In this episode, we sit down with Jerry Kustich—bamboo rod builder, author, and one of the pioneers of Great Lakes steelhead fly fishing. From his off-the-grid cabin days in Idaho to building rods with legends like Tom Morgan at Winston and starting Sweetgrass Rods, Jerry takes us on a soulful journey through decades of fly fishing evolution. You’ll hear about his early fishing adventures, the rise of the Great Lakes fishery, his passion for writing, and the powerful stories behind the rods, rivers, and people that shaped his life. If you love stories that go deeper than just catching fish, this one’s for you.
Hit Play Below to Listen to Jerry Kustich on Bamboo Rods, Steelhead, and Sweetgrass.
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(The full episode transcript is at the bottom of this blogpost) 👇🏻
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Show Notes with Jerry Kustich on Bamboo Rods, Steelhead, and Sweetgrass
From Seminary to the Stream: Jerry’s First Fly Fishing Quest
Jerry’s fly fishing journey started in the 1970s—right after he left the seminary and set off in search of adventure. Inspired by Joe Brooks’ book, he loaded up his truck and drove west with one goal: catch a Dolly Varden. That road trip led him to northern Idaho, where a local helped him reach a remote river. He caught the fish—illegally, he later found out—but more importantly, he found where he belonged.
He built a cabin, lived off-grid, and learned fly fishing one cast at a time. With no internet and few books, it was all trial and error. Later, his younger brother started fishing New York’s Great Lakes and soon they were both chasing big fish, big water, and big dreams—coast to coast.
Mapping the Great Lakes: Jerry and Rick’s Steelhead Adventure
In the early 1990s, Jerry and Rick Kustich set out on a bold mission—to explore and fly fish as many Great Lakes steelhead rivers as they could. They were told it couldn’t be done. Fly fishing for steelhead in these waters wasn’t common, and swinging or nymphing flies was considered useless. But they didn’t listen.
They traveled across the region, fishing around 75 rivers and learning by trial and error. From Lake Superior’s remote shores to New York’s tight tributaries, they not only proved the doubters wrong—they helped pioneer fly fishing for steelhead in the Great Lakes. Their work eventually led to the book Fly Fishing for Great Lakes Steelhead.
The Story Behind Sweetgrass Rods: From Winston to Legacy
Jerry shares the inside story of how Sweetgrass Bamboo Fly Rods was born. After decades of rod building and working alongside legends like Tom Morgan and Glen Brackett at Winston, Jerry and a small crew walked away from the brand when the vibe shifted—clock punches and corporate culture didn’t mix with bamboo rod making.
Sweetgrass started with no plan, just passion. But when Glen began getting flooded with orders after leaving Winston, they built something new. Jerry didn’t want another rod company named after a person—he wanted a legacy. Sweetgrass was born to last beyond its founders, built on craftsmanship and soul.
Now, the torch is being passed to a new generation, with David Serafin carrying on the tradition in Livingston, Montana. Jerry’s chapter in that story ended in 2013, after the loss of his wife and a brief adventure in Mexico, but Sweetgrass lives on.
A Song for Ruby
Jerry isn’t just a rod builder and writer—he’s a songwriter too. During a tough time in his life, Jerry wrote a sweet tune for a little girl named Ruby, the daughter of his friend Jack. Jack had Ruby at age 63, and the connection between them inspired Jerry to create a heartfelt song. It’s called “Ruby” and you can find it on Spotify and Apple Music. It was recorded as part of a local music project in Virginia City, Montana.
How Jerry Kustich Became a Writer (and Why He Keeps Going)
Jerry didn’t set out to be a writer. But living off-grid in Idaho gave him time to read—and dream. Books by Robert Traver and Patrick McManus sparked his interest, and eventually, he started writing his own stories. It all began with short pieces on birds for a local Audubon newsletter. That led to a weekly bird column in a Montana newspaper. He wasn’t paid, but it forced him to write every week. Later, when he published his first book, At the River’s Edge, that same paper gave him a full-page feature—and his book took off.
Now, Jerry’s written multiple books, keeps writing articles, and even mentors others. His advice? If an opportunity shows up, take it. Don’t wait for perfect. Just go.
The Stories Keep Going
Jerry sees writing and storytelling as a way to pass things on. Just like Joe Brooks once inspired him, Jerry now inspires others through his books and life. One fun connection? He recently had a beer with Joe Brooks’ nephew—right in the same region Joe used to fish, the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake Bay. Jerry says everything in life seems to come full circle.
He also reflects on the “golden age” of fly fishing, which he says faded in the early 1970s with the decline of bamboo rods. But a new wave came in the ’90s, sparked by A River Runs Through It and carried forward by people like Lonnie Waller and Lefty Kreh. They were the bridge from quiet tradition to the big, modern world of fly fishing we know today.
From the Great Lakes to BC: The Spey Revolution and a Steelhead Life
Jerry had a front-row seat to one of the biggest shifts in modern fly fishing: the rise of spey rods in both the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest. Back in the ’90s, few people were using two-handers in British Columbia or Michigan. But Jerry saw it all change—he went from skating Waller Wakers on the Bulkley River to swinging flies in the Manistee. He and his brother were part of the early wave proving that yes, you could catch steelhead in the Great Lakes on swung flies.
At Winston, Jerry pushed for smaller spey rods when most people were still casting 15-footers. He helped bring the idea of the 11-foot Great Lakes spey rod to life, even when others scoffed at the region’s potential. Years later, that “cesspool” comment about the Great Lakes fishery didn’t age well—it’s now one of the biggest and most vibrant fly fishing scenes in North America.
Fishing, Music, and a Life Well Traveled
Jerry never planned to be a world traveler, but one trip led to another—and suddenly, he’d fished for Atlantic salmon in Quebec, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, and chased summer steelhead in places like the Dean River. His favorite salmon fly? The Green Highlander. And when it comes to comparing Atlantic salmon to summer steelhead, Jerry says salmon are “majestic,” while steelhead fight with grit.
His best advice for younger anglers with big travel dreams?
- Look into guiding—many travel the world and get paid for it.
- DIY trips are still out there, but they’re harder to find (and more expensive).
- Don’t rush into buying a fishing house in the tropics—rent instead.
Now living in Maryland near the Chesapeake Bay, Jerry fishes for stripers and other species close to home. He’s also a lifelong musician and folk-rock fan, inspired by legends like Jimmy Buffett. His favorite song to end the day with? Knee Deep by Jimmy Buffett and Zac Brown.
As Jerry says, “It all kind of ties together.” Fly fishing. Music. Soul.
You can find Jerry at sweetgrassrods.com.
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Read the Full Podcast Transcript Below
Episode Transcript
Dave (2s):
Today’s guest is one of the pioneers of Great Lake steelhead fly fishing. He’s chased steelhead across nearly every state, Canada and Russia, and is known for his soulful voice of fly fishing literature. In this episode, you’ll hear some incredible fly fishing history, amazing stories and surprising lessons that will leave you inspired on your fly fishing journey this year. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, And what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. Jerry Kustich, Sweetgrass Fly Rods owner and fly fishing innovator is gonna take us on a vast journey of his knowledge of the history of fly fishing and how it all started with this cabin. Dave (45s):
He built this off the grid cabin he built out west in Idaho, And it all started there. And how he’s worked around to connecting and working with Tom Morgan at Winston Rock Companies, how he turned that into Sweet Grass, the bamboo and fly fishing Renaissance movement. So much good stuff here today. I’m just gonna get right into it. So without further ado, here he is Jerry Kustich. You can see him at sweetgrassrods.com. How you doing, Jerry? Real Jerry (1m 12s):
Good. How are you, Dave? Good, Dave (1m 14s):
Good. Yeah, it’s, it’s great to have you on here. We’ve, we’ve had your brother on Rick a number of times here. He’s, you know, got a bunch of stuff going on. We’ve actually, I fished with Rick too, which has also been amazing. We did a trip out. Oh, I didn’t know it. Wow. Yeah, we did a trip out to, we are, we called it our steelhead school, and we did a trip with Jeff Liga and Rick, and Rick was out in our New York, and it was awesome. It was really cool. We had a good, good crew out there. So, but we haven’t really touched base with you. I’ve heard a lot about you Sweetgrass, rods, you know, your books that you have going, you’ve been called some pretty amazing things, the soulful voice of, you know, of fly fishing literature. I’ve heard some things out there and, but we’re also gonna just talk about, just in general, what you have going. Dave (1m 54s):
So first off, give us an update. What’s going on this time of year with you? It’s, I guess we’re almost into April. Are you, are you fishing this time of year or more hanging low? Jerry (2m 2s):
Yeah, I’m starting to, I don’t, I’m not as aggressive at fishing as I used to be. I’m pushing 79, but yeah, I just was out last night on my kayak. That’s primarily what I do is fish outta my kayak now. And I was on the Susquehanna River looking for some stripe bass, which have become more of a, more of a mythical fish these days. The have gone down considerably. At least they’re, it’s not like they’re gone, but if you have a boat where you can travel and chase ’em long distances, it’s one thing. But the places that I usually find fish, I’m just not finding as many anymore. So it’s a, it’s been kind of frustrating that way. Dave (2m 42s):
Gotcha. Yeah. So Kai, so that’s something maybe we will, we’ll talk more about, you know, as we get into it. But, but let’s take it back ’cause we’ve heard Rick’s intro story to fly fishing. I’d love to hear yours, you know, so do you have a first memory of fly fishing? Have you been doing this a while? Yeah. Oh Jerry (2m 57s):
Yeah. I, yeah, it’s one of those things. I write about it in the early seventies. I don’t know, I don’t want to get too much in the weeds here. Yeah, go for it. But, but I was in the seminary for eight years and I left the seminary, I was teaching school in Utah and left in 1972. I was going to continue to teach and get my master’s degree. And at one point I just decided, and I was sitting in class and I said, I’ve had enough education, I guess that, that I just kind of wanted to just go off and look, you know, and discover what’s out there. So at that time, it was in 1975 and I had been reading Joe Brooks’ book, trout fishing, And it just captured my imagination. Jerry (3m 45s):
He was traveling all over the world at the time. It was unique because fly fishing travel wasn’t that common back then. And, and I saw a picture of a dolly garden, which is now a bull trout and char and hanging on a, a log, and I think it must have been the Flathead River. And I just wanted to go and catch one. So I, I, that was my quest. I hopped in the car, or in my pickup. I packed up everything I owned and was living outta my truck looking for a dolly vardon. Wow. And one road led to another. I went through Montana and I was kind of a hippie looking guy at the time, and Montana wasn’t too much, I don’t think, into hippies then. Jerry (4m 29s):
