Episode 121 - Trout Intel: Eric’s Playbook, When to Swap Flies, +

Okay, I hit record this time. Fortunately, we only lost one second of the podcast before I realized. Didn't record, welcome to the men podcast episode 120 something, travel manager. Today was fishing guide Eric Nickham. Yeah, I got to go on the river. That's kind of nice. I don't do a ton of guide trips while I haven't done a ton of guide trips this year, but still get out there enough. I was, I had a business consultant, his great guy, you wouldn't, you would know him. And he was offering some advice, and I was trying to describe like where our business was, and I'm like, man, I was like, if we, if like the management level could just quit guiding, like everything would be easy. Like, and he, his term for that was you, you have to have professional satisfaction. There has to be like a part of your job that provides professional satisfaction for mental health. And like, and that's when he was describing guiding us. Oh, sure. I'm like, yeah. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to do more guiding. Yeah. Well, it's good. I mean, it's, you got to be, you got to stay, everything works together, right? You, you know, on the river some, you can get better health in the shop or on the phone, you know, like it's, it's important. Yeah, you get to have some street cred. Exactly. Yes. Yeah, because he had a perfect, that was his, he had a term for it. He, I was trying to describe him like, but I feel like I need to do this. He's like, yeah, you, you need professional satisfaction. He's like, you need, and he had another term for it too. It was, he didn't say street cred. He had like some MBA type term for it. But yeah, we had about an hour long conversation. I learned a whole ton of like buzzwords like putting different areas of our business into different silos. I was like, that's what I'm going to do. Boat rentals. That's a silo. Yeah. There was a bunch of funny terms that he, he hit me with, but on today's podcast we had, we had all sorts of odd stuff to talk about, but I think first up Eric is like literally fresh off the river. His pant, the bottoms of his pant legs are still wet. So he's going to bring some real intel to the podcast today. Overall scale one to 10, hunger level of, hunger level of the trout today. What was it? I'd put the hunger level at six. Yeah. Which is good. I mean, it's the river, I mean, it's pretty average conditions for the fall. Like about a thousand CFS, it's pretty clear, but it's not gin clear yet. I think what's been killed, let's not kill in the fishing, we're making the fishing not super super good the last, oh, weaker. So just talking to the guides and then, you know, fishing guy today, it's just that bright sound. It puts them down a little bit, they don't feel as comfortable, even though there's blue wings out, you know, you're only seeing a sporadic rise here or there. But you know, we fished really, we fished a real light nymph set up today, which, you don't have brand new anglers in the boat. They were visiting from Alberta, they have family here in Yakima. And so yeah, just, just wanted to make sure fishing effectively, right, gets some fish of the boat, so, you know, fishing just not the smallest oros indicator, but the size small, I'm not extra small. And then two little, two little nymphs, I think the best fly we fished was a number 18, all of bullet with a little hotspot behind the bead. And fishing pretty light-tip it, fishing, I was fishing four and a half x to five x, which is a nice way to go right now, I mean, your fly is sink really good. And then, you know, like we talked about the waters really clear, so, like, and guiding is obviously, it says, again, again, on the podcast, like what we do as guides isn't always the best formula for the, the, let's just say the solo DIY angler. Oh, sure, yeah. Just to angler out on that one Saturday, they get the fish in the fall, like what we do guiding isn't always the same. So like, four and a half x, tip it to five x, tip it, that's light tip it for guiding, because we want pretty maintenance free rigs, like we, we know enough spots and we're going to use a boat that we could access lots of different seam lines. We don't necessarily have to dig fish. We're not confined to one bucket, though we can move, we can move around a little bit and we want to get lots of reps in and get casting in because every time we have a fly break off, it interrupts the angler tempo and then we're not making growth with those anglers. Yeah, like to your point, I mean, I'm fishing on the shallow side. On the go, you know, three feet deep, then we're, you know, deep ended up in the deep spots and we lost one fly today. So the, so the saying that like unless you're losing flies, nymphs and you're not trying hard enough or you're not deep enough, that's not true. Well, I think it's not true if you're fishing from a boat, like we're talking about, and you're covering water. Right. Oh, yeah, like if I was fishing some of these big runs here, like with a tight line rod or even just an indicator, you know, waiting, I would definitely lose a few more flies because I'm not a very that depth. I'm going to push it a little bit to catch one or two more fish out of the spot, you know what I mean? Yeah. I have, man, I have meditated on this. Sometimes sitting back and not fishing, like, okay, there's a saying by a Michael Jordan saying that my son rattled off at me the other day. I ain't been playing, but I've been practicing and that's all of your mind. And I did fish a few days ago. I put up a YouTuber on it and I've gotten way more into like, we were just wrapping about this right before we walked over like, we walk out to a good piece of trout water on the Akama River or any productive trout river. If you see a pool where a pool would be defined as, you know, some type of swift water that's coming downhill into the pool and area where the water gets deeper and slower and then eventually that pool runs out into a tail out and into the next section like that would be a pool. Every pool has got trout like every single one of them. And I watch way too many anglers over time walk into those pools and they fish way too noisy. They fish way too big of flies. They fish too big a tip it, you know, they kind of have that, you know, just kind of aggressive mentality. Like, which worked 20 years ago or worked five to 10 years ago, the trout are just smarter now. Like the flies are better, the indicators are better, the average angler that's on the river is more effective. There's way more education available. And I've gotten way more into changing flies, like testing flies, like, hey, I'm going to throw five or six drifts with this fly. And then if I get a fish or two grade, maybe I get a bite or a takedown, well, I'm going to remember where that takedown was, right, like, I got a bite there. Like, I knew it wasn't bottom because I ran it three more times, nothing. Change flies, test that fly for a couple of drifts over where that takedown was. Go to the next fly. I might test, you know, in one pool, let's just say pool, we could, you know, riffle run, bucket, whole, slop, trough, there's lots of different names for trouty water. But if I run through five or six, seven flies in a spot and three of them hooked fish and the other ones didn't, by the time I go to the next spot, now I've got it pretty well reduced to my three most effective flies. And so I'll use those spots to kind of trial, you know, trial test a few patterns. And then I don't have to go back to those other ones that were productive later in the day. I've got to confine to, you know, I've actually tested it over a known population of fish so I can go to my next spot and take those in more valuable patterns with me. And then you said the same thing about testing depth, like if you're a weighed fisherman, testing depth, they're testing weight where you're standing in one spot and you can replicate the same drift multiple times, don't touch bottom. You don't touch fish. Well, let's give another footer to a depth. Oh, wow. Now I've got a fish. Now you have some, now you have some dope that you can take with you to the next spot, the next spot. Yeah, and I mean, I would just stress that the conditions are really good. You know, like, I don't want to talk negatively about it, maybe like the other day I picked up some boat rental guys. You don't drive it up and the guy was like trying to make it sound like the river was blown out because it was like, I don't know, was it perfectly clear, you know, if it had reigned a little bit the day for it, the river didn't go up at all, right? But because the fishing was maybe a little tougher than he anticipated, it was because the river was blown out. It's like, no, like the conditions are money right now, like we've just got to pick on how to catch them, you know, like we might need to try a few things, you know, I'm just going to say it. Yeah. Nine out of ten times, the fishing is tougher than what you dream it's going to be like. You always dream it's going to be incredible, like it's going to be just outrageous. One out of ten times, it's better than what you dream about. Fishing is almost always like 80 to 90 percent of the time going to be tougher than what you dreamt it would be because you're picturing it being like great dry fly fishing and rises in the stream where I tied or this nymph I bought is going to be like the next greatest thing. Of course we have all those hopes, dreams and aspirations that the fishing is going to be incredible. It's always going to be a little bit more challenging, but that's what makes this a damn intriguing. