WOT 194: PMDs, Caddis, and Abundance on the Colorado River with Peter Stitcher

In this episode we WadeOutThere with Peter Stitcher, from Littleton, Colorado.  Peter fell in love with fishing at age four in Knoxville, Tennessee.  His teacher introduced him to tying flies in 5th grade to help keep him focussed and calm during school.  His education went on from there to degrees in theology, counseling, and finally aquatic biology. 

When Peter realized he spent all his free time on the water chasing trout, he finally recognized his future lay in fly fishing.  Peter moved to Colorado, initially to manage private water, but soon discovered he wanted his own way to enjoy the connectedness he found on the river.  He started his own fly shop out of his home, with the support of his wife and family.  After nine and a half years, Peter moved his shop to a traditional space, opening Ascent Fly Fishing Fly Shop, where as an aquatic biologist, Peter finds joy in simplifying entomology for fly anglers. 

We discuss the Colorado River, fishing emerges throughout the water column, lifecycles of PMD and Caddis flies, and Peter shares his thoughts on how the river is a place of abundance for trout and people.

To learn more about Peter and the topics we discussed in this episode, or to schedule a guided trip, check out the following links:

AscentFlyFishing.com
READ: WADEOUTTHERE | Why We Take Our Children Fly Fishing
LISTEN: WOT PODCAST EP. 144 | Mentorship and Sight Fishing with Landon Mayer

Visit WadeOutThere.com/art for 10% off your first original painting or limited edition print from show host and artist Jason Shemchuk

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

In this episode, we wait out there with Peter Stitcher from Littleton, Colorado. Peter fell in love with fishing at age four in Knoxville, Tennessee. His teacher introduced him to tying flies in fifth grade to help him keep focused and calm during school. His education went on from there to degrees in theology, counseling, and finally aquatic biology. When Peter realized he spent all of his free time on the water chasing trout, he finally recognized his future lay in fly fishing. Peter moved to Colorado, initially to manage private water, but soon discovered he wanted his own way to enjoy the connectedness he found on the river. He started his own fly shop out of his home with the support of his wife and family. After nine and a half years, Peter moved his shop to a traditional space, opening Ascent Fly Fishing Fly Shop. Whereas an aquatic biologist, Peter finds joy in simplifying entomology for flying gores. We discuss the Colorado River, fishing emergers throughout the water column, life cycles of PMD and caddys flies, and Peter shares his thoughts on how the river is a place of abundance for trout and people. Welcome to the Wade Out There Fly Fishing Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Shepchuk. At Wade Out There, we believe fly fishing is special, but not elite, and that anyone can become a great fly fisher if they are willing to go, learn, and teach. Join me as I talk with other fly fishermen and women about their unique journeys into fly fishing, the rivers they fish, and the tactics and philosophies they practice. For those who can never leave the river in their hearts, this podcast is dedicated to helping you make the memories that keep us all coming back to Wade Out There. Welcome, Peter. Thanks for being on the Wade Out There podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Jason, thanks for having me on this morning.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Oh yeah, it's a pleasure, and I'm excited to talk to you. I know you've been super busy with the new shop, so I guess I want to start with the congratulations on that. I guess it's not so new now. I mean, we started talking quite a while ago, and it's been over a year. Did you have your year anniversary?

SPEAKER_03 2:15

It'll be a year anniversary in the new storefront in May. So we're we're at about eight months, I think. I can't do the math, but uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Getting close has been a long time coming. I'm also pumped to talk about uh bugs and fly fishing. Uh I know you're an aquatic biologist, and that's something I I find the more I learn about, the better my fly fishing gets. And we're going to talk a little bit about why that is, probably. And uh you can help me and some other people kind of figure out some of that stuff, especially with mergers and things like that. But can you talk first about how you got started in fly fishing and maybe how that morphed or kind of was congruent with the fishing uh with the aquatic biologist?

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Yeah, yeah. So so fishing was something I have a uh a photo here in the shop, and it's me at four years old um holding a little Zebco pole back then at a trout farm, uh trout farm outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. And I got like this this million mile stair, you know, looking at my bobber, my dad's there with me. And uh so fishing uh with the family was you know, starting with with the spinfisher. In fifth grade, I started tying flies. Um I was a really hyperactive kid, and so as a treat for sitting in my desk, um I had someone come in and and they'd tie flies with me for about an hour a week in class if I if I minded my my myself and behaved. So I started tying flies in fifth grade and uh yeah, you know, playing in the creeks and and on the lakes. Uh that's where I spent all my time as a kid. And uh so yeah, I morphed into fly fishing full time, um, probably in in junior high. And uh my grandpa was a ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park in his later years, so I'd spend summers, a lot of the summers up in uh Colorado with him. And uh yeah, really just delved into fly fishing head first. All all my allowance, all my lawnmowing money went to flies, went to fly tying. And uh yeah, the the river was always my happy place.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Whose idea was tying flies to help you or to reward you for calming down? That seems on standard. I mean, unless you're living, I don't know, where you gotta live to where that enters somebody's brain.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

Well, so I had, yeah, this this mentor in in elementary school and he was from Utah, uh, and he fly fished, so I think you know he he liked uh tying flies and and why not get paid to tie flies, and and I love fishing, so it was a it was a good segue. And I probably still have some of those flies in in an old fly box somewhere in my garage, but they're ugly, but they they caught panfish, so I was hooked.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

But it was his idea to kind of bring it into your, I don't know, kind of reward system for behavior and stuff?

SPEAKER_03 5:06

Yeah, yeah. Sit at my desk and do my math, and and then we get to talk fishing and tie flies.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Wow. All right. Maybe I'll try that with my son. He's not uh super fan of school. I mean, he doesn't mind school, I guess, but he just does not like sitting in that classroom. So uh yeah. He likes tying flies though, so that's a good idea. Maybe take that one away. That's a little lesson for me. Do it, do it. Um yeah, okay. So what about the biology aspect of it? What I mean, did that come naturally for you as you went to school, or did you just think that that would be something that could get you further in fly fishing, or wh why that when you moved on?

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Well, yeah, biology wasn't wasn't my first degree. Um, so I think uh you got a lot of voices speaking into your life when you're you're leaving high school. Like, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna make a living? So um or what's worthwhile. So my first degrees were actually uh what I thought was really worthwhile, or or what was being spoken into me was you know, do something that's eternal. Um so I my first degrees were theology and and missions. So I thought I was gonna be a missionary in like New Guinea. Uh spent a lot of time overseas, didn't feel like a good fit. So I went back and started a master's in counseling. And uh it's funny, man. I I I through every degree, whenever something good or bad or hard would happen, I'd cut class and I'd go fishing. So I should have like seen the writing on the wall. I should have been fishing the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

But it's hard though. It's hard to see that stuff. Especially like when you said they've got all these voices coming at you, and they're not none of them are saying, like, why don't you start a fly shop in Littleton, Colorado?

