Speaker 1: Welcome to the River Rambler, a production of Swinging the
Speaker 1: Fly magazine and sponsored by Jaymon Bamboo Rods.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the River Rambler production of Swinging the Fly Magazine.
Speaker 3: About five six weeks ago, I was driving between my
Speaker 3: daughter's houses and I needed at backing to put on
Speaker 3: a couple of reels.
Speaker 2: I needed backing on a couple of reels.
Speaker 3: And I'm driving up to the Catskills and I thought
Speaker 3: i'd stop into Deddy's fly shop that I hadn't met
Speaker 3: into and probably conservatively forty years, and I met Patrick Cook.
Speaker 2: Patrick, thanks for taking time to visit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about, Uh, how you got started fishing
Speaker 3: and how steel hadder ended up in the Catskills.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Well, I grew up in Michigan, so I
Speaker 4: grew up doing everything Michigan kids do, which is Wisconsin. Wisconsin. Uh,
Speaker 4: I don't know. Fago. That's a Michigan thing, drinking fago. Uh.
Speaker 4: Pop guy, No, So it's good to hear somebody say
Speaker 4: pop though, you know. So it's it's soda soda here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the East.
Speaker 4: Yeah that was he.
Speaker 2: Already hammered with a parent thing.
Speaker 5: So so, uh yeah, I just grew up doing everything
Speaker 5: Michigan kids did, which was whatever, play hockey, go fishing,
Speaker 5: you know, everything outside at that time in the in
Speaker 5: the eighties, and I was lucky enough to grow up
Speaker 5: on a lake, and uh you know, fishing was just
Speaker 5: part of the whole thing, you know.
Speaker 4: Uh, me and whatever revolving door friends, we would just
Speaker 4: take the canoe out and fish for bass and whatever else.
Speaker 4: And I did that well, you know, well into high
Speaker 4: school until whatever girls showed up.
Speaker 2: Girls, Yeah you are you spin fishing? Fly fishing?
Speaker 4: Uh well, so predominantly spin fishing. And when I was
Speaker 4: whatever at my youngest, and then I have two older brothers,
Speaker 4: one of whom, when I say older, they you know,
Speaker 4: I'm in my mid forties, so they're about ten years
Speaker 4: older than me. So they were already in college or
Speaker 4: finishing college when I was whatever in my early probably
Speaker 4: early teens, maybe younger than that. Anyway, So one of
Speaker 4: my brothers moved out to Yack in Washington, and he
Speaker 4: came back with fly rod and we were on the
Speaker 4: Little Manistee River, which is north northwest Michigan, and you know,
Speaker 4: he wanted to go check it out. His fly rod
Speaker 4: and everything, and I was I can't remember how old
Speaker 4: I was, but I remember, you know, I had a
Speaker 4: little bay caster and you know, we went to the
Speaker 4: fly shop so that he could get flies or whatever.
Speaker 4: And then I got like a little popper thing that
Speaker 4: you couldn't cast with a bay caster obviously, and then
Speaker 4: I just was, you know, seeing him off in the
Speaker 4: distance doing it. He didn't want to be anywhere near
Speaker 4: me and my dad obviously. You know, it was just
Speaker 4: kind of like a whatever that river runs through a moment,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, where you just see someone
Speaker 4: doing it and you're like, oh, that's no, that's what
Speaker 4: I need to do now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, uh so, yeah, it was just it was heavily
Speaker 4: influenced by my brother. My other brother got into it
Speaker 4: as well. Then he ended up spending a large portion
Speaker 4: of his probably you know, post college years guiding out
Speaker 4: on the south Fork of the Snake. So I was
Speaker 4: lucky enough to be able to go out there and
Speaker 4: fish with him and spend summers out there with him
Speaker 4: if if I need, if need, be so pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wish my brother fished with me. No
Speaker 2: no interest, nobody, nobody in my family has any interest.
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know, if what we did, I
Speaker 4: don't know if there was more yelling at me than fishing,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like it was, well.
Speaker 2: I got a little brother.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah I too.
Speaker 2: I know what that's about. What are you drinking?
Speaker 4: Oh? It's so. One of the local breweries is called
Speaker 4: Upper Brewery, which is near the shop down and living
Speaker 4: I live in Roscoe, and then the shops down in Livingston, Manor,
Speaker 4: which we can get into because you know the shop
Speaker 4: from Roscoe. But anyway, there's a brewery there called Upward
Speaker 4: and this is a fishing buddy willow we mock Lagger,
Speaker 4: named after the Willowemoc Creek, which is one of the
Speaker 4: rivers that rolls through, which I'm sure you know from
Speaker 4: fishing down here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not be on ages, but I hung out down
Speaker 2: there a lot in college.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 3: But so you're fishing the snake with your brother. You're
Speaker 3: fishing still in Michigan.
Speaker 4: Right, So then yeah, Steelhead, Uh, the steel I think
Speaker 4: probably came about a little later. I'm trying to think.
Speaker 4: I couldn't I couldn't nail down in an age, but I
Speaker 4: remember being old enough to drink. But it was you know,
Speaker 4: I was predominantly just ind indicator fishing for him up
Speaker 4: on you know, the rivers in northern Michigan, which.
Speaker 2: Luckily I wasn't gonna shame you into admitting that.
Speaker 4: Well, I think any any that.
Speaker 2: Was for the longest time that was in the Great Lakes,
Speaker 2: the thought that's how you had to fish for.
Speaker 4: If you even had an indicator. I mean that there
Speaker 4: was the chuck and duck method too, which is just
Speaker 4: full mono rig with you know, a rope of weight. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I remember watching I don't, I don't. There was some
Speaker 4: fishing show you know that popped up on YouTube from
Speaker 4: like the eighties or something, and they were on the
Speaker 4: Manistee and they were doing it, you know, and you're
Speaker 4: like wow, uh and then you know, but that was
Speaker 4: the most effective, most effective way they knew how to
Speaker 4: do it at that point. And but the thing about
Speaker 4: those rivers are you know, they're all old logging rivers,
Speaker 4: so that they aren't the easiest to fish, you know
Speaker 4: a lot. That's why a lot of those guys are
Speaker 4: swinging those rivers. Kevin Fienstra, you know, John Ray, all
Speaker 4: those guys, you know, a lot of the spade fishing
Speaker 4: has done from a boat, just because they've been so
Speaker 4: dredged out by by all the logging that went on.
Speaker 2: Is that what created that entry?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's it's really like you you're
Speaker 4: fishing more. I mean, we're kind of I think we're
Speaker 4: getting ahead of ourselves in terms of like the evolution
Speaker 4: of we skipped over a lot. But yeah, yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 4: it's all that stuff is pretty well dredged out by
Speaker 4: just you know, all the logging that took place there
Speaker 4: for the white pines.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating.
Speaker 3: I hadn't realized it was caused by us, which yeah,
Speaker 3: I thought I thought it was just a geologic, geologic
Speaker 3: kind of anomaly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, there was just I mean, I I don't
Speaker 4: let's lets let's say, don't quote me. I'm sure there's
Speaker 4: some geologic stuff that happened.
Speaker 2: You know, there's nothing, there's no mistake.
Speaker 4: Right, But you know, certain rivers are easier to like
Speaker 4: just wade swinging than others, but are definitely you know,
Speaker 4: like in Schedule Masters, where oh this is going to
Speaker 4: get me in big trouble. They go back to Michigan. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and they're on the man and they're fishing it from
Speaker 4: a boat. You know, it's just best attacked from that position.
Speaker 4: You can definitely wait fish all those rivers. But you know,
Speaker 4: if you want to cover water, which we all know
Speaker 4: is best for catching swinging flies for steelhead, you know,
Speaker 4: doing it from the boat is the best, is the
Speaker 4: most effective way to do it. Probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think Kevin and a few other guys kind
Speaker 2: of uh pioneered that.
Speaker 4: It's it's crazy to me that that that ever approach
Speaker 4: before really with the history of spay fishing and it,
Speaker 4: you know, it took those guys that are still doing
Speaker 4: it now, you know what I mean, are that really
Speaker 4: we're we're pioneering it. It's just it's a cool thing
Speaker 4: and they really do a good job of keeping up
Speaker 4: that tradition there. So yeah, cool.
Speaker 2: See, Okay, so that's backtrack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry, steel ahead. Yeah. So then, uh, I think
Speaker 4: it was just discovering the resource after a few you
Speaker 4: know a period of time, and knowing that you know,
Speaker 4: on the west coast of Michigan, you have all on
Speaker 4: the west you know, I was centered in Manistee, Michigan,
Speaker 4: So you would have four rivers, four to five rivers
Speaker 4: within you know, two and a half three hours from
Speaker 4: my parents' house at that time, so it was, you know,
Speaker 4: it was a real playground to do whatever you want.
Speaker 4: So a lot of a lot of driving around. Bobber
Speaker 4: fishing for sure, and then you know, the spade fishing thing.
Speaker 4: I can't I cannot like pinpoint it, but I think
Speaker 4: it was just being there and seeing someone else do it,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, knowing it was there. It wasn't
Speaker 4: like it wasn't like I was someone was like, oh
Speaker 4: this is you know, this is spade fishing. It was
Speaker 4: more just me being there and you know, I was.
Speaker 4: I remember actually I remember being it was a tippy
Speaker 4: dam and on the Maynistee River and I was on
Speaker 4: one side of the river, and across the river from me,
Speaker 4: someone was spade fishing and I remember seeing that and
Speaker 4: I mean like, well it looks like a switch rod,
Speaker 4: but there's no bobber on the end of it, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. So then you start researching a
Speaker 4: little bit, and it was really kind of just researching
Speaker 4: it in my own and then that wormhole kind of
Speaker 4: really opened up and it was I mean, came over.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It kind of is huh, you can't go back.
