WOT 215: Jake Villwock Part 1. Smallmouth Tactics in Pennsylvania.

In this episode we WadeOutThere for Part One of our conversation with Jake Villwock, from Carlisle, PA.  Jake grew up in Maryland, on an island in the Chesapeake Bay surrounded by fishing.  His father was a commercial fisherman and professional bass fisherman. 

In college, Jake learned early on that he wanted a career in the outdoors and fishing.  After working a summer job at a sport and fly fishing lodge in Alaska, he moved to Pennsylvania to pursue his passion for fishing as a guide. 

Jake soon fell in love with the solitude and exploration of the state’s many smallmouth bass fisheries.  He has now been guiding smallmouth in Pennsylvania for over twelve years and is the author of the book “Smallmouth Bass Flies - Top to Bottom.” 

In Part One of our discussion, Jake shares tactics and techniques for observing and presenting to smallmouth bass in Pennsylvania.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

In this episode, we wait out there for part one of our conversation with Jake Vilwok from Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Jake grew up in Maryland on an island in the Chesapeake Bay, surrounded by fishing. His father was a commercial fisherman and a professional bass fisherman. In college, Jake learned early on that he wanted a career in the outdoors and fishing. After working a summer job at a sport and fly fishing lodge in Alaska, he moved to Pennsylvania to pursue his passion for fishing as a guide. Jake soon fell in love with the solitude and exploration of the state's many smallmouth bass fisheries. He has now been guiding smallmouth in Pennsylvania for over 12 years and is the author of the book Smallmouth Bass Flies Top to Bottom. In part one of our discussion, Jake shares tactics and techniques for observing and presenting to smallmouth bass in Pennsylvania. Welcome to the Wade Out There Fly Fishing Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Shefchuk. At Wade Out There, we believe fly fishing is special, but not elite, and that anyone can become a great fly fisher if they are willing to go, learn, and teach. Join me as I talk with other fly fishermen and women about their unique journeys into fly fishing, the rivers they fish, and the tactics and philosophies they practice. For those who can never leave the river in their hearts, this podcast is dedicated to helping you make the memories that keep us all coming back to Wade Out There. Welcome, Jake. Thanks for being on the Wade Out There podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Super excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

I'm super excited to have you. You are out in Pennsylvania, but we talked before the show that you're not originally from Pennsylvania, and I have this conversation with lots of people. People on the show as guests, but also friends that I meet. And it's certainly my story is someone in their life, whether it's a grandfather or a parent, got them into fishing at an early age. My grandpa took me fishing. You know, we were chucking spinners off the dock or something like that. Um, but your story is that to the next level, I feel like your story is a little bit even more kind of um influential, I guess. Your father's influence. Your father was a commercial fisherman and a professional bass angler. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

I just have never had a pro bass angler's uh, you know, heard that story, and I'm curious how that trickled down into your passion for angling and how it eventually weaved its way into fly fishing.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yeah, I mean, as a kid, I'll I will my pal start by saying my dad and mom sent me to college so that first of all, I wouldn't own my own business and I wouldn't be a fisherman, but unfortunately, I currently do both of those for a living.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Um back the system. It's like it's like you're cursed with these kids. Whatever you tell them, they're gonna do exactly what you don't want.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, yeah. But um, no, yeah, my dad was a commercial fisherman, and and it was a really cool uh childhood in a lot of ways. Um, you know, I got to experience, you know, the all different aspects of it. You know, my dad when when I was a kid, he was doing shellfish, so he was clamming oysters, crabs. Um, every summer I'd be out on the boat with him, probably sleeping most of the time because he would leave at three in the morning. Um, I would wake up about eight o'clock, have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then walk out and start getting bit by crabs as I was the greater for the crabs, so I'd have to measure them. Um, but you know, he was pretty much done his day by the time I woke up. But I was there. So um, so that was that was super fun. And you know, you take it for granted when you're a kid. Um, I grew up uh in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay on Kent Island and didn't really realize that I grew up on an island until I left. And somebody said I said to somebody in college, I was like, Yeah, I grew up on Ken Island. They're like, is it a real island? And I was like, huh, yeah, it is. It's completely surrounded by water. So, you know, I grew up on an island, didn't even know things about it. But um, you know, and then a lot of my childhood, my dad, you know, he was a uh I wouldn't call him, you know, he wasn't bassmaster classic, Hank Parker, Bill Dance, you know, status, but he was traveling all over the East Coast, you know, fishing tournaments, um, and then he had a tragedy at one point. His bass fishing partner passed away unexpectedly, and he kind of hung it up for a while. Um, I went to college, and then about two to three years later, he started competing again um locally, basically. But um at that point he was you know in his 50s and and there wasn't, you know, he was competing against 20-year-olds, 18-year-olds, and all that stuff, and and there just wasn't there. But he did place top three multiple times, and and uh, you know, they did a local news article once, and they're like the young guns, and my dad was like, I've already forgotten more about fishing than these people have, but um, you know, and and he's he's he's kind of the exact opposite of me in so many ways. Like, I'm I'm a gear, I'm a gear head, like I gotta have all the stuff and uh you know the best stuff, and obviously I'm blessed as as a professional, you know, quote unquote professional in this industry to have sponsorships and and and get that stuff, you know, to use. And uh, you know, he's he was always using like Bash Pro branded rods and reels, and you know, I don't think he ever looked at the action of a rod once. You know, you look at now with these NED rods and you know, medium, light, extra fast, medium, extra fast, fast, and all that. He wouldn't even know what that is, but he could still outfish anybody I know.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

So does that influence you at all? I mean, I know you you said you're a gear guy, but in the back of your brain, do you are you ever thinking like, I mean, I don't know. Does it matter? Like, I mean maybe my dad was on to something. I mean, because sometimes we collect things because you know they're they're nice, they're good, they're good to have. I mean, I like having nice things too, especially like especially like warm weather gear. I don't skimp on that, but but um yeah, I don't know. I'm wondering if there's that if that kind of back and forth if you think about that.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

So sometimes I do. Um, you know, I mean it in and not so much for me, because I don't I you know, in all honesty, without sounding pompous, like I don't have to think about like what I would do if I didn't have this stuff because again, I'm blessed and sad to have it, but I watch people get on the boat that don't have the same, you know, connections that I do or or career path, and they're you know, they've got a Cabela's rod or an Orva's clear water or something like that. And and and I'll I will pick up that rod and I will explain to them how to do something. And so many times I can't tell the difference between the twelve hundred dollar fly rod and the three hundred dollar fly rod. Now, obviously, there are some differences in the sense of weight and things like that, but right if if you're a skilled angler and you know how to cast and you know how to mend and do all that stuff, it doesn't matter what the tool is, you can still do it.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Um well you can tell too a lot better than someone else. Like, yeah, you know, it's like putting um you know, putting like really nice skis on someone who's never been skiing before. No, I would have no idea. You know, like well, you know, yes, they're good skis, but at some point there's like a a point of diminishing return where if you put those skis on a professional skier, they're gonna like crush them out and tell you how much better it was with these awesome skis. So I do buy that for sure. I don't know that I don't know where I fall on that curve, you know. I don't know. Um I don't know. I didn't I uh it was in my intent to talk to you all about your your gear or whatever, but no, yeah, it's just it's just super funny, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

I mean he's got all the stuff and he's he he's just always made do with what he had, and you know, being a commercial fisherman, you know, it's not he he wasn't you know rolling in the dough and everything like that. My mom's also a small business owner, so you know it's kind of interesting. My mom's a small business owner, my dad's a commercial fisherman, you put them together, and now you have me the small business owner, fly fishing guide outfitter. So it's like kind of like the perfect child. Well, yeah, far from that. But um, so yeah, it was it was just really cool. And being around that my whole life and and seeing how pure of a lifestyle that was, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

What do you mean by that? What do you mean by pure of a lifestyle?

