834 | Night Mousing for Trout with Kyle Glass – Trophy Trout, White River, Trout Trap Flies

00;00;02;12 – 00;00;23;25 Dave He’s an Idaho guide who spends his nights designing flies that push the edge patterns meant for fish that feed when most anglers are asleep. His creations have shown up from the still waters of Pyramid Lake to the flooded banks of the White River, each one refined through countless late night tests and broken leaders. In this episode, we get into the mindset behind hunting trophy brown trout. 00;00;23;25 – 00;00;42;20 Dave Why mousing Fish is more about precision than luck, and how turning fly design into a business can stay fun without burning you out. This is the Wi-Fi Swim 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. 00;00;43;06 – 00;01;02;28 Dave Carl Glass is here to share what makes a fishery produce giants. Why the smallest fly can be sometimes the deadliest. Why you don’t have to go giant always on the mouse patterns and how glow lines and foam tabs that glow in the dark are a game changer for Kyle. All right, let’s get into it. You can find him at Trout Trap Fly XCOM. 00;01;02;28 – 00;01;07;17 Dave Here he is. Kyle Glass. How you doing, Kyle? 00;01;07;27 – 00;01;09;17 Kyle Hi, Dave. Happy to be with you this morning. 00;01;09;23 – 00;01;29;05 Dave Yeah, Yeah, we’re. We’re always excited to talk big flies. Today we’re going to check in on, you know, kind of mousing, tying some flies. Talk about where people can pick these up and just maybe talk about how somebody might be able to find a trophy fish or even a decent sized fish on a mouse. So. So, yeah, man, does that sound good? 00;01;29;05 – 00;01;33;14 Dave What are you up to this time of year? We’re in that October, November range all over it? 00;01;33;14 – 00;01;54;02 Kyle Yeah. This time of year I’ve completed my guiding for the year, which is mostly a summer thing over there in Arkansas on the White River. I just got recently, got back from a trip actually doing some conventional fishing for tuna in San Diego. And before that I was fishing Pyramid Lake. I’m the opener there, so. 00;01;54;03 – 00;01;55;22 Dave Oh, when was the opener? 00;01;55;22 – 00;01;57;01 Kyle It’s the 1st of October. 00;01;57;10 – 00;02;05;14 Dave Oh, wow. Yeah, 1st of October. It’s a different opener. You hear a lot of trout for openers, a lot of time during the spring. So in now why is that? Why is it the backwards there. 00;02;05;23 – 00;02;19;15 Kyle So it’s water temperature, bass, they close it from, you know, July 1st through the end of September because the water temp at the surface gets over 70 degrees and releasing the trout gets really hard. So, yeah, it’s protecting those fish. 00;02;19;25 – 00;02;43;18 Dave Yeah. Okay, cool. So this is going to be good. I think we’re going to cover that. And then also your home water where you are now, at least is Idaho Falls and kind of all the, you know, big waters there, big and small but kind of famous water. So we might check in on that as well today. But I think the focus is going to be just yeah, helping somebody understand how you do what you do, maybe how to fish, you know, and all that with with the big stuff. 00;02;43;18 – 00;02;55;01 Dave But maybe let’s start there on the flies. First off, brewing. You talk a lot about flies. We might not get in deep into the flight tying, but if somebody wanted to check out your stuff, where’s the best place to go? If they want to, like, pick up some of your flies just off the top. 00;02;55;11 – 00;03;26;02 Kyle Yeah. So my flies. I’d sell them exclusively on my website and that’s trout trap flies dot com. That is. It’s honestly been a really cool project. Dave I, I started out selling my flies kind of as a in between jobs situation. I had planned to become a fishery biologist and my internship fell through. It’s like, okay, well I need a job and started selling some flies and one thing led to another and here we are. 00;03;26;14 – 00;03;30;05 Kyle Wow, it’s my only source of income. And that’s. Yeah, that’s great. 00;03;30;12 – 00;03;46;10 Dave That’s cool. Yeah. We’ve talked to a number of people over the years that have you know, the one reason I always go back to Jonathan Farmer because we finished up in Alaska together this year, But yeah, he’s doing the same thing. He’s up in Alaska just tying a lot of steelhead flies and, you know, stuff like that. But yeah. 00;03;46;10 – 00;03;47;02 Kyle I love the stuff. 00;03;47;06 – 00;04;06;10 Dave Yeah, yeah. He’s, he’s full on just like you. It’s pretty cool to think, you know, in this day and age, you can, you know, you can make a living. Dying flies, right? Which is, which is pretty cool. Is it? How does that feel for you? Because it seems like I remember when I tie it a lot for my dad in the old shop sometimes I guess I never got burned out when I was a kid, but eventually I did. 00;04;06;12 – 00;04;07;20 Dave You How do you avoid the burnout? 00;04;08;08 – 00;04;20;17 Kyle Well, I’ll be honest with you. I’m not in full time production tying anymore. I’ve got a lot of friends that are tying for me most of the flies that, you know, I sell on my website. I actually don’t tie. 00;04;20;18 – 00;04;21;01 Dave Oh, okay. 00;04;21;06 – 00;04;45;02 Kyle Yeah. They’re tied by other fishing guides. I’ve got a lot of, you know, you know, like my my buddy Logan, that ties a lot of the mice and my buddy AJ that ties some of the mice. And it’s just it’s a little bit here and there from a lot of different people. And also expanding right now, trying to get a little bit of overseas production going on, some of the patterns that are a little bit simpler, you know, not as as precise. 00;04;45;02 – 00;04;55;16 Kyle That won’t be the mouse flies, right? Some of the Pyramid Lake stuff, you know, some leach patterns, things like that, that getting an American tire to do. It’s just so monotonous and it’s hard. 00;04;55;24 – 00;05;07;03 Dave Yeah, definitely. So that’s cool. Well, that was a perfect answer to the question is that yeah, you’re smart and you’ve actually figured a way to kind of scale it a little bit, right? So you’re not. Yeah. In doing all the work. 00;05;07;18 – 00;05;37;05 Kyle Well, you know, honestly, like for me doing this thing, it’s a dream come true, right? Like for a lot of people, this would be a dream come true. And it definitely is for me. But my the biggest part of my focus is trying to keep it the dream, right? Don’t let the dream become a nightmare. Right. And for me, that means, you know, not production tying 70 hours a week and it means focusing on the parts of this that I actually really love, you know, which is flight design. 00;05;37;05 – 00;05;51;21 Kyle That’s what I’m passionate about. I’m not passionate about, you know, winding thread around a hook shank as fast as humanly possible. I’m passionate about trying to solve on the water problems, off the water at the vice and I just think that’s cool thing in the world. 00;05;51;27 – 00;06;09;04 Dave Yeah that is that is awesome. So so we’re going to talk about fly design for sure today. You know, kind of how some of this came to be. I also want to hear, you know, the White River. So that’s a place that we’re going to be going to next year. We’re doing an event with Project Healing Waters, and we’re going to be out there fishing the white for my my first time. 00;06;09;04 – 00;06;13;23 Dave How did you how did you come to connect with a white It’s kind of on the other side of the country from where you are. 00;06;14;04 – 00;06;32;13 Kyle Yeah. I mean, growing up, you can’t live in the fly fishing world without hearing the, you know, the stories and all the all the things about the White River and this giant brown trout. There’s a lot of media out there. So I always knew it was a thing, you know, And the world record was from there for a while. 00;06;32;13 – 00;06;41;10 Kyle I remember when that fish got caught, you know, just thinking that this is this unbelievably large fish. It was, you know, just under £40, which. 00;06;41;10 – 00;06;43;13 Dave Is £40 brown trout, 40. 00;06;43;13 – 00;06;44;10 Kyle Pound brown trout. 00;06;44;16 – 00;06;45;04 Dave On a fly. 00;06;45;14 – 00;06;46;14 Kyle Not on a fly. 00;06;46;14 – 00;06;47;15 Dave Not on a fly. Right. 00;06;47;20 – 00;07;06;03 Kyle Almost on fathomable size. You know, and for a while there people were catching a lot of big fish on streamers. In the wintertime, they had a run, a big water, and there were a lot of shad coming through the dam. And so when people first kind of cracked the code on the wintertime streamer fishing, there’s a lot of big fish being caught. 00;07;06;13 – 00;07;30;12 Kyle Well, I had never even gone there. I just that’s kind of the that was kind of the impression I had. I had a I had a guy buddy, Eric Peterson, who is from Michigan, and he and I guided together in Alaska. Well, he had been going out there. My brother went out there with him. Eventually I went out there with them and, you know, my brother and I started doing this mousing deal. 00;07;31;02 – 00;07;34;01 Kyle And, you know, it’s kind of a kind of a niche thing. 00;07;34;09 – 00;07;35;01 Dave It’s pretty cool. 00;07;35;03 – 00;07;36;23 Kyle I never would have guessed. 00;07;36;23 – 00;07;56;15 Dave I’ve done a very little if I did a little bit up in Alaska. And it was just so cool to see the reaction. You know, a fish, you know, this thing coming across the surface and stuff. So, you know, that’s really cool. So you have the way you’re down there and but you’re also in Idaho Falls. Talk about that a little bit, what you’re, you know, out there. 00;07;56;26 – 00;08;08;15 Dave Is there some places you can find some trophy? These I mean, I guess trophy fish, that’s always the question. What is a trophy fish? Depends on where where you are, what size the fish are. But I’m assuming are some trophy fish fishing around Idaho Falls. 00;08;09;02 – 00;08;46;08 Kyle Yeah. You know what’s interesting about the Greater Idaho Falls area, it is unbelievable for fly fishing, right? Like you can catch virtually unlimited amounts of 20 inch trout. Like it’s a it really is a fantastic place, blessed to grow up here as far as, you know, just having access to great fisheries, as far as, you know, for me, cracking into that next level, you know, trophy fish trying to catch a 30 inch fish, you know, we had a run of years about 5 to 10 years ago, where we had a lot of trophy fish in the Snake River Valley due to water and things like that. 00;08;46;14 – 00;09;03;12 Kyle The population of big, big fish here is actually not as good as you might think. Now, I say that the caveat is if you want to catch a 20 to 24 inch trout, there might not be a better place, you know? But if you want to really try to crack into that, that next level fish. 00;09;04;04 – 00;09;05;00 Dave Gotcha. 