Speaker 3: It's funny because it is a far less effective way
Speaker 3: of catching fish than bobber fishing.
Speaker 4: No, it's it's incredibly less. But the thing was like
Speaker 4: water fishing the Maynistee probably unless you let's, unless you're
Speaker 4: using like a center pin rod, you're not going to
Speaker 4: catch a lot of fish anyways. I mean, you just
Speaker 4: can't get just not the most effective way to do
Speaker 4: it either way. So I wasn't catching a lot of fish.
Speaker 4: And then I'm like, I'm already not catching a lot
Speaker 4: of fish, so let's just continue that, but do it
Speaker 4: in a more poetic way, I guess, you know.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 4: So are we gonna do we need to tie this
Speaker 4: into how I work at Daddy's eventually, Okay, yeah, this
Speaker 4: isn't a race. Okay, No, that's fine. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just kind of went out on my own and whatever,
Speaker 4: bought a space rod and just start doing it.
Speaker 2: You know the shop there that's.
Speaker 4: Well at that at that time, there's there's a shot
Speaker 4: there called at that point it was called Schmidt's, Schmidt's
Speaker 4: Schmidt Outfitters, and now it's called the Manistee River Lodge.
Speaker 4: But I think I ordered the rod online from somewhere.
Speaker 4: It was like a TFO a Deer Creek space rod.
Speaker 4: I did not buy it from Schmidt, which now looking back,
Speaker 4: I should have, but I did not.
Speaker 3: Oh it's That's one of the things about I think
Speaker 3: folks your age is that you guys came up when
Speaker 3: when the internet was just immediate thought.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it was really easy, but it was It
Speaker 4: was kind of a interesting learning experience because I would
Speaker 4: go to Schmidt for to get flies. You know, so
Speaker 4: I'm researching it online and a lot of the stuff
Speaker 4: that comes up is is kind of West Coast stuff,
Speaker 4: and you're looking at all the West Coast flies and
Speaker 4: then you would go in I'd go into Schmidt and you.
Speaker 5: Know, a.
Speaker 4: Great Lakes steelhead fly is for the most part, vastly
Speaker 4: different looking from a West Coast fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you're like, and I think, especially over there
Speaker 2: in Michigan, I think had a big influence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, a lot heavily influenced by Fiendstra and you
Speaker 4: know that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh god, yeah yeah that well, you know, eggs
Speaker 6: sucking leech being the basis for a lot of the flies,
Speaker 6: Like you know, Dave has his.
Speaker 4: Eat a peach leech, and then Fiendstra had the gape,
Speaker 4: the grapefruit leech or the Halloween leech, and it's it's
Speaker 4: all kind of more leech centric, more or attractor if anything,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, because we all know there's
Speaker 4: it's rare to find a leech swimming around with an
Speaker 4: egg and it's you know, sucking on an egg. So
Speaker 4: it's never seen it personally. Someone else might have. I
Speaker 4: don't know, but I've.
Speaker 2: Seen I've seen a snake eat a fish, but I
Speaker 2: have not seen a leech eat an egg.
Speaker 4: And the sculping stuff there is big too, though, And
Speaker 4: then you know the thing, the whole thing with the gobies,
Speaker 4: you know, and being an invasive species that kind of
Speaker 4: took over. Really. I think that's kind of when you know,
Speaker 4: you see more. The more realistic patterns would be those
Speaker 4: representing you know, goby or sculpting like that, and those
Speaker 4: all those work equally as well.
Speaker 2: That's I found it. I mean, I haven't fished in Michigan,
Speaker 2: but in New York where I fished for a long
Speaker 2: long time. Yeah, sculpings and crayfish, oh yeah, get pounded pretty.
Speaker 4: Hard, definitely. Yeah, the the bait fish, certain rivers we
Speaker 4: we know of here in New York that don't might
Speaker 4: not get a salmon run and those fish are especially grabby. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and they're really looking for a shiner or something like
Speaker 4: that that that they're used to seeing out in the lake,
Speaker 4: which is great, real fun.
Speaker 2: So, uh, you were buying flies? When did you start tying?
Speaker 4: Well, it was actually right around the time. So when
Speaker 4: I went and bought a fly rod, see my brother
Speaker 4: do it. I bought stuff to tie flies as well.
Speaker 4: I was like, you know, I bought a few flies.
Speaker 4: They had, you know, like a mosquito or whatever, and
Speaker 4: so I bought a few of those, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: and I bought some supplies to tie them. But you know,
Speaker 4: I was I was fishing on the lake and that
Speaker 4: we grew up on and I learned two things you
Speaker 4: need well you don't need advice. But at that point,
Speaker 4: like I was just doing it, you know, if my
Speaker 4: hands or whatever, you know.
Speaker 2: So there was an Adrian Cortes here you can tell.
Speaker 4: Well, I didn't have I didn't have it, but I
Speaker 4: just bought the stuff to do it. And I'm like
Speaker 4: just lashing stuff to a hook. So I learned that
Speaker 4: a you're gonna fly as you should get the right
Speaker 4: stuff to do it. And be as you're watching your
Speaker 4: fly dissolve and fall apart in the water, bluegill will
Speaker 4: still chase a bare hook. So that was that was
Speaker 4: eye opening.
Speaker 2: Are the gift to beginning tires and fly fishermen.
Speaker 4: You know, I've said this about this is probably should
Speaker 4: come up later in the conversation, but growing being here
Speaker 4: in the Castles now is it's so eccentric. But there's
Speaker 4: also like some phenomenal small mouth bass fishing in the area.
Speaker 4: And you know, we get people new people that come
Speaker 4: into the shop and they're like, oh, yeah, I want
Speaker 4: to get a fly rod, I want to trut fish. Okay,
Speaker 4: that's great, let's do the fly rod. But have you
Speaker 4: thought about small mouth bass like there they'll eat anything.
Speaker 4: They don't care like, they're very forgiving to a new angler,
Speaker 4: and they're like, that's cool, but where do I catch trout?
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, fine.
Speaker 3: It's funny that the my my first fishing buddy that
Speaker 3: I used to go down to the Catskills with from
Speaker 3: when I lived up near Rochester. We'd be down there
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden he just get lit up
Speaker 3: and be going like crazy, and he'd be all excited
Speaker 3: and he'd go, oh, it's a small mouth, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, look what it's doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they are definitely definitely one of my favorite game fish.
Speaker 4: They you know, in the summertime. I don't for a
Speaker 4: trout year round here, but I definitely pulled the cut
Speaker 4: off for my own personal conservation reasons. When you know,
Speaker 4: certain rivers get too warm or the pressure gets heavy,
Speaker 4: and I just start swinging flies for small mouth and god,
Speaker 4: it's so fun. I mean, they eat they really like
Speaker 4: a palm skater, which I've learned recently. We last summer,
Speaker 4: we were practicing for our trip to the Shoots down
Speaker 4: and so we were skating a lot of different foam
Speaker 4: skaters and they will just crush those things midday, full sunlight,
Speaker 4: just no whole bar like.
Speaker 2: So, well, it's funny. I'm firm believe that you'll probably
Speaker 2: catch more fish subsurface, but I pretty much only pass
Speaker 2: fish on top.
Speaker 4: Yeah, why would you do so fun Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: it's they'll eat it most of the time, so you
Speaker 4: might as well just it that way. But yeah, they're
Speaker 4: they're just they're they're the perfect fish. But you know,
Speaker 4: I think the Lord of the catskills makes you want
Speaker 4: to skip that part of the deal. But you have
Speaker 4: you'd have success a lot sooner if you gave them
Speaker 4: a chance. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so did you go to school in Michigan?
Speaker 4: I did, Yeah, I went. I went to school. I
Speaker 4: started out in philosophy, and then my philosophy professor at
Speaker 4: the time, Conna, said, well, if you're going to continue
Speaker 4: with this, you can do two things. You can either
Speaker 4: drive a cab or be a lawyer.
Speaker 3: Or I was going to ask, was it was it
Speaker 3: college professor or lawyer that you're raiming for?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Right, well, at that point, you know, I was
Speaker 4: then I kind of switched over to getting into more
Speaker 4: English and so kind of carried on down that road.
Speaker 4: I and now I work in a fla shop.
Speaker 2: But there's something dropped. Yeah, so what got you in
Speaker 2: cat skills?
Speaker 4: Uh? Well, I actually I moved to New York City
Speaker 4: for a relationship and that didn't pan out. So I
Speaker 4: spent you know, some time still there, and then uh,
Speaker 4: you know, I pulled the ripcord. Eventually. You know, I
Speaker 4: was driving up here to fish all the time, and
Speaker 4: I was actually working. I would drive up I was
Speaker 4: working as a carpenter, a set carpenter for film and
Speaker 4: photo shoots in the city, and then I would drive
Speaker 4: up here to work part time on the weekends at
Speaker 4: a fly shop, not at the deadI shop, but at
Speaker 4: a different shop. I would drive up, so I'd work
Speaker 4: during the week as a set carpenter, and then I
Speaker 4: would Friday after work, I would drive up to the
Speaker 4: Catskills to work part time at a flight shop up
Speaker 4: on the Delaware system. And then after a couple of
Speaker 4: years of that, the owner of the shop at that
Speaker 4: time called and said, Hey, I have a full, full
Speaker 4: time position. Do you want to take it? And I said, yeah, well,
Speaker 4: now let's do it. And that's kind of how it happened.