And they kept saying, sent me down the road and essentially to northern Idaho, which was where the hippies were. Right. And I met a guy who was a minister in the, I met him in a restaurant, corner restaurant in Priest River, Idaho, which was ironic since I was studying to be a priest. And he said, you know, I know a guy who could probably get you into a dolly garden. So he took me way back up into the back woods, and I met this guy, John Landon, his name was, and he was an artist, his wife was an artist, and they built somewhat of an artist type of house in the middle of nowhere. Jerry (5m 11s):
And he took me out fishing up into what turned out to be illegal water. It was closed, but I did catch a dolly garden. I didn’t catch him though, on a fly at that time. I was in fly fishing. But I knew this is a place I wanted to be. And as it turned out, John was from Buffalo, New York, which is where I was from. And then I found out, I told that story to my parents when I was telling them on the phone. They became very quiet. And then they asked me why did I end up in Priest River? And, and I just told them, and, and they said I had an uncle who in 1993 had died in Priest River, Idaho. Jerry (5m 54s):
Wow. He was working for the Conservation Corps, the CCCs at the time. So I kind of felt that was probably where I was meant to be. So I, I ended up buying a piece of land, building a cabin living off grid. And within that same timeframe, started to fly fish and met someone who knew someone and how to tie flies at the time. There wasn’t, other than Joe Brooks’ book, there wasn’t much written about how to fly fish, where to go to fly fish. What year was that, Jerry, when you started that? It was, I built the cabin in 1976. Jerry (6m 34s):
76, okay. And from there I ended up getting a job. I worked, I, so I lived in a cabin in the wintertime off grid. And then I got a job with Forest Service in central Idaho on the Locksaw River, just about 60 miles from Montana. And so it was just perfect. I was able to fly fish, the lock saw after work every night. And on the weekends, every weekend I’d head to Montana and fish someplace different. And it was seated. Your, your pants fishing. I really, I just learned one cast at a time. I mean it, you know, just, there was no shortcuts to learning. Jerry (7m 17s):
It was just kind of like, you just had to do it, unlike nowadays where you can pick up any of this information easily. So, so, so it was fun. But I, that’s the, that’s the thing. And at that time then my brother figured into it, he was, he’s 15, 15 years younger, and he used to come out and visit me for a week or two and we’d traipses around Montana primarily, and then go up and stay in my cabin as well. So, and he at the time was, I think, thinking about coming out to moving maybe to Montana. But at that same time, the, the Great Lakes, he was, we grew up on the Niagara River, and at the same time the Great Lakes were coming back strong. Jerry (8m 0s):
And he was one of the, well, probably one of the few people not, there wasn’t a lot of people fishing that magnificent fisheries in the late seventies and early eighties. And he used to tell me over the phone these great fishing stories of these big fish. And he wasn’t, at that time, he was fly fishing, but he wasn’t thinking in terms of using a fly for the big fish. And we talked about it and, and he started swinging big flies up there and Ira probably in the late seventies and the early eighties. And it, you know, never looked back. And from that, you know, I, from, I was tempted to come back. It was, it was so good, but it, so I was able to kind of do a little of both every year. Jerry (8m 46s):
You know, eventually moved outta Idaho into Montana in 1983 and was able to fish all around Montana and then hop in the car and spend four or five, six weeks in, in New York. And it, as I got more and more into working with fly rods and making fly rods, I’d do two short trips, two to three week trips a year to New York. So, so it’s kinda an overlay of how all of this works. Dave (9m 18s):
That’s amazing. Yeah. So you basically had this west, you know, you exploration, right? You’re out in the west. And I wanna hear more about that too, about this cabin off the grid at the same time. It’s really interesting ’cause your brother, you guys are kind of picking up, it sounds like fly rods, although you’re older, so you kind of picked it up first, but doing your own thing on the east and the West Coast, is that kind of how it worked than your exchanging stories as you went? Jerry (9m 40s):
Oh yeah, it was, I mean, you know, and that was, that was a neat thing. And although he was a little more in his younger year, he, he is sort of been able to travel a lot more obviously as he got older. But we’d pick up all these different stories and we’d, you know, TRAs after him, whether it was the, another river in the Great Lakes or another place out west. And, and it just kept on doing different things. That was the thing. And it was more inspired. All of this for me was more inspired. It wasn’t a matter of, I always examine it, it wasn’t a matter of the catching of the fish, it was looking for the fish and these journeys that would take me to different places. Jerry (10m 22s):
And that, because I was inspired by Joe Brooks. Joe, that’s what he, at least that’s what the, his book indicated is that he just loved, you know, loved going to these different places and catching different species and different situations. Right. And Rick shares that same, same gene, I guess. Yeah. And between us, we’ve covered a lot of water. Dave (10m 43s):
Were your parents into like outdoors angling or any of that stuff? Jerry (10m 48s):
Not at all. My dad, he’d go fishing. I often, I’ve written about it, my uncle and my mother’s father. So it would, my grandfather, they, they fished regularly and, but my dad would go, he wouldn’t go on his own and he would go fishing if someone asked him. But if he had something better to do, he wouldn’t Dave (11m 10s):
Go. He didn’t do it. Was your grandfather fishing in, was he like conventional or fly fishing? Jerry (11m 15s):
Oh, no, just conventional. Yeah. Dave (11m 17s):
Out, out in the east out in New York. Yeah. Jerry (11m 19s):
We lived just about probably a quarter mile from the Niagara River, unfortunately, when the Niagara was pretty, pretty polluted. But he, And it was still fish around, but it was pretty crappy. A lot of, a lot of the stink and all of that, a dead fit. Dave (11m 33s):
Oh, right. Jerry (11m 34s):
And, but he’d sit on an old cement dock and catch bullheads and sheephead freshwater drum and, and some bass. You get some bass and, and some perch. There was still, there was still smattering of different fish around. Dave (11m 48s):
Wow. This is great. And so, and you mentioned a few on the book, so, and we’ve talked about that book quite a bit. ’cause that is a huge book. The what, what is the big, the first steelhead book you guys did? You and Rick did. Jerry (11m 59s):
It was, yeah, I think we just called it Great Lakes Fly Fishing. Dave (12m 3s):
Yeah. Great Lakes Fly Fishing. Jerry (12m 4s):
Yeah. Yeah. Rick and I, at one point in all our discussions, I think it was in the early nineties, we recognized that this was a great resource. You know, I was working at Winston Rods at the time. Oh yeah. And then in early, I think in 1991 is when I started building bamboo rods with Glen bracket there. And Rick and I realized there was just a great resource throughout the Great Lakes. We’d been talking to different people in the different states, and there was steelhead in every river at the time. And one of the places that had a, a better history of, of steelhead was Michigan, of course. Jerry (12m 46s):
And then, then there were remnant populations up in Lake Superior of fish that probably, that nothing was being stocked up in Lake Superior. And, and there were words coming from a lot of the north shore rivers that there were still steelhead up there. They were smaller fish, but they were linked to fish that were planted way back in the late 18 hundreds. So we embarked upon a several year mission to explore as many rivers as we could possibly explore around the Great Lakes. And, and our intention was to catch a steel head out of every river in the Great Lakes. But that never came to fruition because there were so many lakes or so many rivers. Jerry (13m 29s):
But on the other hand, we, we explored a whole lot of ’em. I think we probably caught fish out of about 75 of ’em, which was pretty Dave (13m 36s):
Wow. 75 out. How many, how many are there? Or how many were there then? Jerry (13m 40s):
Oh, I, you know, I, that was a good question. I don’t know if I ever come up with the exact number, Dave (13m 45s):
Like the bigger ones, right. Jerry (13m 47s):
Yeah. There’s, there’s probably at least a couple hundred river streams that carried steelhead. And so I, I was charged with doing the western part of the lakes. And, and so I, a couple, I mean at least three or four times, I did the Lake Superior to North Shore, and I stopped at different rivers. I hooked up with a couple different guides every now and then. And not knowing really what we were doing at the time. There was, that was the thing. We were not only exploring rivers, we were developing techniques. The catches fish Dave (14m 22s):
Right by with a fly. This was with the fly. Jerry (14m 24s):
Yes. And at the time, in the early, in the mid eighties, I had started steelhead fishing on the West coast, and especially in Idaho. It was the Salmon River, And it was swinging flies back then. But we were told that it really can’t swing flies in mon or in, in the Great Lakes to catch a fish. You know? In fact, they’re never, a lot of, a lot of guys said, you’re never gonna catch a fish on a fly in the Great Lakes. It’s tributaries. And, and so we were fighting a lot of just local lore that it wasn’t possible. And so, but we kind, you know, we’re nim fishing for ’em. We didn’t really think in terms, because this, the water was a little confining on a lot of the, a lot of the rivers that we were just fishing and just nipping techniques and, and we were starting to catch some fish, you know, and said, bologna, you can catch fish on a fly. Dave (15m 18s):
Right. Were you that early nipping, were you guys doing like eggs or stone fly? Jerry (15m 21s):
Yeah, yeah, eggs. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then there was just a variety of blow bugs and, and as, as eggs and little flashy little things and Yeah. You know, and, and so that was, that was the original technique. And we were defy, essentially, I’ll have to say we were defying the odds because not many people were doing any of that. In fact, I don’t think anybody was doing it. Dave (15m 45s):
What year is this now? Eighties. Jerry (15m 47s):
This would’ve been the early nineties. Dave (15m 48s):
Early nineties. Yeah. So early nineties. Great Lakes. Yeah. There’s not many people out there swinging, flies, flies for, or even doing any fly fishing for steelhead. Jerry (15m 56s):
