733 | 5 Rules for Streamer Fishing with Gunnar Brammer – Predator Flies, Musky Fishing, Minnesota

Dave (2s): When you think about streamer fishing or tying flies for predatory fish, what do you think is the most important factor in creating that fly? Is it the silhouette? Is it the size, the color, or is it something else? Today’s guest is going to show us how to tie and fish predator style flies. And after this episode, you are going to have some key rules to apply next time you’re tying or fishing streamers on the water this year. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I 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. Hey, how’s it going? I’m Dave host of the Wet Fly Swing podcast. I’ve been fly fishing since I was a little kid, Grew up around a little fly shop and have created one of the largest fly fishing podcasts in this country. Dave (47s): Gunner b Bramer is back on the show to walk us through how he fishes streamers. And he’s gonna be focusing a little bit on the Minnesota area. You’re gonna find out why he loves national materials and why synthetics are a distant. Number two, you’re gonna get some tips on casting a big fly, what flies you need and how to fish them effectively. You’re also gonna find out about his articulated 2.0 series and and methodology coming up. Stay tuned for that. Plus you’re gonna find out gutters five rules for streamers and how you can apply them today. If this episode is half as good as the first one, you’re in for a big treat. Here he is, gunner Bramer. How you doing Gunner? Gunnar (1m 26s): Doing pretty good. How are you? Dave (1m 28s): Great. Great. Yeah, it’s really exciting to get you back on here. You know, it’s been like five or six years since you, the first episode you were here, it seems like it was yesterday. We talked about, You know, how you got into it, the connections to Kelly Gallup and the streamers. So today we’re probably gonna jump right into streamers, You know, kind of go strong on this because I think that’s a topic that people love hearing about, but also it’s a big struggle for a lot of people. So it’s Gunnar (1m 51s): The only topic. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dave (1m 54s): That’s right, that’s right. And do you think streamers, do you teach streamers? I’m not even sure on that. Are you? I’m not even sure what you’re up to, more on that, that end, but is it, do you think it’s a big, the biggest challenge for people to learn streamer? Why do people feel it’s so challenging? Gunnar (2m 7s): Because they’re fly fishermen and not fishermen, right? Oh, was that a zinger? Did I start the show with a zinger? Nice. I’m sorry you guys don’t turn me off yet, right? I’ll reign it in a little bit. But no, I don’t think stream fishing’s hard at all for people who gear fish and for people who fish for predators and, and understand essentially reading still water or reading big rivers and and the right presentation. But when you come to it from the fly fishing perspective, I feel like people are so, I don’t know, told right and wrong, right? Like dry fish, dry fly fishing, nit fishing. There’s like right and wrong, right? Like dead drift. There’s right and wrong mending. Gunnar (2m 48s): There’s right and wrong. And so when they get to streamer fish and they’re kind of like, am I doing this right? And I’m like, dude, just smack it everywhere. There’s no wrong answer. Fish are everywhere. Smack the fly down really hard, hard fish it really fast and be mean, mean be mean about it, and they’ll be mean back. And then all of a sudden you start, You know, you’ll get reactions and see fish and yeah. People just don’t ask questions, right? Dave (3m 11s): And Gunnar (3m 12s): I don’t mean they don’t ask their guide or their buddy, that’s all they do. I mean, like when they’re on the water, they don’t ask the fish questions. Like they want you to tell them what’s right or wrong instead of just cast there. It, it only takes a cast to ask the question, just cast, Dave (3m 28s): Right? So you cast, so some of the questions you might ask yourself, okay, do I have the right fly on? Do I have the right size? Gunnar (3m 34s): Yeah. Or fast or slow color depth, right? You know, are, are they and the slack, are they in the current, are they on the ledge? Are they on the rocks? Are they in the grass? Are they in the eddy? It’s like just nonstop. Yep. And I think the best way to get over that is wade fishing, right? Because you have to work the water usually a lot slower. You have to be more methodical. And you have to realize that literally every nook and cranny is a potential opportunity. And if you’re gonna cover even like a mile of river on foot, it’s gonna take you a long time and you just have a lot of time to ask questions and you should, because you’ll learn your river really, really, really well. Yep, Dave (4m 11s): Yep. Exactly. Yeah, I was looking at one of your videos there. Yeah, I think it was, might’ve been the most recent one, but you came to this pool, it looked like it was a tail out of nice. And you said this is the spot you, you hiked in for a mile and it was just this nice slow section below it drops into a riffle. Is that, maybe describe that little spot there. Is that your secret route? Is that your home water? Is that your out there? Gunnar (4m 30s): Yeah, that’s right here in town. Yeah. Dave (4m 33s): And where are you? Just for those that don’t know, where are you at? Gunnar (4m 35s): I live in Duluth, Minnesota. I’m a transplant. We’ve been here about nine years now. And You know, when we moved here And we started having kids, well, I kind of drew like a 40 minute circle around my house and I’m like, okay, that’s, that’s where I go fishing, right? So if you ever see me fishing, it’s, I mean, it’s within 40 minutes of my house. Like I don’t, I’m not going anywhere special. And the crazy thing is, is we have wonderful warm water rivers. There’s only like two in town. I mean you have the Cloquet and the St. Louis. I don’t want to like name drop, but there’s two, like there’s two rivers in town that are within my area and there’s no pressure. I never see anybody there. Nobody’s fishing them. Nobody wade fishes them. Gunnar (5m 16s): You know, people use it like a, a canoe kayak tubing type river. And it’s just loaded with small mouth and pike and channel cats and walleye. Oh wow. Just loaded. Yeah. Nobody’s there. It’s the best. No Dave (5m 30s): Kidding. Nobody’s there. Nobody’s there. No fly anglers or just nobody fishing. Gunnar (5m 34s): Nobody. The people who do our own canoes. And so like I’ve made the point, You know, wade fishing, you, you have to be more methodical. The speed is not in your favor. And you’ll see you canoe guys and kayak guys will come fishing down the river and it’s like, I couldn’t care less. They get one cast at my hole and then they’re out. They’re gone. You know, it’s like a drift. Boat’s a little different ’cause you might anchor up or you might have somebody on the oars back rowing and slowing you down. So you get multiple looks. You might have two anglers, but like a doing a canoe, especially if there’s fast water up ahead, You know, they’re rods in the boat, paddles on, oh, pay attention. Oh yeah, there you go. It’s like they miss 99% of the fishable water because they have to canoe. It’s like, yep, if you just get out Dave (6m 16s): Right Gunnar (6m 17s): Dude, they touch nothing. They literally touched no part of that stream. I could just watch a hundred canoers come by and I’m not worried at all. I’m not the fish, don’t know the difference. I have a video, I don’t know, it’s gotta be like three years ago. And it’s the only time in any video I think I’ve made in five years where I actually capture a canoeist. Like there’s, it’s the first time there’s somebody else in my videos. That’s how un unpressured this kind of water is, right? And it’s right. I look up and I’m like, oh, look at that. Going right past the good part or something kind of sarcastic. Yeah. And I flip the fly down five feet in front of me and a bass comes up and eats it like on command. It was so funny. Oh, nice. Gunnar (6m 56s): And it’s like, You know, they’re 50 yards off of where I would wanna fish anyway. And they’re forced into that by necessity of having to navigate the river. It’s like they can’t even canoe in the fish water. Like it, yeah. It just works to your disadvantage. Dave (7m 12s): So that’s one tip right there is, is get out and get in your feet and start waiting to fish out there. Gunnar (7m 17s): So the best thing, I love this. I told you you’re gonna have a the impossible task of keeping me under Dave (7m 22s): An hour. Let’s hear it. Yeah, go for it. Gunnar (7m 24s): So I have had the pleasure to experience a drought condition. Now most that doesn’t sound wonderful, but even if it’s so low, you don’t get to fish, walk the riverbed, walk the trails, go out there and learn every single hole because like some are lowest, you’re talking like July and You know, August I will ruin my fishing spots intentionally and I’ll walk to places I normally wouldn’t walk. Or when the water’s high, I can’t get to it just to learn what’s on the other side because when it’s, You know, a medium flow and I can just kind of get over there, what was useless and low and clear has now turned into a nice little duck bunk that’s gonna have two or three bass in it. Gunnar (8m 5s): Yeah. And I know it is like I have the entire Riverbed channel left and right banks mapped for like, You know, two or three miles above and below every access that I can get into. Dave (8m 17s): Right. Gunnar (8m 17s): Because it’s like, as soon as it’s July and August you’re like, oh, I’m gonna fish two or three days a week, I’m gonna memorize this. Yeah. ’cause then when it’s high and it’s dirty, it’s like you are so much more restricted. But now You know, every little honey hole Dave (8m 33s): Got it dialed. Gunnar (8m 34s): Just makes a huge difference. Yeah. Dave (8m 36s): Are these streams that you’re fishing mostly? What’s the bottom? Is it gravel? Do they change a lot over the years? Are the bedrock slots, what’s that look like? Gunnar (8m 43s): It’s all gravel. Most of it. I mean, I keep telling everybody the wade fish, most of it’s not safely wadeable. I mean, it’s like ankle sprain territory up the wazoo. You better have felt or bars on your boots if you wear shoes or sneakers like I do all the time, be prepared to, You know, sprain toes. Oh. Or break a toe or something. Dave (9m 3s): Right. It’s is it just super slick and bouldery Gunnar (9m 6s): Or It’s super slick. Yeah. And the rocks are big. Most of them are big boulders. Yeah. Dave (9m 10s): So Duluth, I mean, you’re right at the head of Lake Superior, is that right? Gunnar (9m 16s): Yeah, it is the headwaters of superior. Dave (9m 18s): Yeah. That’s the headwaters of Superior. What is that like? There’s so much water out there, right? Do you, are you staying in the streams? Gunnar (9m 24s): I stay where nobody is. If I find a spot where nobody is, that’s not my spot. Yeah. Dave (9m 30s): That’s where you’ll go. Is it hard to find out there? I always, we just went up there And we drove kind of more drove through that area. Well we didn’t even get that far over to the east, but is it busy up there? Like during the peak times? Are you seeing, are there places you can go and see like, oh wow, there’s a bunch of fly anglers everywhere? Gunnar (9m 46s): Yeah. Like if you want to fish the North shore during steelhead season, good luck. Yeah. That’s it. Right? If you want to go fish the brule during the fall, steelhead run the brule. Good Dave (9m 54s): Luck. Yeah. The