, you can't have it all. So, like you, you and me were saying I'm devoting my steelhead season to, to fishing big things like this. Because the last two years I did more classic style thin bodies, small profiles. I didn't land a steelhead, but I got 11 grabs and now I'm looking for that aggressive grab. So I'm changing my fly, I'm changing my mindset to like okay, now I'm going to see if this works. I don't know. I'm new enough to this that I just I got time. I'm going to be fishing again.
Speaker 1:So if you remove the stress of that, and that approach is is exactly you know what I've done throughout my entire fly fishing career. It's all right, I don't care if I catch fish, I want to learn and that's, I think, the most important part. And I've been doing this for so many years and I still. You know, I mentioned I have a whole tab on my computer file that's called lessons. Every time I go out, I learn something. Every time I go out there's something new and it is, it's the greatest thing I think about this sport, because with different water flow, different conditions, everything changes on the river and you got to learn how to you know, adapt and overcome in order to be successful. And by you know you. All right, I'm just going to fish these large style flies for the next year and I don't care if I catch fish, because I'm going to learn how that fly First of all, you know what my? What kind of fly line do I need to get that out there? What you know? What leader do I need? What head do I need in order to get it at the depth? This run is five feet deep. It's got some boulders in it. What head do I need to get it down? How do I have to position myself in this run to cast, to get it to swing where those fish are. And I'm happy with getting 11 grabs right Because at the end of the day you're learning where those fish were, where they were positioned, what your presentation was, and the next time you go back you can try a different color. But you know, when you're putting that fly in that slot again, there's a very good chance that there's another fish that's hanging in that same spot. And by remembering that, keeping track of that stuff, that becomes priceless because by the time your son is 15, 16 years old that's 10 years down the road you've spent all this time accumulating the information on the river, on the equipment, on the how-to. You and your son are going to be able to go out and your clients and be like yep, I know there's going to be a fish in this run. Conditions are primo, we're going to lock and load. I want you to plant your feet here, cast and hold the heck on, because that steelhead is going to ram and you know, ram that fly. Yeah, you're doing it absolutely the right way. And so many guys this is just my personal opinion forget about that. They're so into the I have to catch fish that they don't pay attention to the details that are necessary for them to catch those fish.
Speaker 1:And let me give you a prime example A good friend of mine who I absolutely love. His first name is Mike I'll just give the last initial because I don't want to embarrass him D he was out with me, we were in my fly craft, we're on this highly technical stream and there's a pod of rainbows and browns that are coming up and these are fish that range from 14 to 17, 18, nothing big, but they're wild fish. And my friend Mike was so damn excited he got out of the boat, he jumped right in the run and he created pressure waves and the pressure waves went right across the stream and it just put every single trout in that entire pod right down Fish never to be seen again, at least for the next hour or so. And it's just like, and I stopped him and I said, mike, I mean you know we're staying at a hotel and not a hotel, you know a motel, we're buying dinner.
Speaker 1:We drove a couple hours to get out here. There was a beautiful pod, you had the right fly, the whole right setup, you're all good to go, but you couldn't take five minutes to slowly get into the water, into position without scaring those fish. You know, know, next time. Just remember that. Next time came and he did the exact same goddamn thing.
Speaker 2:But oh yeah I I 100 agree with that. So when I realized I wanted to guide was pretty early on to the fishing, maybe two years into fly fishing I put the most amount of pressure on myself. If I wasn't producing fish it wasn't a good day to me. Um, you know, the wife would be like how was your day? And I'd be like got scummed. And she'd be like damn next time. And I'd be like, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:And when I finally started guiding that and I only had, you know, maybe 20 days in a season or something like that, like over the course of like three months, so it wasn't even you know a ton of days I relaxed so much because the realization that I was going to do this for the rest of my life, a hundred percent, there was no doubt in my mind that I am going to be fly fishing for the rest of my life that calmed me down so much. The next thing I had to calm myself down on was when I take my son and my wife out fishing. I had it in my mind that I'm fishing with my family Wrong. I had it in my mind that I'm fishing with my family Wrong, absolutely wrong. They're fishing. I'm there to conduct, guide them into it.
Speaker 2:Last time I did that, I finally did it for the full day where I like I got to fish, but I was there for my family, like, oh, they messed up, let me tie that back on, Send it back out. Okay, try mending it. That wasn't the greatest mend, don't worry about it. Oh hey, oh, they messed up. Let me tie that back on, send it back out. Okay, try mending it. That wasn't the greatest mend, don't worry about it. Oh, hey, look, you got a fish. Awesome. At the end of the day my wife was like that was my favorite day fishing with you and I had to train myself, just like how I had to train myself with guests, people all the time. They're like man, I've been with so many guides. You're the first one that's never yelled at me and I'm like for what?
Speaker 2:we're out here fishing well, and apparently they're out there, but it's like, oh my god you know I'll tie on 20, let's say where it's egg season, so I don't even have to think about what fly. Maybe it's it's an egg, other in this color, or maybe a clown egg, or you know simplicity and they're like. You know they're scared's an egg, they're in this color, or maybe a clown egg, or you know simplicity and they're like. You know they're scared. They lost one and they're like.
Speaker 2:I am so sorry and I was like what did I tell you at the beginning of the day? If you lose flies constantly, not trying, I will get frustrated. But this whole day you've been just trying your hardest to do what I tell you. Whether they're great at it or terrible at it, I don't care. If you need to lose 20 flies in a day to catch a fish, I'm your guy. If you, and then next time you come out you lose five flies. The next time you come out, you know five flies again. You learned something so dramatic because you know you were actually trying.
Speaker 2:Now, if I literally, like I said, if I see someone that I'm like lift your rod up, up, up, up, up up, oh, I lost the fly, I'm like all right, you get three of those, you get three of those before before. I'm a little frustrated with you, you know. But if, if I'm like, lift your rod up and you lift your rod up and you still lose that fly, you did what I said. Like we can't, I lose flies all the time. So like I constantly am trying to reassure people that this, this thing, we, we are just getting into, or we've loved doing for many years, you get good days. I get good days where I'm hung up, if I'm on foot, where I'm hung up in trees the whole day, and and then another day where I don't lose a single fly and you know whether the fish count, whatever. It just happens. So you got to take it with a grain of salt, but as long as you you're trying.
Speaker 2:And then the next thing is like I'll ask people this like why did you catch that fish there? And they'll be like I casted there and I was like, oh yeah, how was your drift? It was a really good drift. Like I didn't feel the bottom but I knew I was down there and I'm like you had it in the strike zone the whole time Interesting, and I'm like you had it in the strike zone the whole time Interesting. And then they're cast super far from the boat. During the winter we do a lot of Euroing. So you know, cast far from the boat, not a ton of control, and I'm like I can see your fly. And they're like what do you mean? I'm like, well, that 6.3 mil tungsten bead that you just casted across the river, I can see it in the first foot of the river. Are you in the strike zone? No, okay, cast right next to the boat, right here they do it. Oh, there's a fish Interesting.
