Dave (2s): Fly fishing and streamer Evolution owe a lot to the conventional fishing community from Larry Dalberg to the Black and Gold RuPaul. There’s no question that the more you make your fly mimic these lures and the actual wounded fish, the more success you’re gonna have. And today, you’re going to hear from one of the biggest streamer guests in the game, and you’re gonna find out his four step framework to fishing streamers for success. 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 the fish species we all love. Hey, how’s it going? I’m Dave host of the We Fly Swing podcast. I’ve been fly fishing since I was a little kid. I grew up around a little fly shop and have created one of the largest fly fishing podcasts in this country. Dave (44s): I’ve also interviewed more of the greatest fly anglers and streamer fishermen than just about anyone out there. Tommy Lynch, pier Marquette Guide, and Small Creek Fishing Master is gonna share his best tips on fishing your fly. Today you’re gonna find out what the difference is between a would-be predator fish and a suicide fish. You’re gonna find out how to fish each of these differently today. You’re gonna understand why a sink tip doesn’t sink correctly and how you actually make it sink. And we’re also gonna find out what a just dead fish looks like and an almost dead fish looks like to these predatory fish and how you fish it. All right, let’s find out how to catch big fish and small creeks with the swim fly. Dave (1m 26s): Here he is, Tommy Lynch from the fish whisper.com. How you doing, Tommy? I’m Tommy (1m 33s): Doing well, thanks Dave. Yeah, Dave (1m 34s): It’s good to, it’s good to have you back on here. We’ve, I look back at the archives and episode 3 47 was over two and a half years ago. We’ve done a lot of content since then. I think we’re over 700 episodes now, so it’s pretty cool to have you back on. We talked about streamers, we focused on that. We’re gonna talk, you know, a little bit about that today as well. But maybe give us an update. What’s been going on in the last couple years with you? Tommy (1m 54s): You know, it, it’s kind of the same bat time, same bat channel kind of stuff. It’s, you know, I do a lot of that summer trout stuff. You know, we lean into some of the fall winter steel heading. I tie a lot of flies when it gets cold, and then I repeat the same event around the, the end of March there. So Dave (2m 13s): That’s it. So you, and is is the Pier Marquette talk about the rivers, is that still your focus throughout the year? Tommy (2m 19s): Yeah, I, I’ve never been much of a a, a pond jumper as much as a kind of a crick crusader there. They’re, I do like the rivers, I like the cricks smaller streams. I do fish tail waters, and I did a lot in my twenties and thirties when I was always hunting for, you know, the big one. And, you know, you take that bell enough and then you just start kinda, I think you get off by the time the smoke clears as much or more about the eat the individual, eat from the, the fish as you do anything else. So I have seen that, you know, even when I take clients to a tail water versus taking them into a small water, they’re, their visual seasoning on each fish is, is far stronger than that of say, getting a, a tug at distance. Tommy (3m 7s): And then, you know, just remember too, you know, a lot of times when I used to fish leaded stuff too, I mean there was always that one two second interval of maybe is this a snag? Maybe is it a fish? You know, when you’re fishing that visual swim stuff, it’s, it’s all kind of right in your face, you know, they’re picking a fight with you, Dave (3m 24s): There’s no question. Yeah, yeah. Is that pretty much what you’re doing when you go out on a guide trip? Is it all about that swim stuff, the drunken disorderly and, and just, is that mostly what you’re fishing? Tommy (3m 35s): Well, yeah, I mean the, the fall obviously we, you know, we definitely get to mix up the steelhead, the brown trout with the, the strip configurations as we get colder and the ice and the guides becomes a little bit more prevalent. We definitely like to lean on that two-handed swing. This the same time about, you know, the brown start to slip in that bite as you get that 38, 37 degree water temperature, it’s harder to beg from them. The steelhead obviously could care less about that water temperature. But, but yeah, I mean through, I would say, you know, most of summer is, is mice and dry flies, which is great. You know, obviously if there’s a thunderstorm of good proportions, we’ll jump on the streamer grenade. But yeah, it’s, it’s kind of a, we fish a lot of swim flies over the course of the year. Tommy (4m 19s): You’re not wrong Dave. So. Dave (4m 20s): Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And, and what’s, and so the pier Marquette, so you’re, it sounds like you’re fishing the pier Marquette and tributaries to that, or are there other waters out there in that area? There Tommy (4m 29s): Are tributaries to the pm I fish all of those. We have a bunch of surrounding and I’m gonna say unmentionables Dave. Dave (4m 37s): Yeah, sure. Tommy (4m 38s): Just because we, you know, the, the kind of the unsung rule on, you know, promoting I suppose in Michigan has always been, you know, the pure Marquette, Sabel, Manistee and Muskegon have always been on the chopping block for using, you know, in, in the promotional needs and whatnot. And then everything else, there’s a special place in trout hell, if you mention it. So. Dave (4m 58s): That’s right, that’s right. Good. So we won’t talk about that. We’ll talk about some of the, the techniques. But when you’re fishing the, if it’s the pure Marquette versus say some of those smaller streams, are you fishing the, the streamer flies differently? Tommy (5m 10s): I love this Que Dave. That’s a great question. So it’s huge. You know, it’s, it’s like all these sink tips are like golf clubs, you know, everybody wants this, you know, this tried and true one sync tip that plays all fields. And the closest we’ve ever come to that was an airflow surf 2 65 at 26 and a half feet. It was a type five, it was tapered in a triangle fashion so that the handler met the runner. But you could carry 30, 35 on the let go. It was the one line. I could fish in a lot of my cricks and then turn around and go fishing on the biggest tail water I know of, which is rare for a sink tip. I will say most sink tips, especially in those 30 foot ranges, you know what I mean, that kind of limits you to a certain size of river that you’re, you’re gonna gonna tickle that with in order to use the entire head or at least get it out of the rod tip. Tommy (6m 2s): You need some river to do that. A lot of the rivers that we’re fishing are not just a little bit narrower than the average, you know, tail water. But on the same token, they’re pocketed, they’re not runs, they’re not, you know what I mean? There’s, there’s a ditch in a pocket about the size of the hood of a car, and you have to sell that. Dave (6m 20s): Oh, okay. And is this on the larger, is this on the pier or is this on more of the smaller stuff? Tommy (6m 24s): This is on the pier. I mean, the pier Marquette will fish a little differently as you get downstream And it widens and you can get into, you know, some of the two handed applications and stuff. But, you know, I’ve got really four go-to strategies that I like to use with this. ’cause the idea here, Dave, is to get this as close to a jerk bait as humanly possible. That being probably the, the most deadly kryptonite I’ve ever seen work on brown trout, which is the black and gold number 13 rappel, what that lure in its own right has done to the general, you know, trout. It is, it, it is their nemesis. And I believe that the closer we can get flies to move in that fashion, the more likely, not only will we catch more fish, but we’ll get a lot of the visuals that we’ve often lost when we’re kind of jigging the bottom. Tommy (7m 6s): You know, when I got back from Alaska, Dave, I did a bunch of that strip leach stuff, you know, that was that string leach in the early nineties when I came back from, you know, Alaska, we would tie variations of it. We would put the barbells on it And we would jig it. We would put like a little zoo cougar on the trailer hook. Probably half the reason I had to get a new or had a rotator surgery was because of pulling those big bunny leches from the water. And it’s not that we, we didn’t always just get the, the hit deep, but when you’re using barbell eyes, you’re definitely begging from, you know, below the halfway point of the column versus, you know, most of these swim flies we’re using, none of these fish are really tickling under that halfway point of the column, unless maybe it’s sunny or the hole is ludicrous depth or, or something like that. Tommy (7m 53s): We’re very much front seat when that fly’s being considered and then, you know, ended. Dave (7m 59s): So. Right. Right. So you’re trying to get that fly. So let’s just say in general, but you’re trying, if that trout’s down there, you’ve got a brown trout, where are you trying to put that fly to entice him to take it? Tommy (8m 10s): I that, and there’s another good one too. You know, that proximity thing, you know, if I were fishing a grasshopper or a big golden stone fly when I’m coming upstream or, or even the long ball downstream from a boat, you’re trying to kind of present in such an area that you give the fish enough time to notice the pattern and then react to it. This without smashing on the head and scaring the shit outta him, which Dave will still work in super muddy water, but because he didn’t get scared because the water’s pure mud. So, you know, a lot of these, you know, like the four techniques I go with is a down swat, which is a true jerk bait style action where you’re kind of following the train of the line to the water and then you’re swatting through that to intensify that wedge to kinda not only dig in but dart through that dig and then swim out in that, in that kind of jab. Tommy (9m 1s): The straight strip is a pure walk, it’s a sales pitch for the middle of the, the presentation. When you’re walking through the middle, you kind of break that rhythm. So to indicate that the fish is not only moving, but moving erratically, which kind of triggers that. Oh, that fish may or may not be injured, you know, reflex in a truck. Really. That’s the, that’s the bottom line. I mean, if you can get those two pec fins to just make the left or the right in that consideration for you, it’s your fish to lose at that point. You know what I mean? Right. Once he breaks his hold, you know, it’s your job to finish that sales pitch. You know, it’s, and I like to, I really do like to kind of go back, you know, when I was a kid for one summer, I had this job selling Kirby vacuums. Tommy (9m 45s): Yes. And I think I was 16 or 17, I was trying to figure out how to pay for a truck that I probably shouldn’t have bought. Right. And I do remember there was a huge difference between getting in the door to do the shampoo demonstration with the Kirby and actually getting that client to sign the check, you know what I mean? Dave (10m 3s): Right. Like, you could get in the door, but to actually get them to sign what took a whole nother level, you Tommy (10m 7s): Gotta get the sale. Right. So, yeah. You know, and, and I, I go back to the zombie anglers that I see fishing streamers these days. Dave (10m 15s): They’re, they’re at the door, but they’re not making the sale. Tommy (10m 17s): Yeah, right. It’s not like they’re really, so, and I tell this to all my clients ’cause you can kind of see when we’re having a slower day or the bite’s off, sun’s out, water’s clear, whatever, you know, you can kind of see that that faith fade a bit, you know, that that want or that need to see something. And if they start looking at birds, you know, you might as well just start, you know, looking for your tip at the same time. Right. And I have found that