963 | Big Predator Flies: Fly Tying and Destination Fishing with Max Rivetta

Today we're talking with a fly tire whose entire world revolves around big predators, big flies and the destinations that put them to the test. From strike bass on Long Island to peacock bass in the Amazon, Max Rivera has built his fly tying around fish that hit hard and don't give second chances. Max is the in house fly tire and host with Moxon Fly Club and today he's sharing the flies he trusts most and the trips he's most excited about this year. Plus we're going to find out why reaching out to other fly tires is your best shot at leveling up your game. This is the Weft Fly Swing Podcast where we show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip and what you can do to give back to fish species we all love. Today Max is going to get into his fly design and why Bob Poppavix is still a huge influence to him and tires around the world. We're going to find out about Bucktail, why and how to find great Bucktail and why this really makes a big difference in tying these saltwater flies. We're also going to get some tips and how Max prepares for destination trips and packing all the way down to fly selection. If you ever wanted to tie bigger flies, chase bigger fish or start planning that destination trip you've been thinking about for years, you're going to enjoy this conversation. You can find Max on Instagram at PredatorPrayFlies and you can also check him with him at moxonflyclub.com. Alright let's get into it. Here he is, Max Rivera. How you doing Max? He has a good day, Voles. Good on my end. How about you? Great. Great. Yeah. I'm excited to talk about some Predator flies. We're actually heading up for a trip here this summer to fish for pike. I'm not sure if that's a species that you tie for but you tie a lot of flies specifically and especially for moxonflyclub. We've been working with John, putting some stuff together. We're going to talk about that. Some of the flies you tie. We're going to talk about some of the travel that you're going on. I know you've got a trip to Brazil and some other things going on around the world. We're going to talk about that today but maybe take us back into flytimes. I'd love to hear. It sounds like you're tying. That's a big part of what you do. How do you get into this? Have you been doing this while or is this new or for you? So with the flytimes specifically, I'm pretty green in the grand scheme of things. I've only been tying for just a little bit over two years and how that kind of came through is that obviously losses fly fishermen specifically. We tend to find ourselves very much in contact with the fish that we're chasing and to need the next best thing to get me even closer to the fish was to tie the flies myself and that kind of led to a spiral of YouTube videos, books and a lot of late nights and now we tie flies. There you go. There you go. No, I think it's awesome. That's always the cool thing. It depends on how much effort you want to put into it. I think that if you want to go all in and do what you're doing, you can level up pretty quick. Do you focus on specific types of patterns or do you tie everything? So I mean, I will tie everything but my main jam is definitely going to be bigger streamer stuff for more predatory fish and it's kind of where the name predator prey flies comes from. I'm mainly focused on big streamers and stuff around that parameter. I would say the smallest thing I'm tying is usually like three, four inches long all the way up to 12, 15 inches for even for some of those species that you're going to chase. Would you say the pike or pike? Yeah, even some big pike flies, big musky flies, buffers, a lot of bucktail work, big stuff. So basically the predator flies are your kind of go to what are the top, you know, if you say like main species that you're tying for for predators, what does that look like? The main species that I'm tying for would probably be a lot of here in the northeast is a lot of striper fisherman, bluefish fisherman. So we're tying a lot of flies for that. Obviously we have Bob Bopavix, you know, from the northeast, which is a huge influence on what I do and on the tying community. So a lot of what I tie is Bob's patterns and those are mainly used for striped bass here in the northeast again, bluefish, a lot of guys using them for pike and musky and I do a ton of orders for GT flies and GT's for people who are specifically what where's the main GT trip? Do you think people are hitting? I think a lot of people are hitting the seashells, Christmas Island stuff like that. You know, you got Oman now, which is something that we're offering through Mockison fly club. So, you know, we're reaching out and touching those areas too now. And yeah, I mean, that's a big bad predator fish that a lot of people are interested in. They will smoke you through a few flies. Nice. How did you, so Mockison is, you know, John is doing some good stuff out there. How did you first connect with Mockison fly club? So I connected with John via a mutual friend that I met over in Alaska, which was my first kind of destination fly fishing trip. Me and this mutual friend Joel happened to be sitting on a dock getting ready to take one of the little bush planes out to go fishing. And he was talking to somebody about GT fishing and I was talking to somebody else about GT fishing and our conversations kind of intertwined. Me and him became very good friends. He introduced me to John. I made my way down to Brazil and from there it involved into me being the in house tire for Mockison and being a host and getting to kind of enjoy these international trips with new people and show them all of these awesome places and awesome species that we're able to go and fish for. Amazing. So you did the Brazil trip. Maybe we can start on that one a little bit and we're going to kind of bounce back and forth on the tying. But what was the maybe describe that the Brazil was at your first time down there and what was that trip like? It was my first time down there and I'm going down two more times already. So it's amazing down there. It's an awesome program that Mockison has put together. The accommodations, the fishing, the people that were with down there. There's really nothing bad to say about it. From start to finish from when you get to Brazil, getting to the river, getting on the mothership that we're going to be staying on, meeting the people, working the mothership. It's all a very, very seamless, beautiful experience. The fishing down there is absolutely insane. We were down there in