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, something I'd never do enough of this time of year is, and I think it's a little bit underrated because right, I mean, like a lot of the fish I saw rise, you know, I didn't see a ton, but a lot of the fish I saw see and come up are not in places you can nymph. You know, they're on like a little edge and something like that is, I think I think people that are, you know, proficient casters and stuff, I think they could come out and have a dry rod rigged up, and if they're willing to spend the time on some of these. fish, they see come up, I think they can get on some, I think those are some of the nicest fish in the river right now, are those ones that are kind of in a weird spot by the bank. I was just like, it's just like hunting, man, it's like a big meal deer and elk or, you know, whatever mature animal that's got a few, you know, hunting seasons, you know, behind it, they don't necessarily single out remote areas because they're remote, they don't have on X maps, they just wind up through trial and error of not getting hassled, they kind of wind up in these quirky spots. And you're absolutely right, this is my favorite time of year to have like a two rod set up and that could be, like if I were waiting, you know, like depends on what my goals are. Like if I'm going out to have a little fun, I might take my trout spay rod, by no means to, I think that's the most productive way to fish. Yeah. But I might take my trout spay rod and then finger rod, but if I were going out like just to catch a light dry fly rod to probe all the shallows and then some type of nymph rod and don't care whether it's a tight liner or an indicator rod, I don't have a dog in the fight there. I like tight lining because I just enjoy the nuance of it and I like to feel the fish bite. But yeah, you can probe into all those shallows. In fact, there's, when you start, I was reading, these were sent to me and I just skimmed them real quick. I didn't read them top to bottom, but somebody sent me one of Devon Olson's competition blogs and I just skimmed a couple of them and he would blog about each session. You know how that works. Right. Hey, you got two hours to fish this 100 yard piece of water, right? Yeah, he gets 100 yards. He's got to catch as many fish as possible and those guys always have a dry fly rod. Now they're going to run long leaders and really little flies and delicate bugs and stuff that's like most of us would find very difficult to cast, but they always probe all that stuff at the dry fly. And I think that is so similar to if somebody were to come to this river for the day or for the afternoon, they're probably best suited finding a piece of water that's attracted to them where they know that there's fish, there's good rock structure, there's some walking speed water, there's depth wise, they can see that the bottom exists, but it's not the abyss. You know, like we want two to four feet of water and be like ideal and probing all that with a dry fly first before you nymph bomb it. That's what the competition anglers do and they run multiple rods, you know, they want to check all that quirky stuff at the dry fly. And I've skimmed a couple of these blogs and surprising how many fish they actually do catch on dries. Like a lot of people think it's all nymphing, you know, and it's not because a lot of that water you're right, you can't nymph into. They're right, true. And the, you know, the other thing that flies over the radar too, like for, you know, the guys that don't have a drift mode and they can't go float like I just did six miles and four hours, you know, you floated by 9,000 fish. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many do you catch about 6,000? No, not even close. It's not that's the thing is that when you run the numbers like I've fished the mo before the Missouri and you know, you're getting a bunch of fish and you just feel like you're like, man, we're such good anglers, you know, we smashed it today. We got 30. You're like, well, but there's however many, like you said, 1,000 per mile on the, whatever, 10,000 per mile on the, on some of that is 8,8, 10,000. Yeah. I mean, a ridiculous amount of fish, right? We went and got 30, you know, that's, that's a good fish. But the thing that flies under the radar is how cheap it is to rent like water master from us. It's like 119 bucks. Yeah, go out for the day and just like, you know, access all the water you need. And I mean, it's, it's super good. Like we did it for a, one couple days ago, though over this weekend where I was a guy and he had two, two or three buddies, they were all fishing and, and all of his friends have one, but him. So we rented him one, right? I'll get on the river together and, I mean, so such a good way to fish this time of year. Dividing conquer, man. Oh, yeah. Water master, that thing keeps me from falling on my ass in the slick rocks. It is nice for that. It's just a great tool, yeah. I waited a bunch of really chunky stuff the other day. I was space fishing quite a bit. It's, that's the one I did the, the YouTube video on it. I talk a ton on the YouTube video about changing flies because I can change a fly in maybe 20 seconds. You know, by the time I get my box out, rent, you know, maybe it's 30 seconds and maybe it's 45 seconds. I don't know. One change flies a hell of a lot faster than I can move spots. And then I've got data because the thing is like, okay, if you're just cruising along, you could be like doing it on foot or in a boat. It doesn't matter. But if you're just cruising along and you fish, fish, fish, a bunch of runs and then you change flies and then you have success, you don't know whether the fly was better or you just found a hungry trout. Like, oh, I think most of the time it's, it's the, the, you found a hungry trout. And then you think that's the best fly but you haven't tested it like against a known population. Like, I really got to begin to enjoy like figuring out the depth, the weight, the presentation, you know, or altering like depth wise. Like what if you walked into a bucket and like anglers were more deductive about what they did and they, they took their name for it. It could be, you know, it could be a little baby oros. You know, I, you know, me, I'm so biased towards yarn but you take a little New Zealand yarn and you're like, you know what, I'm going to fish this nymph 18 inches deep. I'm going to fish the whole pool into the whole run, the whole spot at 18 inches deep and I'm going to get every fish that's willing to come up because of a fish floats up and eat and then go straight down. You're way more likely to hook it. The shorter distance between an indicator or suspension device in your fly, the more likely we're to hook it, you get way more instantaneous feedback. Well, one of our guides, Steve Burns, man, he's always fished in shorter than everybody else and he does very, very well right now and a lot of it's like you're talking. I mean, he's two foot under his, his arm, you know, and he'll pluck fish out of a lot of the stuff that, you know, other people are not fishing or they're not doing well and because of stagging and he, he crushes like that. He'll fly a lot of times under a yarny shallow, he's just fishing the little ripples in the rocks and there's a lot of fish in that water until it gets cold, you know. Yeah, they're pretty spread out right now. I mean, we got warm days and the earth, you know, itself, the riverbed itself holds temperature pretty well, you know, this time of year. So even when you get nights that are in the 50s or 40s, a lot of those fish are still, you know, up in that skinny water and it really isolated little spots. Yeah, I've just really grown to like enjoy, like, I know there's trout right here. There's 1,500 per mile on this river. There's probably 20 fish within casting distance of me right now. If I could just figure out how to get four five of them, that would be like a hell of an accomplishment and then I'm become a better trout fisherman because now I figured out how to catch the fish that are within casting distance and I can take whatever I'm learning there and then I can extrapolate that to the next spot, the next spot, the next spot. Up there, he was in the parking lot the other day and he's such a nice dude and he was just going out with his own boat. He's like, man, give me some advice and bubble on so I'm giving a little advice, you know, what I thought was good advice. And he's like, man, how do I become like a, it was a profound question actually. He's like, how do I become a better trout fisherman? And then I was like, my first thought was like, you need to ditch your boat, like, you need to figure out how to go to a spot and I told him, I said, I said, this is my honest opinion. You're going to become a really good trout fisherman, go to that seam line right over there where everybody knows there's fish right below reds across the way, heavily pressured spot, but lots of fish. Fish that for four hours and figure out how to catch as many fish in one spot as you possibly can. And that will make you a better trout fisherman because all of those little skills where you don't get mulligans, you don't get to spook them, you can't miss them. Like if you miss them, you might not get an opportunity at that fish again. So you're probably going to fish more tentatively, you're probably going to fish lighter wine, you're probably going to fish more delicately, you're going to think a lot more about your depth and weight, you're going to learn when to change flaws. And I was like, I actually thought it was like, once he's like, I want to become a better trout fisherman, I was like, man, like if you want the, you know, it would be probably a tough exercise to go through the first couple of times of going, no, I'm not moving. I'm not going to go just find a hungry trout, I'm going to try to fish for every trout. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's good advice for sure. I mean, that and just, you know, I mean, I think too, like if you fish a river, a certain river a lot, you know, I've always strived to learn the whole river, you know, and not just, it's super easy to do the same float every time and that stuff, but I like to mix it up, you know. Well, and when you, when you, when you go through that exercise of going, okay, I'm only going to fish three spots, four spots, whatever it is, like, whatever your number is, you begin to find like, okay, well now I know there are more fish holding in this speed of water than that speed of water. Like there are all these little data points that you get to collect when you're very slow meticulous about it versus just bondsign along, you know, fishing large flies and things like that. And other than against like fishing streamers or big stoneflies and getting aggressive, I do a fair amount of that just depends on what I want to accomplish that day, but I think I like, I define a good trout anglers like somebody who can go into a pretty, a very small or a limited number of pieces of water and still have a very productive day because they're not scaring fish and they're making the most of every opportunity they got and they, they learned all those skills of changing flies or changing depths and rigs and weights. And then they get to employ like a multiple rod strategy like, you know, like if I had three rods and it was just. You know, my picture of myself, like just going, hey, Joe, how many fish can you catch in the next three hours? Like competition style. I'd probably drive fly it with a little parachute and a long leader just check everything real quick Just knock knock anybody home, and then I probably run a little suspension rating Could be hopper dropper, you know could be a little New Zealand rig fish at 18 inches deep fish at two and a half feet deep Fish at four feet deep and just work my way down change flies a couple times and then I'll just get out the nuclear bomb and get my Tightline rod, you know clean up everything at the ends, you know, but yeah, I think that just I say this again Again, but man like I'd like to see people just figure out how to go to a little piece of water and figure out because a lot of the weight Fish from in the Ackermost tough man, so no doubt this is a tougher over the way if you're listening to this and you haven't had much success You are not alone, just keep at it. Don't fish don't fish this river just enough to hate it Oh, absolutely and and this is a good time of year because You know, we catch a lot of smaller fish this time of year, but the in general this is one of the times where You know people do have more success because gosh something about the fall those little guys are hungry, you know And and it's a good time to you know You're gonna learn where the fish hold because of that. That's a really yeah because the average size fish right now is much smaller than it is in the spring And I don't necessarily know why that is but yeah in the spring, you know Maybe those little guys are holding you know in such deep water. They don't need to eat as much They're not up and kind of the feed me troughs in the spring like all the pre spawn mature pre spawn fish are Yeah, good time of year to fish on all all reverse cold nights and warm days fish feeding activity is generally gonna peak It's gonna be an afternoon fishery not a morning fishery typically So was that your findings today? Yeah, the first hour was not as good, but that after that it was about the same And I mean if you can if you got it you're flexible if you can go in its cloudy rainy day That's gonna be the best. Oh, that's a really good point. Yeah, we talked about the sun a little bit earlier But you know for all you retired guys or people to complete hooky like if you see rain and moisture in the forecast in September, you know Really up through mid-October by the time we get to late October the sun angle so low You're gonna have lots of shade and low light but the sun like mid-morning in mid-day is still a fairly direct sun angle right now Yes, and the blue is just like that. You're gonna have a better blowing out and those are the days we look forward to is when we can You know see the pods up and get them what size we're the blue-winged olive Mayflies today tiny, I mean 18s 20s. They're not the true betas I didn't see any true betas that are you know dark all of her almost black and the true betas are more like 16s Yeah, yeah, and they're they're just fatter You know, I mean then you can't see through them but these little ones you can almost see through them in the sun Yeah, those two terms. I know like Technically, all blue-winged olives are some form of betas. Is that right? I think yeah I think there's just a bunch of like subspecies and those little wispy ones You know, so they call them pseudos and so yeah, but I don't I don't really know the difference the best dry-fly fishing I think I've ever seen on the server for like years, you know dry-fly fishing comes in all forms You know like there's hopper fishing where we beat the bank and we blind cast and and there's stone fly fishing You know in low light during the summer which can be incredibly productive from a boat because we can cover so much water Yeah, but on foot like You know angler should favor much smaller dry flies on foot like you you might have to cast a number 18 Overfish numerous times in order to get it set up just right You know to be in that fish's feeding rhythm to get it to drift just right the fish may be distracted with other things You know, so you definitely have to fish it a little bit more, but the best like what I call spot and stock Dry-fly fishing I've ever seen was like a late October last year like 24 25 26 like way late in the year and My goodness there was a period like a week there It was just like clockwork every day. I mean finding 16 to 20 inch fish in the skinny edges Just like sharks so sneaky you could barely see him, but it was all in that super low flat sun angle and those fish We're happy to just belly crawl right up into the shallows during that blooming hatch So we're still like a month out in my opinion from like What can be some of the best dry fly fishing in the year? Yeah, yeah And some of it's a weather dependent if we if we get this dark rainy cloudy weather They're calling for it'll it'll be good if it's if it you know gets really nice well It won't be as good, but yeah Well Yeah, this is kind of like Tuesday's tippets. Oh, I've been fluent around with that that real ESP tippet I've shown you that right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even know it existed for for a little bit That one slipped under my radar. You know why they call it ESP tippet No, it's not extra special. Tell you that ESP is like you know like you you can read minds like you have ESP like you know So it's it has no stretch So like you can feel what the fly is doing, but you know like that would be one case But like it's more about like bite sensitivity So for people fishing with tight lines like especially like lake fishing with like small bugs in a lake and You're like you're stripper treaving you can feel the smallest bite. There's no stretch So if you're gonna strip set your hook set you should get good hook penetration Really quickly because there's less stretch in the tippet So like even the 5x man I can take the 5x I can barely like I can maybe get like in a regular like two foot section of 5x Just like pulling moderate tension. Maybe I can get half inch of stretch out of it Whereas other tippet is like a bungee cord Yeah, and so I've been using that on my my trout spa and I've been using that on my I actually been using it almost exclusively I gave you a bunch of tippet the other day because I was like I got a quick cold turkey So I could actually test this test this stuff. Well, what does it stand for? Is the I don't know what ESP stands for but ESP is like I don't know man. We should Google it Yeah, yeah, Google that thing get from ESP ESP is like being able to read minds like you know So you kind of know what it's happening before it happens, you know like you can predict the future Extra psychic power. Does it not pretty good? You know that actually does most of my brain is a good really good question. It's funny It's been breaking in the leader most of the time But then once in a while I'll tie like a splice knot and it'll is bust Yeah, I would think I mean I would think like sometimes if it doesn't stretch if you've used to line up stretches You could you know have break off on your hook sets like it just maybe you don't need hooks at it's hard, but ESP stand for extra sensory Perception extra sensory perception. I'm gonna actually say the whole thing out when I talk about that tippet I'm using the new Rio extra sensory perception tippet and I'm not totally sold on it yet. It's been a long time since I've used much that wasn't floor carbon But I can't see a whole like I don't know I might test it tomorrow I'm guiding tomorrow, so I'm part of the reason I drug into the podcast take so I want to get some intel on the bite Oh, yeah, I'm