when a client is fishing the bug as if it’s being followed by a fish, they essentially fish the bug better. It’s that belief or faith that I can’t give you out of my fly box. I can’t give you Dave (10m 54s): That. No, no. But they have it a little bit. They have it a little bit because they have like the, you know, the drunken disorderly your flies. They have the confidence of you too. You know, I mean that’s why the guide guide trip is so cool, but, and now are you seeing the fish, like how do you get to that point where you know no where it’s at, how far it is away? Yeah, Tommy (11m 9s): In most case in point, I would say, you know, with the boat, whenever you’re coming downstream, your need to throw distance is there, just because that fish is proximity awareness is, is upstream of them. They’re kind of looking up and out away from them. When I’m in my small water though, Dave, I will tell you, you can sneak right up, and I don’t wanna say you can pet ’em, but you can get pretty close in that, you know, that side view mirror without them on a streamer, I mean, we do it all the time with the dry flies, the golden stones, the hoppers, et cetera, et cetera. But to see a fish that’s in that state of relax or consideration for whatever might be coming down next, and then you tune him up with a, with a high action, the beauty of this, this whole crick or small water event when you’re on foot, is that when these fish are coming for you, that that tunnel vision, which is also developed from boat fishing or fishing downstream, but their proximity awareness to your legs because they’re looking that way, is far farther away. Tommy (12m 13s): So like those fish will often spook at 30, 40 feet if the water’s clear versus when you’re coming in that that blind spot on the rear that we’re talking, you know, 10 feet, 20 feet tops, I mean, you can, they don’t know you’re coming. So you get a front row seat to not just him taking the fly, but like from the word angst, like you hit the water, you add those two kind of suicide actions just to get that, that look or that consideration. Then you kill it and that sets off all kinds of alarms in that predator and then it starts moving again. And then at that point you can kind of see those fish break off. So yeah, there’s a lot of visual in there. There really is. Tommy (12m 54s): Yeah. Dave (12m 54s): So the small stuff and, and what is a small, like what would you designate a small stream versus a large stream? Tommy (12m 60s): Well, you know, when I get a day off, Dave, I really like to, I love going up into the cricks and really my prerequisite for choosing each body of water that I might go hike up in is what is the least likely area I expect somebody can cast in. Oh, right. And if you can get into those areas where, you know, basically as soon as it’s a bad cast, it’s in a tree. Those are areas that are not being heavily fished. I mean, let’s face it, the pure Marquette, the skirt is up. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s not, and I’m not saying the pure Marquette still doesn’t fish. Well, I, I, we had a four fish over 20 day there less than two weeks ago with two steelhead bonus mixed in there too. Tommy (13m 40s): But on the same, I will tell you that the level of critique needed to get that done from the average Joe, just because I’ve seen how those fish consider and, and don’t kind of suicide take versus, you know, it’s like when you go down to Argentina or, or Alaska rainbows or basically those shortened growing seasons and the lack of fishing pressure over as many months allows that fish to get less savvy. Whereas on the pure Marquette, you know, there’s, there isn’t a week that isn’t fished five days of by the general population of people. So the year round element of pressure resides in these areas that I’m not complaining too. We have 12 months of fishing here in Michigan. I mean, we can catch crop that’s pretty good 12 months of the year. Tommy (14m 21s): And that’s, that comes with a tax though. And that tax is that fish awareness. Dave (15m 15s): A few of the things you said, I think four things I was calling ’em the suicide actions you put on the fly, but talk about those. So the down swat, you mentioned the string strip or talk about the rest of those. Tommy (15m 28s): So, you know, the straight strip, like I do have somewhat of a system that kind of plugs in just about everywhere. Dave (15m 35s): Okay. Tommy (15m 36s): So like if, if you come down any body of water, you can say that there’s, there’s two types of fish that are in your realm of, of potential on each cast. One is the suicide fish and the other is the would be predator. The suicide fish is that fish that’s sitting right off of a structure right next to the bank, lying and waiting. Like you could throw a shoe at that fish and he might hit that too. The suicide fish, basically all he needs is proof of life. And so when that bug hits the water, I’ll give it a double down swat, which doesn’t gain a ton of traction so much as just puts a very quick walk action plus a little recovery in the Eddie, you know, adjacent to whatever it is I’m throwing at. Tommy (16m 16s): And I let it pause. In that pause, Dave, what I’ll do is I’ll allow that sync tip to achieve. So not only do I give it time, Dave, I will give it slack. Slack is the only way to actually, you know, use a sink tip versus buy one. You know, everybody wants to throw the sink tip and then they wait a second and then the sink tip swings through the current, but it doesn’t really sink as much as it swings. In order to make that sink tip swing, you’ve gotta sink it by basically slackening the line in one of two ways. Either you just outright land, shake out some lines, so not just the front of the sink tip sinks, but also the back end of the sink tip. And I can tell you, you can count on one hand how many people I’ve, I haven’t had to tell that to over 30 years of doing sink tip guiding versus everybody that buys a lot of sync tips. Tommy (17m 4s): But they throw it over there and they just assume, well, it’s a sync tip, so it’s going down. Right? That’s not, there’s a difference between buying one and using one. So in that pause, what I’ll do is I’ll let that sync a little bit in either two ways. Either I’ll shake out that line or I’ll reach directly at the fly to create that amount of slack for a quicker, maybe not as potent of a sink in that death. The suicide fish that’s lying and wading off of the wall has its proof of life. It has a just dead fish mind you, a just dead fish is a better bite trigger than an injured fish. And this is why, right? The injured fish has to be still chased. The just dead fish is fresh and it’s free. Tommy (17m 45s): They just have to go up. It’s like drive through McDonald’s. It’s easy. Yeah. So after that pause and re-sync of the line. So first there’s that initial traction, a little action, a strong pause, and then through the middle I’ll break it up into a couple of variations depending on the topography of the water that’s, you know, between me and that flock. A straight strip is pretty universal. It’ll cover that middle, middle depth and that extra depth as long as the finger is open during the strip, per strip slack allowed, allows the fly not only to regrab sink tip depth, but it also allows that fly to recover four ways to your one versus keeping your finger taunt to the strip line, in which case you have a constant tension on a wedge head that is supposed to be able to move around. Tommy (18m 34s): If that tension is not relaxed to a swim fly. A swim fly is not allowed to swim, it is allowed to only pull color and pulling color is what zombies do, right? You can bird watch while you do the same thing. But after that midpoint of that presentation where I’m kind of burning that center, I always slow down. So the middle part of it is the fastest part of the present. And that’s the tip over what I call the would be predator. The would be predator is that fish that is, you know, usually likely on the draw going down into the deep, sitting out on some bland, shallow wading and surfing through whatever materials coming down. And that fish maybe not in a state of predation given the opportunity will tip into that predation. Tommy (19m 18s): No different than that, that suicide fish right on the wall or structure. I do believe that that sales pitch slowing down and continuing its depth until the last area where you would bring it up through the depth to, you know, start considering a new cast is one of the most under recognized potentials in the streamer ca and I, you know, it’s like you go over to Mayo Dam here below, below Mayo Dam here on the ble, and you’ll see these guys are throwing all these great lakes deceivers or variations of it or you know, whatever, and they’re going down the river. And the guy in the middle is, you almost wonder if they think those oars are cosmetic, Dave. I mean, those things are supposed to be used in such a way to give you always fish your front, you know, the guy in the back is cleanup, he’s the new angle, he is maybe the, the second chance at a fish we did not see that was moving on the guy in the whatever. Tommy (20m 12s): But the guy in the front who’s always being fished by the guy in the middle. And if he’s really good, the guy in the middle, he can start getting that second guy time so that both of the guys are getting prime cast per attempt on tail water. Some of these casts are 70 to 90 feet typically. Mm. Wow. And you’re, you’re doing about the same process where you’re doing a heavy action right out of the gate. A huge kill to allow that sink tip to achieve and then you’re burning that middle. The third technique that I like to use, especially when I’m, you know, if you’re on a tail water and you’re fishing that kind of shallow to deep as they’re known for, which is the bank depth is not that of what’s out in the middle. Tommy (20m 54s): This lift, wiggle, shaking of the fly line on a lifting momentum with the rod in a slower way is just, I mean, you gotta do it to kind of see what the bug’s doing, but it gets very crank baby. Essentially what happens when you have a wedge and you’ve allowed the sink tube to achieve just enough depth as you lift the line. I mean, anybody that’s fish drunk and disorderly knows that, you know, as soon as you go to pull that fly from the water, it’s always smart to make sure that the bug is already out of the water. Because if you don’t, the wedge wants to grab that water as you lift it. And if you realize that, that that wedge is grabbing so much water and not utilize it on a shallow, which is to say this, if I’m trying to fish a shallow or medium bar and I go into that whole sinking of the fly line dictation where, where I want to get a big U in my sink tip to have my floating or neutrally buoyant bug be pulled down to those depths, that doesn’t really play in an area where I don’t need the depth so much as I need a strong action. Tommy (21m 58s): So in that fleeting response, the flatter a piece of water becomes the more we get into the burn. And there’s two ways to do it. There’s the two-handed salt water burn, which I am a huge fan of on big tail waters, especially with a triple, A triple and a jolted two-handed retrieve with a couple of injury breakups in the middle is just ruthless. I mean, it’ll get the biggest fish to, if nothing else, at least consider. And some of the fish that we moved when we were doing these practices with 40 plus air flows, these are lines that we let go, we’re using leaders for sink tips, which is absurd to say 12 feet, but it was necessary to take the bow tension off of that fly head when you’re throwing 110 feet and 80 of that sink tip in the water. Tommy (22m 47s): If you don’t take off some of that bow tension by lessening that diameter of line to the head of the fly, your swim fly is kind of muted by the constant draw of that water tension on the fly line. Does this make sense? Yeah. So that lift wiggle became a great way