00;09;05;00 – 00;09;16;28 Kyle You know, it’s funny because I have a I have a lot of friends and clients from Utah and they’re like, Oh, man, there must be so many big fish up there. I’m like, Dude, you’re driving the wrong direction right from Salt Lake. If you’re coming. 00;09;16;29 – 00;09;19;24 Dave Over here, what’s the what’s the big river down in Utah that has those. 00;09;19;24 – 00;09;22;28 Kyle Fish? Well, I mean, it’s there’s there’s all those stillwater’s. The Green River. 00;09;22;28 – 00;09;24;12 Dave Has big fish. Yeah. 00;09;24;12 – 00;09;32;02 Kyle You know, so it’s funny because you got all these really, really, like, trophy trout. For the most part, it’s a Stillwater game. 00;09;32;09 – 00;09;33;00 Dave Oh, it is. 00;09;33;11 – 00;09;59;03 Kyle You know, if you want to catch a 30 inch brown trout. Now, that being said, that’s why the White River’s so special. It’s one of the only fisheries I know of that regular Lee and consistently has a fishable population, not just a couple of individual fish, but a population of browns that are into the 30 inches not just like, Oh man, he edged up to 31 like there’s. 00;09;59;04 – 00;10;01;06 Dave Right or it was 36 inch. 00;10;01;07 – 00;10;02;02 Kyle Trout in there. 00;10;02;02 – 00;10;12;21 Dave Yeah, yeah. So there’s some big fish too. And really like you said, I mean you can I think a lot of people, myself included, I’d be happy with a 20 inch fish, you know, or 24 inch fish on it. 00;10;12;22 – 00;10;15;22 Kyle Yeah, well, and I think if you’re not like you’re, you’re missing out, you know. 00;10;16;00 – 00;10;33;16 Dave Yeah, that’s it. So. Well let’s get into that a little bit. Just on the, on the patterns and the I always like to take it to a water body, but if you were in, we’re going to talk plenty of trophy fish. But let’s just say you were fishing. You were heading out of your door there, Idaho Falls, and heading out to fish, something where you can maybe catch one of those toes. 00;10;33;16 – 00;10;34;24 Dave Is it like South Fork? 00;10;34;24 – 00;10;45;01 Kyle Yeah, South works it. I mean, that’s the first river I really guided on, and I’m still kind of consider it my home water. It’s where I learned to row adrift Boat when I was a little kid. Oh, so, yeah. 00;10;45;12 – 00;10;58;09 Dave Out south for what does that look like for the maybe. Let’s take it into the patterns of I mean can you at what we’re going to talk about today with the mousing and the flies and everything, Is this can this apply pretty much in any place around the country? 00;10;59;01 – 00;11;27;05 Kyle Mousing Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, you can. You know, and it’s funny too, because after doing mousing and in a variety of places, and especially like one of the greatest things about, you know, the selling the mouse flies is I have this built in network of all my, all my customers that are just that are out kind of, you know, breaking ground, so to speak on mousing is a is a very I want to call it new. 00;11;27;05 – 00;11;54;20 Kyle Maybe not new. It’s not new. It’s just it’s a poorly understood and not well explored facet of fly fishing. What I’ve realized over the last, you know, seven or eight years that I’ve really been full speed ahead doing this is that it varies so much from place to place, you know, but but that it is almost universally productive and any place that has brown trout. 00;11;55;02 – 00;12;00;22 Dave Oh, okay. So so it’s the species is the big thing. You’re not going to do the same thing with a rainbow trout or a brook trout. 00;12;01;03 – 00;12;12;03 Kyle You know. Yeah. I mean, you can, you can definitely get them. But for me, the targets browns, I just I’m not I’m not motivated to stay awake all night to try to catch a rainbow right? Oh, yeah. 00;12;12;03 – 00;12;21;22 Dave So yeah, so. And that is, that is so let’s just stick on that and we can talk rainbows as well. But so for Brandon, I mean, why is that, Why are the browns the ones. Just because they’re more aggressive, they’re bigger. 00;12;21;22 – 00;12;45;14 Kyle I just, I mean, man, they’re so hard to catch. They’re so hard to catch. They’re so beautiful. There’s so much nuance to the pursuit of brown trout. They will undergo this transformation from a fish that eats, you know, these little tiny beats, nymphs to this fish that will literally eat anything that swims across the river. And what a fascinating fish. 00;12;45;14 – 00;13;00;06 Kyle They’re they’re able to live and in some shocking places, you know, inside of some little culvert tube in a city and some brown will get over 20 inches, get into the mid 20 inch range in a place that you don’t even think a trout should be able to live. 00;13;00;06 – 00;13;00;21 Dave Right. 00;13;01;02 – 00;13;01;13 Kyle So. 00;13;01;29 – 00;13;03;25 Dave Wow. So they’re pretty, you’d say. 00;13;04;03 – 00;13;05;00 Kyle Yeah, they’re cool fish. 00;13;05;07 – 00;13;18;18 Dave And they’re cool. What is that? So is somebody thinking here? Okay, I want to I have some browns in my stream or I’m going to this place with Browns. What are they thinking? How do they know how to set up for, you know, fishing and maybe get the trophy fish with the mouse? 00;13;18;27 – 00;13;35;24 Kyle Yeah, You know, so this is something that I’m really big on as far as like, how do you approach trying to find that trophy fish? And let’s see if I can explain it in a way that makes sense. So a lot of times I think people people will say, well, where do the big fish go? What kind of hole are the big fish looking for? 00;13;36;04 – 00;13;36;21 Dave Right. 00;13;36;23 – 00;14;11;13 Kyle It’s totally wrong question. I think the right question is where is a big fish going to be created? Right. What sort of conditions are going to to be predisposed to making a big fish? Right. And so that would be instead of trying to find a hole where a big fish can feel comfortable, right. Like how deep water and access to food and all these things, it’s like, where is a spot on a river or a lake or whatever where they’re just going to just inherently be big fish because they can’t help it. 00;14;11;23 – 00;14;30;15 Kyle They just grow up there, you know, over 6 to 8 years. Like there’s just going to be another big fish there. And then and then he’s going to be replaced by another big fish and another one. And they just they can’t help themselves because of the food source and because you know, the growing conditions. And I think those are really the two biggest things. 00;14;31;01 – 00;15;02;09 Kyle It’s the the food availability, the type of food. And you know what the year round growing conditions look like. One of the challenges here in eastern Idaho is that we have wild temperature swings in our rivers, Right. So, you know, you take the you take the Snake River flowing through Idaho Falls and for about two or three months a year, we have slush, ice and anchor ice, meaning the water temperatures within a degree of freezing and there’s zero growth going on. 00;15;02;13 – 00;15;07;03 Kyle And and it’s also it’s a stressful time for trout. It’s hard for them to to get through that. 00;15;07;09 – 00;15;08;09 Dave Right. To survive. 00;15;08;10 – 00;15;10;02 Kyle You know, So they’re just trying to survive. 00;15;10;12 – 00;15;10;24 Dave Yeah. 00;15;10;25 – 00;15;19;13 Kyle You also have probably two months a year, all of July and August, pretty much that the water is if it’s not 70 degrees plus, it’s really close. 00;15;19;21 – 00;15;21;16 Dave Oh, wow. Yeah, it’s hot. Damn. 00;15;21;19 – 00;15;41;29 Kyle You know, so you end up with. All right, so you got four months off the year right there. That’s not growing time. And then you’ve probably got a month on either side. You’ve got you got maybe four months of perfect growing conditions. And so the growth pattern that trout tend to undergo in that and you see it in a lot of our fisheries out here, they get really fat. 00;15;42;24 – 00;16;04;19 Kyle Well, what is a fat trout is is a trout that’s storing energy, Right. Well, on the White River, this is the crazy thing about that. You would you would not think that some tail water in Arkansas is the place with the most steady water. No temperature, but it absolutely is bushels lake. It stays, you know, hundreds of feet deep and it’s shallow this point. 00;16;04;19 – 00;16;09;01 Kyle They never draw down for irrigation like our reservoirs out west. 00;16;09;05 – 00;16;09;22 Dave Right. 00;16;10;04 – 00;16;33;28 Kyle You know, so the Tempus, it’s stable, right? So like they they’ll drop down into the into the mid to high forties, you know that’s really cold. Well mid to high forties, a trout still growing like crazy in the water there never really gets above 70 degrees. It’ll dip up into the you know mid to high sixties ironically right now is the warmest water of the entire year. 00;16;33;28 – 00;16;34;14 Dave Oh it is. 00;16;35;00 – 00;16;44;20 Kyle It’s because they have like this you know they’ve got this giant reservoir and it just takes so much time to warm up the entire body of that lake that. 00;16;45;16 – 00;16;45;25 Dave There’s like. 00;16;46;03 – 00;16;48;19 Kyle A temperature lag. Yeah, there’s a temperature lag, say. 00;16;49;04 – 00;16;49;23 Dave Oh, wow. 00;16;50;00 – 00;16;51;01 Kyle From the seasons. 00;16;51;01 – 00;17;02;29 Dave So yeah, so it’s there. So that’s the difference is that and I mean there’s other tail waters all around the country, but that one, because it’s not used for irrigation, it’s just used for what? For water, For city water. Is that kind of what it is. 00;17;03;11 – 00;17;17;20 Kyle Yeah. You know, there’s a couple of reasons they built those dams. The main one is power generation, you know, So you’ll see the crazy daily fluctuations for power peaking in that reservoir. But the other one is flood control. You know, they have. 00;17;17;21 – 00;17;19;05 Dave Flood control, right? They got a lot. 00;17;19;05 – 00;17;40;24 Kyle Of water going through that system. So there were some there’s some historic floods that are just unbelievable. If those dams weren’t there, I mean, the water level will go up by like literally 30 feet. Like it’s it’s insane how compared to what way? Compared to what I, you know, grew up used to out west like the amount of water is it’s pretty impressive. 