Speaker 1:So where you?
Speaker 2:had no control. On the other side of the river, you didn't get a fish, but right, where you could control it perfectly, you got a fish. Why do you think that happened? Cause I can, I controlled it. Yeah, groovy man.
Speaker 1:It. It's good. It's good, it's good that you're forcing people to think a little bit when they're out on the boat, you know, with you, um, I, I challenged my friends all the time. When we're out and when we're in the you know car, on the ride home, you know, we're always. I'm always asking I'm like what did you learn today? What lessons? And it's interesting because you know, what we learned is always different, but yet we can come to some things that we can agree upon. We can come to some things that we can agree upon.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I heard you say that cracked me up is you know when you're losing flies and I have a little saying I don't know that. I'm sure I'm not the only one that says it, but you got to be in it to win it you know if you're not, if your fly isn't in that strike zone, if you're not putting it where those fish are. I mean, let's just use extreme examples If your dry fly, if there's fish coming up to dry flies and your fly is rolling on the bottom, you're not going to get the fish that are taking dry flies. It's the same if they're hitting nymphs and you're throwing a dry fly in January, you're not going to catch those fish. You have to understand where those fish are in the water column or, like you know the little I have before you tie it video that I just did on that squimpish clouser. I put those videos out there because I want it's basically an infomercial for the fly, because I've caught fish on the fly. I believe in it. It's something that I carry in my fly box. I want guys to be able to look at it and go, okay, this guy's not full of BS, he can actually fish it and it'll catch fish. It gives them the confidence. You know that uh, that they need Um.
Speaker 1:The water that I was fishing in that video is atypical water to what all my friends fish. There was um particular two. Two decent brown trout came out of frog water. It's like swampy white mud. You would not fish that water in July and August. If you did, you would catch maybe smallmouth or carp, but you would not catch brown trout. You have to understand a little bit about the river, the time of the year, the water temperature to know where that fly has got to be to be able to get those fish. So, yeah, spending time with someone like yourself, like myself, to help people understand where that strike zone is, where they have to put that fly to be successful.
Speaker 2:yeah, is uh something else that you mentioned was, um, like your buddy, jumping in out of the, the raft and creating the wakes and you know, fish were all hunkered down. After that point, um, we get excited. This is an exciting thing we do. We go out, we toss feathers around and we can catch fish. It's super cool, super fun. Get your friends into it.
Speaker 2:But the patience, you know, like we were saying earlier, we're not, we're planning on fishing for our whole lives. So you know, if you go on, let's say you're blessed to have an eight-hour day where wife, kids, whatever scenario allows you to be out there for a full day. You know, one scenario is you walk into the middle of the run, start flopping the water, smacking it, throwing every fly at it. No fish, you walk out of the water. A good example was I had a client. He wanted to learn on foot how to euro and I explained to him. I anchor up the boat.
Speaker 2:I had to run up ahead because there was talk of a potential log jam that had happened the day. We were on the river. It was high water, blah, blah, blah. So I was like almost every big bend I would run down and take a look just just to see, because you know that's how you are safe on the river is is by putting in a little extra leg work if you think there might be an issue coming up. There was never an issue, but I digress. So I come back and I'm watching him. He's standing at crotch level and casting into the middle of the run and I stand behind him and I was like, hey man, where do you think the trout would be right now? And he's like he looks around. And he's looking around. And then I was like, really think about it. Where have we been fishing all day today? And he looks around and he looks down at his feet.
Speaker 2:And he's like where I'm standing and I was like correctamundo, Not just that, but I bet if you would have casted right where you'm standing and I was like correctamundo, not just that, but I bet if you would have casted right where you're standing, you would have got the big brown that loves sitting there and he was like okay and so we go to another run and I'm like, all right, get out here.
Speaker 2:We go down past the head of the run, we walk back up and I'm like what I want you to do is stand on, like don't even enter the water. I want you to do is stand on the like don't even enter the water. I want you, about two feet off of the water, strip off your line Now cast where you can see that you have about a foot and a half right next to that drop. You know he could see what I'm talking about. He makes that cast after a couple of attempts, gets right where I want it. I'm like, okay, now just drift it and slowly drop it down the drop off. He starts doing that boom, brown. And I was like beautiful. Now, last time you went and stood in the water right where the fish was. If you were to stand about the same distance you walked out last time, where would you be standing? And he's like right where the trout are. And I was like first lesson trout are at your feet.
Speaker 2:If you enter the water prior to making your first cast, it could happen. For sure it could happen, you know. But you've disturbed the water, you've disturbed the closest fish to you and you know now you might have to go work a different section. If you're swinging a run, you know, for trout, spay or something, start with literally just the sink tip. You're on the shore, you haven't even entered the water. Flick it out, let it swing, strip off. You know two, three feet. Do. Entered the water, flick it out, let it swing, strip off. You know. Two, three feet, do it again, do it again, do it again. Now you got your shooting head out. Now, if you need to enter the water just so you can get by the bushes, you already know whatever was there, didn't want what you had. Move on. Now you're swinging a run, you could work it, or you can stay in that same spot, swing to where you can try a new fly without ever entering the water.
Speaker 2:So that's, that's a big tip that I have to tell people quite often. Um, you know people that are always learning. But even for myself, calm down, relax. You're there to fish. Yes, you'd like to catch a fish, we all do. But those little lessons that you overlook, or you've heard on a podcast or you've seen someone explain, there's reasons behind them. So you know, I had a client who he's like oh, I love fishing stoneflies.
Speaker 2:And we're there and he's casting and he's done his drift. He pulls it out of the water and I was like whoa, whoa, what are you doing? Swing that thing out. And he's like what do you mean? And I was like just let it swing out. I was like cast back where you casted, now let it swing. Okay, okay, yeah, that's good, start stripping it in cast again, strip, strip, boom fish on. You might have got him on a drift but by the time I moved the boat maybe not so like patience.
Speaker 2:The reason I know to swing my stone flies is because me and my buddy had that experience where he was like, dude, I keep swinging these things and they keep grabbing it and it's winter, like it's weird. And I was like, well, I guess it is weird. And he looked it up and I looked it up and we're like, oh yeah, like stoneflies aren't really dislodging from rocks and working their way up to the column Like a normal dry fly, they're crawling to the bank and then hatching on the branches. So if, when a stone fly does get dislodged, it's going to swim towards the bank and try to get back to shelter so that one bug does a little bit more of a swing, let's say little bit of knowledge.