SPEAKER_03 6:51

Yeah, so I man, I I found myself working at a university as a therapist, and I was like, man, I hope these clients don't come in so I can go fishing. I'm like, that's really what I should be doing, is I should be fishing. So yeah, late in in my 20s, I went back for a third bachelor's degree in aquatic biology. And I found a guy in Bend, Oregon, I was living in Portland at the time, and I'm like, this guy's got the dream job. He is going in to a field or to some degraded stream, and he's making trophy trout water. So I like really invested in getting to know him and picking his brain. I'm like, what do I need to do to do what you're doing? So I could just be with trout and fish all the time. And he's like, you need another degree. So I delved into the soils and into the botany and into the biology and the water chemistry. And the whole point of this was to be with trout, to work with trout. And I figured if I understood how trout saw, how they fed, what made a prime environment for growing big fish, uh, that would just really help facilitate my game as a fly fisherman. And uh yeah, through through some different courses in my life and and needs in the family, I kind of fell into to starting a fly shop.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

When you were in school, when you were you know studying this stuff, were you thinking it was more for it sounds like it you were thinking of it professionally as well. It wasn't just to help your fishing game, right? You were like, nope, this is I'm making my third or second or fourth career change here, and this is this is gonna help me in that in that regard as well.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

Well, yeah, it was a pivot. Um so in Oregon, I I worked as a field biologist, so I'd be uh in the field living out of my truck or out of a tent for two weeks, and we'd be surveying salmon habitat, trout habitat in the headwaters of the cascades or the coastal range. So I'd just be on these logging roads, just me and fish, and and not a lot to do in the evening, so I just like observe like how the fish were eating, where they were holding in the log jams, um, you know, how the the different trees would stabilize the banks and what kind of bugs were living in there. So I just had journals filled with these notes, just observing how the fish feed. And and I get to know these fish because I'd be back on these rivers month after month looking at the same habitat. You know, being a biologist uh in Oregon, there needless to say, there's a lot of environmentally minded biologists there. So we were we were starving and hard to find work. So ended up taking a job in Colorado, managing a lot of private water in the Aspen Valley. So came over, came over to Colorado, and uh yeah, again, my heart was always about fly fishing. I got tired making trophy trout water for rich people that never fish their water. So it's like, how can I implement this to more of my passion?

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Well, yeah, that's cool, man. And now I should say congratulations as well. You you've got a new son on the way, is that right? How is that uh I do? How has that changed the calculus and and how fly fishing, you know, the season of your fly fishing journey has kind of changed now again, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Right. So I have I have two older kids. Aidan is uh 14, my daughter Emily's turning 12, and then uh Brooks, my son Brooks will be here any any day. Um and so yeah, I don't know how that's gonna change the the calculus of fishing, but uh I think um he's gonna be on my back a lot, you know, this first season in the backpack. And uh yeah, I think the river, I mean, has been for me and my other kids and me and my wife a place of connection, a place of conversation, a place of sharing uh life lessons of healing. Um so I anticipate that that'll be a place of growth and teaching and and and exploration for Brooks as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Yeah, it'll be cool for him to kind of grow up in a fly shop and have that opportunity available to him. Whether he decides to go into that kind of outdoor space or not, it's still a good it's a good tool to have in your tool set as a person, young person especially, to have some sort of place to go in nature. And I don't know, sometimes I feel for people that have never experienced that. And a lot of times I have people on the show or talk to people that they're introduced to fly fishing later in life, and it's such a game changer for them. And so it's a real blessing for us to be able to give our kids that when they're young, you know.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

Yeah, it's uh I think it's a place to to do dangerous things with safe people. So, I mean, you know, standing on the front of the raft, holding onto the rope, you know, we call it riding the bull, going down the rapids. And you know, my kids have helmets and life, so if they fall out in the rapid, like we'll fish them out on the other ends. But yeah, it gives them the ability to explore, to push their limits, and to know that they're safe and held while they're doing it and and and brushing them off when they fall in. So I don't think we're gonna start with Brooks on the front of the boat this season. We'll we'll give them a couple years.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

What's been one of the more rewarding aspects of starting the flash shop that you were kind of surprised about?

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Yeah, so I mean Ascent fly fishing um came out of you know my biology career. We started in 2014, and we ran it out of my home for nine and a half years. Um just this past season, we moved into a more traditional shop. Um and and running it out of my home, uh, it was fun and it was safe. Um it was uh kind of this grassroots, like, hey, I know a guy, he's a biologist, he's got 600,000 flies in his garage. You gotta come check this out. So it was kind of this you gotta come check this thing. And you know, we had free beer for everybody, and people would hang out, and if you came at dinner time, you probably got a burger. It was it was really intimate. Um it was safe for me because I didn't have to do things the way that has you know has been traditionally done in uh in the in the uh fly fishing industry. And uh I could close my door when I wanted, I could open it, um, and kind of yeah, just but you know, that safety, it also kind of uh reduced, you know, how we could grow and what we could do. So it was a it was a big it was vulnerable opening up a shop because you're like you know, we've been doing pop-up shops where we take take all this displays to uh to a brewery or to a tap house and we'd have live music and we'd have food trucks and it was this kind of viral cool thing. You know, will our community follow us to a traditional space and still be a part of what we're doing? And um, so you know, my wife is is awesome. She designed the space, it's beautiful, it's it's it's got a very different vibe as far as what we value and how we empower people. And that first weekend, 2,400 people showed up. So it was really affirming that yeah, the community was into what we're doing and they were with us.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Um so yeah, this first season has been yeah, it's uh That is very um that's gotta feel good, man. That's gotta feel really good because that's a big jump, like you said. It's different when it's not your garage and you got lease to pay and employees and things, and you know.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Absolutely. Yeah, the um, you know, that we it's it's all been built grassroots, so you know we just saved our nickels and yeah, there's no trust funds or or or venture behind us, and uh, you know, but in in doing it, we're doing it, we're doing it our way still. So um Yeah. I was a punk rock kid growing up, so we had bagpipers playing dropkick Murphys at our grand opening. And uh yeah, it was you just do it our way, and it it's really fun.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

We talked a little bit about this before the show, but what's some of the things about your shop that you think gives it the the different vibe?

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Um, I think the way that you know we we are very purposeful about how we hire, um who we hire, and and how we approach you know the community that comes in, whether they're someone with a spinning rod in a bubble wanting to tie a fly on, or someone that's been fly fishing a long time, you know, it it's about empowering people for where they at and how uh they will feel uh alive on the water. And that's different from every person. It's it's not always catching the most fish, it's not always catching the biggest fish. Um, it might be get into a secluded place, catching a rare species, it might be a dispersed camping spot with a hot springs nearby so that their kids can chill while they're fishing. Um again, it might be you know catching a lot of different species or big fish, and and so we want to join them there. So we keep maps on the wall. Uh we have uh our Google maps where we can draw pins for people. They say, hey, I can drive two hours, I want to camp for three days, I want to catch four species, and we'll map out a route to our favorite spots on where to do that. Um, there's never a hard sell. Uh we have 600,000 flies in the shop. We got a lot of gear, we got some overhead to cover, but I want to see what people have. So they bring in their box, and we're gonna look at the flies they have, and I could say, you know, these are the life stages, the hatches, and the flies are gonna be working on these waters. This is how I'd rig it. You only need six flies. You don't need to spend $40 here today. You know, let's spend $10 and get you on the water, and you can come back when you actually need some flies.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

Yeah, that's something that's really cool that you guys do uh that um, you know, I suppose could be done in many places and many different ways, but it's it's cool how you have formalized it a little bit and said, you know, we're gonna break down the hatch for this river and this location uh and uh kind of show you the different life cycles of those bugs. And I want to talk a little bit more about the life cycles, but you know, the tagline for Wait Out There is fly fishing is special but not elite, and that anyone can go uh be a great fly fisher if they're willing to go learn and teach. So I like the idea of people being able to kind of have the opportunity to go out there and fish and not feel like their their experience is any less special than somebody else's because everybody's got their own, just like you said, you said it really well, like everybody's got their own way of doing things. Like some people want to catch big fish, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to catch big fish. Like I think that's awesome, that's your thing. And some people they just want to fish with their friends, and some people want to fish alone, and um I think the problem becomes kind of like you know, I I think it can be problematic when people start thinking that their way or the highway or that this other person is not as uh good of a fly fisher, or because they have a different way of looking at things, you know.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

Yeah, I um I think we all have a lot of questions. I had uh a fly tying buddy come in, Scott Stisser is probably the I would say one of the top five Atlantic salmon fly tires in the world. And he was in the shop, um, and he was sitting and talking, and I learned so much from him in one conversation. You know, I spent my career studying trout. I I I spent all day thinking about fly fishing and just sitting with him. Man, I learned so much. And so I think the atmosphere uh that we've tried to create, uh, the things that we emphasize uh and that we value is is the questions that people are you know really longing to ask are the ones that we're really excited to answer. And so we encourage people to come in and ask us any question, and and we will try to meet them or or learn it ourselves and then you know try to try to learn it with them. Um so we emphasize a lot of education, casting classes, free fly fishing classes, we're starting, you know, free clinics on the water, entomology classes. You know, how do we empower people to really engage this sport in a way that's more meaningful to them and their families.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

All right, man. Well, when you're doing all this fishing and you said you had this job in Colorado counseling, uh, is that right?