00;17;40;24 – 00;18;02;01 Dave Check out Jackson Hole Flight Company today premium fly gear straight to your door without the premium price. Jackson Hole fly company designs and builds their own fly rods, reels, flies and gear, delivering quality you can trust at prices that let you fish more and spend less. 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So when you’re talking fish, you’re on a stream, you’re looking for places where they can grow the food, the temperatures, all of that. 00;18;50;03 – 00;19;00;03 Dave So if you were just walking up a stream or river, you know, where do you start? Or if you’re on a sand new stream and you’re thinking, okay, I’m I’m going to find the biggest fish in this river. What are you looking for? 00;19;00;16 – 00;19;20;02 Kyle Yeah, I’m just looking for food, you know, food. And that’s going to take a lot of different forms I talked to. It’s. It’s so fascinating to think about how it’s. It’s different from from place to place. But one of the common trends is like, if you’re walking up a small stream, you know, assuming you’re walking up, it, it’s probably a small stream. 00;19;20;26 – 00;19;45;28 Kyle Small streams have a lot of nighttime feeding opportunities for a big fish. They really do, you know, because the smaller the stream, the more it is a trout that is existing in a terrestrial habitat, if that makes sense. You know, the more the more opportunities they’re going to have for actual mice and just all kinds of different things, frogs, bats, just who knows? 00;19;45;28 – 00;20;07;02 Kyle I mean, terrestrial insects. One of the fascinating things that I’ve learned at night is just spending a lot of time out there. There are just so many more large terrestrial insects available at night, you know, big moths and beetles and tiny creepy crawlies. Well, the trout don’t think they’re creepy crawlies. 00;20;07;02 – 00;20;13;24 Dave So it’s tasty that all this is at the time. So is that usually are you shooting for night versus daytime? 00;20;13;28 – 00;20;32;25 Kyle Well, not necessarily, But I mean, I think that the conversation of like what is what is good night habitat enters into the conversation. Right? Because my assumption is like if a if the trout’s getting big, there’s a really if a brown is getting big, there’s a really good chance he’s doing a lot of feeding at night. So that’s part of it. 00;20;33;09 – 00;20;51;11 Dave Yeah. So that’s it. So basically you’re I remember when we first had Kelly Gallop on who’s, you know, definitely known for the same stuff we’re talking about. He was saying, you know, fish where people are walking, you know, don’t look at the deep pools, look at those inside seen or inside corners, stuff like that. Does that resonate with you? 00;20;51;11 – 00;20;53;14 Dave Is that kind of the same sort of thinking or, you. 00;20;53;14 – 00;21;21;22 Kyle Know, Yeah, I don’t know. Probably not. I think I’m just looking for maybe the sticky point behind that comment is, look, in places that aren’t being looked in, you know, and maybe that means it’s literally a stream flowing through town that everybody’s driving past to go fishing. Well, maybe there’s a maybe there’s a bridge, right. That that goes over it and there’s no deep water around. 00;21;21;22 – 00;21;47;10 Kyle But there’s deep water in this spot. And, you know, there’s all this crazy stuff happening around it and it’s like, oh, yeah, there’s there’s only room for one big fish. Well, that’s that’s going to be a lot of your situations for big fish. It’s going to be a special situation every time. Maybe there’s a spring, maybe there’s, you know, a maybe there’s like a, a drip of like a wastewater treatment plant that dumps in. 00;21;47;10 – 00;22;10;05 Kyle Right. And so there’s warm water all winter in this spot where normally, you know, it’s going to be it’s going to be too cold or I mean, there’s so many little special situations. But I think if there’s one thing I’ve learned about those fish, it’s that it’s going to be a special situation every time. You know, if you’re going to go to the Madison River and just start casting a streamer, you’re not going to catch a big fish. 00;22;10;15 – 00;22;17;13 Kyle You’re not going to catch a trophy next level fish. You got to do something special. If you want to find something special. Yeah, yeah. 00;22;17;25 – 00;22;31;08 Dave That’s a good point. That goes back to like any species, Roy still had the kind of the same way, or you’re not going to you just cast an swinging cast and swing, do the same thing. You’re probably not going to do as well as if you’re thinking about kind of how you’re fishing it, right? Fish in that fly. 00;22;31;14 – 00;22;32;24 Kyle Yeah. You got to do it on purpose. 00;22;32;24 – 00;22;44;21 Dave Yeah, exactly. So if you’re on the water, you have a spot. You think there’s a likely one of these? Could be a big fish here. How are you setting up. Talk about that. Like, what is your your gear set up to fly. Describe that a little bit. 00;22;45;15 – 00;23;06;28 Kyle Yeah, well I’ll, I’ll dig in a little bit on the White River side of things here. So my mouse fly selection in Velocore, it’s definitely changed over time, which, you know, I hope it never stops changing because I think that means I’ve stopped learning, but I actually use a six weight way more frequently now than I used to. 00;23;06;28 – 00;23;39;15 Kyle I, I used to fish with eight weights a lot. You know, the thought process was like big flies and big lidar and all this stuff. And yeah, you know, the fly selection has changed. I’ve refined the fly patterns a little bit to be easier to cast. So even the flies that are on the bigger end of the spectrum, you know, they cast they cast well with the fast action six weight whereas you know, the previous the previous stuff I was throwing it’s like, man, that fly getting it 50 feet away from the boat with an eight weight is you’ve got your work cut out for you. 00;23;40;17 – 00;23;58;20 Kyle You know I don’t think that the fish are lidar shy in that context. I could change my mind on that. I hope. I hope I change my mind because it means that some some interesting data has come to light that I was unaware of before. But so are you like £12 maxima a lot, You know, lean pretty heavily on that stuff. 00;23;58;20 – 00;24;03;18 Kyle It’s it’s such a great it’s such a great leader material. I mean you probably use a swinging and Yeah. 00;24;03;24 – 00;24;04;16 Dave It’s yeah we do. 00;24;04;29 – 00;24;24;06 Kyle Just so dependable. Yeah I know what I can get away with and it’s a lot you know for me that’s a, that’s a big part of it. When I tie something on the end of my clients line, like, I just want to know we’re going to be able to get away with some, some pretty serious mistakes, you know, line rubbing against the side of the boat or, you know, going under the motor. 00;24;24;06 – 00;24;40;25 Kyle And I mean, all kinds of crazy, chaotic things happen in the dark. So you need to be prepared for that. But, you know, I was using £20 liter before and, you know, that’s all fun and games until you hook a flock of geese and it starts taking off. Now you have to break off. Yes. 00;24;41;13 – 00;25;02;06 Dave At £20, a little bit. Yeah. It’s a little aggressive. Yeah. That’s what they use up in on the skeena for the steelhead. And I think, you know, for two reasons. Like you said, the big fish you had a chance to catch a 3040 pounder, but then also all the rubbing on rocks because these fish are taking. Yeah, you know, they’re jumping here, taking a right turn and just scraping rocks. 00;25;02;06 – 00;25;04;29 Dave And then Maxima seems to be the the best that’s out there. 00;25;05;12 – 00;25;10;01 Kyle It’s good, you know, it’s got that built in stretch. It ties great knots. It’s good stuff. 00;25;10;13 – 00;25;18;21 Dave Yeah, it does. That’s cool. So coming in, you’re talking like name is typically or you just go a nine foot or rod nine, four, six. Wait. Or do you go a little bit longer? 00;25;19;01 – 00;25;38;24 Kyle I like nine foot rods. I really do. You know, everybody’s got their preference. I’m not going to try to change your mind on on what length of rod you should use. You can make an argument for short ones. You can make an argument for a long ones. One of the reasons that I like nine foot rods is, you know, let’s say you’re, you know, some rod manufacturer. 00;25;38;25 – 00;25;43;15 Kyle Which rod are you going to put the most resurgent development into designing a good rod. 00;25;43;18 – 00;25;44;02 Dave Right. 00;25;44;07 – 00;26;15;22 Kyle The nine footer. Yeah. You know, we act like some line of rods. There’s like 25 different models for which ones are they putting the most energy into the nine foot five, the nine foot six in the nine foot eight, Those are the three rods they’re working on. Everything else is kind of an afterthought. You might buy a flagship rod from Sage if it’s the eight foot six, you know, seven weight, there’s not nearly as much, you know, time and energy being put into designing that rod as the nine foot version. 00;26;16;06 – 00;26;19;14 Kyle So for me, I just stick to the nine footers, okay. 00;26;19;14 – 00;26;26;07 Dave And so nine, four, six, we’ve got the leader. And the what about lines Are you and your fish in these? Are you fishing mostly dry lines or are you doing some different stuff? 00;26;26;22 – 00;26;48;04 Kyle Yeah. When it comes to night fishing, I pretty much stick to dry lines. I like using there’s a there’s a line from scientific angler that glows in the dark. Full glow in the dark. It’s called the Magnum glow. So they also have like the glow tip. Not a fan of that. For me, the most valuable part of the glow in the dark line is actually just like the head and the running line glowing. 00;26;48;13 – 00;26;57;15 Kyle And the reason for that is like, I don’t need to be able to see the line on the water as much. I just want to be able to manage it right. The line that’s at my feet, the line that’s wrapped around my neck. 00;26;57;24 – 00;27;05;25 Dave So keeping track of water, is that so for you? Is it on the white or, you know, mostly night time or can you do this in the daytime, too? 00;27;06;02 – 00;27;11;04 Kyle Oh, sure. Yeah, sure thing. I mean, mousing is not effective in the daytime down here very much. 00;27;11;04 – 00;27;12;01 Dave It’s not okay. 00;27;12;10 – 00;27;40;01 Kyle It really is not. And that’s because the whole philosophy of mousing really, Like, if you were to boil it down in a nutshell, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to find a fish that is unavailable in the daytime because he is predatory. And I say he because more often than not, this fish is going to be an alpha male trout with a lot of testosterone that is, you know, just aggressive, predatory. 