brule, right. Gunnar (9m 56s): First off, when it’s fall, I have to cross way too much musky water to go steelhead fishing. I never make it steelhead fishing, I just go musky fishing because Yep. Right. Dave (10m 5s): I why would you musk? I Gunnar (10m 6s): Never make it there. Yeah. And then the spring stuff, man, I used to be so much more diehard fishermen about it and now it’s just like, I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t wanna be around all the people. And I got kids and family stuff. It’s like I, I fish when I can now, not when I want to. Right. Dave (10m 24s): Yeah. Gunnar (10m 25s): Big difference. Big difference. Dave (10m 27s): So you mentioned a few of the species. So muskie, small mouth bass walleye, was it channel catfish? Yeah, Gunnar (10m 34s): Channel cats. Dave (10m 35s): Channel cats. What outta all those species? Okay. You gotta pick one out in that area. What, which one do you go for? You have, you can only pick one. Gunnar (10m 43s): I mean, I prefer muskie fishing above the mall, but you can only do it for so long. I have seasons. It’s so wonderful. Right. I can only really fish muskie in the spring for about a month, month and a half. And then the water’s too hot. So even though I would probably want to, I don’t, and I just bass fish until fall anyway. And that’s when the rivers are low and clear and I’d rather bass fish anyway. Right. So it’s like my seasonal desires, there’s no conflict. It’s just like, hey, spring, let’s go musky fish as soon as it’s open for about a month. And then that becomes miserable anyway. So then you go bass fishing and you get all happy because you actually have slimy hands that smell like fish. Gunnar (11m 25s): It’s Dave (11m 26s): Like you actually touched something. Gunnar (11m 27s): I actually catch stuff. Dave (11m 29s): What, what is the, on the flies, we’re gonna talk about that a little bit too fly design, but are the patterns you have you use similar for all those species? Are you using similar stuff? I mean, obviously bigger muskie might be bigger, but are you using the same types of flies with the same action and all that? Gunnar (11m 45s): I mean, I would say yes, but it’s kind of been like, I kind of just fish whatever I recently tied whatever it is. And, and I, I had mentioned this, I, I forget who I was talking with. I was essentially, I was just saying I’m stubborn, right? I’m, when I tie something and I’m excited about that thing, I’m gonna fish that thing. And I don’t really care if the fish want to eat it or not. I, I am going to find a fish that will eat it and that will make me happy. And so I know that’s not helpful to anybody because nobody can follow that advice. But just, I mean, fishing’s about you, Dave (12m 21s): Right? Gunnar (12m 22s): It’s about you enjoying creation and the environment and, and enjoying that time outdoors. And so I’m gonna do whatever makes me the happiest. And usually that is me just tying on one fly and be like, Hey, I’m gonna fish this and they’re gonna eat it and trust me, I’m, I’m gonna find one that’s gonna eat this fly. Dave (12m 44s): Yeah. Right, right. So that’s, that’s good advice because basically you’re saying stick with it, you’re gonna eventually find a fish even no matter what fly you have on there. Is that what you’re saying? Gunnar (12m 54s): Well, I think fly design gets maybe a bad rep at being too complicated. Yeah, it does. And certainly it’s complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. And what governs something being successful more often than not is does it have the right size and silhouette proportions? Is it proportionally food? Like if a fish looks at it, does it proportionally resemble food so that they instinctively react to it? And then are you fishing it as such? Are you, are you animating the lure the fly in a way that resembles what you’re actually imitating? And if you just have the right silhouette and you just fish it aggressively, it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Dave (13m 37s): Right. So silhouette. So silhouette is the, just overall the size, the shape, that’s the biggest thing. Gunnar (13m 43s): That’s my biggest thing. You know, everybody, everybody prioritizes it differently. Yeah, everybody likes to talk about maybe action and whatnot, but I am a silhouette. That’s where I draw the line as the most important bait fish or bugger or, You know, crayfish characteristic is what is the silhouette? And usually that comes down to the artistic proportions of how the fly is taper. You know, having a certain head diameter or, or You know, roundness or width that’s tapering relative to the length to imitate a sculpin or a Gobi or a chub or a sucker or whatever it is. Or it could just be all of the above, You know, at three inches, four inches, five inches. Gunnar (14m 24s): Most bait fish kind of have the similar FuseForm silhouette where you can kind of sculpt the fly. And like, so you could talk about, well why is it silhouette versus action? Why do you hold silhouette to be more supreme or or at a higher level of priority in your time? And it has to do with the fact that I fell in love with Bob Popovich’s Bucktail stuff. Oh yeah. And I started tying bulkheads on a single hook that were four or five inches long. And all’s I, the only action I have is just some bucktail coming out the back. Like no hackles, no flash, no nothing, no shanks, no bu You know, like all the stuff that all the trout guys are really hard on, You know, like even Blaine’s game changers, it’s like alls I had was like a stick of bucktail, like a stick, like a stick bait. Gunnar (15m 7s): But it was tied out a bucktail and it just moved enough, it looks awesome in the water. They have just some subtle life to ’em. Like they, they don’t look dead. It’s way better than fishing like a jerk bait. And yet the silhouette, because I can sculpt the bucktail butts and really get a nice proportional blunt F form shape out of the whole head and shoulders, it just looks like food. Put white bucktail, tie a bulkhead, flip that thing down and just start stripping it. It’s Musky food, it’s bass food, it’s pike food, it’s trophy trout food. It’s peacock bass food, it’s striped bass food, it’s blue fish. It’s Dave (15m 44s): Like, it’s everything really. And this is just a bucktail. This is basically just bucktail, white bucktail. That’s all that flies. Gunnar (15m 50s): I love bucktail. Dave (15m 52s): So what is it that, about the bucktail that, because it’s cool, right? It’s the natural material with all the synthetic stuff you hear so much about Why do you still like the bucktail? Gunnar (16m 0s): Because it’s hard to tie with. Dave (16m 2s): Yeah, it is. It is hard to tie with, yeah, Gunnar (16m 4s): It would be boring if it was the same every time, which is exactly what synthetics offer you, right? It’s the trade off. You can have the same thing every time you pull it out of the package, which is an awesome thing for a beginner or somebody who’s learning to have that kind of consistency. You know, you can take off a stack being like, Hey, I’m using this much, this is the density, this is how we use it, this is, You know, the technique and the recipe. And they can imitate it and they’ll get the same result. They’re pretty close. But as soon as you take a natural material and I’m like, Hey, I have this beautiful five and a half inch tail and you have a really gross three inch tail, we’re gonna not tie the same fly. Not only that, but it’s not gonna respond the same. Mine might have the perfect amount of trapped air in it where I can get it to compress and flare or control the butts, or they’re gonna have a nice wave to it. Gunnar (16m 51s): And I have hundreds of tales to comb through and find those characteristics. And a beginner’s gonna be overwhelmed by that anyway. I mean, you’re talking about nuance upon nuance of, hey, I’ve spent a thousand dollars on bucktail and I’ve spent 10 years tying with it in order to feel comfortable tying off the cuff. Like you don’t just tie off the cuff because you can’t appreciate the nuance of the variation. It just leads to frustration, which is what you gotta do to get there. But that’s why I feel like the natural materials always come back into rotation. They, they always cycle back into, You know, whatever’s trending or something. And it’s because they’re always difficult. Gunnar (17m 33s): And so they always have the challenge of, I want to master this, I want to pursue this. And then man, once you get it and you understand the castability is better, I will, I will talk about this for hours. The castability of natural materials is so superior to synthetics. Dave (17m 52s): Grand Teton Fly Fishing is a premier guide service and fly shop that has access to some of the most coveted rivers and lakes in western Wyoming. Their simple goal is to share their valued resource and have you experience a native cutthroat trout rising to a single dry fly in the shadows of the Tetons. You can check out Grand Teton right now at Grand teton fly fishing.com. Let them know you heard of them through this podcast. Don’t let the chill keep you from your next big fish. Heated cores next to skin heated base layer is your secret weapon for staying warm and comfortable during those early morning fishing trips or late seasoned adventures engineered with advanced heating technology. This base layer keeps you toasty all day long, ensuring you can focus on what really matters. Dave (18m 34s): Gear up with the heated core base layer and make every cast count this season. And is that because, I mean, I know deer hair is kind of hollow a little bit, right? Or I guess elk here, but why is that? Why, why is it that it’s better? You know, because you would think the synthetics, they could make this whatever they wanna make Gunnar (18m 51s): Sure. So obviously we’re talking about streamers, keep it in that context. Yeah, yeah. Streamers, and we’re talking something decently, large flies, like let’s just say 5, 6, 7, of course you get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger like 10, 12, You know, 14 inch pads for muskie, right? Yep. The problem with the synthetic is that it, first off, synthetic materials are usually gonna be crimped, right? That’s how they get the volume out of them. So they take a uniform material that’s made out of plastic and they will essentially heat it up and crimp it so that it has some sort of zigzagging pattern and the degree of the zigzag will give it volume, right? So all those zigzags push off each other to create volume. Gunnar (19m 32s): Now when you cast this, the air has to go around all those zigzags and it slows it down tremendously. So when we think about casting, one of the things we’re always trying to do is we’re trying to create the most castable pattern, which is a pattern that doesn’t interact negatively with the fly line. Now, something that’s only slowing the fly line down is a negative interaction. I don’t want that, right? It’s, it’s literally pulling and taking energy away from this entire system that’s trying to deliver a fly. And so if you are adding air resistance, that’s a problem. But the nuance of this whole shindig is it’s not always a problem because let’s say you have a sock and you try to throw a sock, right? Gunnar (20m 19s): A sock is only air resistance. It’s not gonna go very far. Well if you put a small rock in the sock, now I can chuck it across my yard, right? So when we have these synthetic flies, usually the best way to make them castable is to put them on a big, huge gauge salt water hook. This is, I think, where the whole idea of synthetics cast better comes from. It comes