Not at all. Yeah. And then, and then it just gradually progressed. We, so I, I’d do some North shore rivers and I’d stop at St. Mary’s River and, and then I’d go and hook up with Rick and we’d hop in the truck and go, you know, so I would go to Western New York, which he was covering pretty good. And then he was covering the rivers up in Ontario that went into both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie from Grand River, the Maitland River, Saugeen River. And he was doing all of those. And then I’d hop in the truck when I’d get out there and do a lot of that with him as well. And then we’d go back to Michigan and we’d fish the Manistee and the, and the White River and, and p Marquette and, and Oay o able, and, you know, so it just, we spent probably six or seven years just doing, purposely doing research. Dave (16m 53s):
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You can join them for an unforgettable fly fishing experience in the heart of the tetons@fishtofly.com. And what were you doing? What was your, how were you making your money back then? Jerry (17m 48s):
Well, I was, the best thing of this whole thing is when I joined up with Winston Rods in 1984, they, Tom, when I say they, it was Tom Morgan who owned it. Yeah. Glen Bracket was co-owner. And they were excited to, because they were expanding their, their workforce. They hadn’t, didn’t have many people working for ’em at the time. And they were excited to hire someone who was passionate about fly fishing. So, so that was one of the requirements is they, they said, we really would like you to do, you know, to fly fish. Oh, Dave (18m 25s):
Really? That was it. That was part of the job. Jerry (18m 27s):
Yeah. Get out there and do stuff and kinda lend some credibility to all of this stuff. And, and so for several years all I really did was wrapped rods at home and they’d gimme rods to wrap and, you know, the guides on, and then I’d wrap. So I had all of this latitude. I could wrap rods till two in the morning, which I did. So I would have the, the day to fish. And eventually they, they moved me in and I was, I do part-time work in the morning, not part-time. I was sort the managing the area, the coating area or coated the, the wraps. Jerry (19m 7s):
And, but then in the afternoon, and I was a free to go fishing and still wrap rods at two in the morning. And so, you know, so I, it wasn’t sleeping a whole lot back then. And then, but it, it worked out really nice. And then when Glen got me into building bamboo rods in 1991, he kind of still, he encouraged me to do, you know, this tremendous flexibility in my schedule. And he, he enjoyed the fact that I was writing a book and, you know, so I give Glen all the credit in the world for encouraging this sort of off wow. Fashion. Yeah, it was, Dave (19m 46s):
That’s really cool. Yeah. And it Jerry (19m 47s):
Worked out really well. I Dave (19m 48s):
Thought this makes a lot of sense. So you’ve got, and I’m looking at the book now. It’s, it’s Fly Fishing for Great Lake Steel at an advanced Look At an Emerging Fishery. That was the first one, because I think Rick came in and did one another book called Advanced, or there was another book out. I think Rick’s done a few, right? Yeah. Jerry (20m 2s):
I, I forget. Yeah, he did it on his own, of course. Yeah. I sort of, as I faded more and I, I got more into, well, owning my own business, he, he kind of went off a little more on his own and updated that was that, that his Dave (20m 18s):
Oh, that was the updated, right. So that was the, yeah, so we’re looking, so there is original one. Yeah. It Jerry (20m 21s):
Was kind of not the same, but it was updated as far as the techniques and all of that kind. Dave (20m 26s):
Yeah. All that stuff. Right. Now this is interesting. So basically you’re out there, you’ve, and we’ve heard this from a few people, you know, I mean, I always go back to John Gear Rock because he, you know, said this on the podcast when I talked to him a few times about why he, you know, got into fly fishing and why he did what he did. And he said it was mainly because his dad loved fishing, but he never had time because he was working all the time. And so he wanted to create a life where he was out there. And it sounds like you also had created that life, right? You figured out a way to fish all the time. Jerry (20m 53s):
It was, and I think I came about at a time, you know, John Garak, the Ultimate Trout bu you know, I was independently doing the same trout bombing thing Dave (21m 4s):
At the same time. Yeah. Really at the same time. Jerry (21m 6s):
Yeah. So, in fact, I’m just reading a little manuscript of a friend who wrote his experiences with John ACH during that period of time, so Oh wow. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a nice little manuscript. Gotcha. Dave (21m 21s):
So you’re reading somebody’s manuscript that they’re hoping to publish after you give him some feedback? Jerry (21m 26s):
Yeah, a friend of Dale Darling, actually, his name is, and Dale is used to own a couple fly shops in Colorado, one in Longmont. And I met him through Winston. Dave (21m 37s):
Yeah. This is interesting. I I love all this ’cause it sounds, you know, the more I love these conversations ’cause the more we talked, you’re, you, you’ve been around for so long, you’ve got all these stories and one of ’em is like the Winston, and we, I was just doing a podcast with someone who was describing the fact that he was talking about Bower reels and he didn’t know a lot about Winston, even though he worked for him, the history. But do you know a little bit, can you get shed some light on that history? I know I’ve heard Glen bracket’s name quite a bit. Were you there when Winston first kind of got going or did you jump on early on? Jerry (22m 4s):
No, let’s see. Winston started in 1929. Dave (22m 9s):
Oh wow. Yeah. Winston’s been around forever. That’s right. Jerry (22m 11s):
Yeah. And Lou Stoner and a guy named Robert Winter were the original owners. And, and Stoner eventually bought Winther out, but the name Winston came from a contraction of their names Winther Winston. And Lou owned and ran the company until the fifties. He sold his share to Doug Merrick. And our, our, you know, they worked together and, and Stoner eventually passed and Merrick took out over, and then Merrick sold the company to Tom Morgan, who Tom was a native Montana, and he used to guide out of Ennis when he was a kid and went to California and chased a few things down there. Jerry (23m 2s):
And met, apparently met Merrick at a certain point and thought he’d like, like to bring Winston up to Montana because it was, you know, that was a, Dave (23m 14s):
That was the place, Jerry (23m 15s):
The place to be, you know, not in San Francisco, which, that’s where it was. And Right. So Tom brought it up and Tom had this impeccable knowledge of fly rods at the time. I mean, what a fly rod should be. And it was at the time that he bought the company in like 1970, early seventies. And it was a time when composite graphite was starting to come around, but it was right in the height of fiberglass. And so Tom had all these ideas of what a good fly rod should be from his years of guiding. And, and at the time, he, Glen was working with them and during the transitional period, and, and Glen then I, from what I understand, got 25% of the company through flood equity and, and in the early seventies. Jerry (24m 11s):
And, and then when they moved it up to Montana and little Twin Bridges, Montana, just down of 400 people, it just worked out real well. And that’s, I I ended up in Twin Bridges, like in 1983 because I wanted to fish the big hole river and be near the big hole river. And so we, that’s when I met Tom and Glen. And then in 1991, Glen and Tom sold the company to the present owner who is David Che from, he’s a Canadian from Toronto. And it more of an absentee owner though. I mean he, you know, which was a departure from the previous owners who were all hands-on owners Dave (24m 57s):
And Tom Morgan. We’ve heard the stories on him. I mean, he’s well known about Yeah. Just that whatever he had. And then he eventually got into his own company right after he sold, or he, he was kept making rods. And that became a pretty famous story as well. But basically, essentially you’re in there with Tom Morgan, one of the greatest, you know, I, I think, you know, when people think about that Right. Bought Rod building. And so you learned quite a bit. And then, so talk about the sweetgrass. Where does that come to be? Where you, you’re involved in that Jerry (25m 26s):
During the nineties? You know, the bamboo craze grew after the movie, A river runs through it. Oh yeah. It’s amazing. That river, that movie, the impact it had on, Dave (25m 39s):
Oh, it was huge. Yeah. Jerry (25m 40s):
And so bamboo enthusiasm grew from that point, because in the early seventies, bamboo sort of was a dying, not only a dying craft, it, the interest was dying on Dave (25m 55s):
It. Yeah. There was nobody, ’cause you had basically, you had these fiberglass period, which were great, and then you got into graphite And it just got like everything I remember because then, and then the like, why would you need a bamboo rod? Right? You had these great graphite rods Jerry (26m 8s):
And that was it completely. And, and so it, the movie just from a romantic standpoint, I’d say just stimulated an interest in the past. And, and Bamboo was a beneficiary of that. And so we at Winston started to make a lot of rods for that period anyway. And we still maintained a real flexible lifestyle. There was no question about it because a, a lot of bamboo rod making is hurry up and wait, you know, you Yeah. Do something. You do something, you glue and you have to wait on it. So, so the thing was, Glen was living in town. Jerry (26m 48s):
I was, so there was always someone at the shop working at some time because there was always something to do. But there, you didn’t have to do it nine to five, you could do it eight o’clock in the evening till midnight or whatever. So it just, you know, it just was that type of operation and, And it worked out good again for me. And there was no, it worked out good for Glen. And, and, but somewhere in the early two thousands that we were getting, Winston had built a big factory outside of town, just on the outskirts, not outside of town, it’s just in a cow pasture outside of town. And there was rumblings that they wanted the bamboo department to come into the big building and that, because when they set up that factory, they also set up a time clock, you know, you punch the card and going in and you punch. Dave (27m 39s):
Oh, wow. So you had a time clock now. Yeah. So you’re going from, you’re going from this hippie river bum, trout bum sort of thing back in the day. And now you’re coming in, they’re like, Hey, we’re gonna be clocking in now and doing all this stuff. Jerry (27m 51s):
That was their intention. It wasn’t ours, so. Right. We resisted and, and just said, you know, you just can’t, you can’t build a bamboo rod on a time clock, you know, is what it boiled down to. And you know, it just has to kind of come from the soul, come from the heart. And as long as they’re getting done and out into people’s hands, what’s the point? You know? So, And it just sort of went downhill from there, you know? Yeah. And Glen, at one point had had enough of it, and he said, you know, I’m just gonna move, move on. You know? And, and that was like in 2005, late 2005, he decided to call it quits. Well, I was fishing, I was steelhead fishing in Montana at the time, or in, in New York at the time. Jerry (28m 37s):
And I got a call and from Glenn and said, you know, I just quit. But, you know, and I was beyond flabbergasted and I Dave (28m 48s):
Was p Right. You weren’t, you were surprised you weren’t expecting that. Oh, no. Jerry (28m 50s):
And I was, yeah. And I, and I even talked to the, at the time, the CEO of the company, and I just chewed him out. I Dave (28m 58s):
Said, oh, really? So yeah, you, you heard what happened then you had to call with him. Jerry (29m 1s):