00;27;40;01 – 00;28;16;08 Kyle And that behavior is contingent upon conditions. And so, you know, if you are going to catch that fish in the daytime, you’re going to catch him during a storm system when the barometric pressure has plummeted and your fish and usually a big streamer, right. Like that’s your daytime opportunity for this fish or, you know, like there’s some crazy hatch going on where there was a flood and there’s literally a bunch of earthworms washing right in front of his face or there’s a crazy you know, there’s a salmon fly hatch going on and the fish is just on the bottom, just sucking nymphs off the bottom every 3 seconds, you know. 00;28;16;08 – 00;28;44;03 Kyle So those are kind of your opportunities in the daytime. It just has to be a special opportunity. But the easiest special opportunity is that it gets dark every night. You know, like the nighttime is is an opportunity to get that fish more comfortable, to show him something that is a big food item and and truly to imitate a food item in a way that he is used to feeding, which is, you know, chasing something down at night and eating something big. 00;28;44;18 – 00;28;48;20 Dave Wow. And are you doing this? Are you guiding guys in the night? 00;28;48;20 – 00;29;00;06 Kyle Yeah. So my guide business is primarily a night is shifted a little bit. I do a lot of daytime dry fly fishing as well on the way because, I mean, that river’s just got. 00;29;00;13 – 00;29;01;05 Dave It’s got it everything. 00;29;01;12 – 00;29;34;08 Kyle Oh, my gosh. Like the hatches, the sulfur hatch specifically, you know, the Thornburg fishing mean here in Idaho. Like if I was guiding to put my client on a 24 inch trout on a dry fly in the daytime is a very serious accomplishment. Right? Like, that’s not happening very often in guided fishing trips here in Idaho. On the White River, I had 11 browns this last summer that were 24 inches or better hit my net in a under two month period. 00;29;34;26 – 00;29;55;15 Kyle Andre’s in the daytime and that’s like not even not even counting the night fishing. Wow. Right. So it’s like it’s it’s a really cool thing. But yeah, like, most of my clients come out because they want to catch a big fish. A big, big fish, right? A 30 inch fish at night. And so, you know, we, we target those fish in the in the dark hours. 00;29;55;15 – 00;30;05;17 Dave Yeah. Same. So talk about that. How are you getting started. Is this, you know, wait till the sun goes down before describe the you know what that’s like getting ready for for the evening. 00;30;05;25 – 00;30;21;02 Kyle Yeah. So we mean, we’ve got this. We’ve got a little rental house that’s Riverside, a private boat ramp, and we’ve got a little stairway where I can park the boat in the river, which is super convenient. I mean, the White River fluctuates. You said you haven’t been out there. 00;30;21;02 – 00;30;22;00 Dave You know I haven’t. 00;30;22;05 – 00;30;26;11 Kyle Yeah. So it’s like it’s going to blow your mind to see how much it fluctuates. Yeah. 00;30;26;11 – 00;30;29;11 Dave You can go from like. Right. 70,000 CFS down to. 00;30;29;15 – 00;30;46;22 Kyle I mean, it’s okay. So this is the, this is the daily typical flow range, right. 700 CFS is the minimum flow. They really don’t drop it below that unless there’s something crazy going on. So 700 CFS, it will come up to 21,000. 00;30;46;22 – 00;30;47;24 Dave 21,000. 00;30;48;04 – 00;31;11;24 Kyle Right? So that’s a nine foot vertical shift. You know, in some spots it’s like ten feet and that’s like when you see that in person, it is actually kind of hard to believe. So the point is, you know, that’s a digression, but the river requires you to be willing to adapt to the conditions, you know? So a lot of people are like, Well, I just want to book a day. 00;31;11;24 – 00;31;27;20 Kyle It’s like, Well, hold on, you know, you need to be staying with me so that we can adapt to the conditions we might need to. We might need to hook the boat to the trailer and drive downstream because we don’t have the right water conditions here. We might have to go, you know, do this whole deal. Sometimes they have to launch up high. 00;31;27;20 – 00;31;37;02 Kyle Even though I’m running a jet boat, I can’t take out in the spot where I launch because I can’t get back there because the water is literally too low. Oh, wow. You know, so. Yeah. 00;31;37;11 – 00;31;43;25 Dave So it’s fluctuating. How does it fluctuate during the day? Does it is it like a a slow drawdown or dry up throughout the day? 00;31;43;28 – 00;31;48;13 Kyle Yeah. Typically they’ll they’ll raise the flow. So it’s kind of air conditioning related. 00;31;48;23 – 00;31;49;16 Dave Yeah. Gotcha. 00;31;49;24 – 00;31;55;29 Kyle You know, so power generation, air conditioning, you know, but there’s no I wish. 00;31;56;19 – 00;32;01;10 Dave There’s no rhyme or reason. Yeah, this could be it could just happen. You could be out. Your son is changing. 00;32;01;20 – 00;32;08;10 Kyle Yeah. You’re just cruising along at oh, 2000 CFS. Well, that wasn’t part of the plan. That wasn’t part of the schedule they released. Okay. 00;32;08;12 – 00;32;16;12 Dave Oh, wow. Yeah. So within a short time, you can see this thing just go from you can drop feet as you’re on the water. 00;32;16;16 – 00;32;38;12 Kyle Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, a lot of times we’ll start out the night and typically at the beginning of the night the water will be higher because they were generating in the daytime. We’ll start out, we’re mousing, we’re mousing banks casting into the trees on flooded banks that are in the mid-teen range. And, you know, by the end of the night, we’re floating in the middle of the river. 00;32;38;12 – 00;32;45;19 Kyle I’m trying not to touch the water with the oars, and we’re trying to cast as far as possible because it’s two feet deep all the way across the entire river. 00;32;45;26 – 00;32;46;05 Dave Yeah. 00;32;46;22 – 00;32;48;22 Kyle You know, so it’s wild. 00;32;49;04 – 00;32;54;14 Dave And so you’re doing this and the boat you’re using is this one of those White river skiff boats or whatever? 00;32;54;15 – 00;33;01;15 Kyle So, you know, I mean, I think people like those. For me, the stealth craft powered drifter is a better platform. 00;33;01;21 – 00;33;03;13 Dave Yeah, Stealth craft. That’s right. 00;33;03;13 – 00;33;21;26 Kyle There really are. There really are a lot of advantages to that boat. Yeah. You know, there’s so many little things. I’ve got a lot of customized stuff. I did all the electrical myself, so I got special lights to turn on for a variety of different things. I’ve got lights under the boat, so when I’m driving, you know, I’ve got a remote switch. 00;33;21;26 – 00;33;32;15 Kyle I can turn the lights on and see the water is crystal clear in that river notice, so I can see where I’m going. You know, even when it’s foggy, I can turn the lights on and see at least where I am in the river. 00;33;32;15 – 00;33;34;20 Dave So you turn the lights on the bottom of the boat on. 00;33;35;02 – 00;33;52;18 Kyle I can turn them on when I need to. You know, I always run with my running lights. And honestly, the big thing that I want the listeners here to hear is I want you guys to know that you need to have your red green navigation lights on. If you were motoring in a river in the dark and. 00;33;52;18 – 00;33;56;01 Dave The dark red green, which is what’s the red green. The red, which ones which. 00;33;56;10 – 00;34;14;11 Kyle Yeah. So I mean they’re just you’ve got your starboard and your port, you know, you’ve got your green on the green if you’re driving the boat, if you’re looking forward the green is going to be on your right side. The reds on the left. Okay. But the world of the story is sometimes people think, oh, I can see better without the lights on. 00;34;14;11 – 00;34;19;29 Kyle Well, that’s true. It is true. You can see better without the lights on. But what if there’s another guy like you? 00;34;19;29 – 00;34;24;17 Dave Yeah. Yeah, he. That’s not a good it’s not okay. No. So I’ve had. 00;34;24;17 – 00;34;36;20 Kyle Some I’ve had a handful of close encounters in the last five years where it’s like, yeah, nothing makes me more mad than somebody who’s taking my life into their hands by driving around in the river without. Without lights on. 00;34;37;03 – 00;34;40;10 Dave And you’re cruising up the river. You’re not just drifting. Sometimes you’re at outboard. 00;34;40;10 – 00;34;56;09 Kyle Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, we’re going 25 miles an hour and somebody. Yeah, yeah, that’s ridiculous. Well, so if you do it, I mean, it’s a really rare occurrence to see somebody do that. But if you have plans to go out on a river in the dark, you better have those lights on. 00;34;56;21 – 00;35;01;00 Dave Yeah. So as on the way, you’re mostly fishing out of the boat. Is that the. 00;35;01;13 – 00;35;10;14 Kyle Yeah. Exclusively. Yeah. You know, from a guiding perspective, I can control variables. If I’m in a boat, I can’t control variables if I’m on foot. 00;35;10;25 – 00;35;14;27 Dave Yeah, right. You’re. You’re getting in the right spot. Getting the person ready to make the cast. 00;35;14;27 – 00;35;28;23 Kyle Yeah. Your feet are going to be in the right spot 100% of the time. If we’re waiting. You know, I just. It’s hard for me to. It’s hard for me to do that. I remember when I was guiding on the back deck in Alaska and you know you’ve been there. Dave. 00;35;28;28 – 00;35;33;18 Dave No, I haven’t been there. We’ve done a few episodes on and I know it’s got these the giant rainbows there. 00;35;33;18 – 00;35;53;17 Kyle Yeah, I mean, it’s a swing fishery that ruined steelhead for me. Yeah, well, the thing is, like when I was guiding there, you know, it was I loved it and I hated it because you have to cover water to catch fish swinging. You can’t just stay put. These aren’t migrating steelhead. They’re. They’re trout. They’re. They’re eating. They’re just sitting in pockets, eating. 00;35;53;17 – 00;35;54;18 Dave Eggs and everything. 