guiding with Shan you guys will get them. I mean so the last week I was up in the farmlands and we did good on frames. Oh really? Yeah, we might fish up there tomorrow Yeah, I don't know it depends on what does head up the cost of bloggo I got to go home and tie flies now. Jeez just a couple just a couple you guys get one each actually you know What I used to guiding you know like the flies have gotten So much better over the years like I'll take 25 year old the robs and reels and even boats and everything in the lines With today's flies like if I could choose one or the other like yesterday's rods and today's flies versus today's rods with yesterday's flies The flies you can buy now are so damn good. Well, and I mean I have not been flying I mean I'm flying fish in a while, but nothing might do but it is funny like when you know You know, we have a lot of a lot of the younger guys that work at the shop You know they've been fly fishing, you know four or five years maybe or whatever you're like Kind of you sometimes you're like, hey, you like just so you know like we didn't there didn't used to be tungsten flies Yeah, you didn't have tungsten It's cheating yeah, I think yeah I don't know, but we used to throw a hopper dropper with like that hairs your mimfe under there and you were like You caught some fish doing it, but it wasn't like a real technique. You know, I mean You you could fish hopper droppers from February through November here You could probably just fish a year around that shw x a hell of a bobberman But what I used to do is when I we couldn't buy a lot of these flies I had to tie a lot of my dry flies and I would throw in materials to tie a summer stones and cranes Just leave it under the seat of my boat And then we'd lose a fly or two in the morning You know, you sometimes would be nymphing in the morning this time of year But it was always this time of year because I'd be at the end of the guide season And I did not want to tie flies in the morning or evening So then I would sit up my little lunch table and then I would tie like four flies at lunch And then I got to it's a really cool thing. I don't know if I'll do it tomorrow He shans not fly tired. I'm guiding with him So it's probably not like appropriate like oh, yeah, man We got all these sick flies because I would end up having the time for all the guests I can't tie that many in a lunch, but oh, yeah I would tie like four flies at lunch And then they would know that they each get two of these really special hand tight for and it was amazing how few of flies we would lose after they saw the act of actually creating the pattern and the vice right there. But that was always a pretty cool way to kind of break up the day and a very interesting way to do it. - Well, if you guys go up there, I got some crane fly for you. - Yeah, I'm gonna need a couple. Shannel probably need a couple as well. - Oh yeah. - All right, so I think I'm well prepared for tomorrow. I don't know what the guests, what their goals are, but every day we should, we should be throwing the catch fish. That's what they always say, man. I got a list of things that we need to talk about on the podcast today. And okay, let's talk at first. We maybe mentioned some of this on the other podcasts. - Well, we dropped the Baja video, like the Baja Masterclass video. So I think if anybody's interested to learn more about rooster fish fishing, fishing Dorado and stuff, go watch that video on the YouTube channel 'cause it's like, it's a really long talk through of what the fishing's actually like. And the thumbnail says Baja Masterclass, AI-generated promotional graphic. It looks sweet, dude. Yeah, I would take me four hours to like make like a little promotional graphic like that. - Yeah, I mean, I've been using it since you showed me. I tone mine down a little more than you. I basically use it to put writing over a picture. It's great for that. It chooses the fonts and it makes it like shadow. But yeah, so that AI thumbnail looked pretty cool, but it called it Baja Masterclass 'cause I described like, hey, I need this graphics for this YouTube video. 'Cause when you use the standard YouTube thumbnails, it always like has a stupid part of the video where my mouse opened or I'm doing something stupid, you know, just awkward or, and just a random moment in the video. And so I'm like, I need a thumbnail for this thing. And this one was like, oh, Baja Masterclass. And I was like, I didn't choose the name, but that AI image stuck. But then I was using like AI. I was like, I kind of hooked on it. I'm like, dude, what can AI do for this video thumbnail? And it would like, I used a couple of them and then I got called out. And this guy, Hoppy Guy 52 on YouTube, we're gonna delve into some of the YouTube comments here. Great content, looking forward to more "Trout Space" fishing this fall. Frustrating to see a reputable and popular shop use AI for a thumbnail. But he also said, tug is the job. It was a nice comment. But I was like, yeah, I've always been like, pretty authentic, you know? It's just here's what it is, man. It's not perfect, but it's real. So if it makes you feel better, I mean, the YouTube stuff that I watch, they're all using it now, everybody's doing it. - Yeah, I think we're gonna go back to the squeaking. I went and took all the AI thumbnails off, except for the Baja Masterclass because that one looks rad. That one looks, they used yellow text. It like matched my shirt. And they're like, oh man, it looks like a professional made this. So thank you, Hoppy Guy. I appreciate the props as far as the content goes. But yeah, we're not doing AI thumbnails anymore. And on my notes here, it says F'd up AI images. Did you see the thumbnail that AI made for the Water Master YouTube video? - I did, yeah. We're kind of turned it into a drip bow to the way the ore blade changed you. You weren't even, you were in the picture, but it wasn't your face. - It was, it was, it was. - Jack, it's so weird. But so for folks that don't know what the Water Master boat is, it's not a float to them, but it's a bottomless boat. So you can kick your feet up on the footrest, but then you can stop and wait and the boat just kind of floats around you. And it's a good waiting device. You can put your hands down on it. And the AI made it a little tiny, like a little tiny drift boat with no floor in it. And then I was just standing there, you know, like a hard, the boat wouldn't even float. Like a hard boat wouldn't float, like when they'll floor in it. So it was, and like I said, it was funny too, 'cause sometimes you do that stuff and it decides it's gonna make you a new person. - Yeah, it's, it's crazy. It made me really buff and one of them, I might have left that one somewhere on the website. That was the one where they took my hat and they changed the hat. No, I did take that one down 'cause the hat looks so stupid. It gave me a giant hat and it said reds in giant letters. Like we don't even have a hat that looks like that. - Nice. - So I thought that was pretty funny. Thanks for the comment. No more AI thumbnails there. Now I didn't get this user name on here, but it said kneeling in the water vaster, question mark, because I was fishing, you know, fishing the boat. Your knees must be tired. I understand. I totally understand what he thought was going on. Oh, there was more to it. There was more to it. I, the copy and paste didn't work here to get it into this little thing. He was asking about anchoring it. He thought I was anchored up and kneeling in the boat. Where's I'm just standing there? Like my feet are on solid ground. - I think those were terrible for those. - Yeah, I thought that was kind of a funny comment. Oh, the new, our new load of reds, exclusive gray water master cody ax are going to be ready. They'll probably be ready to ship that October 10th and we'll have them ready 'cause they'll be at in Montana where they're being built right now. And I'll probably leave some that can just ship from Montana and then the rest of them will be here by late October. - Oh, good. Yeah, we've been getting some questions about them. I mean, they're sweet, sweet boat. - Yeah, it's a nice, nice color scheme. You know, that we sold all of it last year's batch even sooner than we anticipated. Why we're just chatting about new boats. We will have soon a great, really cool or system from Sawyer where it's abandoned or with no rope drop and it uses like a pro lock or lock on it. So we're gonna have to carry that in the shop now too. That's gonna be sweet. You're gonna have to get it there. - Oh, okay, so the ore slide in and out frictionless of the locks and got it 'cause we've only been carrying the rope wrap bandits. - Yes. So I believe we'll be the only shop that has them. I mean, Adapose, you know, has them at their shop but other than that, I don't think anyone carries 'em. So it's a pretty sweet bowl system. If you're, you know, drift boat wrapped, anybody, yeah, trying to get a nice tar wars. - I think I'm gonna get on that, you know, I've always liked just standard rope wrapped oars. You know, for those that don't have really nice oars, like you don't know what you're missing. Like I want to take, no matter what boat I row, I want to take my oars, my Sawyer bandits. I mean, they're like 500 bucks a stick, right? It's a thousand bucks a set which seems ludicrous but I want to take those oars to every boat that I row. So if I go grab a raft, I want my oars. Like I just, I'm picky about that but I'm not rowing rafts that much anymore and I rode somebody's boat that had that contained lock, that