Speaker 4: And then I worked at that shop for about I
Speaker 4: think it was about three years, and then managing that shop.
Speaker 4: And then it was kind of actually like during the
Speaker 4: housing crisis during COVID, you could not find anything up
Speaker 4: here to rent, and I was renting a place up
Speaker 4: on the Delaware system, and because everybody was real you know,
Speaker 4: the real estate, everybody's leaving the city and the real
Speaker 4: estate market was going crazy, there were I needed to
Speaker 4: I was looking for a new place to live from
Speaker 4: the place that I was currently living in and there
Speaker 4: was there was nothing for rent. Everything was in airbnb
Speaker 4: now or someone was working remote from their house or
Speaker 4: something like that. And so a friend of mine came
Speaker 4: in the shop and you know, we were just talking.
Speaker 4: I was like, well, I'm just you know whatever, I'm
Speaker 4: trying to find a place to live currently. And he said, oh,
Speaker 4: this buddy of mine just moved out of this spot
Speaker 4: down in Roscow And I came down and looked at
Speaker 4: it and yeah, yes, it's perfect, done deal. And it
Speaker 4: just so happened to be directly across the street from
Speaker 4: the deady house. So I continue to work at the
Speaker 4: other shop for another year after that, but then you know,
Speaker 4: kind of slowly, slowly, just kind of building talking more
Speaker 4: and more with with Joe Fox, who owns the shop now,
Speaker 4: is a great grandson of Walt Eddy, and it kind
Speaker 4: of just came up in conversation that if I wanted
Speaker 4: to make a move, I could, so I did.
Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, so it's actually still owned by the by
Speaker 2: the original.
Speaker 4: Family, Yeah, it is. It's all current owners are Joe
Speaker 4: Fox and Kelly Booked. They are uh engauged and Joe. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Joe is the grandson of Mary, great grandson of Walt
Speaker 4: and Winnie who were the original original owners of the shop. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so ninety seven years and the family owned at this point,
Speaker 4: which is pretty crazy all things considered, especially now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's it.
Speaker 2: That's just amazing to think about. It is and it's
Speaker 2: it's funny, probably even more so in the.
Speaker 4: Trout World, right, Yeah, I mean the the fly fishing
Speaker 4: for Trout World has really moved so online, big box online.
Speaker 4: You know, Joe had to work really hard with another
Speaker 4: employee at the time, Bran, to really modernize the shop
Speaker 4: and get it to a point where it could it
Speaker 4: could compete with you know what's out there now everything
Speaker 4: is so online centric. You know, you have to really
Speaker 4: be able to manage your inventory well to be able
Speaker 4: to keep up with the other shops that are out there.
Speaker 4: So obviously huge change from where everything started with, you know, Walt,
Speaker 4: Winnie and Harry Darby just tying flies kind of order
Speaker 4: based back in the thirties Ornee nineteen twenty eight actually,
Speaker 4: and then involves into what it is now. You know,
Speaker 4: so the original shop was actually you probably went to
Speaker 4: the one that were in the middle of this of
Speaker 4: the street as opposed to the original shop was on
Speaker 4: the end of Cottage Street.
Speaker 2: And well, as I recall, it was the front porch
Speaker 2: of the house.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yes, the one, the one most people know is,
Speaker 4: you know, the the sixty eight Cottage Street, which is
Speaker 4: you know, you go in and you go to the
Speaker 4: left and there were the tyings tables set up there,
Speaker 4: you know, very limited product obviously, and then the fly
Speaker 4: binds and that was it. And then there was always
Speaker 4: obviously someone in their tying, whether it was Walt, Whitney
Speaker 4: or Mary probably would have been what you spent the
Speaker 4: most time.
Speaker 2: Well, and I.
Speaker 3: Guess it's funny just talking with Johnny King, I've all
Speaker 3: known that I've.
Speaker 2: Only recently started tying flies from other people. I always
Speaker 2: wanted to fish my own flies, especially when I was.
Speaker 3: A trout guy, so I could go in and buy, like,
Speaker 3: you know, two of three different patterns so I could
Speaker 3: learn to tie better. And the and especially the Catskill
Speaker 3: style had such an aesthetic, the tiny, slim body and
Speaker 3: the almost non existent head, and yeah, to get that
Speaker 3: and figure out how to do it was, you know,
Speaker 3: and the little neck, you know, never a crowded eye.
Speaker 4: Yeah that was big, leaving room to tie the knot
Speaker 4: a lot of people say it was to do etertal knot.
Speaker 4: Uh Mary, well, Mary or Whinnie would say they just
Speaker 4: wanted to make sure to leave enough room for you
Speaker 4: to tie your knot without trapping the hackle, so you
Speaker 4: could you could go a couple different ways with that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean more of the catskill dry fly.
Speaker 4: I mean it kind of transcends most areas of fly fishing,
Speaker 4: you know, just seeing it's such an iconic still a
Speaker 4: wet Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and back in that era everything was based and
Speaker 2: they're just worth as many patterns.
Speaker 4: No, Yeah, that that's where I mean you had you
Speaker 4: would see a lot of wolves things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, and or you know, the catskill the kind
Speaker 4: of what you know of the cats skill fly as
Speaker 4: it is with the wood duck wing and the palmer
Speaker 4: tackle slender body like you said, or a quill body.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just such an elegant profile of a fly.
Speaker 4: It's it's just and you know a lot of people
Speaker 4: only tie and fish those, you know, especially out here
Speaker 4: there's there's definitely guys that are there not they don't
Speaker 4: they don't waver from that, you know, we had like
Speaker 4: the comparadiwn revolution that took place when how Kucci and
Speaker 4: Bob Nostazi did the Hatches books, which I'm sure you know,
Speaker 4: but those were more centered around more of like the
Speaker 4: Delaware fishery, you know, and I guess let me think
Speaker 4: about how to frame this if you think about this
Speaker 4: area as a whole, the catskills and fly fishing, and
Speaker 4: the Deadies and the Darby's who were the other husband
Speaker 4: wife team, the Delaware system, you know, the tailwater system
Speaker 4: we have here that didn't really come about until the sixties,
Speaker 4: like mid sixties.
Speaker 2: Late sixties, and also developed prior.
Speaker 4: Right right exactly, so that there was more center around
Speaker 4: you know, the beaver kill and the Willowe Mock. So
Speaker 4: also the other thing you can take into account in
Speaker 4: that is that back at the at that time nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty eight up until I'm not really sure this is
Speaker 4: going to show my age, but the only way to
Speaker 4: get up here was by train. You know, the average
Speaker 4: person didn't have a vehicle, so it was it was
Speaker 4: definitely a seasonal thing, so they would spend their winters,
Speaker 4: you know, time flies for orders, and then you know,
Speaker 4: those people would come up in the summer to spend
Speaker 4: take the train literally up here and then to come
Speaker 4: up and fish for the weekends and stuff like that
Speaker 4: and pick up their orders and go to the shop
Speaker 4: and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: It's funny. I think they had arondecks was very similar.
Speaker 4: In that era right where were people come. People would
Speaker 4: take the train all the way to the from the
Speaker 4: city or were they're coming from from. The likes all.
Speaker 3: The lodges and stuff that the around that guideboat developed
Speaker 3: after the Civil War when it was kind of the
Speaker 3: first time there was a class of people with enough
Speaker 3: money to go on vacation and it kind of took
Speaker 3: over logging up there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just amazing history. That's completely changed now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, much much has changed.
Speaker 3: So let's take a quick minute and when we come back,
Speaker 3: we'll talk about your steel a flied.
Speaker 4: Dyg Oh sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: Patrick Lukoba of Jay Moon Bamboo Rods is located down
Speaker 1: in southern Oregon along the Rogue River in Grant's Pass.
Speaker 1: That's where he spent the last several years developing tapers
Speaker 1: for three Bamboo's bay rods. He builds a light ten
Speaker 1: foot eight four weight trouts bay, a sweet eleven foot
Speaker 1: six six weight summer steel ed rod, and the one
Speaker 1: I like to call Little Thunder his eleven foot eight
Speaker 1: weight Coastal Special. They're all hollow built and have what
Speaker 1: I love in a spe rod, a stiff tip, and
Speaker 1: junk in the trunk. He also builds a powerful eight
Speaker 1: foot six weight single hand rod for those of you
Speaker 1: might want to take a two and a break and
Speaker 1: throw big drives or streamers or small mouth bugs. Patty
Speaker 1: can be found at jay moonworks dot com. That's works
Speaker 1: with an ex jay moonworks dot com.
Speaker 2: So we're back and uh, I don't know if any
Speaker 2: of you guys.
Speaker 3: Are connected with Patrick on Instagram, but if you are,
Speaker 3: you'll see exquisite uh classic steelhead flies and uh let's
Speaker 3: talk about how trupp Bum got to there.
Speaker 4: A well, well it's actually it was Trey Comb's book.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I picked that up Steeled fly Fishing up and I
Speaker 4: just couldn't set it down, you know, and so I
Speaker 4: just started working my way through that. You know, at
Speaker 4: the shop, we're always time flies, and you know it's
Speaker 4: in order. Like being up here in the wintertime can
Speaker 4: be pretty harsh, so you get kind of you end
Speaker 4: up kind of branching out a little bit just to
Speaker 4: keep yourself. Same with learning to tie different flies. And
Speaker 4: I just I just got into that book and I
Speaker 4: couldn't couldn't not tie a fly that came out of
Speaker 4: that book. You know, it was just reading the story.