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Hard work and and return, you know. Um, I just it was so simple. Like my dad fished and he learned what he needed to learn to be successful. Um, and there was no noise, you know, it was just him on the boat. And I think that I think that that's one of the things I love about fly fishing is that like there is now social media, there's a lot more noise, but like in the grand scheme of a day on the water, there's no noise. It's you figuring out what's going on around you every day is changing, and having a base of knowledge to do that. That puzzle to me is is the coolest part about fishing in general, but fly fishing takes it to another level um of you know having more. I don't know if I'd say more, but like you have a wider depth of changing, you know. The spin rod, you can, you know, in the summertime you can only go so small of a lure before the rod doesn't cast far enough to hit the fish that you need to hit. Where fly fishing, you can if your bass or trout are spooking, you can go smaller and smaller and further and further, and to the point where like I I'm gonna spin off for a hot second because this just happened to me two days ago and it was frustrating, but also awesome. Was we had smallmouth rising in the river like trout, they were stationary patterning bass. And typically, when the water's a little higher and and you're you know not at the end of the season, you can throw a deer hair frog over those things if they're eating a size 18 blue wing olive, and they'll still try to eat the frog. Well, now that the season's almost over and they've been fished all season, and there's jet boats and kayaks, and these fish are like on a next level. Um, I was I got to the point where I was throwing six-pound tippet, a 14-foot leader, and now this is ridiculous, but a size 14 sulfur on six-pound with a seven weight, just to get those fish to eat. And some of them were like five inches, but they still wouldn't eat even a big dry fly. It had to be small. Um, and so I think that's an advantage that we have as fly fishing, and that's just a whole nother level of complexity um and what to do. There's not a lot of smallmouth guys that I know that would be like, okay, I've got, well, first of all, would have them. I mean, I have like a small row of traditional dry flies, parachute sulfurs, a couple olives. Well, I don't have any olives, those are too small, sulfures, um uh parachute atoms, some stuff like that. Why do I have that? Because I've been burned before. So now I'm like, I will always have at least six to eight traditional trout dry flies because but I don't know a single bass angler on this planet that would have a size 14 parachute sulfur in their box for the summertime. But I had it and I needed it and it worked. So um that was a complete spin of you know being being prepared. You're right. But but just the the ease of the the ease or the the quietness or the purity of of being able to figure it out and and put the time in, you know. It's like I see a lot of people in today's day and age that you know they've got 10,000, 20,000 followers on Instagram, and they think that because of that, they should be, you know, here or there, but there's no substitute for time. And that's the biggest thing that I learned with my parents and my dad is like, you know, when you when he was the youngest commercial fisherman, he got out of the way, the guys that have been doing it for 30 years prior to him. You know, he found his own water and figured it out. And then as he got older and he became the senior guy, like the younger generation backed away from that. And it was just really cool to see that kind of chain of command and like that respect for your you know the people that came before you. And and I think that growing up in that environment has really helped me, you know, kind of grow in this industry and not to my knowledge be a pompous, you know, arrogant whatever. I'm just I'm just a guy that loves to fish and somehow made a few really good decisions and you know started a business. So it it's worked out well. But that commercial fishing lifestyle, I think, really helped kind of get to where I'm at now.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

So do you think it gave you permission too? Because I think a lot of k kids or people, you know, they think of their career paths, their progression, where they're gonna do in life. Um I think sometimes I think about this with my kids. So I've got two kids and I'm also an artist, and one of the reasons why I'm pursuing like professional art more than a hobby, I guess, is to set an example to show them that if if you like music or you like art or you like fishing or something that you know that if you go after that thing and pursue it and put in the time and honor that kind of I know what you mean. It's not like maybe like chain of command kind of is not what I'm thinking, but like that kind of it's a it's a way, it's like a there's a path for that person, right? You don't just show up and like start playing Red Rocks in Colorado. You know, you you have to play the gigs at all the of the before you get there, right? Yeah, and that's a lot of hard work in the fishing industry and some of these other places. So uh I think that that's cool that your dad did that. I'm I'm wondering if that entered your mind when you were a young person and you were trying to decide what do you want to do?

SPEAKER_02 16:22

No, I'm to be honest with you, like I I what the way I grew up and like all that, like my dad was pretty adamant on me not like no being a fisherman. They wanted me to go to college, get a career or get a degree, get a career where I could go to work, come home, not have to, you know, deal with all the the stress.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Are the fish biting? Like, are we am I gonna catch fish today? Yeah, and variable.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

And just like and just you know, running your own business, whatever it is, can be very stressful. And it's not a nine to five, you know. I mean, it on a daily basis, I'm up at four, four, four thirty, and I don't, you know, I leave the house at six and I don't get home until seven or eight sometimes, and like then I gotta make lunches and it's it answer emails, text my guides, book new trips, all of this stuff, and it it's a lot, but I I love it because it's it's mine, you know, it's something that I've had a dream or a desire. But honestly, when I went to school, I went to school to be an accountant, and it took me about two accounting classes because I really liked it in high school. I took business and accounting classes my senior year of high school, and I was like, hmm, I'm actually pretty good at this. I've always been good with numbers. Um, and I was like, I think I want to be an accountant. I can make a lot of money and go really cool vacations, big house, fancy cars. Um, and then I went to college, and after two semesters of accounting, I was like, I can't do this. I hated my professor who was like the main professor for the accounting department. Um, and then fast forward to my junior year, I went to uh Alaska for a study America program. So we backpacked the inside passage for two months, just vagabonded around, um, did some fishing, did some hiking, and and like honestly, going out there kind of brought me back to like my childhood of being like just being outside, and and that's when I started thinking, how do I do this again?

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Um, how do I figure out a way to do this as a profession? Like, yeah, how can I do this? You did have an example, you did have a good example from your dad. Whether whether they liked it or not, yeah. They maybe I'm just trying to maybe I'm just trying to defend my question, but yeah, I mean that you saw these these folks doing it, so you knew it's possible, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

I did, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and they've they've made out, they've done just fine. But um I actually have some family that lives in Sitka, Alaska, and my cousin, um short story, my cousin is a school teacher, my old boss was a school teacher. Um, short conversation was like, Hey, do you ever want to come back to Alaska? And I'm like, this place is amazing. Yes, I want to come back tomorrow. And he's like, Well, I might be able to get you a summer job. Um, and the only reason I got that job, it was a fly fishing and deep sea like sport fishing lodge. Yeah, and the only reason I got that job was because of my my you know experience on the water. Uh in all honesty, I was a a hobby fly fisherman at best when I went to Alaska. I I mean I uh my dad had an old South Bend six-weight fiberglass rod that I would catch bluegills with and occasionally try to go catch like super tiny stripers with it. Um, well, Maryland we call them rockfish, so I gotta say that every once in a while. But um they call them stripers everywhere else. I don't know why, but well, I know why they got it. Um and uh and then I moved to Alaska and was a was on the a sport fishing boat. So I've been really blessed. I got to do kind of everything. I got to do commercial fishing, sport fishing, and fly fishing, and fly fishing just spoke to me more. Um, I liked the clients more, I liked the the people who were out there for the experience. I mean, when we were sport fishing, we would have whales breaching, you know, orcas going by so close that you could see water dripping down their dorsal fins, you'd see sea otters and lions and puffins and all this cool stuff, and everybody'd be like, I only caught a 30-pound king salmon and I want a 35. And I'm like, really? That's what you care about? Not all of the stuff that's around you. And then you got on the on some of the creeks and you were trout fishing, and you'd see bears and eagles, and people like, oh my god, this is so cool! Like, I don't even care if I catch a fish. And I'm like, that makes my job easier. But it was also just like I related to those people way more and um just kind of rolled with it after that and just realized how much like fly fishing was just an art form, you know, and and I just like we were talking before we got on here, it's like you can you can do anything on the outside and still have fun, right? Or you can dig yourself so deep that more you turn it into a lifestyle and a career, but like to get to that level, you've got to really like go off the deep end and you know, end some relationships and you know, all this other stuff. All this live in your car. No, I don't I never lived in the back of my car, but um, you know, yeah. I well I've been blessed. I didn't have to live on ramen noodles either, but I did live so close when I first moved to PA, I lived I lived within eyesight of a beer store, and I was so broke that I couldn't walk to the beer store and buy beer. I could just see people buying beer and walking out with it, and I was like, I want a beer.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