October of 25, eight anglers, 1500 fish over the course of five days of fishing. It's a lot. We had me and my buddy who came down with me. We had a 101 fish day. Right. And these are all Peacock bass. Oh, Peacock bass. I mean, there's some by catch. There's a couple guys called piranhas. Oh, wow. There's a few different species down there that you can catch. So the by catch would be piranhas, becuda, which is kind of like the best way that I could describe that is almost like a Amazon baracuda. It's a long slender tapered nose fish. They have this other fish that's called an apapa, which is kind of like an arowana, but it's blind. Wow. Blind, completely blind. Yeah, completely blind. Yeah. You pull it out of the water and its eyes just look like you know. How does it find your fly? I think it's a sensory thing from, you know, I'm not the best Portuguese speaker, but from what I was gathering with my Spanish and the Portuguese from the guides there, it's a sensory thing because you pull the fish out of the water and its eyes look like crystal balls. You know, there's like like voids, you know. Dang. What's that one called? That's the baracuda looking fish. No, that one's cold. So I, in its weird, I have not been able to find the English version of what they call it in Brazil is apapa. Apapa. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's, and again, it kind of looks like an arowana would be like the closest thing that I could compare it to, but it doesn't have that weird jaw that like an arowana has. Yeah. Gotcha. But it's a really cool species, really cool species. Amazing. And of course, there's, there's the chance to catch an arapignment down there. Oh, an arapignment too. Yeah. If you happen to cross paths was one, don't choke like I did because I did cross paths with one and froze up. He did. What was that? So the arapignment or the giant fish, right? Yeah, the arapignment or the giant giant fish. So they actually come up to the surface of the water to breathe air. Yeah. And then they go back down. Once they go back down, it's almost impossible to see them or target them specifically just because of how deep the water is there and how intricate the underwater system is over there. But if they happen to come up and roll to get air and you can make a shot at them and, you know, get them in the right mood, they will hit. And that's my dream fish ever since I saw Jeremy Wade catch one. Oh, yeah. He was a little kid. Right. And we were sitting on the tracker boat just put into a new spot and like a five and a half foot arapignment came up and rolled at the side of the boat. And I looked at the guide and I was like, they call it in Brazil, a pita ruku, which means red tail. Because they have that nice design on the red tail. So I turned to the guy and I said, well, c'est pita ruku. And he turned him and he's like cast at it. Yep. Wow. By the time I fumbled with my gear, he had went back down too late. But yeah, too late. But they're there, you know. That's a possibility. Wow. So, yeah. So, you could probably target maybe just go out for the day. Could you for a repymo only? If you, depending on what the water levels are and stuff like that, if you talk to the guide about it, you could entice them to go specifically for the arapymo. The main reason why they don't offer it as a specific target species is just because of how hard it is to actually locate and find them. The peacock bass, Tokunari, what they call them down in Brazil, which is friend of the tree, the peacock bass is much more all over the place. It's way less elusive. I mean, the waters are so filled with them at so many different sizes. I mean, the day that we had the 101 fish bag, we caught 75 of those fish in 45 minutes. Oh, wow. It was just a crazy blitz of all juvenile size fish. The guide put the boat at the tip of a point and set the trolling motor and just drag the boat down the whole point and it was every cast immediately in the water. Fish was coming up and smacking and they're aggressive. You know, they're aggressive, even on small sizes, they're aggressive. They're jumping out of the water. They're flipping around, pulling the drag. So there, it's a fun fish at any size. If you get the opportunity to catch one, that's a trophy size, which down there, the guides will say anything over 65 centimeters is going to be a trophy size. How many inches is that? 65 centimeters is like 22, 23 inches, I believe. Okay. Yeah. So anything over 23. Yeah. Something in that range. I don't know exactly. It's down there was 70 centimeters and that was 27.9 inches. So anything, you know, 5 centimeters is just two inches. So yeah, 25 inches, I would say is where your trophy size is at. And that's a whole other game. You know, it goes from one type of fighting style to another type of fighting style and they're, they're bulldogs, man. They're very fast. They are going to drag you back into the trees. That's why they call them the Tukonari, the friend of the tree because they immediately go to the trees. It's a fun fight, but the guides are great down there, man. If you get a fish and he gets tangled in the trees, they will jump into that river and swim into the trees and pull your fish out of there. They will. Wow. They will. Yeah. That's great. What's the, what's the flies you're tying for the peacocks? So it was a lot of hollow flies, Bob Poppots hollow flies. They did like juvenile peacock colorway and then like a wonder bread colorway. They were loving those. And then the best fly for the whole week down there was again, another Bob Poppots pattern, the Semper fly in white red. That was the money maker for the week. That's what I call my PB on. That's what I was using the day we had the big bag. And a lot of other people caught some pretty big trophy size fish on that, that fly. You know, Semper flies, hollow flies. We threw a couple beasts down there. You know, anything that's looking like a small baitfish that's got good movement, they're going to hit it because they're hungry and they're aggressive. Wow. So that's the Brazil trip and you're doing that sounds like you're going to be doing another one of those or at least couple more of those coming up here. What's the timing when you going on those trips? So we are leaving December 26th of, oh no, sorry, November 30th of 2027 to December 7th. That trip is fully booked with 10 people already. But we're repeating that same trip in 2028. And that's going to be November 28th to December 5th, 2028. That trip runs 5,500 hours per angler. We can host up to 10, minimum of eight. That price includes your lodging for