777 | Fly Fishing the Bow River with Josh Nugent of Out Fly Fishing

Dave (2s): There’s at least one great river in almost every state and province across North America and for Alberta, that’s the Bow River flowing along the eastern edge of the Rockies. Not far from Banff National Park. The Bow River is a fly fisher’s dream. Today we’re gonna be diving into what makes this river so special, how you can plan your next trip, and what we can learn from the guy who guaranteed a giant trout on every trip or your money back. 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. Josh Nugent, Bow River Outfitter and fly casting university masters grad is going to share how he does it all today. Dave (45s): You’ll find out why the bow is like the Vegas strip for trout, why big browns aren’t the only game in town and the 3000 mile river that cuts its way all the way from the base of the Rockies to Hudson’s Bay in the Eastern Canada. Plus you will find out about Josh’s master project that we talked about where he studied 10 of the greatest fly casters in the world and what you can learn from these guys today. Here we go. Another big epic episode. Josh Nugent from outflyfishing.com. How you doing Josh? Josh (1m 18s): Good. You Dave (1m 19s): Great? Great. Yeah, I’m doing well this morning. We, we are rolling here with the podcast. I, I’m interested really in, you know, we’ve had some episodes around around all over Canada, you know, and Alberta. I think today it’ll be great to talk some high level and then zoom in on out fly fishing ’cause you have a great shop out there. I want to hear about the shop and some of the trips you do and your program. But before we get into all that, I’d love to take it back to the start real quick. Have you been fly fishing since you were a kid or did you get started later in life? What’s that look like? Josh (1m 48s): I was pretty lucky. I got started when I was six years old on the Sheep River. Actually. My dad and my uncle were two of the big influences for me there. My uncle had actually taken like an intro fly fishing course, kind of what we offer a 1 0 1 type course. Loved it was so excited about it that he was showing my dad. My dad had taken up bow hunting and showed my uncle and my uncle took up fly fishing and, and showed my dad. And I remember my brother and I were out with my dad and my uncle and when you’re a 6-year-old kid and you watch someone fly fishing and you’ve got a little push button spin casting reel, you’re like, what they’re doing is way cooler than what I’m doing. I need to be doing that. And that was just kind of it for a lot of years. Josh (2m 30s): We did the typical like you take your fly rod and you take your spinning rod because if you can’t catch fish on the fly rod you would resort to the spinning rod. And then it wasn’t until I started when I was in university and I started working at a, at a fly shop that I was like, okay, I don’t really have an interest in touching anything but the fly rod anymore. And you know, in the last almost 25 years, I’ve only had one time that I’ve fished anything but a fly rod and that was buddies took a sturgeon fishing and fly fishing wasn’t really an option there. So other than that, that’s the only time I’ve really touched a rod that wasn’t fly fishing in the last 25 years. Dave (3m 9s): Nice, nice. And the shop’s interesting too, I think, ’cause in Canada you don’t hear of as many fly shops. I feel like there’s more of just kind of conventional stores, but you have a big shop. When did the fly shop start for you? When, when did that idea come to be? Josh (3m 24s): I would say I bought a fly shop by accident. I had no kind of plans or intention to, I was getting back from Christmas Island and my buddy Steve Gardner was messaging me when I was sitting on a layover on the way home. And he is like, how are you getting home from the airport? And I’m like, I don’t know man, that’s tomorrow. I haven’t figured that out yet. He’s like, I’ll pick you up. I’m like, okay, thanks. I’m like, I’ll take you to breakfast for picking me up. And then we’re eating breakfast and like Steve had been on a bunch of the hosted trips we’d done. ’cause even before I had a fly shop, I had been hosting trips to Cuba and to Belize and, and and various places. And he’d been on several of our hosted trips. And so he was interested in Christmas Island or so I thought that’s why he wanted to go for breakfast. And then like five minutes into breakfast, he’s been asking all these questions about Christmas Island and I’m telling him about GTS and triggers and this and that and all of a sudden he is like, Hey, do you wanna buy a fly shop? Josh (4m 11s): And I literally just was spit food all over the table. I’m like, no, why would I do that? Like I already run longer days than everybody else is doing. Why, why would I do that? And he’s like, just hear me out. And I told him it was a terrible idea and 20 minutes later we were driving down to what, at the time it was West Wind’s Fly Shop at the time, which was one of the older shops of town. And that’s kind of the neat thing for us right now. Like May 1st will be our 10th anniversary since we bought and rebranded it. But that shop has been around for, you know, 20 plus years before that. Oh wow. So the wow, the history of that shop. We’ve got both ends of it. We’ve got kind of the oldest shop in town now because of, you know, Westwinds is what I bought before West Winds. Josh (4m 53s): It was Smallman shop that Peter Smallman owned. And now we rebranded 10 years ago to the, the guide service that I’d had. ’cause I started a guide service when I was a 21-year-old kid and just trying to pay for my undergrad and graduate school. And that was what I did. I didn’t take out any student loans, I was just working and yeah, guiding paid for that. And I was coaching college basketball. Oh wow, interesting. They were kind of the two perfect off seasons of each other because other than September, September was a nightmare because I had tryouts at everything. Plus September was also busy. But with it being university students, most of them, most white boys all had jobs and stuff, part-time jobs as well as going to school. Josh (5m 36s): So they could go to their classes, go to their job, and then we would have practices at like nine o’clock at night so I could still guide all day and then run practices at night. Dave (5m 45s): Wow. Yeah, Josh (5m 46s): I did that for six years. Dave (5m 48s): There you go. That’s sweet. Yeah, I love, we’re talking basketball, a little sports and then we’ll have to hear some of this too. So, but you get this shop and, and now yeah, you have this basically, you know, more than 30-year-old shop, but you’ve had it for, for 10 years. What is it, what has it been like? I mean it’s pretty much, I mean the Beau River is kind of the famous, right? One of the famous rivers. Is that, has that always been the your your focus? Josh (6m 10s): Yes and no. Like the thing I tell people, it’s kinda like if you go to Vegas, like you’re gonna go to the strip and see all the flashing lights and all the casinos and MGM grand and you’re gonna see the, you know, the fountain display and all that stuff. But there’s a lot of cool things like you can go see the Grand Canyon, right? Right. So the bow is kind of like the Vegas strip. It’s what everybody comes here for. But then we have such phenomenal fisheries around it. Like Calgary has one of the furthest south populations of native, northern pike. Like again, they’re called northern pike, not southern pike. Right. Yeah. So yes, there’s places as far south I know of as Utah, maybe even further south than that where they’re in reservoirs and places like that. Josh (6m 54s): But for native populations of incredible trophy fish, like I’ve guided at flying lodges up north. And it’s incredible to have people at these lodges that might only get fished by, you know, a handful of people each year, but their growing season can be like five months shorter than what we have here. Right. So our ice comes off way earlier and then our ice doesn’t go back on until way later. And so we’ve got up to five months compared to some of those northern lodges in like Alaska and Northwest Territories, Yukon or Saskatchewan, places like that. So our fish aren’t incredibly long by comparison. They’re heavy. So like we, like most of the time we never weigh fish, but using the formulas and stuff for, for length and g we’ve had fish that would be triple the body weight of some of the fish I’ve caught like of a 44 inch fish up north. Josh (7m 42s): Oh wow. Right. And so we’ve got this exceptional pike fishery. If you go east, like for anyone that doesn’t know Calgary, it’s very much like Denver. It’s in the shadow of the Rockies, but it’s right on the edge of the prairie. So as soon as you go east of town, you’re getting into the prairie reservoirs that have, you know, these incredible populations of pike in them. And then if you go west, you’re getting like 10 minutes west of town, you’re into the foothills, 10, 15 minutes past that you’re getting into the Rocky Mountains or maybe half an hour past the Foothill. So we’ve got so many different fisheries, like Calgary is this perfect little hub and I can kinda, I guess start from Calgary and spread out. So if you go south of Calgary, it’s only a two and a half hour, three hour drive and you’re at the Montana border ’cause we’re directly above Montana. Josh (8m 28s): And so from there you’ve got a bunch of really cool Tailwater fisheries down there that are exceptional fisheries. Like we’ve got the St. Mary’s, we’ve got the Waterton, we’ve got the Old Man river, you’ve got the really cool Tailwater fisheries that down there that are right in the shadow of the Rockies because Alberta’s basically shaped like a rectangle. That’s the bottom left corner has just been cut off at a 45. And that 45 degree angle is the Rocky mountains and the great divide. And so the further south you get, the closer the mountains come to you when you go and sell to Calgary. And then our mountain fisheries, like you’ve got the crow’s nest river and that whole drainage, you’ve got that old man drainage that has so many different tributaries and like they’re, they’re phenomenal cutthroat fisheries you have by TJ Roy. Josh (9m 18s): He works for Orvis and like high up in retail where all the district managers for Orvis all report to tj. And when he was here and on the old man, he was like, this is the most incredible cutthroat fishery I’ve ever seen. Like the size of the fish is exceptional, the number of those big fish is exceptional, but just the scenery that you’re in, like the shoreline of the river can be, you know, a a cliff face that goes up thousands of feet. Dave (9m 42s): Yeah. But Banff right, you’re not far from Banff National Park. Josh (9m 45s): Yeah. So Banff National Park is, if you go straight west of Calgary, and that’s the thing that most people have heard of, kind of like most Canadians might have heard of Yellowstone, but they might not have heard of other places that are, you know, might be better fishing than inside the park. Banff National Park for us is a little bit different because up there it’s so close to the glacier. Like the Bow River starts in Banff National Park and you’ve got the glacier and it goes into Bolle or Mty Jaw is the name. And then it flows out of there and through the park and it’s small and it’s that beautiful aqua veva blue, but it has almost no nutrients in it. So it’s got little to no bug life. So it’s got very few fish and the fish that it have are very small and they’re very skinny. Josh (10m 29s): It’s not until you start to get downstream at Calgary that you’ve got three water treatment plants that are putting, you know, treated effluent back into the river. And it’s clean. It’s supposedly drinkable. I wouldn’t drink it personally, but it’s supposedly drinkable. Yeah. But it’s high in phosphate nitrate concentrations, which supports a ton of weed growth. We drove its bug life. Bug life turns out that’s fish food. So it’s a really weird situation where a city of a million people is actually where the good fishing starts. Whereas we have so many guests from all over