I'd like to buy beer too. I like beer.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Yeah, that would be helpful. It would make my it would make my lonely Saturday nights a little bit more fun.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

So you got back to Pennsylvania. Talk to me a little bit about the way that you feel connected to Maryland, even though you're fishing in Pennsylvania right now, because some of the streams that you're on now, I know flow into Chesapeake Bay. And how do you think about that as terms of just your uh time on the water and uh your connection to like and not your connection, but like the way that all the waters kind of connected in that area and just in general? I think that that's you've seen all of these different things, didn't been to these different places, and now you're up in Pennsylvania fishing, but you're still kind of fishing waters that are going into you like all these memories that you had as a kid.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah, I was talking to uh I was talking to a buddy of mine that grew up on this one trout stream in PA that's um kind of a uh it's a sore subject for a lot of people because it's like you want to talk about like the anti-spot burners, like these people don't even want you in the same like county as this creek, you know. But um, he was like, you know, it's just don't say it. Don't you don't have to say it.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

I won't say it. Um, Pennsylvania is different.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

There, it's different there. But yeah, um like we don't even want to advertise that there are rivers in Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

There's no trout here, Buster. There's no fish. Um, I just have a couple that are underneath my boat in a bin that I pull out every once in a while and let people hold them. But no, um I uh he was talking about his home water. He's like, I grew up here. This is this is where I've learned how to fly fish. This is where I, you know, cut my first, cut my big toe for the first time, whatever, all these stories. And I said, you know, I'm not from Pennsylvania, so I don't I don't really have home water here. Now you kind of become adopted to certain waters that are become you know that are your homewater at this point. But um, one of the coolest things after that conversation, I was driving home and I thought to myself, now wait a minute. Um, in some twisted, connected, ecosystem-wide state, multi-state situation here, uh, the Susquehanna, which is where and the Junietta, which the Junietta is a tributary to the Susquehanna, it's the largest tributary to Susquehanna, um, those are my main bass fisheries. Both of those feed right into the Chesapeake. I mean, the Chesapeake is made from the Susquehanna. There is a there is the Susquehanna flats at the top of the Chesapeake Bay, which is known for striper fishing. And I thought to myself, well, wait a minute. In the grand scheme of a system, a river system that is, you know, over 700 miles long. And dumps into where I grew up. You know, I mean, my dad will talk, he'll call me now when I'm living up here and he's after a big rainstorm, and he'd be like, I was out fishing today. Looks like, looks like you guys are giving us a bunch of extra driftwood down here, you know. And he'll call me and be like, Why are you guys dumping in all these extra? You know, I think one time he said there was a, I forget, it was like 2018, we had a crazy flood and there was um a shed floating down through the through the Chesapeake. And dad said, What bank of the Susquehanna did that come from? You know, and so it's kind of funny that my dad even thought about it before I did, but um, so yeah, I mean, the Chesapeake Bay, the Susquehanna drainage system, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland all have parts of that same ecosystem, which is which is pretty amazing. So in the in a a twisted, connected way, the Susquehanna and the Junietta are my home waters, which is kind of a a cool thing to wrap your head around.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I think it's very cool. That's why I wanted you to speak to it. So I appreciate you talking to it. I think that that is uh I think it's really cool. And uh I'm happy for you that you get to have that now when you're out fishing, you kind of still feel like that. I feel like that home water conversation. I worked really hard or thought, you know, I wanted to get out to the mountains. And in the end, I did, my family and I did move out to Utah to be in the mountains to be where I feel connected to the outdoors and rivers and stuff. But I had a lot of opportunities to fish waters and species that I didn't when I was living in different places in the Air Force, and I've kind of re-adopted this idea of home waters. The it is where you are at, like where you are at, that that's your home water to me now. Because and I had to, I was forced to adopt that mindset when I was in Missouri. I wanted to take my son in the outdoors, I wanted him to experience fishing, and I couldn't do it the way that I experienced it with my dad when I was young in Montana. So it was either, you know, we're not gonna do that, we're not gonna we'll just hang it up, maybe go once a year to the mountains or something, or or guess what, Jason has to learn how to bass fish, you know. We're gonna and uh and we're gonna take him out and and he's gonna learn all that. And I'm glad that I was open-minded, I guess. And then subsequent to that, then I started to look back on all these opportunities I had. Uh I'm curious how moving to Pennsylvania and now I know that you love all kinds of fishing and trout fishing, but at least in recent years you've been really into the smallmouth fly fishing. Can you talk about that transition and how that evolved from you know, I mean, not from commercial, I guess. I understand that, but maybe just it started with trout and then you moved over to smallmouth. So can you talk about why that happened? Uh yeah. Um I don't want to pigeonhole you. I don't want to say, like, well, I mean, I know you probably still love to trout fish, but you also are way into smallmouth, I guess is all I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah, yeah. Um I honestly, you know, in PA we have we have more we have more moving water than any other state in the continental US, which is fascinating to me. You know, we have more water than Montana, than Idaho, and and uh but we also have more people, we have more people. Um, you know, and that's one of the biggest problems is is you know, all the trout fisheries today are super, you know, super crowded, or like, you know, it's you have to spend a lot of time researching and looking for that one spot that somebody hasn't fished in the last you know 10 years or five days or whatever. But um back in 2000, 2011, um I kind of wanted to get a raft. I always wanted a drift boat, but we didn't where I was in PA at the time, didn't really have driftboat water. So I was like, I want a raft. And I was like, I don't really know what I'm gonna do with it, but I want a raft. So I started I started thinking about some of the trout fisheries and and you know, if a smaller raft you could get down, and it's a little bit ridiculous to float them, but it's it's fun. Um, and then my buddy was like, have you ever fished the school river for smallmouth? And I was like, Yeah. I was like, I went over to a couple riffles and swung woolly boogers and caught some little fish, and he's like, Well, I don't know anybody that fly fishes it. And I was like, Well, he's like, let alone float it. So um I we I I went to the owner of TCO, who you know we still work directly with, and and Tony Gaiman's one of my best friends and and biggest supporters, and some ways I consider him, you know, like a fatherly figure, especially in the fly fishing industry. I have any issues, I call him like Tony help, and he's like, got it. But I said, Tony, I want to buy a raft, but I don't have any money. He's like, Okay, uh, let's get you a raft and we'll figure out the rest of it as we go. So I bought a raft and I drove to the Scuka River and we talked about exploring new new water and like you know, being efficient and making yourself, you know, whatever. We knew there was a takeout at this one spot that's like a cut canoe kayak put in. We could kind of get a boat down. We had a four-wheel drive down this giant hill, but we can still back a trailer and and then to to put the boat in, we had nowhere to put it in. So we went up to this bridge and literally threw my brand new raft over a guardrail and watched it tumble down this hill until it hit the gravel bar, and then we just drug it over to the creek and started fishing. And and um the solitude and the wildness and the exploration is what really got me into the smallmouth game. It was something that you know, Bob Clauser, um Brian Schumacher, those guys, I mean Brian was kind of Bob Clauser's protege. Bob Clauser is the godfather of Smallmouth Pennsylvania, you Chuck Kraft and you know, um Harry Murray and all these guys that were like kind of the first generation smallmouth guys were almost not doing it anymore. And um so and especially in our area in the Schuylkill River, like nobody knew anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

I didn't even really know why weren't they doing it anymore?