Speaker 2:I we caught some massive fish early december. Early december on the island used to not really be good fishing. The last three years has been, because the rain doesn't come till later and the weather has been holding, so December has been fishing great and stoneflies. I had multiple days where it was egg season and now I'm fishing stoneflies over places where I was fishing eggs, where I've never fished stoneflies, and we were getting some massive fish and I was like this is so cool. You know Year eight of my fly fishing career and I just randomly was like here, throw on a stone and then we're clapping them all day on stones, when I guaranteed no one else on the river, nor very few people have thought of that, and was doing that.
Speaker 1:It's funny that you say that because that holds true with so much in fly fishing period. Right, it's understanding the ecology of the river and it's understanding what's happening in that river. And how do you imitate that? So you know, let's just talk wet flies, for example. There are certain insects that are active in the water and you have to manipulate your wet fly in order to entice the fish. So a perfect example that probably everyone understands because we've all seen it when we're on the river, is caddis. So caddis, right, they come up from the bottom, they rocket up, they get to the surface, sometimes they explode right out, sometimes they have to hang out and dry their wings a little bit, but their progression from the bottom of the river up through is dramatic. If you dead drift the caddis larvae, okay, you're going to catch fish, but if you're fishing wet flies and you manipulate them and make them move up through the column, you're going to catch two times as many fish Streamers. Same thing In the springtime, you know well, starting in the fall, we have the brown trout that are spawning In the spring. Of course, the eggs that they put down in the fall now become little fry and those fry throughout the year. You know, start out maybe a quarter of an inch to an inch, to two inches and they progressively get larger.
Speaker 1:Your streamer selection. In March and April you can catch some pretty darn big rainbows and bows on small patterns Like I have this one. It's called a microburst. It's a simple marabou pattern. It's tied on a Gamakatsu B10S size six. It's a small hook, maybe an inch in length. The fly itself is only an inch inch and a half. I fish two flies at once almost all the time. So probably 90% of the time I've got a microburst on top and then my other fly down below. And that microburst is one of the most productive patterns. And you look at it and you go why the heck are these big brown trout teeing in on something so small and so simple? It's because they feed let's remember, on dry flies size number 20 blue-winged olives and they think they're awesome. So why wouldn't they feed on a protein-packed inch-long fly that is just going to feed their bellies? And I've caught legitimate 20-plus-inch browns on these one-inch flies as frequently or more frequently than the larger flies.
Speaker 1:And again, it all has to do with us understanding what's going on within the water itself. What is that biomass that the fish are chasing after? What is it? It's eggs. Today it's stoneflies. You made me smile when you said that, because I've done a lot of steelhead fishing too, and in the wintertime we'll have these little tiny size 18, 16 black stones. They'll literally hatch and you'll be standing on the bank and you'll see them coming out in groves over the snow and of course, you know fishing egg patterns and go, ah time to change to little black stones and run in right through the same exact run where you were fishing an egg pattern. Um, you know catching fish where before you weren't. So, from steelhead, brown trout rainbows it's. I think that's part of the fun of what we do and why it's continuous, you know continuous learning A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:You know it's. I need an active thing to be doing. If I sit around doing nothing all day, I'm destroyed as a person. I'm so tired. You know, I think about this like when I when I used to, you know, early twenties, and I'd go to my mom's house and I'd be sitting there and she'd be talking and start yawning and be like mom, I need to lay down, I'm so tired. And then I'd get home and I would be like gaming, having friends come over, you know, and I'm so engaged and I'm wired all of a sudden.
Speaker 2:And so fishing's the same way, you know, if I am just sitting there doing which I did a lot when I first started fly fishing doing the same thing, constantly repeating the same steps, with no luck, not changing it up. And then, you know, over the years, now I'm like, oh well, this didn't work. Well, why don't we try this? Why don't we try this presentation? And oh, that worked, cool, okay, why'd that work? Shit, I don't even have the answer. Why did that work? No idea, all right, moving on, you know. So that progression that I made and my ability, my maybe even lack of ability to learn the way most people would learn in, let's say, school, forced me to teach. You know, if you didn't understand what I was saying. And I'm now quiet on the raft and you're still doing what you're doing and it's not working. Now I'm in my head like well, what is the aspect he's not? Then I figure it out. I'm like, well, let's try teaching him this way. So I'll like be like all right, pull your fly out of the water, give it to me, I'll hold the fly up and I'll be like all right, fly lands in water and it starts to move fast. Now it's on the surface of the water. You need to bring your rod tip in front of the fly, because now your rod tip's moving at the same speed as the water. Your fly can drop and they're like oh, that's what it is, try it. Oh, now they're getting the depth.
Speaker 2:So, like, when I ask myself questions and I can't answer them, I'll still always be thinking about it. Whether I say it or not, my mind's constantly like why did that work? Was it just a fluke? That's totally possible. You know, how many times have you thrown in something that shouldn't have worked and it worked, and then the rest of your life? It's a fluke, that's totally possible. You know how many times have you thrown in something that shouldn't have worked and it worked, and then the rest of your life it's never worked again. That can happen. But those those little key things that I asked myself or I asked my clients, and then I see that light blossom in the top of their head and I'm like there it is, and then you know so.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'll have someone on the raft who has lost five fish and his friend has landed one but only hooked that one. He's hooked into five fish because something he was doing right Well, now it's keeping a fish on, so I need to pull over. I'm going to take the rod. I'm going to get you to wrap your hand a bunch. I'm going to set the rod and show you how little tension you have on your hand. Now I'm going to strip it in to get to the backbone Right, and now I'm going to explain to you you got to run to the left. I'm going to pull the opposite and now you're going to switch with me. I'm going to switch and they're like oh, that's what I'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1:I'm like, yes, that's right, it's called angling. It's really uh, it's really, it's really uh. It's funny you mentioned that because one one of the toughest things, one of the toughest habits for me to break and I still am not great at it was when you're streamer fishing you're supposed to strip set and I, after dry flies, nymphs, wet flies, 20 years of trout setting, to try and go to strip set. It was such a super challenge for me and I have two daughters, both of whom I taught to fly fish. They still go out with me periodically. They're 22 and 25.
Speaker 1:And my youngest, she's helped me make some of the underwater videos of my flies. And we were out there one day it was COVID and we went to this one stream and I was trying to show the difference between a strip set and a trout set and I held on to the fly and I had her strip set. And if you've ever held on to a fly at distance, like maybe 40, 50 feet, and you strip set, it's immediate connection to that fly and you you'll, if you've got that hook going towards your finger, you're going to get hooked. It's going to be brutal and I had her do a trout set and there was zero resistance from that fly and we tried to create this video with an apple on the water. Hey, I had this idea that you could float the apple down the river with my line attached and I would do a strip set and you would see the apple get shredded. River with my line attached and I would do a a strip set and you would see the apple get shredded. It didn't work, but it was kind of fun just doing that experiment. Um, I did.