SPEAKER_03 21:10

I was a therapist in Oregon, came out here as a biologist. Yeah, wasn't quite into, didn't have a scent at that point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

So in Colorado, as you've been living out here, I I know we talked before the show, the Colorado River is pretty close to where you guys are at, and it's been a special fishery for you. Can you talk a little bit about what makes it special for you and maybe some of the unique qualities of the Colorado River that people are surprised at when they come out there?

SPEAKER_03 21:38

Right. So I think when most people think about the Colorado River, they think of, you know, uh a river that's, you know, 70 yards across, maybe some braids. They think of like the the pump house to to ranchos, some of these really popular float sections. But I mean the Colorado River and some really unique fishing opportunities really start on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, um, you know, where my grandpa took me fishing as a kid. And you can step across the Colorado River in Rocky Mountain National Park. It starts as this little headwater fed by little tributaries, and there are cutthroats and brook trout at the at the headwater.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

So that is so cool. Yeah, I mean that's you can just walk across it, you know.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

I mean, it's just it's it's a it's a it's a living entity that grows as you move with it through the state. Um, and so there's different opportunities uh for different times of the year, for different seasons of your life. You know, maybe you know, with my son this year, we do a one-on-one trip with both with all the kids every year. And we did a little survival camp out, no food, no shelter. We just you know foraged greens and he caught his limit of fish. I mean, that's the first trout I've eaten in probably 30 years, but my son caught it, you know. But yeah, we went up to these headwaters and we fished the little streams. Uh, whereas my daughter, she wanted to float. So we go down to the middle Colorado around Pump House, below the town of Kremlin. And uh, you know, the time we spend together is more just you know, stopping at the hot springs, but just slow conversation in between rapids and doing life and meeting each other where where we're at and camping on the side of the river. Um, you get down to the lower Colorado by uh uh Glenwood Springs, uh Silts, Rifle Area. Uh it's kind of below the confluence of several rivers. So the Eagles come in, uh, the Roaring Fork and Frying Pan and Crystal have all uh joined and dumped in there. So it's it's bigger, it's deeper, and there's some awesome streamer fishing in the fall for big browns. So that's really the pumpkin patch where you slam those big browns uh before the spawn in the fall. And uh so yeah, there's there's different opportunities throughout the season, different fish, and uh it's just a really diverse river.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Is there something that you were out there on the Colorado recently that you st stands out in your brain as like uh a lesson learned that you you had to relearn or maybe surprised you when you're trying to catch fish?

SPEAKER_03 24:07

Well, this last season, uh 23, we had record snow. I mean, we're talking five hundred percent of snowpack, thousands. Percent of snowpack moving into the spring, and that uh meant really high flows uh through the spring and and most of the summer. And um, you know, I'm I've been used to fishing kind of drought stage Colorado rivers for several years, and so you know, when nymphing, we're doing uh kind of a standard rig where you might have a strike indicator on the boat, um, you go down you know one and a half, two times the depth of the water you're fishing, you put on a split shot, and then you're running some nymphs in between uh below that. Well, that rig, um, as it drifts on the bottom, it's very horizontal across the water. It's floating on a on a pretty shallow um piece of the water column. And uh with so much water and uh I mean it being that much higher, that rig wasn't working really well. So uh moving weight uh lower on our rig in between the flies or a drop shot rig on the bottom of our fly rig, and and our our nymphs kind of drifting off of tags above it, that allowed us to kind of touch different parts of the water column and uh and really get more fish this season. So higher flows required us to change our rig for sure.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Yeah, that was a lot of snow this year. It was great skiing, but the summer and uh it was like the rivers around here were high like almost all summer. I mean, it was like middle of July before I was really fishing water that I was kind of used to seeing. So I guess that's a good lesson that you know be ready for the different water levels and stuff. Uh do you have a more memorable fish from the Colorado or something that stands out in your brain as uh maybe the one got away or something you learned from that experience?

SPEAKER_03 25:58

I mean, I think the most memorable fish for me this year uh were the little brook trout my son caught. Where I mean we walked, we walked four miles off trail to a little clearing we saw on on uh Google Maps, um, and he camped and he he owned his own rig. He, you know, barefoot walking side by side up the creek together and him catching fish, and then me taking a break and him like, now dad, I'm gonna keep fishing. Like, it just brought me back. Like, that was me at his age, and he's doing it, right? He's he's out there and he can't get enough. So him bringing that little brook trout in and teaching him to to clean that, to to cook that, uh, in the shelter that he made, that was the most memorable fish of the year.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

That's a W, Peter. When you want to stop fishing and your son wants to keep fishing, that's a big win.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Yeah. Yeah. It's uh there's there's a deeper joy in watching him catch the fish at this point in my life.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Well, we're gonna get into flies a little bit uh later, but if uh I'm a slightly below average fly tire to maybe below average fly tire. What are a couple of flies that I could tie if me and you were gonna go fish to Colorado that are pretty minimal materials, pretty um generic, kind of good year-round type flies. If I came out on a guided trip with one of your folks, they would say, Yeah, we'll we'll give these a shot. These will fish pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

Yeah, um, I would say that the Pat's rubber leg is gonna be, you know, one of the best flies throughout the length of the Colorado. Um so with maybe, you know, the exception of right below uh Grammy Shadow Mountain, kind of uh the big reservoirs, um, the Colorado acts like a free stone river and it is full of big stoneflies. Uh so the Pat's rubber leg is gonna cover probably you know four different species um on the Colorado. Um I mean we have two golden stonefly species, uh, our big salmon flies, the pteranarsis. We have you know fish in a large size two or four Pats rubber leg. Um we got stoneflies in the water year-round. So that's gonna be a good heavy, high visibility, be it uh you know, off-colored water, clear water, that patz is gonna be hitting most of the time. Um, jujubatus, another really solid one, not an easy tie. Um Pats is is you know, four materials, jujubetis. It's a little more detailed. Um and then uh Landon Mayer, uh, pretty well known here in the Rockies, he ties a mini leech, um, which is just really spectacular. And again, an easy tie, um about four materials to that. Uh like a tungsten beathead mini leech is is going to be great dead drifting on the Colorado, South Platte, really across the front range.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

All right. Sounds good. If you can only pass along two techniques to people, uh one of the somebody comes into your shop and you could only give them two technical pieces of advice for fishing on the Colorado, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_03 28:56

I mean, I would tell them, you know, get out of the boat. Um, so a lot of people, it's kind of a booze cruise, they don't want to get out of the boat, but you really need to get out, stop at those sweet spots, and dissect them. Um so a drop shot rig, uh, which we have on the blog on our website, where that weight is on the bottom, your nymphs are are moving off of tags on the side. Um, it's kind of a cousin to the Euro nymphing rig, but you can fish it cross current a little more, you can fish with an indicator as well. Um, really get out, get down deep, and hit those different sections of the water column. So weights on the bottom, flies drifting off of tags above it, and uh stop at those sweet spots and and work your way across the different feeding lanes before you drift on. Um so yeah, take take 20 minutes, take 30 minutes on those prime spots and really break them apart. The Colorado, I'd also say skip radium hot springs. It's just a drunk mess with people falling off the cliff.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

All right, that's tactical. I'll take that.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

Yeah, I took my wife floating or my daughter floating by there this last year, and and everyone was naked in the hot springs. I'm like, no, we're not stopping. Let's just keep going.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

So keep on going by here. Nothing to see here, kids.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

Yeah, in in off-colored water, um, you gotta fish streamers. Um, and I think uh again, I'm fishing from the boat most of the time, but uh yeah, I keep one uh rod set up with with the nymphs, with the drives where we're actively matching the hatch. Uh I have my second rod with streamers. So I'm gonna go back over that same water with streamers, especially if we we've pulled over. And fishing streamers from a boat, um, I'm casting downstream, doing an immediate upstream mend. Um so little fish, just like big fish, are gonna be facing up into the current most of the time. So by doing that upstream mend, when you start that retrieve, that little stream is gonna be moving upstream like a minnow, pushing up into the current. Uh, and that's what the big trout are used to seeing.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Okay. Uh let's say you could only fish the Colorado two days this year. Peter, which two days would you fish it? How would you fish it?