the world that look at it like, oh, we need to fish the bow up in the mountains where it’s still clean and cold. Because once it gets past town, it’s obviously a toxic waste dump. And it’s the complete opposite of that, that this is where the trophy fishery starts, is downstream at Calgary through the tailwater section of it. Josh (11m 14s): When you go upstream, that water’s super cold. It’s like postcard beautiful, but it just isn’t a great fishery. And if you go back probably 25 to 30 years ago, like when I was first getting into guiding, it was just kind of tapering off as a decent fishery. It wasn’t like the lower bow, but it was decent. It was a respectable fishery that if tourists are up there you could take ’em. And then for years it just kept declining. People were like, man, what’s happening there? People in their conspiracy theories that they’re like, yeah, there was a railroad spill and they hit it or you know, there’s this slough and that’s what, 30 years ago the towns of Lake Louise and Banff and Canmore put in state-of-the-art water treatment plants and went, you know, if we’re gonna be green eco-friendly communities, we shouldn’t be putting basically just treated sewage into the river. Josh (12m 3s): We need to clean that up. And so they did. And so they took the only nutrients out of this glacial river that it had and the bug life just started to peter out and the fish started to get skinnier and fewer and, and it just, it’s reverted back to kind of more of that native fishery that it was, that’s not an incredible fishery up there. It’s not until you get downstream of Calgary. Dave (12m 24s): Oh, downstream. So the Bow River, so the, where you get into some of the famous waters is downstream of Calgary. Josh (12m 30s): Yeah. All of it is what’s your downstream of Calgary and your downstream of that, that dam. Like there’s a dam on the immediate upstream edge of Calgary. And so we’re in a tailwater here. And so we’ve got more stable flows. You know, the bug life is exceptional. The weed growth is exceptional. And so that’s why it’s such a incredible fishery downstream of Calgary, but upstream of Calgary, it’s like, it doesn’t get fished very much because it’s, it’s fishing in a postcard. Like it got to the point, Dave, that for people, like we used to get people that wanted to fish it all the time and they would be like, well we’re staying in ban So we wanna fish the upper boat. We’re like, well it’s not gonna fish anywhere near as well. It’s not the river that you’ve heard of. They’re like, yeah, we still wanna fish it. Josh (13m 10s): And every time the same thing happened is that because they were staying there an hour and a half away from Calgary, they didn’t wanna drive down to Calgary, they wanted us to go up there. So we would go up there and guide them and then the end of the day everybody was like, man, that was really disappointing. We thought it would fish better. And we’re like, we told you, like I had a lady that we literally, I had 13 phone calls with her trying to convince her. She’s like, okay, we’ll do the lower boat and then reverted back, oh no, we’re gonna do the upper. I talked to you and then wrote a review that we’re like, we were really disappointed that the fishing wasn’t that great. Oh we thought it would be better. I’m like, so like, and I told her like, I need you to understand that if we’re fishing up there, it’s, you’re not wanting to catch fish. You don’t care about fish at all. Josh (13m 51s): The only way we’ll take people on the upper boat is if they do not care about catching fish at all. And their only interest is casting in a scenic environment. If all you wanna do is cast in a postcard, we’ll do it. If you wanna have any chance at catching fish, we can’t guide up there because everyone is disappointed And they’re like, man, it didn’t seem like the guides really we’re that into it. It’s like because they wanted you to have a good day and you didn’t wanna have a good day, you wanted to cast in that poster. Dave (14m 15s): That’s crazy. Where does the bow, so it’s flowing out like you said, from the the national park out. Where does it eventually go into? Where does it flow Josh (14m 24s): Into the Hudsons Bay eventually? So the Atlantic Ocean. Dave (14m 26s): Oh wow. No kidding. It goes all the way across Canada, Josh (14m 29s): All the way across the country. That’s unbelievable. So the bow joins up with the old man river in the south eastern corner of the province. From that point on, it’s considered the South Saskatchewan River, the South Saskatchewan River and the North Saskatchewan River that runs through Edmonton. Those join up and it’s considered the Saskatchewan River. Those run through Lake Diefenbaker, it runs into Manitoba. Wow. Dave (14m 49s): And it’s all connected. Could, historically could Atlantic salmon, like what was that like historically? Say, you know, whatever a thousand years ago before dams and stuff Josh (14m 58s): Still too far ’cause we’re, we’d be talking about thousands and thousands of kilometers. So they’d be dead before they got Dave (15m 4s): Oh right, yeah, yeah. Josh (15m 5s): Too far like Oregon Trail pretty much, right? Like that’s like pack a couple lunches. Yeah. But yeah, historically that would’ve been potentially possible. There was somebody years ago that actually did buy Kayak. I think he went from the headwaters all the way out to the Hudson Bay. Dave (15m 22s): No kidding. Yeah. Josh (15m 23s): And like just had to portage around dams and stuff like that. But other than that, was able to do that whole journey, which is pretty neat ’cause yeah, that water from here ends up in the Atlantic Ocean because we’re on the Eastern slopes Dave (15m 35s): Here. Oh because you’re, yeah, because you’re literally, yeah, you’re on the east side of the, of the Rockies. Right. So crazy. Yeah. Josh (15m 41s): And the very western edge of it. So our water has a very long journey by the time it gets to the ocean Dave (15m 49s): Fish to Fly Guide service is dedicated to sharing the incredible fly fishing opportunities around Jackson Hole. Whether floating the Scenic Snake River in search of native cutthroat trout or hiking into the mountains to explore pristine tributaries every day on the water is an adventure. You can join them for an unforgettable fly fishing experience in the heart of the tetons@fishtofly.com. Patagonia just launched the next evolution in waiters and they’re built for anglers just like you. The Swift current line includes ultralight, packable options for the hiking crew and expedition ready waiters. If you’re hard on your gear like me. They’re designed for comfort, built from recycled materials and backed by Patagonia’s ironclad warranty. Dave (16m 31s): You can check them out right now at wetly swing.com/swift Current. That’s wetly swing.com/s WI ft C-U-R-R-E-N-T Swift current waiters. Check ’em out. Now what is just in generally Alberta? So you talked about a few of these places, the the Tailwaters, you know St. Mary’s the old man, the pike fishing. What else is like as you go up north, you know you got Edmonton above you. What is that northern Alberta that you know? Does it just get more remote and harder to, to get to areas to fish? Josh (17m 6s): Yeah, so as you get past Calgary, you get up kind of we’ll jump before we get to Edmonton is that Red Deer, the Central Alberta area. And it’s interesting because like we call Red Deer Central Alberta and then Edmonton, Northern Alberta, if you look on a map, Edmonton is still in the bottom third of the province, but it’s something like 90% of Canada’s population is within a hundred miles of the US border. Once you get a couple hours north of Edmonton, the population is extremely sparse and so the population density is super, super low. So everything above that, there’s a lot of it that doesn’t get fish a lot. And the, probably the top third of the province doesn’t even really have road access. If you’re not going in on a float plane, you’re not getting into it. Josh (17m 47s): So the, that top third is probably just kind of float plane or like winter road access stuff up there. You’d be a lot of pike walleye, lake trout in those lakes. Rivers would have grayling in them pike in a lot of those lakes as well. And then as you come down around that Edmonton area, it would be that same sort of thing where you would have a lot of Pike Lake. You still have got some stock trout lakes around Edmonton, but most of it would be pike and wildlife fishing that you would have around the Edmonton area. And then if you go west again far enough west towards the border with bc, then you’re gonna start getting into like around Lake Athabasca. Or not Lake Athabasca, it’s nowhere near, it’s been the Athabasca River. Josh (18m 28s): Sorry. That would have bol trout in it. And it actually has the Athabasca Rainbow, which is the only rainbow trout that’s native to Alberta. Oh wow. Everyth scene else. All the other rainbows were just stocked and brought from Europeans famous brown trout aren’t native to here. Dave (18m 44s): Wow. And you can find those in kind of in the, in the Rockies up there. Yep. Josh (18m 48s): Up closer to to Jasper National Park and hitting that type of Dave (18m 52s): Area. Oh, to Jasper. Yeah. Yeah. And which is Jasper is similar. Yeah. Just kind of, you know, a little bit south of Prince George, you know, in that whole area. Yep. So BC okay. Josh (19m 1s): Exactly. And so if you’re going from Calgary to Banff, you go straight west to get to Banff and then you start going north from Banff and that’s how you get to Jasper. And then Jasper like we just got back two nights ago from Terrace. We’re up there Steelheading. Oh you were? Oh cool. And came through Prince George and then you go through Jasper and then down through Banff and then back to Calgary. And so Jasper’s five hours from Calgary and then PG is eight hours. Yeah. So yeah, terrace is a 16 hour drive through the night. Dave (19m 32s): 16. That’s not bad. How, how was, did you guys, where were you guys at? How was fishing? Josh (19m 36s): Fishing was really good at washing flies and lines. It was just typical steel. So we drove through the night. We had our last Thursday night fly time of the year. So all through the winter we do Thursday night fly tying and then that ended at nine 30. We left at 10 o’clock, drove through the night, 16 and a half hours, got to the river and third cast hooked to steelhead. Absolute chrome fish certainly made that drive worthwhile. But we were going back two weeks ago, we went with two of the staff members, Keith, who does all of our social media and marketing. Ty who does, you know, all of our fly tying lessons. One oh ones two oh ones three oh ones. He does all of our fly fishing. Josh (20m 17s): 1 0 1, 2 0 1 3 0 1 lessons and dust guiding for the shop as well. He’s called Lennox Salmon. He’s an incredible fly tire. Actually did a film on him when he was like 14. He started working in the shop when he was 12. Wow. Did Oh wow. Did a film that went in IF four about him ties flies ’cause he did these incredible classic Atlantic salmon flies and you know, so I, I took him when he was a, a young kid out Atlantic salmon fishing but he’d never caught a steelhead. So we went two weeks ago he hooked one reel, kind of froze up and then free spooled on him with the fish like right at his feet in the shallows and he lost it. Josh (20m 57s): So he was heartbroken. So wanted to go back. So we went back for the Easter weekend ’cause it was the only like between now and July, I don’t have any weekends that are free. Every single weekend is booked with something with an event. And so this was the only chance over Easter. So it was kind of hard being away from my family for Easter. But it was nice being up there with my fly shop family so to speak. ’cause I had Steve and, and Keith and Ty, Steve’s a good buddy of mine that guides with us at the shop and did like a huge amount of the rentals for anybody that’s seen all the rentals we did in 2022. We like completely expanded, knocked out the wall, took over a new space, tore it down to bare concrete floors, tore the whole like ceilings out rated or wrote, you know, floor to roof. Josh (21m 40s): There’s nothing in there that’s the same type thing. And Steve did like a huge amount of those renos with me. Really good buddy. So, oh gosh. Yeah. Those were the three people that I desperately needed to get steelhead and Dave (21m 52s): I got a Josh (21m 52s): Fish in the third cast and that was it. Yeah. Dave (21m 55s): Were you guys, what were you guys doing? Were you staying at a lodge or just camping out there? What were you doing? We Josh (21m 60s): Just stayed at, I had a hotel. Oh hotel. Cool. I’ve done the camp thing but at the same time I like when you’re going into another town in a like region like that to try and support the local economy. And so having money flow back into Yeah that that’s good region and that town by staying at hotels and you know, we went into the fly shop in town and everyone who, I mean we’re carrying thousands of dollars in flies and we all went in and bought a bunch of flies, walked there and it’s just like Joe didn’t say anything and they had no idea that we worked at a fly shop or that’s why they owned a fly shop. But it was Dave (22m 34s): Like, what was the, what was the shop there? What’s the name of the shop there? Josh (22m 38s): I could have told you if he didn’t. This is in Terrace so Dave (22m 41s): It’s fish, fish tails. Josh (22m 43s): Fish tails. That’s what it’s, yeah. Fish tails. And So that was the one super friendly. They were really kind to everybody in there when we went in. So it was really nice and great experience and whatnot. So it was fun. I love going into fly shops. I used to go into fly shops all the time now in town. I don’t visit fly shops anymore ’cause there’s lots of other fly shops in town. But I always feel like if you go in there, someone’s gonna think you’re a spy or Dave (23m 5s): Something. Oh right. How, how many are there? Josh (23m 8s): So there’s four fly shops in town now and then another one just opened up outside of town about half an hour outside of town. Dave (23m 14s): Wow. So there’s five fly shops in, in Calgary and around Calgary. Josh (23m 17s): Yeah. And there used to, when I first bought the shop there was eight. Wow. And we also have, or at the time we also had four box stores with a dedicated fly department in them. Yeah. ’cause there’s a bass pro of Cabelas, there was a wholesale sports, there’s a fishing hole and so yeah, there’s not as many as there used to be. A few have closed down. Yeah. In the, in past years and whatnot. But Dave (23m 41s): I feel like Calgary is it, when you think of Canada it’s probably hard to compare because you know go over to Ontario and things like that. But it feels like Calgary’s a hub of like maybe, you know, I always think of like fly fishing, USA, there’s a couple people the places people talk about in New York and, but it feels like Calgary’s one of those places that’s just like a hub for fly fishing. Is that what it feels like where you Josh (24m 1s): Yeah, a hundred percent. It’s got the highest density of fly shops in the country. Like you look at Toronto, which is around 8 million people. It has one shop. You look at Calgary that has 1.2 million people and we’ve got five. Right. Edmonton has one. You go to Vancouver and I think they only have one dedicated fly shop. I guess it’s got two locations, Michael and young fly shop. But everybody else is fly and light tackle. There’s only one dedicated fly shop. They’ve got two locations in Vancouver and in Surrey. But yeah, like in terms of trout, this is the hub for the country. Dave (24m 36s): Why is that? What makes the Calgary area, you mentioned it probably already, but why is it that, you know, is it the place to go that you should be checking out Josh (24m 45s): For one, it’s the bow, like the, the quality of the fishery is incredible. Like I, I haven’t been able to do this anymore when I have other people guiding for me. But when I was a a university student, it’s just trying to pay for school and when you’re 21 years old you can’t tell people yeah, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, you haven’t been alive that long. No. Right. And they’re expecting the white hair, the gray beard and like I got treated by other guides like I was this kid in diapers that didn’t deserve to be alive, let alone guiding on the river. You can’t charge less than anyone else because now you’re gonna be undercutting the going rate and that’s not fair to everyone that’s doing this. So like what can you do? I grew up on a farm where it was like pulling your body weight if you were skinny as I was, wasn’t good enough. So you just gotta work a lot harder than that. Josh (25m 26s): And so I was like, well how hard can I work? What can I do? What can I do to differentiate myself? And for 12 years, I think the first 12 years I offered a 20 inch fish guarantee. Oh wow. If you didn’t land a fish over 20 inches, I would rebook you a half price trip. That’s in 12 years, that’s did two half price trips. No kidding. That’s the type of fishery. Yeah. And so there were other days that I had that people didn’t get like land a fish over 20 that people were like absolutely not. We caught the most fish we’ve ever caught in our life. We caught like we hooked countless fish over that size. We landed so many fish that were like 19 and a half, 19 three quarters. You didn’t lie, you didn’t try and BS on any of those fish. Like there’s no way we’re taking another half, like a half price trip, we’re rebooking at full price. Josh (26m 10s): And I was like cool, it’s there. It’s offered. Dave (26m 12s): That’s so good. The 20 inch guarantee is like, I mean from a marketing perspective is like, it’s so good because even if you don’t get it, like you said, the people that likely are gonna have a good trip and it’s probably gonna not be a big deal anyways. But I’m sure that got, did you see that after a while that, that you started to hear that started to that 20 inch guarantee kinda started to spread? Josh (26m 31s): Yeah and I would hear from other guides that would come up in a boat live. They’re like, wait, I heard this thing from someone, you’re not actually doing that are you? And I was like, yeah. They’re like whoa. And they just kinda walk away and it was kind of funny and people were like, well how? And I was like, well my days are, you know, six hours or seven hours either. Right. And you know, there were certainly some days that we spent a lot extra time on the water trying to make sure that we got that fish for people. Dave (26m 54s): Right. Yeah you put your time in. Josh (26m 56s): Exactly. But it was also like, again I was a 21-year-old kid and you’ve got guides that have been doing it for 20 years besides you on the river, how do you differentiate yourself? Right. You can’t say you’ve been doing it for 20 years, you’ve just barely been alive that long. And so yeah, it was just like work hard row back up through the sea. I literally did, I had guides like when I first started it was very much this old boys club and there was no like helping new people or trying Dave (27m 25s): Who’s the, who’s the old timer? We’ve had him on the podcast, I’m drawing a blank on his name. The old, the big guy Barry White. Yeah, Barry Josh (27m 30s): Barry White. Yeah. And so like, you know, Barry been doing it for long time. Barry’s been doing it for I think 40 years now. And so when I first started though, it was that old boys club, you don’t belong here, you don’t have white hair, you don’t have a gray beard, you’re just some kid in diapers that doesn’t deserve to be here. But then I had happy customers and I had people that were catching fish and I had, I literally had guides pull me aside in the parking lot and say you gotta stop this whole rolling back up crap. I was like what? This whole like rolling back up and going through a seam another time like enough of that you, you can’t do that. I’m like, what do you mean I can’t go back up? What? Why? Like, well you’re making other people look bad. And I was like, dude, from my angle, I swear you had orders in your hand too. Josh (28m 13s): Like it looked like it. You know if you pull on those it slows the boat down. Right. And you pull hard enough you actually go back up. Right. And so yeah, things have changed a lot. It was why like when I started our guide training school, like there wasn’t one in Western Canada and it was like there were all these people that wanted to get into it. Coaching was my background. You know, one of my buddies that is our hosted travel manager at Kasha B, you know he’s a school teacher coaching his background as well like, but he’s also an administrator where leadership and and developing curriculums. That’s his background. And so when I sat down and laid out the curriculum, it was like there’s so many young guides and I shouldn’t say just young guides because there’s a lot of people, new guides, people that had retired from their job, they wanted to get into it that they were there for a year or two and they were gone because whether it’s one of the, you know those unspoken unwritten cardinal sins or faux PAs, there’s so many things in fly fishing that we have all these rules in this etiquette, but it’s not written down. Josh (29m 14s): People don’t talk about it. But if you ever do something wrong, you know an outfitter will never book you again and you’ll get blacklisted and people say like never use that guy. He’s gonna card clients or they’re gonna do this or that. But there’s nowhere, like you go to a golf course and there’s rules and on a river there’s just as many expected rules but people don’t talk about them and people don’t post them and people can’t even agree on them. And so it’s one of those things that I’ve seen so many people that they would’ve been phenomenal guides if someone had actually just helped them and told them like, you’re doing so many good things, you just can’t do that man. ’cause that’s, that’s not okay and you’re not being malicious and you’re not trying to do something. Josh (29m 55s): But like when that customer asked you at the end of the day, do you have a card? And you’re like yeah and you handed it out. Well somebody else saw that. Now they think that you’re trying to steal that customer because that, you know, that trip didn’t come from you. That trip came from an outfitter. Oh right, right, right. And they didn’t know to just say, you know what? The outfitter knows how to get ahold of me. And for them to know and trust that if you’re requested by name, it doesn’t matter if their head guide has been working for them for 30 years, doesn’t have a trip that day if you’re requested by name and that’s your second trip of your life, you get that trip ’cause that’s how the industry works. But if no one’s told you that, it’s hard to know that and it’s hard to have that trust. And so there’s so many things like it’s funny when people come and talk and the first year we started that guide training school, it was because every single person in that school had come to me and said like I wanna get into guiding, I’ve heard you’ve trained other guides, can you help me? Josh (30m 48s): And it was at a point that it was like I don’t have the time to keep training guide. Plus I trained a whole bunch of guides that as soon as you train, they’re like cool, thanks so much. Now I’m gonna go start a company and compete with you. Right. Wait. And so that’s why we did the guide training school because it’s like, you know what here it’s a 60 hour course. Like I don’t care who you guide for, whether you go and guide up north at a lodge, whether you’re gonna be starting up an outfitting company and directly competing with us, that’s fine. We’re gonna give you all the same information because like information is power. If I could have had some of that information going, I would’ve killed to have that information. When I first started my company, all I knew is I had one guy that told me like, yeah, just don’t ever, you know, don’t ever start guiding for somebody and then all of a sudden try and do your own thing and then try and steal all their clients. Josh (31m 34s): And I was like, oh yeah that sounds terrible. So I just started my own company straight out of the, out of the gates. But obviously when