from you took a wind resistant material, you didn’t really know it, but you haphazardly put it on this huge, You know, heavy blue water hook, like four off for tuna or something like that. And you’re like, wow, this casts really well. Well all you did was put a rock in your sock. There Dave (20m 54s): You Gunnar (20m 54s): Go rock. And so the two rock sock and you put a rock in your sock. So the two balance each other out and you can cast it really well. But one of the problems is as the fly gets, let’s say big, like you want to try like a eight inch hollowly or like a beast or an extended body bulkhead, you start to get into pike and musky fishing, you’re trying to imitate large fors like suckers and, and chubs. You can only add so much weight. And usually the best triggering mechanism in this whole shindig of streamer fishing are flies that hover, they’re flies that are neutrally buoyant. They’re flies that suspend and change direction, in which case adding weight is now not becoming beneficial because you’re getting the negative action impact on the fly. Gunnar (21m 38s): And so when we tie flies weightless, or we’re trying to tie flies out of neutrally buoyant material to be fished on say intermediate lines or light sinking lines, then we want hang time, we want glide, we want hover. Well now I don’t have any weight. I don’t have a rock in my sock. And so when you go to the natural, understand the natural is usually gonna be perfectly rounded on diameter, no zigzag, and it’s gonna be tapered, meaning it’s literally gonna get, You know, it’s fat at the butt, skinny at the tip like a fly rod. So as the wind and air travel across this material, it’s literally kind of accelerating. It doesn’t have to follow the zigzags. And it’s not uniform in friction as it goes, but it’s able to accelerate around the material on top of the fact that when that material gets wet and absorbs a little water weight and you pull it out of the water, it all slinks down. Gunnar (22m 27s): There’s no air resistance to begin with. So now you take like a fresh water hook, like a four out or a six out, something that’s not blue water, crazy heavy. And you have this completely slicked down natural material that has no zigzag to it whatsoever. And its own water weight that’s absorbed in the hair becomes the rock, if you will, in the sock. It is the most superior material for tying a weightless suspending batter. Dave (22m 54s): That makes total sense. Yeah. So you have, and what is the hook? What’s your typical four aught hook Would you be using? Like is there a brand or a type of hook? Gunnar (23m 2s): Yeah, You know, I think the old Partridge attitude streamers were sick. The attitude extras, the universal predators Aex, You know, has the, the TP six 10, the trout predator. I think the four OTT in the TP six 10 is almost perfect. The six. So gets a little bit, a little bit and it needs a slightly heavier wire. But they take, came out with the TP six 12. I know this is like product numbers, but Dave (23m 31s): Yeah, now it is a good, Gunnar (23m 32s): Yeah, the six 12 is the trout predator short. That is musky perfection. I love that hook. The four aught, six shot. Oh they’re just sweet. Dave (23m 42s): That’s it. Okay, good. So yeah, so that’s good. So we hit on a little bit, I mean, again, I wanted to ask you about casting because I think that’s all another thing that comes up like, God, how do I cast these giant flies? But what you’re saying that’s a good reminder. It’s like the fly is a big part of this equation, right? Getting the right fly on that. What is the right fly? Let, let’s take it to a species. Let’s, you mentioned Musky maybe, maybe let’s talk small mouth bass for a second. What, what is that pool you, we talked about at the start where you went out to your perfect pool, what fly line are you throwing there? Is that like a dry line or what? What do you typically have for bass? Gunnar (24m 15s): So I fish, I mean you could give me any species on the planet. I only fish three fly lines, which I have a box in the garage, it’s probably got a 90 fly lines in it. I’ll have to take a picture. It’s nuts. All the different stuff I’ve tried over the years, Dave (24m 29s): Really. Gunnar (24m 30s): But like, I like ideas, like I like to pursue ideas. So if I see potential in something, I will buy it and screw around with it. But all of this has come down to, as I learned, fly line taper and, and the purpose of it and the engineering behind it. I fish Rio’s elite predator. That is my all time favorite wade fishing fly line. I fish Rio’s outbound short, which is my favorite still water line and huge fly line. Like if you’re gonna fish beasts and stuff, that’s preferable over the elite predator. Even though they’re kind of designed to do the same thing. They have opposite tapers, which we could talk about. Gunnar (25m 10s): But it’s, it makes a huge difference in, in big fly carry ability at distance. And that’s really relative to casting, really relative to casting. And then if I’m gonna fish something fast sink, I’m gonna fish like an outbound custom or like the Rio striper line. But something that’s just level, I just love a level heavy, fast sink that I can cut the head back, right? Because if you gimme a fly line that’s tapered, I’m not gonna cut it and mess with it. But if you gimme a level line now I can start to screw around with the grain windows and how long it is and how easy it is to slip and shoot and do all the fun stuff. So those three elite predator outbound, short and outbound custom are really the only three I fish. Gunnar (25m 51s): And I like you could, You know, I love Rio if you’re a different company, dude, just look at the taper diagrams and take those tapers to whatever company you enjoy and support and all that. It’s the taper that is, it is, I mean the taper is what makes it happen. And, and Rio has a lot of really good tapers. But those three, that’s the bread and butter. Dave (26m 12s): Yeah. Okay, perfect. So that gives us the, the line. And then, sorry, Gunnar (26m 16s): When you were asking me about that hole and you said something about dry, were you talking about, You know, are you fishing a sinking line or a triple density line or a floating line? Because I went, I went straight to kind of the different, Dave (26m 27s): No, I was thinking what you said. I was thinking big picture, like the three lines. I love simplifying it. So that helps. So we got to simplify and then, and now I’m just thinking more like, yeah, you’re on the water, you got your fight again, we’re experimenting, we’re out there, You know, you’re gonna, somebody is gonna learn on their own and we’re gonna say get out there. But what, what do you do in there? So you make your cast, You know where that little slot is, where those fish are holding. Are you typically casting across and down and then stripping it? Talk about that. How are you, what action are you putting on the fly? Gunnar (26m 54s): Everything. Dave (26m 55s): Yeah, everything. Yeah, you’re doing it all depending. Gunnar (26m 56s): So it’s like I’ve worked that hole from the top down. I’ve worked it on the right side, I’ve worked it on the left side. I work it from the bottom up. Usually if I work from the bottom up, then I swing on the way back down again. I just, I ask every question. And so when I’m walking up to the hole, You know I’m walking up and I’m standing at the tail out. And So what you have is you have a pinch point, you have a riffle section, it kind of has a nice little cut or gouge that then turns into this pool that rises up to this wonderful tail out. And typically you’ll get a lot of small bass at the back that’ll be like eating bugs and stuff. I mentioned as soon as I came up, I was like, oh, someone just ate a, You know, he just ate a mayfly or he just, I saw a fish rise or something like that. ’cause bass do that. I mean you could dry fly fish bass if you wanted. Gunnar (27m 38s): They’re not that picky. I guess that’s what people do with boole bugs. Everybody knows that anyway. And so I’m gonna start to kind of fan cast the back of that hole. And obviously I’m forced to cast upstream, retrieve down just by context of where I’m standing. But I’m gonna work that with, You know, short cast. I probably start like 20 feet or something, not very big. And I’m gonna make a fan cast. It’s essentially like if you were to fish still water, you find a productive spot, you hit spot lock or something and you’re gonna fan cast and then you’re gonna move over 50 feet and then fan cast and then move over 50 feet. Dave (28m 13s): What is the fan cast exactly? Yeah, it’s Gunnar (28m 15s): Blind casting, right? Because I’m working a tail out, which is essentially a large pocket of consistent water. I’m gonna cast, You know, let’s say straight across and then I’m gonna cast at 11 o’clock and then 10 o’clock and then nine o’clock and then eight o’clock, right? I’m gonna work the full clock spectrum of what’s visibly open to me. And each one’s gonna be like a different angle of attack because there’s not structure, it’s a tail out, it’s just a pool. And then as I start to move up one of the sides, the right or left side, it doesn’t really matter. Well now I’m gonna throw one straight up at 12, which is gonna be, You know, parallel to the bank. And then I might come off at one and then I might come off at two and then three. Gunnar (28m 55s): Right? So I’m gonna clockwork out from that as I start to walk up slowly. And part of this that people have to understand in my context, ’cause it won’t be explicit unless you’ve seen the video. My water clarity is a foot or a foot and a half. And so I am forced by necessity to almost never target specific structure unless it’s like a side channel and I can actually see a log or a boulder or a little, You know, a pocket or something. But usually I can’t, my rivers are, have so much tannic staying to them that the best way to approach it is honestly just to walk at a slow pace, work the full spectrum, You know, from noon down to six or whatever, noon down to three, and let it swing out. Gunnar (29m 44s): And then just walk up slowly and keep rinsing and repeating that. Because I can’t actually be more specific. I can read the water, I can see the current, I can understand, You know, the current velocities and what fish are gonna hold in to feed or, or, okay, that’s way too fast. Nothing’s gonna hold there. That’s too soft. That’s slack. They’re not gonna hold there. Oh, here’s a perfect amount. Kelly Gallup would call it soft water, right? It’s like it’s water that’s moving, but it’s not fast. It’s not hard, it’s not super flowy. It’s consistent. It’s even, it’s soft. As soon as you learn to identify what soft water looks like, that’s kind of the biggest thing that’s telling me I need to cast there and ask the question really? Gunnar (30m 23s): Because I don’t know the depth, I don’t know the bottom structure. If there’s a boulder or a log or something that they can hold onto, I can only identify what is probable based on current velocity. And when you can identify what is soft water, well you can stop asking a lot of dumb questions. Yeah, right. Soft water, my my encouragement’s to ask all of them. But eventually you’re gonna learn which ones are more intuitive and which ones are the better question to ask. Dave (30m 50s): Right? So for small mouth bass, if we stay on those for a second, you’re looking for that softer water. You’re not really looking for fish in like riffles or any of that faster stuff. Gunnar (30m 59s): My fish don’t hold them the fast stuff. Dave (31m 0s): Yeah, they don’t, Gunnar (31m 1s): They love a