Oh man. I had chewed him out. Well, anyway, so at that point, there was another fellow working Jeff Walker, who’d been working for Glen with Glen for 20 years and myself. And then there was another fellow, Wayne Maka, who would help out upon occasion when we needed extra help. And we decided to all quit in solidarity with Glen. You know, we just said, you know, we’re just gonna go off on and do our own thing. And so we did, and we gave Winston a three month period where we kind of cleaned up all the odds and ends that needed to be cleaned up. And, and on February the end of February of 2006, our time at Winston was over. Jerry (29m 47s):
But at the time, we had no plans. There was no plans whatsoever. And Glen started, as it turned out, there was this solidarity of people out in fly fishing world who were somewhat flabbergasted with, you know, with what just happened. And he started getting orders. At one point he had over a hundred orders on, on the books, Dave (30m 10s):
On bamboo rods. Jerry (30m 11s):
On bamboo rods. They, you know, if you ever get around a building and we gonna, now we wanna rod from you. Well, Glen approached the three of us, Wayne, Jeff, and myself, and said, you know, I’m getting all these orders and, you know, we could set up a little business type of thing if you’re interested. And Wayne wasn’t, he was doing his own thing. Jeff was semi interested, but he, he then after a little kind of just faded off, he didn’t want it to either. And I saw it as a wonderful opportunity. So, yeah. So we ended up doing all, it was in, shortly after leaving in 2006, we started the process. Jerry (30m 52s):
We kind of got a business license and all that. By April, mid-April, we were officially Sweetgrass rods, and we just decided to come up with Sweetgrass rods, because I, we didn’t wanna make it the Glen bracket Rod company, historically speaking, every company that was named after a primary Yeah, Dave (31m 12s):
They all had names. All, all the rod companies he worked for had names of people. Jerry (31m 16s):
Right. And the thing is, other than Winston, a lot of, a lot of old bamboo companies just faded after the primary builder, Payne. And, and Oh, Dave (31m 26s):
Right. Jerry (31m 27s):
Phillips and all of those companies all ended up, once the primary builder was gone, yeah. You could never kind of pass it on and, and be a viable company after that. So we decided that if our mission statement was to be sweetgrass Rods and to have a company that would be a legacy company, that after Glen was gone, and I didn’t consider myself that significant of a part at that point, other than just kind of being his partner. But after, after he was gone and I was gone, that the company could be passed on seamlessly and still operate as Sweetgrass Rods. Jerry (32m 7s):
And I, at this point, we are on track to do that. Glenn has a fellow David Serafin who’s working out in Livingston, Montana, and who is the heir apparent to the company. And hopefully that will be what will happen down the road. Wow. Dave (32m 26s):
Yeah. And, and now you are basically still affiliated, but not connected at all to Sweetgrass? Jerry (32m 33s):
The one major influence in my life that kind of changed the direction of my life was my wife, who, you know, we lived together in Montana for 30 years, and she passed away. She had Oh, wow. A LS and yeah. And she passed away in 2009. It was difficult living in a small town after she passed away. And I, you know, so Sweetgrass started in 2006, and I stayed till 2013. And, you know, I, you know, talked it over with Glenn and I went, you know, and we, I was training a fellow to take over for myself, and then I would leave. Jerry (33m 14s):
And the idea was, you know, just to start kind of afresh somewhere else. I had, then I had met someone and we, I had this wild hair off my butt to have a ha build a little place in Mexico and go fish. Oh wow. Mexico. Dave (33m 31s):
No kidding. Yeah. Jerry (33m 32s):
So I ended up from a farm, had a little, little beach house built on the beach about 50 feet from the, from a bonefish flats and near Ishak, Mexico, just part the Belize. And yeah. So I went down there, we went, we lasted about 10 months. It, Dave (33m 54s):
It was Oh, it didn’t work out. Jerry (33m 55s):
Oh, yeah. It was a little too much of a stretch. Dave (33m 59s):
What was the, was just the challenge of like getting there? Or was it, oh, Jerry (34m 2s):
Just everything. Yeah. I mean, there was this little, a little Mayan town, which was kinda a little funky little town that had been somewhat destroyed by a, by a hurricane several years beforehand. And it was limping along and, and that was the main source of getting a few things. And then from there, the house was five miles up on the beach. So it was just a major, major effort. And I was pushing, you know, my late sixties at the time. Dave (34m 32s):
Right. Things aren’t getting any easier at that point. Jerry (34m 35s):
No, it just, you know, the fishing was great and, and I, that was the one thing I, I was able to, in my dreams, I wanted to be a Jimmy Buffett. I wanted to have my Oh yeah. Cars and fish, you know, live on the beach. And I did. So I can actually claim I did that for, you know, almost a year and caught fish on my own. That’s the other thing. I didn’t wanna have to go get a guide. So I was, had bonefish that were accessible to me right in front of my house. Oh, wow. But they were kinda like Spring Creek bonefish. They, I kind of got to know there was a pot of about 50 of them, and it just seemed like the, you know, they’d seen a lot of flies over years. Jerry (35m 19s):
So, so it was just sort of, it was tough to get ’em, but it was fun, you know, tra you know, every couple days or every day I’d go out for a couple hours. And then there was a few slews lagoons that had snook and ba tarping and that were all accessible by canoe. And I did that and, and Barracuda. And, and the only thing I, I did, I hooked every now and then a permit came by. I did hook permit. I, I was fortunately never got a permit down there, but I was able to get all this other fish and a few other. Dave (35m 57s):
What were you thinking at the time? Were you thinking kind of like you were gonna be the, like moving down there like full-time? Well, Jerry (36m 3s):
Yeah, the idea was, you know, I actually had, we had a little guest house built next to it, next to our prime house there. And also a little, what we thought would be a, possibly a t-shirt shop, something like that, you know? Yeah, sure. You know, and, and kind of just hang out. That was the original plan. But as it turned out, just the effort of just living there was a, you know, And it just, and you didn’t realize you don’t wanna send a bad impression of the people, but, you know, you just couldn’t let things, you couldn’t leave your house, you know, without worrying about someone walking in and getting some Dave (36m 44s):
Oh, really? Yeah. Jerry (36m 45s):
And so there was that aspect of it. And then my partner, she got sick and then you realize that, boy, if you get sick down here, it’s not anything to deal with, you know? So, and the closest, the closest places were, were you could get the groceries you needed was at 40 some miles away. And it town awa and a mile we would go once a week, which was 120 miles away. And so, so it became evident that, you know, just a lot of, yeah. Dave (37m 22s):
How does that compare to when you think, ’cause it sounds like it was just an amazing amount of work doing that when you compare it back to the start of this episode when you were talking about that cabin off the grid in Idaho was, you know, was that at the same age, say you’re in your twenties, right? This probably would’ve been a lot easier. This this thing Jerry (37m 38s):
E Exactly. I mean that, I think what I was trying to do is relive those days. That was the whole point. And those days, you know, that even living off grid way back then was difficult, but doable. Dave (37m 50s):
Yeah. But what about if you were in your sixties trying to live, do that Idaho thing off the grid? Jerry (37m 55s):
Oh, it would’ve been tough. I mean, all that. Yeah, you’re right. It just, it, I think there was a point at which, you know, and I gotta say, you know, some of it was just influenced by the fact that, you know, I was kind of living a nice good life without all the hassle, you know? Yeah. And, and I didn’t, I didn’t factor in all the hassles. Dave (38m 16s):
Yeah, you, you, you were, you were, it’s not taking it for granted, but you know, we do that. Right. You’re someplace, someplace. I’m not sure where you are now, but you’re at that place in, it’s probably a pretty good place. ’cause you got a lot of luxuries. Right. And life is fairly easy. Is that kinda how it looked at the time that you didn’t realize that? Oh Jerry (38m 33s):
Yeah. I mean, because we’d been gone down there a couple, two or three times to that same area. And all you do is, you know, and stayed in a bed and breakfast And it was just great. You know, you had everything you needed and, you know, you just sort of sorta didn’t have to deal with the day to day life that you do when you’re there, when Dave (38m 53s):
You actually, yeah, you’re down there all the time. And what is, you mentioned, you know, Lonnie Waller earlier too, he’s a person that, you know, I think it’s interesting ’cause he, I think he might have moved down south too, but he was a big steelhead guy. You know, I remember watching his videos and his books and stuff, but talk about that back on the, the book there. So you guys worked with him on one of his books that he did? Jerry (39m 12s):
Yeah. So the interesting thing with Lonnie was I knew, I know I still know him, I still know Jack Waller, his brother, who was this offbeat character who lived in Virginia City, Montana. Jack is this very philosophical theological man of the earth type of guy. He lived in a teepee for a while. Oh wow. And yeah. And then, and so I knew Jack, and then I met Lonnie through Jack. And then there was this cross linking when we were researching that book. And I don’t know how I got, I can’t remember the specifics of how we would’ve talked to Lonnie about Steelheading, because at that point he was really into, you know, the Steelhead guru at that time. Jerry (39m 60s):
He was one of the more notable guys. Dave (40m 2s):
Yeah. He was working for, I think like a scientific anglers or something like that, doing those videos. Yeah. Jerry (40m 6s):
Yeah. And that was really put him on the map was he was doing videos before anybody ever thought of doing those types of things. And some of them were pretty spectacular. And so I think we, I utilized Jack’s connection to talk to Lonnie. And Lonnie at the time was, you know, he was always a real gracious guy. And somehow he, when the whole Great Lakes thing really started to flourish, he went out a few times to do some Steelhead symposiums. And Rick met him at one of those symposiums, and we approached him somewhat cautiously. Jerry (40m 47s):
We didn’t know how he would accept our offer to write an introduction to Great Lake Steel a but he did, he graciously accepted it. So, and then subsequently we published a book, which was a collection of stories, which a neat collection of stories that Ani wrote called River of Dreams. I think that’s what we, that was what it was. And it did real well. Yeah. It just, it sold, you know, 3,300 copies or something like that. So that, yeah, that was our connection. And I still, heck, I just got a email from Jack the other couple weeks ago, and a little story story with Jack is he, he got married to a professor from Montana State University in Bozeman, and he had a little girl when he was 63. Dave (41m 41s):
Oh wow. Jerry (41m 42s):