the week, your fishing, your food, a laundry service, a cleaning service because we are on a mothership. Transportation from the airport to the river and back. So basically aside from your flight to Brazil and your gear that $5,500 gets you squared away for the whole trip. That does. And what airport do you find in two? We fly into Manaus. Manaus, okay. That's just in Brazil. That's like so Manaus is the capital of Amazonia in Brazil. So yeah, we'll fly into the Manaus airport and then a brand new, they just finish building it last year, a brand new kind of touring bus. We'll come and pick us up from the airport that same night, all of us. And then it's about a four or five hour bus ride right to the river and the mothership meets us right at the river. And then we're on the boat for the next five days, six days, depending on what day we land because it's a Tuesday to Tuesday trip. So sometimes we stay a half day on the river, on the six days, sometimes we don't. But then that boat will come back to the same spot where the bus dropped us off. Bus will pick us up again and bring us right to the airport and off you go. Yeah. What's it like? What's the mothership like? Kind of living on the mothership. The mothership is awesome. It's like a five-store hotel in the middle of the Amazon jungle. You got two, the setup is two people per room. Each room has two beds and a private bathroom, air conditioning unit. The whole boat is air conditioned inside, but each bedroom has its own air conditioning. So you got you a bunk up with a mate, you have a personal bathroom in there. That's on the, we'll call it the main level of the boat. Then you have two upper levels. Oh, wow. So this is like a three story story. It's a three story. I think it's 125 foot long boat. Okay. Where would you see, could you see a photo of what this looks like? Oh, yeah, absolutely. If you go on a Demox and Fly Club Instagram or my Instagram, we both have pictures of the ship up there. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah. So you got the first floor with all the beds in it. The second floor is going to be they have like a TV gaming room and an outdoor bar. And then the third floor is a, you know, open to the sky. That's where we'll do dinner one or two nights a week. And then again, you have a full chef staff on the boat 24/7. They make you three meals a day, wake up call. The manager of the boat will come and knock on everybody's door, wake you up, go down for breakfast, get you a packed lunch for the day. And it's six o'clock. You're on the water until five o'clock, usually like four or five o'clock in the afternoon. You get back to the boat. The crew is waiting there with cocktails for you and snacks. You get on, have a cocktail, have a snack, wash up, dinner served. So it's a very, very seamless and organized process that they have going on there that makes it very easy to just focus on the fishing and not have to worry about what am I eating? Is my, are my clothes going to be clean? And I need to make my bed. I need to clean my room. They take care of all that for you. They're there to fish and to enjoy the Amazon essentially. Yeah. What is it about Bob Poppavik's flies that are so, you know what I mean? It seems like he's got something going there. I mean, I know there's a lot of other types of flyer, other tires out there, but what is it unique about his style? I think what is super unique about his style and what kind of drives a lot of people to eye those is that he's, you know, what he was able to do was achieve such a big broad profile of a baitfish and still maintain the castability and the ease of fishing in that profile without sacrificing one or the other. The way that he was able to incorporate these various time techniques of hollow tying in reverse bulkheads and whatnot to build profile and taper with just bucktail, which is a very white material that's easy to cast and wicks water well. Right. So it's, it's a combination of a few different things. You have the good material selection that he had, the good tying style, the profile that he was able to create. And that kind of just led to a very large platform of innovation that everybody has been able to base also or tweak also is the basic style. It's basically bucktail and then just and then the technique is just, I mean, yeah, it's a unique look and fly, but that starts with bucktail most of his flies have bucktail. It starts with bucktail. Yeah, everything pretty much everything starts with bucktail. The main patterns that I tie of his are again, the hollow, the beast and the semper fly and they all start with bucktail. The hollow and the temper are very similar. I mean, sorry, the hollow and the beast are very similar. I would say the main difference between the two is that one has the long mono extension off of the hook, which is the beast to get that really long, really tall profile. And the hollow doesn't have that mono extension, but you can still achieve a very long, a big profile on that platform, all based off of the hollow tie with the bucktail. So you get a couple bucktails, you get a couple chicken. Yeah, there's some flashy stuff. Yeah, and you're good to go. What is the species wise? Are there just a ton of minno species that you're imitating down there? Do you have a specific one for Brazil? For Brazil, no, there isn't a specific one. When it comes to the hollows, I think we found that. [BLANK_AUDIO] juvenile peacock colorway worked the best. So like, you know, a green, kind of like a darker green color with hints of yellow and red, being that they are such an aggressive fish and they are a sicklead, you know, that's one thing that, I don't know if it's hominologer or what, but, you know, it's peacock bass, but it is a sicklead. - It's not a bass, it's not in the same bass. - It's not a bass, yeah. And they are cannibalistic fish. So they will eat their fry, they will eat their young. So having a fly that looks like a baby version of itself and making, you know, fishing it in the right way that you're making it look wounded or weak, they're gonna hit on that. They're very opportunistic fish. And then again, the red, semi-fly. So I'm gonna be honest, I don't think that color is a huge, determining factor down there. I think that given the fact that it's not pressured waters, that plays huge into it. Obviously right off the bat, they haven't seen a lot of stuff. So they're gonna hit a lot of stuff, but the sole aggressivity of the fish, if you got that profile right and you got the size right, they're gonna hit it. I don't think color is something that