to keep the sink tip from ditching so to speak. If you, if you were to let it go down, it would go into the shallow and your fly would either be running into the rocks or having no action at all. ’cause you’re just hung up in something. So as soon as you throw this thing 90 feet and allow for just a second of sync with that, you would lift the rod and shake the line abruptly left to right in such a way that that shocking of line would grab the wedge and fast darted ruthless crank beatty looking action. Tommy (23m 32s): And I’ve always struggled to kind of get the fish to take in that, but I could always switch after I noticed the fish came to that, that apparatus of, of presentation. And then you could go back into one of your standard straight, straight strip a down swat, you know, a slow down and then you could finish off that fish. And that was, that was always key. Now, when we got into the two-handed approaches, it seemed like the only way to kind of seal the deal was either pick up the speed or the fish just reacted to one of the jolts versus the rhythmatic way that we would bring like a salt water fly. We are still trying to break this up into a, a jerk bait slash crank bait, like look to it as it moves through that top third of the column. Tommy (24m 15s): And no, I don’t think you need the bottom of the river for, you know, I, I, I fished enough lead when I was a kid to know that these fish are moving upwards of a couple yards for these flies. The idea that I need to rub my nose off the rocks to get him to give me audience, I think is a, a little bit of a re and god willing, my shoulder just loves me for throwing little flies I can throw for three, four days straight, eight, nine hours a day and never screw up my shoulder. But as soon as I start throwing lead, not only am I gonna up my shoulder a little bit, but I’m also gonna probably up my rod the first, pardon my french there, Dave. I’m kind of right. You know, if that lead hits that rod doing any type of that’s, you know, you’re 150 bucks, Dave (24m 54s): You’re done. So what you’re saying is, and we’ll talk more about the, the d and d and some of the fly design stuff, but these four things you talked about in there, which is amazing, the down swat, the straight strip, the lift, wiggle, and then like the burn and what do you call those? Do you call what the four, do you have a, what do you call those four things? Tommy (25m 10s): I don’t know. That’s kind of the procedure. And you know, I would say that it is always up to the angler to identify that the water that he’s about to come through does need a prescribed, you know, the, the PM is not a tailwater. So we have these holes that go from 10 feet to ankle deep in two or three steps. Right? And it’s not to say you don’t have that in ledges and whatnot and the tail waters, but typically a tailwater run graduates, its over a period of time versus having some sandbar boil lifting out down to the, to the river bottom where the next two steps are a sand deposit from 10 years. You know what I mean? So yeah, it’s, you have to be able to use all the arrows in your quiver or you’re, you know, like I said, if you’re fishing these flies correctly, it becomes harder and harder for the fish to say no. Tommy (25m 59s): I’m not saying they’re all gonna say yes, but if you move the fly a certain way, you know, that guy that fishes the rappel every day has, for 20 years, 20 years he’s been fishing that number 13 black and gold rappel. You ask him tomorrow what he is gonna use, guess what? Using a black and gold number 13 propell, it’s not so much what you’re using so much as how you’re using it. Anytime you can enhance those actions, you’re definitely getting that favor to you. But yeah, yeah, I think people don’t fish with enough agenda. They, they try and pull color through the water and they beg and they, they plead for some kind of audience. And instead of changing that presentation or, or consideration for the, the fish in this water temperature or that to fi they changed their fly. Tommy (26m 41s): And I’ll tell you something right now, you’re never, never gonna get any confidence in anything. If you’re changing your fricking fly all the time, how can you believe it’s gonna be hit if you wanna change it, if it doesn’t work in 15 cast, you can’t, you can’t Dave (26m 55s): Do it. That is the worst. Tommy (26m 56s): I don’t like changing flies. Do I have a few colors that I’ll rotate over the course of the day? Yes. But I still, I, I don’t believe that the color of starburst in the bag for those fish matters as much as that it looks like a Starburst square and that it moved like a Starburst square. Dave (27m 14s): Right. And it feels like a starburst, Tommy (27m 16s): You’re trying to get that to where you’re hitting his instinctual responses as much as you’re trying to match some fricking, you know, these guys that are, you know, they’re all about, oh, I want to get this particular color or this kind of effect. And mind you, I, I tie a lot of flies, so I’m all into it. I’m, you know, this is all coffee and donuts for us. I love it. But I would also say that the idea of engineering movement is far better than any consideration of this new material. Does this make sense? You know what I mean? Dave (27m 48s): Yeah, yeah. So what you’re saying is the, the action that you’re putting on the fly with the rod and everything is as important as how you’re making the fly. Tommy (27m 56s): I agree 100%. Dave (27m 58s): But your flies are like the, the drunken dis Let’s just go into that fly a little bit. Maybe we could start back there and talk about what are you fish in, maybe describe that fly, how you tie it, and then how you tie some of your other flies you’d have in your box for what we’re talking about here. Tommy (28m 11s): I have three or four gigantic boxes of all the stuff that I fish from strip leaches. There’s always a fan of a sex dungeon. I think the muddler minnow, by the way, in all variations and sizes is leaps and bounds one of the coolest flies ever created. Dave (28m 27s): Yeah. Is it still good? Do you still fish the muddler minnow? Tommy (28m 29s): Oh gosh, yes. Oh gosh, yes. No, I’ll, I’ll fish. I, I’m, so, I’m, as you know, I’m a crick fiend and there are special weeks of the year where I’ll dive into that brook trout rabbit hole. And if you’re not fishing a Turks and a muddler twice a day all day, you’re just, yeah. I mean, yeah, muddler are killer. I love a muddler for fry season here. You know, when our salmon fry come off, all those little minnows are just in the billions across our watershed. And I’ll sometimes run that tandem on of five weight for folks. And they, they really get off on being able to fish streamers on a nine foot five weight with a couple little minnow patterns. And you look 19 inches of spring fatness and that fish will walk you around on that five weight, like a, a big Newfoundland, you know, take, you know, it’s, it’s absurd to consider that we shouldn’t match the hatch. Tommy (29m 21s): In that case in point, that would be the salmon fly hatch. But during that same window, I have most of my clients that still want to throw, you know, versus the, you know, french fry. We, we have these Big Mac streamers and these fish that are already keyed up for any type of chase are looking to kind of really fill the void as they come out of that winter cold, you know, that post spawn need for calories, that excitement for the water temperatures rising, the incoming bug movement across the, I mean, there’s all kinds of things that are turning that brown trout on in the spring. And I just think that having that, that idea of what you wanna get out of everyday strain, I mean, everybody’s a little different. Tommy (30m 6s): You know, not everybody wants to throw a seven weight with a sink tip and, you know, walk the dog. Some of these folks just wanna show up and flick a couple of minnows around and get the rod bent and, you know, and that’s good enough. They don’t need the full, you know, the full fatman on him, you know? Dave (30m 22s): Right. Yeah. The full thing, which is the, is that the d and d, is that kind of the full fatman, the full Monte Montana? Tommy (30m 27s): Well, yeah, once you get into the, once you get into that, those finer, you know, when you’re fishing a couple of fry, it’s, it’s more of a gallop style presentation where you’re kind of lifting and pop lift and pop. It’s a short dart. You’re just trying to get that inch or two dart here and there just to indicate that, yes, I’m a minnow two, I might be in trouble three, come and get it, you know? Yeah. So, and, and that lift and jerk, which we used on the dungeons and the string leeches from Alaska and, and any variety of, of stuff that we used to fish that was leaded, we, that lift and pop is just naughty. But yeah, I mean that as soon as you start getting into swim, swim, that’s just a whole different religion. I’ll just, I mean, those are, those are definitely two chapters in the streamer book. Tommy (31m 9s): They’re not the same chapter. Dave (31m 10s): Right. Can you describe the more of those flies, like the d and d, how they’re, they’re tied in general, Tommy (31m 16s): You know, like Blaine’s game changer, you know? Yeah, he does. I mean, there are leaded variations of, of Blaine’s and there’s some, you know, keel waiting and whatnot. But if you look at his tail on those little game changers, the way that that do the little flicker, you know, that little tail, I mean, you can’t really, you can’t really do anything. I mean, that’s, fish sees that, and mind you, you should know, I struggle with the game changers a lot in Michigan only ’cause we have a little bit more flow. But in those areas where there are brown trout and the, the flow is low, that fly plays because you can get the wiggle and the wa a lot of the water I fish is kind of moving. So those game changers tend to straighten out a little bit, you know what I mean? Yep. Yeah. They don’t, but that feather game changer, they do with that grizzly, those guys up at Schultz tied ’em a whole bunch. Tommy (32m 2s): The, I think it’s actually called the Feather Game Changer. Oh yeah, yeah. Think you’re right. But the way that those little grizzly saddles kind of undulate in that uniform to, you know, head to tail. Oh, that’s just, that’s, you could just, that’s it. Yeah. That’s, that’s popcorn there. Yeah. That’s just fun to watch. But no, I kind of go the a different, when we get into these swim flies, even those great lakes deceivers, the swim flies kind of walk a, a little different path because of the either neutrality or float recovery in that, that design. So essentially you’re provoking an action that sets off four others on the, on the bug’s own steam, you know, where like if you were to hold the bug in the water, it’s moving for sure that wedge doesn’t let it cavitate. Tommy (32m 49s): But those flanks, the way they’re positioned is to kind of create that paper airplane movement under water. And yeah, I mean, that swim fly definitely has more of a wide glide jerk bait dig style present than say kind of a leechy looking up and down or even, you know, some of those basic fry patterns and stuff like that where there’s, there’s just not a lot of, you don’t need to do as much to make that dog walk, I guess, you know? Right, Dave (33m 18s): Right. Yeah, they’re simpler. So that’s it. So these are, so like the, the d and d is an example of a pretty detailed fly. I mean the, what you’re, what you’ve tied in that is a pretty like high level, is that what you say? Compared to everything else? It’s doing a lot more, Tommy (33m 31s): I would say that you can make a drunk do a couple more things than the average, you know, melted chicken there. Dave (33m 37s): Yeah. Right, right. Well, could you see where would be a good place to see that fly? Is there, are there any videos out there or, I know you’re, you know, Dan, Tommy (33m 44s): Dan White over at 1884 was just asking about that. He says, you