828 | Fishing For All with Evan Griggs – Fly Fishing Minnesota, Saint Croix and Mississippi River, Warm-water Species

00;00;01;29 – 00;00;24;05 Dave Today’s guest has built his life around fishing. Minnesota’s diverse waters from spring fed drifters creeks to the broad wild stretches of the Saint Croix and the Mississippi rivers. By the end of this episode, you’ll know why Minnesota is more than flyover country. What makes the drift list? Trout Fisheries such a hidden gem? And how smallmouth bass migrate more than 100 miles each season and how to chase them. 00;00;24;19 – 00;00;46;27 Dave Evan also shares his philosophy on teaching new anglers the gear and flies he trusts and what it’s like guiding on rivers where you might see black bears swimming across or £30 buffalo slipping on the surface. This is the Fly swim podcast ratio of 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 the fish species we all love. 00;00;47;18 – 00;01;06;07 Dave Evan Griggs is the founder of Fishing for All and Outfitter. That puts anglers on everything from trout to smallmouth bass to carp pike muskie right in the heart of the Midwest. All right, let’s get into it. You can find Evan at fishing for all. Here he is. Evan Griggs. How’s it going, Evan? 00;01;06;18 – 00;01;08;00 Evan Very well. How are you, Dave? 00;01;08;10 – 00;01;18;26 Dave Not too bad. Not too bad. We are getting a little bit of rain out here. How’s? It’s kind of weird going into that October period. What’s going on for you guys this time of the year? What’s keeping you busy? 00;01;19;05 – 00;01;37;15 Evan Oh, man, I wish we were getting rain and some cold. We’ve hit our second summer for the year before. It’s about 90 degrees all week. So, yeah, hopefully, hopefully we’ll have some fall here soon in the north land of Minnesota. So. 00;01;37;16 – 00;01;46;11 Dave Yeah. So you get a longer summer. How often do your summers now go? Like when is it change? Because you guys get some cold weather too. When does that typically change? 00;01;46;21 – 00;02;04;03 Evan Oh yeah. You know, normal years. We’ll see it mid-September. You’ll really start to feel the chill. But boy, the last three weeks have been super hot. I’m not complaining. You know, we’re doing a lot of smallmouth bass trips and they like it hot. So bass fishing has been really epic. 00;02;04;03 – 00;02;09;09 Dave This fall. They do. So the drift less and the trout stuff isn’t quite as hot this time of year. 00;02;09;19 – 00;02;23;00 Evan Yeah, it’s it’s good for good for terrestrial fishing for sure. With our hot weather here, the grasshoppers are still going slow and they’re all spring fed creeks. Dominance of water temps an issue. 00;02;23;03 – 00;02;48;09 Dave Oh, right. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Well, we’re going to dig into some I think we’re going to keep it fairly general on Minnesota and your operation down there. You cover a number of different species. So we’re going to kind of keep it open today, but maybe we could just walk through, you know, your season’s a little rhino. You know, we’re talking about right now, September, October, what’s the shut off point when you guys or what do you do once things hit and you got some snow coming in? 00;02;48;22 – 00;03;14;06 Evan Absolutely. Yeah. So we’re kind of in the tail end of our season right now. We depending on before things freeze or before snow starts to fly. Most years we’ll get our first snow around Halloween and we’ll depending if anglers are super hardy and want to keep targeting big trophy Muskies and Pike, we’ll go into November. Even our season closes early December for those guys. 00;03;14;06 – 00;03;24;11 Evan So if you want to fish in your full parka and yeah, dodge ice birds down the river, we’ll keep going. But generally we’ll wrap up at the end of October. 00;03;24;13 – 00;03;32;11 Dave Okay. Okay. And are you are you doing is it kind of equal Pike and Muskie for trips out there or whatever? Sure. Yeah. 00;03;32;21 – 00;03;46;19 Evan Yeah. Here. UPS of all times are Prime Muskie prime type times, especially for the bigger fish they need to up before the great freeze comes. So they’re all getting really bitey this time of year. 00;03;47;02 – 00;04;03;13 Dave Yeah. So it seems like, you know, just in general and fly fishing, you know, trout still is the dominant rate. I think a lot of people, depending on where you are, you know, trout fishing is still the big thing. But, you know, all these other species that you mentioned, pike, muskie, carp, some of these other ones are kind of growing. 00;04;03;14 – 00;04;11;22 Dave Do you find that out there? You’re getting more those are getting the equal of the trout stuff or what’s like if you look at the whole year, well, what’s the distribution look like? 00;04;12;04 – 00;04;36;02 Evan Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say our bread and butter for our operation at fishing for all is our smallmouth bass floats on the Saint Croix River or the Mississippi rivers or various of their kind of backwoods tributaries. It’s really easy access to our less trout streams here, which is a major blessing compared to a lot of Western states or even eastern states. 00;04;36;18 – 00;04;54;04 Evan How we’ve kind of structured our trout trips is we’ll teach people how to fly fish on our trout streams and encourage them to go back to the spots that we guided them on. And once they kind of hone their skills, then it’s like, Okay. Yeah. And the drift boat, let’s go catch some fish now, you know? 00;04;54;18 – 00;05;08;23 Dave Gotcha. Yeah. So you get them started understanding the drift. Less fishing, getting some fish, but then step it up to some of the bigger fish. Right. Because the the drift loss has it does have some brown trout or decent size. Right. But for the most part they’re smaller and some of those streams. 00;05;09;03 – 00;05;37;24 Evan Absolutely. So we’re mostly seeing average trout, I don’t know, 8 to 10 inches. We do get some big 20 plus inch rounds, not in huge frequency, but they’re out there, especially if you’re willing to throw big articulated streamers or things like that. But yeah, for our bass, you know, or rather for our trout, we’ll be throwing 3 to 5 weight rods, six, six tippet little tiny nymphs or dries. 00;05;38;21 – 00;06;05;04 Evan It’s all 30 foot casks or less because their streams are very narrow and overgrown, a little bit technical compared to our small mouth streams or our small mouth floats where we’re throwing eight weeks, seven or eight intermediate lines or huge your hair poppers or wood poppers or big old streamers. But from the drift boat, you can you don’t have to worry about getting snagged behind you as much. 00;06;05;19 – 00;06;24;09 Evan And you know, it’s hard to complain with a with a fish that will hit a popper that’s blaze orange on top of the water. And then we’ll pull line off of you and we’ll have to try to sit down with the drift boat. So it’s you know, we get a lot of out of town travelers, especially from the west. 00;06;24;09 – 00;06;37;10 Evan They’ll come into Minneapolis for business or something and it’s like, oh, let’s go trout fishing. Like, now let’s, you know, our crown jewel here is our big rivers in our in our brown bass. Let’s let’s show you something really cool, right? 00;06;37;10 – 00;06;37;20 Dave Right. 00;06;37;21 – 00;06;39;28 Evan And he always gets a pretty mind blown. 00;06;39;28 – 00;06;49;28 Dave Yeah, well, it’s a and yes. And it’s all pretty much you guys are floating. What’s the the river is the Saint Croix. Is that is that your big one. Do you have a few different rivers your fishing for bass For sure. 00;06;49;28 – 00;07;14;16 Evan Yeah. So the Saint Croix is, is what we work on the most. It’s also my backyard it’s the Sinclair way was one of the first eight original rivers to get designated wild and scenic with the Wild Rivers Act in 1968. And so it’s you know, National Park for most of its 250 mile length course. There’s very, very little development. 00;07;14;16 – 00;07;26;11 Evan It’s all natural shorelines. You’ll see black bears swimming across the Eagles and Ospreys and all that. So even a few wolves that pick it up way up on the headwaters. 00;07;26;19 – 00;07;27;04 Dave Crazy. 