you’re a 21-year-old kid, you don’t have this big client base to draw from yet ’cause you’re brand new. So it took a long time to build things up. And so, and and that’s the really cool thing is to see like there’s outfitters on the river that went through our guide training school years ago, like some of ’em up to whenever we started it for around 10 years ago. That you know, they employ a handful of guides that have taken our guide training school as well. And I love seeing them out on the water and yeah, technically they’re competitors of ours, but who cares? Like the more people on the water that do a better job of representing our industry, the better that is for the industry. Dave (32m 18s): Yeah. The better experience, the better experience for everybody, which is great. Josh (32m 21s): Yeah. The better experience a customer has, the better their stories are when they go back and tell everybody about the be river that like man the guides were great, they worked hard, they did this, they were super professional. You know, they never took the rod and fished. You know? Right. Any, any of those positive things that they’re sharing, they’re sharing that about our fishery. Now when that person hears it and they’re like, oh cool, maybe I’ll go to the Bow River, they might find that outfitter, they might find us, they might find one of our competitors. But it’s going to be bringing people back to this industry, which is just a good thing. Which Dave (32m 53s): Is what you want. If we were gonna be, let’s say, grabbing some listeners here on the podcast and heading up to your area and setting up a trip for say a few days, what would you recommend, what would be a good all around trip in the Calgary area would you say? Would it be hitting the bow for three days or, or mix it up? What would that look like? So Josh (33m 11s): I would mix it up for sure. And this is one of the things I tell people when they ask that, and it’s a great question Dave, because people ask that all the time. It’s like, okay, I’m coming up there, I’ve got four days, what should I, and I try and tell people like if you’ve got some flexibility trying to at least three days because the chance of you getting in the months of July, August and September, that’s our peak season. So our season kind of starts, April may bring a super feast or famine. I don’t encourage people to travel here at that time of year because it could still snow, it could still be minus 20 Celsius or it could be plus 25 Celsius. And so there’s such a broad range what we could get. The fishing could be absolutely lights out. And I feel like in the spring you’re always telling people it’s not always like this either. Josh (33m 55s): You’re getting like some of the craziest dry fly fishing I’ve ever seen where fish like you can pile up your leader. And I’ve had first timers out that I, I literally watched that when he was our former chief of police and he was first day fly fishing. His false cast hit the water as the fish was coming up to sip bluing dolls, it ate and while it was eating, his false cast hit the fish in the face with the fly. And so it whips it in the face and the fish flares and you see it be like, it’s okay, I can still see outta this eye. And it came back up and ate his fly. Nice. Like when he laid it down on the next cast, you know you couldn’t spook a fish if you tried. And so those like insane days often happen April, may, but you can also have the very next day where everything that you can record and and measure well like you can have the identical conditions. Josh (34m 43s): So the, the flows are the same, the water temps are the same, the turbidity or the amount of clarity is exactly the same. The barometric pressure is the same, the air temperature is the same. Like anything that you can write down or record is identical. And you work all day to put one fish in the boat and you’re like, what happened? Like yesterday I felt like a hero Today I feel like a zero that’s spring. And I always tell people like when you get one of those epic days in spring, you can’t ever come back and tell a guide like, oh last time when I fished with now or last time I was fished with Steve, you know we got 200. No, no no for that. Like that was exceptional. Enjoy it. That’s awesome. But it’s not typical. And that’s spring you’re always like, it’s not always like this his, you know, and then the next day you’re like, it’s not always like this. Josh (35m 26s): Sometimes we catch fish on it. Right? That’s spring once runoff happens in June and typically June’s a write-off. And that’s where we do a ton of our pike fishing is when the river blows out in June, July, August, September. In those three months we’ve got super stable weather patterns. We’ve got stable water conditions, stable insect hatches and stable fishing. Like it is very rare that you would ever have a really brutal day in those three months that you couldn’t put your finger on it Exactly. And be like, oh this happened. And that’s why it got really tough. ’cause if that hadn’t ne like the water all of a sudden bumped up two and a half feet or all of a sudden they dropped the water like crazy or we had this epic storm come through and there was hail and lightning and you know, that put the fish up. Josh (36m 8s): But like it would almost, it would so rarely happen that you can’t put your finger right on what it was at that time of year because it’s such a consistent time of year. So if you have three days, it would be so rare that you would ever get three tough days of fishing. The more days you have the better chance you’re gonna get one of those really epic days of fishing and the more chance that if you do get one of those tough weather days or tough conditions, that it’s one day and you’re still gonna see good days on either side of it. I would never come here and just fish the bow. I shouldn’t say never. Yeah. Like superlatives are dangerous. Sure. But I wouldn’t recommend it typically because we’ve just got such incredible fisheries. Our mountain cutthroat fisheries are amazing and there’s, you know, there’s a couple fisheries that everyone goes to and they get just pounded but there’s so many mountain streams that don’t receive a lot of pressure. Dave (37m 0s): Yeah. Are these cutthroat, what are these cutthroat? Are these, what species of cutthroat are these? Josh (37m 4s): West Slope Cutthroats? Dave (37m 5s): Yeah, these are West slopes. So these are, which are the super aggressive fish, right? Josh (37m 9s): Yeah. And so those are the, the ones that are native to here. We’ve got a, a bunch of our cutthroat streams where you can consistently, like if you’re just looking for big fish, you could fish do nothing but 18 plus inch fish all day. Now those are gonna be harder fish to catch ’cause they’re much more educated. Like people forget catcher release works really well. We get much bigger fish. Like we’re getting way bigger fish now than when I was a kid. But they’re smarter now because when I was six years old and started fly fishing, if someone hooked that cutthroat, like it might not have gone into a net, it might have gone straight into a frying pan. Right? Right. And So that gets removed from the gene pool, it doesn’t get any smarter. Whereas now we release that fish and it’s like, oh wow, that hopper had a sharp pointy butt. Josh (37m 52s): I’m gonna avoid those in the future. Right. And so fish get smarter, they also get much larger. Dave (37m 57s): How big do those fish get? Josh (37m 59s): So for Pure West Slope caddies like 22 inches is probably the top end of what we typically see. Wow. Dave (38m 5s): You can, you can get West Slope Cuties up to 22. That’s amazing. Josh (38m 9s): Yeah. We’ve got some mountain streams that have a similar level of nutrients that you would see on a tail water. And so the insect hatches are so incredible crazy. It’s, and it’s usually where you’ve got multiple trips that are dumping into a main stem or something like that. And because of that you’ve got more nutrients, you’ve got more bugs and you’ve got these big super healthy fish. We had some of those rivers that also started, they got rainbows in ’em. And So we started seeing cut bows and cut rows are just kind of these freaks that we had cut bows up to. I think 26 and a half was the biggest cut bow. Wow. That somebody, and so you’re in this little mountain stream that like you can reach the other side of the river with your rod tip almost in some places. Josh (38m 54s): And then you’ve got a 26 inch fish that came up and ate a dry fly and is now like going over a ledge and like into your backing going downstream. Wow. And you’re like, I’ll be back. Hopefully. Dave (39m 4s): So it’s got a mix of, so it’s the kebo, so it’s got the slashes like a cutthroat, but it’s like how does it look like a rainbow? Just how could you tell? So Josh (39m 12s): A, a lot of those fish look very little like the rainbow other than the fact that they have more spotting through their side. Whereas those cutthroat, you know, you’ve got heavy spotting tail and on the back, but through their side there with the we west slopes, there’s very little spotting going down their side. Those cut bows have more spotting throughout the side. They’ve got the pink in the cheek of a rainbow. It’s a little bit lighter colored. It’s not as that kind of like those west slopes are that kind of nice golden ish, you know, yellowy, peachy color. They don’t have as much of the yellow in ’em at all. They’re much more silver sided. But for whatever reason the hybrid, like, and I get it like the west slope, cutthroat is such an important fish and we don’t wanna lose those pure genetics. Josh (39m 58s): But when we had those hybrids everywhere, they were just these genetic freaks that they got heavier shoulders, they were deeper than the, is deeper than the cutthroat. So they just turned into this like specimen. They took the best of both worlds where Right. They fought like a rainbow. They jumped like a rainbow. They came to the surface for dries like a cutthroat, they live in the most beautiful parts of the world. Wow. Like cutthroat did. Like they were just this exceptional fish and, and yeah you could commonly have fish in that 20 to 24 inch range that were cut bows. That’s crazy mixed in there too. And they were super territorial. Like cutthroat too. So you knew where they Dave (40m 35s): Lived. Right. And then on the bow river is it now those are mostly rainbows down there and then same thing, you just get big rainbows down there Josh (40m 43s): And browns like the, I would say like especially from a guiding standpoint as a photography standpoint, if I could talk Yeah. I prefer the browns because like a rainbow looks like a rainbow. Looks like a rainbow. We’ve got incredible rainbow, the original rainbows that were stocked in the boat. Like there’s, there’s been no stocking in the bow since the 1970s. So we’re going on like 55 years. Wow. Without any stocking. These are all wild fish. It’s all wild genetics. And it shows like they’re super strong fish. I’ve had people, I think I’ve guided people from 53 different countries in the world now. And so many people are like, these are the strongest rainbows that I’ve ever fought that have ever hooked. Because Dave (41m 17s): It’s a big river. It’s a big river. Yeah, Josh (41m 19s): It’s big river, it’s big water. There’s lots of food. They’re that are healthy fish. They’ve got big shoulders. Like again, it’s the same as a person. You can have someone like coaching basketball. I coached six foot 11 or this guy I played with is seven foot one. Wow. But he’s 185 pounds Dave (41m 34s): What? Seven foot one and 180 5. Josh (41m 36s): 180 5. Wow. Right. Super, super skinny like bean pole. But then you’ve got a guy that’s five foot one and he is a bodybuilder or he is into juujitsu and like he can break your body in half, he can tear your limbs off your body. Right. Fish are the same way that you can have a 20 inch trout that if it’s super skinny, it’s not that strong. You take a 16 inch fish that has, you know, more body weight than that 20 inch fish because of its girth. Because of a stroll. Like what is that extra body weight coming from? It’s coming from mussel on those fish. And when they’re fighting heavy current, just to stay in the current on a river like the boat, you get heavily muscled fish, but then you also get on a tail water. You get soft enough pockets. Josh (42m 16s): It’s not like when you’re up in the mountains where there’s nothing but heavy fast water that they’re fighting all the time and they’re on a treadmill and now they’re more of an endurance runner. Now we get fish that eat enough that they can bulk up and they can get big and they can be way more heavily muscled. Dave (42m 31s): Yeah. And they can use the current right. They can. Well they can get out in the current and take you on that too. Josh (42m 35s): Exactly. And they use it against you very well. And so the browns are exceptional here. Like for most people we wouldn’t consider ’em a big fish on the bow until it’s over 24. So 24 is usually that benchmark that’s, that’s a big fish. Dave (42m 49s): Let’s take a break and check in with Jackson Hole Fly Company right now. 