Speaker 4: It's the same as the catskill flies.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a very different but it's also a
Speaker 2: very strong aesthetic.
Speaker 4: Same but different. Yeah, one hundred percent. You know. The
Speaker 4: crazy thing is that McNeice actually came here to learn
Speaker 4: to tie the cat's skill style fly.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he actually took a trip out here because he
Speaker 4: wanted to learn, you know, the deady style of time
Speaker 4: catskill fly. But back to I just thought of that
Speaker 4: because you know, now we're talking.
Speaker 2: Because I think McNee especially is such a clean tire.
Speaker 4: Yeah, agreed. Uh, and that made you know, the cats
Speaker 4: the clean style out of the catskill fly. May have
Speaker 4: contributed to that. I don't know, but uh, I started
Speaker 4: out tying like obviously the Great Lakes patterns, and then
Speaker 4: from there got in Oh.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that with the two horns. Yea, it
Speaker 2: was like a wooly worm with a back.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Uh. Michigan, Michigan is a weird place, you know,
Speaker 4: they call it the Michigan Cattus is actually a mayfly,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like, it's just a it's
Speaker 4: an interesting, interesting place we do it. We do it
Speaker 4: our own way there. So you know, I was tying
Speaker 4: inster pattern stuff like that, and then I just found
Speaker 4: that from tying uh whatever cat skill style dry flies
Speaker 4: or trout dry flies, you know, the the precision of
Speaker 4: that transfers into tying steel steelhead web flies.
Speaker 2: I do think.
Speaker 3: When I was in college, i uh tied a fly
Speaker 3: fishing class and a fly time class at the college
Speaker 3: that I went to the leisure learning and uh I
Speaker 3: was a super shy kid, and I realized that doing that,
Speaker 3: I knew more about it than anybody in the room.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have to know everything.
Speaker 3: I just needed to be If I didn't know something,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you next week, I'll find out. And but
Speaker 3: teaching people to tie when proportions are everything sure, and
Speaker 3: and with with a beautiful classic steelhead fly, it's the same.
Speaker 4: It is with a catskill style dry fly, less is
Speaker 4: more and that definitely coincides with with a steelhead webfly.
Speaker 4: You know, controlling your your proportions. Let's the fly breathe.
Speaker 4: Our joint friend Barret Names always says, you got to
Speaker 4: leave room for the water. Yeah, and it's in you know,
Speaker 4: you you tie a fly and the shoulder is too big,
Speaker 4: and you watch it swim and it will all that
Speaker 4: will collapse behind it. It's like that woman in a
Speaker 4: convertible where you know her hair is actually blowing the
Speaker 4: opposite direction of I think I always picture like for
Speaker 4: some reason, like Daryl Hannah. I don't know if that
Speaker 4: existed in a movie, but like being in a convertible
Speaker 4: and the hair blowing the opposite it creates that vacuum
Speaker 4: and sucks everything back the opposite way. So controlling the.
Speaker 3: Drove my dad's MG in high school, okay, a little convertible,
Speaker 3: and that caused me lots of grief with.
Speaker 4: I've been like, I don't know what an MG is.
Speaker 4: That's gonna oh, it's a little.
Speaker 2: Tiny sports car.
Speaker 4: It was a sixty three MG B.
Speaker 2: It was just a oh, a scream of a car.
Speaker 2: Dad walked on.
Speaker 3: It was Morse Garages, and there was the A and
Speaker 3: the B, and I think it was the B was
Speaker 3: more of the you know, home model, and the A
Speaker 3: was a little souped up, a little tiny, little bit
Speaker 3: like driving a sardine can around. But it's super fun. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And there were so many problems with the car, and
Speaker 3: we didn't have a mechanic in the house, despite the
Speaker 3: fact that my grandfather was a mechanic. But my brother
Speaker 3: and I just had so much fun in that car.
Speaker 3: It was literally about it probably would have fit in
Speaker 3: the bed of my Tacoma.
Speaker 4: You know we have the same truck. Did we talk
Speaker 4: about that, Yeah.
Speaker 2: We did. I just got I just got a camper
Speaker 2: for the back.
Speaker 3: I'll show you a month. Yeah, I gotta go fast
Speaker 3: camper for the back.
Speaker 4: Well, you got the long bed, so you have, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I have the short belt.
Speaker 2: You can.
Speaker 3: My nephew is just lusting over the camp and he said, well,
Speaker 3: I don't get the short bed. And I'm like, I'll
Speaker 3: make it for that too, because you're sleeping up above
Speaker 3: the wedge opens.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, now I see what you're saying. Okay, so
Speaker 4: I'll have to see it to believe it. Yeah, sort
Speaker 4: of thing.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I just when I was out west Last, just a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago, I rented a twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: to Comba and it's got an even shorter bed.
Speaker 2: Really, it's like a four and a half foot bet.
Speaker 2: It looks like a super.
Speaker 4: U brat what years yours at twenty seventeen, Oh, mine's
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, but so basically the same truck.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I will say this though, if your serpentee belt, if
Speaker 4: you ever run into an issue with your serpenteem belt
Speaker 4: and you take it to a mechanic, make sure they
Speaker 4: put the OEM belt on it.
Speaker 2: I thought they had a chain belt.
Speaker 4: Now, uh no, they have a whatever, regular whatever serpentine belt.
Speaker 4: And it's like a known thing.
Speaker 2: That don't like, don't get talked into replacement.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, knock on wood for you if you ever
Speaker 4: go on to Coma World or whatever. There's a whole
Speaker 4: thread about it that, like they put on the NAPA belt,
Speaker 4: it's just going to start squeaking again immediately, like it
Speaker 4: happens like from winter to summer. And so like I
Speaker 4: had like had being the operative word. I had like
Speaker 4: a local mechanic that I trusted. Yeah, and then I
Speaker 4: just kept taking it back there. I'm like doing it again.
Speaker 4: He's like, all right, well it's covered under works you,
Speaker 4: So I'll just put the same belt on it and
Speaker 4: then we'll do it again, dude again. I finally got
Speaker 4: onto Coma world and they're like, oh, yeah, you got
Speaker 4: to get the OEM belt. It's like a known thing.
Speaker 3: So just saying, uh, yeah, I drove a two thousand
Speaker 3: and four until we look every moved back here. That
Speaker 3: was one of the years that had frame trouble, and
Speaker 3: so I didn't want to bring it back here in
Speaker 3: the Salt, and I sold it with three hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty four thousand miles on. It broke my heart that
Speaker 3: things got at least another hundred in it. But the
Speaker 3: Serpentine belt went on that on me when I was
Speaker 3: on the road and made.
Speaker 2: For a very frustrating day and a half. Stuck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it'll do that. My brother had I think he
Speaker 4: had two thousand and five, and he got that thing
Speaker 4: up to like five hundred thousand miles and like just
Speaker 4: changing the only the only thing bad that happens, like
Speaker 4: the door handle pulled off. Eventually.
Speaker 2: You know, where does he live?
Speaker 4: He's in Boise Item.
Speaker 2: Oh so it wasn't Salt, Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, probably, you know it was.
Speaker 2: Probably probably five hundred thousand miles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I couldn't tell you. Yeah, but yeah, So when
Speaker 4: I got my he's like, yeah, change the oil. You know,
Speaker 4: you're good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, That's that's why I'm a Toyoda guy, because that's
Speaker 3: that's the extent of my automotive knowledge.
Speaker 2: I'm good with a fat tire and outside of that,
Speaker 2: I need no.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't want to get
Speaker 4: involved in many more than like pointing to point, p oh.
Speaker 2: See, I always want to build tear a vehicle apart.
Speaker 2: And uh.
Speaker 3: I think my my grandpa lost his garage in the Depression,
Speaker 3: and I think my father always associated that with struggle,
Speaker 3: and so get away from that, get away from manual labor.
Speaker 2: And I'm someone who likes labor.
Speaker 4: My dad, my dad always said if there was one
Speaker 4: job he could ditch digging only because you knew what
Speaker 4: the job was from start to finish. You were just
Speaker 4: there and you dig it. You dig a ditch and
Speaker 4: you're done. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And and you can be good at it, or you
Speaker 3: can be kind of sloppy at it and you're probably
Speaker 3: still going to get through the day.
Speaker 2: See. I got two stories free. One is grown Up.
Speaker 3: Johnny Quest was one of my two cartoons, and Johnny
Speaker 3: Quest and Hodgi, which are a pretty racist character, but
Speaker 3: they traveled the world with Doctor Quest. And Doctor Quest
Speaker 3: was this brilliant, semi befuddled guy, and Race Bannon was
Speaker 3: his dude. It was his right hand man. You know,
Speaker 3: fire any weapon, fix any vehicle, drive anything. And I always,
Speaker 3: you know, dreamed of like a Race ban in life,
Speaker 3: not working for doctor quest, just be able to do
Speaker 3: all that stuff. And then at a gas station in
Speaker 3: Florida one year pumping gas, enters a guy putting gas
Speaker 3: in a sixty.
Speaker 4: Seven land Rover okay, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Looking at it, and he sees me looking and just
Speaker 2: gives me a nod.
Speaker 3: And because I'm me, I start visiting with him and
Speaker 3: I said, I heard you can get parts for those
Speaker 3: any place in the world. Within two weeks, he goes,
Speaker 3: you can, and I said, it sounds like you have
Speaker 3: and he goes, yeah.