they're too concerned about. - Yeah, that makes sense. Wow, this is cool. So, so you got the, so the trip coming up here is on the Brazil, talk about some of the other trips. You got going with Moccasin, you've got, and you're tying. Maybe you're pretty much tying for all the trips that you're going on here. - Yeah, so any trip that I host, I will be tying for. So if you happen to come on a trip that I'm hosting, and you don't know what to bring, or you don't have the right stuff for your concern about what you have, rest assured that I'll probably have 100 flies with me that you're more than welcome to use. - Yep. - All right. As of right now, my next trip is the double hole tournament in Mexico, I'm not hosting that. I'm actually participating in the tournament. That's this September, and that's something that Moccasin, I believe this is either the second or third year that we're doing this. - Yeah, we've heard about that. This is a cool trip. And I know we just got off of Atlantic Salmon Trip. And Mike, shout out to Mike, he was one of the guests who was on the trip. I think he's gonna be on the double haul. And Mike's awesome, he's down out of Texas. But yeah, talk about that a little bit. I know John described that a little bit, but this is kind of a fun event, right? Where there's like a contest, a fun contest. - Yeah, yeah. So it's a cool tournament that John put together. It's five days of fishing, two days of quote unquote practice to get you locked in with your guide that you're given for the week, and then you got three days of tournament fishing. And the tournament fishing is a moccasin tournament. So it's something that John is putting together. There's gonna be trophies for biggest fish, most points, species specific and whatnot. So it gives a little bit of that. It adds that competitive edge into the fishing, which I think a lot of us as fishermen already have in ourselves. So when you put tournament on something, it kind of gets us all excited. I mean, it gets me excited. - Yeah. - So it's a cool program. And the price is really, really good. For what you're getting, it's $3,400 down there for five days of fishing, lodging. So it's a really good program. The people down there, this will be my first time down there, but I mean, where's the location? - Ishglaak. - Yeah, Ishglaak, that's right. - Ishglaak, yep. So I haven't been, but I've met a couple of the guys from down there, the owner of the lodge that we stay at and some of the guides and they're all awesome people. From the experiences that I've had with them and from what John has told me. - Yeah. - So I'm very much looking forward to that. And this is a yearly trip. I believe there's talks about doing another version of this, possibly over in Oman. - Oman. - Yes. So the species target is tarp and imperme, so I think over there it would be permit and GT. - Oh cool. - Don't quote me on that. I think it's happening. - That's awesome. So tarp and imperme, which is great about that is that when you talk about two species that are not the easiest fish to catch, these are two of them. What are your thoughts there? Have you had a chance that either of those species? - So I have not had a chance that either of those species. I have, this will be my second time doing the bow front sight casting style of saltwater fly fishing. The first time I did it was down in Louisiana. - Oh yeah. - For redfish. And it kind of, it's kind of like drugs. If I got to be honest with you, it was very new to me because it was the first time that I had done it and it got me no pun intended hook line and sinker. It is the adrenaline rush of that team dynamic with your guide where you could be having a normal conversation about football. And then all of a sudden I had to know where the guide's like, you know, 11 o'clock, three feet out. The adrenaline comes and even if you fumble the fish, it's just the whole process of it is very, very adrenaline, if you love it. And then I love that. So I'm only assuming that Mexico is gonna be even more intense than that because the fish are harder to target than the redfish. - Right. - So I'm very, very much looking forward to that. You got down there in Mexico, we're gonna have the tarp in, the permit, bonefish, Jack Rawhale, which I know a lot of people aren't big fans of, but I am. - Yeah, good. - So we're, you know the way I see it is that I think a lot of the podcast listeners are like this. It's like all the species are great. You know what I mean? Like everything with, I don't care what it is. It's just because you're catching a diversity. I mean, you know what I mean? How can you not enjoy catching some new fish? - Absolutely, absolutely. And especially when you're talking about big fish, big rods, big flies, you know, it's, again, that adrenaline starts churning and you just get very in tune to what's happening and it's awesome, man. It's gonna be a great time. It's awesome that, you know, John and Makacin are able to put these things together. - Yeah. - It's an honor that I'm able to be involved in the process and part of the team and get to experience these things and go to all of these awesome places. So yeah, I'm very much looking forward to it. - That's cool. So that's the double haul and then the double haul. What, are you gonna be, what flies are you gonna be tying for that trip? - Double haul is gonna be a little bit different for me, you know, because the fish are eating not 15 inch flies. So my partner that I'm gonna be fishing with, shout out to Levi. He is gonna be taking care of all of the shrimp and crab style flies because it's a long face in the permit. And I am gonna be tying all of the flies for the tarp and in the jack. You know, tarp and flies, I'm gonna be doing some tarp and toads. Couple weird ideas that I came up with myself. We'll see how they come up with. But for the tarp and it's gonna be primarily the main stuff that they're throwing tarp and toads, worms, you know, little feather bugs. Maybe some smaller, semper flies, you know, we might try and put together a couple, four or five inch hollows just in case they're running on it. - I'll wait and you know, we can get into that. But yeah, for the permit and bones, it's obviously gonna be the crab stuff, floating crabs, sinking crabs, shrimp patterns and stuff like that. - Awesome. So double haul, so you've got that coming in. And talk about some other things that you got in the horizon, some other trips that you're gonna be tying for. - I have another trip that I'll be hosting in February of this coming February, February 11th to February 14th. That is in Louisiana