SPEAKER_03 30:58

I would probably fish the uh Newcastle to Silt section. So that's below Glenwood Springs, below the confluence, uh the two rivers confluence with the Roaring Fork in Colorado. And I fish it probably uh in mid to late October. Um and I'm gonna be fishing that with big sex dungeons and double gongs and uh really going after those big aggressive uh angry browns.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Okay. What about day two?

SPEAKER_03 31:29

They can't be back to back, huh? They can be back to back.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Yeah, yeah. No, that's a good answer. No, no, I'm not gonna go back to back. They've had back to backs. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

I'm gonna do uh the end of May, maybe first week of June, and uh I'm gonna be waiting across at Pump House. I'm gonna walk across, I'm gonna walk up into Gore Canyon, and I'm gonna be throwing my big salmon flies. Uh so that big uh Terra Narsis Californica, stonefly the size of your pinky. Um I mean the fish, if you can get just ahead of them, right when they've because when they fill up, they're done eating for about a week. But you get ahead of that, it's the biggest, sloppiest dry fly action of the season.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

Okay. Those sound like two good days. Anything else you want to pass along about the Colorado River that we haven't talked about before we start moving on? I want to ask you, oh, I know what I was gonna ask you. Um one of the things that you do in your fly shop and as an aquatic biologist is really break down the different hatches for different rivers all around North America and Patagonia and New Zealand even. Uh what is if you were gonna do that for the Colorado River, uh how would you how would you break down that fly box for the different stages? This might be a very long answer, but you know, I mean, just what's the basic stuff that you're gonna look for? And I and and then I guess two-part question, is that do you have different box for different seasons as well, or do you can you pretty much break it down for Yeah, or or do you can you can you break it down in generalities, sir?

SPEAKER_03 33:02

Yeah, so on our Instagram right now, we're we're we're showing our process where um someone will tell us this is the river I'm fishing, this is the season I'm fishing. You know, essentially they answer seven questions. These are the waters, these are the seasons, this is my skill level. So we're gonna be kind of taking into account both environmental variables about water temperature, elevation, the specific waters, which bugs live in that water, and based on the season and stuff, we'll be able to determine where those bugs are gonna be in the water column, how big are they gonna be, how how abundant are they gonna be. And then we have angular variables. So if someone's brand new to fly fishing, I'm probably not gonna be going into the weeds and really uh you know specific flies that are only gonna match one hatch and one life stage. If someone's new, I might, you know, tend more towards L care caddis instead of uh you know a spotted sedge, because an L care cattle can be used to match ten different caddis species on that water as opposed to the one.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Why why is that? Is that because you want them to have uh like a more general f generic fly they could use in more places as a beginner? Because you assume they have less flies to begin with, or is that because exactly?

SPEAKER_03 34:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

Yeah, so I mean if they're brand new, they might have inherited 10 flies. I want to make sure that the flies we're giving them are gonna cover more waters, more hatches, more species. If someone's been fishing for 20 years, they got a thousand flies, maybe they want that detailed information on I want every course in the meal now for this. And I'm gonna go a little lighter. I might give them one of each of these flies for you know the nymphs for the emerging nymphs, for the emerging dun for the spinner, and then they'll take that back into their existing fly box and they'll say, you know what, I got three or four of those so they can start to combine what they have and they understand what they have and when to fish it better. Um, so yeah, we get uh a budget, we get a season, we get some details on when and where they're fishing, and then we can we can go as as deep as they want. If someone's got a $20 budget and they're gonna be fishing a specific water for a weekend, you know, I can touch on you know pretty detailed what they're doing. If they have a a $20 budget and they want a box for an entire season, we're gonna have to really spread out that hatch and get a little more general.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

So let's break it down for the Colorado then. Maybe let's do the Colorado. I'm an intermediate fly fisher. Uh I'm coming out to fish in um, let's say I'm coming out to fish in October, your favorite, your number one day to go uh on the Colorado River. How would you break down that fly box? And I'm really interested in especially the different stages of life cycle and the bugs, because a lot of times I used to think of a hatch as like dry flies. And the more I learn about entomology, the more I realize and we're we're gonna talk about the water column more uh a little bit later, but you know, there's there's that hatch is happening throughout the water column and where the bugs are in the different parts of the water column. That's fascinating to me. And I feel like the more that I've understood the water column and that part of bug life, that's not just bugs on the bottom, nymph the bottom, and bugs on the top for dry flies, those are things that are um valuable to me, I guess. Can you talk to that a little bit or for Colorado?

SPEAKER_03 36:33

Yeah, I think um when we say the word hatch, uh our mind does jump right to the surface of the water, like those bugs somehow warped from the bottom of the river to the surface.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

So, yeah, hatch charts uh are somewhat helpful. I mean, but most of them have, you know, uh the major oversight in hatch charts is is that little highlighted line next to the species and under the months of the year, it's just indicating when we can expect the dry flies to be present sometime within that period. Well, the dry fly accounts for 0.1% of the life of the bug. And it accounts for about 20% of fish feeding year-round. So it's like, well, do we want to be fishing those flies the other 99.9% of their life, and do we want to catch another 80% of those fish? Yeah, that hatch chart is a misnomer. It's just talking about dry flies. We we need to be thinking under the water and and that whole progress of the bugs through the water column.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

To me, the f the hatch chart, the I I agree with you. The value of the hatch chart for me has been like, okay, if I know the hatch chart says like Elkare Caddis in I don't know, August or let's say October on the Yakima River, October caddis hatch or something like that. Here's and they might the hatch chart might be a couple months of uh of caddis. What that now with a with the understanding of what you just talked about, it gives me some clues into like, okay, here's the nymphs that I need to be thinking about because those those hatches, all those other things, right, that you're about to talk about. And I didn't mean to cut you off, but it just seems like it it's uh for somebody that has no idea, like, hey, what even what even species of bugs is is gonna be out here, you know what I mean? Does do you think that that's helpful? Or I mean it gives you a starting point about these are the midges and mergers and things.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

So I I think you're you're nailing it. I think a good hatch chart will will list uh maybe the genus or the species. So it's not just it's mayflies in October, they'll say it's bluing olives, or it's uh it's our pseudos. And maybe, you know, depending on where you're at, there might be some some trichos somewhere in the country in October. And so now we we've gone from mayflies and we're getting a little more detailed. All right, we know that the pseudo is our fall blooming olive and it's gonna be a size 22 to 24. And that's not gonna be just true of the dry fly, that's gonna be true of the emerger underneath the surface of the water, it's gonna be true of the nymph. When you see that half start and there's that colored bar going across the month of the year, what your mind should be saying is not just our dry flies gonna be on the menu at some point during that day in that season, every course in that meal, the nymphs, the emerging nymphs, the emerging duns, the duns and spinners, and that spent spinner for that mayfly, at some point in that day in that season, each of those courses of the meal are gonna be on the menu. And the trout are gonna be following each of those courses in the meal throughout the day. So there's a period when the greatest concentration of calories is gonna be the nymph. And then those nymphs are gonna break cover from the rocks on the bottom of the river, and it's like D-Day, this mass migration up through the water column towards the surface, and the trout are gonna be phasing off of the nymphs and they're gonna be moving to your uh your bars and mergers, they're gonna be moving to your RS2s, your chocolate thunders, those mid-column patterns. As the majority of those bugs start hitting the surface of the water and struggling to get out, their wings are emerging. We're switching to our sparkle dunks, our parachute emergers, those those patterns in the film. And on a on a two-fly rig, on a three-fly rig, we can kind of span the meals. So maybe fly one is a fully emerged parachute bluing olive. So as those flies are struggling through, more and more of them are going to turn into that parachute, sitting on the top, wings standing straight up off the water. Currently, um, you know, those trout are porpoising through the water. Their behavior is still very cluing us into that they're eating emergers. So below our parachute atoms, fly number two, trailing off the back of the hook, might be a sparkle dun or a parachute emerger. So one of those patterns that's half in, half out of the water, off the tail of that, fly number three, you know, an RS2 or chocolate thunder, something just under the film. So we are progressing through those courses of the meal with our rig. And as those fish change their attention from the RS2 and the parachute merger, those last two flies, more and more of those bites will start transitioning to those front two. And so, yeah, we can we can anticipate and move with that hatch. But again, when I see the hatch chart, I see that bar, I go to the river with every fly uh in its largest size that is true to that hatch. So um the largest fly for you know uh a green drake. Let's say we're fishing our western green drake. Well, let's talk about the Colorado.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

Can we do the Colorado?