Speaker 2: The first time I rebuilt the edgine, I was in Kazakhstan. Oh,
Speaker 2: no shit, I said, wait what he said, ye rebuilt
Speaker 2: the engine in Kazakhstan.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: I'd never done it before. So it took me about
Speaker 3: two weeks to wait and then about a month to
Speaker 3: do it. But everybody was friendly and it was just
Speaker 3: a great trip. And then I had to do it
Speaker 3: again a few hundred thousand miles later, in South Africa.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I said, you're driving through South Africa. Well, I
Speaker 3: drove Africa top to bottom.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking, what life does this guy have? Said?
Speaker 2: What do you do for a living?
Speaker 3: And he looked kind of embarrassed and he shrug and said,
Speaker 3: I've never had to work. So he said, Trustafarian making
Speaker 3: the most of it.
Speaker 4: Right, independently wealthy. Yeah, quote unquote, but man, doing it right,
Speaker 4: bless it's hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be amazing.
Speaker 4: Well yeah for me, it'd be like doing that, but
Speaker 4: like driving from like BC to somewhere, you know, or
Speaker 4: driving up to be fishing.
Speaker 3: And it is funny that at one point I wanted
Speaker 3: to go everywhere, and every year, every year older, I
Speaker 3: get it narrowed down.
Speaker 4: Same, definitely same. But but yeah, so the the thing.
Speaker 2: Wait wait wait, we're not done with with stealing flies yet.
Speaker 4: We're not done. Okay, continue.
Speaker 2: So so you've got kind of you. I've I've seen
Speaker 2: you since we met, which hasn't been that long ago,
Speaker 2: but I've been following you. Yeah, pretty consistently put up
Speaker 2: classic ties. But you're throwing some one of your own
Speaker 2: twists in there.
Speaker 4: I do, I do, I just well, can you can
Speaker 4: you give me an example.
Speaker 3: You just put up a kind of a variation on
Speaker 3: Thompson River cantaism is really sweet.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, yeah.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's just a pattern that I'm not aware of,
Speaker 2: but uh, I'm intrigued by. I learned it.
Speaker 3: When I learned to tie, I wanted to tie everything
Speaker 3: and I and I I tied stuff for fishing. I
Speaker 3: was never going to fish for.
Speaker 2: And then at some point it got taken over by
Speaker 2: painting and I quit time as much. But I still
Speaker 2: am fascinated by use some materials and different techniques, and
Speaker 2: I still, to a minor extent, keep up on it.
Speaker 4: So so the one I the one I just put
Speaker 4: up was it was a fall cat. It was Lamar's
Speaker 4: fall cats, Okay, and that that one like, So the
Speaker 4: Thompson River caddis is one where you tie the it's
Speaker 4: got a flat wing, yeah, the flat wing, and then
Speaker 4: the fall caddus is like a tented wing. And then
Speaker 4: I when I was originally tying them, I wasn't. I
Speaker 4: felt you know, it was it was. I thought it
Speaker 4: was faster. It's just clump the the moose body hair
Speaker 4: on them, you know, like you would do with a muddler,
Speaker 4: just spin it. But then I you know what, I
Speaker 4: was like, you know what if I'm gonna do this,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna do it like he does it in the
Speaker 4: DVD and spin it in the loop. And what I
Speaker 4: found with that is that you get a better variance
Speaker 4: the esthetic. Well, the aesthetic of the fly changes because
Speaker 4: if you're clumping it, you're gonna have.
Speaker 2: A denser head.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well you're also going to have like a stage
Speaker 4: of the finer hair and then a stage of the
Speaker 4: thicker butt ends right, Whereas if you spin it in
Speaker 4: a loop and do it the way he did, it's yeah,
Speaker 4: it's all varied and you get like this, I think
Speaker 4: the water moves through it better, you know, because it's
Speaker 4: not you can skate it, but it really fishes best
Speaker 4: down in the film. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you're you know,
Speaker 4: like you know, going through my mirror wormhole. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm looking looking at it like it's a muddler or
Speaker 4: something that you're going to wake across the surface. When
Speaker 4: the reality of it, it fishes so much better fund
Speaker 4: of the surface and looks better, I mean, aesthetically looks
Speaker 4: better when you when you spin the spin the hair
Speaker 4: in a dubbing loop and it's it's not that difficult
Speaker 4: to do. You just have to take time with it
Speaker 4: and thread tension. I don't know if to say, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? Gravity is is your best friend
Speaker 4: always in fly time?
Speaker 3: Well, and I think I found uh was spinning in
Speaker 3: a loop. I set my loop up and put it.
Speaker 3: I use a hook rather than a camera what you
Speaker 3: call the spinners. But and I can't remember the name
Speaker 3: of the hook. It looks like a little shepherd's crook. Okay,
Speaker 3: But I put that in there to hold the loop
Speaker 3: up and want prep in my hair.
Speaker 2: But I wax first, sure, yeah, and then I wax
Speaker 2: again before put the stuff in.
Speaker 3: And I think that second code of wax sticks better
Speaker 3: because the first cut has kind of adhered, and then
Speaker 3: it ends up being way easier to get your hair
Speaker 3: to stand the loop.
Speaker 4: That and like a gradual you just like go that loop.
Speaker 4: It's gonna explode.
Speaker 2: Excluding exploding hair. My other big deer hair tip.
Speaker 3: I'm it's one of the allergies I still have pretty strong.
Speaker 3: In a family full of people with hay favorite animal allergies,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty lucky that I don't have many. But deer
Speaker 3: dan drift gets me.
Speaker 2: I'm a relack.
Speaker 3: But if you take a dryer sheet and squeeze it
Speaker 3: over your squeeze your dear hair through it before you
Speaker 3: start cutting, it takes the static electricity out and doesn't
Speaker 3: stick to you. Oh it's made a huge difference because
Speaker 3: I enjoyed.
Speaker 2: I enjoy time, but I avoided it for like probably
Speaker 2: fifteen twenty years until I figured that out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I always just carry around, uh you know, I
Speaker 4: have cats, so it's cat hair everywhere. So I always
Speaker 4: just carry around a lint roll or whatever and all myself.
Speaker 4: But I found the moose here. It doesn't it doesn't.
Speaker 4: It's not. It doesn't. It's here adhere to the human body.
Speaker 2: It's oh no, and it's different. It's spin too.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I really like And then when you I
Speaker 4: don't know, man, it just looks it's it's you know,
Speaker 4: they we're talking about iconic cat skill flies like to me,
Speaker 4: like an iconic steelhead fly to me, like, that's what
Speaker 4: I see is that either whatever Thompson River caddis or
Speaker 4: the Fall Catus or something like that. It's just you're
Speaker 4: just like, dude, I want to fish that you can't not. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I can't not look at that fly and be like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, like it just looks good.
Speaker 2: Man. I'm making making a note here, I'm making a
Speaker 2: Barrett note.
Speaker 4: Okay, let the water, let the water, Let the.
Speaker 2: This is for me to remember. Ask him a question.
Speaker 2: I just I just sent Evy a package yesterday.
Speaker 4: So okay, cool, So let's talk prospect. Sure, yeah, are
Speaker 4: you doing.
Speaker 2: That right in the middle of classic catskill waters?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, you know. It's like, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 4: Like I love like I love single hand fishing for
Speaker 4: I love watching a trouty the drive fly. There's no
Speaker 4: feeling better in the world than whatever matching the hatch
Speaker 4: here in the catskills with.
Speaker 3: Wait wait, wait wait, this is this is a steeled show.
Speaker 3: Who gives a ship about that crap?
Speaker 4: Right right? But don't give me wrong. I love watching
Speaker 4: just sip a dry fly like you can't you can't,
Speaker 4: you can't, you can't miss that. But you know, the
Speaker 4: catskills are so they're very hatch specific. It's really so
Speaker 4: you know that those because the hatches are so dense.
Speaker 4: Here the trout gets so keyed in on a specific bug.
Speaker 4: This is going to lead into trout space to just
Speaker 4: give me a second. So a lot of the time
Speaker 4: spent in the shop is problem solving with the customers.
Speaker 4: Which fly the fish are actually eating, which version of
Speaker 4: the fly? You know, where the especially if you get
Speaker 4: catties involved, you know, if they're eating cats six inches
Speaker 4: under the surface, so you got to fish it under
Speaker 4: a dropper or you gotta you know, coming out of
Speaker 4: that every day after work. You know, you can get
Speaker 4: a little little cooked from it. Like you know, the
Speaker 4: drive fly fishing. It's like after that, like stepping into
Speaker 4: the river and just spayfishing and swinging and fly and
Speaker 4: let it. Yes, letting the fish make the decision for you.
Speaker 4: Is it's just it's the best thing that it just
Speaker 4: slows you down. After that that whatever eight hours of
Speaker 4: you know, making helping people problem solve you're like, there
Speaker 4: is no problem. I swing to fly. I know that
Speaker 4: a fish may eat this, it may not. But if
Speaker 4: my job now is to make a somewhat a fishing cast,
Speaker 4: swing and fly, take a step, and then just do
Speaker 4: that again, and then look up and look up in
Speaker 4: the mountains and sometimes you get them, sometimes you don't.