Speaker 1:I learned this other and I don't want to name the brand because I don't want to anybody, but I'd used this brand of um Skagit Skagit line and I had been fishing it for two years and it was an integrated line. So you had the head, you had the running line and I was missing all these fish. I mean decent, you know, decent brown trout, decent bows. I would see them flash, I would see them eat the fly, I would set the hook, nothing. And I'm like what the hell is going on? Right, is this me? Is this the equipment? Because, like you and many of us in fly fishing, we're always thinking all the time. We're like what the hell went wrong.
Speaker 1:So I came home and I had my wife, you know, grab the fly line and I stood 60 feet and I had her pull back doing like a strip set and there was so much flexibility in that line that at 40, 50, 60 feet when you strip set and you pulled three or four feet back, there was zero tension on that fly at the end. The reason why I share this is that a lot of you guys that are getting into this and just starting to play, it's not always you. If you're seeing fish hit or fish break off, I've had it happen multiple times where my damn fluorocarbon went rotten and I've broken off fish after fish after fish. I call these things terminal tackle errors, but that stretching line, the fluorocarbon breaking, but that stretching line, the fluorocarbon breaking, it's not always you. And so you know, go home, get your girlfriend, get your wife, get your mom, whoever it is, to try and help you solve the problem.
Speaker 2:You know it's an interesting thing and don't have an empty spool, or even a spool around me. If you look on a spool of fluorocarbon. When you buy it, yeah, no, I don't. When you buy it, yeah, no, I don't. Um, there's actually a little spot where you're supposed to write the date out because there's an expiry date or they. You know so and that's a good point. Like things could be literally stretching so much that you don't get it. Um, I had one of my friends I was talking I had a client on and he was. He just got back from doing tarpon fishing and he was like, oh man, I'm I keep strip setting these dry flies and I was like, well, maybe we should be streamer fishing so we go to streamer fishing, he's strip setting.
Speaker 2:And I was like in my mind I was like, do I strip set when I when I'm fishing? So I asked next time I went fishing for myself and I was with my good friend, I was like yo, just watch me and tell me if I strip set. I don't think I strip set. And so I get into a fish and he's like, yeah, you did. And I was like, oh yeah, but was it just a strip set? And he was like, well, no, you lifted your rod. And I was like, well, no, you, you lifted your rod. And I was like, okay, I need you to film this. Uh, I'll just pretend I get a bite or I'll purposely hook up on a branch or something you know. I just I just need to see what the heck I'm doing. And so, like I moved my rod like you know, not a ton, like maybe six inches, and at the same time I'm pulling the line like I'm stripping. I'm stripping, I get the fish. And he was like you just drop your arm, so naturally to me that I'd never thought about it, um, and so I was like, oh, okay, I am strip setting, but one thing I do, and when you were talking about, like changing up your your sink tips and and and all that. I'm a little lazier. I'm way better for clients, so don't take what I'm about to say as this is what I do for clients. I go above and beyond for the clients and I'm lazy for myself. I fish, I fish extremely heavy and, mind you, my river is generally got good flow and whatever, um, but I fish a super heavy stream streamer line. It must be a type seven or something.
Speaker 2:I never pay attention, you would. You're what I would consider the smart angler. I'm the caveman angler. I I pay attention to very little name brand stuff. I'm like, oh, what do you use for your trailer hooks? I'm like, yeah, that's stuff that my buddy zach sold me. He knows what I need. I've been best friends with him so long. He's coming to sleep here tonight. You know we're going fishing tomorrow, you know, like he. I told him hey, man, I need a heavier sink tip.
Speaker 1:You know what?
Speaker 2:rod for and he's like all right, give me your credit card number, here you go, son, you know, so like, but you don't have to know everything, but you need to be observant. If you know none of the name brand of the gear you got on, but you can fish, you're going to catch fish Right. Another example is I had a guy who's like oh, I do casting lessons every week so I can cast really good, and I was like sick man, today is going to be a great day. We get out there and he's casting phenomenally, but he couldn't fish. There's different things going on here.
Speaker 2:I was like okay, we got to dial this back and I told him I was like man, you don't know how to fish your fly.
Speaker 2:I was very much nicer about it than saying it like that, but I was like you need to learn to fish. You don't fish a lot. So, like on a field, when you need to lay out 60, 80 feet with a single hand rod, you can do it and that's awesome. But your next venture is now how to fish a fly, and there's multiple flies. You know, it's not just a fly, it's nymphs, streamers, this and I was like and they're all different things. So like you know, if you can't do that, you're going to have a hard time. So that day we just worked on short casts, controlling the fly, getting it down, doing this and by the end of the day he was like man, I, you know, when I go fishing by myself, I rarely catch a fish. And now I know why he's like most people come fly fishing for the first time and can't cast, and I can get them into a ton of fish or, you know, a good amount of fish. We're all happy.
Speaker 1:So, having someone, that was so good at casting but never really fishes.
Speaker 2:I was like I was kind of blown away. I was like man, that's the extreme from both sides. You got the guy that you know has never fished or seen a fly rod in his life and I got him into just as many fish as this guy that's been casting for 20 years but rarely fishes it's it, it's it's, it's good it's.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because one of the things that I've done over the past four years is I bought a GoPro and I'm not again, I'm not sponsored by any of these guys, but if you want a tool that'll help you understand all the mistakes that you've made, the GoPro is a pretty darn cool thing. I've learned a lot by watching the footage. Like I was out three weeks ago and there were four different times. It's got this cool feature on it that's called hindsight, and so 30 seconds back when you hit the button to record, it'll record the 30 seconds before you hit the button. And so whenever I'm a fish hits and I miss it, I hit the button. And what I've noticed over the past year is that if I have a fish strike, I naturally cast back to the same spot and I fish through and typically I'll get that fish, which is just crazy to me. And typically I'll get that fish which is just crazy to me. So lesson number one for all those that are listening if you get a strike and you're on a streamer, get it back out there again, because odds are that fish is hot and it's going to hit the other thing.
Speaker 1:You know my strip setting, I realized, was absolutely horrible. I was the king of trout sets. I would cast out right and just lift them. I was so damn good with that right hand and ripping that rod up, but it takes. The reason why you do that strip set is one like I mentioned. You get a higher torque hit and if you don't believe me, go out and try it. You're gonna be blown away by the difference between your strike strength when you strip set versus trout set. But it also keeps the fly in the kill zone longer, which is cool.
Speaker 1:The third thing that I've learned over the past year with this is that it is super important to pause on the retrieve Like you're coming through. You know, like we were talking at the beginning. Right, there's that boulder. You know there's gonna be a fish five feet somewhere around it. If you bring your fly by and you stall it in front of that boulder, or there's a change in color, or there's a drop off, or there's a change in current or there's shade against the bank versus a bright, sunny river. If you're able to stall your fly in those areas and there's many, many, many, many more that is a trigger for a lot of fish, especially brown trout. When they see that you know fly tracking along and then it just starts to drop like it's going to the bottom, they just have to kill the shit out of it. But but that GoPro has helped me just to see simple nuances and mistakes that I was making and help me, you know, analyze, um be the technical angler that I am versus 100%.