SPEAKER_03 41:32

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So Colorado in October. Um let's say we're let's say we're fishing that lower section, um uh that Newcastle to Silt.

SPEAKER_02 41:45

Okay. What does the hatch chart say for the Colorado River in fall like that?

SPEAKER_03 41:50

Yeah, what it's gonna say, um, again, it's already gotten pretty frosty. Most of our, I mean, 98% of our terrestrials have already bit it. So um there might be some blooming olives persisting, but again, the life stages of most of the bugs, they're hatching, they're mating, they're laying their eggs in the warmer months. And so what's happening is these eggs have hatched underwater, and we're looking at 80, you know, probably 90 to 95 percent wet life stages right now. That's what's prevalent. So there might be some short uh periodic midge or some really late bluing olive hatches, um, but that would only probably account for 5% of the flies that I give you. I give you a couple blueing olives, I give you a couple trichos, but again, it's the tail end of both of those hatches, a couple dry midges. The rest of it's gonna be um some size 12 pat's rubber legs, lots of size 22, like juju betas, things like that. October, um, that brown spawn. Uh the browns in the brooks spawn in the fall. Um, we are not targeting spawning fish, but every fish in the river is gonna be eating eggs. It's the highest calorie, easiest to get meal right before this long winter, you know, fast. So we're gonna be having egg patterns on a lot of our rigs. Um and then again, uh looking at fish feeding behavior, what's going on? Um, I would say trout uh during the spawn or just before the spawn are like frat boys at last call. They're horny, they're just looking to score, super aggressive, and so we're throwing these big streamers that they see both as a small fish looking to you know predate their their eggs and also a nice, you know, a nice meal. So um they'll aggressively attack those big streamers. So I'm fishing big streamers, uh you know, some mid-life cycle stonefly nymphs, um fishing a lot of smaller mayfly nymphs. We have green drakes in the water, we got PMDs in the water, we got blueing olives in the water. The PMDs in October, uh, they've just wrapped up their hatched, you know, a month or two earlier. They're probably about a size 30 right then. So I'm not fishing PMD nymphs. Our our green drakes, they've been in the water a little bit, they're probably about a size, I'm guessing, you know, 20 to an 18 that time of year. So a little pheasant tail would cover that.

SPEAKER_02 44:17

Is this because they're in the stage of their life where they're just not gonna hatch, like it's gonna take them a couple years to hatch, or like why because if they're in the water, why wouldn't they go through that stage and end up being the dry flies? This is kind of a basic, maybe unintelligent or uninformed question, but it's a great question. If you have these nymphs and they have these four lifestyle life cycle stages or whatever, three or four, what what prevents them from going through the whole thing? You know, I mean I I mean it makes sense. You don't you don't fish a lot of dry flies in the wintertime, but they're still going through their their lives, right?

SPEAKER_03 44:56

Yeah, I mean, so you know, looking at the life cycle of of a bug compared to our life cycles, I mean, the the green drake in October is is in elementary school. Man, it's just fresh from the egg, it's teeny, and they might be abundant, but they're so small, they're they're down in the rocks, they're crawling around, they're not actively they're not big enough, they're not ready to make it to that next stage. That that's a summer hatch. And so they're they're buried in the rocks. Um, you know, what's active and available is a lot of eggs, uh, those those streamer patterns, um, and then the blueing olives and the end of our trichos are still actively moving through the water column. Um, talking about emergers, um, emergers are some of the most productive life stages because you know these nymphs that have been hunkered down in the rocks for, again, 99% of their life now are breaking cover, right? And they're trying to make their way through these actively you know searching trout. And so they're and a lot of our mayflies and caddis flies, they're very indecisive emergers. So they will swim up towards the surface of the water and then they'll head back down. And they'll swim up and swim down. I didn't know. So it's not a a it's not a quick break to the surface. They are um you know up and down, up and down, getting swirled in the current. So this is a great opportunity. For trout to really pack on the calories in that emerger life stage. When they hit the surface of the water, they're not home free yet. We do a class here every month called Bugs and Brews. We meet at a brewery, we talk about entomology, everybody gets their first beer paid for by me. And I do this analogy where I take a pint, you know, pour a fresh IPA in it, and we get a nice head of bubbles on top of that IPA. And what that's illustrating is uh these bubbles, we get a head of bubbles because that carbonation gets trapped in the surface tension of the liquid, of the beer. And these small mayflies, these small midges, they have to break through this uh resistant ceiling, that surface tension of the water. So it's a point of food collection. As more and more of these nymphs and more and more of these midge pupa hit the surface of the water, they have to struggle through a break through that, open up the shuck. That nymph shuck opens up those wings, need to expand and gain circulation. And so it's a long drift on the surface of the water as well. And both of those, on the way up from the from the rocks to the surface of the water, and through the surface of the water to finally flying off into the side of the river, those are two uh emerger life stages uh with unique patterns and unique opportunities to catch a lot of fish.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

I think what you said that makes a lot of sense that I wasn't really thinking about or you implied it's the duration of the life cycle stages, right? Like the one they're nymphs for a lot longer than these other than the dry fly or the dun or the spinner, right? And so that's how they can be still in the water, but we're not gonna see dry fly versions of them. We're not gonna see duns and and those types of things because they're so early on in their like you said, elementary school, that they're not to the point where they're going to be even close to doing that, and that's seasonal, and that's why the hash chart says, well, you're gonna see these later on in the summer or warmer months when the temperature and climate allows for them for their life to to go on and do that, right? And even if you have a multi-year life cycle, that's constantly fluidly going. So there's different stone flies at different ages, and some of them a couple years away from hatching, but these ones are gonna hatch this year. So that I think is something that's important to understand is the duration of those life cycles, which makes sense then, because then if you're then nymphing gives you more opportunity, because just in general, there's just longer periods of time where these bugs are in that nymph stage. Is that is that accurate? Or it sounds like that's what I'm hearing you say.