know, this summer when the water clears up, we should go down somewhere slow where I can, he is getting kind of, I think he’s gonna get into some of this camera stuff too. I’m fascinated with all the fricking buttons on those cameras. I don’t even want to go into that rabbit hole. I know. So I’m not gonna, I’m just gonna keep my head underwater and let Dan Daniel’s pretty techno like that. I am not, So yeah, Dave (34m 6s): It’s a lot. It’s a lot. Okay. So, but the point is, is that, yeah, we’re describing a little bit here on, on this and maybe let’s, I like the small stream stuff. Thinking about that, if we take it back to the small stream, are you fishing? Maybe talk about that again, what that looks like when you’re preparing to come up to that fish. Tommy (34m 22s): As much as I love fishing a streamer in that small water, and I do, I really do. Just ’cause you can have some, I mean, silly, I mean, I’m talking Dave 40 Browns to hand. Oh wow. No boat, no people, no nothing. I mean, there’s not so many places around that we still can say that, you know, I mean, I’m walking around, I, I live an hour to an hour and a half from, so Century Circle is a, a, a name of a buddy’s guide service and a nickname for the area in which I live in. If you’re standing in Baldwin proper, you are within 100 miles of 100 different trout streams. Oh, wow. Tommy (35m 2s): That’s absurd. You know what I mean? Now, given, I would say one third of those have some type of boat slash raft access. Right. And the other two thirds are hike water. And that water has been utilized tremendously by our spin Ella worm fishermen for millennials. Dave (35m 22s): So there’s lots of, there’s lots of gear fishermen out there. Yeah, Tommy (35m 25s): Yeah. I mean, all I’m trying to do is kind of bridge that gap just a little. ’cause what they had was a naive fish. Now remember when I came up on the pier, Marquette trout fishing was about as popular as, you know, know, like, you know, water skating on, I mean, everybody came here for the salmon and the steelhead and the occasional hex hatch right outside of that trout fishing on the west side of Michigan was a, a very limited, there was definitely a crew of people on it, but it was nothing like the armies that would show up for the migratory. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So those fish back then, were semi naive too, these days. If you want naive fish, you have to go to that place where, you know, all the folks that got sent a pin or were mentioned something on this website or that all of that is a prerequisite to a person still being able to cast in a certain corridor. Tommy (36m 15s): If your cast isn’t, I mean, this is higher learning when you take a fly rod into tight water and then you’re trying to beg 40 foot cast in such a, an arena. I mean, and mind you, that 40 foot cast is not across the river. That’s straight up that river. Yeah. That’s got, you know, these, these rivers are, you know, 10 feet across in a lot of spots. You’re jumping over stumps to get the right angle. I mean it’s, it’s very four by four fishing, but the payoff, the candy day, oh, I mean the, you know, you can see the whites of his eyes when he is eating it. I mean, I’ve had three, like if the water gets dirty enough, I do not. I’ve had five or six fish in just a year bounce off my legs. Tommy (36m 56s): Oh wow. So they can’t find you because they, number one, they get, everybody knows what tunnel vision is from a drift boat. You’re on a drift boat, the fish sees it. They can’t see you. If there’s dirt in the water, he may come up to the side of the boat. But most browns, you know, looking upstream will usually spook at 25 to 40 feet, depending on clarity. When you’re fish in that crick, you’re picking that fight upstream, in which case the fish has to turn downstream. As long as you don’t move your legs, you’re just a fricking log in the water. And they don’t know that. So they’ll come right up to you. I mean, my leaders and, and my leader’s like seven feet for those little small waters, six maybe, which is absurd. People would say, why are you using such a long leader? Tommy (37m 36s): Get gets back to the same thing I was talking about before. If I’m fishing upstream, I have less bow tension on that fly line immediately. ’cause I’m throwing it up current and bringing it down to me. I can fish a five footer if I need to in such an arena. But anytime that I go for the longer cast, and I again, have that bow tension when I’m fishing the pier Marquette, I might be fishing like an eight foot liter with clients and I might go to nine personally if I’m in the lower middle. But usually you wanna have that lower diameter around that swim head so that when you give it that shock, that wedge engaging shock that that bug is allowed to first dive, but then recover with slack. Tommy (38m 17s): Without that slack. All you do have, it’s kind of just swinging at you at that point. It’s not really walking anymore, you know? Right. Dave (38m 25s): So, yeah. But let’s, and I wanna frame that because I love this. I’m getting the picture of fish in these small creeks, you’ve got, you know, tight 10 foot, there’s hanging vegetation, and so are you, are you mostly casting upstream towards the fish? Is that, is that what you’re describing there? Correct. Tommy (38m 40s): So the, basically the way this works out is as I’ve gotten older and, and maybe gotten rubbed the wrong way from a couple of the, you know, the new kids that don’t know what the word etiquette means, we’ve really learned to love sticking headphones in listening to cellos and violins and walking upstream until something starts to hurt. And it’s, it’s really limited by the, the amount of daylight that you have. But you’ll walk for, let’s say anywhere, depending on how quality the wa I mean, sometimes you get into a section that’s just got so much good water, so it, it takes you longer to cover it as you’re working up. Versus other areas where like you gotta walk two or 300 yards down some dumb ass sand or up some sandbar to get to the next good bend where there’s some dark water and structure. Tommy (39m 27s): So, you know, it’s anywhere from, I’d say two miles upstream to, you know, we’ve probably pulled off a couple of five mile upstream walks and then you basically walk back to your truck. Or if you’re lucky enough to have a buddy or something that day, you’d put a car up at the other one. I personally just, I just love hiking as I get older. And, and the beauty of it is, I can say that I fished personally last year no less than let’s say 50 days in the cricks. And I can’t count on one hand how many fishermen I saw. Right. Dave (39m 59s): That Tommy (39m 59s): Is awesome. So, and, and usually when you bump into somebody, it’s some, you know, old timer with a MEP zero, you know what I mean? That’s looking for his two fish to put in the, you know what I mean? And that’s just fine. I mean, I, I’d rather that than, you know, the idea of God, there’s only five boats in here and this is the least of all the launch, let’s go in there today. You know, and I’m not catching like 25 or, you know, I can’t say that anymore, but you’re not catching 26, 27, 29 inch fish with any frequency. This is not like when I was in my twenties, we would go to these tailwaters where we would sometimes fish a day or two before we saw the one we were looking for. Whether or not he got it or not was irrelevant, but you would see those huge fish in those areas that are being, you know, competed by predators with pike and walleye. Tommy (40m 46s): And yes, there was also brown trout in those same bodies of water. And when you’re in there with pike and walleye that that brown trout’s gotta be of some kind of wonderful to kind of keep above that, I’m gonna get eaten size. Right, right. Which really encourages some of those brown trout and said watersheds to start being a predator earlier in life. And it’s encouraged here by our Michigan DNR, our Michigan department of natural restocking, or where you wanna look at that. Yep. You know, these wild browns, they’ll come up and they’ll dump these rainbows out of these things and you can ask ’em directly, what are you doing? They say, we’re feeding the browns. Oh Dave (41m 21s): Wow. Tommy (41m 21s): And it’s true. I mean, these, these, I I don’t know if anybody’s ever seen a trout come out of a banner truck before, but they’re black as knight. I don’t know. Does anybody ever know that the they’re black, black as knight? You guys know what the photos strobe, you know, in their eye thing. You ever read up on that? Dave (41m 38s): No. Uhuh. Tommy (41m 39s): So the, a lot of trout have this involuntary response to the environment that they’re hunting or feeding in, and there’s a photo strobe that lines the eyeball and it’s, it’s goes directly to the brain to allow that fish’s, you know, narrative to kind of keep going. And that that photos strobe. If you’ve ever seen a, a brown trout kind of really light and color disappear across black rocks, they stick out like a golden trout. In the same respect, a wood dwelling trout, one under the bank comes out and he comes out onto a sandbar and he sticks out like a sore thumb too, right? Yep. This photo strobe lightens their hue, their entire fish color kind of lightens or darkens relative to this photo strobe. Dave (44m 34s): The smallest creeks is really interesting. Like you said, you’re, you’re making the argument for it, you know, the fact that Yeah, and I, I agree. No matter when you hike, you know, whether you’re in Colorado or wherever you are in the country, the world, the more you hike, the better chance you’re gonna get away from the crowds because things are busy nowadays. Right? And so indeed, so that’s what you’re saying it is. Like, do a little bit hiking, get on these small creeks. So once you get there, how do you know what the water? Is it just looking for some structure? How do you find the best places to find those fish? Tommy (45m 10s): Well, and, and I suppose that is the one bonus to crawling up into some of these, you know, hole in the wall type of fisheries, is that, with that lack of fishing pressure and then the overall quality of the river, we all understand that structure relative to the width of river, dictates how many trout can use that body. Correct. So if you’re in a tailwater that has two big log jams on either side of the river, there’s still a whole lot of in the middle that’s just rocky and bland, right? Yep. When you go up into these cricks, especially in the Midwest here, I mean, it just gets like Dr. Seuss’s bad dream ugly wood, like the undercuts go up under there and you know, you just, you don’t wanna stick your hand under, you don’t know what’s under there. Tommy (45m 52s): And the, the trees and the tag elders and the way the tag elder bushes promote for like almost zero cast, like, I don’t know anybody that’s walked, you know, if you’re ever walking up with tag elders, you know, in both of your ear lobes, geez, trying to figure out how to come up with a cast. But the payoff is, is absurd. ’cause I, I can fully tell you that there is a difference between making a cast in the spot that looks like everybody made a cast in. Even if you’re in Arick versus a spot, nobody’d want that cast, right? You make that cast guess where the fish is? I mean it’s just, ’cause nobody’s done that. I haven’t seen that before. I’m gonna eat that. That goes back to these fish that are naive on top of which, when you have that much structure per inch of the river, now you’re just gonna bump up your counts. Tommy (46m 40s): And for a long time, Dave, I I just in the back of my head, I thought that those really extra large fish, you know, we’ll call it 25 and up, could not reside in such a small C creek like body. But I, I have been wrong about that. Dave (46m 58s): Okay, so these small creeks, 10 foot wide, you’re finding 25 inch fish or you can Tommy (47m 3s): I it that’s a rare bird and, and you know, half the time you find one