SPEAKER_02 30:37

What's that?

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Why why not why were they not doing it anymore?

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Well, that so the Susquehanna will back up for a second. So Susquehanna had a huge fish kill in 2005, um, and it just kind of ruined it for at least the Pennsylvania side of the bass fishing. I mean, Bob was like, I can't take anybody's money to go out and catch four smallmouth in a uh a day.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Um, I don't want you to speak for them. I'm just wondering if something happened, which sounds like it did.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

That's age is a big thing too. I mean, Bob's 86 now, so 10 years ago, 15 years ago, he was in his 70s, and at that point it's hard. But um, I will say, like, I have I Bob and I have become very close, uh, which is kind of awesome. Um, and uh, you know, we've I've got the coolest picture. I think one of the biggest highlights of my career was when I signed my book for Bob and Bob signed his book for me, and we've got a picture of each other holding, you know, holding each other's books, which was like super cool. But back to the small mouth thing. So the exploratory stuff was what made it really exciting, knocking on people's doors and being like, hey, can I put can I put my raft in your front yard or your backyard or like can I use your driveway? And um, you know, just exploring it and and learning it. You know, when we we started bass fishing, we started bass fishing it like we were trout fishing with streamers. We were moving really, really fast. We were fishing, you know, big stuff, and and we weren't catching, we were catching a lot, but they were small. Um, and then over the years of kind of doing that, I started realizing, oh, these bass aren't trout in some ways, they're a very efficient freshwater predator that doesn't have to like be super explosive, they don't have to chase something, they need they want it slow. Um, and when we started figuring out how to present properly, um, we started catching bigger fish. And uh, and then I moved um and I was introduced to a buddy of mine who grew up on the Junietta River, uh, who took me down the Junietta River for the first time. And he was like, dude, he's like, I don't know if I'll ever guide on this, but you're kind of already getting, you know, you're bit by the bass bug. He's like, you should do it before anybody else does. And I said, All right, cool, thanks. And uh, so I started guiding on the Junietta about 12 years ago, and uh it's the same thing, like you would float days without seeing another boat. I mean, that was one of the coolest things, too, is like there's just nobody around. Um now since COVID, and you know, the bass fishing has gotten way better, the systems are super healthy again. Uh, people are talking about it, probably not the greatest that you know, I wrote a book in the last full three years and four years about it, but like, well, it's pretty great. I mean, I I like sharing the experience, and so um there there's more people on the river for sure, but the coolest part is all of the guides, whether we work together or we or we're work for competing fly shops, we're all friends. And so there's no hostility, which is super awesome. You know, there could be two or three guides on one section of water, and we all know it well enough now that we can stay out of each other's way and still have you know very successful days, or like, you know, have a small conversation about the weather as we float by. Um yesterday it was there's 61 degrees blowing about 10, 15 miles an hour straight up river and raining, and me and one other guide were on the water. I'm like, how about this duck weather? You know, we're just like, we're just having a good time. And um, and I think that's something that's super cool. And we take that for granted. Um my the same guy would just floated by yesterday, he's like, dude, he's like, I just had a reality check. He's like, I was in Montana last week, and he goes, I stopped counting at 47 boats in one section of the Madison, and I was like, Oh, yeah. So three or four boats on one float on our river is really nothing compared to what's going on out there. But um, yeah, that's a very long-winded answer. For I just like bass because I love the exploration in the wilderness. And two days ago, we saw black bears standing on the side of the river. So I've you know, it's like you never know what you're gonna see. You see eagles, you see, you know, mink pop up next to your boat, and you know, black bears on the side of the river, it's super fun.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

So well, I think the exploration thing is really exciting for anyone. I mean, anytime you can tap into something new, even if it's just new for you, right? Even if it's just getting started in fly fishing, that is exciting. Or if you start mountain biking or start skiing, like that initial part of it. And for someone who's been around fishing their whole life and who is fishing for trout in Pennsylvania, and then you found this other thing, uh, and then you really feel it sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that you feel like you're in the beginning of it, not just for yourself, but just kind of figuring this out with some of your close friends and and building uh building a a way of approaching it that maybe um had been lost a little bit or you know, that you're just kind of like looking at again. I mean, I I know that you're not the first person to go out there smallmouth fishing, and I I don't think you're saying that. I'm just that exploration I think is cool. Uh and even when you're exploring new waters, but when you take it to a new species and a new river, that's a whole new thing. And um and it's kind of a niche, it's a new thing, and it's a a place for you to fit in, maybe. I don't know if you look at it that way.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and and you're you're totally right. I mean, I think that I I think again, going back to the commercial fishing thing, like I look up to Bob Clauser and you know, Chuck Kraft unfortunately passed away, I think, two years ago, but like you look at their fly patterns, especially, and like those guys were the pioneers. Like, there were no smallmouth bass flies back then, and and uh, you know, there wasn't this like at least to my knowledge, there wasn't this like overlap of you know species conversation. I mean, like Bob Clauser loves saltwater fishing, so the Klauser Minnow, you know, has caught all these different spe I think it's caught over a hundred species of of fish on it, which is amazing. But like, you know, there wasn't this like you know, there wasn't a bland chocolate that created a game changer that, you know, changing the size and the color and you know the the material could be uh an a false albacore fly or a muskie fly and then a bass fly and a trout fly. I mean, I'm sure there's patterns out there that do that, but like I just feel like today in this industry there's so much overlap. Um, and and I find that fascinating with the fly design. But you know, those guys like they did it when nobody else was doing it. There wasn't social media, there wasn't hell, there wasn't even internet back then. It was a phone book. I mean, I one of my one of my favorite people, call him my one of my best friends, is Tom Baltz. He's one of the oldest fishing guides in Pennsylvania. He's been Orvis Endorsed for I don't even know how long. He's been guiding for 46 years. Um, his his guide service is called um Angling Adventures, and I was like, I don't get it. And then I was like, oh, AA, that's at the very front of the phone book for the business section. So, you know, that's how those guys used to have to think because there wasn't all of these other avenues of stuff, and and I thought I think that's super cool. Um, and yeah, by no means am I like oh you're not, yeah, the whatever.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

But um you're not doing that, dude. You're you're definitely not doing that.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

I think I think smallmouth for me, I mean, I've been doing I've been a smallmouth, I've been doing smallmouth almost full time for about 10 years now, and um, and I'm still learning, you know, and that's the thing. I love about it, but um, you know, and as as we continue to to fish it, um, I I will say this, I've fished for bass in many different states, um, and and each one's different, and I love that about it. Like, you think you know what you're doing, and then you go to Michigan and fish with Mike Schultz, and you're like, wow, these guys have a whole different program than what we have. Um, but our fish in Pennsylvania get hit hard, not just from fly anglers, but from jet boats, competitions. Like there was the the Junietta was basically shut down the lower 20 miles of it because there was a kayak tournament with like 300 kayak anglers on it, you know, and like those fish get pretty smart, and you gotta really change your tactics and your materials and like how you're doing all this stuff to like either you know imitate what those guys are doing or figure out a way to get it there further and lighter and smaller. Um, and and all of that stuff is what I think is is really really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

So let's talk tactics. All right, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02 39:00

Well, now we're gonna go down multiple rabbit holes.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

No, it's good. Uh I want to talk tactics with you. I've got some questions I want to ask about you. You mentioned we started learning how to present it properly. And for you, that was the difference between catching lots of smaller fish and catching some bigger fish. So, what is it about the way that you present that you discovered that you teach, that you help people when you're guiding? What is it about the presentation that you do that is gonna over time kind of get you bigger fish? Not that I mean I love catching small fish, big fish, whatever. But if you had to if I had to choose, you know, if someone gave me the choice, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:43

I'm gonna pick a big fish.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

I'm I'd probably pick a big fish. I'm not gonna lie, you know, I'd probably pick one, but I only had one, right? But um, yeah, so what what was that discovery like?