SPEAKER_03 49:00

That is. So let me break that down for your your your listeners. So I was saying, you know, in October I'd be fishing like a size 12 Pat's rubber leg. Well, I mean, if we were to to be on uh the Colorado in in late May or June, you know, we're seeing these these large salmon flies that are you know three inches long coming out of the water. A size 12 is is an inch and a quarter. It's pretty small or an inch. Um so looking at the life cycle, um, our stoneflies will spend one to three years underwater as a nymph. Our mayflies spend six months to two years underwater. So what we're we're saying is there's multiple generations of these hatches. So, yeah, that big generation is already out of the water. So what's left is for our golden stoneflies, is we have one-year-old golden stoneflies that are about a size 12, a size 10, maybe a size, you know, 14 to a 12. And then we got this fresh generation that just popped out of the egg, and they're a size 28. We're not we're not even matching to them yet. Okay. Um, yeah, with our salmon flies, man, that big generation just came out of the water at three inches, and what's left is we got a two-inch two-year-old generation, we got about a one-inch to a three-quarter inch one-year-old generation, and then we got those fresh salmon flies fresh from the egg. It's a size 22. In the eyes of the trout, that really abundant fresh generation of salmon flies looks just like a bluing olive at that point. It's a dark size 22 nymph. So that juju betis is gonna cover that early salmon fly generation, a stone fly, and it's gonna cover the bluing olives that are still coming off, and it's gonna cover those trichos that are just wrapping up. So we've covered three hatches with one fly and a size 22.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

That makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_03 50:51

And we got we got charts and visuals and yeah, videos on the website that really flesh it out for you for your folks.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Oh, that's very well fleshed out, man. I appreciate that. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the emerger life stage and the and the water column. And we've touched upon it a good amount, but I'd wonder if you could talk a little bit more about um so you have the generational life cycles as well, which I think is really important to understand. But then how do they how do you break down the water column with the emerger? Because typically, when I think emerger, when I was introduced to eMergers, it was this realization that why aren't they taking my dry fly? Because you know, there's all this activity on the surface and they're not taking my dry fly. Well, Jason, they're not eating dry flies on the surface. You're seeing their backs and they're eating just below the surface, like you said, they're trying to break through that beer. That's where I was learning about emergers, right? But then there's this this whole period of time between when there are nymphs on the bottom and where they're in that trying to break through and where they're in that middle water column. And can you talk a little bit about the duration of that season and um you know, I guess different tactics you use and flies you would use to mimic different uh ways that they uh are in the water column?

SPEAKER_03 52:16

Right. So, you know, what we're gonna do, I mean, if if I were to uh you know, plan a trip to to the provo, right, to your water. Um I'm just yeah, one of your listeners head head into a new water. What I'm gonna do is first thing first thing I'm gonna do, I'm gonna call a scent fly fishing and ask them what's going on, and we're gonna tell them no. Uh they can't.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

We'll link to that in the show notes, people. There'll be plenty of links to the show notes. We'll get you covered. Yeah. We'll get you covered, Peter.

SPEAKER_03 52:40

I mean, go ahead and and and look at uh look at a hash chart, and it's gonna tell you, you know, roughly, yeah, there might be dry flies, you know, there might be those adult life stages present on this this this water you're visiting while you're there. But what I want you to walk away with is all right, it says PMDs are present in this water. I need to make sure I have all of the life stages. I want the PMD nymphs, I want the PMD emergers, the emerging drives, the fully emerged adults. I want every course of that meal. So throughout the day, as those fish follow that bug, I'm gonna have it. We're gonna get to that water and we're gonna see where are we at in the meal, which course of the meal are we stepping into as we we enter this restaurant? What are they serving right now? And so um so you need to, we're observing, right? We're gonna, you know, sanding the water, actually looking at, you know, what are the sizes, you know, kind of confirming what are the sizes, what's the most abundant, uh, what flies in my box are looking close to what's actually on this water. That's something that we do every time we get to the water. But also we're looking at fish feeding behavior. And I think that's what you were talking about. And I think a lot of us have done this, and it's probably one of the most frustrating things for beginner to intermediate fly fishers is we get ahead of the hatch. And we think, since I see the fish now, I see it on the surface, it must be eating dry flies. And we throw the fluffiest, highest floating dry fly, and we might be close to maybe we even hit the right hatch, right? All right, it's PMDs. I'm throwing a PMD on top of the water. It looks like they're flipping me the fin, man. They're giving me the middle finger and they're ignoring it. What's going on?

SPEAKER_02 54:15

The middle fin. If we slip back.

SPEAKER_03 54:17

The middle fin, right? Um, how are these fish actually rising? How are they coming through the water? And I think you hit it. And if they're porpoising, if they're their dorsal fins, their collatal fins, those tail fins are just clipping the surface of the water. We see this little flipper-like porpoise where it's just the top of their head rolling through the water. That behavior is true to eating those emergers in the film or just under the film. And so by throwing that parachute PMD, you're like, man, here's a brownie. And they're like, no, we are still on the prime rib course of the meal. There is a thousand PMDs stuck right at the surface. I don't have to chase them off the water. There's more food right here. So we're getting ahead of the hatch. And so it said, dial it back, go into the film, go right under the film with your flies. And that's again where one of the most abundant uh part, you know, bites is on those emergers.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

I guess my next part of that was like, what how do we take it even further down then, right? How do we take it into those, you know, the the main course and the salad and the appetizer? Like, how do we break the menu down? So I love this concept that you're bringing up with the the hatch chart being like an introduction into like, okay, this is kind of the type of the the cuisine that they're eating, right? They're eating they're eating PMDs, like, but it they could be eating all these different types of PMDs, and it's and it and how and where they eat them depends on that water column. Or I mean, you know, it's it's different based on what how where they're gonna eat them is different. And that's what I'm interested in your opinion on. Is now if we go below the close to the surface game, how do we break down that hatch chart even even further backwards in the life cycle? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 56:05

Right. So yeah, so I mean, we we get to the river, um, and this comes into how do we actively match the hatch on this water this day? Which course of the meal are they on? So um we're constantly observing a couple things. We're gonna stay in the water, we verified PMD nymphs are in the water, we've looked at the hatch chart, we know within this season, these PMDs should be making their break to the surface. It's their turn to reproduce. This is the window that we expect them to be making that break and finishing their live stage. PMDs are only out of the water for about six to ten hours before they mate and die. I mean, it's it's off mid-morning and they're they're back in the evening mating and and dying. Um so um it's it's a constant movement throughout the day. Um PMDs are triggered. Every major feeding event on the river uh has a window. There's a window for each of these hatches. There's a window of months that our blueing olives are gonna come off of this water year after year. There's a window that the PMDs are gonna come off of your target water year after year. And that hatch is gonna be triggered by water temperature. Um, so there is a PMDs are generally uh a late morning, early afternoon hatch, and the water temperature that tells them it's time for you to hatch. This is your season when you're gonna be most productive and abundant and most likely to be successful in reproducing and passing on your eggs to the next generation is 58 to 61 degrees. So when I'm waiting, I have a thermometer. This is getting a little deeper into it, but again, if you start to understand the temperatures, you can start to anticipate these bugs are gonna be moving to this nest life cycle in one degree, and I'm gonna start moving my flies to this part of the water column, and I'm gonna be moving to these life stages because that's where the bugs are going. And this is what science is it's measurable and predictable. So I keep a fly fishing thermometer on a carabiner, and it's laced down through the bottom of my wading boot and it's clipped to my knot. And so as I see the bugs start to dimple the water, as I see the backs of the trout start to crest the surface of the water, I put my boot on a rock and I look at that thermometer and I can see that 58 degrees. And I'm gonna take a note 58 degrees on the Colorado, on the provo, you know, in uh in you know, beginning of July triggered this PMD hatch. And so next season when I come back, or even the next week, it's cold in the morning. Uh, you know, the sun's coming up, and the water temperature is is 52 degrees. And as the warm start, the the sun starts to warm up that water, I watch it start to clip up towards 57. You can anticipate and start tying on those wet emerging PMDs as that water temperature hits that trigger point. And it's gonna trigger that same hatch within that hatch window, within that highlighted period on your on your hatch chart. And those those fish are gonna start to follow that fly up through the water column. And this is so predictable uh on our Instagram in the past. I mean, I'll I'll make some hatches, uh, some hatch selections for people where I set it out by the half an hour of the day for that water. Because I can I know I have enough data on the water temperature on the hatch on the life stages, I can say you're fishing the nymph, these patterns at this depth until 9 o'clock. And then uh from 9 until about 9.45, you're fishing this emerger in this part of the water column. I mean, and you can start to learn your waters this well also. But yeah, we're we're changing the depths, we're moving our patterns, and again, year after year, season after season on that water, you can expect roughly the same thing happening at the same times on that water.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

And when it's 52 degrees, so when you first get there and it's chilly and it's 52 degrees, that's when you're fishing more of the uh PMD type nymphs or emergers. Is that right? Because they're they haven't got to that, they're further down, right?