you’re just trying to walk up through some mess and your foot’s kicking around under this or that and boom, he comes out in the sandbar just to flip you off and Right, he’s gone and just, you know, but sometimes you get lucky, like last year I personally broke as far as stream non lake enhanced. We have a couple of situations here in Michigan where they’re not lake run per se, but they’re not exactly stream resident. Oh right. They’re kind of in that middle ground and those are all asterisk fish. But as far as four stream residents that I caught at or over the two, four mark, two of those, or rather three of those better than 25 this year, which is good. Tommy (47m 46s): Two of those fish we’re in water where you never made a cast without looking at all four corners of you. You know what I mean? It is tight. The sales pitch is short, it has to be devastatingly potent. Dave (48m 1s): What was the sales pitch on those? On, on one of those big ones? So Tommy (48m 4s): When you’re throwing upstream, number one, you have to remember that the wedge of that drunk is based upon some type of water current grabbing it from a boat’s downstream. And you don’t really get away from that when you get into the crick ’cause you still need that grab of current to get the walk of the dog even in the downstream fashion. The way to use that is that that bow tension, so if I’m fishing directly upstream, I would fish directly upstream to the right or just to the left to create a u in the sink tip. Essentially I make the cast, you drop the sink tip in the water and allow the current to grab it so that you foul that entry of sink tip from the rod tip to the water and do whatever sales pitch you can on that angle as the bug comes down and beside and then below and then up to you. Tommy (48m 52s): Oh, right. But I mean, again, the visual, I mean, at the long spot, the bug is, is passing you 10 feet away. So if somebody’s on it, you get to see it from there. If you’re lucky enough, you’re walking up the crick and there’s just enough color that you can make the shadows out on the bars and whatnot, and you can set that prescribed cast, like you said, like where you get the from the go kind of thing, versus being surprised by his, his trailing. Right. If you’re not surprised by his trailing, well, I will tell you, as much as I like casting at the one that you can see on the barn, you can tip him into all that predation and watch him from the word go. I still get off on that surprise. Tommy (49m 33s): Oh, damn there. You know what I mean? Oh, right. You know, I love weren’t even expecting that Jack in the Box event of having that fish come from nowhere, then he is all over you. He wants to, you know, it, it is just, there’s so much, whether he gets it or not at that point, I mean the eye candy from that, that encounter, those are the stuff we put in the wallet. Dave, Dave (49m 52s): This is perfect. So, I mean, I think that what you’re painting the picture here of is that, you know, yeah, you can site fishing, you might have some of that, but just being in a small creek, finding what you think is good structure in the stream, and some of these places are gonna be so small. You might just, you have one place to cast. You do what you said there, and then that fly is coming back down to you and you do the things we’ve talked about today to make it, give us some action. And that’s kind of what it takes to start to get a little bit of action with these things. Tommy (50m 15s): Yeah. And they’re, I will, it’s again, higher learning. I mean, if you get good at crick fishing with a streamer, I mean, and this coming from the guy that teaches moving boat, you know, etiquettes for all of this. You get good at Cricking while trying to add action to a fly that’s coming at you in the current. And then first off, even making the cast in such a corridor, I mean, there you are definitely getting, you know, the forces with you. Dave (50m 39s): Yeah. You’re high level. Is it harder to catch fish on a creek versus the, the, the bigger stuff? Tommy (50m 45s): There’s two ways to answer that question. One, it is terribly hard to learn how to fly fish and catch fish in a C creek. Okay. There is a, I mean, that learning curve basically says anytime you do it wrong, you have to either retie or get it out of the tree. So I would say if you’re a good caster, is it easier to catch big fish or in a tail water? Geez, I’m gonna have to go with the crick. It’s the fish per mile. It’s their unawareness. I mean, I know a lot of people have been fishing for five or 10 years, but I don’t know a great deal of people that have been deep into this for, you know, three or four decades. So if they knew what the fish used to feed like when I was a kid, they would reconfigure what their good day of fishing was in the same body of water in today’s terms. Tommy (51m 34s): So if you know those two differences and, and where we are as as a whole in fisheries and where we’re going, I don’t think, yeah. I mean, with a straight face, I can tell you those fish are more naive in the crick, but it comes with the toll of you got a cast in there, you know what I mean? Dave (51m 52s): Yeah, exactly. What about on the timing? We talked about it when this episode goes out. It’s probably gonna be late February, early March. What, when are you getting started on some of this, this trout stuff? Tommy (52m 1s): Well, I kind of go on the weather windows this time of year. I mean, I have four or five year-round trout only cricks that are kind of close to me. And I can always kind of engage those whenever, whenever the wind, I mean, I’m not saying that streamer fishing is better in the winter fish. I’m not saying that, but as a streamer fisherman, you always want that eat. You’ll do, you’ll put on the extra two layers just to go see it. You’ll get a little sweatier walking back to the truck and, and your fingers might get a wee bit cooler than they did say on a late may day. But, but you can still get it. So I’m not saying, you know, water temperature and streamer fishing really do, I mean, on the pier Marquette, because we switch from our brown trout right into our steelhead season, there’s always that overlap, right. Tommy (52m 47s): But that magical temperature where browns really start to kind of slow down. I will tell you that the post spun, you know, everybody wonders what the pros and cons to this window and that window are. You know, obviously, you know, the spring shark attack bite is probably the most prolific eat of streamer versus just, you know, eats per how many f like in the fall, you might move 40 or 50 fish with 30 of those being, you know, 10 to 14 inches and you know, a handful of ’em being worth talking about. Right? Yeah. And you only get four or five fish even out of the little ones to hand over the course of the day, because in the fall it’s a fending bite. It’s not a feeding bite. They’re trying to kind of weasel you out of their water. Tommy (53m 29s): They’re trying to, you know, covet that area, in which case they give it. And you can tell in the bite too, Dave, you’ve seen the, that bite on the fall. They just, they come up And we call it the fall ger, which is a friend of mine, Brad Turner, who’s working on the Missouri out there, and Craig now, or he’s outta Wolf Creek actually. But, but he, he called it the fall gerr because if you’ve ever seen a dog grab a chew toy, you know, when they grab that chew toy, oh, they’ll grab it, they’ll shake their head, right? Kind of g and and, and they don’t actually, you know, in the spring you see something totally d it’s like a full shark attack. You don’t actually see the fish come up and grab the tail so much as you’ll just see a flash and that fish turn around and t-bone the, the fla, that’s a feeding bite. Tommy (54m 10s): And the post spawn is a feeding bite. We refer to it as post spawn because it’s in the realm of them finishing spawning. But it’s far different than the pre spawn bite where you see that g and that that chew toy type fending bite. You know, in, in the late season when that water starts to cool off, all those little ones that we rolled in the fall are gone. It’s like you’d, where they’re just not in the river. It’s hard to move smaller fish as the water cools off. However, the brood stock fish, the fish that were the most active, the two primary spawning pears on the bed, these fish will pardon my French themselves to almost death. Wow. You know? Yeah. And that’s why they kind of get on this, this post spawn. Tommy (54m 52s): If I don’t eat something now, it’s gonna be 32 degrees and I won’t be able to chase anything. Right. And, and so you see fewer fish, but the quality, or I shouldn’t say quality, I should say the size of the overall fish coming to that fly in the post bond is bigger. The quality of the fish is somewhat this year, for some reason on the pm they’re all fat. I don’t fully understand why this year, however, most fish you catch in the post spawn in years past are either, you know, we call the, the hens, they’re kind of methed out. They’re all, you know, skinny and flat tired, and they kind of fight like wet towels and the bulls, they don’t look much better, but at least they’ve got the big head and the shoulder. Tommy (55m 34s): And, and, but you can tell they’ve, they’ve been going at it with their, their other male counterparts. But again, that commitment, you know, in that post bond through the, the winter, you don’t roll the numbers. You certainly don’t, you might roll a dozen a day, but of that dozen now in the post bond, seven or eight of those might’ve been in the 20 or better inch class. Gotcha. Dave (55m 54s): Okay. So each, each time has it. What about when you guys are tran, when does that brown, what trout vert to steelhead transition take place for you? Tommy (56m 1s): You know, year to year, it’s gonna vary based upon when winter shows up on West Michigan here. But typically our stream trout will start to, you know, that heavy spawn is usually right around Halloween. There’s a two, two and a half week period from about Halloween through about, I’d say the gun opener, which is the 15th of November, where like that fall ger that we talk about, it’s still somewhat there, but you can tell that the population of fish is in the act of spawning because your commitment just goes to s it’s just weak. Right. You know what I mean? Yep. And it’s usually coincides about the same time you see a couple of those browns on beds around the river is about the same time. Tommy (56m 43s): You’ll really lose that fall ger. And there’s a two and a half week period where you’re out there, you’re begging for whatever brown trout would give you an audience or possibly a steelhead that just came outta Lake Michigan. And we do a lot of that. I mean, that steelhead on Dave (56m 58s): Oh, you do? So you’re doing both. So like on the same trip you could catch a brown or a steelhead? Tommy (57m 1s): Oh, very. No, I’m setting up for that. And I can do that right up until about the end of November, about the end of November, the daytime he temps will let me or not let me engage that strip fly just because the ice in the guides, the, the fingers, you know, it starts getting a little too much for the, you know, the weekend warrior to come up and, you know, let their fingers go to without feeling before they turn around and say, do you got a hand warmer or so, you know, something like that. And Right. So we go to that swing fly, which is all two-handed and perfect too. ’cause about the same time that brown trout bite is really hard to key up on is about the same time the steelhead bite really starts to tip in. So we’ll get the two handers out, we’ll start swinging glitter, you know, a lot of enos intruder variations and, and really anything with, I mean, I’m not even sure how much it matters what you swing in front of ’em, as long as it’s got some disco and fight into it. Tommy (57m 53s): And, but yeah, they that, and the weird part is too, Dave, is over the