00;35;54;26 – 00;36;12;17 Kyle Well, if you’re not moving, you’re not fishing. Right? And so, like, my job as a guide was to convince my clients to keep moving. Well, they don’t want to. They just want to cast their spare rods. So it’s like they want to work on their cast. Okay, that’s great. Like, if you want to Do you want to practice your snake roll, go for it. 00;36;12;17 – 00;36;12;26 Kyle But. 00;36;12;28 – 00;36;16;12 Dave Right. That’s not the place to do it. It seems like when you’re on the Mackinac, you should have all your practice if you. 00;36;16;12 – 00;36;19;13 Kyle Want to catch a trout. He’s three steps downstream from where you are. 00;36;19;13 – 00;36;28;01 Dave Yeah. Yeah. I’m imagining the trout is one of those rivers where I would be practicing for a lot of hours before, so I don’t have to think about practicing when I get there. 00;36;28;08 – 00;36;30;17 Kyle That’s right. Yeah. No, that’s totally true. 00;36;30;22 – 00;36;37;15 Dave Yeah. Okay, so you’re on the water. What is the talk about a few of your flies that you’d be using? Are there a bunch of patterns or could you just pick one? 00;36;37;15 – 00;36;53;27 Kyle You know, there really are. What I realized about mousing is it’s an entire discipline, right? Like, there’s a whole different range of conditions, just like streamer fishing, right? It’s like if you were to ask the question, like, is there one streamer? There’s definitely not just one right condition based. 00;36;53;27 – 00;36;58;03 Dave And there’s big there’s big ones and there’s small ones, right? Lots of different sizes too, right? 00;36;58;03 – 00;37;15;16 Kyle And there’s different ways of retrieving them, you know. So yeah, I mean, I have, I’ve got a lot of different mouse flies. The other thing, the other part of my deal is that I sell all my mouse flies. They all have glow tabs that we use to tell where the fly is. We use it to tell when we get a strike. 00;37;15;16 – 00;37;19;19 Kyle I mean, there’s a ton of information that that GLOW tab provides. 00;37;19;26 – 00;37;22;27 Dave The GLOW tab is describe that a little bit. That is that little all flies. 00;37;23;04 – 00;37;40;28 Kyle Make them out of foam. It’s about, you know, a half an inch tall and a quarter inch wide. And I charge them with a, you know, U.V. torture. I have a laser that I keep in my pocket when I’m guiding a little purple laser and like I can shine my laser on the fly and recharge it for you. 00;37;41;08 – 00;37;46;06 Dave So that’s for you. Like the line, that’s for you, that’s for the English. Not necessarily the fish eating it. 00;37;46;15 – 00;38;08;06 Kyle They don’t like it, honestly, they don’t like the glow. I think there are times where cutthroat actually like the glow and sometimes where brook trout might like the glow. Browns don’t like it. It’s for you. And so I think the the balance there is like, I don’t want the fly to be glowing too brightly. I want it as little as possible, as much as I can get away with, you know. 00;38;08;06 – 00;38;20;14 Kyle So that being said, being able to see where your fly as and see how it’s moving is a lot more of an advantage than having this, you know, perfectly stealthy fly. I don’t think it really deters them that much. 00;38;20;29 – 00;38;40;10 Dave So stone fly nets makes nets with sole each one handcrafted to stand out and built to last. When you spend time on the water, your gear matters. And these are the kinds of nets you can pass down for generations. I know myself still flying that goes with me everywhere and has seen the abuse, but it seems to get better each day. 00;38;40;10 – 00;39;05;02 Dave I’m on the water. Every night is shaped from premium hardwoods, balanced by hand and finished to handle a lifetime of use. We all love a big fish story, but it’s the moments around it that stick stone Fly helps turn every one of those into something you’ll remember. Head over to stone fly nets dot com right now to see what stories you can create with this beautiful custom landing that that stone fly nets icon. 00;39;05;02 – 00;39;10;17 Dave How do you want that fly. Let’s just let’s pick a pattern like what would be a pattern that you have one of your big sellers. 00;39;10;26 – 00;39;30;13 Kyle Yeah. So I mean on the small end we have my Minnie Mouse, right. Which is basically no more that it’s not a mouse imitation. Realistically, it’s so small is smaller than your average chubby. And then on the large size, we have, you know, the trap rat, which is a very large mouse pattern. And then, you know, like the medium trap mouse would be kind of in that middle range. 00;39;30;21 – 00;39;36;18 Dave So yeah. Okay. And are these fly some of these out there, are they all on your website or can you find these other places? 00;39;36;18 – 00;39;38;03 Kyle They are, yeah, all of them are. 00;39;38;13 – 00;39;47;01 Dave Okay. Yeah. So the Minnie Mouse is, is a little bit of a smaller fly. What does that one look like? Describe how that’s designed so it fishes how you want it to. 00;39;47;12 – 00;40;11;21 Kyle Yeah. So that fly is a single hook. It’s a size two, kind of a stinger style hook. It’s got a flat piece of foam on the top and the hook kind of dangles down into the water. So the foam will float flush and then it’s got a, you know, eight legs. It’s got a lot of rubber legs going on that create a visual profile and have a lot of movement that flies really all about the profile on the surface. 00;40;11;29 – 00;40;29;14 Kyle They see that silhouette, the legs sticking out. Great thing about the Minnie Mouse is it’s a small target, you know, So people will be like, which fly is the best for a big fish. The answer to that question is whatever the smallest mouse you can convince the big fish to eat, that’s the one you should use. 00;40;29;20 – 00;40;30;13 Dave Oh, okay. 00;40;30;26 – 00;40;43;20 Kyle Yeah, right. Because unfortunately, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, like a big trout eat a fish or something like that. Like there’s some videos I see on Instagram and stuff of like a, a bull trout eating a cutthroat or something. 00;40;43;21 – 00;40;44;04 Dave Right. 00;40;44;20 – 00;41;07;06 Kyle Well, these browns we’re targeting, they do that. But if you watch that process, a trout, unlike a lot of predatory game fish, it just does not have a mouth that’s designed for swallowing big food items whole. So he’s going to swim up to it. He’s going to kind of chew on it. He’s going to nip at it, chase it around, bite it, let it go, bite it, let it go, fight it, let it go. 00;41;07;06 – 00;41;28;02 Kyle Well, is the fish does that to your fly? All you do is get a strike and you don’t catch the fish. So the smaller you can convince a big fish to eat, the better. And that’s why the mini mouse is an amazing tool. I mean, if you let’s say you have a stream or you have a lake where you know where a big fish is, if your question is what should I throw at him, start small, right? 00;41;28;02 – 00;41;31;12 Kyle If he eats the mini mouse, guess what’s going to happen here? You catch the fish. 00;41;31;27 – 00;41;32;07 Dave Yeah. 00;41;32;20 – 00;41;39;26 Kyle Right. Like there’s no guesswork on the hook set. They don’t miss. They just swim up to the surface. They it in their mouth. They closed their mouth and you got them. 00;41;39;26 – 00;41;43;10 Dave You got it. And what is the smallest mouse you might start with? 00;41;43;23 – 00;41;45;27 Kyle Yeah, that’s. That’s the smallest when I use it. 00;41;45;28 – 00;41;47;28 Dave So size two is that is how small. 00;41;48;00 – 00;41;57;12 Kyle You too. I mean it’s like the fly is less than two inches long and yeah, that’s really like an inch and a half. Gotcha. You know, like if you were to compare it to a salmon fly smaller. 00;41;57;12 – 00;41;58;12 Dave So on the salmon fly. 00;41;58;12 – 00;42;05;28 Kyle A little smaller, Yeah. It’s more like round bulk, but smaller, easier to cast than your run of the mill. Fly sharp, chubby. 00;42;06;04 – 00;42;12;10 Dave Yeah, I gotcha. The chubby. Right. And then, And then when would you go up to a larger fly and when do you fish the bigger stuff? 00;42;12;19 – 00;42;33;12 Kyle Yeah. So, like on the White River, I will frequently use bigger flies in that, and it’s typically related to flows. The higher the flow. I’ll frequently use bigger flies and that holds true. Like if I were to be mousing in Idaho, I tend to fish bigger flies because we have less water clarity in a lot of places and faster flows. 00;42;34;00 – 00;42;47;16 Kyle Also, the less pressure to fish is, the more likely they are to eat big. And I do think I do think there’s a case to be made for using large flies to target large fish. That’s not a off base. 00;42;47;20 – 00;42;48;05 Dave That’s not a. 00;42;48;05 – 00;42;58;12 Kyle False. No, that’s right. I mean, that’s right. There’s a lot of times where like if you want to catch a giant fish, you need to use a fly that’s big enough to motivate him to move up off the bottom. Yeah. And to chase it. 00;42;58;20 – 00;43;12;15 Dave Yeah. Okay. So. So you’ve got, you know, a fly on. Let’s just take the mini mouse. And then when you make that cast, it sounds like you’re casting into the trees or near banks wherever you think the fish might be. What’s the cast look like? And then what is the strip and all that look like? 00;43;12;23 – 00;43;34;19 Kyle Yeah, so really there’s a lot of different ways of retrieving the fly, but it’s always going to. For me, mousing is always going to follow. One key rule in that is you need to try to get all of your strikes on a dead drift. Everything else is secondary to that goal. The reason for that is based on conversion rates. 00;43;34;28 – 00;43;40;25 Kyle So a lot people swing mice, you know, that’s what you do in Alaska. Yeah. I mean, what was what was your experience like? 00;43;40;25 – 00;43;54;19 Dave Yeah, that’s what we did. Yeah. It was a we were casting towards, you know, we were getting fish and other stuff and but I was like, All right, I’m going to get, I’m going to try this mouse thing. And yeah, we were kind of swinging it across a little bit casting and they were hitting it, but they were missing it a lot of times. 00;43;54;27 – 00;44;18;27 Kyle Okay, so there it is. Right? And think about like if you think about why that is, when you catch a fish on the swing subsurface, the reason it works so well is because the fly is in the water, right. Like it doesn’t push to the side. Well, you’ve got a swinging fly now. You have you’ve got all this buoyancy, you’ve got all this surface tension and that is fighting the fish while he’s trying to get that in his mouth. 00;44;18;29 – 00;44;19;26 Dave Yeah, exactly. 00;44;19;28 – 00;44;22;22 Kyle Know, so like those Alaskan rainbows, they’re voracious. Yeah. 00;44;22;27 – 00;44;23;24 Dave Crazy, right? 00;44;23;24 – 00;44;26;15 Kyle They will come up and hit that mouse like, six times. 