00;07;27;12 – 00;07;51;01 Evan It’s kind of and you know, and it’s only an hour from downtown Minneapolis and a few million people in the metro. Wow. So the Mississippi would be our other one. And that one’s probably more well known for especially its bass fishery. But interesting juxtaposition that one is a wild and wild scenic state designated, but that designation is a lot lower than the federal. 00;07;51;01 – 00;08;01;08 Evan So we have lots of buildings and lots of developments along the shoreline. And it’s not necessarily impeded the fishing, but it, you know, very different vibe. 00;08;02;00 – 00;08;06;07 Dave Yeah, Yeah, definitely. And does the Saint Croix, does that flow into the Mississippi? 00;08;06;14 – 00;08;19;02 Evan Correct? Yep. It’s a big, big main artery of the Mississippi. It forms the Minnesota and Wisconsin border for much of its course. And then it hit the Mississippi River just south of metro area. 00;08;19;10 – 00;08;27;06 Dave Just south. Okay. Yeah. So and then the Mississippi and it heads up into the headwaters release. It goes north. Right? That was just somewhere in Ontario, up in Canada. 00;08;27;16 – 00;08;56;14 Evan Almost. Yeah. Yeah, it’s in northern Minnesota. Kind of makes a funny question mark. Sheep after a whole bunch of various glacial movements, but it starts up by Bemidji, Minnesota, and this little swamp, which is now protected by the state’s largest state park called Itasca State Park. And you can most people don’t sit up there, but there are lots of people who will start out of that little swamp and canoe all the way to New Orleans. 00;08;57;25 – 00;09;00;18 Evan Over along that course is takes a few months. 00;09;00;18 – 00;09;05;18 Dave Usually people put in at the very much the headwaters and float all the way down into the Mississippi and down. 00;09;05;18 – 00;09;16;16 Evan Yeah you know a fair number of them we’ll see them when we’re out guiding we’ll see them paddling through on the sections that we guide closer to Minneapolis. And they’re always looking pretty to shuffle. 00;09;17;04 – 00;09;21;02 Dave Right right there on a what’s that take up? I take months probably that it. 00;09;21;21 – 00;09;25;24 Evan Takes like I think it’s like three months at least to do the whole river. 00;09;25;24 – 00;09;27;09 Dave But see that would be great. 00;09;27;26 – 00;09;29;11 Evan Yeah but because the. 00;09;29;26 – 00;09;48;21 Dave Okay so yeah you have, you have this I mean the Saint Croix is definitely I mean obviously you still have the Saint Croix rise. I always go back to that, you know the brand there which. Oh sure. Going out there strong. Right. But but yeah it’s a I didn’t realize it was a federally designated river. And did you also say it’s a national park. 00;09;49;04 – 00;10;01;03 Evan Yes. The National Park Service manages the wild and scenic river way. Yep, yep, yep. So it’s a separate designation than like a Yellowstone. But yeah, the National Park Service maintains it all. 00;10;01;13 – 00;10;13;18 Dave Okay. Okay, good. And and so at the small mouth fishing, is it kind of I mean, you got a pretty decent season, right? Because you get hit in lake in the spring early and then all the way through the summer into the fall. What’s the season look like for you guys? 00;10;13;25 – 00;10;38;08 Evan Yeah, correct. Yep. So our base season in Minnesota starts in May, mid-to-late May. And what’s really cool about the Saint Croix fishery, because there is a lack of dams, which is why it was federally protected to keep to maintain its free flowing nature. Our bars do a11 up to a 100 mile, make reason one way every spring and then all the way back down in the fall. 00;10;38;22 – 00;11;05;04 Evan Wow. So there’s one only one dam on the kind of the lower Middle Saint Croix and Taylors Falls that produces a little bit of hydroelectric. But back in the eighties or early nineties, they did a radio tag study on these fish and they would netted them tagged them in the in the fluids above the dam and throughout the season they would catch them further and further up the river. 00;11;05;28 – 00;11;22;14 Evan And some of the largest fish that were found in the study were tagged in the study were also found the furthest up river and and some of those were reaching 80 to almost 100 miles upriver. Wow. We’re I don’t think anyone thinks of bass as a migratory. No. 00;11;23;00 – 00;11;25;02 Dave No. What is that? What are they migrating for? 00;11;25;25 – 00;11;52;12 Evan So they’re swimming up from the lake all the way up to some really rocky sections. Fast, rocky water up, some tributary trees or just vast sections of the Saint Croix and further spawn. So kind of the trigger in the spring would be this the high water push of snow melts and ice off. And they they hit that high water usually late May or sorry, early May, late April. 00;11;52;20 – 00;12;06;29 Evan And they will just truck nonstop up river. So our early season, May and June we are fishing like really cool Northwoods rocky fast cascading sections of the Croix and its tributaries. 00;12;07;07 – 00;12;09;17 Dave So you’re kind of following those fish up to fishermen. 00;12;09;18 – 00;12;30;08 Evan Yeah. Yep. Yep. Exactly. So we start up high and then throughout the season, as the waters drop, those fish will slowly spread out. And eventually by September for sure, early October on most of those fish, you’re back down in the lower river, back in that flow and Taylors Falls. 00;12;30;18 – 00;12;41;08 Dave Is falls and and what do you if we were, you know, calling you to say a trip we had an open you know, time we can go any time. What do you typically recommend? Is there a better time that you like out there? 00;12;41;12 – 00;13;17;21 Evan Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. Our my favorite time would be that late May through through June, that high water time where all the fish are, all hot and bothered. And that fast, fast, really cool water, very woodsy wilderness feel to it. You know that these are fish are compared to our Mississippi fishery where there’s many many dams. They did a comparable to radio take study on the Mississippi where those fish move three miles at three miles in a year compared to 80 to 100 miles. 00;13;17;24 – 00;13;20;25 Dave And where are those fish spawning if they’re not going to the cold. 00;13;20;25 – 00;13;50;24 Evan Those fish, because they’re so limited? There is like gravelly sections and riffles. So many people envision the Mississippi, like lower down where there’s huge barges and stuff and Mississippi and much of Minnesota is comparable to like, I don’t know, say, the Yellowstone River through Central Montana. It’s very broad water with older gardens and riffles and braided channels. So it’s a it is a really cool fishery to explore in Minnesota. 00;13;51;06 – 00;14;07;14 Evan Like I’ve had a couple from Alabama come up years ago and they were expecting to see barges and all sorts of trash and stuff is like, wow, this looks like, uh, Montana trout rivers like, Yeah, yeah. But we’re using eight weights and poppers. It’s great. 00;14;07;27 – 00;14;18;02 Dave Right? Right. That’s awesome. And so you guys are going so upriver when you target them, what’s the closest town to some of those upper areas where you’re going in May and June? 00;14;18;20 – 00;14;19;23 Evan Oh, boy. 00;14;20;25 – 00;14;21;28 Dave There’s not a lot of towns up there. 00;14;22;07 – 00;14;51;01 Evan No, not a lot of major towns. The closest town that would be big enough to recognize would be Saint Cloud or Brainerd, Minnesota, where we normally guide. We’re up in the Monticello section, which is kind of in between the metro and Saint Cloud. And that section is really cool because back in the nineties after that radio tag study and they found that those fish don’t move and they were getting over pressured. 00;14;51;14 – 00;15;11;04 Evan Back in the day we had a small mouth alliance and a conservation group and they were able to get legislation and protections passed for a catch and release slot for all Bass 12 to 20 inches. And right now we’re seeing the fruits of that labor with some really awesome, awesome fish. 00;15;11;12 – 00;15;14;16 Dave So and that’s the cool thing because these are native to this area, right? 00;15;14;22 – 00;15;19;24 Evan Yes. Yep, yep. They are native to our to our watersheds here. 00;15;19;24 – 00;15;25;23 Dave And is that the one end of the species you guys fish? Is the bass the only native one or the Muskie. 