course of the winter while you’re swinging for steelhead, sometimes deep in the winter, like February, you will pick up one of these post spawn fish that are taking a swung fly, which is against just about every grain in the book for brown trout. Oh wow. Save the fish that’s bordering on starvation, knowing it’s gotta get through the winter, you know? And, and you’ll see those fish die. I mean, you know, around the middle, later part of November, you’ll see those fish that didn’t stock up enough calories to go into their spawn. And again, they, they kill themselves in the act of getting it. What you No kidding. Not a bad way to go, Dave. Dave (58m 33s): Right? That’s true. They’re probably, yeah. They’re, they’re going for it. That’s the one thing the fish have on the some on it is they’re, they’re, they go hard. They go hard, they don’t mess around. They Tommy (58m 40s): Go hard. Dave (58m 41s): They don’t mess around. So, and then the steelhead, obviously we’ve talked tons of steelhead from all around. I don’t think we’ve talked as much. I mean, well we have talked pier Marquette, but talk about that. What is the, the steelhead run there? Is that, is that the wild one of those wild runs? Talk about a little bit. Tommy (58m 55s): Yeah. We, you know, there was this big study done by Great Lakes survey and you know, you wanna check probably my exact numbers, but I’ve memorized ’em enough to regurgitate a little bit. And they have found that basically if you catch a wild steelhead, which there are plenty of in anywhere attached to the Lake Michigan basin, that’s Illinois, Wisconsin, you know, up the entire west side of Michigan, 94%, are you ready for this? Blew my mind. 94% of every wild steel had caught out of the lake Michigan basin comes from the little manistee or the pier Marquette river. Oh wow. Blew my mind. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s, there’s a half a dozen other rivers on the west side that are promoting some type of wild natural reproduction, which really gives me a, i I don’t want to turn into the corner of the tragedy of what we do to our fish or, or debt. Tommy (59m 46s): I mean, I haven’t taken money doing that tragedy, but as you know, here in Michigan, the big black eye on our fisheries is that we allow an army of would be poser fly fishermen to show up to our rivers for three months of the year to snag wild fish off their beds. And the guides and lodges around here encourage it. Save one, huh? Dave (1h 0m 5s): No kidding. Tommy (1h 0m 6s): Yeah. It’s really a bad, and I don’t want you to think I’m clean of it, Dave. I took money when I was a kid doing it, you know, nobody was telling me the wrongs and the rights and everything, but I Dave (1h 0m 14s): So this was in the, this is the springtime what you’re saying is the, the fish are spawning and there’s actually people catching spawners on the reds. Yeah. Tommy (1h 0m 21s): Oh wow. Like with this chunk of duck, you know, everybody thinks I’ve got such a, a heart on for the Euro guys. I really just don’t, I have this level line discussion with our, you know, possible lawmakers or chapter entities and all this. And the level line band would help get rid of the snagging and, and all that. And really what it would do is just help cope with the traffic of it. I mean, the tragedy in Michigan is, is I don’t know how serious the DNR would be about actually making snagging truly illegal in Michigan. ’cause right now we’ve got this like, where it’s, it’s illegal to snag in Michigan, yet we allow thousands of people to dress up like fishermen and fly fishermen, you know, rig up some variation of either yarn bear on a hook or, or just some fancy nymph that some lodge sold ’em for $2 just so that they can play either glorified mouth hockey with these fish off their beds or Oh, or outright snag ’em. Tommy (1h 1m 17s): Dave, I won’t lie to you. Yeah. What they do to the salmon here all wild again. Dave (1h 1m 21s): Oh, the salmon. Like what salmon are you talking about? The, the chinook or Tommy (1h 1m 24s): The Chinook salmon. Yeah. The coho actually here tend to eat really well. Like our cohost salmon are terribly ready to apply. I’ve caught ’em on the surface no less. Dave (1h 1m 33s): Oh, what And are the cohost salmon actually is doing this? Are they spawning in the wild too? Is Tommy (1h 1m 37s): It wild? Correct, yes. And for some reason that Pacific salmon is much like a silver or, or rather like a chum in that they don’t really, that fending bite for them is, is an actual closer to a feed than anything like sockeye. When I got in Alaska, sockeye don’t eat anything either. You snagged all them. They tasted really good ’cause they ate nothing but plankton. They had no teeth and Oh yeah, they tasted incredible. Which I guess in some ways made it okay to snag them when they were coming up the river. And, you know, they’re kicking on the bank and their filets are on the grill. I guess I can get there, I don’t know. But what we do here in Michigan is, is basically we sell a farce. These folks are promoting, you know, Michigan fly fishing for salmon and steelhead in the spring and fall, in which case they never learned fly fishing because they’re giving four monkey nuts in a mono running line to and say, chuck it out in front of those four black stripes in a foot of water. Tommy (1h 2m 32s): Right. And I’ve, I’ve heard of a lot of people that have written letters to, you know, Orvis and, and all these other different entities saying, you know, I’m not exactly sure what you’re endorsing out there, but it’s, it’s some shady and nobody really wants to talk about it, David. Dave (1h 2m 46s): No. Well, why couldn’t you, couldn’t you just close down when they’re spawning? Like close those areas off. So you say, Tommy (1h 2m 52s): So, and that’s one of the options that I would also be up for. And I’ve said, you know, what if, if we can’t, you know, clean up the regulations to kind of cope with this tragedy, maybe we should just close it like regular trout streams and, and I’m, I, I would be for anything that gets that black eye out of our rivers and, and, but the tragedy of that would be to say that we have to close down a blue ribbon section of trout stream because we cannot regulate Dave (1h 3m 20s): Our Oh, so that’s it. Yeah. So you’d have to close down. There’d be other implications. So the brown, so people wouldn’t be able Yeah, that would be tough to do because the browns are actually fishing. Yeah. They’re probably eating the eggs with those spawners. Right? Oh Tommy (1h 3m 30s): Gosh. The egg trip I used to be able, I can’t do it anymore just because of the amount of salmon fishermen that are in our rivers. You know, when I was a kid used to be able to stay in the upper river and egg brown trout behind those kings. And I mean, Dave, it was, you know, like 10 dozen fish in the 20 inch class in a day. I mean, just dumb good. I mean, they were drunk on caviar. Right. And it was disgust. But now you can’t, because now because the army is so big, instead of having that lower river concentration of fishermen all the way till the end of September, like years past, if somebody even says they saw salmon in the flies only section, now you’ve got some amount of Johnny Colemans, you know, spending the night in these big holes. Tommy (1h 4m 15s): And then as soon as two or three of ’em get up on gravel, which is really the best time, the the beginning is the Browns will eventually get over fattened on the caviar, you know, come second week of October, you’ll see a couple of ’em out there. But they’re like, when you catch ’em, Dave, they’re burping eggs all over the world. Right. I mean, they’re just, it’s disgusting. And the way we used to really just, I mean, very visual too. I mean, you could see like five or six browns behind each one of these salmon beds, and you’d have a nine foot five weight rigged up with basically the very lightest amount of shot that you like, like one bb you know, type of thing. And then you’d run like two very small eggs. Tommy (1h 4m 55s): And the trick was that, that I found as I got deeper into that game before I was basically shoved out by this goen army, was you would make the glow bugs basically on the smallest hook you could. So that when you went to go fish through or just behind the kings, that the hooks wouldn’t trip the kings and they would still get behind them. Yeah. You know, it’s, it was very, very similar to what we did in Alaska. Yeah. And, you know, for the rainbows behind the, the salmon. But it was, it was just really, I mean, you could do some bad, you could really get some dumb numbers of fish and now we can’t even fish it. Dave (1h 5m 31s): Oh, you can’t fish it. Yeah. Tommy (1h 5m 32s): Because that army of fishermen now is up in the top of the river by the second week of September. You know what I mean? So yeah, you’re, you’re limited to maybe a week in that first week if you’re lucky. You know, I mean, I, I usually stop my mouthing in there now before Labor Day because there’s already people in the top of the river system, not the bottom, in the top of the river system looking. Remember that army of salmon fishermen was X big. Right now it’s like four times X Dave (1h 6m 1s): Big. Oh, it’s way bigger. Tommy (1h 6m 2s): So you know that that kind of spill off as it moves up. River has basically washed me out of a lot of those that said the rivers for trout in Michigan don’t actually close until the last last day in September. Right. So now I’m able to get up into these sections of river the cricks as it were, and get away from the, the guys that are trying to land 20 and 25 pounds salmon, which can’t really be done if you get cricky enough. So if you crawl up into those cricks, not only will you get a fantastic late hopper bite, but anytime you come across one of these beds, there’s 20 browns like it used to be back in the day. You know what I mean? Yeah. Tommy (1h 6m 42s): And you can, you can ting ’em all off and it’s creepy how bad they want it, Dave. I mean it’s, yeah. It’s like patch fishing without the blinders on, you know? Dave (1h 6m 51s): Yeah, yeah. Gosh. So, so things are definitely changed. So things have changed over the last 20 years. There’s, there’s more pressure, there’s more people. And so you just, you’ve changed your tactics it sounds like a little bit. You still fish the pier Marquette though? Oh Tommy (1h 7m 2s): Yeah. No, that’s, it’s across the street here. Yeah, Dave (1h 7m 4s): Yeah, that’s right there. You’re still doing that. So that’s, that’s, and then what we’re talking about here is these guys that you know and who doesn’t want to catch a, a salmon for the food Right. For the table. Sure. You know, but that’s, that’s what’s going on. Guys are out there wanting to catch a steelhead Tommy (1h 7m 15s): Or a salmon table. Oh no, no. I wish it was. Yeah. I, I really wish it was Dave. These guys are living in some kind of, you know, little fantasy land. They, they buy all their, their gear, they’re sims this, and they’re winced in that and they’re, you know, they dress up to the nines and all their fly fishing attire and then they go out there and they snag fish and Oh Dave (1h 7m 34s): Really? Oh, so this is a different thing. This isn’t the guy just trying to like, put food on the table Tommy (1h 7m 38s): For the kids. I’ve more coose for the guy that’s down there in the bottom of the river snagging with a spider so he can put three on a stringer and take it home and eat it. Then the guy that dresses up in all this Halloween costume dressed like a fly fishermen to go out there and impale fish with flies. It’s not fish. Dave (1h 7m 54s): Yeah. So that fisherman, that’s interesting. ’cause that’s the fisherman that’s got plenty of money. So it’s really not about putting food on the table, it’s more about catching maybe a first fish, maybe their new to. They Tommy (1h 8m 2s): Just want that hero shot to go shoulder all their buddies at the office is Dave (1h 8m 6s): All the hero shot. Right. Wow. It, it