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Honestly, it there's a there's a few different things, and and and one of one of the biggest rabbit holes that I've gone down is is um, and I'm gonna try to stay out of this rabbit hole, but just skate around the circle, the surface of it, um, is looking at the background of what's going on in the ecosystem at a specific time of year, a specific time of day, water temperature, um, and and knowing like, okay, you know, this time of year the crayfish are out way more uh frequently than this time, or the you know, the dry fly fishing, the damselflies are out for this two months, or like, you know, all of these different life cycles, but also just like river flows and things, all of that background information is huge when it comes to figuring out like what you need to do to be successful. But the biggest thing that I learned about smallmouth um is that you know, some people call them lazy, which is fine if you're frustrated with them. I call them all kinds of names, but um they're very efficient and they are super smart. And I'm sorry to every trout angler that's listening to this, but smallmouth bass live to be about three times as as old as a trout does, which in theory means they can be through the big fish are three times smarter than a trout. So uh I'll get lots of hate mail for that, but it's a joke that I kind of come up with. Smallmouth are very smart. Um you know, we're catching when we catch a six-inch fish three times smarter. Three times smarter because scientifically proven. Well, I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

No joking, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

There are days where I think it is, but anyway, they uh so a big bass, which is super interesting. So say we catch an 18-inch smallmouth, there's a good chance that about eight years ago we caught that fish when it was six inches. There's a great chance. I mean, um, and so that fish has eaten so many different lures and you know, actual, you know, forage food over those eight to ten to twelve, fifteen, twenty, you know, a 20 plus inch smallmouth could be 20 years old uh in the state of Pennsylvania, which is really neat. So um, you know, they've had a long life in the river, um, and they know what to do. And so what I've found was the slower you go, the more big fish you're gonna catch. Um, and that comes with challenges because you need to be either on the surface going slow or subsurface going slow. And um, the two main techniques I find for summertime, anyway, is topwater and then bottom bouncing crayfish or stone cats or helgram mites, or you know, one of those bigger meals that they're gonna eat, crayfish being the number one food source in the summertime for the for the bottom. Um, and so you have to be able to go slow, keep the fly in that right strike zone or that zone of interest. You have to be able to feel it, uh, and then you have to be able to have enough tension while being able to feel it and keep it moving slow to set the hook. Um, smallmouth bass are built to close a short gap very quickly. And so, you know, unlike a false albacore or a striper or a tarpon or, you know, really any of those bigger saltwater predators or or even trout for that matter, you know, they're not when they're eating a crayfish or they're eating a streamer, a lot of times they're they're not eating it and blowing straight through it, or they're, you know, they're not eating it from the head, so you're immediately under tension, or they're not eating it from the side. You know, they're if it's a crayfish and it's moving super slow on the bottom, what they're doing is they're coming up to that that fly or that natural material, that natural bait, and they're looking at it six, ten, twelve inches, two feet away from it. And when they go to strike, they're just gonna peg it to the ground or they're gonna flare their gills and suck it in. So there's no tension of that eat, even though there is an explosion, it doesn't happen past the fly, which is very interesting. And so, you know, I tell every single angler on my boat when we're fishing crayfish, I said, Look, crayfish is the most efficient way to catch or most effective way to catch a smallmouth bass, but it's also the hardest because you have there's no sight most of the time, it's all under feel. Um, and so slowing things down has made it a huge difference. Um, same thing with our topwater act, you know, topwater game. When I first started fishing the Junior River, we were fishing deer hair frogs, and we were popping them as loud and as obnoxious as we possibly could, and we were getting these super aggressive eats. And then over the last 12 years, those fish don't react to that noise anymore because it's not natural. Um, you know, when it comes to popper fishing, the the initial plop of that popper is the most natural sound of the entire presentation. Something hitting the water, you know, not under tension is the most natural pattern. There's not a lot of things in this on the water that go bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop as it goes across the water. So, you know, yeah, you get that reactionary strike or that aggression strike, but when you look at those big fish, the last thing they want to do is chase something going across the water, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. They're gonna sit there and they're gonna watch it float by them. Now, if you were to take that same popper or a foam grasshopper and you were to drop that thing right, you know, within three to five feet of that fish, I call that the zone of interest. And that is in the front half of the fish, not in the back half of the fish. Fish don't eat out of their butts. So, you know, I try to tell people like hit them on the head, but not so close that like it's like a startling run away. It's like you drop that thing right in front of their face within that five-foot circle or six-foot circle, and you're gonna get that fish's attention immediately.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

And then you do the zone of interest is like a semicircle off the nose from the gills, from the gills forward is what I call that.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Because they will, if they're on the sides, you know, bats, their eyes are on the sides, so they have a cone shape, so they're gonna see it.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

And this is topwater now, we're talking about, so you're gonna see the take, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:00

You're gonna see the take on this. Yeah, the zone of interest. And you're gonna yes, and you're also gonna be able to read the fish's attitude. I mean, I get it wrong every day, but I still go with it. I tell people if you traditionally present. A popper or a foam bug to a bass like you would a trout, you know, drop it 30 feet in front of it, let it come down over top of them. There is a 0% chance that fish is going to have any interest in that. But there's a 50% chance if you drop it in that zone of interest that that fish is going to eat it. There's still a 50% chance he won't, but I'm going to take 50% over zero any day. Um, and then once you get that fish's attention, sometimes you do nothing. Sometimes you just let that popper or that bug sit there and they'll come up and it's almost painful how long it takes for those fish to eat that thing. And they'll just open their mouth and they'll suck it down. And then you say, God save the queen and set the hook. Other times they'll come up and they'll look at it and then they'll start to go off of it. And this is that, you know, when they're like, nah, I don't think so. You have to be so in tune with that fish and know that as soon as that head just turns an inch or a half inch, you got to twitch that fly. And when I say twitch it, I mean like basically it's like you're blowing on a feather, you're like, and that fly just goes, just barely makes any movement, and that fish will a lot of times will turn right back around and it'll get its interesting and it'll look at it. Sometimes you got to do that three or four times before that fish eats it, but you're not aggressive, you're super slow, you're methodical. Um, you know, and so that's the number one technique I found is slowing things down to make it easier for the fish to eat. And there are so many challenges with that, but that is what's become the most successful for me. Um, and then backtracking to the crayfish thing, there's this little rubber bait that's come out in the last 10 years called the NED rig, the Z-Man TRD NID. It's a three-inch stick bait. It is the stupidest little thing in the world, but it is absolutely deadly when it comes to smallmouth fishing. And I do both.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

I've heard of this good.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

It's it's so stupid. And it's there's so the fish eat them like crazy. But um, and I do both spin fishing and fly fishing, you know, because I'm not I'm I'll take anybody that wants to have what's it called? The Ned Rig? The Ned Rig, the Z-Man.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

Can you use these for uh largemouth too? Absolutely, yeah. So I was in a intramural bass fishing league when I was living in Missouri. I had a friend, and that was one of the the setups that he was he would he was like my kind of my friend, but also my mentor or teacher of bass fishing. And yeah, we did the Ned rig.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