Speaker 4: That's you know, there's not the expectation drops. So much
Speaker 4: when you put a spade rout in your hand that
Speaker 4: you know, the weight is immediately lifted off off your shoulders,
Speaker 4: you know, and then you're like it becomes more so
Speaker 4: much more about like I just made a I just
Speaker 4: made a ship cast. So now I'm gonna work on
Speaker 4: that for twenty minutes, and I'm gonna work that kink out,
Speaker 4: you know. So you're you're you're just stepping in, swinging
Speaker 4: and dealing with your own strikes and gutters. I guess
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Yeah, it's and it can
Speaker 4: be very good and it can be very bad. Same
Speaker 4: as any other spade fishing. You know that that when
Speaker 4: the hatches are really dense, the trout won't really move
Speaker 4: too far out of their feeding lane, so it can
Speaker 4: be difficult to get them to chase a fly. But
Speaker 4: the other thing about it is looking for different water
Speaker 4: than the guys that are are there strictly to dry
Speaker 4: fly fish. So you know, you're finding fish that are
Speaker 4: more opportunistic and they're gonna chase a fly out of
Speaker 4: some pocket that they're in behind a boulder or something
Speaker 4: like that, and so it gets you away from people too.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I just at this point in
Speaker 4: my life. It's it's it's like that median in the road.
Speaker 4: You know. It's like when you're when things get hectic
Speaker 4: and you find you now a car would like make
Speaker 4: noise if you cross the median, you know. I feel
Speaker 4: like that's the spay rod and it's like it gets
Speaker 4: slow down, like wake up.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 3: I took a break from fishing in my thirties because
Speaker 3: I didn't have the right mind to be contemplating how
Speaker 3: my life was off track.
Speaker 4: Sure, because life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And when I got back to it is when
Speaker 3: I really started steel heading hard. That was not my
Speaker 3: only focus, but like ninety six and a half percent
Speaker 3: of my focus. And the biggest thing that changed through
Speaker 3: that was I no longer had to catch a fish
Speaker 3: to make my day, and that is to me still,
Speaker 3: I loved a single hand cast, probably more than I
Speaker 3: loved to single hand fish. But if I'm single hand casting,
Speaker 3: I'm probably more focused on where's.
Speaker 4: The fish, and I to think of.
Speaker 3: It the same way. When I'm steel heading. I'm still
Speaker 3: looking for fish, but I have a much more relaxed
Speaker 3: mindset about it, and it makes it a much more
Speaker 3: relaxed endeavor.
Speaker 4: Sure, Yeah, I mean when there's when you drive single
Speaker 4: hand dry fly fishing and there's a fish up in
Speaker 4: front of you, Like, I'm not I'm not gonna say
Speaker 4: that it's not relaxing, but it's definitely not the level
Speaker 4: of intensity that comes with it, you know, and especially
Speaker 4: here because you know we're two and a half hours
Speaker 4: from the city, those fish get a lot of pressure
Speaker 4: and they get picky, and you know, you may only
Speaker 4: get a few drifts over that fish or it's going
Speaker 4: to go down. It adds it definitely adds a level
Speaker 4: of intensity to the situation, whereas if you're just going
Speaker 4: out and swinging a fly like the fish is, you're
Speaker 4: just allowing the fish to make the decision at that
Speaker 4: point whether or not it wants to eat right right,
Speaker 4: And that's other than that, you know, watching your loop go,
Speaker 4: I mean, there's no better feeling in my mind than
Speaker 4: like snake rolling and watching that loop just go and
Speaker 4: you're like, whoa, that was a good one, you know,
Speaker 4: and then like next thing, you know, it's like a
Speaker 4: whole new day.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: Well, it's actually too.
Speaker 3: One of the things I love about it is if
Speaker 3: you screw up, about three minutes later, you have another
Speaker 3: chance to be as good.
Speaker 2: As you can be.
Speaker 4: Sure. Yeah, And when.
Speaker 3: I probably my first ten or fifteen years of fishing
Speaker 3: the Spay Road, I kept a novel jam down in
Speaker 3: the front of my waiters And when I completely fell apart,
Speaker 3: which still sometimes all of a sudden I can't do anything,
Speaker 3: I would sit down and read and have a little
Speaker 3: few SIPs suburban and read a few pages and step
Speaker 3: back in again and you know, just completely reset.
Speaker 4: Yeah. One of the things that I've learned more recently, actually,
Speaker 4: like after doing it for X min of years, I
Speaker 4: just I just thought of this because you brought up
Speaker 4: the novel thing is that I had a friend that
Speaker 4: I fished, my friend Craig Buckby, that I fish with.
Speaker 4: He He's like anytime that you you know you're casting
Speaker 4: starts to fall apart because you start to drift, you
Speaker 4: start your your pop hand is beating a drift too
Speaker 4: far to the outside, and you're losing You're losing all
Speaker 4: that everything. Should you know you want to stay in
Speaker 4: the box, right, The best way to do that is
Speaker 4: pretend there's a Bible under your arm. And if you
Speaker 4: and so I find when my casting starts to falter,
Speaker 4: you know, I pretend there's a book under my arm,
Speaker 4: and then that keeps everything tight, and you know, next
Speaker 4: thing you know, you know, you're reel in. Pretend there's
Speaker 4: a book under your arm, and then start working your
Speaker 4: stuff back out, and then next thing you know, you're
Speaker 4: a it's a whole new stretch of river that you're
Speaker 4: fishing with a whole new cast, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's funny.
Speaker 3: I had never thought about it that way, but I
Speaker 3: struggled so much to quit us.
Speaker 4: Well, that's what it comes from, especially here because you have.
Speaker 2: To because you're single hand fishing most of the year.
Speaker 4: Well I was. In order to get better at space casting,
Speaker 4: I had to start limiting that.
Speaker 2: Oh, but I quit for years.
Speaker 4: So so here you have to present the fly downstream
Speaker 4: to the fish. You know, you're doing a downstream reach gas,
Speaker 4: which means you're extending your arm up and over. So
Speaker 4: that would transfer into my space casting where my my
Speaker 4: top hand or my armpit would completely open up to
Speaker 4: make this downstream reach cast. I was essentially just doing
Speaker 4: the spey rod, and then you know, the rod's losing
Speaker 4: all of its power at that when you're doing that,
Speaker 4: you know, because you're you're everything is is so top
Speaker 4: hand centric at that point, so you know, uh, pretend
Speaker 4: there's a book under your arm thing. It's really you're
Speaker 4: you know, you're right. Your top hand really makes your
Speaker 4: bottom hand become so much more dominant, and like in
Speaker 4: the double space too, because that you know, you're using
Speaker 4: your bottom hand then to move everything around. It's also, oh,
Speaker 4: gives you a better back cast by doing the same thing.
Speaker 2: Right. It's funny that.
Speaker 3: Mice told me years ago that uh, I think it
Speaker 3: was a Scottish Gilly had told Mike Kenney just put
Speaker 3: your arms like this and pretend there's a belt around you, right, sure, And.
Speaker 2: If you've seen any of the old videos of Mike Kenny, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it looks like there's an oak tree kind of blowing
Speaker 2: slightly in the wind, a beautiful loops are going out.
Speaker 4: It's there. There's like the phone booth analogy to where
Speaker 4: you're stuck in a phone booth and you can't you know.
Speaker 4: But yeah, really so, but back to the trout spath
Speaker 4: thing in general, we we actually actually have like it's
Speaker 4: you know, everyone knows it's a niche thing obviously, Like
Speaker 4: it's not it's not huge because I don't know that
Speaker 4: people get into trout fishing to limit their catch of
Speaker 4: them obviously, Like it's not like, oh, let's go not
Speaker 4: catch trout, you know, I Like, nobody's doing that. But
Speaker 4: so you end up finding friends that are just out
Speaker 4: there because they want to cast, you know. So we
Speaker 4: have a nice crew Johnny, Johnny who you talk to
Speaker 4: the other day is part of it, and we all
Speaker 4: get up get together myself, Johnny, Craig Buckby obviously, and
Speaker 4: then everybuddy Joe, and then some days we'll meet up
Speaker 4: and we'll have the trout space. And then some days
Speaker 4: it's like, you know, there's a group tag and everybody's
Speaker 4: bringing their long rods or something and we're casting the
Speaker 4: tributary that day, you know. So it's it's more, but
Speaker 4: definitely more about just hanging out and having fun casting,
Speaker 4: which is which working in a fly shop, you know,
Speaker 4: every day. It's it's a really relaxing thing to just
Speaker 4: go do that with your friends and there's no expectation
Speaker 4: whatsoever of catching a fish.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's funny.
Speaker 3: For for decades I mostly fished alone. And when I
Speaker 3: moved back out West, I just through good luck, through
Speaker 3: the internet, I ended up I I kind of have
Speaker 3: three groups of fishing.
Speaker 4: Buddies out there, okay, and there's some.
Speaker 3: Overlap, but it's become much more social and I was
Speaker 3: actually surprised how much I enjoyed.
Speaker 2: I fish way more intently when I'm alone, but.
Speaker 3: I enjoy it just as much with a couple or
Speaker 3: three friends and half a dozen or ten people at
Speaker 3: camp at night.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, yeah, for sure. It's nice to look over
Speaker 4: and see your friend just sitting on the bank. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, because like some days we'll go and like,
Speaker 4: you know, you may or whatever whatever you were dealing
Speaker 4: with that day, you may have had whatever crap day
Speaker 4: or something, and you're out there just hair them it
Speaker 4: away at it and it's not working. You look over
Speaker 4: and your friends just sitting on the bank enjoying the scenery,
Speaker 4: and you're like, what am I doing out here? Like
Speaker 4: I'm just going to go chill out for five minutes
Speaker 4: and then you know it's night. Friends are great for that,
Speaker 4: And then some days you just want to be there
Speaker 4: to see your friend catch a fish and take photo
Speaker 4: for them. And that's definitely one of the things that
Speaker 4: the spadefishing gives you is because of the lack of
Speaker 4: fish the individual experience becomes so much more. Whether you're
Speaker 4: just out there, we're all just sitting around casting or
Speaker 4: trying somebody's rod or something. You know, it's just so
Speaker 4: much more about that, about that specific moment, you know.