And her name was Ruby, this cute little gal. And, and at the time, I, it was when my wife was kind of ill and, you know, going downhill. And I, I’ve off and on played guitar and always, and myself is writing songs and I did write some songs, you know, kind of, kind of goofy songs. But I wrote ’em and, and I did write a song for, for Ruby, her name was. And we subsequently a guy who was a music producer actually. And he, and he was from Virginia City and he put together a neat little CD of local talent. And I did a couple songs on it, and one of ’em was, and so I, and I just found out recently that you can dial up Ruby on Spotify or Apple Music or something. Dave (42m 33s):
Oh, you can, you can get it right now. Jerry (42m 35s):
Yeah. So I guess so. But anyway, you know, the story is Ruby is now 20 years old And it sort of this genius little girl now young lady. And so it’s just kind of this, it was this sort of like string of connections that all Dave (42m 52s):
That’s amazing are Jerry (42m 53s):
Coming together. But Dave (42m 54s):
There it is. There it is Ruby. I see it. Ruby on, on Spotify, Jerry (42m 58s):
So Dave (42m 58s):
That’s amazing. Yeah. Jerry (42m 59s):
And she grew into the song. She, that was what it was so funny. I always say she became the song as is what it boils down to. Dave (43m 7s):
We’ll put a link in the show notes. Yeah. Here’s a little clip, Jerry, I’ll just let it play. Is, is this, it, it falls 3 (43m 12s):
Down from the tree, but sometimes there can be a surprise. Dave (43m 20s):
Is that, is that it? That’s it, Jerry (43m 21s):
Yep, yep, yep. Dave (43m 22s):
Amazing. There you go. Okay, well we’ve got that, we’ve got that now in the show notes. We’ll put a link to that and Oh, that. Jerry (43m 28s):
Yeah. Pretty funny. Yeah. So Dave (43m 29s):
This is good. So you got, that’s really cool. And, and so this is, and it’s awesome because this goes back to Lonnie, which he, yeah, I remember I’ve talked about this a little bit, but I remember one of those videos, he was on the Deschutes swinging and run that I’ve phished before and actually caught a really nice fish and, you know, splash, what do you call it, splasher in the tail off. He had all these, he was super excitable. Right. And he’s out there. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was really cool. So that’s the Lonnie connection. So he, and he is down, I think he, didn’t he move down south somewhere? Yeah. It seems like Hess not really in Yeah. Yeah. He Jerry (43m 57s):
Moved to a, what we would say, an ex expatriate enclave of sorts. You know, a place where a lot of Americans and Canadians and Europeans. The idea behind that is that they could somewhat be a self-contained and even self protected area. And I, it was fairly close to Mexico City, but I think the town was called San McWell. I think it was a sort of an artist type of gathering. Dave (44m 30s):
Yeah. And what do you, what do do you mean self protected? Well, Jerry (44m 33s):
You know, they, they could, you kind of watched out for each other. You didn’t have to worry about, like we did, you know, a house in the middle of nowhere in Mexico. Dave (44m 42s):
Oh, right, right. Gotcha. Jerry (44m 44s):
You subject to whatever Dave (44m 46s):
Yeah. Random stuff happening. Right. Because there are, yeah, because you’re talking Mexico, the drug cartels. Right. There’s even all that crazy stuff. Jerry (44m 53s):
Yeah. All sorts of possibilities. And you know, I want, you know, again, the police weren’t all that, you know, Dave (44m 59s):
They weren’t up to, up to the law all the time, I’m guessing. Yeah. Jerry (45m 3s):
So, so there were a lot of things you felt like you were at, at out flapping in the wind when you were in Mexico. And, and, and that was somewhat taken care of because whether they had their own kind of little security system, I had no idea. But that was the idea of kind of having a bunch of like-minded individuals living in a general area. So, so yeah. And Lonnie, you know, again, passed away in the fall, unfortunately. Dave (45m 30s):
Oh, he just passed away this, this last fall. Jerry (45m 32s):
Yeah. Yeah. Dave (45m 33s):
Oh, I didn’t know that. Oh, Jerry (45m 34s):
You didn’t? Yeah, unfortunately he did. And even more unfortunate, according to Jack, he had, he developed dementia, so it was kind of kinda Dave (45m 42s):
Tough, you Jerry (45m 43s):
Know, it was too bad. And I talked with Jack about it a bit, And it could add something to do with, you know, he had that terrible plane crash going into the Baine somewhere. I forget when that was. I think it was after we hooked up with him. I can’t remember the exact date. And he did, boy, he suffer his head and, you know, suffered great trauma. So it could have been all linked to that, but it was, you know, a sad ending to a noble soul. I thought just, it just really made me feel, you know, kind of down in the dumps about that. Dave (46m 19s):
Yeah, that is, that is pretty tragic. Yeah. Jerry (46m 21s):
So especially a guy who was, you know, so he was, you know, he could have been, you know, one of those snooty guys, but he wasn’t, he just kind of, kind of, you know, was ingratiating to everybody he met and encouraging to everybody who needed encouragement. So, so always, I kind of will always remember Lonnie from that standpoint. Dave (46m 45s):
Yeah, no, I think I, I definitely, yeah, I think just the movies, I always go back to that, the videos, you know, that was so, so powerful. But yeah, I mean, you’ve in your own right, you know, written a number of books. Maybe talk about that a little bit just on your writing. You know, I mentioned at the start the kind of the soulful voice of fly fishing literature I’ve heard, but what has, what has writing meant for you? Like, how do you look at writing and do you, are you still writing now? Yeah, Jerry (47m 7s):
I am actually, I hope to come out with one last book at, at the end of this year. But yeah, the writing, I was kind of interested when I lived in my little cabin up in Idaho. I read a lot at that time. I read Louis Lamore Cowboy Stories and, and Rex Stout Mystery stories. But I also read a lot of fly fishing stories, Robert Weber at the time, and Roger Ha Brown and, and Patrick McManus and, and a few others. And, and for whatever reasons, especially McManus, I just kind of liked his stories And it was kind of fishing outdoors. Jerry (47m 53s):
And he wrote Last Laugh, a column for Outdoor Life for many. Dave (47m 58s):
Yeah. And he was kind of a like comic, right? He had a lot of comedy in his writing. Yeah. Jerry (48m 3s):
Light, light hearted. Yeah. He kind of little quirky stories and, and so, you know, you kind of make you chuckle. So, so yeah, I, I kind of was interested in, in that, but I never thought about writing until I, when we moved to Montana and my wife was into, we were both into Birdwatching and she was more so because she came from a bird watching family and she resurrected the local Audubon chapter, and I was able to, well, we had a newsletter and she said, why don’t you write something for it? Jerry (48m 45s):
And I said, okay. And I wrote a monthly vignette on a local bird, and I kind of made, tried to make it creative just more than just what they ate and what they looked like, and, you know, kind of just kind, kind of give a little tale about ’em. And the local newspaper, which, which Southwest Montana newspaper, Montana Standard, it was called out out of Butte, the editor of the magazine or the newspaper called me once and said, yeah, would you be interested? Because she was a birder. And she said, would you be interested in doing a weekly article about a bird? Jerry (49m 26s):
And I said, oh man, you know? And I said, well, yeah, I great opportunity, you know, and, and so I did, and I, I draw, I was, at the time, I was doing a little drawing and, and I draw a bird and do a kind of a three to 400 word vignette of, you know, with little folksy tails that I could find about particular species. And I did that for eight years, never got paid. But the thing was, it forced me to write every week. And at that time we were, my brother and I were doing the Steelhead book, and then it just sort of got me into thinking, well, heck, you know, maybe I can start doing some of those stories that I like to read, you know, like the McManus stories. Jerry (50m 11s):
And, and, and I had to accumulated in my mind quite a few little possibilities over my, throughout my travels. And that’s what inspired coming out with at the River’s Edge, which was in 2002, I believe. And the good thing about that, you know, was when it was published, the Montana Standard, because I had done all of that, those over the years, and I had a bunch of followers following my third article every week, which, you know, a lot of ’em were like, I’m sure little old ladies who put, you know, seed in her bird feeder. Jerry (50m 53s):
Right. And, but the Standard did a full page with a colored photo of me standing next to the big Old River review of that book, and geez, did I sell a lot of books. Oh, wow. So, so I always say to people, if an opportunity knocks for whatever it might be, take advantage of the opportunity, you know, don’t get paid for it. It somehow comes back to you. And I’ve always been, I’ve always encouraged people to, you know, to not be picky If something, if, if something comes along, take it and run with it. Jerry (51m 33s):
And I did. And that was it. It’s kickstarted me into writing, which then I, after that at the Rivers Edge, I released three other books. But also, it just opened up a lot of other writing opportunities along the way, whether it was articles or other books, things like that. So, you know, and then just recently as guys doing a, opening up, starting a, another online magazines, I don’t know how many online magazines there can be, but on the other hand, he wants me to write a, you know, a quarterly article. So, you know, so the opportunities keep coming, you know? Yeah. And it, so something you can do when you’re old like me. Jerry (52m 15s):
So that, that, as I always say, and a lot of people will ask me. Yeah. And I’ve done that with music. When I used to teach, teach Kids, I taught school for three years in Salt Lake City, Utah. And we started a little, me and another fellow started a music club, and at least eight to 10 of those kids learned to play guitar. And several of them became professional musicians. Hmm. Not, they were not famous professional musicians, but, you know, they, they’d do Holiday Inns and things like that. So, so like I said, you, you know, if these opportunities come along, grab hold of ’em and you never know where they’re gonna leave. Jerry (52m 59s):
And that’s even with me, I try to encourage people, you know, if they need, especially with writing, I try to, you know, I’ll read, if someone sends me a manuscript, I’ll read it and I’ll try to get’em hooked up with wherever they can get hooked up with. So, so it’s just, you know, one of those things you can kind of just keep passing on and hopefully be beneficial to making someone else’s life and come true, I guess, is what I say. So, Dave (53m 27s):
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, it’s cool to hear that because you have all these experiences in your life and, you know, and stories. That’s what’s amazing about the stories. I mean, we’re doing a little bit of that, telling some of that. Oh yeah. But it’s not, it’s not like a book, you know, it’s not like a book that you could sit down and, you know, relive, you know, put yourself in the play like you did. You know, that’s a cool thing, right. Joe Brooks, you go back to your influences. You had this person before you were writing Right. Heavily, you were learning from him, and now people are doing the same for you with your stuff. Yeah, Jerry (53m 55s):