00;15;25;23 – 00;16;02;04 Evan Also Muskie are also native hiker, also native. Okay. Yeah, we run we run guided trips in downtown Minneapolis on the Mississippi as well. And we’ll target you know, everyone’s favorite invasive the common carp. All right they’re awesome and but we will also see native native rockfish like largemouth buffalo or quill back suckers, red horse suckers. So even in downtown, yeah, it’s littered how there’s, you know, concrete jungle right up to the water’s edge. 00;16;02;04 – 00;16;05;08 Evan But there’s still a really cool, interesting fishery as well. 00;16;05;20 – 00;16;11;16 Dave All right. Yeah. The cool back sucker. That’s interesting. It’s got a cool dorsal fin with a big gray ray off the top. 00;16;11;16 – 00;16;15;19 Evan Yeah, They’re like the the Midwestern permit. That’s pretty cool, right? 00;16;15;28 – 00;16;18;24 Dave Is that pretty similar to fishing? Like a carp? 00;16;19;16 – 00;16;33;29 Evan Yes, very similar. The quill backs are way spookier, though. If you’ve ever gone fly fishing for like redfish and Louisiana. You know, the sheep head. The sheep head are ridiculously hard to catch. That’s right. 00;16;34;10 – 00;16;35;01 Dave Yeah. They’re tough. 00;16;35;05 – 00;17;09;10 Evan Yeah. And the quill backs act very similarly. You’ll see them. They kind of like hop around feeding on the bottom. If you splash too close to them, they’ll spook. Our carp in Buffalo are both sort of bottom feeders and filter feeders. So often we’ll hop on some old factory ruins on the river and there’ll be a big scuzzy eddy right behind some of the infrastructure, and you’ll see carp and buffalo, kind of just slurping on the surface all the scores and slurping off of flip flops or old Styrofoam cups. 00;17;09;10 – 00;17;24;26 Evan And so we’ll like throw big terrestrial patterns and try to land them right off of that flip flop. And almost like Whac-A-Mole, I’ll try to get these big, big, big fish on on dry flies right in downtown. It’s awesome. 00;17;24;26 – 00;17;25;25 Dave How big do those get? 00;17;26;14 – 00;17;39;28 Evan The buffalo will get up to £40. Our biggest carp we’ve landed was about £30 on average. We’ll see, you know, 10 to 15 or £18 is really, really regular. 00;17;39;28 – 00;18;12;12 Dave Discover Smitty’s fly box for premium flies. Their monthly subscription service delivers expertly crafted flies and materials tailored to your fishing environment, boasting over 30 years of experience, Smitty’s is your trusted source for a diverse range of flies. Enhance your fishing experience and make life easier with their carefully created selections. You can subscribe right now at Smitty’s five Vox.com, enjoying a community of passionate anglers since 1972, For Real Campers has been building a rugged, lightweight campers designed to fit almost any truck in every kind of adventure. 00;18;12;23 – 00;18;32;17 Dave Whether you’re keeping it simple like me with the project AM or gearing up for full time off the grid travel. There’s a four wheel camper built to match your lifestyle. You can head over to four wheel campers. Com right now to use the builder tool to find your perfect topper slide in or flatbed camper for your next journey. 00;18;32;17 – 00;18;46;07 Dave And then and we’re here. I mean I guess we’re talking kind of native species here or there if you were going up there in that May June Irwin would be the best time to get here. If you want to catch a few different of the native fish you guys have won would be the best time. 00;18;46;17 – 00;19;21;10 Evan Yeah. Like doing a grand tour that this sweet I would come June or July for all the species probably June because the drift was trout streams. We have epic carries hatches, brewing olives kind of tapering off by June. The Somalis are prime in both the Mississippi and Saint Croix watersheds. And then you could also get on to some metro swamps or or along some lakes or streams in the in the spring in the city and go get some huge carp, too. 00;19;21;20 – 00;19;31;14 Dave Okay. So June would be a good time for that. And could you do it? Would it be doable that you could catch maybe. I mean, how many species do you think you could catch if you’re out there for a week? 00;19;31;29 – 00;19;40;23 Evan MAN Well, we have 160 DNR, Department of Natural Resources, Classified Species Game, species of fish. 00;19;41;13 – 00;19;47;07 Dave Oh, wow. Wow. How many of those do you think are native, or what about ones that are native to your area? Is that most of those? 00;19;47;07 – 00;20;06;22 Evan Yeah, most of them are native. Most of them that are non-native would be a lot of our cold water species. Oh really? Only native cold water fish are brook trout in our lake. Trout. We do have brook brown rainbow. We’ll stir the pot and call them Great Lakes Steelhead. 00;20;07;05 – 00;20;09;02 Dave Yeah, yeah. You got those the brewer, right. 00;20;09;02 – 00;20;33;23 Evan The brewers in the Brule in the north shore of Lake Superior. Yep. We have very small salmon runs as well. Cohoes and pinks. So there there’s that. Otherwise most of our warm water fish species are all native, which is pretty dang cool. One of the local fly shops used to run a tournament called Grand Slam and it was literally like the winter. 00;20;33;23 – 00;20;44;27 Evan You have a weekend or a week or something and whoever catches the most species of fish wins. And I think one of the winners one year cut 39 different species. 00;20;45;08 – 00;20;46;01 Dave That’s cool. 00;20;46;02 – 00;20;46;28 Evan To fly. Yeah. 00;20;47;06 – 00;21;08;24 Dave Man, that’s great. Yeah, that’s the we’re starting to get into that a little bit. We’ve been talking a lot about some of the there’s like a Western trout channel native trout challenge and there’s some different ones. But I think just having a fish species challenge, right, native fish species would be kind of cool because no matter where you are, you could find your, you know, sometimes I mean, trout obviously are kind of everywhere. 00;21;08;24 – 00;21;17;05 Dave But yeah, I think it’s more unique to find those ones sometimes the smaller fish, right? You guys, probably they’re not all £40, right? You have a mix of no small. Right. Yeah. 00;21;17;15 – 00;21;41;10 Evan You have like a lot of our, a lot of our sunfish. Our sunfish family has like ten different species in it alone. And even our largemouth and smallmouth bass are in that camilli capiz, bluegills, green, sunfish, rock bass, all sorts of different stuff. So something we really like to highlight with fishing for all is like fish, local fish. 00;21;41;27 – 00;22;14;22 Evan So we’re in flyover country. You know, we, we acknowledge that, I acknowledge that. But man, we have such cool fisheries not that far away from us or even right in a major metropolitan area. Whether you want to drive an hour and legit see black bears swimming across the river while you’re catching bass and muskies on the Saint Croix, or if you want to drive up to the Mississippi, catch huge bass and Muskies there, or drive an hour down to the drift less or drive 10 minutes to the Gulf Park pond behind your house. 00;22;15;07 – 00;22;22;14 Evan You know, it’s it’s been a pretty amazing opportunity for flying colors if you’re well into the catch more than just throughout. 00;22;22;26 – 00;22;39;04 Dave Hey, you have some options. Well, let’s get back to the and the bass that we were talking about there a little bit. Let’s say we were coming in June, maybe break that out. What does that look like on your trips? Were you guys kind of sounds like you have drift boats. Are you guys fishing? Kind of, you know, talk about that a little bit. 00;22;39;04 – 00;22;40;08 Dave What would that first day be like? 00;22;40;14 – 00;23;05;20 Evan Yeah, absolutely. So our average day, eight hour day, we would start probably 8 a.m. We’ll meet you at the boat ramp, will loads everything in. We’ll be throwing probably eight weights that time of year with the higher water. And depending on the water temperature, if it’s mid-sixties or above, we’ll be throwing the top water flies right at this lot of grass. 00;23;06;07 – 00;23;36;24 Evan A couple of years ago we had a really mild winter and there was a lot of mice that survived over winter. So come May we had a super wet spring, so it was very flooded and there were mice everywhere in the water. It was like fishing in Alaska. We were fishing. A big old mice flies in the middle of the day, just slamming them right along this banks in these shoreline eddies and these respond bass coming up, inhaling these mice flies. 