run. There’ll be an entire school that’ll just hold out in a run Dave (31m 6s): And a run. Right? Yeah. They don’t like the fast. Yeah, Gunnar (31m 9s): I don’t find ’em in the holes unless it’s like off of a side channel. Like if, if the river come down and there’s a little like, You know, let’s say the main current is fast. There’s this weird little nook off to the side where the current gets cut in half and it drops down two or three feet, a hundred percent chance there’s a bass in there, 0% chance there’s a bass in the fast water, right? I’m, I’m, yeah, I’m walking through the fast water looking for those little, little nooks and crannies that, You know, the difference between one foot, one foot, one foot two and a half feet. Oh there’s a bass there, You know, it’s like, and you learn that by walking and low and clear and just walking around. You have to walk, just walk across the river back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Gunnar (31m 53s): ’cause I can’t see the, I can’t see the bottom. It’s like you, you don’t know. Dave (31m 57s): So you’re just covering Yeah, you’re being systematic about it. Covering all the water. Gunnar (32m 1s): I wish it was different. I’ll tell you what, I went to visit my brother-in-law once and I stopped on the bank of the Mississippi in Grand Rapids, which is like an hour and a half north. Oh yeah. And I could see the bottom and it was like six feet deep. And I was like, are you serious? Like, is this what it’s like for normal people to go fishing? Like I can’t, I have gone fishing with the most ridiculous chartreuse neon green fly before and stripped it into my guide because I couldn’t see it. Wow. Like all the way to the front guide and just ripped it right into it. And I was like, good grief, this is not good. Like, Dave (32m 34s): That’s your water. Now I’m going back a little bit now on, on more of your, your history, but what was, because I wanna get into the fly design and give people a little heads up on that, but was it Kelly Gallup, right? Was your first influence in Yeah. In this fly design stuff? Is that talk, talk about that a little bit. Give us a reminder on, on on that and how your design got to where you are now with what, what you do. Gunnar (32m 55s): Yeah. Okay. So I think it was my, my junior year of college I got to work for Kelly and moved out to Montana, lived in a trailer and fished Oh, that’s right. In Madison River. Yeah. You know, for about four Dave (33m 7s): Months. And where’d you come from? Where, where were you, where were you, where were you coming from? Where were you living before that? Gunnar (33m 11s): I went to school in Michigan Tech. So I was up in Houghton, Michigan. Oh, okay. Dave (33m 15s): Yeah, Michigan. Gunnar (33m 16s): Yeah. And that was wild because I didn’t know anything and I was horrible. And I told Kelly I didn’t know anything and he told me that was fine. And I just went wade fishing every single night for four months straight. And that’s what taught me what soft water was. And You know, it’s like obviously I had trophy water to learn it. On Dave (33m 38s): On on the Madison. Gunnar (33m 39s): On the Madison, yeah. And this is, You know, it’s, it’s right below Quake Lake. It Dave (33m 44s): Was. Oh Gunnar (33m 44s): Right. Yeah. It’s like two miles below Quake Lake. So it’s in between Ness and West Yellowstone. Right. And it’s just beautiful white water. And it’s above the, the, it’s the Wade only section. Right. So from like quake down to Lions Bridge I think is wade fishing only people can take a drift boat. But you have to get out of the boat to fish. And one of the coolest things that I ever got to experience was, it was, must have been like the first week of June, we had crazy runoff coming outta the mountains. The rivers, You know, climbed 1500 CFS in about two days, three days by every person’s consideration driving over that river. Gunnar (34m 25s): They would’ve said it was blown out, you couldn’t fish it. And what’s the most beautiful thing is every single person drives across Reynolds Pass to go into Idaho to fish for salmon flies to fish the salmon flash. Yeah. And the streamer bite on the Madison. Yeah. If you give it like two or three days for the fish to get used to the new flow, it’s off the charts insane. It was like, You know, like when you’d see like a field and stream magazine and they like put a circle where every trout should be. It, it was real. There was a trout where they set a trout. Should be, it was like you just like walk the river smack a fly down with like a five and a half foot cast, three inches from the bank, six inches from the bank. Gunnar (35m 13s): Yeah. Dave (35m 13s): Like Gunnar (35m 13s): A drive five inches behind the boulder. Like it was the most ridiculous thing. And you just like 16 inch trout, 17 inch trout, 18 inch trout, 14 inch, they just out of the woodwork to try to eat these cul and patterns that are like five inch black pieces of meat. It was nuts. So that’s, that was kind of my, I went from being a really bad fisherman to being a really spoiled fisherman really quickly. Yeah. Dave (35m 38s): And that’s right. Yeah. And you were around Kelly and all of his, You know, the sex dungeon and all that stuff. You, you kind of got a Gunnar (35m 46s): Yeah, I, I always wanted to be like a competent fly tire and I sucked at it for, I don’t know, ever for like 10 years. And then I got Kelly’s DVD, it was like called streamers on steroids. And it was the first time I had a visual, like, You know, someone took me through it, start to finish visually. I’d never had that, I had never taken a class, You know, like the pictures in the books didn’t do it because I had missing gaps of information. Right. Pe I don’t, like kids don’t understand that anymore. Like we have YouTube alright. Like it’s not a problem. But as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, like I don’t have to go from, You know, A to DI understand A, B, C, and D now. Gunnar (36m 27s): Like I see the whole progression. I saw it on video and so I just ripped all of Kelly’s stuff off. Like alls I did was tie Kelly, gale variations, boogeyman variations, sex dungeon variations. And I would just, it turned into something where when I started my tying company, You know, looking back, right, this is what hindsight’s wonderful for. But when you look back at kind of all the stuff the trout guys tie, especially in the Russ Madden kind of style of our, it’s essentially articulated buggers with a head. Right? Right. And what everybody does was they would tie the articulated bugger, but then they’d wing it with something like Kraft fur and you’re like, oh, it’s a Goma. Oh yeah, right. Or like Arctic Fox and you’re like, oh, it’s stroll headbanger. Gunnar (37m 9s): It’s like, it’s still an articulated bugger. They just took a wing material that somebody hadn’t used yet and then they put a head on it, whether it was Laser dub or Kraft Fernal loop. And I’m not trying to take anything away from that because in my own journey, those jumps aren’t intuitive. Like when you’re walking through it step by step in real life, like I have so many patterns that are so similar, but you only see the similarity when you look back like four or five years and you’re like, why didn’t I think of that? That was so obvious. But in the moment you, you are like, man, this made a huge difference. Oh dude, Arctic fox is sick. How come nobody did this before? It’s like, well, if you just skeletonize the recipe, You know, it’s like bu hackle body in a wing bu hackle body in a wing and then a head and you can change the head to whatever you want. Gunnar (37m 56s): Wool, deer, hair, lead eyes, no lead eyes, You know, synthetics. And so you start to kind of like see the different segmentations of a fly, whether that’s like tail body weighing head, and you can honestly substitute nearly anything. And as long as you scale it appropriately, you understand how it’s gonna build so that you get the right taper and proportions, you’re gonna get a pretty successful fly. Dave (38m 20s): Right. Okay. And and you mentioned bu well you talked about a couple things. We talked about the deer hair, but I’m trying to get a picture of what is the Kelly’s, what is the sex dungeon? Is that Gunnar (38m 32s): It’s a stacked deer. Her head over lead eyes. Dave (38m 34s): Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it is. Yeah. So it’s stacked here, here. It’s been five years since we’ve talked. Has there been, have there been any changes in the streamer? Have you seen, have you changed your style at all? Is there new stuff out there? Or is this pretty much Gunnar (38m 47s): Thing five? Oh, I’ve gone totally off the walls. Saltwater East coast striped bass style. Yeah. Anybody, anybody who’s, who’s kept up with the YouTube knows that I, I very quickly became a, a disciple of Bob Popovic and spent, I don’t know, probably the past seven. So I guess this would’ve been part of our last talk. I bet the past seven years, I have dedicated almost everything to Bucktail fly design based off of all the innovations that Bob Provi brought to the table. Dave (39m 15s): Oh, okay. Yep. Gunnar (39m 17s): And so I’ve gone, You know, like I don’t really tie articulate it anymore. I’ve gone almost all the single hook. I do use naturals, but the big thing I’ve been working on is, is adapting my old Kelly Gallup style patterns to a new shank hook layout that allows them to be single hook, but still have the same tie space so that the recipe’s not actually forced into being changed. And so you can take the same recipes but superimpose them onto a totally different chassis layout. And I, I call it articulated 2.0, nobody knows about this. I haven’t made any videos about it because life right now is, is really difficult. Gunnar (39m 57s): Yeah, yeah. But hopefully, You know, Lord willing, in six months from now or next year, I’ll get to kind of bring this idea to light. But when you, the videos you’ve referenced so far, those are all fishing the Hot Fuzz 2.0, they’re all fishing the season Geezer 2.0, the Triple Sculpt Daddy 2.0. It’s all part of a series where I was trying to build up a little bit of hype around this idea of, hey, I don’t fish articulated flies, two hooks connected by a wire joint anymore. I, I can’t stand fishing two hooks. It just doesn’t fit me. And that wire joint has driven me absolutely bonkers as a tire for years. I hate putting that joint in at the vice. Gunnar (40m 39s): But then on the water, they get kinked and they get weakened. Oh yeah. They break and they fray and they foul. And trying to find a way around that, it’s like hybridizing articulated flies with game changers, but you take the same recipe that the articulated fly was, that’s 2.0 in a nutshell, Dave (40m 59s): It’s time to talk about something that elevates your fishing experience. Stonefly nets nestled in the heart of the Ozarks Ethan, a master craftsman dedicates his skill to creating the finest wood landing nets. They aren’t just tools, they are works of art blending tradition and craftsmanship. You know, every time I set my stonefly net in the water, it’s not just the fish that catches my eye, it’s the beauty of the net itself. These nets are tailored to your fishing style with options to customize the size handle and even the intricate wood burrows. They are a perfect mix of functionality and aesthetic appeal. And let’s talk about the memories. Just like Ethan, many of us cherish fly fishing as a way to connect with our past and creating lasting memories. Dave (41m 40s): Stonefly nets are more than just nets. They are part of our story. Each cast and every cast. Are