00;44;26;15 – 00;44;32;27 Dave Yeah, that’s exactly what happened eventually. Yeah, You would catch some. We were getting some, but it was a Yeah, you’re right. They’re just voracious predators. 00;44;33;11 – 00;44;36;11 Kyle Well, so brown trout are going to hit it six times now. 00;44;36;12 – 00;44;36;23 Dave Right? 00;44;37;05 – 00;44;38;16 Kyle This time you got one shot. 00;44;38;17 – 00;44;40;21 Dave They’re not going to work that harder. They’re smarter than that. 00;44;41;08 – 00;45;02;10 Kyle So then the question becomes like, do you really want to take your chance? You’re one in six chance at a swing. And so like, yeah, I mean, you can catch fish swinging mice and sometimes it works. Like sometimes you’ll get them on the hang or, you know, in a certain spot. But for me I am creating dead drifts in my presentation at frequent intervals. 00;45;02;10 – 00;45;25;08 Kyle Regardless of what the presentation is, the glow line helps with that. The glow tab helps with that. I want my fly. I’m almost like mending, right? Lifting whole line up, setting it down so I get a nice little clean dead drift so that if I were dry fly fishing, I’m getting a dead drift. The presentation is like you’re retrieving it like a streamer, but you, you want to get all of your eats like your vision to dry. 00;45;25;22 – 00;45;32;11 Dave Yeah. So the retrieve could be a Is there a reason why you would do a fast retrieve and then stop versus slower retrieve and stop? 00;45;32;22 – 00;45;55;10 Kyle Yeah, I fast retrieve. Lot of the time the fish are attracted to the wake of the fly. They’re attracted to the movement, they’re attracted to the silhouette, you know? So a lot of times it’s like, you know, I’ll. I’ll move either with the rod tip, you know, big lift, big high lift with big super fast strips as you’re going in or you know, kind of fluttering it across the surface. 00;45;55;10 – 00;46;16;08 Kyle Sometimes we’ll put it in our armpit, the rod in our armpit and do the fast like saltwater hand over hand. You know, really the crazy thing about mousing is there are frequently times when there is no such thing as too fast of a retrieve. You just got to be pausing. You’ve got to be killing that fly for, you know, two, 3 seconds to let that thing soak long enough. 00;46;17;01 – 00;46;18;25 Kyle So yeah, it’s it’s interesting. 00;46;19;03 – 00;46;19;28 Dave That makes sense. 00;46;20;08 – 00;46;33;11 Kyle If you were to compare trout to other game fish, too. I mean and a lot of those a lot of fish, you’ll hear people talk about, oh, yeah, don’t kill it, don’t kill it, don’t kill it. Like it’ll turn them off, not trout. You can kill it. 00;46;33;11 – 00;46;35;23 Dave You can. Right. They like it. They like that. Yeah. 00;46;36;02 – 00;46;46;29 Kyle They’re not as keyed into that predator prey reaction of, of like, food items stopping. They’re like, oh, what a cool opportunity. This mouse that was swimming is now stopped by Eat him. 00;46;47;04 – 00;46;55;29 Dave Yeah this is it makes it easy for me Yeah. So and then once they do eat it what do you do. What’s your first set? The hook. What does that look like? 00;46;56;10 – 00;47;16;20 Kyle Yeah. The hardest part, honestly, of mousing is the hooks. Absolutely is the hardest part. And the most important thing, regardless of how you set the hook, is that you have to wait for the fish to eat the fly, which is easy to say when you’re you know, talking on a podcast. It’s hard to do when it’s dark. You haven’t had a bite for 3 hours. 00;47;16;20 – 00;47;33;22 Kyle It’s 2:00 in the morning and this fish catches you off guard. You hear the splash and your body just reacts, you yank. What you need to do is you need to wait for that fish to completely take the glow tab. Under the glow tab just needs to be gone. And that’s part of the reason the glow tell is so helpful. 00;47;34;11 – 00;47;54;27 Kyle You know, it’s with some of the larger flies. I guess it’s possible for the fish to actually eat the fly without the glow tab going away. But I’ll hear people say, Oh, well, I wait till I feel them or, you know, I wait really? Like if you have the presence of mind, if you watch that glow tab, it will tell you 100% of the time when you should set the hook. 00;47;55;19 – 00;48;14;05 Kyle The other thing that’s fascinating, what the glow tab you’re going to have a lot of times where you’re going to see that glow tab. You’re going to hear a splash and nothing happens. And you can either set the hook or you can not set the hook. Regardless of what you do, you’re not going to hook that fish. And it’s because you heard the splash. 00;48;14;05 – 00;48;34;06 Kyle But he didn’t need it, right? Like trout are curious. They don’t have they don’t have hands and they come and they’re messing around with it. They’re doing their little refusal thing or splashing around. And if you don’t have a glow tab, you think you’re just missing fish. Well, you’re not. They’re not eating it. And so, you know, that’s valuable data. 00;48;34;06 – 00;48;51;14 Kyle That’s maybe you need to speed to retrieve up to get the fish more fired up. Maybe you need to change the angle of your presentation. But ultimately, you know, man, I think there were there were a couple of years where I was convinced that it had to be a strip set. 00;48;51;28 – 00;48;52;13 Dave Oh, yeah. 00;48;52;26 – 00;48;57;29 Kyle And the amount of trauma and gaslighting that I did to my clients is bad. 00;48;58;07 – 00;49;01;09 Dave Right? You figure that out. So it’s not a strip set? Definitely not. Is. 00;49;01;09 – 00;49;17;09 Kyle I mean, it can be. It can be. Yeah. The challenge with a strip set in the dark, it’s the timing. It’s the timing that’s the most important thing, you know, the timing and the pressure. So like, if I have a good angler that wants the strip set and knows how to manage their line so they’re not going to have too much slack. 00;49;17;09 – 00;49;39;22 Kyle So when they get up, when they get a strike, they can strip the. Oh, go ahead. The timing’s got to be right, though. And then when it comes to trout sets, like if you just jump in my boat and we’re fishing and you ask me how you should set the hook, I just. Just trout set. Because if you have to pick one 100% of the time, you can always take out a lot of slack with a trial set. 00;49;40;15 – 00;50;03;11 Kyle You know, the hooks on my flies are really not that big, and a trout mouth is not that hard. And so you can drive a hook home if you can get a size two salmon fly hook in the fish, you can also get a mouse into the fish. So, I mean, it’s a pretty hard hooks up, delayed, right, to wait for the fish to eat the fly ball but hard so yeah. 00;50;03;17 – 00;50;07;22 Dave Okay. And are most of your flies, do they have foam on them somewhere. 00;50;08;02 – 00;50;09;08 Kyle Yeah, they’ve all got foam. 00;50;09;08 – 00;50;09;20 Dave They do. 00;50;09;24 – 00;50;17;07 Kyle Yeah. Yeah. Bunch of foam. So they hopefully just barely float. You don’t want too much foam because then it makes it harder for the fish to eat it. 00;50;17;15 – 00;50;32;04 Dave Okay. Yeah, a little bit. And I’m looking at some of your flies now. I’m looking at the Ninja Mouse fly. It looks awesome. You’ve got a bunch to talk about that. What is, you know, just on the fly design. How did you go into creating these things and are there more similarities or differences between your patterns? 00;50;32;13 – 00;51;02;03 Kyle Yeah, So I mean, they’re they’re all it’s all what I mentioned earlier, which is problem solving on the water problems off of the water. You know, the Ninja Mouse is a response to wanting to create a fly that has an enormous profile in the water, but yet it’s easy to cast that fly is a horrible, painstaking process to tie using a ridiculous amount of really high quality slop and feathers to make flopping. 00;51;02;10 – 00;51;02;21 Dave Yeah. 00;51;03;03 – 00;51;25;06 Kyle But it casts really, really well, you know, it feels like a much smaller fly. It’s like over two inches wide in the water and over four inches long. And it casts pretty well, you know, So, like, that’s a fly that I actually like one a lot for Idaho stuff. Black seems to work pretty well A lot of our Western streams and places with murkier water. 00;51;25;23 – 00;51;38;19 Kyle It’s a really good fly for casting underneath bushes and trees because it doesn’t carry as much weight in the air. And so it’s easier to get the like normal casting mechanics of fly casting to go underneath stuff. 00;51;38;26 – 00;51;47;08 Dave Right, Right. Gotcha. Okay. And it looks like most of your flies also or they have foam, but there are their deer hair on some of your flies or no deer. 00;51;47;13 – 00;51;47;21 Kyle Yeah. 00;51;47;22 – 00;51;48;24 Dave No deer. Yeah. You don’t do the. 00;51;48;28 – 00;51;50;20 Kyle Deer at all. Synthetics. 00;51;50;20 – 00;51;51;07 Dave That’s cool. 00;51;51;21 – 00;51;56;00 Kyle Except for the slop and mouse which uses, you know, the ninjas is flopping. 00;51;56;09 – 00;52;03;29 Dave The actual chopping, right? Yeah. Everything else is synthetics. The trap. Well, the trap, Chubby. I guess that’s not necessarily a mouse, but it’s not even. 00;52;03;29 – 00;52;23;07 Kyle Yeah, but, I mean, at the same time, like, really? Is it a mouse? I mean, at some point, it’s not really about the mouse, right. Like these flies are they do imitate the profile of a mouse for the most part. But we’re not imitating mice. I’m not in the business of imitating mice. We’re in the business of pushing a trout’s buttons. 00;52;23;26 – 00;52;49;05 Kyle I think that’s one of the one of the biggest you can make going into mouse fishing is start thinking about mouse behavior. Just forget it. Forget about mice, right? Forget about mice. And honestly, even forget about the frogs unless the fish are super keyed in on them. Right. Which they would frogs would be the other thing that, that the trout are really, you know, if a trout is is keyed in on your fly, it’s probably from frogs or mice. 00;52;50;01 – 00;53;00;15 Kyle But it doesn’t matter. Right. Like think about the fish. Be thinking about the fish’s behavior, what the fish wants to see, not what his food does, what he wants his food to do. 00;53;00;27 – 00;53;03;13 Dave Yeah. Which is run and then stop for him to eat. 00;53;03;13 – 00;53;15;22 Kyle Run and then stop. Yeah, that’s it. Right in front of him. Oh, look at me. I’m dangling. Oh, sometimes it’s like a straight up stream retrieve. Just like, be creative from the perspective of don’t limit yourself to imitating a mouse. 