Speaker 2: It's it's funny. I think he's probably twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: I was walking on the beach with my axe and
Speaker 2: down in Florida, and I had a rod with me
Speaker 2: because there's always a chance you're gonna look out and
Speaker 2: see a snook. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But a guy comes up and I see him give
Speaker 3: me the eyeball and he comes H'm said, oh, brother
Speaker 3: of the long rod.
Speaker 2: And I'm like what, and uh he says, well, I
Speaker 2: see you're a fly rodder.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, uh, yeah, I'm just out here with
Speaker 3: my wife. And he goes on and on about tarbine
Speaker 3: fishing and.
Speaker 2: I he said, what what rod is that?
Speaker 3: And I don't even remember what rod it was, but
Speaker 3: I said to him, I said, what do you think
Speaker 3: She goes, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't actually have a rod. I use the guy's rod.
Speaker 3: And I realized he's probably fished for tarpain one time.
Speaker 3: But I find spade doesn't generally have those people or
Speaker 3: further down the rabbit hole. Yeah, and the and nothing
Speaker 3: against that guy. I don't really want to talk fishing
Speaker 3: with him, but he might have been perfectly fine otherwise.
Speaker 2: Sure, but I think the spake community is just that
Speaker 2: much more nerdy and odd.
Speaker 3: Chances are you have a little more in common with them.
Speaker 4: It's like trekkies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need a hand symbol.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it would be.
Speaker 2: He looked at two hands. Oh man, what's the work that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, it's it's it's it should be a thing. Yeah, well,
Speaker 4: I think Bridge kind of has it. I think Tim
Speaker 4: with the cross fingers is you may have figured it out.
Speaker 2: I've got my own, but that's just kind of my own.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think he kind of figured it out. But
Speaker 4: but yeah, so I don't know. I really like I
Speaker 4: fished the knob, the the twelve foot four weight, which
Speaker 4: is kind of like my du all for it, and
Speaker 4: I just it's the thing about trout space is it's
Speaker 4: thinking you're taking a what would normally be like a
Speaker 4: thirteen foot seven weight rod that's capable of normally throwing
Speaker 4: like five hundred something grains, and then scaling that down
Speaker 4: into something that's like fun too. Trout up. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: so it's it's it's been I've been doing it. It's
Speaker 4: rare to find a trout space that actually functions like
Speaker 4: a space rod does, and that no, I'm forty one
Speaker 4: twenty is is really really like a very one of
Speaker 4: the closest representations of a of a you know, it
Speaker 4: just acts like a space rod does, and your timing
Speaker 4: doesn't need to change when you switch over to it
Speaker 4: from A from A from the long route or from
Speaker 4: the from the big pole. So that's been really nice.
Speaker 4: Thomas and Thomas has one too. Their DNA trout space
Speaker 4: are one of the only other ones I've found that
Speaker 4: really like, you know, as a if you were a
Speaker 4: someone who would notice the difference between a you know,
Speaker 4: a full size space rode in a trout space rod,
Speaker 4: you know, you would pick that up and be like, wow,
Speaker 4: this is this is like such a good representation of
Speaker 4: what a spade rod is capable of, but put into
Speaker 4: a little trout spade package.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I really love fishing that one. I've been
Speaker 4: fishing the next cast lines a lot lately. But the
Speaker 4: scientific angler, like the little scandy lights, Yeah, those are
Speaker 4: like if you were to try and like getting it,
Speaker 4: getting into it or something, you know, like those little
Speaker 4: scandy lights. Scadget lights are just a perfect gateway drug
Speaker 4: to it. The Scadget lights, like even in like a
Speaker 4: three hundred grain rod, you can you know, you can
Speaker 4: throw T fourteen or something with it. It's surprising what
Speaker 4: those things are capable of.
Speaker 3: As as long as that heads short enough, you can
Speaker 3: you can carry some freight.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It is kind of funny though that when you're fishing
Speaker 3: that small you probably don't need fourtee.
Speaker 4: No, you don't, but sometimes it's nice.
Speaker 2: How so I hear?
Speaker 3: I actually have a lot that I've never had a
Speaker 3: lot a few that I've never got a chance to
Speaker 3: play with much.
Speaker 2: But the ambush taper has kind of a cult following
Speaker 2: with a few people.
Speaker 4: For sure. The ambush is a great line for it. Definitely.
Speaker 4: How light does that go that gets down into the
Speaker 4: three hundred grain range? I think actually there was a
Speaker 4: one seventy five. There's a one seventy five you can
Speaker 4: go down to.
Speaker 2: Oh there is, yes, but that's the neighborhood I'm looking
Speaker 2: at for.
Speaker 4: Oh really, Okay, I have joke.
Speaker 2: Joe Catalano is a young rod builder out of Detroit,
Speaker 2: and he built me just a sweet little uh ten
Speaker 2: I think it's ten ten to six.
Speaker 3: It's probably a one weight, and I'm really struggling. I'm
Speaker 3: struggling to find a line for it. I have a
Speaker 3: couple to try. I've got a one hundred and I
Speaker 3: think it's one hundred and sixty grain spadelight scandy that
Speaker 3: they don't make anymore that I found that I want to, Okay,
Speaker 3: but I'm curious about that ambush.
Speaker 4: The ambush would be good. But the other thing you
Speaker 4: might we might when you are neandering your way out
Speaker 4: this way, so is the triangle taper short oh, which
Speaker 4: is a really short I mean it's a single hand line,
Speaker 4: but it's geared towards it's made for bamboo rod, so
Speaker 4: it has a really short head on it and it
Speaker 4: almost acts as like an integrated scandy. Yeah, so that
Speaker 4: would definitely be worth trying. We've we've had quite a
Speaker 4: few people looking at those as you know, like kind
Speaker 4: of an underhand scandy option, and lately because of because
Speaker 4: of the taper.
Speaker 2: It's funny. The airflow used to make forty plus yeah,
Speaker 2: a single hand line, and I used to that line
Speaker 2: and I don't think they're making it anymore.
Speaker 4: No, they don't make it.
Speaker 2: They don't make it.
Speaker 4: That was a great line. Yeah, I love that line.
Speaker 4: I liked it for even just uh trout fishing.
Speaker 2: It was I used it stripper fishing with a nine
Speaker 2: weight intermediate. It was killer. I wish that was I
Speaker 2: wish there wasn't such a push on boys coming out
Speaker 2: with new because they they end up giving up some
Speaker 2: really wonderful stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, that's the good thing about Wolf is that
Speaker 4: those tapers have not changed for so long. So hold on,
Speaker 4: I'm losing it, losing my train. Thought here.
Speaker 2: That standard for me, So don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I would, Yeah we can, we can cast
Speaker 4: some stuff. I wouldn't. The ambush could be really good.
Speaker 4: But with he said it was one way.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like a five weight single hand. I
Speaker 2: just ordered. I just ordered a scientific Anglers like small stream.
Speaker 3: I think, oh yeah, it's got like a twenty eight
Speaker 3: foot head.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The creek, it's like a creek something and it's.
Speaker 3: And the other one I'm wandering about is uh it
Speaker 3: was it a Scottish line?
Speaker 2: Barrio?
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Barrio has a switch line. It's supposed to be really,
Speaker 2: and they can streamline too. Yeah, the the Wolf, I'm
Speaker 2: curious about that. I'm coming to.
Speaker 4: The creek line the freak Trout or whatever I say
Speaker 4: he called it.
Speaker 3: I'm parcel there because I used to illustrate Jones column
Speaker 3: and Roden reel.
Speaker 4: Really. Yeah, did not know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. I used to meet she and Lee
Speaker 2: and the holiday in in uh oh, what a blank
Speaker 2: in the name of the town. It's slightly south of.
Speaker 4: Binghamton, Portland, No, along seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, slightly, but I'd take pictures of her and and
Speaker 3: Lee would be kind of grumpy and.
Speaker 2: United to visit, and she wouldn't know me from a
Speaker 2: hole in the ground, but they were. It was fun
Speaker 2: to get to know them a little bit.
Speaker 4: Sure, Yeah, definitely, No, we shouldn't. We should explore some
Speaker 4: some wulli fi, especially if you're there's some of the
Speaker 4: salt water tapers as well, like there's the Bermuda short,
Speaker 4: which would definitely be work worth looking into, especially if
Speaker 4: you're going to use it for any warm water fishing.
Speaker 2: Well, a little one weight it probably won't, but I've
Speaker 2: got I've got a twelve foot two weight Angler's roost
Speaker 2: to build, Okay, so that'll be fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then I've got a couple of Miser four weights.
Speaker 4: So when you come out here, we'll have to go
Speaker 4: buy the museum and well, we can go down into
Speaker 4: there because they do they have the whole raw bamboo
Speaker 4: rod making classes down in the basement, so they have
Speaker 4: a full fully equipped down there.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 4: Not to mention like all the framed flies that are
Speaker 4: down there, but we can go down there and poke
Speaker 4: around and you can check out some tapers down there
Speaker 4: and stuff.
Speaker 2: It'll be fun, be fun.
Speaker 3: I'll bring when I was when I was talking to
Speaker 3: Johnny yesterday, he was saying, I have all the rods
Speaker 3: I need, I said, bamboo.
Speaker 2: He has done that, and I'm like, whether you're not
Speaker 2: done yet?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I have.
Speaker 2: I have Chris Obachowski Quad single hand.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm gonna bring just a fore you guys.