contained lock system the other day and I was like, oh, this is buttery. There's like, you get way more power. - It's pretty nice, yeah. - More power less effort. Yeah, I thought that was, was pretty cool. For those that don't know, if you live in the Pacific Northwest and you want to learn how to fish out of water masterboats, did you do a personal watercraft fish along the other day or were you just overseeing that rental for the guy who was with his buddies? - No, I didn't do the fish long ago. I think Jason did that fish long. - Yeah, or Jeremy, Jeremy did one as well but we do these things called personal watercraft fish longs and you can rent a single person watercraft from us. They could be an NRS boundary or it could be water master, just a single person watercraft and you can rent it or you can bring your own and then you go out on a river with a guide and we kind of teach you like, okay, here's how we're gonna navigate and we're gonna fish a river from a personal watercraft. Here's kind of water we're gonna focus on. Here's how we're gonna approach it. Rowing lessons at the beginning of the day make sure we're safe, we're well prepared, set up our float timing correctly. So if you have a single person watercraft whether it's pontoon boat, water master, whatever, and you've been frustrated like with float timing and fishing productivity, good or website, click classes and then look for personal watercraft fish along but like from now through Thanksgiving is like the time to do that. I think that's a really good thing to do. Even if you live outside the area, I think it's a great product. Okay, this was on my list too 'cause we missed this in the last podcast. That the crispy boot customer telling our staff to f off in the store. - We didn't cover that? - No, we never covered that. - Oh yeah, that was an interesting one. So yeah, so I'm working the floor. The only one there that this guy comes in. He's looking at boots. I love crispy boots. He's kind of excited to talk to the guy and like, hey, you know, like, how can we help you? You know, you're looking at some boots and he's like, yeah, I want these boots in this size. I'm like, okay, well, let's see if we have them in stock. Look at the inventory. Like, oh, man, I don't have that one, you know, in your size, but I've got this other one. You know, it's actually a boot I wear. I'm like, it's a great boot or whatever. - It's essentially the same model. It's very similar, just a different up, you know? - It's the exact same fit. And we're like, this is late August, you know? Like, it's time, you know, it'd be like a skier buying their skis, you know, early January. Yeah, like, it's, you know, you should have had them months together, if you're serious, you know what I mean? And the words are leaving my mouth and the guys like, just walk into the door. I'm like, oh, okay, like, you know, sorry. Sorry, we don't have those, you know? Like, it was kind of weird, you know? He's like, walking away. He gets to the door or no, as he's walking away, he's like, well, I can't, the only reason I came down here was because your guys, you guys told me you had those in stock, you know? And I'm like, oh my god. And like I said, he's walking away. It's not like you can really talk, right? And as he's getting to the door, he's like, "Tell your staff to app loud." And I was just like, "Oh, okay." Yeah, let me put that into a team's chat that you told the entire staff to app loud. The lesson here, folks, is the boot sold before the guy got there. Yeah, it was like a conversation from like 10 days prior, yeah, he's like, "Oh, they got up in stock." And well, the boot sold, man, they're like coveted inventory. So if you call it shop, reds, or whoever, and you want something, don't ask 'em to just set it aside, don't ask 'em to hold it, just buy it over the phone, and just confirm with 'em, say, "Hey, 90, whatever, percent, I'm 80%, but I really want these. If they don't fit, or whatever, can I just return 'em when I come to pick 'em off?" They'll say, "Absolutely, no problem." And that way, you know, the inventory's there, you can go in, you can check it out, and you don't have to tell our staff to f off because a boot you checked on inventory 10 days prior sold out in the process. Well, the funny thing to your point about how to approach that situation, we actually had a guy drive all the way to our shop from like Bad Coover, Canada, because we had the boots he wanted in multiple sizes to try on. And he called a talk to the guy, and we actually have a way to earmark 'em, you know, remove them from the inventory, and hold them for somebody for, you know, I can set the time, you know, so he was coming the next day. Earmarked 'em for him in our inventory, you know, so it's saved under his name for that day, you know, and he came all the way to Canada, trying on a couple of boots bottom, that was great. - Yeah, he drove least five or six hours. - Yeah, I mean, it's so great. I love selling the crisps. It's the people that, you know, that customer is such a loyal customer to that brand, you know? So it's nice, I just like selling them, you know. - Dude, so, you know, I've been testing, I gave my crispy Colorado's to Jensen. - Yeah. - I stayed in Jiveman, my Brooks Dally FX are so much better for my foot, but I were like the custom-molded insoles. - Yeah. - Like 80 bucks. I went up to the mountaineering store in town, and they made the insoles for me, and it's been amazing. Jensen literally, he almost walked the soul's office feet out kind of in the last four days. He wore that shitty, crispy insoles that the boots come with, that are like literally intended to be thrown away, because people are gonna throw like, if you're spending $400 on a boot, spend $40 on a proper insol that fits your arch, your foot. We sell super feet, super feet are the budget version, but they're the minimum in my opinion. - Yeah. - And that insol, his foot was just sliding back and forth across that insol making a bunch of heat, you know, a bunch of friction, 'cause there's no arch support in that insol or anything, and that poor kid, man. I mean, his feet were like, he had to elevate his feet. And yeah, it's like, you can be in the best shape of your life, and if your feet hurt, you're disabled. It's like having a race car with flat tire, man. - Yeah, I mean, I got a fresh set this year. I wore the mountain, I liked that mountain SF, and yeah, my mind had this year, I was, it's so nice having those new boots. Like, you're saying for tires, it's like you have a new set of tires, you don't realize how much better they just grip when they're newer. - Soft, fresh, yeah. - Yeah, and the other thing about, you know, fresh boots, and why they need to be broken in obviously, but fresh boots in general is a lot of those boots with like that EVA midsole, like, you know, the laponias and some of the others. We'll get back to fishing here in a second, I promise, but that EVA midsole wears out fast. I mean, it loses its spring, my opinion, so. - Totally, yeah. - Well, and even if you just like to hike, I mean, these are a great product. They're not, they're marketed towards hunters, but they're, they're a great food for anybody, dockfacking, hiking, whatever. - The Italians, the Italians know their boots. Dude, did you read the article about the gal that died through hiking the enchantments last week? Well, there was actually, there was some other people that died too. I didn't read the article, my brother came up when I was hunting and met me and he had heard about it. So I guess there were some people, I don't know the details on the folks that died through hiking, but there was a couple from Oklahoma here, same, that same. - Oh, okay, they were, yeah, they're here from Oklahoma and we had some just horrible weather, not last weekend, but the weekend prior. And sounded like they were on vacation and they were gonna do this hike and, you know, they probably wanted to do it 'cause it was their time. - It's a world famous. I mean, hiking contingency of the world, the enchantments through hike is one, you don't have to have a permit to do the day hike and it's a massive endeavor. - Oh, yeah, it's gnarly up there. And yeah, we just had that terrible weather and they weren't prepared for it and, yeah, they died. - Yeah, I just read the, I read at least one whole article, I'm sure there's been, yeah, they just, they weren't prepared, man, that weather blew into the cascades and buried them in a couple feet of snow on a day hike. And yeah, she tragically died a hypothermia and then he was, they couldn't get, they couldn't get helicopters in there to, he hit an SOS button, which I think, you know, is wise to have, but you can get through ONX now. You can get emergency ONX maps, which is, owns trout routes that we talk about quite a bit here. I don't know if trout routes offers the medically evac, but they hit the SOS button and they tried to get helicopters and rescue teams in there, but the weather was so bad, they couldn't, but, you know, even a rain jacket, a puffy jacket, probably would have saved her. You know, just, I mean, just being, you know, prepared, or some crispy boots, she'd have been faster and they'd been on her way down the mountain. - Yeah, terrible, man. That's kind of all over the news here in the Northwest, right now, but don't got to worry about that fish in the Yakima out here. If the weather comes up, just come back to Canyon River Grill and get a hot toddy in a burger. That's all you got to worry about. - Okay, so I sold a guy three five piece Winston rods today. - No kidding, three