SPEAKER_03 59:57

So yeah, we're gonna we're gonna stay in the water. We see some PMD nymphs on the water, but we're also gonna be looking at what are the trout doing? You look out over the water, uh, you and you're looking above the water. I don't see any bugs floating, drifting, flying above the water. I don't see any fish actively breaking the surface of the water. So the fish feeding behavior is telling me they're not on top, that's not where the calories are at. So we're gonna prioritize those early life stages on the bottom of the river. When we see the fish start to come up, we see the flies start to pop through the surface of the water, the first few flies lifting off the surface of the water, fish are following the food, we're going mid-column, we're going to the surface. So we start shifting through those life stages.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

No, that makes a lot of sense. So if I'm coming to you and I'm fishing and I'm gonna fish in the the the um in the in the hash chart says PMDs, right? And I'm I need um let's just say a general type fly. What are some general type flies that you would put on for like a a Mayfly, a nymph, emerger, dry fly? Like what are some because there's all these different kinds of nymphs, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:09

So a pheasant tail, a hair different sizes of each of those nymphs, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:13

But let's just talk about like the the fly itself, right? Like which fly is a good match for these different stages, and that is, I understand, loaded question. You've got how many 600,000 flies in your fly shop? Like, there's a lot of flies out there, but like let's just so that people I I think what I'm asking is so people can walk away from this and be like, okay, I know that a Mayfly is a generic um, you know, like a parachute atoms is a generic type of Mayfly pattern, right? What are but I can take that and I can look at I can break that down to more specific spec in more specificity if I go to more specific waters and more specific types of mayflies. Does does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:00

Like a yeah, it's it's overwhelming to go into a fly shop and you see all these trays, and there's some guy in a in a plaid, you know, sim shirt with a beard looking over at you, and he wants to be on the water. He doesn't want to be a little bit more than a lot of things.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

Well, you don't have a plaid shirt, but you've got a wonderful beard and you look great.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:17

I do. I it's this is when we we grow our time material. Yeah. So yeah, how do you do this? Well let's let's stay with the PMD. Yeah. So first resource. Again, we're all about answering the questions and making this topic much more accessible. You can go on our website, and next to every single pattern, I list this is the hatch, the species, the life cycle that this pattern imitates on the water. And if you want to say, hey, all right, I know there's PMDs here, I want to make sure I have every course in the meal. We have hatch-specific fly selections where you say I want PMDs, we cover every one of those life stages, every course in the meal in that selection. So you got everything you need. For PMDs, I would say, you know, great patterns to start at the bottom. You know, first course in the meal, breakfast, most important meal of the day. Looking at something like uh a gold ribbed hair's ear. So that natural rabbit dub size 14, 16. 16 is probably that sweet spot. Um, split case PMD, another really good. So those are my two favorites for the bottom of the river, going deep. Coming up through the water column, the Barza Merger PMD or the Greg's Emerger PMD has that nice creamy kind of uh Cahill colored body. Both super productive patterns coming towards the surface. That Mayfly nymph, more and more of them are hitting the surface of the water, they're starting to transition from that nymph to the dun. Dun is our first dry live stage breaking through the surface of the water. I would do a parachute PMD merger or a sparkle dun. Sparkle dun is probably available in every shop, and we have a sparkle dun variation for every Mayfly. And what we have is just a wing just starting to stretch out at the top of the water. That abdomen and curve of the hook are still stuck in the film, and then there's a uh a piece of material coming off the back of the hook, which is imitates the shuck. That uh the skin of the nymph that's getting left in the film. So that's our one breaking through the surface of the water. From there, that mayfly is fully emerged from the shuck and its wing standing tall, straight up off the back, uh almost like a little sailboat going down the river. So you can move to a parachute PMD. That done leaves the surface of the water, heads into the streamside vegetation, and our mayflies are the only family that hatches twice. It sheds its exoskeleton on the side of the river, and now it comes back and it's like full mating plumage. So think of like a rooster pheasant and its full array of color. The spinner, which is the sexually mature mayfly that's coming back to the water, has a clear, glassy colored wing and much more vivid body colors. And so we have a more of a pink to rusty color now. That PMD is no longer a yellow kind of creamy cahill color, it's a rusty color. So I'm thinking like a red quill or like a pink cahill type pattern. Um, they mate over the water, they return, dip down onto the water, and they expire. And the the dessert course in the meal is going to be a rusty spinner. That's the last pattern I'm fishing towards dusk.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

Okay, that was awesome. Thank you for humoring me a little bit on that one because I know I'm really oversimplifying what what it is that we're talking about here, but I just want people to get the understanding that like for that one PMD, there's these different life stages and these flies to, you know, because I think that a lot of people you'll say, Oh, well, I'm gonna fish nymphs. So I'm gonna fish a hairsear or a pheasant tail or you know, uh, I don't know, name another nymph or some I'm gonna fish nymphs, but they're not really clued into like which species of bug that that nymph is supposed to kind of imitate. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um because yeah, and blueing with olive is a mayfly too, right? So you got a whole different kind of set of flies that will imitate the nymph, the emerger, the dry, the done, the spinner for that for that blooming dog.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:29

It's got a different profile, a different size, um, different color spectrum. So yeah, we do have flies specific to that as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:37

And then it's different on different river systems and those things as well. But I think the important thing is to know if you're going to break down that river and try and fish the whole water column and break down the the hatch chart, you've got to kind of be ready for all the meals or all the courses on the menu, I guess, is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:56

But you know, I do want to open, I mean, I think it's helpful to for a lot of our our clients in your audience if we can oversimplify it. You know, it's like, man, I don't want to have 600,000 flies in my box. So, yeah, what are those go-tos? You had mentioned the parachute atoms. I mean, if you present that pattern really well, I mean, just fish it well. Don't slap the water, don't put your fluorescent line over top of the fish before this year fly. Get a good drift, fish that pattern well, and fish it in five sizes. You can effectively match every Mayfly we have in the Rockies with the parachute atoms. Just fish it well.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:30

That's why everybody loves that fly. I mean, it parachute atoms is like one of the most popular dry flies ever because it does such a good job of working in different species. And I've definitely caught fish when it was blueing to olives with uh parachute atoms, you know. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:45

Yeah, yeah. Fish that in a size 18 to 22 and fish it well.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

Can you give me another let's do one more example if that's okay with you, of like uh caddis and the difference with a caddis and how those flies change. And maybe we'll keep it simple, kind of generic. Or we can do the Colorado if you like.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