Exactly. And, you know, just sort of pass it on. And that interesting thing about Joe Brooks is just a little suck, like a lot of Yeah. Make, get these little stories. As I was recently, last fall, I went, went out for a beer with Joe Brooks, his, his nephew. Dave (54m 13s):
Oh yeah, his nephew. Yeah. Jerry (54m 15s):
Yeah. So, so I was able to, he was in the area. Joe, Joe Brooks is actually from this area, so Oh yes. Okay. Now, I, I mean, I kind of all, I, I, all of these different threads that kind of tie back to Joe Brooks and I am living in northern Maryland right now, just right down the street to three blocks is the Chesapeake Bay and, and Northern Chesapeake Bay. And so I have that connection with Joe Brooks too. He, last night when I was fishing, the Susquehanna, Joe Brooks used to fish the Susquehanna. So, so it’s just all of these kind of connections Dave (54m 53s):
In the same area. Yeah. We had, we did an episode with, with Joe Brooks, not the Joe Brooks, but episode 71. We’ll put a link in the show notes with the person you’re talking about. His, I think it was his cousin, or not his cousin, but his nephew, I believe. Right? Jerry (55m 5s):
His nephew, yeah. Dave (55m 7s):
Yeah. So we did a whole episode and he, because he wrote, yeah, he wrote the book and then we talked, And it was really interesting because it was pretty deep. Joe Brooks’ life is really interesting because, I mean, it’s at one point in his life with alcoholism, it got so bad that he was like living off the streets. Jerry (55m 21s):
Yeah. That thing. Yeah. And fly fishing saved his life. Dave (55m 26s):
Yeah. And fly. Exactly. And so it’s a really powerful story, but he told that story and so we’ll put a link to that one. But I’m kinda the same way, you know, I mean, or at least here when you think about this, it’s, you know, like Lonnie, we talked about. I mean, it’s tough because some of these people that paved the way for all of us and help with stories, you know, are slowly going away. So I think I would love to talk more with somebody could tell maybe Lonnie’s story, you know, I think that would be a kind of a cool episode to do as well. Yeah, Jerry (55m 53s):
It would be. I wonder who would be out there that could give you a little background on that. Dave (56m 1s):
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Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that would be a, that would be a, you know, a really good story. Yeah. Yeah. Dave (57m 13s):
Definitely. Jerry (57m 14s):
You know, would be a, some insights into his background. Yeah, I, I was just thinking, there’s, the interesting thing is there, there was the golden period of fly fishing that sorta ended when the bamboo rods started to fade away. Dave (57m 33s):
Oh, is that it? So when is that, when, when the golden period end? Jerry (57m 36s):
Oh, I would say, you know, the golden age. I mean, I’m just throwing it out there. Is that, that it was, is probably the early seventies things just sort of died, you know, fishing was sort of, sort of, you know, in a limbo state, I would have to say. And then, and I think Wes Jordan said something to that effect, you know, when he passed away that, you know, I forget the, it was of that sentiment and, and, and then, you know, it just sort of waffled along and, you know, people like me kind of stumbled into it. John Garak stumbled into it, and there was, you know, a lot of these in Inbetweeners, you know, eventually, you know, the Kathy Becks came in and then Lonnie Wallers, and they all, all of them somewhat, you know, were the link between that period of time where fly fishing faded and what I call the new or the Renaissance age, you know, the nineties Dave (58m 34s):
The river runs through it was part of that, right? Jerry (58m 36s):
Yeah. Yeah. The river runs through, it started the whole Renaissance, but the people who were connecting it were the Lonnie Wallers, the, you know, and of course the lefty was, yeah, there, he was sort of a thread that strung through all of it, but, you know, but there was just this, you know, group of people that just sort of emanated before fly fishing was real famous, you know, just kind of were just kind of hanging on and, you know, doing this sort of esoteric pursuit with no really intention other than doing it, you know, and then eventually the doors opened to kind of profiting off it to a certain degree. Jerry (59m 16s):
And, and we all did to a lot of, to that point. Yeah, Dave (59m 20s):
That’s right. It’s pretty cool to see how it worked because, and we talked about that with the Great Lakes. That was really interesting too, because the whole spay, you know, we just had an episode this week that came out with George Cook and our in the bucket series that, that we’re doing. And, and I’ve heard some of that where he was talking about, yeah, it’s the history, right? I mean, the spay, it didn’t get started in the Great Lakes until that period that you talked about. You guys started writing that, those books and all of a sudden like, bam, this thing, whole thing changes. And now you go back there and it’s pretty popular, right? Jerry (59m 50s):
Oh, it is. Yeah. What’s interesting, I just don’t go off on another little tangent here, but yeah, the neat thing about working at Winston and then at, I’d always get these hot tips, and a lot of times I was able to hop on them. Well, Ken High used to be is Dr. Slick. Dave (1h 0m 8s):
Oh, yeah, Dr. Slick. Sure. Jerry (1h 0m 9s):
Yep. And he used to go up to British Columbia, steelhead fish in a lot. And he came into the shop once in the nineties. And I got to know Dr. Slick, pretty good at Ken High over the years. And he told me that you, you know, because I would really started to really get into the steelhead fishing in the mid eighties and in Idaho and particularly, and he encouraged me to go up to British Columbia. He said the fishing, he said it was down in the eighties, but it’s coming back and, you know, not too many people are known about it. So I went up in 94 fish for, I drove up and fished for eight or nine days, and there wasn’t hardly anybody up there because fishing hadn’t, hadn’t been, you know, hadn’t been good apparently. Jerry (1h 1m 0s):
And, and I caught some fish. I was pretty excited. Dave (1h 1m 4s):
Were you up on the Skinna? Jerry (1h 1m 5s):
No, I, I went up at Bulky. Dave (1h 1m 7s):
Oh, the bulky, yeah. Jerry (1h 1m 8s):
Yeah. And found some neat runs and kind of frequented them and, and yeah, they had a really neat week and even accidentally started hooked up with another guy. I just, just kinda, yeah. Hooked up with another guy, a friend of mine who we, we were up there together and, and we, we were swinging some green butt skunks and stuff like that, and we weren’t doing real well. And, and, and so Dick decided, you know, he, he had a Waller waker and he, he decided to just skate a fly up top and within a less than an hour he had a fish. Jerry (1h 1m 49s):
Well, I started skating Waller waker up top, and I, I got a fish and we never turned back, never looked back. We always then continued to skate. We got way more activity up there on a surface. And we did, you know, just swinging wet flies. And we always, you sat around the campfire and talked about why, but, you know, it could go on on that. But on the other hand, during that period of time, it wasn’t like everybody, ’cause there wasn’t that many people, but they, nobody was using a spay rod, nobody up. And by the time I’d gone, gone up there at, in 2000 year, 2000, I would say it was 10% spay rods. Jerry (1h 2m 32s):
And Mike, Matt Maxwell was a guide up there at the, he, he had spay roding, somewhat quirky, but I think he had some rods made for him by somebody. And he was the one guy, you know, pushing spay rods up there. And, and, but by 2000 or 2000, everybody was using rods. It just was sort of this revolution, spay rod revolution that was unfolded within that period of time. And again, going back to the Great Lakes, I was interested in a smaller spay rod for the Great Lakes. Jerry (1h 3m 12s):
Talked to, talked to, at the time, there was this pompous guy who was the general manager at Winston, and I said, you know, we really should come out with a spay rod for the Great Lakes. I, he, he said, why would we come out with a spay rod for fishing in a cesspool that was a Oh wow. Word. Wow. And I said, man, oh man. I said, you just, that’s crazy, right? Yeah. He, you know, he just started chuckled off. He said, what kind of business can we do there? Geez, no vision. No vision whatsoever. And at the time, a friend who he has eventually, he since then passed away. He was Rod Designer, Sam Druckman and Sam came up with the two B two X series, which was actually a boron, a four piece with boron butt. Jerry (1h 4m 2s):
And, and actually that was probably the, the second best series of rods ever Winston ever made the first best. And still as classic as Tom Morgan’s, I am six series, yeah. I call it the Coca-Cola rods. You just can’t do anything better than what those rods were. But Sam came up with this interesting, real, I still fish with him B two X series, and, and I talked to him about 11 foot rod for the Great Lakes and a two-hander, and that, and the day that, whatever, I don’t know why that general manager left, but the day he left, Sam came to me and gave me this 11 foot rod that he’d been working on. Jerry (1h 4m 47s):
And it was a single handed, I still have it. And it’s a single handed 11 footer that’s wor it’s just really neat functional rod. But, and then he, then he converted into a mini bay. And that rod sold so many rods is sold pieces throughout the Great Lakes, but people onto the Deschutes, every place was, you know, using the, the 11 foot smaller space. That was the thing I found with spay rods is that when in the first few years everybody was using these 15 footers, and I was watching these people trying landing fish with a 15 footer. It looked like, it looked like they were hunching them in. Jerry (1h 5m 28s):
I mean, we, yeah. Like, you know, they were just sort of outta touch with reality. And so eventually the rods got down into that 12 to 13 foot range, which was a lot more manageable, but these little, little mini space, you know, and a lot of the smaller rivers in, in the Great Lakes and even the West coast took on, and I still, that his, that general manager’s words still echo in my head, you know? Yeah. Cesspool the great right. Cesspool and, and now it’s a couple billion dollar industry and a couple Great Lakes, so, oh, yeah. And that was the other thing. I, I think Rick and I eventually when I, we, as I said in the earlier, we were fishing the bead heads, you know, little esda eggs and bull bugs and, and we were fishing the Manistee River, one of those on one of our journeys. Jerry (1h 6m 26s):
And we were swinging egg sucking leaches at the time. I forget the water was coming up, it was raining. Geez. We, one afternoon we hooked fish after, couldn’t land ’em because there was this big log we couldn’t get around. But, but, but we hooked one fish after another. We landed a few. But, you know, and it was, I think that was the dawning of the era of, Hey, you can just swing flies on these fish just like you do on the West Coast. And we never looked back, is what the point, the thing was. How was that? Yeah. It was just, it was sort of this eye-opener for us. We just accidentally said, well, you know, geez, we bought into the fact that you couldn’t catch fish. Dave (1h 7m 8s):
You couldn’t catch fish. Yeah. And what was the reasoning behind that? Why, why do you think Jerry (1h 7m 11s):