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These rods are dialed in with the right action, clean design, and built to fish hard without the high price tag. Whether you’re stripping streamers tight lining or dead drift andries, they’ve got a setup that feels right from the first cast. And the best part is you can try any rod reel or fly line for 30 days risk free. And if you’re not 100% satisfied, you can send it back for a full refund. Dave (44m 11s): Check ’em out right now. That’s San Juan Rod works.com. S-A-N-J-U-A-N Rod works.com. You support this podcast by checking in with San Juan now. So if we’re on the boat with you, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna be thinking 24 plus inch Phish was is gonna be a goal out for us. Us. Josh (44m 31s): Yeah. And it’s, it would be a fairly rare occurrence that you wouldn’t have an interaction with a fish that size. Now whether you hook that fish, whether you land that fish Dave (44m 40s): Totally. The 20 fish guarantee, is that still, is that still valid or you still work at that these days? No, Josh (44m 44s): No, that’s it. No, that’s So as soon as I got to the point that I was no longer doing all the trips or even the majority of the trips, so when it was just me, I could do that. But it was different when it, it became other guides and the pressure that they felt from that was one of those like, and it also became that that thing that it was more about the experience and how much you’re actually teaching someone. Like the way I guide now is so different than I used to guide back then. And when I was young in my head trying to pay for university, like this is such an expensive day. I would want every second I could out of it and I would want the most fish I could get out of it. And it was just, you fished through the people in your boat, like they would cast too far and you would move the boat to drag the flies in line with where they needed to be. Josh (45m 29s): They would have too much tension and they couldn’t mend properly. So you’d move the boat towards it to take the tension off the line. ’cause you knew you were about to hit a bucket. They would hit that fish and they’re like, oh, I think it’s bottoming. You’re like, it’s a fish. You would turn the bow of the boat to tighten the line and oh it is a fish. Right? And now like they’re paying the fish and they put too much tension on it and it’s gonna break. So you row out the fish, right, they lose tension. And so you row away from the fish and you would land fish through your guest and at the end of the day people are pumped. ’cause they caught their fish. And I’ll never forget Dave, it was the worst feeling. I saw a guest that I really enjoyed the day with them. They were so much fun. They had hands down the best day of fishing of their lives on the river in my boat. Josh (46m 10s): And that like as a young guy that made me so proud to know people were having these great days. Well I see him five years later and he is booking a trip and I’m like, you know, he shows up for his trip and I’m like, how’s it been You’ve been fishing, like getting fish on the bow now? And he is like, no, I haven’t caught a fish on the bow since I fished with you. Oh wow. I was like, oh you’ve been too busy working. You haven’t been fishing it. He’s like, no, I’ve been fishing a ton. I was like, what do you mean? He’s like, no, like, and I realized I was catching fish through my guests. I wasn’t teaching my guests how to catch fish when I wasn’t there. And I did everything in my power to give them the best possible day that day. But that was only helping them for eight to 12 hours. Dave (46m 51s): The teach Man to Fish. Right. That the old story. Right, exactly. Josh (46m 53s): Yeah. And it completely changed the way I guided where I was like, okay, we can’t just be focusing on how many fish did I catch today? Like did I catch 12? And that that whole like you know, you get into a marina in Mexico and how many flags are up and you get into the boat launch, you guys are, how many fish did you catch? Well like when we stopped just indicator fishing and we started like hunting fish and we started teaching people how to cast better and we started drive fly fishing. You are not gonna hook as many fish a day. Or you might have like we’ve had days like NATO and I would talk about days where we’re talking about like 50 and 80 eats on dry flies. Yeah. Wow. And you had guests that maybe landed two of those and so they go home and it, that was always the thing where it’s like what is the best way to do this? Josh (47m 34s): Like what’s most important? Like is it just about them getting fish? Because sure if you’re just trying to put fish in that, sure you can float down with bobbers on beside the boats and you are gonna catch a whack load of fish even if you don’t know where you’re going, you just let the current take you. But does someone know what they’re doing to be able to replicate that? Because if you’re floating down the middle of the river in the main channel, well an angler on shore can’t do that. They can’t replicate that. So how have you helped them? So yes you can take them to shore and get them outta the boat and teach them how to fish it from shore and you can do that whether it’s an indicator or stream or fishing or drive flies. But are you actually helping them become a better angler So that he or she can catch more fish on their own when they go out? And that was the thing that changed. Josh (48m 16s): And when we started doing all of this drive fly fishing, it was amazing where it was like, man, we’re seeing similar or higher numbers of fish that are eating dry. Then we were having landed fish on indicators but they’re just not landing as many fish. Dave (48m 32s): Is that what you guys were doing where you focused more on like indicators and and streamers and Josh (48m 36s): When it was young? Yeah. ’cause you look around and you see most of the guide boats and you’re like, huh, virtually everyone is running indicators, so I guess we should be running indicators. And you’re like, yeah, they’ve got a bent rod, they’ve got a bent rod. And you’re like, okay, you know it’s hopper season or stonefly season, I’m gonna run dry flies there. But so much of the, even then, the best ever day I’ve had of like fishing foam, so it was stone flies non hoppers. They had 114 eats in a day Dave (49m 3s): On like a foam. Like a A grasshopper Josh (49m 5s): Or what? A single foam stonefly. So fishes, donly, no droppers, just one fly, two people in the boat. There were two brothers, they had 114 eats and I, I don’t often count, but it was just getting so silly that we kept track and kept counting out of those 114 they landed 14 fish. Oh wow. Right. And I didn’t count any fish that looked like it was anywhere near or below 16 inches. So, and I mean that’s the nice thing also about fish in a size six foam bug. You weed out a lot of those small fish that they can’t wrap their lips around a bug that big. And so you’re gonna see more of the big fish than you know you’re not gonna get an eight inch fish outta Dave (49m 42s): Those 114 that day. How many were actually hooked where they had ’em on for a little bit? Josh (49m 46s): I don’t know how many were hooked. There were 14 landed out of the 115. Dave (49m 49s): Yeah, 14 landed. Yeah, Josh (49m 50s): 14 of those were landed. Some of those were hooked and fought and came off. But so many of ’em were just missed on the take. And honestly if there’s anything that people ask how they missed that many fish, it’s so different when you’re in a drift boat because most of us grew up or learned to drive fly fish out of a boat fishing upstream. And you watch fish rise and as you see its nose come up, you set the hook and its mouth is still wide open but it’s facing away from you. So you can set three seconds too early and there’s a good chance that you’re gonna pull that hook and it’s gonna catch the corner of their mouth because it’s facing away from you. When you’re drive fly fishing out of a drift boat, you’re leading the boat. So now the fish’s mouth is facing you. So when that fish rolls, and especially with really big foam bugs like our fish know that that meal is not the most important thing, not drawing attention to yourself and the attention of predators is their number one priority. Josh (50m 43s): So it’s not a big aggressive, they don’t smoke it, they roll super slow and they’ll roll and you can have a 25, 26 plus inch fish that they roll and there’s hardly rings because their number one priority. Don’t draw attention to yourself. We’ve got bald eagles, we’ve got herons, we’ve got ospreys, we’ve got corts, we’ve got pelicans, we’ve got McCanns, we’ve got tur. Every stage of a fish’s life there’s a bird that’s trying to eat them until they’re probably over that 24 inch range. But at that point it’s still so ingrained in them. Yeah. To watch out for birds. So those fish roll super slow and they roll with an open mouth. So what happens when you see a, a giant snout appear and it rolls on your fly. Josh (51m 23s): Everyone get excited and they set the hook but their mouth is still open and it, and I mean I’ve sat on a bank and photographed Phish, I’ve spent hours, like if I have a day off now I’m more likely to be on the river without a rod just with a camera photographing phish or filming phish than I am to actually be fishing. And I can promise you I have learned exponentially more while just observing and photographing Phish than in almost 25 years of guiding and watching them while we’re trying to put a a shirt pointy object in their face. You’re distracted by so many things and you see a fish rise once and then you cast to it and you hook it. And what did you learn that fish is willing to eat my fly. Josh (52m 3s): But that’s the only thing you learned when you watch a fish for four hours, you learn man, he’s ignoring every single PMD and he’s only eating cadi. He hasn’t eaten a single cadis that’s sitting still. He ate every cas that was actually running and moving or vice versa. Right. And I’ve sat in the mountains and watched cutthroat that they will ignore green drinks and only eat midges. They’re ignoring hoppers and they’re only eating midges. And you’re like, why? Well chances are, if every angler throws a giant bug, they get really scared of giant bugs. Very few anglers throw that size 22 midge. So that becomes a safe thing. If every angler’s throwing size 22 midge, well that becomes the dangerous fly. Josh (52m 43s): And that size, you know, two grasshopper might be the safe Dave (52m 46s): Fly. That’s amazing. When you’re casting that dry out there, you mentioned you know the take, so the big fish, it’s coming you, how do you, when do you set the hook? Talk about that. If it’s coming up the mouth is open. How do you coach somebody to make sure Josh (52m 59s): Once the mouth is closed and that’s, people are like what? And they’re like, how do you see that? I’m like for one it does take some time in practice because the first time you see a fish at your dry fly it’s just full panic and that’s okay. Like it’s not gonna help you catch fish. But that’s part of the learning curve, right? Yeah. The first