is interesting because I think we all go in phases in fly fishing. You know, you start out wherever you are, you know, you Right. You haven’t caught a steelhead and you want to catch a steelhead. I mean, think of that, right? The person who’s never caught one, that’s a challenge. We’ve, I talked to ’em, you know, occasionally through the podcast that that’s like, and then, but once they get their fish, they start evolving. Right. And then they maybe start to get into swinging from, you Tommy (1h 8m 28s): Know, whatever. Right. But it’s also up to the stewards to kind of set that tone as a guide. If I take you out there and show you how to snag fish off their bed, you know, without them eating a fly, I have shown you nothing. Dave (1h 8m 40s): Why? So that’s the other thing. So now we factor in, you got that, but then you actually have guides and lodges that are showing that are like promoting this, Tommy (1h 8m 46s): Oh, this, this is their main Dave, I I can tell you there’s two entities in town here that would not be in business. I mean, bar none. Like this isn’t even up for debate. Right. If they shut down snagging fish with fly rods in the flies, only of the pier Marquette, there would be two lodges and probably 15 guides. That would be Dave (1h 9m 6s): No kidding doing Tommy (1h 9m 7s): Vinyl siding or, or plumbing or Right. You know, it, it certainly wouldn’t be fishing. I’ll give you a for instance. The one of our local lodges endorsed up the wazoo, yada, yada, yada. I haven’t seen a fly rod in their boats this fall. They have spinning and pin rods with beads. Oh yeah. So, and this is supposedly a fly shot. This isn’t like an all gear thing. This isn’t kind of like a mix. This is a fly shop endorsed by a fly outfitter. Huh. And these folks will get in the boat on a fly fishing trip and you will not find a fly rod or reel in that boat. Dave (1h 9m 46s): No kidding. Tommy (1h 9m 46s): You will not fish an egg fly, you will fish a pegged bead. You know why? Because none of these guides should be guides. They don’t have the ability to teach anybody because their only claim to fame is taking hero shots with fish kinked off the gravel with, again, mono runners. If you don’t know how to fly fish and you’re a fly fishing guide that runs it, you kind of hit a wall on, on what you’re, you’re able to accomplish. And it shows, it really shows. So. Dave (1h 10m 16s): Right. It’s interesting. Yeah. These, I mean the, I think this is the extreme conversation because we’ve had the talk about euro nymphing versus just regular fly fishing and you know, is it fly fishing because you’re not, are you casting, you know, and that always comes back to it like you have to be casting, Tommy (1h 10m 29s): Well, you know, Euro nymphing is the, well, it’s a terribly effective way to catch a fish on a fly. And it’s a terrible way to learn how to fly fish. I’m not saying that the guys in pa are, are not doing some, you know, very needed presentation for their descrip pocket water and making it work for the masses and whatnot. Here in Michigan though, we’ve kind of diluted our euro nipping and it’s giving our chuck and duckers a base for religion. Oh. Because now because there is euro nipping, now they’ve almost self justified what they’re doing on the beds. And it shows also here in Michigan, ’cause in pa I noticed most of those guys are actually looking for a bite. Tommy (1h 11m 9s): And most of the guys here in Michigan are too. However, I will tell you that at the end of a Michigan Euro nfer drift, there’s this weird twitch, this lifting, probing, I don’t know what you wanna call that. But at the end of their drift, they’re plucking and ripping. And I asked them, did you get a bite? And they said no. And I go, well why did you set the hook? Well, just in case. Just in case. What? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And what that is is in Michigan is them snagging at the end of their drift. Oh Dave (1h 11m 41s): Wow. Tommy (1h 11m 41s): It’s this probing lift where they never got a bite, but they wanna make sure they couldn’t come up with something on the end anyways. You know, fly fishing is supposed to be hard. Yeah, it is. You know, this isn’t supposed to be easy. And anytime we’re trying to gray that line, dumb it down, oversimplify it for the sake of numbers, you oughta just get a night crawler and a spinning rod and get it. Dave (1h 12m 4s): That’s right. You Tommy (1h 12m 5s): Know, once you’re there, why, why go anywhere else? Dave (1h 12m 8s): Which is fine, right. If you wanna do the night curl and spin rod, like in some situations, that’s great. Tommy (1h 12m 12s): That’ll lot fish my nims every day of the week, you know. Dave (1h 12m 15s): Exactly. But, but that’s not fly fishing, that’s Tommy (1h 12m 17s): Not word. That’s not fly. And no, nobody gets into fly fishing because they, they want the easy, they want the sport and you’re not gonna, you know what the thing about spin fishing is, it’s terribly effective also if it’s not working, it’s like watching paint dry. Do you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. You know, with fly fishing, I’ve always said fly fishing is the improvement of in between those windows of potential. Where a fly guy can show up to the river with the best bite in the world. But if he doesn’t have the skills, he’ll do nothing with it. You know, it’s probably half the reason I don’t like fish and leaded streamers anymore. You know, I, I do, I believe that fishing right off the bottom was something big, hairy, ugly, couldn’t work maybe Sure, sure could. Tommy (1h 12m 58s): But, but then I couldn’t see it. And if I set the hook on something that I wasn’t sure was a fish before I did, you know, I just, I think there’s parts of that sport I lose by going there. And the, there’s a, a gray, maybe even thinner line between that and fishing and pat’s rubber legs off the bottom than there is on what I’m doing. I mean, I, I think the line between me and a jerk bait as far closer than me and a nymph when I’m fishing the swim fly. Dave (1h 13m 24s): Yeah. The jerk bait. Who is the, you mentioned dahlberg, I think just briefly, the Dahlberg and Dahlberg Dalberg Tommy (1h 13m 30s): Is the, the fishies man on the Planet Dave (1h 13m 32s): Barn. Yeah. Do the Dahlberg diver, is that, who are some of those, who are some of those more, I know Larry kind of does a lot of different stuff, but who are some of those gear type more, not the fly guys, but the guys that you’ve learned from that have been big influences? Tommy (1h 13m 44s): Oh, I, I wish I, I could come up with like some bass master or, you know, I, I mean I was, you know, when I was a kid I had a hat signed by Babe Winkleman shook his hand, watched all the bill dance and rolling Martin videos I could muster. That was when it was like the only fishing shows to speak of. Dave (1h 13m 59s): Oh yeah. Roll. Right. Tommy (1h 14m 0s): And I would say my biggest influences John Kessner, there’s a, a fellow here in Michigan, he doesn’t even fish that much anymore. And I had a pretty good cast when I met the man, but he really oversimplified it down to some core values. I’m not even sure if he knew how to tell people how so much as if you watch somebody do something enough, you can see pros and cons in, in all of the maneuvers that and the old timer with the rappels man, jeez. Beats, you know, I mean these guys, I mean they tell you so much about, you know, everything in fly fishing we’re doing is some direct knock of something in conventional, you know, Ming under a indicator is float fishing with a night crawler or a spawn bag and you know, streamer fishing is to, you know, rappels and spinners, even swinging flies for steal it. Tommy (1h 14m 49s): Is that a back trolling hot and tots and wiggle warts and wiggle Dave (1h 14m 52s): Warts and spoons and stuff like that? Tommy (1h 14m 54s): Yeah, I mean, you know, save dry fly, everything we’re doing is trying to knock. So, you know, I gotta tell you, there’s only a couple of guys that I fish with these days if I do fish with somebody and both of those guys happen to be spin guys. And the reason is, is I believe I’ve hit my head on the Western Michigan ceiling of what I’m gonna be able to, you know, draw from this. It is just, there’s not a lot of people that are in my situation, they have to spend three months of the year snagging fish off beds, which gives a man like me a lot of time to figure out some other shit in some other places. Yeah. But those spin guys, man, you watch those guys work plastic through the water. Dave (1h 15m 33s): Oh, they’re good. Tommy (1h 15m 33s): I mean, it’s not that they’re good. It’s, those baits are good. And if you watch those baits enough, those baits kind of give up some, some tells that those brown trout have, you know, the, the way it moved, the way it turned, he fished that piece of water. I mean, certain things like there’s a scenario where we fish in these really shallow sandy, some of our rivers have sandy bottoms and there’d be these trees that are laying half in and half out of the water. And the depression of water in front and behind that was only a foot up and a foot down. There was no hole per se. And the way these fish would use these things made known to me by these crank base. Tommy (1h 16m 14s): I mean there’s only so much I can do with a fly by comparison to what they can flip into and get quick actions. Oh yeah. But to see some of the places that they were getting their origin of, of chase from started turning some lights on in my head. You know what mean? It just makes you look at the, the fly game differently, even though again, we’re trying to mimic that conventional approach in some way as it is a more potent one as a general rule. Dave (1h 16m 39s): Yeah, definitely. And I was thinking, and I can’t remember the connection ’cause we’re, we’re, you know, Schultz is just across the state, right? Like down there out of Yep. Kind of Detroit. What’s your, there’s obviously Kelly Gallup and stuff. What’s your connection to the other guys out there? Tommy (1h 16m 53s): I always like the, the Schultz crew just because, you know, you get these trout guys that all want to go fishing with Tommy and they think that, oh, ’cause they’re in the boat with Tommy, they’re just gonna catch a two footer within the next 20 minutes. Right. I wish people knew how many freaking hours we spend in between those, you know, and, and so with Schulze’s crew, it was always nice because whenever parts of their, their client base would make it up here, they were always small mouth broken, you know what I mean? These guys were already in tune with throwing something that wasn’t a Adams, you know? Yeah, right, right. Dave (1h 17m 24s): They’re Tommy (1h 17m 25s): So, you know, you get this guy who’s been fishing 20 years with hatch flies for trout and in, in his own right as a master of that entity. But you ask him to throw big chicken and, and it’s just like hunting with Ray Charles. It’s, It’s tricky. So if, if you get guys that are kind of cut with a similar cloth, that being a big fly, you know, higher grainage lines, even bigger rods for that matter for the query, it’s easier to kind of build that bridge between the two warm and, and cold water, you know, targets. But you know, Kelly, when Kelly was back in Michigan, I did a few salmon and steelhead trips when he was still back in town. And I do remember I bought a really nice sage rod from him when he had the troutman up there and I think Oh right. Tommy (1h 18m 10s): Probably the last time I was ever up there. I, I think, Dave (1h 18m 12s): Oh, that’s right. So Kelly had a, was he, did he have a shop or that’s where he started, right? Was Michigan. Tommy (1h 18m 16s): Yeah, Kelly was here in Michigan guiding at first, then he bought the troutman shop up there in, in Traverse City, did a really good thing for those trout fisheries up there and, and that he brought that brown trout out a little bit more than it I, I suppose had been up there. I