People thought, I have no idea. I have no idea. You know, the thing, and it was even the Michigan people, and, but this was, this was when we were in the initial stages, the way they used to fish, they didn’t use fly lines, they just used straight mono and a little baggy, a little kind of nylon filled weight of bbs. And they’d put a, you know, so it was this sort of like a pencil pencil weight, but it, you know, it was kind of a made up little baggy of a shot that they’d put, and then they’d extend eight foot liter beyond that and a fly. Jerry (1h 7m 52s):
But essentially they were dragging the bottom with these flies. And that’s, that was the way we were told. That was the only way you could catch a fish on a fly there, you know, because for whatever, Dave (1h 8m 3s):
Right. Down and dirty down to the bottom. Jerry (1h 8m 6s):
Yeah. And, and I, we watched them sometimes and, you know, a lot of the fish they hooked were all hooked on top of it, you know, it just made no sense. And so, again, we went back to, well, we would, we’re gonna just, you know, nim fish for ’em. And, and that, you know, obviously was working. But so that refuted that the fact that you couldn’t catch ’em on a fly, which they were telling us that there was just no way that would work. And then we gradually got into just accidentally, but a hundred percent committed then to swinging the flies somewhere in the late nineties. Jerry (1h 8m 47s):
And with that came what I always thought, with the Great Lakes, I’ll Give Great Lakes. And the people really got into it after that, a whole series of flies that, that were unique to the Great Lakes. And, and they had, and they were, my brother was riding, you know, in the front end of all of that, using bunny strips. Just a lot of maroo, just a lot of flies that had a lot of action. And as compared to the West coast, were, a lot of the flies we were using out there were just real static, you know, just green butt skunks, you know? Jerry (1h 9m 27s):
Yeah. Dave (1h 9m 27s):
Traditional, like traditional wet flies, which was just a little, little tiny little wet fly. Jerry (1h 9m 33s):
Yeah. And they were just sort of static. They didn’t have that much flow on ’em, you know, general practitioners. And they were just, and so that was unique to the Great Lakes. But then I started using some of, you know, and my green butt skunks out west, I started tying instead of just a a a wing of, of a white white Dave (1h 9m 57s):
Cocktail Jerry (1h 9m 57s):
Cocktail. Yeah. And I start using, I’d start using bunny strips, white bunny strips, and it give more Dave (1h 10m 4s):
That’s the wing. Jerry (1h 10m 5s):
Yeah. And give it a lot more life. And so I think a lot of the, a lot of the Great Lakes flies started showing up on the West Coast a little with a lot more action. I know that’s sort of my interpretation. If I could see, I could, the one unique aspect that I kind of bring into this stuff, I, after I started Sweetgrass, I didn’t steelhead fish as much, but, but, but for 20 some years I sta I really fished steelhead fished a lot. The one thing I did do over the years was I, I didn’t know too many people that fished the Great Lakes and the West Coast and British Columbia. Jerry (1h 10m 50s):
And I also had, I spent six weeks over in Russia. Wow. So I’m kind of a, like a unique person because I’m not sure how many people have done all, all of those. Dave (1h 10m 59s):
No. There’s not too many people We’ve talked to a lot, we’ve done a ton of steelhead episodes, but I don’t think there’s too many people that have Yeah. Have, I mean, just that the Great Lakes to the West, I think most people haven’t done that. You know, I think that it’s always you, you know, the, you know, all the stories of whatever, you know, the great lake Steelhead not being steelhead. I think that that’s kind of, I think it’s behind, I think it’s like, Hey, there’s steelhead. It’s just a different way to fit, you know, a different area, you know, a different way to fish. Jerry (1h 11m 25s):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they’re just in there. The thing is, they ha have at least the connection the steel had because they’re genetically steelhead. Dave (1h 11m 35s):
Yeah, exactly. Jerry (1h 11m 36s):
You wanna make that point. But yeah, so I was, you know, the one thing I, the only place in this north of had, the only place that I haven’t caught a steelhead is Indiana. Dave (1h 11m 47s):
Oh, Indiana, right. In Indiana does have a steelhead. Yeah. Jerry (1h 11m 50s):
But one or two steelhead streams. But I, I’ve caught ’em in every province or in every state and you know, California and Oregon and Washington and Dave (1h 12m 1s):
Right. Wow. So you’ve caught, you’ve pretty much caught fish in every state where they live. Jerry (1h 12m 6s):
Yeah. Except Indiana. Dave (1h 12m 8s):
Except for Indiana. And then, and then, then the province. You’ve obviously BC you’ve been up there. Jerry (1h 12m 12s):
Yep, yep. So it’s, so it’s just sort of an interesting, I, I kind of have a unique perspective of a lot of, a lot of this. I’m never gonna be known for my steelhead prowess, but I, but I did, I have to say I did fish in a lot of different steelhead, you know, steelhead venues for sure. Dave (1h 12m 31s):
That’s awesome. Well, that’s a, I think that’s a perfect segue to take it out here in our kinda, this is like our travel segment here. And today, I’m just gonna give a shout out. This is presented by Mount Waters Resort. We’re actually doing a trip to, for Atlantic Salmon. So that’s something I haven’t, it’s been on my bucket list we’ve talked about. But we’re gonna be heading out to the East Coast to Newfoundland. And the cool thing about this, this trip is it’s Mountain Waters Resort is the same resort where Lee Wolf used to fly. It was his resort right back in the day. And he used to, he really popularized Atlantic salmon fishing up in newfound out to this area. So I’m gonna be fishing, kinda like you did with Joe Brooks, you know, in your area. I’m gonna be fishing these places where Lee Wolf literally at the same cabin locations and stuff. Dave (1h 13m 11s):
So I’m pretty excited about that. And the cool thing, your brother too, also I was gonna mention might be going on this trip with, I’ve been talking to him to see if he wants to, to join us up there and, and chase these fish. ’cause he’s a big, obviously he’s got Atlantic salmon, but, so I want first start off with a shout out to Mountain Waters Resort on that. And then, yeah. And for you, what is your, I mean obviously you’ve talked travel this whole, this whole episode. Do you, was this, when you look back at your, say your 25-year-old self or you know, that early ages, did you foresee, how much of this did you foresee? Did you think this is the way it was gonna turn out with all the travel Jerry (1h 13m 44s):
Wood? No, I never really even thought about, you know, that aspect. It’s just one thing, one thing unfolded to another and then one thing led to another. And like you said, Atlantic salmon. I drove from Montana to the maritime states, maritime provinces nine times from Montana to Atlantic salmon fish. Dave (1h 14m 7s):
So at maritime provinces. Are those, what, what are those? That whole east, Jerry (1h 14m 11s):
Oh, I, you know, so I’ve caught Atlantic salmon and Quebec and Newfoundland and in Nova Scotia I did fish the Mihi in New Brunswick, but I, I didn’t catch a fish there. But yeah, I just, well Dave (1h 14m 28s):
You’re a good person to ask about this because you’re in the, you fish for summer steelhead, right? Winter steelhead are a little different, but you hear summer steelhead are a lot alike Atlantic salmon. What is your take on Atlantic salmon versus the summer steelhead? How similar are they? Jerry (1h 14m 43s):
Interesting. Yeah. Nice. My one summer steelhead, I guess it’s couples experiences were on Dean River. I was able a couple times in, in I think July. And then fishing for Atlantics. I do a couple times in Quebec in June. And yeah. So those two would be, timeframes would be very comparable. I just, you know, the interesting thing I would have to say, I always said with Atlantic salmon, I say they tend to, I won’t say delicate isn’t the word, they tend to fight a lot more majestically, where steelhead fight more doggedly. Dave (1h 15m 28s):
Oh, okay. Jerry (1h 15m 29s):
Might have to say, you know, yeah. Know that that would be the, if I have to classify them. But when I think about it, yeah, they, those two never really did think about it. But those two would be exact con comparisons. Dave (1h 15m 46s):
Yeah. That’s it. And so the, the Atlantic salmon you caught, were you catching those? What patterns were you fishing for those? Jerry (1h 15m 53s):
Oh, green Highlander is one that I liked the most. I probably, you know, I, I, you know, when I get a fly I, you know, other than changing every now and then, if it’s catching fish, you know, I don’t change it a whole lot. But, you know, I like the green butt stunk out out west. Plus a couple of the fly, especially in the fall flies that somewhat imitated the October cadi type of fly. And then, then the green butt skunk, and let’s see, the black bear green, but black bear I think was another one I used to fish for Atlantic salmon and the green green Highlander. Jerry (1h 16m 35s):
And I forget if they, you know, doors of few other ones and some of the wakers that I used. But usually it was just kind of riffle hitch, some of those patterns and stuck with those. Dave (1h 16m 49s):
Gotcha. It seems like, you know, there’s, that’s always the, we talked about that a little bit, just the challenge of so many cool places to go. Not enough time. Do you still have a few places that you’d like to get out to that you haven’t been to? Jerry (1h 17m 2s):
Oh boy. Yeah. I kind of, yeah, as it turned out, you know, I, yeah, I had really kind of planned on doing a lot more and then 2020 came along and, you know, Dave (1h 17m 12s):
What would be your advice for somebody listening now maybe is younger and thinking like, oh man, I want to do as much as possible. What would you tell them? Jerry (1h 17m 22s):
Boy, you know, to a certain degree I do see the people who are doing that kind of stuff are the ones that are doing the guiding, you know, that Yeah. That seems to be, you know, if you’re a younger guy and you’re ambitious enough and all of that, it’s, it’s tough. Any of these things are tough to do, affordable, affordably. So what I do notice is the ones that are doing them are the guy Are the guy, Dave (1h 17m 50s):
Yeah. The guy. Because the guides are able to dial in their own fishery, and if they get really good, then they’re known for it. And then they take their clients off and go travel on like hosted trips around the world Jerry (1h 17m 60s):
And they can do other things. Yeah. So they can offshoot it. So that, that would be the difference between nowadays and the trout bumming days. I always say that trout buing is not as affordable these days. Dave (1h 18m 16s):
Right? Yeah. Trout buing is not as easy. Well, trout bumming probably is doable in some Yeah. Like, you know, permit bumming or, you know, bonefish bumming. Right. All that stuff is kinda spendy. Jerry (1h 18m 27s):
Yeah. You just can’t up and do it, you know, I, and I, and I always said, that’s why I went to Mexico. I just wanna do stuff on my own. And you, as it turned out, I spent a lot of money to do that, where I, I felt if I would’ve had the opportunity to do it over again, I would use the money that I spent my on on that place on the beach and just gone, gone down to Mexico for a month every year. Dave (1h 18m 56s):
Yeah, right. You Jerry (1h 18m 57s):