for the redfish. - Oh, cool. So you're going back for redfish. - Yep. - Going back for redfish. We have, I got five openings available on that trip. That's a $2,700 trip for three days of fishing, three nights of lodging. And that's an awesome program. Louisiana's great redfish are awesome. (laughing) You know, so that's the next one after the double haul. Then from there we go into Brazil. And then I have the end of 2027. I have a trip that I'm gonna be hosting from December 6th to January 1st in Argentina for the Dragonfly hatch down in Patagonia. - Oh, yeah. - So that'll be my last trip that I have that I'm hosting as of now in the lineup. And kind of a different direction than what I'm on now. You know, that's obviously trout. Bring out in beautiful Argentinian Patagonia. You know, I mean, I don't think it really gets much better than that when it comes to trout fishing. No, it doesn't. No, I think that's like top of the less for sure. There's a bunch of places. - Yeah. - But yeah. - And I've been to Alaska and Alaska is beautiful, but Patagonia sounds a lot nicer than Alaska. - Right, right. Yeah, in Alaska, what part of Alaska did you go to? - I was on the Kenai Peninsula. - Oh, Kenai. - Soul Dopna. I believe is the town that we were in. Yeah, that was I went there with Alaska outdoors. - Oh, cool. What were you guys fishing for? So I tried to do this thing that they call the June slam. So it's seven species on the fly and June down there. I got six of the seven. - No kidding. - Let it's Dolly Varden. Let me see if I can remember them all. - Yeah, I see if you can remember them, Dolly. Let's see, well, let's see if we could, but let the listeners think about this for a second because we've been talking Alaska quite a bit. So you got six. So June, what you're gonna get in June is potentially Chinook, although I think Chinook were they open during that time? - Yeah, I think Chinook was in the middle of the night. period because it was very low run when I was there a few years ago. Yeah. So you got the Dolly Vardin, you got Arctic Char, you got Lake Trout, you have Grailing, you have Rainbow Trout, that's five, then you got the Chinook, that's six, and then the seventh one is what? The seventh one, that's a mystery. I'm trying to think Rainbow, you know, no other Sam would be running in June, right? Well you make it so it was just one Sam in species. Yeah, just the one Chinook. And I caught the seventh fish because the one that I didn't catch was, oh no, sorry, the seventh is a pike. Oh and pike, you got Northern pike? Yeah, yeah. So that was the one that I didn't catch. Oh, you didn't get a pike. Yep, yep, yep. I got all the rest of them, but no pike. So you got Dolly's Arctic Char, Lake Trout, and then Grailing. Grailing, Rainbow, and Chinook, yep. Good work, and that was in June. What was in June? What was in June? Yeah, it was in June, pretty good weather. Oh yeah, it was decent, you know, it wasn't terrible, a lot of overcast, but you know, that's not really when you're fishing, you're not really complaining about overcasts. No, overcasts is good, right? Yeah. No rain, really. Good rivers, good conditions. Good rivers, yeah, good conditions. I think the biggest thing for there is, which is kind of shell-shocking, if you're not like, programmed with it in your head is going to be the the light versus dark, you know, I, I knew about it, you know, I've known about it my whole life, but when I got there, I didn't think about it, and then I walked out of my room at 11 o'clock at night to run to my car, and it was still sunny out, and I got really confused as to what was happening. And then I remembered. But, yeah, that was really the only thing that I would say, if you're not walking into it, like conscious that that's going to happen, it might shock you a little bit, because we had pretty much, I think like 20, 20 something hours of light a day. It's not like it's beating sun, but it's weird looking out the window at two o'clock in the morning, and the sun is still up, you know, but it is cool. Yeah, yeah, for somebody like me or others, you know, where you're like, oh man, you kind of want to like just stay up all night, you know, and fish or do whatever, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we definitely stayed out, you know, they had like little gazebo areas over there, and we stayed out. Yeah, and freeze, you know, waiting to the night, just because why not? You know, you got this opportunity, you might as well. Exactly. Well, and you're on the east coast, what town are you in out there on the east? So I'm on the island. I live in a town called Manerville. Okay. On Manerville, New York, it's on the east end of Long Island, and this is, I've been here my whole life, not in Manerville, but I've been on Long Island my whole life. And it's the east coast, baby. Exactly. Yeah, what do you, what's the cool for those that haven't been to Long Island? We've actually did at least one episode on Long Island. I know there's some good opportunities. What do you really love about living out there on Long Island? I would say the diversity of people is really awesome down here. I think that the proximity to saltwater fishing is awesome. And also very close to here, just upstate, you know, you have some of the most famous and old and tried and true trout fishing rivers. Yeah. That's the thing we haven't even talked about. I mean, we just had Rachel Finn on the podcast, and she was talking about, you know, fishes up on the Osabel. I mean, that for the Ed Arondacks is like six million acres. It's crazy. It's crazy. And it's a whole mother, you know, upstate New York, especially like up in the Ad Arondacks and stuff like that. It is a whole other world than where I am. You know, it's like you wouldn't even believe that you're in the same state. I mean, Long Island is a very suburban congested area. You know, you get up into upstate New York and the Ad Arondacks and you're you're back in the woods, you know, you're back with nature, which is awesome. It's awesome. But you have fishing on Long Island, right? Do you do anything out there on your, you know, when you're around town there? So we have, I mean, I guess it's like what is it more, not as much trout, but kind of warm water fishing out there? Yes. So there's a lot of, you know, like ditch pickle fishing, large mouth bass fishing, blue, blue guill fish and carp fishing and stuff like that. We have a lot of small ponds and lakes throughout the island. We have two hatchery rivers here that they raise fry and release the fish into the river. We did have many, many