Speaker 2:I've up my phone. You know, if I was by myself on my raft casting my streamer rod and I was like, okay, you know, this was maybe a couple years ago, year and a half ago, whatever, but I would have like a couple good casts and then a couple of shit casts, and my shit casts are are good enough to still fish, so they're not like you know. But I'm like, okay, I had load on those last two and I sent out my full fly line nicely, and it landed straight lined and I'm happy. What changed? So I will I turn my camera on, start recording, go to the front, start casting for five, ten minutes and I literally will sit there and watch my phone and like, oh, okay, yep, you know, these, these three casts I know are my better ones and I stopped there and I did this and a lot of it comes to patience, not trying to overload your, your rod, because you know that's this. That could be a deep rabbit hole actually. But you know, patience and and consistency will will do you so much better with a fly rod than anything I mean with your traditional gear.
Speaker 2:You got a heavy weight on a big spoon. Whatever you put it behind you. You crank it. It goes out far Makes sense. Well, now you're into a fly rod and you're trying to crank this streamer or this nymph or whatever out and it's not working very well. And then that same person. I can calm them down, be like yo, just do this hand motion. And now just listen to me and let's time it when I say forward cast. I'm going to give you enough time for your brain to register that and go forward and don't apply more power, just do the same. And they're like, oh, like, oh, whoa, that did it. And I'm like form. You know, take a step back, relax, stop trying to power the, the, the stroke out, and you'll usually have a better cast. It's a, it's a big portion to why I see women pick up fly fishing really well, because they're not trying to overpower it, because they, they listen.
Speaker 1:Right when I, when I did the casting for recovery, I saw the exact same thing. You know, the, the ladies that I were with, they were very good listeners and it's funny with the trout unlimited kids, the, the boys, um, you know, 15, 16 are pretty good listeners, but the girls inherently are always better casters it's just like what three or four types of listening you know?
Speaker 2:listening with or with the intent to respond, listening with the? Yeah, I don't know them. I'm trying to act smart here, but there is different forms of listening and as males, we tend to do the uh, oh, I know, I know, I know, I know what I'm doing. Yeah, I know oh yeah yeah, yeah, you know whether they say the words or not, it's, you know, I my I do that to my wife all the time. If I could conquer that, she would think I'm the best listener in the world, you know.
Speaker 1:But but you bring up a really good point about the phone though. One is being able to record yourself and what you're doing to get better. The other and my phone is filled with all sorts of like. I had a man crush on edward from opst for a long time. Just if you haven't checked out OPST and the way those guys cast and the beauty of the casting stroke, it's awesome. And he has this one video that I had recorded because you can screen record, you know, and I'd recorded him doing his single-handed spay, which I thought was awesome. And then he has this golf ball video where he's showing how you load your rod going on the outside in order to maintain tension on the rod, and then you bring it around up and over and stop.
Speaker 1:And I was having problems casting and I went to the river. I had my phone. I'm like, all right, edward, show me what you got. And I just played it and I'm like, okay, I understand it. Put my phone in my pocket, right, and then I would cast and I'd be like, oh, that sucked, let me watch it again. And you know, but at least by having our phones to be able to screen record those things that are awesome to be able to try and execute it river and stream side. It just goes a long, long way.
Speaker 2:I found that really to help me out a lot too. This guy kept just holding his rod up and I was like no side pressure, do this, do that. And he just kept going back to the traditional rod tip up, rod tip up, you know. And so I it was just him. We were on a section anchored up.
Speaker 2:I went to the back of the boat and I just started filming him and he didn't notice. I was like, oh yeah, I'm just doing something, you know, didn't let him know. I was doing it because I wanted it to be natural. And after a handful of casts he finally got into a fish rod tip goes up. I'm recording it and I'm like side pressure. And then he doesn't do anything about it. He just kind of keeps going, loses the fish, and then I'm like hey, buddy, can I show you something? So I I play it out for him and I'm like did you know you had your rod up like that? He's like no, and I was like okay, so your next step and I do this a lot to clients is I'm like, if they're super excited, I'm like breathe, breathe, deep breath, take that in take a moment for yourself.
Speaker 1:You already got him hooked and we got him under tension breathe and and the amount of people that have turned around and been like thank you
Speaker 2:for telling me to do the most basic human thing, which is breathing, and I'm like man, it's, it's, it's everyone you know, like when I you hear these things like rod tip up and then it becomes just natural to do that. Or you fish ocean all the time, where that's what you do, like they could go so deep, like rod up. Right, we're on a river, it's you know, maybe six to you know, 10 feet deep on average, probably even less than that. You know 10 feet deep on average, probably even less than that, and you're holding your rod up and you only really have that top of your rod engaged. It's you know you need that backbone. So good, a good story of this.
Speaker 2:I had this little old asian lady. She was just a joy to have on the raft, her and her husband, and she listens so well that she picked up fly casting. We're dry fly fishing, and I know, sorry, there was another scenario. Anyways, she's, we're not, we're dry fly fishing on one and I'll go on this one first, and this lady is just listening and I taught her how to mend like a champion, how to do a delicate up like, change her angle upwards of her fly line so that it would come down in accordion into itself so she could. She just picked it up. Now, this other, this other lady I'm talking about the asian lady we're on the couch and we're fishing euro. She, I tell her um, I'm like, okay, there is a really good chance, there's a brown trout over there. I anchored up and I explained to both of them what.
Speaker 2:Because, like, as we move through the river it actually gets more and more technical. So upper is like anyone can catch a fish. Lower down, like you kind of got to be on your, your stuff, and it's the later part of the day when you're getting tired. So like I I'll stop or like slow down and really tell people what they're looking to do. And I'm like, if you can get it into that scene and you hook a fish, the first thing you need to do is avoid the log jam, because good chance that fish is going to go straight for the log jam. So right away low down river, which is going to end to the right, which is going to be pulling it away, and just if, if you can get a couple of good strips in there and then do that, you'll keep that fish on. If we get them, go through it. She nails the cast, hooks the fish right away to the low, to the side, and just keep stripping. And I was like keep pressure, okay, slow down, slow down on stripping.
Speaker 2:And I was like keep its head up and she lifts, and I've already taught her to like lift her whole arm so that she keeps the backbone in the same kind of angle so that she's not, you know, making her rod do a full circle. Basically, she lifts the fish it's a 22 inch brown. She lifts the fish out of the water. The whole fight happened in about 15 seconds. She never let that fish's head back into the water. Obviously its head was like dipping in the water. It could breathe and all that.
Speaker 2:She kept a 22 inch brown out of the water, basically got it out of the log jam up and out of the water. And while I'm passing the log jam, I was able to grab my net, net the fish hold, get her to hold the net. So the fish was in the water, moved to where I could anchor up and I was like I was blown away. I was like you just took three X and made it your bitch.