you ready to make fishing trips? Unforgettable? Visit stonefly nets.com right now and discover the difference a handcrafted net can make. How do you get the articulated is, makes it longer. You got a hook out there long, how do you tie your same length of the fly and get the hooking? Are you getting short strikes and stuff like that with the style? Gunnar (42m 8s): The only hangup is that I’ve had to test it all on small mouth bass, which are kind of notorious for smashing the head. Dave (42m 15s): Oh, okay. They t-bone don’t, don’t a lot of the predators T-bone stuff, isn’t that how they’re, are they getting hooked that way or they come from the side? Gunnar (42m 23s): Well, yes and no. It depends a great deal on how their mouth is shaped. So if you look alike pike muskie and trout, and you look at their teeth structure and how their mouth opens when they eat something, their teeth are designed essentially to kind of poke or stab or hold prey. Wound prey. They’re like, you would, you would identify them as a slash and grab style mouth type. Whereas if you look at bass, you look at schnook, you look at tarpon, that would be like a bucket mouth where they use literally the, the suction of dropping their jaw to draw in water, turning a bait fish’s head into their mouth so that they can eat. You know, even Tarpon will eat a huge thing. Gunnar (43m 3s): Headfirst striped bass will eat, You know, a 14 inch mullet head first because of their mouth shape. A barracuda’s not gonna eat a mullet head first. He’s gonna slash it in the middle because his teeth are designed to slash and grab, he’s not worried about sucking in water like that. He’s gonna cut pierce injure and then consume. Whereas the bass species bucket mouth style species use the water suction to orient bait fish’s head so that they can swallow head first and kill. So when I’m taking something that is essentially a articulated trophy trout style pattern, which is very much more slash and grab, and then I’m catching a 12 inch bass on it, you’ll see in those videos, I, I’m like, oh, he missed it. Gunnar (43m 48s): Or like, I’ll I’ll say that just kinda like off the cuff and it’s like, man, if it was articulated, maybe I would’ve got ’em. Yeah. But that’s, it’s not, I’m not trying to target 12 inch bass either. Right. And so it’s like, where do you, as the designer, it’s like, well shucks, because if it was a 30 inch pike that was game on, if it was a Musky game on, if it’s a 16 inch bash, he’s got, he’ll fit the whole thing in his mouth. Dave (44m 14s): Yeah, that’s right. That’s actually a good thing. That’s actually, you’ve, you’ve created a, a fly that keeps the small ones away. You don’t have to worry about Gunnar (44m 21s): The small ones. I know it’s like, but do you let that deter you? Because sometimes the recreational guys, You know, it’s like every fish matters and every every fish makes you happy. And it’s like, well shoot, if I was fishing a willy bugger I would’ve caught twice as many fish today. Dave (44m 35s): Yeah, yeah. Right. Well you’re, you’re a, you’re a musky fisherman too, so my guess is your style, you’re not as worried about catching numbers of fish. Gunnar (44m 43s): I told you it’s I’m gonna fish the fly I tied on. Yeah. And I’m gonna make them eat it. That’s the game. The game that I am there to play is I’m gonna make you eat this slu I’m not here to figure it out. I’m not here to pattern fish. I’m not here to be the most successful fisherman. I’m here to enjoy myself. Which means you’re going to eat it. Dave (45m 3s): Yeah, totally. So that’s awesome. So, so this is it. So, so you’re, I mean, we’re simplifying it here I think a little bit, which is cool. What, what would you tell if somebody was gonna get down at the vice, just look up a popovic style. I mean, you could see ’em all, they’re giant, they’re all bucktail. Like what would you say if somebody wanted to tie some of these or pick these up, what would they go in the store and buy? Or could they Gunnar (45m 25s): Yeah. Do you narrow it down more Pike Musky bass size? Dave (45m 28s): Yeah. Let, let’s keep on the, let’s keep on the bass. I think that’s a good topic to stay on. Yeah. Gunnar (45m 33s): If I was gonna go, I mean, I would probably take a, a one knot TP six 12. I’d run the, the, You know, like a, a short shanks but thick gauge. One knot would probably get you by just fine. I would grab two bucktails and I would select them by hand. And you’re just gonna look for two different lengths of tail. You’re gonna try to find something around four and a half, which is actually pretty common in shops. And something around three and a half. The four and a half is gonna be your tail and your mid-body section. So you’re gonna have a longer out the back and then you’re just gonna go to that three and a half to finish it so it gets shorter and denser upfront. It’ll get a nice teardrop to it. You’re just gonna tie either bucktail receivers or bulkheads. And then to get a little extra length, you can either do like the strung saddle, which is super easy, or just a little flash tail, like a flash tail whistler. Gunnar (46m 20s): Just a wad of like a original flashabou and silver out the back. Dude that, Dave (46m 26s): That’s it. Gunnar (46m 27s): That’s it. And you could tie it, I mean you could tie it half and half style. You could tie it klauser style, you could tie it Bob pops bucktail Deceiver style. Bulkhead style. The bulkheads gonna be neutrally buin suspend bucktail deceiver is gonna be about half and half, but the hook weight will slip it under. The clouder is obviously gonna bottom dredge it and jig it. You could tie it bend back if you wanted it. Weedless and weightless. It’s infinitely versatile and it’s like a four and a half inch catchall, You know, it’s like a finess minnow essentially. It’s like fishing a soft plastic that’s four and a half inches long. Right, Dave (46m 60s): Right, right. Okay. Gunnar (47m 1s): Not, not soft plastic like worm, like a, You know, a plastic minow molded type Dave (47m 5s): Tape. Yeah. Minow. Right, right. Gunnar (47m 7s): Alego, I’ll, I’ll give you a Dave (47m 9s): Slug. Yeah, a sluggo. Okay. So now you were back, back to your pool. So in on the line again. So what, what was the line? So you, you talked about three lines there on that pool that day, on that video, what was the line you were using that day? Gunnar (47m 22s): So that was Rio’s Elite Predator. It was a six weight, I believe it was the float intermediate sink three. So they got three different line densities. Dave (47m 31s): Oh yeah. Flow intermediate sync three. Okay. Gunnar (47m 33s): The beautiful thing about that line, you got like a 32 foot head. So it’s got a really short compact head for streamer fishing, which is what you want. Your head length should be 35 feet or shorter. 30 is about ideal. Yeah. Dave (47m 44s): Okay. Gunnar (47m 45s): The taper diagram on it is a spay taper or a heavy rear belly or a triangle taper. It’s all the same nomenclature essentially. Right. Yeah. What you’re describing is that out of that 32 feet, the heaviest part is the closest to the rod’s tip. Dave (48m 1s): Yep. Gunnar (48m 1s): This creates control and accuracy and stability because as it is unrolling, it’s getting the taper is helping the energy towards the fly. Right. And so it’s a really stable, really stable, controllable, accurate line that doesn’t feel clunky or bouncy or splashy. Right. Lands down really well, but because it’s compact at 32 feet, it can handle a payload. And so I’m casting a five and a half, six inch fly on a six weight line. I’m carrying it probably 40 feet and shooting it out to 50, 60 feet with a rod from the 1940s. Dave (48m 41s): Right. I was gonna say that Rod, what is that rod you’re using there? Looks like a bamboo rod. Gunnar (48m 45s): Is it like five dust? There’s, there’s no markings on it. I couldn’t tell you what it is. It’s old. Yeah. It’s got a full wells cork on it, but it’s seen better days. Dave (48m 54s): Is it bamboo, Gunnar (48m 55s): Uhuh? It’s it’s glass. You Dave (48m 57s): Know what’s cool about that Rod? I love seeing that because right away when I saw that we had, we’ve had a Reese, a bunch of casting episodes recently, and one of the guys, I’ve mentioned this before, one of the guys we’ve had on was Chris Corch, and I’m not sure if You know Chris, but he’s a casting instructor and he’s the guy that took Maxine McCormick, who was that 13-year-old girl who won the championship, the world. Cool. She was like the caster. But what he said, the take home message, and I’ve been saying this a lot because I’m trying to preach it because I think he’s basically said the, the fly fishing space went into this nuclear arms race with like faster, faster, faster rods. But he’s, what he’s saying is like, you don’t want a super fast action rod, especially if you’re new. You want a rod that bends all the way into the cork because then it allows you to feel the line. Dave (49m 38s): So he feels like the fly fishing industry has really got that wrong. And so it sounds like, and that’s what he said, the championship, the people that are winning championships with right now are wish fishing with 1980s rods not new rods these days. Right. So it seems like that’s the same rod you have. Gunnar (49m 52s): Yeah. Dude. That thing’s ancient. Yeah. So I love glass. I I, I was talking to a friend yesterday on the phone and it became really clear to me just, I mean, there is personal preference. People like different things and different feelings, but I would fish, I don’t even know where I’m going with this. He, he was telling, he was talking about new technology, he was all excited about some of the technology that these rod companies were talking and, and coming out with. And I essentially said to him, I was like, look, like, I agree that that’s exciting, but taper is what determines whether a rod is successful or not at its intended job. And then roll it out of whatever you want. Gunnar (50m 32s): Because I love glass. I’ve, I fish my grandpa’s 1961 Wonder Rod all the time. I have, You know, like a blue halo zenas. Love it. I have that 1940s fiberglass. That’s what I fished for the whole season. Nice. I just fished a 1940s fiberglass fly rod. Like, I don’t, I don’t need some thousand dollar rod to catch fish. Like, Dave (50m 56s): And what do you like about that 1940s rod, when you cast it? Gunnar (50m 59s): So I, I like, so you talked about how, You know, feeling it through the cork. I have a really slow cast. I don’t like a punchy, jumpy cast. I have a really slow cast. I like a really long kind of lateral movement of my hand. Yeah. Right. I think it’s fun. It’s, it’s like dancing. I like to be a part of the casting experience. To me it’s not about efficiency. Like I want to enjoy what I’m doing. Yeah. Dave (51m 22s): Like a big, you have like a bigger arc typically. Gunnar (51m 25s): Yeah. Yeah. And so that’s, as my stroke length increases and my arc increases, I need to bend your rod to match my style. Yeah. Dave (51m 34s): Right. Gunnar (51m 35s): And so when I fish a fast rod, it’s not that I can’t, I do it all the time. It’s just that I have to think about it and be consciously aware because I’ll throw tailing loops because I have such a long kind of stroke with such a big throw arc. And so I can very easily fish something that’s 50 years old and it just fits me. And, and I have no problem casting it 70, 80 feet either. Like people, it’s, it’s like I’m pretty sure 30, 40 years ago people could still cast really, really well. Dave (52m 7s): Yeah. They Gunnar (52m 7s): Could, when you put a modern fly line on it, I think the fly lines would