years ago a pretty good native brook trout population that has since depleted. There are still some, but there's few and far between. I do fish the hatchery rivers if I need to scratch an itch and go catch some trout. One thing that is cool about the hatchery river here is that they do run out into the bay. So you have the opportunity to get some quote unquote hatchery sea run fish. No kidding. So these are rainbow trout? So they stock it with rainbow trout and brook trout. So you could get this hatchery steelhead if it happens. Really? So these hatchery fish will migrate out to the Long Island sound out there and then come back in. Yeah, they go out into the great South Bay. So on the south side of the island. Oh yeah. So river runs right into patch on bay here and they go right out there. So many, many years ago, many years ago back in like the 80s, you know, a lot of the old time best fisherman, striped fisherman, they used to notice and they would hang out at the opening of these, of this river going into the bay because the striped best used to feed on them because they would come out through that through that little canal out into the bay and the best used to just hang out feed on them. So back then it was a very big one of those unknown secrets that and the fact that we used to have a large run of sea run brook trout because the brook trout, excuse me, would go out of the river and go in the bay. I don't know if they made it all away into the ocean or if they were just in the bay, but they would hang out in the bay for a while and then come back up the river. And there's actually a book called brook trout and there's a small excerpt about them talking about that, you know, here on island in the book. And it doesn't happen as often from what I've heard and the people that I've talked to. I luckily wound up catching one of these sea run brook trout, you know, it looks like an arctic char. It doesn't really look like a brook trout anymore. And the, I went, when I caught it, I went and spoke to the people at the hatchery and everything and they said that it was the first one that they had seen in 15 years. So, yeah, so it hasn't been, I believe that there still are. It's probably fueling far between. Right, there's still fuel. Yeah, but, but that's cool, you know, it's a cool thing that you can say that not something that you cross pass this often. So yeah, definitely cool. Yeah, and you're not too far like you're saying we were just up there. I flew across the country, actually flew into Toronto, then into Nova Scotia, the Halifax, and then up to Newfoundland, the fish for Langs. I mean, you're not too far from there, right? From New York, you could probably, in fact, Lee Wolf, I think back in the day used to fly his plane from somewhere out there in the states up. Yeah, no, it's not for at all. I mean, we last year, a couple of buddies and I went up to Polaski for the salmon run, which is the same river. Is that the same river? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's you're basically in Canada at that point. Oh, you are. That's way up there, right? Yeah, and that's like an eight hour run from my house. Oh, wow. So it's eight hours from your place to up to Polaski up to Polaski. Yeah, so I mean, give or take another hour, you're in Canada, another two hours, you're in Canada. Actually, I was not too far from there. Yeah, you can get up there. I mean, it's definitely if you got like a long weekend, it's for sure possible. And it's something that me and my friends have talked about because I haven't had the chance to yet to do any swinging, but I really want to swing some flies and I really want to swing for some Atlantic salmon. Yeah, so that conversation of weekend backpacking for Atlantic salmon in Canada is always going on there. It's right there. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's something I think you're going to have to talk to John and Mockerson about get put together. Absolutely. Atlantic salmon. Because I know that's one that it's definitely obviously numbers haven't been great around the world, but I think that part of Canada. And I've heard that out and I think Quebec, some of those rivers are having pretty good runs this year. So I think it sounds like something good's going on out there. And they got a lot of no discussion now. They have a massive striped bass population. Oh, they do. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Strippers. Yeah, that's the other one where you're at. I think where you're at, I mean, probably that is the species that's the the the hear the stories about the create people are so crazed with the striped bass, right? Striped bass. That is the Long Island species. I mean, not even just Long Island. That is Montalk. You know, that's what kind of what I think when it comes to fishing, I think that if you ask anybody about Long Island, the first thing they're going to say is Montalk and the second thing they're going to say is Striped Bass. Striped Bass. And that is the truth. That is what what the fishing here is based off of that is what 90% of fishermen here want. I mean, yes, we still have we still have fluke. We still have summer flounder. We have blackfish. You know, we do have tuna. We have Mahimahi. But striped bass is always the number one fish that people are here targeting. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. Well, let's start to take it out here with our kind of tips tools and take away segment. This today is presented. We mentioned it here Moxon Fly Club. All the great stuff we've highlighted some of those trips today. I wanted to get a few tips out as we're thinking about, you know, kind of flight time. We've been on that a little bit. Maybe you talk about that. If somebody's going to be tying flies, getting ready for a trip, maybe some saltwater trip. What's a couple of tips you tell folks and maybe you can even bring it back to, you know, how you got into flight time. Was this something where you watched a bunch of YouTube videos or, you know, how was it getting started? So my suggestion is going to be contact people. I watched along YouTube videos and I was very weary about messaging people in the beginning because I didn't want to be that. Right. Like on social media or something. Yeah. Like that annoying guy that's like trying to get just information from people and whatever. But I found that everybody, I don't want to say everybody, 90% of people in the tying community are very eager to share and help out. So my beginning stages was based off of YouTube, but then I started reaching out to people