So those things are those things are ridiculous. Um, and when they first came out, there were so many fly tires out there that were like, oh, I need to tie Ned fly. I need because the the interesting thing about a NED is the Ned actually has air bubbles on the tail of it, so it sits straight up and down when it's on the bottom. So all these people were tying these lanky little three-inch, you know, worm-looking things and putting foam on them. And in my mind, I'm like, yeah, that's great. That's a that's a a feature of that lure. But do you know why those things work so well? They work so well because most spin anglers are running six or eight pound fluorocarbon, which has virtually no surface area whatsoever. So there is zero drag on that line. When we used to fish crayfish, we would throw crayfish with a sinking line or an intermediate line. So most of your fly line was down because we had this mentality of like, and they were super heavy. We had this mentality of we got to get the crayfish down and we gotta like quick and we gotta keep it there. Well, you end up spending more time tying crayfish than you do actually fishing them because you lose all of them. Um, so I had this epiphany. I'm like, well, how do we fish the flies that we already know work really well subsurface to get the same presentation that you can get with a spinning rod? Um, it's and the biggest thing that I found is that the reason why those neds work so well is because they stay down and they move at the speed or slightly slower than the current. So those fish have so much time to follow them, to look at them, to see them, and then they when they commit to it, it's still moving at the same speed. They don't have to chase and go any faster. And so, you know, I took a huge deep dive down into the crayfish world. Um, and now I fish 100% of my crayfish on floating lines with long 12, 14-foot leaders that are tied super thin because I want the least amount of surface tension um underneath of the water. I don't I want very little you know surface area for that current to pull that fly. And when you have a floating line, now you can manipulate how fast that's going by mending it upstream, downstream, throwing a stack man in there, and you have an indicator. You put a little teeny, you know, upstream J in there, so you've got this little hook at the end, and you can watch it stop, slow down, speed up. Um, and that's your indicator on how to catch these fish. And it and and it's I have some guys that were like die hard popper fishermen, and then I said, Hey, I'm sorry, we can't catch them on poppers today. We've got to fish crayfish, and I explained to them how to do this and like worked with them for a couple hours till they were getting pretty good at it. Now they won't even touch a popper. They're like, this crayfish stuff is awesome. They're like, I want to do that all day. Um, and so slowing it down has become a huge thing. And then, you know, on that point, I wanted to get them down, but I also didn't want them to get stuck. So I started thinking on the design side, how do you get a fly down to the bottom that you can flutter and flurry around? So I started making my crayfish super light. I started adding a little bit of foam to them, not to get them to stand straight up and down like a like a Ned, but it just elevates the hook ever so slightly. So you're not drudging the bottom like a snow shovel. Now you're getting this little flutter action, and it's actually keeping making that fly a little bit more buoyant.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

If it's getting if you're tying them light, though, how are you getting them down? Because now you're using floating line. I I mean you don't have a lot of drag on that leader. I get that. But now at some point you got to get the fly down to the bottom, right?

SPEAKER_02 52:29

You do, and and the thing is, is you change you can change the weight of it. So I I do run still run, I run tungsten, um, tungsten jig style beads. Uh I don't have one back there. I was gonna show you, even though they couldn't see it. I was gonna show you. That's okay. I would love to see it, but that's okay. Um the uh so I run tungsten beads on them, but I run super small tungsten beads because tungsten is three times more dense than brass, and I don't know how many more times dense than than lead, but you can feel it so much better on the bottom.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

But so when you say light, you mean just like the uh less material or less clunky, but because the weight is all in that kind of you know, that precise kind of bead head.

SPEAKER_02 53:13

Yeah, and you know, I see a lot of lot of competition nymph guys that you know weigh all of their nymphs and they make you know get them to this point because they want them to sync rate, and and I do similar things, I don't weigh them yet, but like I can watch them in the water. But one of the things before I forget is that it making them lighter takes longer to get down, which is uh part of part of like yeah, it's part of the the presentation, and and I learned this from my dad. Like, I would watch him fish like a Senko, like a rubber worm that's got that weight to it, but like there's no extra weight, there's no bullet head, and that thing would just flutter down to the bottom. Nine out of ten times a fish would eat it before it even hit the bottom. Because I think about it as like you know, watching a leaf fall. You know, as a as a human being, we're watching this leaf fall down and it's got our attention the whole time, it's just coming down super slow, and you're like, oh wow, that's fascinating. Well, think about if that was a cheeseburger that was fluttering down, like that'd give you lots of time to decide you're gonna eat this cheeseburger. Where you look at like, you know, uh an acorn, it's like gone. You know, the only thing that knows they're there is a squirrel, and they're ADHD, so they'll always see them. But like, you know, you look at a bass and they're like the a slower dropping crayfish is actually getting their attention before it even hits the bottom versus this light speed drop where they're just like what was that? You know, that it's gone. Um, so you slow everything down.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

Yes, that's that makes a lot of sense. It doesn't matter as long as it's going down, it doesn't matter how fast it goes down because the whole point in your tactics is let's go slow. Yep, slow, smooth, smooth, it's fast, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

Uh that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just let it get down there, right?

SPEAKER_02 55:04

Yeah, just let it go.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

So, no, rabbit holes are welcome, man. Don't worry about rabbit holes. Uh I'm gonna even go back into the rabbit hole. So you talked about uh the zone of interest on the surface and the importance of that, keeping it slow underneath. What have you found works for feeling the take? Because that seems challenging. You've mentioned it's challenging. So, what are some tips to overcome that part of it?

SPEAKER_02 55:34

Uh that that is a great question. And I will say that the number one thing is set on everything. Um small mouth, you know, when your fly's down there and you're connected with it, you know, making sure that you stay connected is a is a huge thing. Like having a tight line, having having tension, like having tension, but also not having tension, and that's where that's where the mending comes in, right? Because you have tension from that little J at the end of your fly line down to your fly. So that's where your all your movements come from and your visualization of seeing that. But because it's a tungsten bead on the head of that fly, that kind of vibration or that, you know, um uh yeah, we'll just go with vibration, kind of reverberates up that line pretty well, uh, which is nice. The other thing I will say is that I tie all of my crayfish leaders with fluorocarbon because there's way less stretch, less memory, and it also transfers that movement from the crayfish or the vibration up into the fly line. So there are plenty of times where you can actually you know feel it, but a lot of it's visual, you're watching the tip of that line. So you're keeping basically from that little J to the fly tight, and then everything else is slow.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

The little J describe the little J again. That's the indicator portion of the flight.

SPEAKER_02 56:52

That's the indicator point. So what I do, like when I cast and I'm presenting, I'm throwing it slightly upstream, and then I'm gonna throw an upstream mend, but I'm not gonna mend it so much that all the leader gets moved. I'm just gonna throw a mend in it so that the mend goes almost all the way to the fly line, but there's like a 12-inch piece of fly line that hasn't been touched. So you throw that mend in there, and now you have this little kind of S curve or J facing upstream. And then every time I'm mending after that, I'm mending it slow small enough and frequent enough that I'm not actually moving that J. I'm just move manipulating that fly line behind the J to slow it down to keep it that same speed or slightly slower than the current. Um, and so watching that is huge.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

Watching the J to straighten out, like watching the J straighten out or do anything.

SPEAKER_02 57:43

Sometimes it just is a slow pull, sometimes it's a quick jab. There's other times where, you know, yeah, most of the time it's you know, the the bass are gonna peg it to the bottom and they're just gonna hold it there. But there are some times where they'll grab it and run, right? Or like they grab it to that one point where the the hook touches them in the mouth and they freak out, set the hook on themselves, and they're gone. And you can feel that, you can feel that. But um the bass, when it eats, a lot of times, this is what I was trying to say a minute ago, is like it feels just like you're getting stuck about to get stuck on a rock or a log. So I tell everybody set, but don't set super hard because if it's not a fish, then you can throw men back in there and keep going on your drift. And all that crayfish did was jump up and fell back down, right? So that's a natural look for a crayfish of that kind of fluttering, flirtying stuff. So um it's one of those things where you literally just have to do it enough till you get to feel it. Um, and you're gonna lose some. But the beauty of of having those lighter flies is that most of the time when they get stuck, that that bead head is just barely stuck on the you know up current side of a rock. So if you walk up, if you're in a boat, you can roll back up. If you're wade fishing, you walk back up and just pull it upstream and it pops right out.

SPEAKER_00 59:04

So you'd you say that the hook set is a little bit stronger than a trout, but not as much as a largemouth?