00;53;16;03 – 00;53;17;13 Dave Yeah, Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. 00;53;17;19 – 00;53;27;21 Kyle Okay. I had a conversation frequently. It was like, this is an interesting one. People would be like, Well, yeah, I don’t want to cast out into the middle of that big deep river because there’s no there’s not going to be any mice out there. 00;53;27;22 – 00;53;28;07 Dave Right? 00;53;28;13 – 00;53;32;00 Kyle That doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. Right. It’s all about the fish. 00;53;32;12 – 00;53;49;02 Dave Yeah. Okay. So if you were fishing, let’s say you’re on a river. There could be any river. Big water. You fished the banks a lot in the daytime. You’ve seen some big fish. You go up there at night with, you know, the mouse pattern here. Would you be, you know, let’s just say it’s a fast water out there and you’ve got a pool upstream. 00;53;49;02 – 00;53;55;20 Dave Could you just cast upstream against the banks and then slowly let it strip down to you, talk about that some different water types? 00;53;56;03 – 00;54;18;10 Kyle Yeah. I mean, so it’s they’re waiting. Typically my waiting approach is going to be a mostly downstream fishing and that that could be like I’m standing in the middle of the river casting to the bank and like doing short casts, casting it in, wiggling it out, doing one pause, letting it sit for 4 seconds, picking it up and going back in. 00;54;18;26 – 00;54;38;09 Kyle Maybe I’m standing on the bank, I’m casting out, I’m doing kind of a swing, right? I’m swinging the fly, but I’m interrupting my swing by lifting the rod tip and dropping it so that I create a short dead dress, which are opportunities for the fish to get the fly in his mouth for the waiting. Angler That would probably be the that would probably be the tactic I would recommend. 00;54;38;18 – 00;54;43;22 Dave Yeah. Lift the rod tip to kind of kill it and let this land drop it slowly to make it just dead drift. 00;54;43;22 – 00;54;48;07 Kyle Yeah. Drop it at this speed or slightly faster than the water’s taking the water. 00;54;48;11 – 00;54;54;25 Dave Okay. And are you fishing? Could you fish these in all water types? Pools, riffles, guides, everything. 00;54;55;04 – 00;55;11;24 Kyle Really? You could. I mean, it’s going to be so spot specific. There are places where the fish really are like inside bends. That’s the spot. But that’s not a hard, fast rule. I mean, your stream, it might be that they’re on the cut banks like they would be in the daytime. So who knows? I mean, you kind of have to. 00;55;11;24 – 00;55;24;01 Kyle That’s part of the fun, right? Is it’s like, well, this you might know the stream intimately well and you turn the lights off and it’s going to look completely different. It’s going to feel completely different. The fish behavior is different. It’s a cool thing. 00;55;24;12 – 00;55;44;09 Dave Wow, this is cool. Well, I want to get a few more tips from you here, but I’m going to slowly start to take it out of here with our fly shop Friday segment here today. And I want to hear well, first off, let’s give a shout out to Patagonia, today’s sponsor here. They’re swift current waders. We’re going to give a big shout out to them today because they support the podcast. 00;55;44;24 – 00;55;57;16 Dave I just want to say first and the Fly Shop Friday have a couple of things I always say first, like what is your closest fly shop? And then for you we’ll talk gear a little bit as well. But what is that for you? Do you have in I guess you got Idaho Falls and we’re talking the White River. 00;55;57;16 – 00;55;59;29 Dave Are there a couple of good shops in both locations? 00;56;00;14 – 00;56;05;24 Kyle Yeah. I mean, I the shop that I grew up going to was Jimmy’s All Seasons and Jimmy. 00;56;06;10 – 00;56;07;21 Dave Which is five fish food now, Right. 00;56;07;22 – 00;56;17;08 Kyle Whitefish. Food now. Yeah. Those guys are great. Honestly, I don’t know of another fly shop that I’ve ever been to that is as likely to have what I’m looking for. They just have everything. 00;56;17;10 – 00;56;30;12 Dave Yeah, that’s the perfect right. That’s the cool thing about when we did an episode with I think it was Curtis he mentioned. I asked him about that, like what didn’t Jimmy’s and he’s just had the it was the Great Flatiron Fly shop, right? Lots of materials, that kind of thing. 00;56;30;12 – 00;56;46;18 Kyle Yeah. Cheech and Curtis have even expanded on. Yeah. They have been maybe doubled, maybe more. Yeah. My buddy AJ is one of the guys over there and he’s. It’s great. It’s the shop’s awesome. They’re super nice, super helpful. They’ve got what you need. So yeah, that’s great. 00;56;46;20 – 00;56;54;13 Dave Okay, perfect. So you got Jimmy’s and then and then the other end are there. I know there was one big shop there on the white that’s gone now, or is there still one? 00;56;54;13 – 00;57;01;23 Kyle Yeah. So there was a shop called Delis that shut down. It’s kind of been replaced by a shop called Diamond State. 00;57;02;01 – 00;57;03;19 Dave Flaco Yeah, Diamond State. 00;57;03;20 – 00;57;18;00 Kyle They’re really nice. I like them. Yeah. They are still expanding their new fly shop, but one of the great things about a new fly shop is they’ve got all the energy, they’ve got all the excitement, you know, they’re not, they’re not burned out on those guys. So super nice. 00;57;18;14 – 00;57;29;25 Dave That’s awesome. Okay, great Service shop. There’s our fly shop Friday. Shout out on that. And then on the gear. What’s your gear? Let’s just talk a waiter. Are you wearing waders much on the boat? Are you a big waiter guy? What would that look like? 00;57;29;29 – 00;57;41;24 Kyle Yeah, I am. And that’s on the way. It’s because even though we’re not getting out of the boat so foggy and wet, you know, you’ve got to stay dry and we’re ready to jump out of the boat to take pictures. We big fish. 00;57;42;04 – 00;57;42;25 Dave Right? 00;57;43;07 – 00;57;44;13 Kyle So. Yeah. 00;57;44;13 – 00;57;50;15 Dave Okay. And, and are you a are you I’m guessing there’s a few different waiter types. What’s your go to Waiter. 00;57;50;27 – 00;57;52;23 Kyle I’m wearing Orvis these days. 00;57;53;01 – 00;58;14;08 Dave Yeah. Or a perfect Yeah there’s there’s a bunch of great that’s a cool thing right like all products, there’s great brands that are doing great stuff. And Orvis is another great company as well. So. Well, let’s get a couple of tips here. So we’ve been talking, you know, now seeing you don’t have to have necessarily you have to think mouse, but what would be a few tips you give somebody they’ve listened today and they’re thinking, okay, I’m going to go out in the water. 00;58;14;17 – 00;58;18;11 Dave I’m going to try to get my first fish on a mouse type of pattern. What what are you telling them? 00;58;18;28 – 00;58;47;05 Kyle Yeah, I would say just go into it with an open mind, you know? I mean, it’s a totally different process than your daytime fishing, so go into it with an open mind. The other thing I would say is really just try to wargame the situation, pick this water apart, create something, create a plan that makes sense. And what I mean by that is like find a spot where it’s like, okay, well, like I already know there’s these fish here. 00;58;47;22 – 00;59;08;04 Kyle I already know there’s fish. I’ve caught fish in the daytime in the spot. I know there’s a lot of nice fish. I know they hang out in the shallow water where it’s crystal clear and da da da da da. Like, create that plan. Don’t just go out. And just what I would not recommend is don’t just jump in the drift boat and do a float hoping to catch fish on mice. 00;59;08;28 – 00;59;28;24 Kyle Be really methodical about it. You know, like pick that water apart, try three different flies and try three different presentations with each one. And what you might find is the fish want you to be retrieving that fly straight back upstream, doing a long course downstream that does not make sense. But that’s what they want, you know. 00;59;29;04 – 00;59;31;19 Dave Like actually going against the current, like it’s swimming upstream. 00;59;31;28 – 00;59;45;23 Kyle Maybe that’s what they want. Maybe they want a long dead drift. You know, I’ve I’ve been fishing in some spots for like, oh man, they literally just cast the mouse and just let us. It sounds dumb. Yeah, right. This doesn’t think so. 00;59;46;02 – 00;59;52;07 Dave No. And they can see it, right? That’s a cool thing about nighttime. Even on a dark night. Do you find that fish can still see everything? 00;59;52;14 – 01;00;10;14 Kyle Man, As long as the water’s clear. It’s amazing how well they can see. And then that would. Maybe that would be the other tip is mouth fish. Clear water. If your water clarity fluctuates a lot, just fish it when it’s clear And if it’s a river, that’s not clear. Chances are it’s not going to be very good. Lake River. 01;00;11;01 – 01;00;16;02 Kyle If it’s not clear your odds of being super successful on a mouse are very low. 01;00;16;11 – 01;00;25;04 Dave Very low. Okay. And are we talked a lot I mean, we were thinking today streams, but are you could you would the whole thing be different if we were fish in a lake as far as what we talked about today? 01;00;25;19 – 01;00;36;22 Kyle Yeah. I mean you have more flexibility because the currents not fighting you as far as your presentation goes. But yeah, truthfully, Dave, I think most of the best mouse fishing in the entire country is and still waters. 01;00;37;03 – 01;00;57;06 Dave That is got and its mouse too. And like you said, it doesn’t have to be necessarily exactly imitating a mouse, but. Right. Something on the surface and you don’t think about Stillwater as much as surface because there’s not as many of chaotic insects that are hatching there. There are a lot of stuff we’ve talked about is below. But you’re saying that you can fish these big guys just like we’re talking today and catch them on the surface? 01;00;57;14 – 01;01;15;19 Kyle Totally, Yeah. What’s interesting is fishing still waters. I found more more mice like in Stillwater, either swimming or floating dead on the surface or around the bank. They’re all over them, you know. So like, if you want to find a trout that’s actually keyed in on eating mice, you have a pretty good chance of doing it at a stillwater. 01;01;16;03 – 01;01;24;04 Kyle You know, you can cross a lot more fish too, right? Like you go fish a lake, you can cover a little bit of water and your flies crossing a lot of fish. 01;01;24;20 – 01;01;25;04 Dave Right. 