00;23;37;26 – 00;23;42;20 Evan So they’re they’re just kind of dominate aggressive, especially pre spawn. 00;23;42;25 – 00;23;45;20 Dave And pre spawn as before. What’s the response time. 00;23;46;00 – 00;24;07;08 Evan Depends on water temps typically like a mid mid-May is pre spawn for most of our fish will be spawning by a early June and it will kind of give them a little break and then we’ll hit them hard again. Post spawn, which is like mid-June that to the rest of June. Yeah. 00;24;07;16 – 00;24;14;05 Dave The rest of the June. Okay. And then this is up in the upper the water. So you’re floating the upper to the, you’re talking about the upper river. 00;24;14;08 – 00;24;45;10 Evan Right. So. Yep. Yep. This is on the Upper Saint Croix or the upper Mississippi, especially with higher flows we can get on some really on Crescent tributaries that have really crummy like boat access. But we just shove our rafts or our drift boats in right below a road bridge, and we can get into these really cool rivers that are really rocky and definitely where some of the only flies and lures that these these fish see. 00;24;46;05 – 00;25;08;16 Evan But yeah, they’ll they’ll swim up some really cool rivers for us but yeah otherwise it’s giant top waters and really big streamers. These fish are kind of fattening up again after a long, cold winter, especially if they’re in the Saint Croix. They’re just getting done swim in 100 miles there. They’re angry in there and they’re hungry. 00;25;08;16 – 00;25;14;10 Dave They’re hungry and they’re hungry. And what are the typical if they’re not on mice, what other top water flies? 00;25;14;10 – 00;25;39;13 Evan Sure. Frogs we have up here created by Larry Dahlberg. Larry, during the famous hunt for big fish. He’s a Saint Croix River legend up here. All right. We still see him a couple times this summer up on the water here. But he invented, that’s all, bird diver, which is kind of a deer hair frog pattern. So that’s super effective. 00;25;40;13 – 00;25;54;12 Evan Also just big like bugle bud poppers, yellow or white or black, all easy to see colors. Otherwise for streamers will do big like Murdock minnows or team changers, things like that. 00;25;54;20 – 00;26;01;20 Dave Yeah. Okay. And in the Dahlberg diver, describe that pattern a little more of such a pattern. Yeah. 00;26;01;20 – 00;26;32;14 Evan Yeah, It’s so it’s. It takes like, 2 hours to tie. It’s. It’s all pain in the butt, but they look super cool. They kind of have some hair coming off the back of this. Yeah. Big wide gaps. Passbook with some tinsel and rubber legs, and then you jam the front of the hook super tight with this spin the deer hair and you take a razor blade and you kind of shave it into almost like a cone from the hook eye to the middle of the shank. 00;26;32;14 – 00;26;57;17 Evan And then you leave a little sliver of deer hair behind that cone and essentially that shape, when you strip it in the line, we’ll help that fly dive under the water a couple inches. And then thanks to the deer hair being so buoyant, it slowly floats back up to the surface. So it makes this cool, kind of like, boy, maybe even like a pencil metal popper kind of thing. 00;26;58;01 – 00;27;21;24 Evan But it’s a diving action with a sweet bubble trail behind it. And then it’s like a very slow natural flow back up. That’s usually where we’ll get the bass to come up. And they’ll either just destroy it and inhale the saying where they’ll be. Sometimes that they’re feeling a little more data. They’ll just slurp it like a little little tricot or something that’s kind of cool. 00;27;21;29 – 00;27;31;28 Dave Oh, wow. Yeah. So describe that. So you have your fish and for the most part, you fish in, you know, riffles, runs pools. Like what? What are those banks looking like? How are you? 00;27;32;06 – 00;28;10;05 Evan So, yeah, especially early season, May, June, even early July, we’ll be hitting water deep eddies typically on the outside bands of fast, fast, older water. The deeper and more bubbly, the eddy is, the better. So you’re you can kind of visualize it. We’re we’re rolling like hell through this fast water and we come up on this big scuzzy eddy and you throw your big your hair frog in there and you can see it kind of part the bubbles on the surface of the eddy. 00;28;10;05 – 00;28;29;17 Evan And then all of a sudden it’s like a toilet bowl flushing. It’s a giant 20 inch, £5 small mouth on the end of your line. And then we have to chase it down the rapids. It’s just so, so cool. Yeah. So we’re we’re fish in very, very similar water to, like western trout rivers for sure. Yeah. 00;28;29;23 – 00;28;38;28 Dave Yeah. So it’s similar water. So it’s kind of so they’re in different times, pools are kind of in everything. But it is the thing is you want to get it to that bank because of the undercuts and things like. 00;28;38;28 – 00;29;02;15 Evan That, right? Yep. Undercuts. They just don’t love fighting currents so they want to be close to it, just like a big, big trout. But they want to be sitting in that slack so they don’t have to burn all that energy. Yeah, it’s so we’re looking for. I think that’s why, like when we do get western trout anglers out here, they feel pretty comfortable with the fishing. 00;29;02;15 – 00;29;11;14 Evan It’s because we’re hitting the same spots that you would for big brown trout out west. You know, same so same sort of holding water. 00;29;11;14 – 00;29;21;14 Dave So I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah that’s And when do you guys trend is it transition from the top stuff is that just water temperature if the water cools down or describe that when do you go to the streamers. 00;29;21;19 – 00;29;57;22 Evan Yeah. So we we always start with top water because if they are hitting top water, it’s going to be an epic day. Typically, if we don’t get pretty consistent action right away on top water, we’ll switch to a unweighted streamer like a murdoch minnow and we’ll see if they’re active in that mid-water column. If we’re not hitting there, then we’re going to put on like a really big game changer or a claw dad or or other big heavy streamer patterns, sex dungeons or things like that. 00;29;57;22 – 00;30;02;16 Evan So yeah, we kind of let the water temps depend or the fishes behavior depends. 00;30;02;24 – 00;30;08;01 Dave Okay. And what is and is it 60 degrees? Is that kind of the big thing or what would be what are you looking for? 00;30;08;01 – 00;30;50;02 Evan Yeah, I think it’s 65 and above. They really get turned on and especially the warmer the better for them. You know, if it’s 70 to 75, it’s going to be a really epic day for a smallmouth bass float. 65 to 70. It could be good that we might not get a lot of like really explosive hits on top water, but we’ll get more subtle, kind of trout Slurpee kind of hits, which is kind of cool, but we’ll probably be like mid column flies or or dredging the bottom with heavy stuff if it’s less than 65, we’re definitely dredging the bottom air. 00;30;50;03 – 00;30;56;28 Dave Okay, So that’s the so so 68 again. So the one the top one, you know, top water is going to be on what is that temp. 00;30;57;06 – 00;30;58;22 Evan You have like 70 plus. 00;30;59;04 – 00;31;10;05 Dave 70 plus. Okay. And then you guys mix and there’s that the case throughout the whole year is is it kind of could you get top water as easy early spring as you can later in the fall. 00;31;10;17 – 00;31;37;28 Evan We’ll have a shorter a shorter top water window per day, depending on the spring or the fall. And it, you know, climatically. It’s so weather dependent. And we could have like this last spring we had snow. We still had ice on the lakes in late April, entering early May. So that kind of set us back a little bit this season. 00;31;38;09 – 00;32;02;19 Evan So yeah, there’s some variability, but between spring or fall for top water, I think we’ll get more consistent action on top water in the spring. They’re just a little more aggressive that time of year come the fall of we can get some top water, but we have fewer frogs out in about. We have fewer dragonflies or dams or flies zooming around. 