of them. And he said he does a lot of backcountry stuff, a lot of floats like backcountry. He's, it's Tom Randagard. He's always doing some wild, wild stuff. And he can use, he kayaks, he rafts, he hikes, he does all this different stuff and he said the difference between a four piece and a five piece and that just being a little bit shorter on his backpacks makes it so much more convenient going through brush and just everything he does like adventure travel wise, like just put him on a plane, float plane, whatever. I was really surprised. He's like, yeah, he's like I've been waiting for like a cool, you know. - Well, you need to say kudos to Winston 'cause I don't know of anyone else doing it. - Well, he has 25 year old sage SLTs, which that's a rod I love. You know, I love that rod, but they used to make the SLT in a five piece, sage did. And nobody's been really making five piece rods, but I thought that was, you know, I was like, I mean, he was like, he said I literally have been looking and waiting for somebody to come out with that because it's just that much more compact for the statlet fishing that he does. - That's pretty cool. Well, I wish I would have been around today. I hadn't met Tom before, but. - Yeah, I was just don't for the phone. - Oh, I gotcha. - Yeah, he bought a lot of other things too. Dude, that guy never sleeps, man, I swear. He's always fishing somewhere, but, okay. So, flyless, destination, flyless. So somebody's going to a wild place, man. Well, it could be wild or not wild, but you've been working super hard on these destination, flyless, procurated flyless. Give us the rundown on where you're at on that project and how do people who are going somewhere look at Eric's flyless. - Yeah, so we've had some flyless before and we were super proud of the flies and our selection but maybe less than satisfied with how they shocked. - Like the mechanism. - Yeah, you know, if one fly was out of stock, it was clunky to get the rest of them and maybe you had a bunch of flies and you only need one or two. - Let me stop you. - Okay. - Let me give you a scenario. - Okay, yeah, yeah. - Somebody's going, let's just, somebody's going to the Bahamas, Crooked Island. - Oh yeah. - In the Bahamas, they're like, "Hey, man, what do I need?" I've been bonefish, but I've been bonefish fishing before I've got some bonefish flies, but like I really want to be well prepared for this big trip I got coming up. And that could be Baja, could be wherever. - Sure, yeah, we've got a bunch of them. I mean, basically everywhere we go to, we have a flyless for it. So you go flies on our website and then you're going to see a drop down and you go to destination lists. In this case, you click on Crooked Island and then it's going to have a drop down of all the flies that we recommend and then you could click on, let's say you need some E.P. spawning shrimps, click on that guy and add a tear cart and maybe you don't need the gotchas. You've already got the gotchas. You can look at the list with your box there and you can go down and get those, I've got those, but I need that danger buff and crab and add that to your cart. So it shops really well. It's going to show you what we take and then you can, you can peace in what you need or maybe you need them all and you just want to add them all and you can do that too. - Yeah, it's not like a, a pretty built, like for a long time, people had to add all of them to their damn card. Yeah. And they're like, well, maybe I already got some. Well, I'm also, it's my wife and I going, so we don't need double, but maybe we need 1.5, you know, like, and there's some guidance on there. Like, it's not just like a built product. There's, there's a, a lot of information in the product description too on, you know, why this fly, these different flies. If, if, if it's a multi-species destination, right, it's going to kind of recommend the amount of bone fish flies you should have, the amount of permanent flies you should have, the flies we recommend for some of the ancillary species, right? And maybe you don't care at all about catching bear cuda. So you can leave those flies, for example, right? I think you're example of somebody who's been, they've done some saltwater fishing, but they're going to do a new destination, can look at that list right there with their mocks and go, yeah, give me two of those, two of those, two of those. And it's not just a list, but it's actually shoppable. You could click that product, learn more about that product, is it heavy, is it light? You know, what sizes do I recommend? Well, we can only, I can only go so far, right? I mean, I don't want to recommend someone buy a thousand dollars with flies for a destination, right? But like, you take a fly like that EP shrimp, right? That's, you know, comes in so many variants, right? Well, like you said, you can click on that fly, right? Maybe that fly just speaks to you, and you can get, you can see all the variants now, right? You can, you can get, all the colors are different, the different sizes, the different weights, all that good stuff. Well, I guess so tired of these shitty old lists that are in some PDF document from a lodge that have these, like bring a woolly bugger black, or just the type of fly, you know, I hate the fly, the solar fly list, where they're like, yeah, you're going to need shrimp flies. And you're like, it reads alone, we sell probably 85 different shrimp flies from a redfish, which would be completely irrelevant to, you know, go into the Bahamas when you need a little, you know, stealth shrimp or something like that. But yeah, completely redid them for everything. I think, I think they're dang good. And I'm very happy with how this new, like said, out of the new one shops, it's gonna be better for anyone buying flies, and it's gonna be a lot better for me 'cause I'm not gonna get the phone call when the one flies off stuff. - Well, they don't have to buy it all. - Oh no. - It's a better system. They can just cherry pick, you know, what they need. And then I was just gonna say, I'd recommend anybody going anywhere, like even if you've already bought flies, or you got a list from the lodge, or, you know, whatever, you know, booking agent you used if it wasn't reds, just go look at our list 'cause we work really hard on these. We have an advantage. We've got a bigger inventory on flies than anybody on the planet. So we can be super picky and very specific about how we line flies up for specific trips. And then it'll constantly change. We'll go to some of these destinations again this year, and we'll probably make a small tweak. - Oh, we will, yep. - And we buy, last year we bought quite a few, we brought in a whole nother brand midway through this season because we needed some flies, you know, we needed four flies from that vendor. And we bring them in so that we have the right flies for that spot. - We will stop at nothing to make sure we have the right flies. - I just have a conversation with Bogeys putting in the, he's our shipping manager, he's putting in our fly pre-season, you know? And we were talking today about, hey, we need to make sure we have this fly in the early winter 'cause I want that fly to go to a Christmas Island with, you know? - Which is-- - The shallow howl for real, that's a killer. - Okay, well, I need that. - Hey, your Christmas Island trip is getting a little tighter. If anybody wants to go to Christmas Island with Eric in January, you better get on it because I think that one's gonna fill up here pretty darn quick, so I'll better get on it. Okay, let's do some YouTube comments here and dissect these. Okay, so this was in a response to, have you cast a new sage signal salt water rod? - Oh yeah, I like it. - Very smooth, just very easy, fun to cast, very smooth, it doesn't feel like a chore. And so that rod is like $7.95, you know? Which you want something nice? That's gonna cost you, but it's not $1,200, right? - That is the best rod at the, yeah, I mean like, if you want a premium stick, but you know, you also care about saving money, that is hands and feet above anything else, right? - I spend 400 more bucks on my reel. I get a keyboard. - That's a sweet rod, yeah. - Yeah, I'd get a better reel. I'd just say same budget, but you know, or get one of those able reels that's with the sweet art work on the side. But so I had said like, you know, this rod, math, maybe as good as the $1,700 ask with two, I don't know, I don't have an opinion on the matter. - Sure. - And you mentioned the ask with in the review? - Yes, I mentioned the ask with like this, like this is $800, which may seem like a lot. There are rods for 1,700. And this guy just said $1,700 question mark, fly fishermen are suckers. And I was like, well, maybe, maybe you know, it's all about, that's one of the nice things about any sport, but you can choose to participate in the sport at whatever level you want, right? Like just because there is crazy expensive rods, does not mean our sport is all that way, you know? Like there is, it's going to hit, it's going to hit our door here soon. There is a $100 echo rod coming out that we were casting out here with the rep and we were casting it, now it was an A way version of it. We were casting the entire fly line with it. - 100 bucks, 100 bucks. Like, and I am as excited about that rod coming out. Is it any rod that we carry in the store? I look at rods like this. Like if I liked playing, okay, so let's take chef. Chef loves playing guitars, right? Here I'm jamming sometimes, it's just like, you're not in a band, you know? He's not going to an