have what changed the game. The fly line is what makes streamer fishing possible. The whole point of that video, the title of that video is the, the line is Mightier than the Rod. Dave (52m 19s): Oh, that’s right. Yeah. And Gunnar (52m 20s): I, I meant it kind of as a joke, but it’s like people, when they get into streamer fishing, the first thing they think of is, I need a new rod. I need a streamer rod. Yes. I need to get a six wave. I need to get a Dave (52m 29s): Set something. I need something heavy duty to cast so I can cast in big case. Gunnar (52m 33s): Absolutely. You don’t, what you need is you need a fly line with a 30 foot head that’s designed to throw streamers. You could put that line on any rod ever manufactured ever. And cast streamers really well on it. Dave (52m 45s): The big stuff you can cast six eight inches with that. Heck, Gunnar (52m 48s): I was fishing a six inch fly on that rod. Yeah. With a six weight line. It was nothing. If you gave me the same rod in a heavier rod class, I could throw beast flies. I, I would go musky fishing with it. I don’t care. And of course I like that style, so I’m drawn to it. And I think the history’s cool. And I think part of it’s me. I don’t, I don’t like where the industry’s going. I, I don’t like the idea of if you just had this rod, you’d catch more fish. Right. Yeah. You do it like, it’s just, it’s a lie. It’s a marketing lie and I don’t like that. And it’s like, if I could just change your perspective on that and just, hey, what you need to do is practice casting in your grass one hour twice a week for an entire summer, and then enjoy fly fishing for the rest of your life. Gunnar (53m 32s): Like, just invest one summer into being better and then that skill won’t really diminish that much and you’ll just have gained perspective and understanding and skill and you’ll have invested time that makes it more valuable. But buying a rod, that’s the cheater’s way to getting better. And honestly, it’s not gonna help you. Dave (53m 51s): Doesn’t work. No, it doesn’t. And it’s not, and it’s not gonna help you. Right. You gotta like anything great. You know, like to get good, you just gotta get your hours in your, do your reps and Gunnar (54m 0s): It sucks. Dave (54m 1s): Do your reps. It Gunnar (54m 2s): Sucks because I know the rod companies, I know half of ’em, You know, they’re well intentioned. They want to make the best fly rod ever. Dave (54m 10s): Right. Well, and I think there’s some situations where there’s truth to that. You know, when you’re at it’s truth. Oh yeah. When you’re at a, when you’re at a high level and you’re on the salt water flats and the wind’s blowing, You know, having that super fast or that specific rod is gonna be important probably. Right. Yeah. There’s some situations, but for most people you probably don’t need that. Right. In a lot of situations. Gunnar (54m 29s): Right. I don’t wanna belittle it. Yeah. ’cause I understand the advancements have done a great deal of good, but the marketing behind it has done a great deal of damage. Yeah. And it’s like, you don’t need that new rod to catch fish. You just need to stop sucking at fishing and get better at casting. Dave (54m 47s): Exactly. Gunnar (54m 48s): But it’s, You know, the ancient saying is it’s, it’s the Indian, not the arrow, it’s you. Oh yeah. You need to practice. That’s okay. Own that. Dave (54m 57s): Yeah, Gunnar (54m 58s): Own that. Dave (54m 58s): Yeah. Yeah. Good, good, good. Well, let’s, I, I want to talk rule. You had these, it’s kind of funny because you had the rules of streamer fishing, which was kinda, you’re kind of joking in there. I think you had rule 21, rule 37. So I’m not even sure if the numbers, You know, what’s going on with the numbers, but arbitrary, could you break? Yeah. Could you break it down and say again, just let’s say streamer phishing and say, what are a few rules? You know, are there any rules? Are there things that somebody listening now should know? We’ve been talking about stuff just kind of high level, but, You know, are there rules? Like what, why’d you say that first? Why did you, what gave you that idea? To put down rule number 21? Gunnar (55m 33s): I didn’t want to do rule number two because I didn’t want people to think I was being super rigid or intentional. Right. And so I went from rule one to rule 21, hopefully, so that everyone who was paying attention realized instantly it was meant as a joke. Like, okay, let it go. There’s there, there’s not, Dave (55m 50s): But you did say rule, you did throw the word rule in, which means something’s, Gunnar (55m 55s): I don’t know if it’s click bait, but it grabs people’s attention. Yeah, Dave (55m 58s): It does. Gunnar (55m 59s): And I do, maybe, I don’t think there’s rules, but I definitely think there’s sins. Let’s call ’em that. Right? There’s peccadillos to streamer fishing that beginners ignore and they do it to their own detriment. And usually they’re frustrated by it. So it’s like perfect example. Right. I think rule number one’s like always fish it to your feet or something. Mm. Yeah. Something like that. Always fish the fly to your feet. Maybe that was rule 21. Dave (56m 23s): That’s a good Gunnar (56m 23s): Rule. That’s a good rule. But I, I have a buddy who’s never been stream or fishing before, but he has a trout fishing background. A fly, You know, dry fly fishing background. And typically when you drive fly fish, you’re casting out to where you want the fly to land, you’re gonna get a drift. And then once it starts to drag, you pick it up because it’s not fishing anymore. So you’ve ingrained this habit that you’re only fishing when it’s out there, and as soon as something changes, it’s wrong. Right. And the fish aren’t gonna eat it and you pull it out of the water. But that’s not how streamers work. Yeah. And so we’re fishing together, he casts out, he starts to retrieve and then he picks it up. Yeah. And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Gunnar (57m 4s): Like bass pike and muskie, large mouth, everything, everything will follow. They, they will Right. Tail it all the way. And what’s really interesting is not only do they follow, which is a great reason to leave it in the water, but fisher, they’re not as spook as some people think. So I, in the, in the first video, I’m literally talking and I’m explaining this lie of water between me and the bank. And I flop the fly down five feet in front of me as I’m talking. And I catch the biggest fish of the day right there. I didn’t cast, I didn’t slip line, I didn’t carry line, I didn’t work it. I wasn’t animating it, I wasn’t stripping it, I wasn’t trying to catch a fish. Gunnar (57m 48s): He was just five feet in front of me on a rock shelf. And I’m, I had stood there long enough that he wasn’t spooked by me. He didn’t think I was a threat. He didn’t care. You know, the, obviously the water’s a little dirty, so he’s like, whatever. And my fly just swings right over his head and he smashes the crap out of it. Yeah. Dave (58m 5s): There you Gunnar (58m 5s): Go. And it’s opportunities like that where the beginner thinks the fish are out there. Yeah. Right, right. The thought is is they’re far away from me. I have to cast. Right. I have to strip it, I have to fish it. Once it gets close to me, they’re not going to eat it. There’s nothing, why would something? And of course it’s like, well, if you’re standing on the bank, sure. Don’t fish it. You know, it’s like, but if you’re in the water, keep the fly in the water. If you’re walking, keep the fly in the water. If you’re fishing, it fish the fly all the way to where you’re standing. Dave (58m 35s): To where you’re standing. Yeah. How do you, when you’re, you make that cast out there, how are you fishing that fly all the way to where you’re standing once you get in, maybe out of the current, are you doing stuff with your rod stripping a certain strip, but what is, what are you doing there? Gunnar (58m 48s): I wouldn’t say I’ve, I’ve abandoned Kelly’s jerk strip. I use it once in a while. Yeah. The strip. Yeah. But like with a soft rod, it’s not an effective technique. The rod doesn’t have the power to drive the fly. And so that’s, You know, that’s one of the big things around Kelly’s rod design is he has one of the only rods designed around fly animation, Dave (59m 6s): Which is, which is like a super, what is it? Is it a soft tip with a, a powerful rod? Or what, what is his rod? Gunnar (59m 12s): It’s definitely kind of a tip. Flex style with Yeah. With a quite a powerful butt and heavy medium. And it’s because he wants, You know, the tip to drive the fly and then recover quickly back to it. That’s right. But you have to have the nuance. Right. So the tip has to be soft enough to have nuance, but when you have like a soft midsection and a soft butt with no recovery, it’s kind of just like mush every, if you, if you try to use a jerk strip, Dave (59m 38s): It’s not re it’s not recovering. You’re just, it’s like, yeah. Gotcha. You’re Gunnar (59m 42s): Just pulling it at that point, right? Yeah. You’re pulling the rod cannot snap, the rod can’t whip the fly. It can only pull lethargic. Dave (59m 49s): Yeah. Gunnar (59m 50s): So there’s no difference essentially between that and stripping, I fish a lot under arm. Right. So I’ll throw the rod and reel up under my arm and fish hand over hand, like salt water style really fast. And I’ll, I’ll animate flies with men’s, You know, there’s no right and wrong. Sometimes I’ll just stop it halfway through the retrieve and let it swing out and then I’ll just twitch it in the current. I’ll just leave it there and twitch it. You know, if you cast across, you can fish up real slow and you can be quite methodical about where fish are and really hang it in front of their face and tease ’em and kind of do cat and mouse and give it to ’em and pull it away. If you’re casting upstream, I mean, you can only come down and it should be a little faster than the current, so you gotta be pretty quick on your, that’s a hard thing for beginners to get used to. Gunnar (1h 0m 34s): ’cause it’s fast. You gotta be stripping real fast to keep up with current. Yeah. But like I said, You know, it’s, I cast the whole spectrum 12 o’clock down to six. Yeah. Dave (1h 0m 43s): Just cover it. Gunnar (1h 0m 44s): And so you, you, You know, you start, you come up on that hole, you’ll find where you’re gonna stand. And I’m usually casting like one or two to get to the top of that pocket, and I’ll fish it downstream fast and I’ll start casting at three and I’ll kinda work across that hole, You know, probably underarm because it’s enough slack water. And then as I start to get down to four or five, I’m gonna let it swing now up onto that ridge line, and then I’ll just dead stick twitch upstream real methodically. So just, it’s all context driven. Dave (1h 1m 12s): Yep. And, and you’re like you said you got the sinking line, the fly that’s neutrally buoyant, so it’s kind of down below the surface. Are you, like, how far on those bass do you think your fly, how deep is it? So let’s take it to that pool again. How, how deep foot and a half, how deep do you think you’re, oh yeah. So you’re kind of under there and that’s just the fly line, getting it down, you’re letting it sink as it’s swinging across and then, and then you’re doing some stuff as you pull it across. Gunnar (1h 1m 34s): Yeah. So like all the 2.0 streamers all have Yeah. 2.0, You know, like medium led eyes, they’re like 0.6 grams. Oh, okay. The hot fuzz is weightless. Those fish, you can see ’em boil on it, You know, that’s like two inches under the surface. So they’re, they’re presence behind