Well, no, no, let's uh the caddis. Um, yeah, what are the courses in the meal of a caddis? So we have a larva life stage, first life stage out of the egg. And um Our caddis flies are going to have a segmented body, really big head, they're going to have legs that help them kind of navigate along the bottom of the river or the lake. And so our patterns for the caddys, they're going to be this caterpillar-like larva with a segmented body. And again, we have other larvae in the river. Midges are have a larva life stage, and they're much more abundant. But what's going to distinguish a caddis larva from a midge larva are three things. Caddus flies have big heads and big mouths used for chomping up leaves and sticks and big organic material. Caddus flies have legs. Midges do not. And then the vast majority of our caddys are going to build a case. And so they're going to cobble together little gravel algae sticks, and they create this little RV-like cocoon that hangs over their abdomen and they haul it around on the bottom of the river. And our midges don't do that. So we have caddis larva. And some of them are going to be just that little caterpillar-like pattern pattern. Some of them are going to be with that head and leg sticking out of the case. So there's a couple patterns for the larva. All of our caddys, when it's time to start to prepare for that next adult, you know, surge towards adulthood, they're all going to build a case at some point. And they close that case up, just like a butterfly would a cocoon on dry land, and they begin this transformation process, and we call that pupation or the caddis pupa. Pupa is just a fast fancy name for caddis emerger. And so the caddis is going to grow these adult appendages. It's going to look totally different than the larva. We got long legs. We have these wings that have formed. We have long antennas. And as the caddis breaks its way out of that case on the bottom of the river or lake, it very actively and aggressively swims towards the surface of the water. Legs flailing, wings kind of floating behind it, drifting behind it, and it's going up and down in the water column. Indecisive. Great opportunity. So as these caddis are coming up towards the surface of the water, a lot of our caddis pupa or emerger patterns, there's a lot of soft hackles coming off, a lot of fine materials that flow and move in the water to imitate those legs and appendages drifting in the water. And we're going to swing those when we're fishing them. The caddys are heading towards the surface, the fish are following them. So let the current grab your flies and drift that caddis pupa towards the surface of the water. You're going to get a lot of takes as we swing that up towards the surface of the water. Caddus don't waste much time at the surface of the water. We don't have a prolonged process of going through the surface and off the water like we do with the Mayflies. So there's a couple like emerging caddys patterns, like the X catus, but there's not a lot of crippled caddis patterns. They hit the surface of the water, they break out, and then they're off. Our caddis flies spend um two to four weeks as an adult typically. So much longer adult life stage than our mayflies and our midges and stoneflies. And so the elk hair caddis is gonna be the most uh versatile dry caddis pattern. And um our caddisflies are chaotic. Um on the river, they are bouncing, they are hopping. Um, so you know, my kids, I let them keep their Halloween candy in their room this year, right? They're they're in middle school. But I can tell when they've been crushing it because they are bouncing off the walls. That's what caddisflies do. They are fluttering and flopping and hopping. So that elk caddis has that expanded, fluttering, tufted wing that really imitates that chaotic caddis. At rest, those caddis flies, their wings lay up really uh like a little A-frame, a little pup tent over their back. So an elk air caddis, a goddred caddis, a tentwing caddis, all great adult patterns. Um and then there's really not a spent you know, spawned out caddis pattern.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:14

So when you're saying larva with a caddis, that's kind of like the nymph stage, is that?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:20

So I mean And when you're saying pupa, that's like the emerger stage.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

Exactly. Yep. Okay. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:28

And so what would be like a fly that would imitate like uh uh you said hairs here for the PMD, would that be uh different for uh uh a caddis? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:39

So uh for the larva, we'd be looking at something like um there's a lot of woven caddys larva. There's buckskins, another really popular one here in uh kind of central Rockies. Yeah, there's there's several uh you know, just larva patterns. And again, key characteristics segmented body, legs, and defined head. Um caddis pupa, it'd be something like the graphic caddis, um, the La Fontaine sparkle pupa is one from the East Coast. It's caught fish for 70 years, it's gonna catch them for another 170 years. Um great pattern. Um, and that's kind of your mid-column. And then we hit the surface with the ex caddis and the alcare caddis.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

All right. Thank you again for breaking that down, simplifying it, humoring me. Uh, I want to start wrapping it up, Peter, but is there anything else you want to pass along about uh I guess hatch charts and breaking out hash charts and final words for people that are kind of following along with this and trying to, okay, it kind of makes sense, like but uh now they're gonna go take this to the water that you want to pass along before we wrap it up?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:42

You know, I think we we we delved into the hatch charts pretty good. I mean, I think don't don't just uh I want people to break their dependency on the hash chart and the fly shop and really to gain the confidence to be observant.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:56

Just keep an open mind. Don't get stuck tying flies on in the parking lot and sticking with them all day. You know, we don't eat cereal every meal, every day, all year. So an El care caddis and a Prince Nymph is not going to catch fish on your water every day, all day, every year.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:12

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:13

We just gotta go and see what's seasonal and local. So start opening your eyes. Get a seine, put it over your net, and kick the bottom of the river and put that seine downstream of it, and and and look, like what's the the color of the bugs on this? What's the size? What's the most abundant? And just from our conversation today, you can say, oh, there's a larva with legs and a big head, that's a caddis. And then, man, there's only two of those, and there's ten of those big Mayfly and uh those big stone fly nymphs. Maybe what I'm seeing the most of here today, and the size and the color, this is what I should be matching to. Um, so keep learning um and and and try new things. Keep asking questions. And if if your fly shop uh gives you the stink eye and they want you to pay for a $400 trip just to answer your questions, find a different shop, find a different resource. Call us and we'll answer your questions for free. You don't need to buy anything. Um, but if you have a good shop and and good guys and gals that are answering your questions and equipping you for success on the water, spend your money with them, support them. And uh and yeah, this is a place of learning, and we're gonna learn for a lifetime, and it's a place of healing, and it's a place of connection. And I feel honored to share the water with you, and that I feel honored that you would have me on today to share my little bit of of knowledge and take on it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:39

I'm happy that I'm having the chance to talk to you as well. Before I ask my last question, Peter, how can people find out more about you and find the shop online and maybe some of the things that you're excited about moving forward professionally before I ask my last question?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:54

Yeah, so um you know we try to educate our community um through our social media. So you can find us on Instagram and and Facebook at Ascent Fly Fishing. Um you know, here we our shop is right up against the foothills on in southwest Denver, so Littleton, Colorado. And and uh yeah, again, we got tons of resources here. Happy to look at your boxes and and help you fill in the hatches. Our website, ascentflyfishing.com, every single fly is organized by hatch species and life stage. That's how it's organized here in the shop. So you can just go in and type in the names of your flies or or search just what are cattysome mergers, and you can start to see this is what you have in your box, this is what it imitates, and you can start piecing that together on when to fish it. This winter, uh, my wife and I we just closed on on some property on the Arkansas River, so central Colorado, about two hours from Denver, and we're gonna be building a lodge there where we'll have rentals, where we'll have hatch-specific selections, and we'll be uh you know creating opportunities and and experiences where someone wants cutthroats in high country lakes, if they want big fish, if they want to float, we'll kind of curate each of those experiences with the right flies, with the right gear for them. So that'll be available this summer.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:10

Awesome, man. Sounds exciting. Last question. You ready?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:15

Hit me.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:16

If you could go back to when you first started fly fishing and give yourself two pieces of advice, one more tactical and one more philosophical. What would you tell yourself to help you progress as a fly fisher?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:28

I would uh so the first one is tactical. I would say work towards ditching the indicator and fishing heavy flies. Uh so get rid of the distractions, get rid of the split shot, get rid of the indicators, and learn uh either tight line fishing or euronifing. I think that is the most tactical. If you want to get more fish in the net, if you want to feel every strike, um, if you really want to dissect the river, that is those are the two techniques, drop shot fishing and and euronifing are the techniques to really learn. Um what was the second part of the question?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:04

Advice you would give yourself to help you progress, philosophical advice that you think would help you progress as a flyfisher.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:11

I'd say be open to to what you need this season uh on the water. Um I wrote an article uh this last year and it and it was entitled uh What You Need the River Will Become. And uh Yeah, it's not all about as I get older, as I have kids, as I as I bring different friends to the water, um it was about conquering and and getting numbers and getting big fish initially, but in some seasons you just need to be carried and you need to float with friends. In some seasons, uh you need to try new things. Um in some seasons you just need to spend all day on this island and figure out a seam. But uh yeah, the the river is is a place of abundance, a place of belonging, and uh yeah, welcome that and and allow that to change as as your needs change. And uh yeah, it'll be a place where you find life uh you know your whole life.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:05

Those are two good pieces of advice. What you need the river will become. That's pretty that's badass, man. I love it. Thank you, thank you, Peter. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for sharing all your knowledge. Thanks for breaking it down, keeping it simple, and and helping me understand some of those things better. I know a lot of people learned, and I really wish you well with uh your professional endeavors and your personal endeavors with your son and your business and the fly shop and everything you got going on. Sounds very excited, and I'm super happy for you. So thanks for being on the show, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:36

Hey, thank you so much. And yeah, hopefully next time you're in Denver, uh stop on by the shop, and hopefully your listeners will do the same. Thank you, Jason.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:48

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