Asheville or, you know, anywhere like that, but he loves playing guitars. Chef can tell me that, yeah, this guitar is five grand. And I'm like, awesome, dude. You obviously love playing guitars. You shouldn't buy a really, really nice guitar. I love fly casting. I want to have a really, really, really nice rods. It doesn't mean it's dubbed twice as good as the next thing. It doesn't mean it's going to do cast twice as far. I just really like casting rods that feel good and are smooth and give me good feedback. So, people like to, you know, people like to hate on, you know, high end rods, the people wouldn't do that for somebody playing music. You know, they might, I could be a shitty piano player, which I am, but I still like that, really, really nice piano. Like, it just feels good. You know, it's like I'm kind of a fan of that, right? But anyway, like, people will spend crazy amounts of money on musical instruments and nobody would ever fault them 'cause they just love playing music, but I don't know why people like to hate on fly fishermen, you know, for, you know, quote unquote, overspending, in air quotes, overspending on rods. I just thought that was kind of funny. Fly fishermen are suckers. I was like, yeah, maybe, you know, like, I don't know. It's fun to have nice stuff. Yeah. So, in a video, I jokingly named a trowel that was down here below the shop named Frank. I just, I don't know, I just, I start talking and stuff comes out. And Tom T said, in quotes, naming a fish is, okay, the part that's in quotes, naming fish is, in quotes, too huge for me, Joe. And I thought it was kind of funny. And I don't know if it's a reference to huge fly fishermen. I don't know. Well, that's a great comment. Yeah. That's a good comment. Yeah. But you're talking about Frank is just, he just lives out there. It's on the actual fifths, I think, he lives out there. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, Frank, you know, like too huge for me. That is funny. That's a good YouTube comment. Whoever made that, you were funny. Tom T. Thank you. I, cause I, I'll talk like that sometimes. I'll throw that out there. That's funny. Yeah. I was just saying that, you know, it's kind of funny banter. That's what I say when I see a rig that has more than one rod vault on it. Oh, he's huge. Huge fly fishermen. So, I like that too huge for me, Joe. Okay. I don't know. This isn't an exact quote, but I'm going to paraphrase it here. Jeff Goosey. This was in response to a steelhead breakdown I'd done on like fishing really light motifs, like having some different heads and motifs, like the water got dirty. And so I went to a floating head instead of an immediate head. And then I went to a real light mo tip. And so I could control it and fish shallower, you know, like finish my swing. And I caught a big, giant, beautiful steelhead and I appreciate a lot of these comments. Like, I don't say I'm like, there's no disparagement here. And it was some effect that, hell, I just want to get out there and fish and not have so many options. Why? There was more to this. But why not just one setup that worked without having to spend 10K on a variety of lines? And I'm like, yeah, that's a good point, man. Like when it comes to spay, like there's a lot of line confusion, tips and different heads and just all the different running lines and, you know, spade junkies are just nerds for this stuff, aren't they? Yes. Now I do think some of it, I think some of this, it's kind of like the rod out of two. I think some of it comes from just not going like some of it's just ises to batch different rods, you know, like there wouldn't need to be forwarding motifs if there wasn't different size rods. Yeah, from a two weight spade to a 10 weight spade. Yeah. So there's two lines. So there's two sizes. Yeah, but I mean, I get it and it's, you know, like, it's a good point, like, you know, you don't, and you don't need that much stuff. Like, yeah, I guarantee you everything you've had your set for that day. - Well, it was all in a lane jacket. - Yeah, it was all in a little small sling pack. So it wasn't like I had a big big. - If you were setting somebody up for Nager was fish, right? So they're gonna be a little silver fishing. Maybe they're gonna sting some chums, steal that here and there. What are you setting them up with? - I don't care about brands, but I want rod weight and length, and I want style of shooting it, style of running line style of tip. - Yeah, I mean, in Washington, I'd probably go 12 foot, spare rod, scadget power, and then I'd have, you know, like I don't buy floating motifs, but if they're gonna fish for salmon, I guess I'd have a floating mo, a half and half mo, so half floating, half sinking, and a 10 foot mo, that'd be fine. - Okay, and then explain the scadget power. Like, the sling, like that's a very generic, like, real scadget back to power. - Yeah, but it's a very basic piece of equipment. - Yeah, you gotta have a head and the heads, these different heads and different lines. Again, primarily, one of the primary reasons there's all these lines is because of different rods. So 12 foot rod, you're gonna have the appropriate length head, which in this case would be a scadget max power, right? Short, heavy, powerful floating head. - Exactly, yep. And you can do everything with it. I mean, you know, the reason I picked that length is a lot of the stuff in Washington, you know, we're fishing, you know, there's a huge variety of rivers, but a lot of it's, you know, there's trees around, right? So I wanna have something that I can fish in tight spots, you know? It seems to be more beneficial than the little bit of this that you gain when you could a longer rod. - You can sidearm it, you can underhand cast it, these short heads and short rods, you can cast easily on either side of your body. - Yep. - Maybe you've got a log jam, a stump next to you or a rock, you know, that shorter rod, shorter head is a little bit more like guerrilla warfare in that tight stuff. - Yeah, and I mean, that's like, like I said, I mean, you could really go anywhere in any season and fish that and fish it successfully. - And then running line. - I like that Parflex Ultra line. I just sold that to a guy earlier today. - Yeah, absolutely. - Oh, he, oh, he had bought the rod in real yesterday, but then he wasn't, he just knew that he wanted to get that, kind of like we were talking about. That's a hard rod to find. In '81, 13 and a half foot, eight weight, R8 space, a lot of shops aren't gonna have that particular rod. - Oh yeah. - So he bought the rod in real yesterday, just said the earmark, but he wasn't sure on lines because he was still doing some research and then he called back the day and I set him up with that O4O Parflex Ultra. And then I set him with the SCAGET max launch, just a floating SCAGET, but then it was recommended that he have a game changer as well. And I was like, okay, like just, you know, like 80 to 90% of the space fishermen out there using floating SCAGET heads all the time. Like you don't have to get the game changer. Like, man, I just want to have it, you know, 65 bucks, you know, he's already that far into the rig. But those like the sinking SCAGET heads, you're not necessarily getting deeper, you're just getting slower. - Oh, digging it, no, yeah. - Yeah, the space stuff, you know, it's one of the spay or same assault water fishing, I mean these lines, you know, you can, there's a lot of them out there and they are, they're not free, but you know, they last a long time if you just take care of them. You know, it's not like your trowel wine where you use the same line every day and you wear them out, you know, like it's good to have a couple options, you know what I mean? - Yeah, and talking about spay too, this is applicable to trowel spay or, you know, what we call full spay. It's just full spay is like six weight on up. You know, we're talking about steelhead and steelhead and salmon species primarily. You could take a rod, say your 12 foot seven weight and you can make that rod do very, very different things by changing heads. And so instead of looking for a new rod, for instance, now for 65 bucks, we can change the head out, maybe get a different type of tip and now we can gain a ton of distance, you know, by having a longer head, for instance. Or you could swap the running line and you could go to a really skinny monoline and add 20 or 30 feet to your cast simply by changing lines because you wind up on the clear water in Idaho or the disputes or the granderollon where you want a long cast. And so instead of changing rods, the modular nature of space systems is that we can get the rod to do very different things for different applications without having to go by a new rod. - Yeah, I mean, I do all my steelhead fishing with either a 12 foot seven weight or a 13 and a half foot seven weight. Like I said, I just changed lines. And I could do everything that I want with that. - Dude, you didn't even have to spend $10,000 on lines. (laughing) - It's outlandish. - Hey, this was a nice comment. There's a lot of nice comments on YouTube are appreciated 'cause it's hard to get motivated to go do YouTube videos, especially like so filming. Like, God, it is so hard. I was out there in that water raster the other day with a frickin' camera on a tripod. By the way, I saw like five people I knew floated by me while I was self-filming and they're floating by yelling at me every day else. They got several cameos. Charlie Voss got in the cameo. Shane floated by, Burns floated by. David Conn over with space fishing right across for