Speaker 2:You know, you, you, you literally gave that fish no chance to to get away and she's just, you know, I, I, I bet like 60 to seven year old little Asian lady and she kept this 22 inch Brown. She did everything perfectly. The fish gave up almost instantly because she overpowered it, and and then I get other people who catch you know a 12 inch fish and play it out for like five minutes and I'm like, okay, we can bring that thing in now like we don't need to. You know, like it's you just lift its head, lift it, lift it.
Speaker 1:But if, if, if people aren't paying attention to you like you could do the same little experiment with the strip set where somebody you know holds on to that line and you do. I call that same maneuver the down and dirty. When you put that rod perpendicular to the ground and you just you turn that fish so it's going sideways. It's killer, as opposed to you know, straight up and down, because there's zero pressure put on that fish. They can do whatever they want and you're 100% right on. You're like break the fish.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it is mentally with the fish, but if you put pressure on them quickly and show them they're not getting a chance at getting away. It almost becomes easy to get them in. Um, when I I don't. I don't understand that. It's there's like a 21 inch brown that I caught on that squimpish clouser. It's on the eye before you tie it. It's the best fish of that whole video and I caught it in a slot. It's like three feet deep. I get two strips in that fish nails the fly and 30 seconds later, and it was a 50, 60-foot cast. 30 seconds later that fish is in the fly and 30 seconds later, and it was a 50, 60 foot cast. 30 seconds later that fish is in the net and I was standing in water that's six inches deep. I don't know. It's like if you put that pressure on the fish. It's the same with steelhead right. As long as you show that fish, hey, buddy, you're not getting an inch, you're coming my way it changes their attitude and part of that, like when I was.
Speaker 1:You know and I've mentioned Evel Knievel a bunch of times I love fishing with lighter rods versus the heavier rod and I think if you do that, if you take your five weight out and you fish for big fish and you're successful at landing them on lighter rods, you learn a lot about how to fight fish, as opposed to if you were catching big fish on a eight or a nine weight. It's much easier to land those fish and personally I enjoy the fight. That's why I go out there. I love the scenery, I love the birds, I love being outdoors. You know all those things are inherent, but I'm in it for the fight, you know, and for the beauty of the fish. So I don't know, I just love those light, you know, the light equipment it's what excites me.
Speaker 2:Last year I pulled in a steelhead on my four-weight. It wasn't a massive steelhead, but it was still like 28 inches or so uh, relatively fresh, late season, um, still chrome, and I right away knew it was a big fish, put the boots to it, got a flash and I looked at my friend and his draw was already dropped. He was pre-dropped, he was in the pre-drop sequence and right, we got it in in about five minutes, maybe even less, which I even on a spay rod is about. You know it is not is, let's say, normal. It was on a four weight.
Speaker 2:My rod was damn near straight the whole time. I just, I just put the boots to it. I was like I'm going to break off before I let this run happen too long, um, and every time it went to go on a big run, I changed my angle and just dug in. Uh, you know, I had my drag set at the right thing and then, as it started its run, I would apply more pressure to slow it down. It would slow down, I would change angles right away on him.
Speaker 2:Real, real, real, real. Get it in tight, nice, okay, he explodes again, goes for a run. Change angles. I just, and my buddy was like, dude, you didn't give that fish a chance. And I was like, well, why would I? I'm a little bit when, right, exactly when my actually winter steel steelhead still make me shiver my knees, my knees quake, um. So I can explain it better with a spring salmon.
Speaker 2:When I'm fishing for spring salmon, which I don't really do anymore, they're just so tough on the gear. Um, I would be next to people I would have 15 pound tests on, they'd be on like 25 maxima, and I would get fish in way faster than the guy next to me fishing a spoon or something, because I just put the boots to him. Change the angle. If they start to run and you can even torque the angle a little bit, change the angle just slightly that pressure is all of a sudden not the same that he was used to. So him running, let's say to the right, all of a sudden, is way harder than it was a moment ago.
Speaker 2:That's going to tire them out way more so another good example of it is I was fishing with my buddy and he was like, man, every fish you hook into you get it up to the surface in like a minute. And I was like, well, yeah, they're like 18 to 20 inch trout. And he's like, yeah, but like you don't even. And I was like, well, yeah, they're like 18 to 20 inch trout. And he's like, yeah, but like you, don't even. And I was like, once again, why would I give him a chance? Like the goal is to fight the fish quickly to you know, preserve them and get them back in the water and let them go on their day A five minute fight a 10 minute fight, a 15 minute fight, a 20 minute fight with a small trout.
Speaker 1:You're not doing it right, it's gonna kill simply not doing it right yeah, you're going to put so much stress on that fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like you know, I will break off before I have a fight last too long. It does have its moments, though, where I'm a victim of it. When I get, I'm like holy shit, that's a 24 inch brown. I don't get those often. I want to get this fish in. I'm nervous now, but I also still know I need to apply the same principle of keeping it tight. So maybe that fight might last closer to three to five minutes, but I'm still doing the same thing. I just know that my tippet isn't. You know, wasn't expecting that guy.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean when I was fishing. So I don't fish fluorocarbon anymore. I used to fish it all the time. I had multiple occasions where it would just get brittle and break and I didn't pay attention, I guess, to the expiration date. But you know when you're paying and I would buy bulk spools, so I wasn't buying the tiny ones for 20 bucks, I was buying 200 yards for 20 bucks but it was still frustrating to have a spool go bad on me.
Speaker 1:But now I use Maxima and the lightest I'll go is 8, the most I'll go is like 15 and I'm fishing in water in July and August where everyone is like, oh, you need to have 7x, or you need to have 6x and I'm using 8 pound ultra green and the fish are still whacking the crap out of the fly. And even when I was doing wet flies I would be fishing six pound test. You know three flies at a time when other guys were like, oh, you need to use 7x. And I would just challenge anybody that's out there to not worry so much about you know, having a light tippet as it is to how you're fishing those flies and how you're presenting those flies been a real pleasure, brian.
Speaker 2:But I this year, when we got to the cowagin, um, the boss had ordered up some spools for us and for me and him, and we had three spools of like guide spools. So they're 100 yards or 90 yards, whatever. I have three x and we're going into our egg season, day four. I'm like yo, I'm out of, like I already finished a spool, what about you? And he's like yeah, I finished mine today. And I was like dude, we, we got another month to go plus, like this isn't going to work. And he's like well, on the columbia, this is what I use. And I was like what pound test? And he's like I got 11 and 8 and I was like can I try something? So what I did? Because I like a five foot tippet section my euro style is pretty greasy I put on the full cider line onto backing because it's so much easier for clients. If it was just me fishing euro, maybe I would do it a little bit differently. Um, I do have respect for mono for not sticking to the rod when it's raining, but I would do about, you know, maybe more like four and a half feet of this. You know 200 yard spool, I can't remember, it's like InvisX or something like that. And I would do that and then tie on just a six inch to a foot long of you know the expensive tippet. Inch to a foot long of you know the expensive tippet. And what I figured is, as long as that knot is down in the lower part of the column where it's relaxed and there's not going to be a ton of resistance on it, and it's you know, for that four and a half feet, it's all one diameter, we're going to be okay. And so we started doing this and I started doing this and that whole day all I lost was either my foot of my more expensive stuff and then a lot of the times it would actually break at the fly. So now I can tie on a new fly. Well, rowing, flick it out, have them back in the game. Way less waste in the river, so much less line.