time you see it, it’s so exciting. You freak out and you rip the fly outta their mouth. And I tell people all the time, I’m like, that was awesome. I’m like, you just saved that fly’s life. That fish was about to annihilate that fly. Right. Fill it full of tooth. I’ll, I’m like, if there was a bunch of tooth marks in that fly, there’s no way I can resell that fly. So you just sell, save that fly’s life. People are like, you’re prick. Yeah, right. But it’s waiting till that fish closes. If you can see the white of the mouth, it’s mouth is still closed. Josh (53m 40s): And I used to tell people like wait till it drops, wait till it’s underwater. And my buddy Steven Palmer, he’s a fishing manager at the Orvis Plano store in Texas and he was up here with a group of clients. He was hosting a trip with us and he had missed a couple fish. I like you gotta wait till it drops. So this next fish rolls and it drops and it like they’ll roll super slow where it’s coming up, it’s noses just breaks, it grabs the fly, it rolls, it’s slowly roll ’cause it doesn’t wanna make a ripple, it doesn’t wanna draw any attention to itself. It dropped, it was underwater completely. He set the hook and he missed it. And he’s like, what? He’s like, I waited so long, I’m like, you did you 100% waited but I could see your fly and I could see the white of its mouth six inches below the surface of the water that fish rolled for whatever reason it hadn’t closed its mouth yet. Josh (54m 27s): If its mouth is still open and the fish is facing you when you set the hook, you will pull it out of the mouth every single time. So you have to wait until that fish is mouth is closed. And I’ve taken high speed video where we’re like filming like at 300 frames a second and you watch fish that they roll and you can see ’em and they’re sometimes like six, eight inches below the surface and they haven’t closed their mouth yet. There’s other fish that have closed their mouth when their mouth is still outta the water. So there’s not a rule like count to one, Dave (54m 55s): What do you do with all that video that you’re taking there with all the cool. Josh (54m 58s): So a lot of that video was always like, I would do that for B-roll for a bunch of the shows. So my buddy Nick IC used to do a a ton of like, I don’t know, I think we’d done probably between 40 and 50 different episodes of TV shows together. But TV’s not really a thing anymore. So like I haven’t done TV show in probably 10 years. Dave (55m 16s): Like what type of tea? Where were, where were those shows aired? Josh (55m 19s): So like Fly Nation was one of the hosts on like that’s where I met NTO who was our head guide and like that’s where I met April and that’s where I met Paul Castellano and that’s where, and like so my closest group of friends, we were all a host of Nick’s show Dave (55m 31s): And that was just on like broadcast was Fly Nation on broadcast television. Josh (55m 34s): Exactly. So it was on broadcast. So it was on WFN at the time. But that was the thing is that I was just guiding or or helping with filming on those shows. But those shows were then sold the network. So the networks own the rights to it. So it’s not stuff that’s on YouTube and stuff like that. Dave (55m 48s): Yeah. So it’s hard to find. But you have video, you’ve seen lots of Phish out there, you know, basically doing this. Josh (55m 55s): Yeah. So there’s a bunch of the video we also used when we were filming April’s the Anchored Outdoors masterclass. So we did a masterclass for her. The first one was on tailwater fishing, but the second one we did was on like fishing to very educated spooky fish. How do you target those biggest fish? How do you target the smartest fish? How do you target the fish that are in high traffic areas that they see a ton of pressure? How do you catch those fish? Because so many people, that’s where they’re fishing, they’re not fishing to stream that gets walked twice a year. They’re fishing to stream that gets walked twice every five minutes. Right? And so how do you help those people still catch fish? Josh (56m 36s): And so that’s, that’s why we did that masterclass and some of that footage, there’s a lot of that footage that was, that was put in there and we saw some crazy, I saw something in there. This was when you talk about the reactions of of pressured fish. So we didn’t have any rods with us. We went and caught grasshoppers like a bunch of little kids run around trying to catch grasshoppers in your hat. I went to a pool that’s at like, it’s at a provincial park. It’s right below a waterfall that gets a ton of foot traffic. Tourists fished all the time. So much pressure there. But it has fish in it too. And it has some nice fish in it too. But they’re so, so heavily pressured. I threw a grasshopper and we filmed it going through the pool, it got rushed by three different fish. They got to it and they flared on it, the hopper kicked and they raced back to it and they looked at it, they’re like, oh I want to eat it so bad. Josh (57m 21s): And then they would flare on it and then the hopper kicks again. They’re like, it is real. And they would race back to it and then they would flare on it and then they let it go through the pool and then hatch to, I threw 28 grasshoppers through that pool before even one of them got eaten. Once one of them got eaten, the first one that got eaten, it actually blew me away. What happened? So we saw this on high-speed camera three oh oh frames a second. You could see this fish came up and ate it immediately. Pun we couldn’t see this by the naked eye. I had no idea this happened until I looked on camera after fish ate it, spit it out. As soon as it got under the water it spit it out. And then there was this brief pause where it was like, no that was real. And it grabbed it again. Josh (58m 2s): And because of all the bubbles and the whitewash from the E, you couldn’t tell that that happened. It just looked like he came up and ate it. But he ate it immediately, spit it and then went, no, no that was fine. And you think about like the wing case on a grasshopper, if you’ve ever held hoppers in your hand like a little kid, I used to, we had a pond on our farm and when I was going to like fix fences or move cows, I would be grabbing like frogs and grasshop anything I could throw in the water to watch a fish eat it. And so you can get poked by that. It’s sharp, it feels like a hook. So trout probably very used to biting down on a real grasshopper, getting poked. So that’s why like when you miss ’em on a fly, like leave the fly there, they’ll often come back and eat it. And So that fish ate for the crazy thing Dave, this blew my mind. Josh (58m 42s): So 28 grasshoppers went through that pool. I had probably, I have no idea how many different fish in total, but I would guess up to where of 10 different fish that race stepped to that grasshopper, looked at it, flared on it and then didn’t eat it. As soon as the first one got eaten, we threw 56 grasshoppers through that pool. Not another one made it out to tail out a lot. Every single grasshopper got eaten after that. ’cause it’s such a heavily pressured part of their, that they, they’re hardwired, they want that bug so badly because it’s so much food. And winter’s coming like this was late September, early October. They know winter’s coming, it’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be, that’s so much food value in one package. Josh (59m 23s): But like I ask people this all the time, on your best day of hopper fishing that you’ve ever had in your life, how many natural grasshoppers did you see on the water? Dave (59m 31s): Right? That’s true. Josh (59m 32s): Almost none. Now if you saw a hundred anglers that day, how many anglers had a hopper on their rod? Yeah, 95, 98. So now 98 out of a hundred hoppers have a sharp pointy butt. So those are dangerous. Now when there’s a mid hatch or there’s a blueing olive hatch, how many of those do you see on the water? Tens of thousands. And outta those a hundred anglers we saw maybe or those five, someone’s probably throwing a beetles, someone’s probably throwing ant, someone’s throwing a green drag. One Midge, one blue on olive. So we’ve got one Midge or one blue on olive or little ant or little beetle, one small fly. And like how many like, I don’t know the number, but how many midges do you have to eat to equal one size two grasshopper? Josh (1h 0m 14s): It’s probably a ton. So now they’re eating all of these naturals and virtually everyone and so tens of thousands of those are safe for everyone that had that sharp pointy butt and that one’s not safe. Dave (1h 0m 26s): That’s it. Wow, this is cool. So this is great Josh, because I think we’re gonna have to bring you back on here. I love that there’s so much information, we’re just touching the surface on this. But I want to talk some tips before we get outta here. You’re on this track here, but fly casting, I think you have some background, tell me if I’m wrong, but kinda your college or university background. Like you studied like tracking and this applies to fly casting. Maybe describe what that was. You studied in college and am my right on that track a little bit. Yeah, Josh (1h 0m 53s): So my master’s thesis was a eye tracking study where I looked at the visual characteristics of expert fly casters and how manipulating attentional focus will affect outcome accuracy. I always try and do that in one breath. Yeah, Dave (1h 1m 3s): There you go. Well done. Like, Josh (1h 1m 5s): Like we’ve all done, right? Yeah. And So that was, I can can nerd out on casting so much. Dave (1h 1m 12s): So you literally in college at your university you actually studied flight casting specific topic. Josh (1h 1m 19s): Yeah, So that, that was my thesis title that I just rattled off there. Yeah, it’s so I was, I was doing eye tracking study so I was monitoring the eye movements. I was looking at master certified casting instructors because I was trying to look, the premise of my thesis was there’s no question that proper mechanics are necessary for an accurate performance. But does that mean it’s sufficient? Right? So if you’ve got, like we’ve got missiles that you can send, you know, around the world and it can land within meters of a target. But what happens if you launch that missile and you don’t put in the proper coordinates? Can you expect it to hit a target? So I was looking at master certified casting instructors that should have not only this exceptional level of mechanics in place, but the ability to break down anyone’s cast and their mechanics. Josh (1h 2m 5s): So if they all have this exceptional mechanics in place, why were some of them hitting two and three targets outta 20? And some of them were hitting 18 and 19 targets outta 20. And what they, the huge difference we saw is there’s a big difference with what they did with their eyes. And like that’s where I met Tim Ray, Jeff, he was casting my study, became good friends with him, one of the greatest casters that we’ve ever had. Oh for sure. And one of the greatest human beings. Like I know you’ve had him on your podcast. Yeah, like I became good friends with Tim because I was this 20-year-old kid, like grad student that’s used to being treated like six steps below dirt. And now you’ve got a world champion caster who’s calling me like a giddy little school girl excited. He’s like, have you seen my data? Josh (1h 2m 45s): What can you tell me? Awesome. And I’ll never forget as like a 20 something year old kid talking to Tim and telling him like I’d, I’d looked at some of the data and telling him what I’d seen and like you know, finding the target early and like the most hits you had were when you found the target earliest and you locked your eyes on the target. And he was like, so he was super locked in and he started practicing that stuff. He called me up and for me at that point in my guide career and just even as a a university student, it was one of the most influential phone calls I’ve ever had because he is like, dude, I was just at IFTD, they have the fly casting competition, I did it. He’s like, I was thinking about all the I stuff that you talked about and I was focusing on the target and