01;01;25;11 – 01;01;33;10 Kyle Makes total sense, you know, So you’re stacking the odds compared to fish in a stream where, like, you’re you’re huffing it. Yeah. You’re beating your feet to try to cross a fish. 01;01;33;13 – 01;01;43;01 Dave Right. So if you’re out west, I mean, there’s lots of, like you said, like Stillwater finding a good stillwater. And like you said, Idaho Falls has tons of Stillwater. Do you think you could do this out there Pretty. 01;01;43;01 – 01;01;43;27 Kyle Totally, yeah. 01;01;43;27 – 01;01;49;26 Dave Yeah. So that might be a better bet instead of start in the South Fork Snake, maybe start finding Stillwater and give it a shot there. 01;01;50;04 – 01;01;55;24 Kyle Totally. And you’re way less likely to be you know, gored to death by a moose or eaten by a mountain lion or the stillwater. 01;01;56;02 – 01;02;00;02 Dave Right. During the night. It’s still during the night, though, right? Stillwater still during the night, Yeah. 01;02;00;05 – 01;02;06;19 Kyle Yeah. There are situations where you definitely could get him in the daytime, but it’s really for me, mousing is a nighttime endeavor. 01;02;07;00 – 01;02;16;09 Dave Yeah. Where would you if somebody is listening, where would they take this further? You know, like, so we didn’t talk about Stillwater in depth. Are there do you have resources out there? What do you tell somebody? 01;02;16;20 – 01;02;32;05 Kyle Man, I, I wish there were better resources out there. I’m in the very beginning stages of, of working on creating some media, whether it’s a book or a nice, you know, stuff like that. But, but really, I think part of the fun of this is that the information’s not out there. 01;02;32;12 – 01;02;32;25 Dave Know. 01;02;32;28 – 01;02;37;26 Kyle Right? Lewis and Clark it up. You know we’re canoe upstream and start paddling. 01;02;38;00 – 01;02;44;23 Dave That’s right. Yeah. Go over here as follows and let all the Native American watch. They’re laughing. Those Are you going over? Just go. 01;02;44;23 – 01;02;56;00 Kyle For it. And that’s what’s so fun about this. Find somebody that shares your passion enthusiasm and go out there and do something nobody’s done before, which is such an awesome experience. 01;02;56;06 – 01;03;06;11 Dave This is exciting. No, I think this is really cool because like I said, I mean, we we’ve talked a lot to Stillwater’s and this is the first time this has come up, I think, that I know of on mousing and the Stillwater’s, right? 01;03;06;11 – 01;03;06;27 Kyle So yeah. 01;03;07;13 – 01;03;12;14 Dave And there’s not necessarily going to be a big book out right now. You know, you can’t go out and just find, you know, deliver. The book is on it. 01;03;12;21 – 01;03;29;29 Kyle All The information’s not out there and there are people who are doing it, but they’re tight lipped about it. You might be able to find someone on social media if you find pictures of fish that you know are at night and look like they’re from a Stillwater. Yeah, you might be able to steer them into giving you some tips, but yeah, yeah. 01;03;30;00 – 01;03;33;11 Kyle I mean, pyramid Lake even, right? Like it’s closed night. We can’t night fish there. 01;03;33;23 – 01;03;34;25 Dave So you can’t night fish. 01;03;34;29 – 01;03;56;11 Kyle We have an hour before sunrise to an hour after sunset. And I caught fish from pyramid on mice in that time frame. You know, the one I was really excited about. I got a £12 lawnton on a mouse right at dark. It was. It was a rainy day, so it was raining and the fish were on the shoreline. 01;03;56;11 – 01;04;17;03 Kyle It was I think it was January. I was actually I was dragging my fly behind me. I was trying to cover water. Right. Because it’s like I have this 25 minute window. I need to just be feed and cover as much water as possible. I was walking down the beach. I jumped off this rock. I’m dragging my rod behind me and just got destroyed. 01;04;18;03 – 01;04;19;08 Kyle Yeah. So, yeah. 01;04;19;15 – 01;04;20;07 Dave So you never know. 01;04;20;08 – 01;04;29;15 Kyle I mean, yeah, all bets are off. The fish was five feet from shore in a place you would never fish in the daytime. Yeah, but he was there and he was hungry. 01;04;29;15 – 01;04;35;13 Dave What’s the biggest fish you’ve kind of caught or seen out there? Caught on this, on the mouse, sort of on your stuff. 01;04;35;20 – 01;04;41;24 Kyle So the biggest fish I had a client catch was a £20, three ounce brown out of the white. 01;04;42;02 – 01;04;42;18 Dave Of the white. 01;04;43;01 – 01;04;43;11 Kyle Yeah. 01;04;43;21 – 01;04;46;23 Dave £20. So you broke that in How many inches it was that 20 pounder. 01;04;46;23 – 01;04;54;19 Kyle You think it was 33. I mean that fish was, you know, morbidly obese. Yeah. I mean and yeah, yeah, it was insane. 01;04;54;19 – 01;04;55;19 Dave And what fly to take. 01;04;56;05 – 01;04;58;28 Kyle That one ate a variation of the ninja mouse. 01;04;59;08 – 01;05;04;12 Dave Okay. Variation the ninja. And how were you fishing. What was your were you fish in a pool or what was that. 01;05;04;15 – 01;05;14;11 Kyle Yeah, it was the fish was in front of a big rocky sort of a tail out where it was just hiding from. The current flow was dropping. Yeah. And so the fish was between spots was right. 01;05;14;12 – 01;05;15;23 Dave And you were where you did drifting it. 01;05;16;10 – 01;05;31;09 Kyle No, it was, well essentially it was the client was my good friend Nate. He had cast the bank and pull this fly out. One pause and glow Tap went away. Sounded like a regular little fish. Set the hook and yeah, it was pure chaos. 01;05;32;04 – 01;05;39;02 Dave All right. So nice. And is casting your flies or big flies? This is a challenge, really. Any any tip there on the casting? 01;05;39;28 – 01;06;10;11 Kyle Just slow down. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, mouth flies are it’s like they have a it’s like the speed limit is governed on them as far as line speed goes. Yeah. We have this tendency with a lot of guys, the streamers especially like they want to just really accelerate their cast and shorten their casting, stroke the mouse fly like it’s only going to go so fast if you just slow down, let the rod load, you can actually shoot a lot of line, but you can’t force it to go any faster. 01;06;10;22 – 01;06;22;11 Kyle You just have to wait a long time for that thing to turn over because they’re just they’re, they’re flies that inherently it’s a big fly that floats. It’s a density issue, you know? So yeah, a lot of buoyancy. 01;06;22;21 – 01;06;39;15 Dave Nice. Well, I think definitely there’s more we could chat about here. We might have to leave that for maybe next episode or if we can get you on, on doing a webinar or something like that, we could talk more. But I think I think we can leave it there and send everybody out to Trout Trap fliers dot com if they want to follow up with you on your trips or your fliers. 01;06;39;28 – 01;06;43;23 Dave Does that sound good for next steps and any other last words before we hop out of here? 01;06;44;02 – 01;06;56;14 Kyle Yeah, sounds good. I mean, my 2026 calendar is open. I’ve got quite a few good openings still for somebody who wants to come out and learn it all from me. I mean, there’s a lot more than you can cover in an hour podcast. 01;06;56;14 – 01;07;05;04 Dave So Doit now is on the way. Or if somebody calls you if they were in Idaho or around the country, or is it where would they be fishing or how does that look? Yep. 01;07;05;04 – 01;07;06;06 Kyle I only guide on the way. 01;07;06;11 – 01;07;13;24 Dave Yeah, on the on the way. Yeah. Gotcha. So they can connect with away in the best time on the way it is because you can fish it around. Is there, is there a best time or. 01;07;14;02 – 01;07;15;01 Kyle June to September. 01;07;15;13 – 01;07;16;11 Dave To in September. 01;07;16;11 – 01;07;20;05 Kyle Yeah that’s my season. I keep it short. I’m not trying to burn myself out. 01;07;20;09 – 01;07;30;06 Dave So yeah, June to September and then what are you doing after September You’re back. Well, you’re not doing as much tying, but what are you doing where you fish in the rest of the year? 01;07;30;15 – 01;07;44;15 Kyle Yeah, I mean the fly business, it’s a lot of I mean, it’s more work than you would think. It’s a lot of production oriented things. I do fish a lot. Nice. I am very fortunate. I get I get to spend a lot of time with my weight in blood sweat. 01;07;44;22 – 01;07;52;20 Dave Yeah. Still. Yeah. Perfect. Okay, Awesome guy. Well, thanks again for all the time. And yeah, we’ll be in touch and looking forward to getting some of those supplies on the water. 01;07;53;01 – 01;07;55;18 Kyle Thanks a lot, Dave. 01;07;55;18 – 01;08;10;22 Dave We mentioned it right there. You go to trout. Trout, Flygskam or head over to Instagram trout underscore trap right now. Check in with Kyle. As you heard it, you can’t find a ton of these resources out there right now. At least he doesn’t know of them. So check in with him if you have any questions about taking this further. 01;08;10;22 – 01;08;33;03 Dave I think Stillwater is one definitely I would love to hear more about. Maybe we’ll check back if we get enough feedback on this one. Let cow know you heard this podcast as well. And if you want to get some more information on this, you can check in with me anytime. Dave will place Wycombe. Next episode is amazing. We’ve got tomorrow Nelson is Shyama is here to talk about Henry’s Fork angling. 01;08;33;03 – 01;08;51;08 Dave He’s the owner of the Henry Fork Lodge and we get into a great episode tomorrow, so stay tuned for that. And also just want to give you a big heads up the Atlantic salmon fly the Atlantic salmon fly fishing trip is going on right now if you’re interested. If you wanna check with me, if we have any spots available, send me an email. 01;08;51;08 – 01;09;11;00 Dave Dave. I will face Wycombe. I already mentioned it. This is the big trip to Newfoundland where we’re going to be fishing the famous waters that Leigh will fished. I’m going to be flying in to the same area and hopefully getting into a bunch of great fish for Atlantic salmon. One of the bucket list trips on the swing. That’s Newfoundland Mountain Waters Resort. 01;09;11;23 – 01;09;31;17 Dave Check in now. And Emily, get out here. Hope you’re having a great morning. And if it’s afternoon, I hope it’s a great day for you. And if it’s evening, enjoy it and we’ll look forward to seeing you on the next episode. We’ll talk to you then. Thanks for listening to the wet fly Swing Fly fishing show for notes and links from this episode, Visit Wet Fly, swing, Dotcom.