the fly. Everything. They’re awakened behind it. It’s so cool to watch. But that line will, You know, it’ll get a foot down, which in three or four feet of water is plenty. Those fish are looking up. They, they’re always looking up, moving two feet up in the water columns. Absolutely nothing for a fish. It’s not like in a lake, let’s say you’re in a lake and it’s 10 feet deep and you’re fishing a fly a foot deep, that’s a problem, right? Like, that ain’t gonna work. But in a river that’s two and a half, three feet deep and you’re a foot up, no big deal. Dave (1h 2m 18s): Yeah. That’s really do Gotcha. Gunnar (1h 2m 20s): Absolutely. No big deal. Nice. The walleye, that’s a big deal for walleye. Walleye don’t go up. Oh, Dave (1h 2m 23s): Walleye. Oh yeah. Walleye Cow. And we haven’t talked walleye yet. I, that was one. So, so walleye is, that’s the one species that I, I love, we’ve talked a little bit about, but I know that’s a popular sport fishing not, not, and conventional guys love it right there because I think they’re good to eat. But are you fishing walleye just as much as you’re fishing smallmouth bass throughout the year? Gunnar (1h 2m 41s): No. Dave (1h 2m 42s): No. Gunnar (1h 2m 42s): Okay. It happens accidentally depending on the fly’s design. So, You know, I I I told you I’m gonna fish what I, whatever I tide. And so part of that experimentation process is I have to adapt my day and my presentation to the fly because the fly might not come out perfectly. It might not do exactly what I wanted. I might have to fish it faster or slower or wait it more or whatever. So it’s like you get to the water and let’s say I’m working on a design to kind of be dead drifted or swung, maybe it’s tied on like a shank stinger, steelhead style. I take it to the water. I’m like, oh, okay. I’m really gonna have to fish this kind of slow and deep That didn’t work well on the jerk strip. Gunnar (1h 3m 22s): I moved it too fast, it rolls up on its side. I really gotta let it hang. Right. So I, I immediately look at the fly and I’m like, okay, I can’t fish the way I thought I was going to this fly demands. I fish it the way it wants. So I’m immediately locked into trying to figure out how to maximize the fly. And so then maybe I’m gonna dead drift and swing this fly in the bottom. And because of the line and real combo I brought, okay, it’s gonna get down about three or four feet. So I’m gonna go and fish this hole in that hole or whatever. So I walk downstream to those holes that I know are deep enough. And that’s where the walleye inevitably show up, is when I’m fishing something slow and methodically on bottom where they don’t go up because the bass will beat ’em to it every time. Gunnar (1h 4m 3s): And it turns out they’re almost always in the same water. Like the walleye love tail outs. They’re at the same tail house that the small mouth bass are on. They’re just eating leeches and stuff that are like right in front of their face. They won’t go up for a bait fish. But if you take like the same pattern, like a clouder, you could tie that same bucktail, deceiver clouder style and fish it on the bottom and you’ll start catching walleye instead of bass. Dave (1h 4m 27s): Oh, no kidding. Yeah. ’cause they’re just, they’re down deeper. That’s the with wall, it’s like, Gunnar (1h 4m 32s): So the only difference essentially between the two is, You know, the, the spectrum of the water column that they occupy. It’s the only difference kind of in their niche. Oh Dave (1h 4m 41s): It is. Yeah. Gunnar (1h 4m 42s): It’s like bass are like, Hey, we’ll take the middle, you guys take the bottom deal. They’re like, yeah, sure. Like we’re lazy. Do what you want. Right, Dave (1h 4m 49s): Right, right. Yeah. Gunnar (1h 4m 50s): Sounds good to Dave (1h 4m 50s): Us. Okay, nice. This is good. Okay, well, well let’s, and I do want to try to get a couple more of these rules outta you here, but before we do, I wanna take it away here and get, this is our getting into our wrap up segment here. But I’m gonna do a listener shout out. And today I had a really cool Alex, I ran into Alex just randomly at, at one of the shows. He works for Bench Made the Knife Company. And we were just chatting about Knives. I was up there looking at these amazing knives and all this stuff stuff. And it turns out he was a huge fan. He is. Listened to all the episodes. So I wanna shout out to Alex with Ate Who we Connected with today, which was amazing. And today this is, we always do a listener shout out. This is presented by Mountain Waters Resort. We’re heading out Atlantic salmon fishing this year. Dave (1h 5m 31s): I’ve never fished for Atlantic Salmon. We’re heading out to the northeast part of Canada and, and we’re chasing it. So I wanna give one big shout out to Mountain Waters Resort today in this episode. But for you, the question is, and this is our random segment, first off, I know you’re busy, you got a lot of stuff going, but have you been looking out, is are trips, are you doing anything outside of Minnesota? Do you have anything you’re thinking about or you’ve been in the last few years? Is that, is travel or are the kids keeping you? Because I know for me the kids don’t allow me to travel much. I’ve got a couple of young kids. I think you’re the same way. Is that how it’s looking for you Gunnar (1h 6m 3s): Right now? It’s definitely the kids. Yeah. Well, I should, right now it’s, it’s the cancer stuff. Yeah. Dave (1h 6m 7s): Right, right, Gunnar (1h 6m 8s): Right. But once that’s behind us, I think we’re gonna try to go up to Walton and Dave (1h 6m 14s): Doon Gunnar (1h 6m 15s): Pike fly fishing. Dave (1h 6m 16s): Oh, is that up north in Minnesota? Yeah, Gunnar (1h 6m 18s): It’s in Manitoba. Dave (1h 6m 19s): Oh, Manitoba, okay, cool. Gunnar (1h 6m 21s): Yeah, I think it’s in northern Manitoba. Dave (1h 6m 23s): Yeah. Okay, nice. Yeah, that’s right. You, yeah, you’re not far. Gunnar (1h 6m 25s): At least I have to drive to Manitoba in order to fly. To fly in. Dave (1h 6m 30s): Oh, okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Gunnar (1h 6m 31s): That’s where I have to get to, Dave (1h 6m 33s): Man. I know that’s, there’s so much country up there, You know, you guys have just unlimited from where you are, but okay, so we got that. Let’s, let’s again, we, we talked Kelly A. Little bit here, but talk about if somebody wanted to take the Bob Vic’s stuff more, what resource do you talk about his book? Gunnar (1h 6m 51s): Yeah, dude, fly Design is Yeah. Is the best book Dave (1h 6m 53s): And it’s fly design. Why is it the fly design F-L-E-Y-E? Is that, is that actually, does that make sense to you? Gunnar (1h 7m 1s): I’m pretty sure Bob did that because the, i, the, the I spot is such a critical feature on a lot of bait fish patterns. Oh. Dave (1h 7m 8s): Oh, there Gunnar (1h 7m 9s): You go. He kind of did it almost jokingly, like fly, that’s it. Fly. Right. It spells the same. Dave (1h 7m 14s): Okay. Is Bob, is he a joker? Is Bob a joker? Jokester? Gunnar (1h 7m 19s): He’s he’s a salty guy, man. Is he? That’s hard to say. Yeah. I don’t know why he did it, but I know that the, the, the prominence of the eye and the bait fish patterns, especially in the East coast, is something that he wanted to imitate in his, his fly patterns. Dave (1h 7m 37s): Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. Gunnar (1h 7m 38s): That’s where it comes from. Dave (1h 7m 39s): All right, good. So we’re definitely gonna throw some Bob Popik in the, in the show notes, some resources there, but, and a couple random ones for you. And then we’ll, we’ll jump outta here. Do you wanna jump into a few of these rules or, or what do you think this rule segment do? Do you have a couple rules you could throw in here? Gunnar (1h 7m 54s): You know, off the top of my head it’s gonna be pressure, but Dave (1h 7m 57s): It’d be pressure. Yeah. Well you mentioned always fish to your feet, which I think is always Gunnar (1h 8m 1s): Fish to your Dave (1h 8m 1s): Feet is a great rule. I for just fly fishing. Right? Yeah. I mean, that’s a good one. Gunnar (1h 8m 6s): I think the second one was always leave your fly in the water. You know, especially if you’re moving, right? Because when you’re wade fishing, if you’re walking upstream, downstream, you gotta go around a little Eddie, just throw it in the water, drag it, swing it. If you’re talking to the camera, leave it. If you’re showing your friend how to do something, put your fly in the water. In the water, you catch so many accidental fish, it’ll blow your mind. Nice, Dave (1h 8m 29s): Nice. Gunnar (1h 8m 29s): You know, the, the line is mightier than the rock. Right. Understand. Dave (1h 8m 33s): What about tying, what about a, a rule for tying these streamers? Are there any rules for that? Like you like the stuff you tie Gunnar (1h 8m 40s): The rule of one third head, two thirds body. Dave (1h 8m 43s): Oh, one third head, two thirds body. Gunnar (1h 8m 45s): So if you just look at kind of f deformed bait fish, that’s the proportion that most of my flies are tied to. So as far as the thickest, widest most shoulder part of the flies that the one third mark. Okay. Behind the head. Dave (1h 8m 58s): Behind the head. Gotcha. Gunnar (1h 8m 59s): And then it tapers out to a tail from there. And so two thirds, You know, tail body, one third head and shoulders is, okay, that’s food. Right. We talked about that food. That’s food profile. Dave (1h 9m 9s): That’s your typical, typical bait or whatever that fish is. They all kind of have that, like whether it’s a sculpin Yeah. Or they all have that bulky little head area, right? Yeah. Kind of whatever. What about, So what about the rule for choosing the right deer hair for these flies? Any rules there? Gunnar (1h 9m 26s): Fish? Good luck with that. Dave (1h 9m 29s): Yeah, that’s hard because you, you’re the type that goes through like hundreds of deer hides to find the right Gunnar (1h 9m 35s): One. So almost everything we’re talking about specific, just so we’re Dave (1h 9m 40s): Accurate Yeah. Is just Gunnar (1h 9m 41s): Dreamer bucktail, Dave (1h 9m 42s): Right? Bucktail. Right bucktail. Gunnar (1h 9m 43s): We’re talking about the whitetailed deer’s bucktail Dave (1h 9m 45s): White tail deer bucktail. Yeah. Gunnar (1h 9m 46s): And what I would encourage you to do is to not, I’ll give you one of Bob’s rules. That’s what I’ll do. Dave (1h 9m 52s): Okay. Yeah. Gunnar (1h 9m 53s): Never take a long hair and cut it short. Right. Oh wow. So if you need short hair, use short hair, Dave (1h 9m 59s): Get short hair. Yeah. So find the short hair. Yeah. Gunnar (1h 10m 1s): People undervalue it because obviously when you’re tying big flies, everybody wants long hair because you need the length. That’s understandable. But then people will do sacrilegious things like take beautifully tapered long hair and they’ll cut it short to meet a shorter need. But now you’ve cut the taper out of it, you’ve cut the compressible butts out of it, you’ve cut the ability to trap and flare and sculpt the hair out of it. You’ve lost the progression and action and the tips ’cause you distorted the taper of the, the material. So use the length hair relative to the need. Never manipulate the length of the hair, get other tails. Dave (1h 10m 37s): That’s awesome. And what about, are you stacking this hair ever? Gunnar (1h 10m 40s): It’s mostly done in a 360 format. So I’ll stack it on top, shove my thumb into it to get it to move around the hook in a 360 format. But you can high tie, low tie, totally. You can high tie, low tie. You can do like, Bob’s got a 3D fly right. Where you’re doing short belly stacks with long