mean, he really got into the trout fishing. He started doing some of the, you know, the non-migratory tail waters and, and you know, he, he kind of dove into the rabbit hole. Obviously Mark ti was a big influence on us all back here when Mark ti I talked to him just the other night. Oh really? Yeah, he’s, I he’s gonna write a book here too. You should be looking out for that. Oh, awesome. Dave (1h 18m 54s): I haven’t talked to him yet. That might be a good guy to follow up with. Yeah, Tommy (1h 18m 56s): You should talk with Mark. He is pretty much a striper East coast guy, but he’s got his that’s great foot and plenty of that, you know, that trout stuff. He, he gets around, he was probably the first person I’m aware of or really anybody’s gonna be aware of that was throwing the really big down there in Arkansas. And I’m talking like, you know, late eighties, early nineties. This is, this is back before it was a thing And it was, it was a thing for those guys. He was, he was as much or more into the night fishing then, and even probably even more so now, just because the streamer bite is kind of, I don’t wanna say it’s dwindling on the white, but the fish are certainly savvy now that there’s, you know, 25 boats a day throwing chicken at ’em. Dave (1h 19m 39s): Right. We’re actually heading down to the white down there, I think later this fall. And I think we’re not going to really be focused on streamers, we’re gonna be focused on whatever, you know, just to have a good time. Tommy (1h 19m 48s): Yeah. We’ll take a spay rod and a beetlejuice with you that’ll, that’ll turn all the lights on for you, even though it’s dark out. Okay. Dave (1h 19m 55s): All right. Good, good. Let’s take it outta here real quick with our random segment here. And I want, I want to go back to the, at the start, I love you were talking about vacuums the sales of vacuum And we were talking about getting in the door, making an analogy between that and fishing. But what was that like? So do you remember that pretty well? So you get in the door, what was your sales pitch? How the ones that made the sale, how were you, how were you doing that? Do you remember that pretty well? Tommy (1h 20m 18s): You know, you could say there’s presentation points in both. I think the excitement, you know, if you got excitement in your presentation is Yeah. Dave (1h 20m 26s): Like they know, they know you have a good product. Yeah. Tommy (1h 20m 28s): There’s life there, you know, and that’s the same thing with a good streamer. If you sell that, if you sell that excitement, that life that it just, it pulls ’em out of whatever dead sit that they may or na may not be in or the fence. And you know, sometimes people just tell you to get the hell out. And there’s plenty of that in the brown trout world too. You know, they just turn, look at just say nice chicken and you know, swim away. Dave (1h 20m 49s): Exactly. Well isn’t that what I mean, that’s the funny thing is that fishing at sail, that’s what it is. It’s like outta 10, you know, you’re gonna probably get nine that say no. Oh, Tommy (1h 20m 59s): That flies always just the hook around the boulevard. You gotta get in the car man. You gotta get in the car. Yeah. You can’t just talk at ’em through the window. You gotta get in the car. You know that I, I really do believe with more and more people fishing these days, you know, I, I know that I’ve had to modify even with the drunk a more, I don’t wanna call it strict, but definitely abiding by certain rules based upon, you know, this cast depth, that flow this time of year, et cetera. It’s, you’re trying to make educated guesses in almost like a, a match the hatch, you know, discipline, but you’re trying to do it in this creative mess of movement, not some exact dubbing and size of hook. Tommy (1h 21m 42s): Alright. So that discipline comes in, in your ability to sell that, that life, that excitement and, and make that fish just unable to ignore you. I mean, you know, at a certain point, brown trout, there’s only a small percentage and on those days where the bite’s good, there’s a higher percentage of would be predators. Before you put the boat in the water, they were set up to kill something. And then the rest of the time it’s all those fish that are on the, either the brink of being a predator, that is to say that they’re semi hungry and they take what they, they were offered if it looked right, et cetera. It’s your job to kind of dictate what, going back to Dalberg, there was this Pat Seaville guy he used to fish salt water with the two of them together were the, like a meeting of the mines. Tommy (1h 22m 29s): Anyways, this Pat Seaville guy was in the boat and I think they were thrown for either big GTS or, or little tuna, I can’t remember. They’re be using these big pop bugs, you know, those big loud, obnoxious rippers on Oh yeah. Anyways, they’re out there and this pat sea belt turns around and he says, you know, in those days when you know the bite is just that good and you’re using something and you have that confidence in something and your ability to stay with that, something kind of is, is the live and die of whether or not you’re gonna have any more action. And what he said was, was against that. He said, when you notice that you’re fishery, wherever that might be, you’re local too. When you notice that not only that they’re biting, but they’re, the bite is on, like it’s happening is to change around either some patterns or some presentation or colors or whatever. Tommy (1h 23m 18s): But that’s your, that’s your your your kind of test tube on those days. And what you’re trying to do is not just find out what’s working. ’cause on those days to some level, everything’s working, you know? Yeah. It’s to find out what stands out, what not only works, but what works better, what works exceptionally better. What what stood out on that day when I switched, you know, five or six different variations. Variations. So when I change flies, I typically change flies when the bite is just stupid good. And I’m not changing flies to really better my situation so much as to find out which one stands out. And then on those days where the bite is not on, I can take that knowledge that I got from that day and apply it to a day. Tommy (1h 24m 4s): And typically that bug that stood out that day when they were just snapping at barrel hooks is also the one that still works when they’re not, and I’m not saying it’s gonna work as good as it did the day the bite was creepy. When that barrel drops and flattens like that, you know, we, we never know what those fish are gonna do, especially if it drops twice and flattens those fish. Just go a and you’d swear bear hook works and then you’d show up the very next day when the barometric has gone straight up and leveled out over 30 points and you’d swear they need to plant the damn river. The same one that you slayed ’em in the day before. Yeah. So I think it’s, it’s that constant trial and error that make us all better fit. And I, I gotta say something as a whole to just everybody that’s getting their feet wet in this stuff is don’t deprive yourself from the meat on the bone. Tommy (1h 24m 51s): And the meat on the bone isn’t always knowing what works or reading what works or listening to what works or taking that knowledge somebody gives you so that you can apply that knowledge so that you might be productive in that event. I would tell you the meat on the bone in fly fishing is not knowing. Is not knowing and going out there and going through your own trial and error and when those lights come on because you did something right. Man, I gotta tell you, I think a lot of folks these days just they need to put down the, the OnX, which right, I’m guilty, I use it. I mean, myrick endeavors have gotten very frisky enough ever since I’ve known right. Tommy (1h 25m 33s): Where I can and cannot walk. But for the average guy that’s trying to get his, his real money’s worth out of fly fishing, it’s not the destination, it is the journey. And if you guys wanna know it all before you show up, you’re missing the meat on the bone. You really are. You wanna go out there and say, man, this looks kind of fishy. Or I don’t know anybody that’s fished here. It kind of looks trouty. And when you catch a trout out of a piece of water that nobody told you to go to that nobody said, ah, probably, probably nothing even in there, it’s a little, it’s a little small or I haven’t heard too many people fish in that this time of year, all that go there, be that guy that, you know, gets his lights turned on. Tommy (1h 26m 14s): ’cause that’s the, that’s the full cup of coffee here. That’s not that, you know that bland folger. Dave (1h 26m 20s): That’s right, that’s right. I’d love it. What are you a coffee drinker in the morning? Tommy (1h 26m 25s): You know, I, I’ve been known to slam some coffee, some of those monster iced teas. I, I’m a caffeine nicotine, you know, I abide, I try and bow to my addictions. Is is, Dave (1h 26m 34s): That’s right. Yeah. You got, you got it. I could. Yeah. That’s awesome. Nice. Well Tommy, this has been great. I think we will maybe leave it there until the next one. I think this has been awesome today. We’ve had another great conversation and you know, there’s always so much left on the table, you know, I think steelhead might be a, a thing and talk more. Pier Marquette. You Tommy (1h 26m 52s): Let me know, Dave. We’ll do Dave (1h 26m 53s): It. Awesome man. Well thanks for your time. We’ll send everybody out to the fish whisperer.com if they have questions or want to connect with you on trips and things like that. And yeah, thanks again for all your time. Tommy (1h 27m 2s): Well of you, Dave, Dave (1h 27m 4s): Your first call to action today is check in with Tommy, let him know you heard this podcast and, and let him know if you have questions. If you’re interested in one of his trips, check in with Tommy right now. If you get a chance, follow this show, apple Podcast, Spotify, click that plus button. Or if you’re on something else, check in with me. Let me know what you’re listening on today. I would love to hear that. All right, quick shout out the Togiak River Lodge. We just ended the giveaway and we’re gonna be announcing that winner actually tonight as we speak. You can go to check in with me if you wanna hear that. We’re gonna be live on Facebook, on YouTube, and maybe even on Instagram tonight. So if you’re interested in that and you’re catching this on the date this episode comes live, we’ll be live there for that. If it’s after that fact, we are gonna be selling a few spots to Togiak River Lodge, and this is gonna be focused on a number of species, but we’re gonna be heading up there for Chinook Spay fishing for Chinook on the fly. Dave (1h 27m 54s): Send me an email, dave@wetlyswing.com, put Chinook fishing in the subject line and I’ll follow up with you and let you know what we have for availability on this trip. It’s gonna be epic, Togiak River Lodge. And one shout out before we get outta here. The Laur zone is up next. Phil is back. He’s back baby. He’s back for another big episode. We all love the Littoral zone. Phil brings it every week and he is gonna have, I believe it’s Brian Chan, episode two two of the Best on One podcast, and it is gonna be Epic Littoral Zone podcast. All right, off to the next one. Hope you have a great morning, great afternoon, or great evening wherever you are in the world. And even if that is, if even that is up in Canada, maybe you’re up in Alberta and, and you’re up there in Alberta right now. Dave (1h 28m 40s): If you are, I’d love to hear from you. Check in with me, send me an email. If you’re hearing this right now, you’re from Alberta, dave@westlifeswing.com and just let me know Alberta in the subject line. I would love to hear that, that you heard this episode. Thanks again and I hope you have a great evening. We’ll talk to you soon. Outro (1h 28m 54s): Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly Swing.com.