me and I caught a fish and he's yelling back and forth of me, Jameson floated by. Like, dude, that's not the hard part of self-filming, but just actually capturing, you know, going out and having some type of meaningful action in a short period of time is tough. But anyway, this was one that I self-filmed on the art. It was just a basically like a 45 minute instruction on like how I would teach somebody from the very, they're very first time holding a fly rod to becoming proficient enough to go fishing. And this guy said it was chance to Texas. Nine days ago, he says, "I have been flight casting "and fishing for 100 years," which I like. He must be, yeah, he must be taken peptides or something. For 100 years, and this is by far the best video I've seen, but it's not over the best video I've seen today. So I don't know if that was a props or a gouge, which I'm going to take it as props. Yeah, it was pretty funny. So, and at 38.23, this is the same video. At 38.23, it says WTF. If anybody doesn't know what that means, you just go ahead and Google that. WTF, when did you let go of the line with your right hand? God damn it, all I have is a glass rod. I hate fly fishing. This is a different comment. There's a different comment. Yeah, he's like at 38.23. I was teaching to shoot line, but not use your left hand. Learn to shoot line with your rod hand first because it's just easier to let go with your rod hand and shoot it out. And then we're going to involve the off hand and create a single hole. We're going to train ourselves in a progression, like very specific progression to casting. And then I love this. When did you let go of the line with your right hand? I hate fly fishing. I was like, and then I had a comment. I had more comments in the last 10 days in foreign languages than I've ever seen. And this is like, "Alas Gute, Beast Off, Doss, Abnik, and Des, Hand Gelnecks, blah, blah, blah." It's German, I can't read it. But I put it into Copilot. And essentially it was this German guy critiquing my wrist movement in my cast. The European, they sure think there's a right and a wrong way to do certain thing. I love that. I was like, yeah, he's critiqued by, he's like, I gotta, he's like, I'm going to tell this Yankee what's in my cast. Yeah, and this, that's pretty funny. There was a couple of French ones and stuff too. I didn't put them all in there, but I was like, I had to know what this one was. And now that I see that, I've never done the translator and had it been like real complimenter. Like generally it's like, we're gonna get it. Well, I just say that because when I've seen, 'cause there's some really good competition, European casters, very good. And when I've seen their instructional stuff, a lot of the stuff, a lot of the really good casters here, like they definitely acknowledge that there's like many different ways to be successful in fly casting. I mean, you see that, a lot of the really good casters, they all do it a little different, you know? But I've seen their instructional stuff. It is very much more like, this is the way to do it. Oh, yeah, go. I've seen, yeah. And I kind of wish competition casting was a little bit bigger in North America. And I think a lot of the, you know, I could be corrected here, but I think in Europe, they spend a lot of time preparing for really large, meaningful excursions. And less time fishing, they're backyard fisheries. And in North America, we're blessed to have tremendous amount of public space and public water. And so we probably spend more time fishing. So the things I teach are definitely catered towards taking people from farther, they're at today and making it better for tomorrow. But you have to use your wrist in proper way. or let's say now fly casting, but like fly fishing, you're going to use your wrist a lot. The flight doesn't care what your wrist does. It cares what the rod tip does. - Exactly. - And so for like very short abbreviated trout casting, you are like we're talking 15 to 35 feet, you know, we're most fish or caught, you're definitely gonna have wrist movement, you know, in the cast. But yeah, I thought that almost, I had to know what that one was. This was a really, this was a really, I'm gonna read it, I think this one's all verbatim and then the last statement, I'm gonna circle because this was in reference to a yarn indicator video. Another nice thing about using yarn strike indicator is that it floats on top of the water surface as opposed to down in the surface, like other indicators do. You know, when yarn is set up with the appropriate balance and light rigs, not much of the yarn is underwater. Like it should be, it should be like a feather. It is also more sensitive than others and because it has a flatter profile on top of the water, it's easier to see settled indications that you can't pick out with other types of indicators. Like yarn indicators will twist and they'll lean and they'll pitch. Maybe if you tap the top of a boulder, you'll see the yarn indicator lean and then you'll see the boulder release. You know, as a, for instance, the key point with this is the indicator doesn't have to go underwater to signal a strength. Which I thought was a really nice like reinforcement of what I, you know, couldn't find words to really describe in that particular instance. So yeah, I thought that was like a very productive comment. - Yeah, absolutely true. - Yep. - Okay, David Hamilton says great video. Thanks. I love the, quotes, "Buy your gear from Red's chat." Which I never do. And he said, "It's so easy to lose set of the fact that information costs time and plenty of money to produce." And so I always feel corny when I, you know, give people the pitch to buy at Red's. Oh, by the way, we need to take a break for our sponsors. - Yeah, buy from Red's. That's it, our sponsor is Joe. - Yeah, that's it, man. Just want to make everybody better fisherman and they'll find Red's eventually. Okay, last one. This was in reference to video that we kind of repromoted that I actually did last year. And it was a little day of fishing, comparing like when you would want to run, you know, yarn indicators or strike indicator. I don't. - Yeah. - I think people should try yarn enough to get good at it. And once you get good at fishing yarn and setting up yarn and understanding the advantages, then make a decision on what type of indicator or suspension rig you want. But like, if you haven't tried yarn, like most people tried just enough to hate it. And then they suck at it. They don't comb it out. They don't get the float and ride. They put too much weight on it. Or they put too light a weight on it in the whole system floats too fast. Like they don't get the balance right. So like learning anything, you're gonna have to suck for a little bit at first. But I would encourage everybody to try it, especially all the ground-to-pound crowd that's on foot. I think it's really critical. But I compared like the two, like hey, here's when I would tightline them for when this might be an advantage. Here's when a bigger, more open pool where the fish are gonna see the fly coming from a long ways away or the fish are sitting suspended. I would run, you know, yarn. Anyway, Andrew S says, I don't know why this video doesn't have $11 billion likes. Hands down the best nymphing masterclass and so simply presented. I learned a ton and I'm gonna put it to use thanks. I'm very nice comment. I kind of appreciate those 'cause I do consume a lot of YouTube and I need to go and I need to start encouraging and giving I jokingly call criticisms and encouragements that yeah, I need to provide some encouragements to YouTubers that I follow. - Oh, absolutely. I mean, I never, I don't think I've ever left a comment on a video ever positive or negative. And yeah, I mean, it feels good when people acknowledge or just let us know that they are liking something good. - Well, we get a lot. I will say, you know, a big thank you to the people when they call in and they make a, a lot of people do make a point to say, hey, you know, I love watching the YouTube or I really like when somebody mentions, hey, listen to the podcast, you know, it doesn't go unnoticed, you know. People mention that to us on the phone and all that. You know, it does mean a lot to us. - Oh, by the way, if people do want to comment on the podcast, like the app we hosted on is not great for like comments and feedback and things, but every one of these podcasts is also on the YouTube as audio. And you can comment right, even if you listen to this and Spotify or Apple or whatever. You can go comment on the YouTube version of it and we read every, I read every single comment. Like I do it about twice a week. I go through and try to reply to all of them. So, but yeah, mention that you like the podcast. - If you do. - If you do. - Yeah, if you do. I don't know. I'm mentioning that you like it anyways. That's what I say. Any other conclutors, any wrap-ups? - No, I'll just try to get out of this and I mean, and don't stop when it gets a little cold, that's the best fishing of the year. - Oh yeah, yeah, cold nights, warm days. I mean, that plays today. - Skip the football game, go fish on Saturday. - That's a good tip, bro tip right there. Cool, well thanks a ton for listening everybody. Like I said, you want to give us encouragement or critiques and in all seriousness, even the stuff that we joke about being negative. We appreciate all of it. And we like doing the funny YouTube comments section of the podcast. So, we're over now, shop at reds. Be sure to follow the podcast and we'll be back probably next week.