Know, so, so there there’s sort of a, a lesson learned there, but, but yeah, it, it’s, it’s, it’s tough to do, find a lot of doit yourself types of places. And that’s what kind of always was always my driving force, you know, to find the doit yourself places. And, and they’re still out there. I mean, that’s, you’re still out there. It just, and, and now here I am, talk about where I am now. I didn’t really, I’m three blocks away from the water here. And when I first moved here 10 years ago, there was stripe bass all over the place. Dave (1h 19m 36s):
So you are still in the Buffalo area? Jerry (1h 19m 38s):
No, I’m in northern Maryland. Dave (1h 19m 41s):
Oh, you’re in Maryland, okay. Jerry (1h 19m 42s):
Yeah, just, just as a three blocks away from, it’s called the Northeast River, but it’s a very upper, upper edge of Chesapeake, it right near the Susquehanna River. And this is, was, And it still is a prime spawning area for stripers, but the striper population has gone down tremendously and, and unfortunately just poor management again. And I’ve noticed it in my, in, in my fishing where I can normally, when I used to, it’s just three, three years ago and be beyond that, I’d be able to pop in my kayak and just kind of puts around all this water that’s just right available to me. Jerry (1h 20m 30s):
And during the right, and I only go out for two or three hours and during, during the right tide I catch, you know, two to four fish, you know, And it, And it is more of a rearing area, so you we’re not, I’m not talking about huge, you know, just nice size. They’re just nice fly rod fish, you know, it’s like 16 to 24 inches, you know, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. But, you know, and last year doing the same thing where first few years I was catching a few hundred, you know, just putzing around like that, you know, last year I caught seven. Oh wow. So, you know, fishing the same, same intense, same stuff, the same areas, same water, same, you know, and, and it just really, really sad to see things going downhill. Jerry (1h 21m 23s):
And, and the thing that kind of still makes it worth going out is you never know what you’re going to hook. There’s tidal, like we call ’em tidal, large mouth, large mouth. ’cause the tide comes up, the large mouth kind of swim with the tide. And so you, you’re not finding ’em under lily pads and stuff like that, you know, they, they kind of move with the tide. So you never know where you’re gonna find the, the large mouth. And, and then there’s snake heads, you know, I just don’t catch many snake heads, but I’m always looking for ’em and introduce species. And then you got small mouth and, and, and my whole intention when I retired, and that’s why I moved to Mexico, was to fish for non trout species. Jerry (1h 22m 6s):
I just kind of wanted to just try some new stuff. Yeah. New, new species and new techniques, new everything. And, and, and then other part of it is I had, you know, had my fun in the sun with, with a trout and steelhead and, you know, give other people the opportunity. And, and so, but all, all this is leading to is that, you know, I’m just fishing mediocre water. I’m not fishing elbow to elbow with anybody. There’s hardly anybody fishing any of the water, fish. And it’s nice to be out there and just kind of not be crowded and catch a fish now and then. And I kind of, the pisser about the whole thing, I said just, I don’t need 20 fish striper days. Jerry (1h 22m 50s):
I just like the opportunity to catch some stripers, which have sort of been taken away from us by poor management as it boils down to a lot of, a lot of technique, a lot of things that have led. That’s Dave (1h 23m 5s):
A bummer. That’s a bummer. Well, I think that’s something we could probably keep up on. I would love to hear more, maybe on the next one we could chat to you more about the kinda stripers where that’s going. I, I would like to take it away on kind of our random segment. You mentioned the, the guitar. Let’s just take it back there and we’ll take it out here on, you know, your music. It sounds like that’s a pretty big part. You mentioned that Spotify song you have or the song on Spotify. What is your music? How would you describe it? Who are your influences? Is that something you do regularly? Jerry (1h 23m 33s):
Oh yeah, that’s good question. Yeah. Well, you know, I grew up during the Folk rock era. Dave (1h 23m 42s):
Oh yeah. Like Bob Dylan. Oh, Jerry (1h 23m 44s):
Yeah. Yeah. So it was all, you know, the Dylans, the Jim Roches, the Harry chickens. And, and that’s kind of what I always, at one point in my life, would’ve loved to be one of those guys, you know? Right. You know, but traveling, you know, I at one point, what kind of fantasized being the rambling man, you know, kind of barred driving around and singing here and singing there. I never got to that point, but I, but I was, you know, I, I I played a lot of, you know, learned. And Dave (1h 24m 16s):
Have you played, have you played in front of some audiences? I, Jerry (1h 24m 18s):
Yeah, I did, but you know, and I’m, I’m just not an in, that was the other thing I realized. I’m more of a private guy. I am not an guy, you know, so I never was really comfortable doing that. And so, but you know, I’d, you know, and some of my initial writing was just writing songs. I just write, you know, some folky folk rock types of songs is what I use. And to a certain degree, I think my, when I’m rereading or rewriting some of the stuff that I write for my stories, I kind of have a little rhythm in the story that it is probably imperceptible to people reading it. Jerry (1h 24m 59s):
But it, to me, it’s just sort of, there’s a almost a song like quality in the, in the, in what I write. It just sort of, sort of, you could, I’m almost thinking that you could put it to music, you know? And so, yeah. So that was, I kind of got into, into like Martin Guitars. So I bought, at one time I had 10 Martin Guitars, you know, was the only one of the things I used to collect a little of. And I still have a couple of them, but I really, my hands with, after building so many rods, my hands are really kind of arthritic. So I am playing, playing just as, as lot more difficult now than I was. Jerry (1h 25m 42s):
So it sort of faded out of my, out of my life. But there was, there was a period of time, especially when my wife was dying, where I, I was, spent a lot of time at home and, you know, played a lot of music and was writing at that time too, so, so yeah, it’s been a big in, it was a big influence in Dave (1h 26m 0s):
A lot. It was music is power, but what is the, you mentioned Jimmy Buffett. Is there somebody a tune we could leave maybe a, a musician or a song that we could leave in the show notes as we take it out here? Jerry (1h 26m 11s):
Oh, geez. Yeah. Let me, Dave (1h 26m 13s):
Is Jimmy Buffett, was he one of your, like, did you like his music? Oh Jerry (1h 26m 17s):
Yeah. Come Monday it All right. You know, type of thing that, yeah, that was one of the big, you know, that was the type of type of music I liked, you know, the kind of emotional kind of that grabs you. But yeah, there was one i, I wrote about it. It just, it’s a Jimmy Buffet, Zach Brown did it. Oh, Dave (1h 26m 39s):
Here, here’s one. I’m just looking at Zach Brown collaborating with Jimmy Buffett on the hit song Knee Deep. Jerry (1h 26m 43s):
That’s it. Dave (1h 26m 44s):
Oh, awesome. I, we had a great song. Okay. So we’ll get knee deep in the show notes. So right now people can, everybody listening can listen to that as we take it and all do the same. Yeah, Jerry (1h 26m 53s):
Yeah, exactly. Cool. Dave (1h 26m 54s):
Well this has been great, Jerry. I think we could probably hold this one there for now. We’ll, we’ll send everybody out to sweetgrass roz.com and then they could also find you on Facebook just search and ru Jerry cui fly Fishing probably, or something like that. Jerry (1h 27m 6s):
Yeah, yeah, that would be, and if anybody’s interested in the books that, you know, they’re, they’re on Amazon too, so Yeah, Dave (1h 27m 13s):
They’re all on Amazon. Yeah. We’ll put links to all your books as well on the show notes so they can take a look at all those and Yeah. And check out some of that soul. Right. I, I feel like the soulful writing, the soulful bamboo, the Soul and the bamboo rods, right. It’s, it’s all kind of a similar, and the music feels like that’s kind of your thing, right? Jerry (1h 27m 30s):
Yeah. It was all, it all kind of all tied together. You know, I’ve kind of always looked at, you know, my life to a certain degree is, there was something that kind of led me along, you know, whether it’s the Great Spirit or whatever it was, it seemed like, you know, something came along whenever at a time when I needed it to come along, you know? Dave (1h 27m 52s):
Yeah. It worked out. Sounds like it worked out to me. Sounds like you’ve had a pretty amazing journey along the way. So, so we’ll, we’ll send everybody out there and then, yeah, Jerry, this has been great. We’ll, just until we talk to you again on the next one, we’ll look forward to us following you and then keeping in touch. Yeah, Jerry (1h 28m 6s):
I appreciate it, Dave. This was great to talk. You know, I, I, like I say, I, I like to talk and when I used to, when we used to have that shop, you know, when I worked, that’s what we did. You know, people come in and I was able to work and talk at the same time, Dave (1h 28m 23s):
So yeah, you got the best. Yeah. Jerry (1h 28m 25s):
So it worked out nice. And that’s kind of what I miss. I I, that’s if I miss anything in my life now, it’s the fact that I don’t have that kind of intermingling with angler like I used to. Yeah. Which, which I used to really, really like. Dave (1h 28m 41s):
Yeah, definitely. You know, I, I think that’s, that’s what’s cool about the podcast is it allows me to do the same thing. Yeah, Jerry (1h 28m 46s):
It does, it, it it’s a, at least kind of is that connection. Dave (1h 28m 50s):
Yeah. It’s not, not totally, you know, in person, which is all always the best, but, but it’s the second to that. But cool, Jerry. All right, well, we’ll be in touch. Thanks again and Jerry (1h 28m 58s):
Well thank you Dave. Dave (1h 29m 0s):
If you get a chance, check in with Jerry today. You can do that. Go on Facebook, track him down. We’ll have a link in the show notes. Also, if you want to go to Sweetgrass Fly Rods, you can go check ’em out right now. See their amazing work and, and do that. If you get a chance, if you haven’t yet, subscribe to this podcast. You can follow the show on your podcast of app. And wanna give one shout out before we get outta here. We are heading to the Missouri the Big Mo this year with On Mark Lodge. If you’re interested in that, send me an email, dave@wew.com or you can go to wet fiw.com/missouri and, and we’ll follow up with you on availability there. Hope to see you and talk to you there. Dave (1h 29m 41s):
Thanks again for checking out the show today. Hope you have a great morning. Hope you have a great afternoon or a fantastic evening if it’s evening, and we’ll talk to you on that next episode. Outro (1h 29m 50s):
Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly, swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly swing.com.
Conclusion with Jerry Kustich on Bamboo Rods, Steelhead, and Sweetgrass
Jerry’s journey proves that fly fishing is more than a sport—it’s a way of life shaped by people, places, and stories that stick with us forever. From steelhead in New York to skating flies in B.C., from handmade bamboo rods to heartfelt songs written for friends, Jerry reminds us what matters most: staying curious, passing it on, and making time for the water. Be sure to check out his books, music, and Sweetgrass Rods to dive deeper. Thanks for joining us—until next time, keep your line wet and your stories flowing.
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