Speaker 2:And then when I was fishing by myself, I did the same thing. I was like, well, do I really need that tippet section? And yes, for clients I will put on the expensive stuff because I wouldn't want them to be in the back of their mind Like man if, if they noticed, be like man, he's not even using the good tippet or something. I don't want to. I don't want to. That's your day. You're paying me, I can afford it, I'm a put it on for you, but for myself.
Speaker 2:I was just using the eight pound stuff. Um, it's a little stronger than eight pound like, or you know like, 3x is usually anywhere from 8.5 to 9.5, depending on what it was. Blah, blah, blah, um, but I was finding that I was able to pop it out of rocks, pop it out of bushes, a little easier. Yep, and I was still catching a ton of fish. So now, um, you know, uh, one of my other guests that I had on brennan reed, he, uh, he just totally stopped buying the, you know, the fluorocarbon expensive spools, you know, and just started going to whatever fluorocarbon he liked, um, from Walmart or whatever. And he was like well, if I want, you know, something really thin, I'd go to like four pound, which would still almost be more like six pound. So if you're fishing smaller fish, you can still get that smaller diameter and you're saving a ton of money. And he's like it almost always breaks off at the fly, exactly, you know, it's very easy when I first started fly fishing, I bought everything.
Speaker 2:I bought multiple reels, multiple rods. I needed this. Oh, I can't catch them without this tippet, without that tippet, without this tippet Nowadays, like ice streamer fish, you ain't getting expensive tippet, you're getting some freaking 12 pound Maxima, whatever, and you're going to get my flies out of that tree.
Speaker 1:You're going to be able to pull it off some reeds and it'll be all good. Yeah, the only. So I'm it's funny that you say that right, because you can with like 12 pound, 10 pound maxima, you'll hook the bottom, you'll be able to pull it out, depending on the hook right, the hook might even straighten out. I've one of the things that I've started carrying a lot, and I have them right here with me.
Speaker 1:This is a. It's a simple stone that I get off of Amazon that I use to sharpen all my hooks. You can get two of these little stones for 10 bucks and it's got the diamond on the one side and then the ceramic on the other. And that's another really, really, really important thing to do, even when I was steelhead fishing with nymphs and with eggs, because we get hooked on the bottom all the time. Right, your line stops, you set the hook. You don't know what the heck it is, but if you bring your fly in, if you're able to straighten that hook out, you can hone it up pretty darn good with some of these Amazon hook sharpeners.
Speaker 2:They're 100% in their pocket size. You know, if anyone out there is using lid rig nippers, they're like a magnetic nipper that goes to your hat. You can pull it off, clip your thing. That clip that clips onto your hat has a sharpening stone or a diamond dust whatever sharpener on the inside Same thing. You ding on a rock. The first thing I do with clients. I'm, like I said, I'm way like less lazy with clients. I'm being paid to do something. I'm sitting there anyways, let's check the hook out for myself. You know, if I get my hook bends open, I bend it back, throw it back in there. Whatever life goes on. Um, I, I really should be less lazy for myself sometimes and I and I lose a fit.
Speaker 1:yeah I do the same.
Speaker 2:I do the same thing I mean you're gonna straighten your hook out you're not gonna change the fly, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, that's just. Yeah, that's just the way it is. No matter how much time you spend tying a fly, you want to try and save it, and I have. I have either gamagatsu or daichi hooks.
Speaker 2:They're both really great at being able to bend the hook back into position, straighten it out, and so all I do is I if I showed you my nails, which it probably doesn't really matter, but I got all these little dots in my nail, so I take a hook and I I just put it into my nail if it catches your nail as you just pull it.
Speaker 2:You're not trying to pull down, you're trying to pull away. So you just put the hook onto your nail and pull and if it digs you're good to go like that's. That's what I was taught when I was young. And fishing see, run, cut, cut throats, um, you know, if your hook isn't sharp and you didn't get a great hook set, you're for sure not penetrating the skin but just being able to do that and being like okay, hook's good and throw it back in. And I've had clients be like no, it's not like pull it back out, I'm like what do you want to hook it in? Let's test the theory that you got here.
Speaker 1:And they're like well, it dinged on a rock and I'm like well, I'm also not buying store-bought flies.
Speaker 2:I tie my own flies. I get hannock for my nymphs. I get the hannock. I'll say it because these hooks are gangster, um hannock, competition, h45xh size, these things. Yeah, they're beautiful. I've literally hooked a rock that's, you know, a softball size and and lifted it out of the water, you know, and been like, look, it was hooked so perfectly on this little piece of whatever. And we brought this rock up without bending it open or hooked it into some grass, pulled it through, check the hook. All good, you know, and even when I've dinged it on rocks, I've checked the hook and I've been like it's still just so sharp. So, like your quality of your hooks, if you're going and buy hooks, you might as well figure out which ones work best for you.
Speaker 1:Spend the money on the hooks. If you're going to tie flies, don't buy dirt, cheap hooks. If you do, you're going to be pissed because you're buying materials. You're spending the time to tie the fly. The other thing is to make sure that you dry your flies out after you've fished them. You know I had, when I was first starting out, I had boxes of dry flies that just got destroyed because the hooks rusted out and I didn't pay attention to it.
Speaker 1:Now I'm anal, retentive. I've got a box that's dedicated no matter wet, dry streamer, just for drying the flies out, and every night, you know, I bring them back, I lay them out and then I check the the sharpness on them. The other, there is another, because I forget my sharpening stone all the time. There's one little trick that you can do. Every river that we're on has rocks and if you get a hook that's so bent and so gnarly and you can't get an edge on it and it's your last fly, go to the edge of the stream. Yes, find a nice flat rock and you can put a pretty decent edge on a good hook. A piece of crap hook. You can't do it, but you know the hannock, the gamagatsu, the daichi's, those hooks streamer hooks at least will take a real nice edge even off of a piece of stream rock.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm looking through my photos because I was hoping to find I sent this to my buddy what it is. So we're talking about keeping things dry. That goes all the way to your gear. Your like everything. You want to get that stuff dried out quick. So obviously for waders, we hang them up. Our boots are probably, for at least me is the one thing that might stay wet longer than they should. But I actually have a boot dryer. So when I'm in the Kootenays and it's summertime and I'm wet wading, I put my boots and my wading socks on a boot dryer. So the next day when I slip into them early morning, I'm not slipping into wet, soggy socks. That helps with the smell and I'll, even when it's pouring rain. For like a couple of weeks straight and I'm guiding every day, I put my waders on that boot dryer, I turn them upside down, I feed them down onto the boot dryer, have the boots. Next day Everything smells good. I'm not getting this stink. I'm in nice dry boots. You know, haven't stepped out of my truck, feel dry, it's nice.