focusing on my eyes. Josh (1h 3m 25s): He’s like, I got the first ever perfect score in the accuracy round. Oh wow. And I was just like, that’s amazing. He’s like, in the second round I got a perfect score again. I was like, are you kidding me? I’m like, so you won it? And he’s like, well no I actually didn’t. I’m like, what The last thing where they had to cast your, your loop through a hula hoop hanging, he’s like, it’s the easiest thing. But he was like, I was so focused on the eyes and trying to think about like looking at the middle of, of the target. Oh right. But the hoop was hanging and he is like, there was people walking by in the background and I got distracted and I screwed it up. So I got second. I was like, but it was the coolest thing because I had a Tim Raje tell me, he’s like, I teach people for a living and this is one of the first times in a long time someone has actually helped me become a better caster. Josh (1h 4m 8s): And I was just like, could you put that in writing please? Right. You’re a little kid that’s so excited. Dave (1h 4m 14s): How would you describe that again? So what the study break it down to just the, for the basic what it was it that you, you yeah somebody could take away from that. Josh (1h 4m 21s): So someone’s wearing a set of glasses that has an eye tracker attached to it. So there’s two cameras off of this set of glasses. One is right in between your eyes on the bridge of your nose and that’s called the scene camera. So it just captures wherever you point your head, it’s looking at that scene. And so it captures your visual field essentially there’s a second camera and an illuminator light that reflects off a monocle or a prism into your eye based on pupil edge detection and corneal reflection. We can tell where your fovea is. The fovea is the only point in your eye that you have acute vision So that you can actually like read something that you can tell any type of detail. So that’s your fovea. Josh (1h 5m 2s): We would then have each of the people look at a nine point grid and I, I would tell you if you’re wearing the eye tracker Dave, look at 0.1 while you’re looking at 0.1. I tell the computer, Dave’s eye is now looking at 0.1 and we do that one through nine. Once we’ve told the computer that now that software tracks your eyes and there’ll be a little red circle called the gaze cursor, GAZE, that moves wherever you look. So wherever you look it follows your vision around. And so while they were casting these targets, I was monitoring all their eye movings. And what I was looking at was basically, you know, if you’re focusing internally on your own body movement, so thinking about your arm where it is in space and more the mechanics versus if you’re just solely focused on look at the target, lock in on the target, that’s it. Josh (1h 5m 50s): Which is more conducive to accuracy. And that external focus was much more helpful in terms of accuracy. So it was about neuromotor control and is an internal focus or an external focus more conducive to accuracy. But it’s one of those things too that from my standpoint, when you have and there and there was another video camera that’s just a regular video camera that shot from the side that would sync the two videos in time. I would have to to splice them and put them together So that while Tim was wearing the eye tracker on the left hand side, I saw Tim casting just a regular video camera. But on the right hand side I could see what he was looking at with the gaze cursor, wherever he looked. Josh (1h 6m 34s): So I had to go through every single frame of data one frame at a time and account for what was he looking at? Was it an eye movement, was it a fixation on a stable point? Was it a blink, was it a like an eye movement? A Sade? So it’s Sade just means that it’s an eye movement. I’m like your eyes move so quickly that your brain actually suppresses visual information during an eye movement and then as soon as your eye gets somewhere stable and slows down, then you get the information back again. Wow. And so I had to code every single, so for an hour and a half of data for each of the 11 participants, I had to go through one frame at a time and say the gaze cursor is on the target, it is fixation or this is now a blink that lasted for four frames. Josh (1h 7m 20s): Every single frame of data I had to account for where their eyes were. So it was looking at eye movements, it was looking at mirror motor control. But from my standpoint, it’s one of those things where if you have video footage of some of the best casters on the planet and you don’t look at it and break it down and learn from it, you’re an idiot. What Dave (1h 7m 42s): Would be, say somebody listening now how could they use this knowledge for maybe a few tips for their casting? Like today Josh (1h 7m 48s): One of the big things is like your eyes are the targeting system for your brain. And it sounds intuitive but at the same time we forget that where like master certified casting instructors would be casting to these targets and they had never actually had a fixation. So a fixation is a hundred milliseconds. So three frames of video, they had never had a single fixation at the target that they were casting to until the point of their fi. They were allowed three false casts and had to deliver on the third false cast. ’cause I didn’t want them just like false casting continuously until they measured the distance. Oh right. And then just laid it down. Yep. So they only had three false casts to deliver the fly, which did make it challenging and they all complained about and said it was too hard. Josh (1h 8m 29s): But some of them had never looked at the target until their final false cast. And at that point, like we know physics says that the line is committed to the path that the rod tip comes to a stop. Once it comes to a stop, it has to go in that direction. So they’ve already committed the flys there and that’s the first time they’d looked at the target. They’d been looking at everything in their visual field. So they looked at the near target, the far target, the edge of the paper, the spout of the paper. Someone that ran by on the track in the Jack Simpson gym and their eyes. It looked like it had Tourettes. Like it was just all over the place. And and in all of those movements they tried to look at everything and your brain is then able to process nothing. So what is your relevant cue that you’re looking at? And people forget too, if you’re casting to a rising trout in a lake, well that cruising fish when you see the rings, that ring isn’t your relevant cue anymore because you know that fish is cruising. Josh (1h 9m 18s): You have to go, did that fish rot, is it going left to right? Is it going right to left? Is it going away from me? Is it coming towards me? And now you have to reference your distance from that point and then look at the point that you want your fly to land. If I’m staring at the rings and I know that that fish is going left to right and I continue to look at the rings where that fish no longer is, there’s a really good chance my fly is gonna go to the rings not to where I wanted it to go. Right. Yeah. If I’m like when people are skiing, you tell people if you’re skiing in the trees, like look where you want to go. Not at what you’re scared to Dave (1h 9m 48s): Hit or the other great one, and you’ll, you’ll appreciate this as as a Canadian is Gretzky the famous quote I go where the puck is going to be not where it is. Right. Or whatever that is. Josh (1h 9m 57s): Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that’s the exact same thing that we need to do with the fish is if you’re casting to a rising fish on a river, I’ve seen so many people short of fish and short of fish and short of fish and sometimes they’re scared to line it. And so that’s where some of that comes from. But so often, and it took me a while as a guy to realize they’re casting to where they saw the rings not to where the fish ate. Right. And you think when a fish is in a river, as it rises up off the bottom, what is happening to that fish? The current’s pushing it backwards and then it eats on the surface and as it eats it doesn’t sink straight down from there. It returns to its lie that depending on the speed of the water, it might be three feet further forward. It might be a foot and a half, it might be six feet further forward. Josh (1h 10m 39s): So where is the fish sitting and where is it looking? And that’s where you need to be looking because if you cast to where the rings were, the rings are four feet behind that effect. Dave (1h 10m 48s): Yeah. So you’re estimating, so as you’re to put this into knowledge on the river, you’re kinda like Gretzky was, you’re kind of predicting like okay this is where I think that fish is gonna be. And then I, I’m laser focused on that spot and that’s where I’m casting Josh (1h 11m 0s): On that spot and that’s where I need to cast Dave (1h 11m 3s): That one little spot. And I’ve heard this before people talk, I’ve had some instructors on here talk about instead of casting into the ring, you know that little pipe plate or whatever actually our focus on a blade of grass in the middle of it and that’s what you focus on, right? Is that kind of, that’s kinda what you’re saying. Josh (1h 11m 17s): Yeah the, the more narrow your focus is, the more likely you are to hit it. It was interesting like one of the participants in the study, they were supposed to be casting to the middle of the target. He was looking at the edge of the target. And I could see it on the monitor while he was casting. He was looking at the, because naturally the first thing that her eyes detect is movement. There’s no movement on a stationary target. So what’s the second thing that her eyes detect Edge detection. That’s how we like we use the profile of something to figure out what it is. I look at the edges of it and find out that’s person look at the edges of that. Well that’s a spruce tree, right? He was looking at the edge where this bright blue target meant white paper and so his eyes were locked on that he had about eight casts that touched the edge of the target. Josh (1h 12m 0s): So he was actually one of the most accurate in terms of in that trial the number of hits that he had. But it was also measured off of the middle of the target ’cause the instructions were be as accurate as possible and try and hit the center of the target. So his numbers looked like he wasn’t anywhere near as accurate as some of the other casters, but he was actually very accurate in hitting where he was looking. He just wasn’t looking in the right place. Same sort of thing. He was looking where the rings were not where the fish is. That type of analogy. Amazing. And so it’s like your eyes are the targeting system for your brain. You can’t expect your brain to put that fly somewhere that you haven’t pulled it. Where that exists in space, you have to enter coordinates before you send the missile. Josh (1h 12m 42s): You have to enter the coordinates in your brain by taking a stable look at that target. And you see people like we’ll tell people when we’re teaching them to cast like watch your back cast, watch the tip of your rod. Yes. When you’re learning mechanics, when those mechanics are second nature and you’re trying to catch fish, you shouldn’t be looking at the line on the back cast. You shouldn’t be looking at your rod tiff. You should be focused on that target and you should find the target early. The earlier you find the target and the better chance you give your brain to understand where that target is in space, the more likely you are to be able to hit that target. Dave (1h 13m 13s): And that’s where the reps come in. Where you hear again a lot of great guides and casting instructors. They say, you know, get the reps in, they’re still doing, you know, the more you practice because then when you’re in the moment just like Michael Jordan, you know, at the free throw line or whatever the clutch shot, you know LeBron James, it’s like well guess what? He’s already taken that shot like a thousand times in practice. Exactly. He doesn’t have to think about it. And Josh (1h 13m 33s): It was one of the best example. I’m