SPEAKER_02 59:12

Yes, it's kind of we call it like a hybrid, right? You're like kind of strip setting and trout setting at the same time. You're like you're just trying to remove all the slack without you know yanking the thing out of its mouth. And it's the same hook set for uh for uh topwater for us. It's like you're not going straight up like a trout, you're kind of going sideways and pulling away, you're separating your hands to remove all that all of that slack, and then you're and then you're off to the races, which is pretty pretty great.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

So all right. Other tactical questions? These are meant to be like shorter, but take as much time as you need. Okay. Um all right. Uh what's the first thing you change when you're not catching fish?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

Oh um my empty beer can. Um we could just move on. No, I honestly I would say uh size and color are the are the two things I look at the most. Um if I'm not if I'm not catching um and I have some sort of feedback from the fish, uh, I'm typically gonna go smaller. Um, you can never go too small. Um and I might go further, right? We talked about that a little bit. Like I might if if we've got fish on cast further or make a little bit add some tippet to your leader and have a little bit more distance between your fly line and your flyer.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

Be a little less spooky.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:47

Yeah, okay. All right. How about what do you think is underappreciated about fly selection?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

Oh, that's a that's a good one. Um confidence, I think, is the biggest thing, you know. I mean, I people can look at in one person's flat box and be like, I would never fish any of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:09

But this is a great answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

But if you're the guy that doesn't that those flies work for, that's the biggest thing. Confidence is is huge. I mean, I I I that's where my crayfish games come from. Like, I I have spent years, hours, days, nights designing crayfish to get to finally get to the crayfish that I'm fishing now that I have the most confidence in. And there's not a single crayfish pattern out there right now that I know of, even that my friends die that I would fish because I have no confidence in that fly. So confidence is the number one thing that I think is underrated.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

Um observation is always important in fly fishing, in my opinion. And everyone talks about that. It seems like you know, always observe before you get in the water, look around. What do you think are some of the things that are um more most obvious and least obvious to you uh in observation? Something that you think like this is obvious and everyone should see it, and this is less obvious and it's harder to see, but it's important, both of them are important.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:17

Um, I think I think water, um water like river flows, water flows in depth, and clarity is something that a lot of people overlook. Um, you know, and I know this from one, you know, days working the flash out, but also days like talking to people on the banks or you know, people floating down, and and you know, they're throwing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

So that would be like a more obvious one, like the water color clarity.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:45

Clarity.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

Clarity would be the number one obvious thing that for me, I'd be like, okay, the water's super clear. I've got to do this. There are so many people that spend most of their day fishing, they're like, Oh, I didn't realize that if I would have gone smaller, again, going back to that smaller thing, like if I went smaller and lighter and quieter, it might have caught fish because those fish are spooky.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:05

So because it was clear water, it was gin clear water.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

Gin clear water, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:10

Um, another thing is uh that I would say that's less obvious, and um, I talk about this a lot. I actually have a presentation called Observations for Success.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:19

Um we could do a whole nother podcast. This is already like we're getting close to uh part one, part two, but I love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:27

Um but uh the the thing that I think is is is less obvious is reading the fish and reading how they're reacting to a specific situation. Um, and I'm just gonna spin off on this really fast, but go go, go, go, go.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

You know, false albacore. It's always been written, it's always been talked about that you throw your fly out when you see breaking fish, you drop that rod underneath your shoulder and you double hand strip as fast as you possibly can because these albys are moving 60 miles an hour. Well, a couple years ago, we were out down in North Carolina fishing for them, and they were stuck on these bait balls that were like, you know, the size of a Volkswagen, and they wouldn't leave the bait ball. And my buddy that I was fishing with was throwing his fly in there, burning in it back as fast as he could. And I made this observation of realizing these Albies weren't coming more than three feet out of this bait ball. So I did exactly what you're not supposed to do. I threw my fly in there and let it sink, and then just single-handedly slow stripped it out like I was bass fishing, and I caught a fish every time. So for me, it's like the observation of what the fish are actually doing in that particular moment is something that a lot of people don't think about because there's something written, a textbook, yeah, you know, way to do it. And so, yeah, so that's a great answer too. So that that's what I'd say.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:50

Or you're used to it, like this works all the time. Like, like you said, like this is what you do, you cast, you strip really fast, like that's quote, how you do it, right? And fish are tricky and they don't always do the same thing, so they never it might work, it might work a lot, but yeah, it's something that's I think that that is kind of tricky to observe and and think about.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:12

Uh if you don't have that that mindset of like of observation, you you're you're gonna be, I mean, there's you're probably gonna catch a couple fish, but like, and this is just for me, this is just a glory for me. But I've had it happen to me plenty of times where I'm like, oh, I didn't even think about that, you know. And my buddy's over here like smashing them. I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, well, I changed the color because they weren't eating that color. I'm like, well, I'd have fished that one color all day and been like, they're just not eating. So, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

What's your most uh underappreciated piece of kit or gear and why has that become important for you? Like something that people don't think about or that that you didn't think about, but it's become very important to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:55

Um my Clorox bleach bucket that's cut off as a baler for my boat. Uh, that pretty much saved my boat from sinking about a week, two weeks ago. So, you know, we always have these little hand pumps, you know, little bilge pumps. And uh ironically, my client, that was my client's pea bottle, and he never used it. And he's like, dude, you should keep this on your boat. And my dad has had a bleach bucket or bleach bottle, you know, cut off in his boats my whole life. And he's like, You should keep this for a baylor. I'm like, yeah, okay. So I literally threw it under the seat of my drift boat, and then you know, we were on a camping trip, it rained nine inches in an hour, and my boat was so full that my Yeti boxes were floating, and it would have taken me three hours to pump it out, and I'm just sitting there with this little Clorox bucket. So a little Clorox bleach bottle, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

No, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah. My son, we have a uh something, uh a pea bottle, I guess. And uh my son, he went on the first uh his first kind of fly fishing trip with me and my dad, my brother from Montana, and he thought it was so much fun to pee in the pea bottle that he was just drinking water all day, like non-stop drinking water. Yeah, he was just pissing all the time and loving it and laughing and like uh he thought it was hilarious. So um, okay, good, good pee bottle story. I like it. What habits have you developed that you think have been most helpful in two things? First, I think presentation. People say presentation over fly selection, and presentation is really important. Um, and I think that sometimes presentation we kind of forget or we don't know, I guess. You know, you always know that you want to present well, but uh sometimes uh I don't know, you think you're presenting well until you're until you realize what a good presentation is. That's for me. I mean, I always knew presentation is important. When I started really getting it into presentation and making sure it was really good, that's when I started to see a difference. And I and it was like, well, I thought I was doing it already, but I I wasn't. And I'm still not perfect, of course. But um so presentation, and then um the other thing that That I think is tricky is fighting fish because especially big fish, you don't have a lot of opportunities to fight big fish, especially if you're not going all the time. And so when you finally hook into it, now I'm talking trout now, but whatever your experience is with fighting big fish. What are what are some habits that you've grown into your your angling experience, or what are things that you do to deal with those two kind of hard to recognize, hard to kind of deal with? But when you are good at them, it's because you have good habit patterns. Yeah. It's that's my that's my kind of thought process. Like they both require good habit patterns, but habits are hard to form because you have to do them a lot. But if you're not doing them a lot because you don't have the opportunity, then you know. So do you have any of those types of things? Habits?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:07