00;32;03;13 – 00;32;07;21 Evan So there are more keyed in on like big crayfish or big minnows in the fall. 00;32;08;02 – 00;32;29;08 Dave Yeah, but okay. And I’m looking at the app. So we had an episode with Larry Dahlberg back in after week 241 and we talked about the hunt for big fish and everything he has gone. So I’ll put a link out in the show notes to that one so people can check that out. Yeah, okay. He’s definitely got some more where he’s kind of famous because of I know the Dahlberg diver, but did he ever show or what was his. 00;32;29;15 – 00;32;32;09 Evan Yeah. Yeah. Because his hunt for big fish. Yeah. Yeah. 00;32;32;11 – 00;32;32;20 Dave That was. 00;32;32;20 – 00;32;34;15 Evan This was like Saturday morning. 00;32;34;16 – 00;32;36;18 Dave Did you watch that show when you’re when you’re younger. 00;32;36;26 – 00;32;37;06 Evan Yeah. 00;32;37;13 – 00;32;43;08 Dave Yeah. Is that when you watch your. Did you get into fly fishing kind of earlier. What, what’s your head. 00;32;43;09 – 00;33;22;09 Evan Yeah I was, I was fortunate to grow up in a outdoorsy family in the city. So every Saturday my dad would drive me down, which was trout stream near Redwing, Minnesota. And we would. We just started with, like, spin gear throwing rooster tails, spinners or crappie minnows or something. But my dad watched a river runs through it and then, you know, like so many others, try to take up the sport and I remember being around ten years old and watching him flail around and it’s like, I got to learn how to do this and see if you can actually catch a fish on it. 00;33;23;03 – 00;33;42;20 Evan That’s cool. So I borrowed is Throw Me Cortland set up that he had at the time and put my back against our fence. So my rod swing when go too far behind my my shoulder. I knew if I could hit the hedge on the far side of the yard. That was like a 40 or 50 foot cast and that would be good enough. 00;33;43;07 – 00;33;59;03 Evan Yeah. And then, you know, every second I could, I’d hop on my bike and bike to Lake Harriet or Lake Calhoun or Minnehaha Creek or the Mississippi in downtown. All, you know, all natural waters catching bluegills and large mouth and pike and stuff. 00;33;59;03 – 00;33;59;24 Dave And that’s cool. 00;34;00;05 – 00;34;19;00 Evan And it took me three years to catch my first trout on the fly. And I remember we were on this little stream we would go to in Redwing Co Hay Creek, and it there was just this shallow little run with this school of fish. I sat in that bank throwing random dry flies at him for what seemed like hours. 00;34;19;08 – 00;34;42;10 Evan Finally, one of them took pity on me and zero 180 slammed the fly just to get me out of there, set the hook and brought it in. And it was a little six inch brownie. I remember that like it was yesterday. Wow. They were like, Oh, Lord, yeah. We bring it home and eat it right? So when I did, I brought it home. 00;34;42;10 – 00;34;42;25 Evan I made them. 00;34;43;08 – 00;34;54;01 Dave Yeah. So, yeah, that’s cool. That’s really awesome. Well, when did the and then eventually how did the kind of the guiding that started was that did you always see that coming up or. 00;34;54;25 – 00;35;20;27 Evan I was about I was after that fish I was addicted to fly fishing and probably when I was 13 I was a terrible student in school, but I had a notebook full of like, like large design signs or fly shop designs. I would peruse topographical maps and be like, Yeah, I want to lives right on that creek or that lake, you know? 00;35;21;13 – 00;35;48;12 Evan And I finally went on my first backpacking trip when I was 16 to Yellowstone. And there are two two cool dudes who I’m still friends with today leading that group. And it was like, Wait, you’re getting paid to go backpacking. That’s fishing in Yellowstone. I want that job right? So I just just decided from then in there that that’s going to be my lifestyle. 00;35;48;12 – 00;36;04;02 Evan Graduated Minneapolis Public High School packs my car three days later and drove to Montana for the first time. I’d never had been. I drove the closest good trout fishing in Montana to us is the Big Horn River. 00;36;04;10 – 00;36;06;12 Dave Oh, the Big Horny. I live on the Far East Side. 00;36;06;22 – 00;36;30;08 Evan Nice. Yep, yep, yep. On the east side there. So I rolled up to Cottonwood Campground near three Mile Access and walked into the little shop, and there was an old timer sitting behind the desk and I said, I want to be a fishing guide. And he just laughed at me. But he saw my Minnesota license plate and said, Where are you from in Minnesota? 00;36;30;17 – 00;36;39;28 Evan Said, Oh, Minneapolis. He said, Oh, what blocks is like, oh, 51st beer? He’s like, I used to live on 48th and Queen just a few blocks apart from each other. 00;36;40;04 – 00;36;40;22 Dave No way. 00;36;41;09 – 00;36;54;13 Evan So he took pity on me and let me live in a cat infested camper in the back of the property and pay me eight bucks an hour to work 16 hour days and do all the grunt work. And I absolutely loved it. 00;36;54;22 – 00;36;55;15 Dave And the fly shop. 00;36;55;24 – 00;37;03;26 Evan App in the shop and managing the lodge grounds, running shuttles, running school oats. 00;37;03;26 – 00;37;21;24 Dave Some places are just different. You feel it. The second you step into the water. Mount Waters Resort sits on the legendary Portland Creek, a place where Atlantic salmon runs strong and where fly fishing history was written. Lee Wolf himself fished these waters, and now you get to experience the same world class fishing in a setting that feels untouched by time. 00;37;22;01 – 00;37;38;26 Dave Whether you’re swinging flies for fresh chrome or kicking back in a cozy riverside cabin. This is the kind of trip you’ll be talking about for years and years to come. And guess what? I’ll be there this year as well. But here’s the deal. Prime time season fills up fast, so don’t wait. Check in now and join me on this historic river this year. 00;37;39;05 – 00;38;02;09 Dave You can head over to whet fly swing dot com slash mountain waters right now that’s Mount waters resort you can go to whet fly swing dot com slash mountain waters right now and save your spot for this epic adventure. So there’s a whole they had a whole fly shop and lodge and unbelievable. Who is that. Who is that person. 00;38;02;22 – 00;38;25;14 Evan Cottonwood Campground. The Dude, I first met was named Roger. He. I don’t know if he’s still there or not, but that was a long time ago. Now, after 15 years, my 15th year guiding and yeah, it’s it’s cool from coming from going to Montana not even knowing how to row a boat or back up a trailer at all. 00;38;25;14 – 00;38;27;12 Dave There you learned all that learned it all there. 00;38;27;12 – 00;38;39;11 Evan And now I own my own outfitter here on my home waters and have a team of eight fly fishing guides in for me. And yeah, so it’s it’s been a it’s been a labor of love for sure. 00;38;39;13 – 00;38;51;14 Dave That’s really cool. Has it been you know, is it been cool? I mean, has it been kind of a slowly adding guides over the years, over those 15 years? Is that been our I guess you had this master plan, right? So you’ve kind of already seen it. 00;38;51;28 – 00;39;17;07 Evan Yeah. It’s so most of because Minnesota doesn’t have a big fly fishing community. We’ve had to like we’ve had to build our clientele first off. So most of our clientele aren’t fly fishers that are one on one class or something. And now, you know, we’ve we’ve kept growing their skills. That’s a big thing that we’re all about is growing anglers skills. 00;39;17;09 – 00;39;32;17 Dave Oh right. So you’ve actually instead of I mean you do get people that come in from out of state, but you’ve a lot of this has been like people in Minnesota who don’t even know about fly fishing. You start with fly fishing one on one and then eventually they keep growing their skills and then maybe they’re even traveling with you guys eventually. 