back wings to create the, the silhouette that you want. Something like a bunker belly. They have a really nice deep Oh okay. Profile belly. And the short hair allows you to sculpt it, but it also doesn’t follow around the hook. And then the long hair out the back gets your taper. It gets a nice long, shallow, sweeping back section. But it also helps stabilize the fly with the longer back wings. So, yep. Gunnar (1h 11m 20s): I don’t know why I just said that. I don’t, I forget what you asked, but, but that was my answer. Dave (1h 11m 25s): Yeah. Good, good, good. Well let’s keep this going. So the rule, high tide, Gunnar (1h 11m 27s): Low tie, we were talking about high tide, Dave (1h 11m 29s): Low tie. Yeah, high tide, low tie. What about, what about a Kelly gallop rule? Gunnar (1h 11m 33s): A Kelly gallop Dave (1h 11m 34s): Rule. Does he have any rules? Gunnar (1h 11m 36s): Always fish it before you walk through it. Dave (1h 11m 38s): Oh yeah. Always fish it. That’s a good Gunnar (1h 11m 40s): One. It’s a Kelly Gallup rule. Dave (1h 11m 41s): Always fish it. Yeah. No matter what. Like he loves the, Gunnar (1h 11m 44s): So like people when they walk up to a river, right? We talked about this. People look out, they think the fish are out before you walk through that water to get to that good spot that you think is good. It’s probably not, you better fish through what you’re about to walk through because you’re probably gonna disturb the best streamer water. You’re just gonna blow right through it. That’s Kelly’s point. You’re gonna walk through the good spot to get to the bad spot fish before you walk. Dave (1h 12m 9s): That’s it. Okay. Well, any is that, I think that’s probably pretty good. Do you want any other rules you, you’re thinking about here? That that’s Gunnar (1h 12m 16s): A decent list? Dave (1h 12m 17s): That’s pretty good. I like, I like, I like five is a good number. So, okay. I got a couple random ones that I’ll let you get outta here. And one is on, I saw a video, this was a couple years ago, I think I saw you popped up on social media shooting a gun. And I was like, oh, okay. That, that’s pretty cool. What, what’s going on here with the gun? So are you, are you into the target practicing? What, what was that gun? Did you do that quite often or was that like a one-off thing? Gunnar (1h 12m 38s): No, kind of new to it. I picked it up maybe two or three years ago. And You know, part of it is I’m a husband and a father and I want to be a capable protector. I also feel like I’m fairly levelheaded. Right. And it’s like, Dave (1h 12m 55s): Yeah, Gunnar (1h 12m 56s): I, I want to be capable of protecting life and protecting innocent people and being able to say, hey, like, You know, I’m a civilian, but guess what, these people are under my care. And so I kind of took a, You know, defensive kind of tactical. Dave (1h 13m 13s): Oh, you did. Same class. Gunnar (1h 13m 14s): You know, I’ve, I’ve had nice pistol one and pistol two training from Warrior Poet Society and John Love pretty big on the EDC, You know, kind of everyday carry Glock 19 stuff. Dave (1h 13m 25s): Sure. Yeah. What is the, is that the gun? What’s the, what’s the, is the Glock or what, what is the, the good gun? The good carry gun? Gunnar (1h 13m 31s): I mean, Dave (1h 13m 32s): Are you into that? Are you like the fully, ’cause I’ve had some people tell me about, Gunnar (1h 13m 36s): It’s like fly rods, right? Like I don’t really care about the nicest new, I want the most reliable Right. Thing. Glock 19 is is the most universal, ubiquitous, most military police firearm. Dave (1h 13m 48s): Oh, it is. That’s your standard Gunnar (1h 13m 50s): Ever produced. That’s Dave (1h 13m 51s): Your Glock. Gunnar (1h 13m 51s): It’s a hundred percent reliable out of the box. Okay. Most aftermarket accessories you could ever hope for, like, forget it. Okay. Dave (1h 13m 57s): And is the Glock, is that the style of gun, the Glock? Or is that the name is the Glock, the name Gunnar (1h 14m 1s): Glock is the, the manufacturer. Dave (1h 14m 2s): Yeah, that’s the manufacturer. Yeah. Glock. All, all right. Okay. Gunnar (1h 14m 6s): Nineteen’s the compact size. Dave (1h 14m 7s): Oh yeah. 19. Okay. So you got the, the Glock and, yeah, no, I mean, I I I totally hear you. I feel like I am the same thing. I mean, I, I’ve grew up hunting a little bit right. Deer hunting, so we always had guns around, but, and I think my dad, yeah, we had pistols too, but I just never really into it. But I think, yeah, you, you have a family and you just, you realize like, You know, there is stuff that could happen. So you feel better about having something like that around. Gunnar (1h 14m 31s): I get a lot of crap for carrying in some of my videos. Not a lot. Oh, do you? But Dave (1h 14m 34s): Enough. Yeah. Yeah, you do. Like people are saying like, what, just Gunnar (1h 14m 37s): So I have, I have a 10 mil, a Glock 20 that I carry usually in a shoulder holster when I’m out on the river. And I don’t think people understand that Minnesota has the highest wolf population out of any state in the lower 48. Dave (1h 14m 50s): Oh really? Gunnar (1h 14m 51s): And that entire population is in the top third of the state where I live and go fishing. And we have a pretty healthy bear population. Well, guess what? They’re all in the top third up here too. In fact, I, I get my trash broken into about 10 times a year and Dave (1h 15m 5s): Oh, no kidding. These are, these are black black bears. Gunnar (1h 15m 8s): Yeah. Three or four black bears a year. I’d probably see. And me and my dog walked up on one in the middle of the neighborhood at like 6:00 PM last year. Yeah. Really? So when I’m, I’m, You know, a mile and a half from my truck and nobody knows where I am, and I’m up a creek in the middle of nowhere. You’re darn right. I have a firearm on Dave (1h 15m 26s): Me. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes you feel, and if nothing else, it makes you feel a little better, a little bit better out there in case something happens, You know? Gunnar (1h 15m 36s): Yeah. It takes one mama bear who I piss off and I don’t come home that day, so. Dave (1h 15m 41s): Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yep. Cool. All and the, the other one I was gonna check in, I love in the, on your videos again too, I occasionally see some music out there. What, what is that? Remind us again. I think you’re into the, some of the heavier stuff or what, what’s your, you got any tunes you wanna give us for the Yeah, Gunnar (1h 15m 55s): I’m a Christian Metalhead big to Dave (1h 15m 57s): Oh yeah. Christian metalhead. So, so metal just like, hard rock, loud? Gunnar (1h 16m 1s): Well, no, I mean, it’s metal man. And it’s, it’s not like someone like the, I mean, like there’s, there’s bands who have, let’s say, Christian beliefs and they make like positive music. This stuff is like Preacher Corps, you’d call it Preacher Corps. It’s like super heavy reformed, doctrinally dense. Like for today Sleeping Giant, like old school cool metal bands. That Dave (1h 16m 27s): Is that, is that the name for, for Today Sleeping Giant? Is that the name of the Gunnar (1h 16m 30s): For today is a band, sleeping Giants a band. Okay. Yeah. Living Sacrifice. Dave (1h 16m 34s): Oh good. Okay. Gunnar (1h 16m 36s): Nice. Saving Grace. These guys are intense, but it’s perfect. Dave (1h 16m 39s): All right, we’re gonna, I’m gonna grab some of this from Spotify. Hopefully we can find some of this out here. Those Gunnar (1h 16m 42s): Are my jams. Dave (1h 16m 43s): Okay. Yeah, we’ll throw out in the show notes. Awesome. Nice. Well you’re right Gunner, from the the start. I do, You know, it’s gonna be hard to, because if we could talk about, I think what we’re gonna have to do is just, just bring you back on more regularly so we can kind keep, keep this rolling out, something like that. But yeah man, this has been a lot of fun. Definitely appreciate what you have going. We will like send everybody out, we set at Gunner Bramer on social or check out your YouTube channel. Yeah, man. Does that all sound good to you? To you? We’ll maybe stay in touch looking ahead and maybe put another one together down the line. Gunnar (1h 17m 13s): Yeah, right on. For future talks, we gotta talk about two-handed Musky Casking. Oh yeah. We got some custom lines that we’re working on for those rods, which are gonna be sick. Dave (1h 17m 23s): Okay. Yeah. Two handed Musky, like, like we’re talking how Gunnar (1h 17m 28s): Like, like 10 foot foot compact overhead casting Dave (1h 17m 31s): Rods. Yeah. And you’re doing that because You know, you can’t, because it’s just too heavy. You just can’t cast single hand Gunnar (1h 17m 36s): The swing weight on your wrist when you’re getting Dave (1h 17m 38s): To Yeah, it’s too much, Gunnar (1h 17m 39s): You know, a 12 weight, 500 plus grains and a 14 inch fly. It’s just not, yeah, it’s too much mechanically possible. Dave (1h 17m 46s): So 500 grains. I was just listening to your Gunnar (1h 17m 48s): 500 is nothing, that’s the start. Oh Dave (1h 17m 50s): Really? Gunnar (1h 17m 50s): The two handers go like 600, 6 25, 7 50, like they go way up for that. And that’s a 30 foot head. I mean, you’re talking some heavy gear. Dave (1h 17m 59s): Oh, a 30 foot head with 700 grains. It’s Gunnar (1h 18m 2s): Mind blowing. But you can cast, I was gonna say, you can cast a wet sock. Dave (1h 18m 6s): Wow. Yeah, that, that’s Gunnar (1h 18m 8s): Heavy. It’s, it’s, it’s cool. Dave (1h 18m 9s): That’s heavy. Yeah, the guys went in, actually Tim Arsenal, who just won the spay casting champion at Spay Aama, who’s, I think they’re cast in somewhere in that, I have 14, I can’t remember what the length is, 14, 15 foot rods, whatever they are. But they’re casting like up to 1100 grains sick, but they’re longer, You know, I think the lines are a little bit longer, but still it’s just heavy, heavy stuff. Right. But awesome. Well, I, it sounds like a good topic for the next one, gutter. So yeah, we’ll be in touch man. And thanks again. Gunnar (1h 18m 35s): Alright, thanks Dave. Dave (1h 18m 38s): All right. If you get a chance, head over, check in with Gunner at his YouTube channel, you can do that. Or on Instagram, either Instagram or YouTube. Gunner, bramer. Check in with him, get some streamer tips, let him know you heard this podcast. And, and we’ll go from there if you haven’t already, if you’re new to the show, please follow that show, that plus button you’ve get the next episode, deliver right to your inbox. And in that next episode is gonna be a good one. And that next episode that’s gonna be coming to you next week, we got a big lineup next week. We’ve got a La Toro Zone podcast with Phil Roy, and we’ve got a big surprise. We’re gonna be getting back in even deeper into streamers down in the southeast part of the country. Stay tuned for that big announcement next week. Dave (1h 19m 19s): Click that subscribe button so you get notified. All right. That’s all I have for you today. It is, it’s fairly early in the morning. Nice and quiet here. I’m not sure where you’re at, but if it’s morning, it’s morning. I hope you’re having a good morning. Hope you’re enjoying your beverage. Maybe that’s a, a hot cup of coffee or a cup of tea. Maybe you’re on the, on the vice right now. I’m not sure where you are, but no matter where you are in this country, in North America or the world, appreciate you for stopping in today and look forward to seeing you and talking to you on the next episode. 3 (1h 19m 49s): Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly, swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly swing.com.