Um yeah, uh, I would say like I don't know, habits in the sense of like presentation versus you know, fly selection, things like that. I mean, I I've um one of the biggest biggest habits that I've kind of created in the past couple years is is simplicity. Um, you know, I there were times where I had, you know, 50 different styles of fly pattern in my box thinking, ooh, there's gonna be a day where I need this because they're not eating these other 10 things. But then I realized pretty quickly that you know, if you if you know your systems that you're fishing and you kind of know what's going on, you don't need to have 50 different patterns to catch fish. You need to have that core about them. And so for me, like especially summertime smallmouth, I have one of those Bugger Beast Juniors as my guide box, and that doesn't hold that many flies, but one side is half poppers, a third, like foam grasshopper things, and then one row of traditional dry flies, and that's my entire dry fly selection for four months. And then the other side is literally a few, and when I say a few, I mean like five or six little bait fish patterns, but then the entire rest of that side is crayfish, helger mites, and stone cats or or uh scalpins bottomass, because I know that it's not about having this wild fly that you don't you don't even know if it's gonna work, or like, oh, they're not eating this, they're gonna eat this. They're only gonna eat five different types of things in the summertime. I mean, that's I'm generalizing here. They're gonna eat five different types of things. If they're not eating those, they're probably either one, not eating, or two, the conditions are so bad that you know you can't even get your cast in front of them before they spook. So um, simplicity, I think, is a huge thing. And then presentation is just going back to that observation is like being able to observe what you're doing wrong in the sense of like, am I is my fly hitting the water too hard? Am I not casting far enough? Um, is my fly line hitting before my popper or my dry fly? And then, you know, taking those observations and watching those fish, and then being like, okay, I've got to switch to this style, or I've got to make a leader longer, or I've got to go to a lighter fly line. That's something that you know, I I talk about fly lines a lot because it's it's one of those things where it doesn't necessarily matter, but there are plenty of times where you have the you can have the wrong floating line, it's gonna hit the water too hard. So um, you know, that's that's a big thing for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:51

Like observing yourself. It sounds like what you're saying is observing yourself that and and being uh persistent and honest with yourself, like actually thinking critically, okay, what am I doing that I can do different? It's a different type of observation than what's the water doing, what's the weather doing, what's the bugs doing? Like, you know, I think that's a great habit to get into. It's like that self-reflection. Let me think about this. Like, am I actually doing this being like present or and I, you know, I think sometimes you can get into the habit of just like pick it up, cast upstream, mend, you know, yeah, keep walking, try the different spots, and it takes some uh it takes uh the habit of looking at yourself and thinking, all right, what am I actually doing? What can I do different? What could I be doing better? What's going on here? That critical thought I think is something that it's be good to think about all the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:54

If you want to catch a bunch of fish. Well, right. And the other the other thing that I would say that kind of goes hand in hand with that is is observing and being able to read your fish. Like take feedback from the fish, even if you haven't presented yet to that fish, and you can see them, watch what they're doing. Um, you know, are they are they are they frozen to the bottom because they're freaked out that there's this big goofy thing floating closer to them, or are they happy and feeding? Or, you know, how are they eating that dry fly? Or how did they just, you know, did they just bust bait on the on the bank? Like watching those fish. I mean, I've had so much success and and peep and and and praise, not praise, but celebration on my boat because people like, how did you know that that's what that fish was gonna do? I said, because I've watched that fish not do that thousands of times. So knowing that that I can see what that fish is about to do, or and and again, I get it wrong plenty of times, but like I'm always gonna take that chance of watching that fish and trying to, you know, read it, what it's doing, um, and react to the fish itself. Um, so yeah, I mean that's that's another side that I think is really important that I've I've created a habit is watching as you know many fish as I can because that's something that's helped me be more successful. Um, and then in the way of fighting fish, I would say one of the biggest habits that I've I've learned over the years is no matter what the fish, I mean, every video you see, everybody puts the fish on the reel, whether it be a redfish, a tarpon, a trout, doesn't matter. Um, more fish are lost in that last three feet of fly line going onto the reel than any other possible part of the fight because there's that little bit of slack. Um, so one thing that I have gotten in the habit of doing is only going on the reel when the fish puts me on the reel. So, like a tarpon, for instance, you know, they're always gonna be on the reel, but they take all that slack up. You're not really in that slack. If they don't take that slack, you fight them via your hands and not the reel. And it gives you way more control over the situation. I mean, redfish are the same thing. I mean, I've I was catching bull redfish last year and I was stripping them in sometimes because they weren't blowing that line out, and I wasn't gonna, I didn't have the time in the fight to be like, okay, uh, the video showed this guy put it on the reel. So I'm gonna hold it super tight because that's another thing. You can hold them tight, reel it in, give them no slack, and then all of a sudden they're like, you know, I don't know, they run over an oyster and it pokes them and they freak out, and boom, there it goes, you fly. So I only I react to the fish when it comes to to putting them on the reel. And I think that's a huge habit that I've that I've learned um over the years is just go with what happens, let the fish decide if you're going on the reel or not.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:47

That's interesting you say that because I have two habits that I that I try to incorporate into my fighting fish. And one is put it on the reel. Now, I'm bringing this up because it's hilarious to me that you're saying this, but uh what you're saying makes a lot of sense. And as you're saying it, I'm like, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I probably shouldn't do that. But I think the other thing that I definitely try and do is, and I didn't do this, and I wrote a whole blog post about this, is hook set and assess. So I used to like hook into a fish, and then I thought, okay, I have to like put it on the reel, or I have to fight it with my hands, or I have to like I'm I'm much more likely now, or I try very hard to when I hook into a fish, like give it a potato, like how one about 1001, 1002. What is this fish gonna do? Yeah, right, because especially on my home waters, these brown trout, man, they love to run at me, you know? Oh yeah, they they I they are just I've had them jump out of the water and hit me, like when I'm wade fishing, yeah. And so I really have had to focus and try and build a habit of hook up with the fish, and then before I'm doing anything with putting on the reel or anything like that, I have to let the fish decide where the fight goes. Yep. Okay, we used to say this when we do BFM, which is like basic fighter maneuvers, and I don't want to get all off track, but uh you observe what the attacker is doing, yeah, and then you assess what he's doing, and then you make your move, right? If you always go into a break turn and pull, pull, pull in that circle fight, and he turns and points his nose at you and doesn't drive to your turn circle. Well, it you it should work most of the time. But if that if that attacker then decided I'm not gonna drive to his turn circle, I'm just gonna go for the gunshot and then jink off, like you messed up, and uh you messed up because you didn't observe what he was doing. Yeah, and if you're totally blind, you have no idea. So that's I don't know, related sort of in my old work or the old things that I think about, the way I think about things, 100% and I take that to fishing, like that fish, if it runs at me, like putting it on the reel, quote unquote, putting on the reel is irrelevant. Like I can't, I have to be stripping, I have to have my hands doing other things to be successful. And at the same time, if that if I if I just hold on to the line and don't let that fish run and take it, um I'm also potentially losing this fish. Or upstream, downstream, like if it's running downstream, I gotta get going. I gotta start, you know, I either have to put the screws to it or I have to do something, I have to get lower in my angles. A lot of these decisions I realize that I I need to kind of have an idea what I'm gonna do in that in that first part of the fight, in those first half a sec like two seconds. Yeah. Um tension. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and that's the whole thing. I want tension on the run. And if I've got a big giant fish, it's gonna get on the reel anyway. Um, so yeah, I guess I don't know. Maybe that's me defending myself. I I don't feel like I feel like maybe I'm saying some of the same stuff, but I do like having a fish on the reel. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say that I don't. Um I'm not I'm not opposed to it by any means. I like it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:29

I like it too. But there are plenty of times where like you know that you just want to stay tight, and if they never give the opportunity to get to that, you just keep going with what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:39

And I have lost a lot of fish, like trying to like that last where you like got the rod up and you're backing up, and there's no more room to back up, dude. Yeah, like just strip a line, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:51

Like you, you know, get the and then he'll run again or she'll run again, and then you'll you'll get your you'll get your slack. Yeah, that's that's a huge thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:59

Yeah, let the fish decide if it if it needs to be on the reel. I think that's valid.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:10

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 waitouthere.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.