00;39;32;25 – 00;39;43;16 Evan Yeah, absolutely. Now we have people that travel to us on hosted trips for redfish, or we’re next week we’re going to run a muskie camp on the Upper St Croix here. So. 00;39;43;18 – 00;39;45;22 Dave Oh, you are. So you’re doing Muskie there, too? 00;39;46;03 – 00;39;46;26 Evan Oh, yeah. Yep. 00;39;46;26 – 00;39;56;21 Dave Big time. Yeah. Wow, man. So the Sea Crew is pretty amazing. I mean, it has one of the species there you talked about the hundreds of species, but the big ones are. It’s got Muskie and Pike. 00;39;57;01 – 00;40;24;20 Evan Yes, the Muskie, pike and smallmouth bass. We also also have the opportunity to catch walleye. We see sturgeon all the time. They’re big, six footers jumping out of the water. They don’t eat flies, but we see them. Yeah, we catch random bluegills. It’s tons of those suckers rent horse suckers. And there’s various species of those up here that are all native. 00;40;25;18 – 00;40;28;15 Evan So, yeah, it’s it’s an amazing ecosystem. 00;40;28;23 – 00;40;38;22 Dave What is the if somebody is there and they fish, they’ve never fished for Muskie or Pike, what do you tell them if they have one trip to do it, you say you should go for Pike or Muskie or what? What do you say? 00;40;39;19 – 00;40;44;01 Evan I am going to have to say they got to go between just those two. 00;40;44;08 – 00;40;48;17 Dave Yeah, just those two. I mean, because Mike is known as the one that you’re going to have a better chance, right? 00;40;48;25 – 00;41;01;08 Evan Yes. The pike are there, so they’re in the same fish family. I like to describe Pike as the drunk cousin no one likes to invite to the holiday party because he’s. 00;41;01;15 – 00;41;05;03 Dave Why is that? Just because it’s so. Well, they’re just so aggressive. 00;41;05;03 – 00;41;13;23 Evan Yeah. They want to fight all the time. They don’t care what you throw at them. It’s just like, God, Terri’s here or God damn it. 00;41;14;08 – 00;41;19;19 Dave That’s right. Is it harder? I mean, I’m guessing bass is the easier one, but between bass and Pike, are they both. 00;41;20;03 – 00;41;51;14 Evan Bass? Bass? They’re the most forgiving to start with, for sure. Yeah, But if you want to go for, like, those upper echelon, more apex predators between Pike and Musky Pike is the better way to start. If you have to attack Muskie like you’re going on a trophy, elk or moose hunts. Like we’re going out there throwing a 12 weight flier odds, 500 plus grain sinking lines, our flies are 12 to 15 inches long. 00;41;51;26 – 00;42;06;16 Evan You just use most of a buck tail and fly. Wow. So it’s going for the muskies are your best shots is this time of year October, early November. But we are going to be working. 00;42;06;24 – 00;42;10;05 Dave You are? Yeah. You’re going to be working for a fish sometimes, right? That’s. 00;42;10;05 – 00;42;46;03 Evan Yes. Yeah. Yes. Well, I mean, we’ll see multiple fish in a day, but they just wear Cousin Terry is super extroverted and crazy and willing to kill stuff. Muskies are like the introverted weird cousin. Yeah, that’s a legit study. Study their food before they eat it. And they will always for tens of feet, all way to the boat and they will follow it into a circle next to the boat, multiple whacks and for some dumb reason they will be like, Nah. 00;42;47;00 – 00;42;47;23 Dave No. 00;42;47;23 – 00;42;48;02 Speaker 3 Yeah. 00;42;48;28 – 00;43;02;12 Dave Yeah. It is really interesting because they’re so closely related. Yeah. The other the Muskie or just I don’t know if they’re smarter, you know, but they’re there’s something about them that they just they are sometimes they don’t take as readily for some reason. 00;43;02;18 – 00;43;05;08 Evan Yeah. Yeah. If you can figure it out. Know. 00;43;05;14 – 00;43;16;07 Dave Yeah. You don’t know. Yeah. Well what about let’s take it back on the class. So you do for those people that are brand new. What is that one? Okay, one class look like for you guys. So you have somebody coming in. What? What do you. What’s that look. 00;43;16;07 – 00;43;35;07 Evan Like? Yeah. So we really specialize in our beginner anglers. We’ll either start people out on a two and a half hour lesson on a lake for Bluegills just to get the basic mechanics down to gills. Or like the best self-esteem booster there is especially. 00;43;35;08 – 00;43;38;04 Dave Easy shows are the easiest fish to catch on the fly. Yeah. 00;43;38;07 – 00;44;08;15 Evan Yeah. They’re like midwestern piranhas, man. They will eat anything. Yeah, as great. So we’ll start a lot of them out of that and then they’ll usually get addicted and come back for tribulus trout because they everyone visualizes or associates fly fishing with trout. We’ll go do that with them next. Usually a four hour trip and then they’ll get really addicted and they’ll sign up for some of our camps with you. 00;44;08;19 – 00;44;19;14 Evan We have a lot of local hosted trips that we do on the Saint Croix or the Mississippi or things, so they’ll come back for a camp or a bass floats. 00;44;19;25 – 00;44;23;14 Dave And what is the camp? What is the camp is that we’re like, oh, a group of people over there. 00;44;23;22 – 00;44;37;28 Evan Yes. So it’s a group of people. We own a little dental cabin up here on the Sink Croix. So we’ll get a group of six people up for all inclusive, right on the water, all, all skill levels. Welcome. 00;44;38;06 – 00;44;42;10 Dave Oh, wow. So this is your lodge. So you’ve your your your dream. Early on, we did it. 00;44;42;14 – 00;44;44;16 Speaker 3 We did it. 00;44;44;16 – 00;44;45;29 Dave You did it. You got the lodge. 00;44;46;11 – 00;44;53;01 Evan Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not full blown lodge yet, but it’s just a little fishing shack to start. 00;44;53;01 – 00;44;54;11 Dave Yeah, that’s great. 00;44;54;21 – 00;45;09;09 Evan But yeah, we’re just all about building community. That’s just been the biggest secret to our success here in a place that isn’t known for fly fishing. Everyone here associates, walleye or lakes Walleye. 00;45;09;09 – 00;45;30;05 Dave Yeah. It’s interesting for me, and I’ve been there. I, you know, I fish the drift less, but I haven’t been there a ton. And for me it’s always like just because we’re in the fly fishing world, it feels like everybody’s fly fishing in Minnesota, you know, just because we’ve done interesting, you know, because we’ve talked about so much from steelhead to salmon, all these species, I just it kind of feels like, man, it’s no different than any of the western states or the eastern states. 00;45;30;15 – 00;45;45;24 Dave It just seems like you guys have as much diversity as anybody else, maybe more so. But I think that I think it is what it is there is that you’ve just got to also a strong conventional, you know. Right. And probably if we come back and talk to you in ten or 20 years, my guess is there’s going to be a lot more fly anglers. 00;45;45;24 – 00;45;46;18 Dave Would you agree? 00;45;46;28 – 00;46;14;18 Evan Yes, I would. I would agree. I think you’ll see a lot more trout fishers, especially in the drift less because their access is so easy. Here we have a ton of public easements as well as like our water access laws you can access or many bridge crossing or public lands spot. And even if it’s not easements it, as long as your feet are wet, you can go anywhere you want, which is that’s. 00;46;14;18 – 00;46;20;04 Dave Awesome is Wisconsin do you probably don’t go to Wisconsin much but the surrounding states do they have the same law. 00;46;20;15 – 00;46;41;28 Evan Yep Wisconsin is very similar. They actually allow you to get out of the water. If there’s an obstruction in the way through on easement, it lands. So Minnesota and Wisconsin have really epic water access laws. But we’ve seen even since COVID, I mean, COVID was the biggest boom for the outdoor world in general. 00;46;41;28 – 00;46;42;16 Dave Yeah, was. 00;46;42;25 – 00;46;56;17 Evan But even since COVID, we’re seeing a lot more trout anglers on some of the bigger systems. I think bass fishing on my big rivers will be a little longer just because you need a boats in order to get to it. 00;46;56;27 – 00;47;03;28 Dave Yeah, you need a boat. That’s right. And what you and you guys are fishing. It sounds like drift boats or rafts, depending on the water. Yeah. 00;47;03;28 – 00;47;05;04 Evan Yep. We have both. Yeah. 00;47;05;13 – 00;47;22;11 Dave Nice. Well, this is very cool. I think we can start to take it out of here. We’ve done a good little high level, you know, kind of summary of what you have going here. I was going to do kind of. We have like a product spotlight segment where we talk about some products. I’m always I love the gear talk today. 