that I aspire to be like when it comes to fly tying and actually became friends with a lot of them like Matt Bailey and Andre, who's South African, gentleman, Bucktail flies, August on the fly. You know, a lot of really awesome people in the community that all it takes is just, hey, I'm struggling with this or hey, I want to learn how to do this. Can you show me? But these people are very open to sharing that knowledge. That's cool. And they would show you the Yasemin, they would kind of show you on how would they show you? Take a video of them tying it and send it over, draw pictures on paper. Cool. I want you in the direction of what YouTube video to watch. There's also, if you're a reader, which I unfortunately am not a big reader, even though I have a big book collection. Right. There's tons of books pop pop of access to books out. There's tons of books that you can read that over techniques. You know, Flatwing Joe has a book specifically on tying flat wings. Bob has his two books that overall his patterns. And then when it comes to again, to the reaching out to people, if anybody listening has any questions, my Instagram is always open. I have no issues. I'll FaceTime you. I'll send you videos. We can go over material. We can go over whatever. There's no gatekeeping. That's awesome. You know, if you want the knowledge, the knowledge is there for you, essentially. So somebody's getting ready for a big salt water trip somewhere they can just ping you on. And, and remind us again on your Instagram, predator, what's your handle? Predator prey flies. Yeah. So we can track you down there. And that's good to hear because, you know, I think that everybody's busy. But the cool thing is, is that, you know, the fly tying and all this, you know, you love it so much, you want to share what you're knowledge, right? And you're kind of at that level. Now you're at the next level, right? So people are going to be hitting you up more. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, it's one of those things that, it's a never ending gain. You're never going to learn everything. There's so much knowledge out there and there's so much improvement. You know, I don't even, some people may say that I'm on a certain level, but I don't even, you know, I still see myself as a beginner that has so much to learn. And I think that that's what's awesome about it is that it's not just fly tying, but it's an art. It's a craft. Exactly. And if you're an artistic person and you like that, you're a craft is never ending. You're always evolving. You're always learning new techniques. What if I tweak this fly this way? Is it going to jerk to the left and the water? Is it going to dive down? How's it going to swim? You know, so there's so much. It's a mad science. You can get so deep into it. It's awesome. That's great. Is there on the flies? Is there one, I'm guessing it's maybe one of Bob's, but one that's just your standard salt water fly that would work for like all the, a lot of these species we're talking about? Yeah, it's definitely going to be Bob's flies and it's either going to be a hollow fly or a simple fly. Those are my two go-to's. They're always in my bag. Any color variation, whether it be a simple white on white or something, a mimic a bunker or any species, the hollow fly and the simple fly are always in my bag and the first two things I'm throwing. Go to's. Okay. What would be a tip on tying those flies? What's something you, somebody wanted to tie up a few of those for, and would those be good potentially for even like redfish too? If they're hitting on mullet, yeah, if you time on a smaller size and they're hitting on mullet, absolutely, you could throw those at redfish. The tip that I would have is going to be selective about your material. Don't just go and buy when it comes to bucktail. Don't just go and buy any bucktail off the shelf and I want to preface this. You can tie these patterns with any grade bucktail that's on the market. Depending on the grade, you can make your life way harder or way easier. You want to go through the long haul of trial and error like I did of just buying this and buying that and buying this and buying that. That's fine. It's a great way to learn on your own. If you want to kind of circumvent all of that, go online. There's tons of videos of people talking about grading bucktail. I have a small video that I did with about trout. Oh, you did. Yeah, it's on there. Instagram, James did a small video with me. It's one of his guide tips. It's on his Instagram talking about bucktail. If you need to see that, that's on there. We'll put that in the show notes as well. Yeah, yeah. There's tons of videos. I would say that's going to be the main thing. If you got the time to watch a few videos or do a little research on what kind of bucktail you need for what you're tying, you're going to save yourself some money in frustration. For sure. There you go. On the bucktail, the difference is that there's a quality difference out there, but also selecting depending on what you tie, like thinner versus maybe describe that a little bit. Is there a quality thing? Yes, so you got. It's going to be a quality thing for sure. The quality is going to be on different grades. Obviously, you have a length. If you're working to build a really, really long fly, you won't really, really long bucktail, which is a lot harder to find. It needs to be a lot more selective about finding a bucktail that has six, seven inch hairs on it. And the average is going to have like three, four inch hairs on it. And then it's going to be the consistency of the material. Is it super crinkly? Is it super soft? Is it stiff? Does it flop? And again, all of that is going to affect how the fly fishes and swimmies. Where do you go? Where do you get your bucktail from? I get my bucktail from anybody that has good bucktail. Oh, really? So this is like local around the area or mostly online? There's tons of guys on Instagram that are processing and selling bucktail. And that's, you know, there's a few guys, lateral lines, fly tying is a guy that's selling really good bucktail. And Northwest bucktail is also putting out a really good product, musky fool, which is bigger company. They also make a great bucktail. And they have a lot of awesome colors. I would say for me and my style and the kind of person I am, I like the small batch guys. Because one, you build a relationship with them, you become friends with them. They die up something cool. You never know. They might hate you up before they release it and be like, hey, you want this? Right. So it's cool to have that personal connection with somebody. And you know, you can ask for requests too if you're friendly with them. You know, hey, what do you think about this? Hey, what do you think about that? So I'm more of a personable guy. I want to make a relationship with you. I want to be friends. That's why I deal with a lot of the guys that do small batch bucktails. Yeah. Small batch. That's awesome. Those are great resources. What is the, so we mentioned, obviously we're talking travel here today a little bit. What would be, you know, first off, is the travel? Is that something you really enjoy all the travel getting to these places? Just the getting there? I love it. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. The whole build up of packing your bags six months in advance and looking at them every day. You know, and tying, tying flies and, you know, re-rigging rods and taking lines off. And the whole build up of it, it's, you know, the trip doesn't start when you get there. The trip starts when you book it and you start thinking about it. So it's an awesome process. Destination fishing has been something that I've thought about ever since I was a kid. Again, I'll take it back to Jeremy Wade, man. You know, that's, I think he was an inspiration to a lot of people. What's his show? River monsters. Yeah. I think he was an inspiration to a lot of young anglers or, you know, anglers around my age bracket. And he's been all over the world. So as a kid watching that, I was like, "Oh, man, I want to go there. I want to go there. I want to go there." And then I got a little bit older and I got in a position where I was able to venture out and do it once. And once I did it once, it kind of became the only thing that I really wanted to ever do again. That's cool. When you get to this, yeah, when you get to this level of love and addiction for the sport, it's almost like you do everything in life to revolve around the sport. Exactly. And put to. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, we're working to get to the next trip where we're doing this for the next trip. So that's where I'm at and I love it. And I hope that I get to go anywhere and everywhere. And I hope that people listening to this, you know, if you're weary about it or you don't know if you should go or you're not sure if it's worth it, just go just do it because I'm telling you that's how I was the first time I tossed and turned and this and that. And then I just it snapped in my head. I made the phone call and that was it. You know, listen, life is short. You never know what's going to happen. You can always make more money. You cannot make more time. So go and do the things that you want to do. Make friends, make memories, catch awesome fish, eat awesome food in awesome places and live life, man. That's really it. That's it. Well, take us out here with our just our travel tips, tips and tools kind of segment here. So you're out travel and what is your advice? What's one tip you would give somebody on the travel to have a better, because I know we've had issues with lost bags and we've had like fairy issues, right? All the stuff. What's one tip you give somebody who's making a big travel? I would say make a checklist when it comes to packing. That's the first thing that I always do is make a checklist because I'm one of those people that always somehow manages to forget something. So the checklist is key. Don't over pack and don't under pack. I know that that's a crazy thing to say. And it's like, yeah, just pack what you need. Think about it. Are you really going to need to change your underwear five times a day? No. Do you really need a 70,000 pairs of socks? No. You might travel with what you need because wherever you go, you're going to bring stuff back from guaranteed. And then my big thing, which John from Marcus and we'll always say with the rods, carry them on, going, check them coming back. You do not want to get to Brazil or Mexico or Oman or anywhere in the world and your rods are lost. When you come home and you're coming off of the high of five days of fishing, if your rods get lost in transportation for a few days, you're not going to care as much. So carry them on, go in there, check them coming back. Extra line, bring extra line and extra line. What do you mean by extra line? Extra fly line. So bring us extra backup fly lines. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, because you never know. You never know, especially when you're getting in these places, again, like Brazil, Mexico, you know, Oman, a GT will blow your line up. A tree in Brazil in the river will cut your line. A tarp in could pop your line. So bring an extra line, travel light and have fun. That's it. That's it, man. Awesome, Maxwell. I think we can leave it there for today. This has been awesome. We will send everybody out to moxsonflyclub.com and they can reach you as well at Predator Pray Flies on Instagram. And yeah, man, this has been great. Appreciate all the words of advice on tying and travel. And we'll be keeping in touch with you as we move ahead. Awesome, Dave. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. And, yeah, thank you and have a great day, man. All right. Hope you enjoyed that one. If you get a chance, check in with Max. You can go to moxsonflyclub.com or check in with him on Instagram. If you want to, you heard him. If you want to get into Moron tying some of these flies, Max is there for you, checking with him, send him a DM. He's going to help you out. I want to let you know if you're interested in any trips, you can go to moxson or you can go to Weftly Swing Pro. And that's the easiest place. If you're not a member yet in pro, we've got a bunch of bonuses and extras you get there. Go to pro.weftly swing.com. And want to let you know we got trips. We mentioned a few of them here. Moxson's double haul. We've got the Redfish trip. We've got a bunch of trips around the country. So if you're interested in anything, please check in today. And that's all we got for you. We're going to keep this rolling as we get out and travel around the country. Hope you're enjoying and preparing and planning for a big destination trip yourself. And if you get a chance, please check with me anytime if you're new to the show. Dave at Weftly Swing.com always love to hear from new members, new listeners and everybody out there. So check in if you get a chance. And I want to let wish you a good day. Hope you're having a good evening, morning or afternoon. And we'll look forward to talking to you on the next episode. We'll see you then. Bye.