Speaker 3: To play with, because it's it's got a four to
Speaker 3: five and a six weaight tip and glass faral so
Speaker 3: it's a it's a really interesting rod.
Speaker 4: Oh Okay, Okay, we have.
Speaker 2: If you think bamboo is slow, it will blow your
Speaker 2: doors off.
Speaker 4: We have the Wolf Bamboo Special too. I don't know
Speaker 4: if you've ever cast a Yeah, it's a nice line. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so we have that. We also have like a long belly,
Speaker 4: classic stuff like that too.
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just not married to a classic approach.
Speaker 2: So I'll throw I'll throw a new way forward in
Speaker 2: a heartbeat if I if I like it on it.
Speaker 4: My my favorite single hand rod I own is actually
Speaker 4: a Frankenstein of a prototype of the Scott Radiant called
Speaker 4: the Dreamland. And then the top two sections of it
Speaker 4: are an old loomis U G l X and it's like.
Speaker 2: Did you combine it? Yeah, take the broken tip there was.
Speaker 4: That's how it started, but then it just became this.
Speaker 4: It's my favorite rod to cast at this point, so
Speaker 4: you know it's it's a two P like. I can't
Speaker 4: travel with it obviously because certain certain pieces had to
Speaker 4: be glue together to make them all fit. But it's
Speaker 4: it's my favorite signal hander.
Speaker 2: What wait is it?
Speaker 4: It's a five weight?
Speaker 2: That's pretty funny.
Speaker 3: It's when I when I worked in a shop, I
Speaker 3: don't think there was a guarantee yet.
Speaker 2: And you know, when you broke your rod, you buy
Speaker 2: a new rot sure.
Speaker 3: And I think there was a lot more experimentation then,
Speaker 3: I bet there was. I used to always carry chopsticks
Speaker 3: with me because you could. You could take out a
Speaker 3: pocket knife and slice your your GRAPHI or slice your
Speaker 3: chopstick down and jam it in.
Speaker 2: And get through a weekend.
Speaker 3: And I will knock on wood here because I only
Speaker 3: ever broke one rod.
Speaker 2: It was up in Alaska, but uh I fixed.
Speaker 3: I think three different rods for people with chopstick enough
Speaker 3: to get you through a trip.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's nothing you can.
Speaker 4: Want to leave long term, No, but I mean that's
Speaker 4: good to know now now I know too. I would
Speaker 4: never I never would have thought of that. It's like
Speaker 4: it's like the shim free shims.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably swiped from.
Speaker 3: Somebody in the era when I was just like absorbing
Speaker 3: everything I could about fly fishing. Sure, So so you
Speaker 3: guys have an event coming up?
Speaker 4: We do, Yeah, we're doing like, uh, I don't I
Speaker 4: don't have I don't know, really have a name for it.
Speaker 4: I don't want to call it a space clay because
Speaker 4: I don't know if it would be that. But we're
Speaker 4: gonna have a little spay event at the shop June sixth,
Speaker 4: Predominantly June sixth, will have some vendors out Barrett with
Speaker 4: Nams coming out. We'll have all the rods other rods
Speaker 4: we carry in the shop set up as well, from
Speaker 4: Thomas and Thomas, Hardy, Echo Scott, and we'll have a
Speaker 4: really nice row of tires as well. Some local guys,
Speaker 4: some guys come traveling to come here, some local uh,
Speaker 4: some guys high in you know, the classic steelhead and
Speaker 4: salmon stuff, as well as a few friends of mine
Speaker 4: coming down, like Adam Slevinsky coming down from your old
Speaker 4: neck of the woods to try some great lake style stuff.
Speaker 4: And then Barrett, we'll be doing a presentation. Craig Buckby
Speaker 4: as well. We'll be doing a some some presentation. And
Speaker 4: I think we're getting Melinda down from Melinda's too cool.
Speaker 4: We're trying, really trying hard to get hurt come down
Speaker 4: and talk a little bit about the Salmon River and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, it's a little bit of a work in progress,
Speaker 4: but happening. There's gonna be a grill, definitely some beer.
Speaker 4: And there's actually a lot of stuff going on in
Speaker 4: the Catskills that weekend as well, so there should be
Speaker 4: a lot of people around, so it should be really
Speaker 4: good time. Really looking forward to it.
Speaker 2: At the shop, we're down by the water.
Speaker 4: No, so well, the good thing about the shop is
Speaker 4: so we have the pavilion. We have the shop and
Speaker 4: then we have like a pavilion type thing out back,
Speaker 4: and then we have the on so you'll be able
Speaker 4: to cast out on law. But then we also have
Speaker 4: wi Willowe Mott Creek right across the street.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 4: So it's it's kind of you know, Saturday, it's kind
Speaker 4: of if you want to go over and cast in
Speaker 4: the water, because well, you know, that's really the best
Speaker 4: way to test out a rod, you can do that.
Speaker 4: If you just want to grass cast, then that's fine too.
Speaker 4: And then Barrett, like I said, Barrett Craig and a
Speaker 4: few other people will be doing presentations and then Sunday,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to do some kind of more specific clinics
Speaker 4: that people can sign up for, and that stuff will
Speaker 4: all well all I'm hoping to have that stuff all
Speaker 4: up on our website here probably for the next couple
Speaker 4: of weeks, and people can just kind of sign up
Speaker 4: for those Sunday clinics where be more specific to either
Speaker 4: trout spay or let's say, sustained anchor casting or touching
Speaker 4: go casting. Just something that's a little bit more specific
Speaker 4: to you know, different areas of spade fishing.
Speaker 2: That sounds awesome. So so how do people find the shop?
Speaker 4: Uh so in the Catskills Daddyflies dot com if you are.
Speaker 4: We're located now in Livingston, Manor, New York. We're thirteen
Speaker 4: Main Street, Livingston, Manor, which is oh it's about two
Speaker 4: and a half hours from the city, right on the
Speaker 4: willow Wee Moc. We're ne Yorpe's Grocery Store in the
Speaker 4: post office.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's actually funny that I still remember the first time
Speaker 3: I went to Roscoe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just steeped in Jersey history.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I get to Roscoe and I'm like, this is it.
Speaker 2: It's just a quaint little town.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The funny thing is it still.
Speaker 4: Is it's still the exact same there's you know, at
Speaker 4: that time, there was probably the Antrim.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to stay there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so now that was the bar. But now there's
Speaker 4: a bar called the Junction that we can go to
Speaker 4: that everybody hangs out at and that's kind of a
Speaker 4: fishing bar. Now.
Speaker 2: Well, I stand at the Entrum Lodge. It was probably
Speaker 2: h forty years past its prime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean it's it's still there, it's all
Speaker 4: boarded up. I think people, you know, there are multiple
Speaker 4: people have made efforts at revitalizing it, but I think
Speaker 4: there's just unfortunately too much, too much work that needs
Speaker 4: to go into it. If anybody doesn't know what the
Speaker 4: antrum is, it's just kind of part of the historic
Speaker 4: lore of the Catskills, just just this, you know, it
Speaker 4: was It wasn't I wouldn't call it a hotel, right.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It was like set up like more like a bed
Speaker 4: and bed and breakfast, but also had a bar.
Speaker 2: And I think, as I recall, you get breakfast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he got a room.
Speaker 2: It was almost a dorm room, right.
Speaker 4: It was a communal bathroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But it was also when I was down there
Speaker 2: official with my buddy O'Brien. I mean that was just
Speaker 2: part of it.
Speaker 4: Oh sure, Yeah, because you stand.
Speaker 3: In the hall in the morning wait to use the bathroom,
Speaker 3: and the other two guys standing had also been fishing
Speaker 3: all week.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, and there's you know there. It pops up
Speaker 4: in all the books too, you know, the Sparts Gray
Speaker 4: Hackle books. You know, it just became one of those
Speaker 4: you know the where everyone went after they were fishing,
Speaker 4: and you know, tall tales and big fish stories.
Speaker 2: The first place I ever had an old fashion.
Speaker 4: Oh no, kidding, all right, I it predates me, but
Speaker 4: I love looking at photos of it. It looks looks
Speaker 4: like a place I definitely would have would have hung
Speaker 4: out at, for sure.
Speaker 3: It's it's funny, but well, I like in a northeast Oregon.
Speaker 3: Uh is a lodge that was my grandparents.
Speaker 2: Back in the oh no, back in the thirties, and
Speaker 2: it's been mostly boarded up forever.
Speaker 3: I think it's condemned now. And my siblings and I've
Speaker 3: always dreamed of like how do we how do we
Speaker 3: get that and fix it up?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And you know it's just not it's just financially possible.
Speaker 4: You need to be independently wealthy. I think, like the
Speaker 4: guy try driving across Africa that kind of money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and decide you want to live in a
Speaker 3: really remote place that most people.
Speaker 2: Don't go to.
Speaker 4: Sure, so well, great visit man, Yeah yeah, I had
Speaker 4: a great time. I'd love to uh do it again
Speaker 4: and looking forward to seeing you in June.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Fun Wise, it should be actually, I mean, hatch wise,
Speaker 4: it should be pretty good too, Green Drake's March Brown's
Speaker 4: Golden stone flies, so we actually might run into I
Speaker 4: was excited about the sculping hatch.
Speaker 2: We could do that too, but maybe the crate fish hatch.
Speaker 4: But I'm talking about skating flies. Oh, the golden stone
Speaker 4: flies are going. We could, we could.
Speaker 2: Awesome? Yeah, cool on, be good man.
Speaker 4: Alright, you to the.
Speaker 2: River Ramblers production of Swing and Fly. Visit swing tofly
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