00;47;22;11 – 00;47;38;27 Dave This one’s presented by Patagonia Swift Current Waders. They’re a big partner for us this year. We’re excited to have them. I was just I was just doing an episode the other day, actually, it was this week, I think. And I was talking to a guest in Denmark who was fishing for Atlantic salmon, and I asked him the same or I was talking about the same segment. 00;47;38;27 – 00;47;57;26 Dave And I mentioned Patagonia and he knew Yvon Synnott. He was like, Oh yeah, I know Yvon. I, we, you know, he sent me some fliers the other day and stuff and but I love Patagonia is because of their, you know, their conservation ethic and things like that. But they also have some good products. And the swift current waders are a set a pair of waders that I’ve been wearing have been pretty awesome. 00;47;58;11 – 00;48;11;12 Dave So first, we will start with that. That’s our product. Shout here for Patagonia for you. What is it? Do you have a few products? We talk boats. Are there a few things out there you kind of don’t leave home without on the on the gear. The gear and oh man. 00;48;11;23 – 00;48;21;03 Evan I never leave home without my tfo flier rods. We use the mangroves out of the drift boats. Seven weights for the generally. 00;48;21;03 – 00;48;21;17 Dave Okay. 00;48;21;25 – 00;48;31;01 Evan SC Fly lines. Yeah. Orvis Boat bags for the waterproof ability. Fish pond waterproof bags. So. Oh, yeah, yeah. 00;48;31;02 – 00;48;34;22 Dave Oh, those are of a spot, right? Yeah, they’re 100% waterproof. You can just throw them in the bottom. 00;48;35;00 – 00;48;40;15 Evan Yeah, absolutely. Yep. So we’re going through those big rapids. It’s like, problem. 00;48;40;29 – 00;48;45;22 Dave No problem. Well, what are you guys as we’ve talked drift boats quite a bit. What are the drift boats you guys are using there. 00;48;46;00 – 00;48;57;23 Evan Oh, yeah. So I’m a big Clark, a craft guy. Always have been, always will be. Few of my other guides have, Clark does, and the other half have adipose and adipose. 00;48;57;23 – 00;49;04;12 Dave Yeah. Yeah, definitely. In adipose or the or the adipose. The. What are those made out of fiberglass too. 00;49;04;22 – 00;49;10;25 Evan Yes. Yep. They’re all fiberglass boats. I think adipose is made in Kraig, Montana. 00;49;11;07 – 00;49;11;18 Dave Okay. 00;49;12;00 – 00;49;23;20 Evan Because obviously in Idaho and Oregon. But yeah, we we rock those them in our rafts. We have Saturn with an inner rowing frame with two leg bars. 00;49;23;24 – 00;49;24;20 Dave Saturn rafts? 00;49;24;29 – 00;49;35;21 Evan Yep. Saturn raft. Yep. Yeah. And we also have a couple fly crafts on the team and a couple of river rats on the team. So those are all rafts. 00;49;35;29 – 00;49;45;21 Dave There you go. Yeah, I’d say, yeah, Rafts are awesome. That’s one of those tools that when you can’t get the drift, but in right there, the raft can pretty much go anywhere. Throw off the bridge, do whatever you need know. 00;49;45;25 – 00;49;49;19 Evan There. There’s the Swiss army knives for sure of our of our flotilla. 00;49;49;19 – 00;50;07;22 Dave So nice. That’s it. Cool. Well, that’s our that’s kind of our gear segment here. And as we take it out here, I want to get a few more tips. We talked about bass, small mouth. I want to stay on that. So if some of these out there, they’re in your area, maybe they’re fishing their first time or they’re hitting smallmouth, what are a few things you’re telling those people, a few tips to have more success? 00;50;08;02 – 00;50;39;01 Evan Absolutely. A lot of times our bass are known for being super aggressive, but there are days out there where it’s like, what the heck is going on? And they do require more finesse tactics. So a really popular thing we’ll do, especially like July and August. We didn’t talk about those months, months, but with our really low, really clear water, pretty warm water that time of year, sometimes our bass can get a little finicky. 00;50;39;23 – 00;51;10;23 Evan So you can use a fly called a mr. Wiggly. One of the guys are tight lines. Fly shop in Wisconsin came up with it and it’s become a staple on our arsenal. It’s just like a big grasshopper with super long rubber legs. And so if you drift that through even like water, you wouldn’t think there was fish in like super slow, weedy froggy water or really shallow gravelly water, just fish it and switch it like a grasshopper out west. 00;51;11;20 – 00;51;15;06 Evan And these fish will come up and slurp it like a like a dry fly. 00;51;15;13 – 00;51;19;17 Dave So twitch what’s that twitch look like when you guys are doing the twitch for those with the Mr. Wiggly. 00;51;19;17 – 00;51;27;27 Evan Yeah, just like, almost like a skates on the surface. Little skates or a little. Just little kind of shaking. The rods hit side to side a little bit. 00;51;27;27 – 00;51;33;07 Dave Yeah. So you just kind of go side to side, a little bit of wiggle the tip wiggle off. Yeah, the side. Yeah. 00;51;33;18 – 00;51;34;29 Evan Exactly. Skittering. 00;51;35;05 – 00;51;37;14 Dave Skittering. Is that skittering. Is that what’s skittering? 00;51;37;14 – 00;52;03;15 Evan Yeah. That’s a good way to do it. Yep. Yep. So, so that, that’ll get them jazzed up. Same thing with this late season. You can almost tight line with really big heavy crayfish because our waters are usually kind of tannic stained or kind of brown stained, but they will get clear enough to see the structure on the bottom and sometimes even the fish. 00;52;03;27 – 00;52;26;05 Evan Yeah, so you can kind of tight line with a big heavy claw dad fly that’s my go to and just kind of like pickpocket these holes as we’re drifting through and you know, same sort of deal just really little movements. And so that’s always been a really good tactic when the bass aren’t being their usual super aggressive cells. 00;52;26;16 – 00;52;40;22 Dave Yeah, there you go. So that’s a few awesome tips there in the Clyde ad is one we’ve heard about and we did have you mentioned the Mr. Wigley, I think with Tim Land, where we had him on the podcast to 73 was Tim and he’s up in your neck of the woods right near you. 00;52;41;00 – 00;52;43;06 Evan Yeah, see up he’s in northern Wisconsin. In northern. 00;52;43;06 – 00;52;43;18 Dave Wisconsin. 00;52;43;18 – 00;52;44;23 Evan That’s right. North of Green Bay. 00;52;45;04 – 00;52;59;22 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’ll put a link out to that one as well. I think we did talk about small mouth that that’s a cool thing. There’s a number of, you know, depending what state you’re on it seems like there’s always some big small mouth guys out there, right? Tim’s one you got. Oh yeah. At Schultz down in Michigan. 00;53;00;04 – 00;53;13;09 Dave Who’s the do you have a small mouth person shot down if you think you know you got that Minnesota, Wisconsin missing. What about Iowa or what about I guess the Iowa north go south so you don’t really see small my third. 00;53;13;09 – 00;53;32;01 Evan Year there’s Iowa’s kind of like Minnesota’s Mexico. Oh, it is you. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. They’ve got the drift list. Region extends into the northeast corner of Iowa and some of their warm water rivers do have some pretty epic small east. 00;53;32;05 – 00;53;32;14 Dave They do? 00;53;33;14 – 00;53;50;00 Evan Yeah, there is I think it’s the Cedar River. Yeah. And kind of central. North central Iowa. Okay. It’s pretty well known for its Somalis, but I don’t think to my knowledge there’s not much not much guiding or targeting going on for them. 00;53;50;00 – 00;54;03;22 Dave Yeah, there’s just not as much water. And then you got that vertical state, you know, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, right where it’s just I think it’s just What is that? I mean, what do they call that or is that kind of the high? There’s just not as much water, right, The high plains. 00;54;03;22 – 00;54;04;05 Evan Or the Great. 00;54;04;19 – 00;54;05;01 Dave Plains. 