so glad you said that ’cause I was gonna bring it up earlier and I’ll say it now. Michael Jordan, the clutch shot, but do you remember it was mid nineties, Michael Jordan in the All-Star game shoots a free throw with his eyes closed and he hits it. Dave (1h 13m 47s): The great thing is is I’m a huge basketball fan and Michael Jordan since I was like eight years old, had was always been, was always my hero. Yeah. And so I’ve seen every, every Michael Jordan thing so yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. He is like, so Josh (1h 13m 59s): The interesting thing about that, ’cause like growing up as a short white kid in Canada, like that’s iter. Everyone assumes you play hockey. You’re like, no, I play basketball. And they look at someone five seven and they’re like you. Yeah, thanks. But it, it was funny because I was al like I, Michael Jordan was a favorite player. I’d idolized Michael Jordan and I watched him do that and I thought that was so amazing. And then when I did all of my research on, on my thesis and my supervisor actually did studies on free throws with the University of Calgary DNOs basketball team. And one of the things they learned doing that study is the moment that someone was shooting a free throw when the ball occluded their vision. So when the ball passed through their line of sights, they couldn’t see the basket. Josh (1h 14m 40s): They actually thought the eye tracker was broken ’cause their eyes just like stopped paying attention to anything. And so it’s such a brief moment that you don’t really notice it until you’re going through a frame at a time. But the look at the target at the point like, so it’s called this quiet eye period that that’s the period that you have to have that stable look at the target, what you do after that final movement phase. So with a free throw, that final movement phase was defined as the first upward movement. Once you started that upward movement to start your free throw, what you did with your eyes did not matter anymore. Everything was about what you’d done previous to that point. And so it was so funny to see that like Michael Jordan does, he looked at the target, like he looked at the back of the hoot, he stared at, he spins the ball, he looks at the guys, he kind of heckles the guys, then he closes his eyes and he shoots and he hits it. Josh (1h 15m 31s): And I was like, that is so amazing. And then I did the research and looked at the papers that my supervisor had published and looked at it and realized at the point that he started that upward movement, which is when he closes his eyes, he’s already told his brain where the target is in space. It didn’t matter what he looked at at that point. So yeah Dave (1h 15m 48s): That’s Josh (1h 15m 49s): Amazing. Like it was one of those like, oh that was kind of sad like that that kinda, you know, myth busted one of my hero’s big moments in my mind. But it was important to know that it’s like the look you have at your target before that is what matters. Like at the point that you start to deliver that cast physics says that the line’s already committed to that direction. It’s too late. You had to have seen it before. Get your look at the target in early and the longest kind of stable look you can have at your target. But again, your target is where you want the fly to go. Not necessarily where the fish is. It’s like if I’m fishing to a permit, you know, if I’m dropping it on his head, sure that’s my target ’cause he is tailing. But if he’s moving and I need to lead him by five feet, I can’t look at the target. Josh (1h 16m 30s): And he, and how many people have thrown a cast at a bonefish or a permit? The guy’s like, oh you landed it on him, you spooked to him. I told you to lead him. They’re like, yeah, sorry. It was just a bad cast. Maybe it wasn’t a bad cast. If you’re staring at that permit while it’s swimming and then you cast, you’re probably gonna hit the permit. You needed to be staring five feet in front of the permit if you have any expectation of the fly actually landing five feet in front of the Dave (1h 16m 53s): Permit. I love the, I love all of the sports analogies. This is always a fun part, you know, for, because again, and I was I LeBron again, I, we will just do one more out here. I watched, I went to a a game recently, it was the first time I’ve seen LeBron live and I’ve always, you know, followed LeBron just, you know, whatever. He is one of the great, but man, I watched that guy in warmups. I was pretty close. Actually shout out to Ben in our wet fly swing pro community. He actually hooked me up with tickets there. Nice. But we had, we had, I need to know Ben. Yeah, yeah, you should check with Ben. He’s, he’s amazing. He’s, he’s actually, he does all the, he’s the production manager for the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Right. So he actually gets, I Josh (1h 17m 30s): Wanna know him even Dave (1h 17m 31s): More now. Yeah. So he gets tickets. So he, he there’s a Portland game. Hi Ben. Yeah, exactly. I’ll, we’ll hook you up. But he was, there’s a Portland game. He is like, Dave, I know you love basketball. And he got us tickets. So we went there and I was, we were really close on the, we were in the LA side, right. Because we were on his team. Yeah. And man, I watched LeBron and shooting in practice. It was crazy. Just warmups. And he like shot seven three pointers in a row. Some of ’em were fading away. Some were. And just swish, swish, swish, swish seven in a row. And I was like, damn. And being able to see that guy, I’ve been watching a lot of more video highlight stuff. I mean he, I think, again, this is gonna be hard to say you’re a Michael Jordan fan. I am too. But I think from the stats, there’s a lot of evidence to say maybe LeBron is the greatest just because of the time he’s been doing this and what he’s done. Dave (1h 18m 13s): Yeah. Josh (1h 18m 13s): How long he is done. It’s impressive. His staying power doing it on multiple teams. I’m still gonna say Jordan. Yeah, me too. Final Dave (1h 18m 19s): Answer. Me too. Me too. I Josh (1h 18m 20s): Know I got to see him play my buddy and I Kosh that. Our hosted travel manager, we were down in Florida. Dave (1h 18m 27s): You saw Jordan? Josh (1h 18m 28s): No, I gotta, I never gotta see Jordan. Yeah. My parents got me tickets when I was in grade 12 or no Grade 11 to go see him play the Vancouver Grizzlies, because that’s Grizzlies were still there. And that was gonna be my birthday present. And it ended up, the game was the night before my math 30 diploma. So like the government diploma that’s worth 30% of your final grade. Oh yeah, I would, I had always done math like a year ahead and on my own through school. And so I was only like first semester of grade 11 writing the grade 12 math final. That’s worth 50% of your final grade getting into university, everything like that. And so like that had been my birthday present and I couldn’t go because of that. Remember the school thing. But we were in Florida and we were supposed to do a trip in Everglades. Josh (1h 19m 12s): I’ve fished the keys a lot. I’ve been like, I’ve got friends down there that I go down and fish with, but I’d never fished in the Everglades. And we booked this trip with a guide and there was a tropical storm. The weather wasn’t great, but the guide just bailed on us. He’s like, nah, it’s not gonna be good. I’m gonna cancel. And we were like, man, we’ve already flown here. We’ve already paid for our hotels, we’ve been here for four days. Like let’s just go. He’s like, nah, I won’t be good. I’m like, man, we get it. Like, we hadn’t mentioned this before, but like we guide, we do this for a living. You can’t control the weather, you can’t control the fish. We totally understand that. We just desperately wanna fish. He’s like, no, it’s gonna suck. So we’re not gonna go. And he is like, I’ll, I’ll give you your deposit back, but I’m not going. And we’re just like, man, we’re like, what are we gonna do? But we took the money from the trip and it was game one of the heat versus the Spurs. Josh (1h 19m 57s): Oh yeah. In NBA finals. Right. And we’re like, when in our lives will we ever get to go? I met Kash when he was coaching for the junior, like the University of Calgary’s club team. Akasha, our hosted travel manager who I fish all over the world with. He and I met coaching basketball at the University of Calgary. They’re club teams, not the university team but the club team for the university. And So we were down there, we’re like, let’s go. We took the money from that. ’cause I mean, to fly to a city, to get the hotel hotels everyth to pay for the tickets would’ve been, it would cost so much money to be able to afford that. I would never be able to do it. But I’m like, we’re already here. The money we had towards the trip, we just put into the tickets and they’re like, we were in the nosebleeds. But I mean you had so many hall of famers in there because Tim Duncan was there. Josh (1h 20m 40s): You had Ginobili there, you had Tony Parker there. Sure. That was great. And then you had Dwayne Wade and you had LeBron James, you had Chris Wal and you had Ray Allen. It was just Dave (1h 20m 50s): Like, oh, Ray Allen. Right. That’s when they put Yeah, they had, right. Yeah. Josh (1h 20m 52s): And so there was just so many hall of famers there. And we got to see that game because the guy bail him. Damn. Damn. Dave (1h 20m 58s): Wow. What, what was that? Did LeBron, I can’t remember. They win that series. I don’t even remember. Yeah, they must have won. Josh (1h 21m 4s): I don’t even remember, man. I know that the Spurs won that game and I did not want them to, I love Tony Parker, but I Dave (1h 21m 11s): Came, yeah, me too. But not Josh (1h 21m 11s): Like gin. Dave (1h 21m 12s): The Spurs were, the Spurs were a powerhouse. They were definitely huge. This is good. They were, well this is Josh. This is gonna, I always hate to leave these conversations when they’re like this because I, I think we could talk hoops probably for hours as well. But Yeah, for sure. I think I’m gonna respect your time here and, and cut this one off. But I think we’re gonna be following up with you because I feel like a trip up to your neck of the woods is something I’ve heard a lot of our listeners talk about. So I think we’ll have to catch up with you. But we’ll send everybody out to out fly fishing.com right now if they wanna connect with you and you know, find out more of what you have going and yeah, man, appreciate all the time. This has been really awesome and look forward to staying in touch. Josh (1h 21m 46s): Awesome. Great talking to you man. Appreciate it. Dave (1h 21m 50s): All right. Amazing. Right. Your call to action today, if you shall wish to choose and take it, is to check in with Josh Lev. Know you heard this podcast, and if you’re interested in trips, definitely check in with him. Pick his brain. Definitely this guy could bring the good stuff all day long. So check in and if you’re interested in a trip with us, I think we might be putting something together here. Check in with me, Dave, at webify swing.com anytime. And, and let me know if you’re interested in a trip to the Bow River. All right. If you haven’t already, please subscribe and follow this show. You’ll get the next episode delivered to your inbox, which is in the bucket in the Bucket podcast. Brian’s back with another big episode and wanna give a shout out before we get outta here as well Lodge at Palisades Creek. Dave (1h 22m 30s): If you’re interested in heading that direction, fish in the South Fork, check in with at the lodge at Palisades Creek. Check in with the lodge at Palisades Creek. We’ve got that one going right now. I wanna thank you for listening in all the way to the very end today. Appreciate you for stopping by hope you have a great evening. Hope you have a great morning, and if it’s afternoon, if it’s afternoon, maybe you’re on a, on a road trip, mid midday, you’re hanging out, maybe it’s sunshine, maybe it’s warm and, and you’re getting ready to fire it up. I hope you have a good trip and we will see you on that next episode. Outro (1h 23m 1s): Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly swing.com.