Speaker 2:But the boxes when I get home I open up because I got a guide box. You know a rectangle thing that all my my gear goes into, or all my like flies, tippet, all that extra stuff, hand warmers, you name it. Um, I open it up, I check the bottom, make sure it actually stayed dried, because you know you're guiding it's raining. You don't zip it up properly. It's got a bit of water at the bottom. Yeah, you leave that for two days without attending to it.
Speaker 2:You got a smell coming on. You might get mold. Mold sucks to deal with. You know. That's why there's mold control people that come to your houses and charge extreme amounts of money to deal with mold. So fly boxes come out. All I do is like I have, you know, a two sided fly box. I open it up and then I close the latches and I lay it down on the side. It just needs a bit of airflow. You know, if you're fishing every day, it's not as big deal. But if you're only going out once, once a week, and you leave your, your flies wet, yeah, like he's, you're going to lose some.
Speaker 1:And it might not happen the first time.
Speaker 2:It might not happen the second time, but one day you will look back at your fly box and be like oh damn, like everything's rusted.
Speaker 1:My, my buddy, my buddy, phil, who I I fish with probably 75% of the time, is my, my fishing partner. And um, first he bought these cheap ass hooks again, I won't you know, throw a company under the the you know the bus, but he bought these cheap ass hooks and they kept either, you know, break in or they would straighten out, and then the flies that did survive, he let them stay in his fly box and he did this for two years, wouldn't you know? I'd be like hey, did you get your? You know your flies out, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:He completely ignored all that and last year every single one of his flies became unfishable. So he had probably tied you know 30 to 40 different streamers and he had to ditch every single one of them because he would hook a fish and it would break off. He's like what the hell's going on, you know? And he took a look and it rusted up and you could look like on one of the white flies and right at the base where the hook went in, you could see that orange rust and internal to that it was internal, you know, you couldn't see it externally, but that's where it weakened and got to the point that it was broken.
Speaker 2:It takes extra time. Not many people are excited about getting home from fishing and taking all their gear apart and really making sure that it dries out, but that extra step will save you tons of heartache, tons of money, all that good stuff. So, yeah, do it. Yeah, last part I was going to say, though, with the keeping things dry, is you guys got Home Depot in the US? Is that a thing? Yeah, home Depot is the us. Is that a thing? Yeah, home depot is the place that I go, yeah, I get these like big rectangle silicone packs um.
Speaker 1:They're moisture wicking packs yeah, I got, I got one right here, it's exactly it's little different, but it's the exact same thing. This is carbon.
Speaker 2:I throw one in my dry box on the raft, one in my guide box. I have two in the back of my truck and then one extra one. In case it's a really wet day I throw them on the seats. I don't like that wet dog smell that you get from fishing too much in the rain. So moisture wicking bags have become kind of a staple. When I buy them Sometimes I'll get the smaller ones. That are three packs and I'll use those for, like my smaller boxes, but if you have a fishing backpack that's waterproof.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what. I can't believe you're saying it. That's exactly what's on my wall. It's that fish pond, 100 waterproof, and that thing got wet and it smelled like ass and the only way to get it out was by having that little carbon.
Speaker 2:you know that that alone has saved me so much smell. Um, um, getting into smelling waiters, like I have a couple of friends that you know. They throw their waiters in my truck and I'm like you got it, you got a dead animal in there, what is that? And he's like nah, nah, you know this trout bum stuff. And I'm like we're putting that in the.
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm like there's a in the. Yeah, I'm like we're putting that in the back of the cab there or not?
Speaker 2:the cab, not the cab.
Speaker 1:But there's a simple trick to you know. So you can wash your waders, of course, in the washing machine, and you use borax to be able to do it. It's a gentle wash. You can wash your waders so if they stink today. That's rule number one. Rule number two is, when you're done fishing for the day, take your stocking foot waders and you can flip them inside out and dry them that way, because you want to get into dry waders in the morning. Who gives a crap about the outside of the wader being wet? Yeah, because you're just gonna flip it back.
Speaker 2:So it's a big thing, happy um. I just noticed we've been talking for two hours and two and a half hours um is you know, I know it's funny because I was watching the first hour go by. I have a tendency to like watch time. You know, on long drives I sometimes will put a piece of tape over my clock because I'll look at it, like every 10 minutes and I'm like it's only been 10.
Speaker 2:But that first hour just kind of was like. You know, I look back it would be 10 minutes, and then I didn't look at it till now and I'm like wow, wow, an hour and a half now has gone by since that first hour. So that's, that's incredible. But that's a lot of uh, a lot of your time that I've taken out of your day, and I very much appreciate it because we had some great conversations.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's been fun. I've I've really enjoyed it um getting it's been fun. I've I've really enjoyed it. Um getting it's always fun talking to like-minded anglers and being able, you know, like this last thing with, uh, wet must see, I wrote down home Depot and moisture. I'm going to check those out, cause mine is okay but it's not perfect.
Speaker 2:So that one I go as far as like my window in my bedroom collects moisture and we need new windows. But we're not in that, that financial step yet. Um, I threw one in that window cause it's like a bay window kind of style. I threw one in there and it helps there. So, like, if you're trying to get rid of moisture, you need something for it. Like a moisture wicking pack is what you need to be looking for, and yeah, I'm gonna try.
Speaker 1:It's in an orange orange and blue box.
Speaker 2:I really wish I had the box in front of me. I'll make a post on it on instagram one day, because that's it's worth it if I've, I've given them to, so many of my friends been like throw this in your car and they're like with, because they got dogs, and they're like dude.
Speaker 2:This thing works so good and you know, obviously, if you have very moist, a lot of moisture, you're trying to deal with let's say, wet dogs constantly, you're going to need probably more of those than, let's say, if you just go fishing once a week in some rain.
Speaker 2:But Well, if you ever make it to new york, you gotta look me up, I've never been to new york and, uh, I definitely want to go fish the cat scale and few other systems out there that I've heard so much about. So, yeah, one day I have a master plan, I'm going to hit everywhere that I have client or that I've had guests, because almost everyone said something like that. So I'm going all the 10 years later like hey let's go fishing.
Speaker 1:But yeah, brian, it was a it was an absolute pleasure, so I appreciate it. Thank you, have a great night and good luck with your podcast and all that great stuff. Best of success to you and your family.