00;54;05;01 – 00;54;30;25 Evan Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have there’s not a ton of Somalis in South Dakota. You could maybe find some in the Missouri River or some of the tributaries out there. I know in western Minnesota, which flows in this and South Dakota rivers, there’s the Otter Tail River and that is an amazing small mouth stream that’s very easily way able. 00;54;31;18 – 00;54;38;18 Evan But yeah, otherwise the narrows that topography is rolling hills and yeah, tall grass and yeah. 00;54;38;27 – 00;54;48;17 Dave That’s it. Yeah. And you guys up for I mean you’re on the other side of Minneapolis, it’s kind of the east side of Minnesota, but driving like you said, the Montana, that’s where you can do that in a day, right? Pretty easy. 00;54;48;17 – 00;54;50;29 Evan Yes. Yeah. You have 12 hours. Yeah. Yeah. 00;54;50;29 – 00;55;06;24 Dave So you’re not I mean, that’s not too bad. If you want to shoot over to Montana or Wyoming or really any of the Western states. Right. You’re not you’re absolutely. You’re kind of in a good spot, right, for traveling for the drive, because you can drive south, you can go hit the Arkansas know White River. You can get to the East Coast. 00;55;06;24 – 00;55;17;02 Dave Yeah. You know, and even up in Canada, it feels like you guys are actually the everybody talks about Denver, Colorado. Right. Being the central hub because of all that. But I feel like you guys were kind of there, too. 00;55;17;11 – 00;55;27;15 Evan Yes. Yeah. In terms of like if you’re willing to catch other stuff than trout. Yeah, you can throw a rock and probably hit a pretty epic fisheries fishery. 00;55;27;15 – 00;55;39;29 Dave That’s so nice. Or just as we take it out of here. You mentioned some of the hosts of stuff. Are you guys is that something you do? It sounds like you’re are you taking groups out, traveling around? Do you have any trips you’re thinking about maybe traveling to outside of your state? 00;55;40;08 – 00;55;57;26 Evan For sure, yeah. We have a DIY float fishing trip on the Bighorn River this winter. There you go. It’s kind of one of my favorite times to fish out there. There’s no crowds and it’s the best time to throw huge streamers for big brown trout. 00;55;57;26 – 00;56;00;09 Dave That is just like October, November. 00;56;00;27 – 00;56;02;07 Evan This is going to be in January. 00;56;02;08 – 00;56;02;22 Dave Oh, wow. 00;56;02;22 – 00;56;04;13 Evan So every 1 to 10. 00;56;04;22 – 00;56;12;08 Dave Yeah, that’s amazing. So I would think that January in Montana would be really cold and snowy and maybe not fishing. 00;56;12;20 – 00;56;13;14 Speaker 3 Yeah, it does. 00;56;14;01 – 00;56;38;24 Evan And that’s why the crowds are there for sure. You know, we’ve been out there where there is. You’re we’re kind of on the foothills. You’re not quite in the high elevation yet on the Bighorn. So we’ve had days where it’s forties or fifties and sunny and that’s pretty epic. We’ve also had days when it’s zero degrees with 30 mile an hour winds and sleeting sideways. 00;56;38;24 – 00;56;42;05 Dave And then what are you guys doing? What is doing that? What do you where do you stand? 00;56;42;10 – 00;57;00;10 Evan Where stay? And we’re renting a cabin right in Fort Smith. They’re okay. We’re going to thankfully, it’s a damn fed river. So if you hop in the hop in the water, it’s probably 50 degree water, which is a lot better than zero degree air temperature. Oh, yeah. And you know, us being crazy, Minnesotans are we’re used to cold. 00;57;00;10 – 00;57;04;03 Dave No big deal. Yeah, they call they call in the bugs, right, You guys, that’s a no problem. 00;57;04;03 – 00;57;04;24 Evan Oh, yeah. 00;57;06;05 – 00;57;22;07 Dave Yeah, that’s that’s the thing. We we were I did some Alaska stuff this summer and we had one trip that was up to Togiak was great, but the bugs, man, you just realize you’re you’re like, but you guys have the bugs in your place. Can get really like, what are the where are the mosquitoes? What what do you think is the worst bug you have? 00;57;22;07 – 00;57;48;10 Evan I can I’ll lay it out for the whole season for you. So first we’re going to get ticks in the spring and then a late spring through July. It is mosquito heaven and then July through early September, it’s biting flies, horse flies and deer flying. Yeah. So unfortunately, the best fishing of the year happens when there is the worst bugs. 00;57;48;10 – 00;57;54;05 Dave So we’re supposed. Do you ever I’m guessing you don’t. Do you ever see anybody wearing the head, the head net things out there. 00;57;54;15 – 00;58;01;09 Evan Oh absolutely, yeah. Where do you have one. I don’t I, I just grin through it. 00;58;01;09 – 00;58;02;01 Dave But yeah, there’s. 00;58;02;01 – 00;58;03;15 Evan Something about that. So aware of that. 00;58;03;15 – 00;58;18;11 Dave That’s the same way with Alaska. As I went up to Alaska and I had my head and I was like, Right, I’m probably I’m going to try not to wear this, but it got so bad. There is one hole they called it was just called Mosquito was the whole the whole, you know, But I put mine on in mosquito and we were sitting there and I was I was super happy. 00;58;18;11 – 00;58;31;13 Dave I had my gloves on. There were bugs are thousands of bugs around my head, but the guides and everybody else wasn’t wearing it. It was like a you know, I mean, a badge of honor, like, no, they don’t. Yeah, yeah. Right. So it’s kind of what that’s what it is, right? You just say kind of your your Minnesota. 00;58;31;13 – 00;58;32;09 Dave So you going to deal with it. 00;58;32;17 – 00;58;36;09 Evan Yep. Their mosquitoes are our state bird. So. 00;58;36;11 – 00;58;38;05 Dave Yeah that’s right. Nice. 00;58;38;21 – 00;58;39;28 Evan We have we got to love them. 00;58;40;06 – 00;58;47;06 Dave Well this is this is cool. Anything else you want to leave us with about you know, what you have going with your operation that you want to make sure people know before we get out of here? 00;58;47;14 – 00;59;04;25 Evan Absolutely will open invite everyone and anyone. You’re coming to Minnesota, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, bring a fly rod. Give us a call at fishing for all. And we’d love this. Show your home water and gets you on some big bass or carp or whatever you want to catch. 00;59;04;25 – 00;59;05;02 Dave Yeah. 00;59;05;08 – 00;59;18;13 Evan Awesome. Yeah, Yeah. We’re we’re. We’re here for a good time. We cook lunches on all of our day trips. There you go. And, yeah, we’re we’re here for fun. We’re here for the community and repping our local waters. 00;59;18;13 – 00;59;35;22 Dave Sounds perfect. Yeah. And I think the Saint Croix, for me, it would be really cool. I love getting the different species, but also the rivers and lakes is like, it’d be cool if it’s the Saint Croix just because it’s one. It’s kind of a famous it is a famous river, you know, And then to see it and to drift it and it sounds like, yeah, it’s amazing with the national park. 00;59;35;23 – 00;59;43;23 Evan So it’s that it’s kind of akin to like the old Sable River in Michigan. You know, it’s got a lot of lower to it for sure. 00;59;43;29 – 00;59;52;27 Dave It does. Good. Well, hopefully we’ll stay in touch with you here even as we go and we’ll maybe get out on the water eventually. And looking forward to keeping in touch. Thanks again for all the time. 00;59;53;08 – 00;59;54;20 Evan Thank you. Appreciate it. 00;59;56;18 – 01;00;13;29 Dave There you go. Check in with Evan if you get a chance fishing for all, let him know you heard this podcast. That would be amazing. If you’re interested in heading out to this neck of the woods, check in with me, Dave. I will fly. So income, we’ll get you in touch with our Web fly swing pro community. This is where you can build trips together and connect with anglers around the country. 01;00;14;19 – 01;00;30;17 Dave And we’ve got another big one come up next week. We’re kicking off our Atlantic salmon Week. If you’re interested in checking into that, send me an email and I’ll let you know. We have a few spots available. We’ve already got some spots that have been taken, but we do still have a few spots available for the Atlantic Salmon School. 01;00;30;17 – 01;00;49;04 Dave This is going to be a big event. We’re heading out to Newfoundland and to chase the trophy waters of the Atlantic Salmon. You can also hit our giveaway. What flightaware.com says giveaway. All right, I’m going to get out of here. Thanks for your time today. Enjoy. I hope you enjoyed it. And you have a great morning. Great afternoon. 01;00;49;04 – 01;00;56;25 Dave Or if it’s evening, I hope you have a good evening. We’ll talk to you on that next episode. Outro 01;00;56;25 – 01;00;57;25 Thanks for listening to the wet fly, swing, fly fishing show for notes and links from this episode, Visit Wet Fly Swing Dotcom.