824 | Pheasant Tail Simplicity: Yvon Chouinard, Craig Mathews, and Mauro Mazzo’s New Book

Dave (2s): Lee Wulff once said, game fish are too valuable to be caught only once. That philosophy, simplicity, respect, and letting the river teach you runs through today’s conversation all day long. Today’s guest has spent a lifetime proving that you don’t need thousands of flies. To fool a trout from his early days co-founding Blue Ribbon flies to co-authoring books with Yvonne Chouinard. Craig has shown that a handful of pheasant tail fibers the right presentation and sharp observation can out fish the most complicated patterns. 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. Dave (44s): Craig Mathews is on the podcast today, and we are gonna dig into his brand new book, Pheasant Tail Simplicity: Recipes and Techniques for Successful Fly Fishing. You’re gonna hear why Craig believes restricting your fly options actually makes you a better angler. How to fish caddis hatches without getting fooled and why listening to the river is the most important skill. You can practice tons of stuff today, we’re gonna cover it all- pheasant tails, we’re talking match in the hatch dries, the X caddis, the iris caddis, it’s all here. This is another awesome one. Hope you enjoy it. You can check in with Craig in the new book at patagonia.com. Here he is, Craig Mathews. Dave (1m 24s): How you doing Craig? Craig (1m 24s): Doing great, Dave. Thanks for having me back. Dave (1m 26s): Yeah, yeah, definitely. This is fun. We had the last episode. I don’t have it in front of me, but it was a pretty epic one we had you and Yvonne Chenard on. That’s an episode that still gets talked about Out there, of course, because you guys are such powerhouses, but that’s great to hear. Yeah, no, that was awesome. I appreciate that was such a good episode, and I think it’s really awesome now because we’re coming back here really to, to actually have another connection to Patagonia and, and this new book you have coming, it’s called Pheasant Tail Simplicity Recipes and Techniques for Successful Fly Fishing. And so I’m excited to hear about that today because I know you guys have been going strong, Yvonne, especially on how simplicity, right. One fly. So first off, gimme an update since that last episode we did with with Yvonne, what have you been up to? Dave (2m 10s): Oh Craig (2m 10s): God, we’ve been, I’ve spent only 167 days on the river This year so far. Geez. And yeah, a lot of fishing, fair amount of writing, a lot of several podcasts such as this. And just spreading the word for 1% for the planet, our, our organization that, our conservation organization and doing some great work out here in Yellowstone country. Dave (2m 34s): Perfect. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, and 1% obviously is, is huge. I think that we talked about that on the last episode there as well. But, but let’s jump into this book. ’cause I feel like pheasant tail, I, I think it’s perfect. I always, I think if I, if I have to think of my favorite fly, the favorite material is probably between like peacock, pheasant tail, like those two are, are key. And it’s just so simple, right? Because a pheasant tail is the most simple pattern Out there. But, but talk about that. When did this book hit you guys? When did this idea come to be? You know, take us back a little bit. Craig (3m 5s): You know, several years ago, I think 10 or 12 years ago in our previous book, simple Fly Fishing, we made the case to replace a lot of unnecessary gear in fly fishing with, basically with knowledge and technique. And since that time, we’ve done just that and in pheasant tail simplicity, we, we propose that the barbs of a ring neck, pheasant tail can be used to tie simple bodies on, on nu and soft tackles and dry flies and mergers and terrestrials and that are more or equally or more effective than the thousands of otherly patterns that you can find in fly shops around the world. Craig (3m 47s): And it’s kinda interesting, this book, really our new book is really not intended for beginners nor for gear junkies that I guess believe that the secret to success lies in buying even more equipment and more flies. And the book really isn’t for serious anglers who don’t tie flies because you can’t buy a lot of the flies that we describe in our book, but it’s for the person, the angler who knows that restricting options forces you to be be more creative. And if you understand that limiting your fly options and relying on, on basic skills and knowledge and technique that leads not only to success but satisfaction, then this book is, is right down your alley. Craig (4m 32s): This book is for you. Dave (4m 33s): Perfect. So what you’re saying is the patterns in this book you’re not gonna find in, in a fly shop probably, is that, is that the case? Craig (4m 40s): Most of them, yeah. We, we introduced 17 or 18 new fly patterns in the pages of this new book. There Dave (4m 47s): You go. Okay. And, and are the fly patterns a mix of, you know, dries, nymphs streamers, all sorts of things? Or are they, because I’m picturing the pheasant tail nymph, right? Just wrapping around the hook shank and kind of, is that kind of, or describe it a little bit. Craig (5m 1s): Maro Mazo from Italy, Yvonne and I are the authors of the book, and I do six or seven dry flies. Maro does six nymphs and Yvonne does half a dozen soft tackle patterns. So there’s 17 or 18 new flies that e equally spread between the three of us. Dave (5m 19s): Okay, that makes sense. And, and maybe describe that we know Yvonne Chenard, you know, he’s obviously Patagonia, the man behind that, but now the person you talked about a ma ma, I can’t even say it right. Can you pronounce that for me and tell me who this, this person is? Craig (5m 33s): Maro Mazo, M-A-Z-Z-O, marrow’s a, a juvenile delinquent like Yvonne and I Dave (5m 40s): Do everything the opposite. Right? You guys have done everything the opposite of everybody else. And Craig (5m 43s): MA’s from Italy spends a fair amount of time here in the US fishing with us. And whenever we’re together, we’re a dangerous threesome. Roy’s up to something. Dave (5m 53s): Okay, good. So, so we got this, this is already sounding really awesome because I think, think we’re gonna get some new flies out of this book. And do you talk about, you know, technique, describe the book. Is it more a fly tying type book or what, what could we expect? Craig (6m 6s): It mixes, technique mixes a lot of observations. It gives our thought on fly design, hence the new patterns that we’ve come up with. What’s really cool about the book is it has a QR code on it that you can scan and give you online access to content that contains our, our fly tying instructions for each one of the patterns we’re short videos of us fishing the flies featuring techniques and our thoughts on fishing the flies, and an actual video of us fishing the flies. Dave (6m 38s): Oh, amazing. There you go. So there’s a huge resource. So if you get the book, you can actually yeah. QR code into, and this will go into videos of all three of you guys fishing or the, Craig (6m 48s): The three of us. Yep. The three of us fishing mar fishing, n Yvonne, fishing soft tackles, and myself presenting drive flies to rising fish. And, you know, it contains the book contains also written stories that we’ve written. For instance, Yvonne does one on fishing for fish as if they’re all spooked. And it’s a lesson that he learned. He had me down one time to fish a little Spring Creek where these big cutthroats are cruising. They’re very shy. And Yvonne, you know, he is small in stature, but he, and he always stands up and fly fishes where I approach it a little different. I, I sit down and scooch along in my butt or walk on my knees. I try to get close to fish and observe what they’re doing. Craig (7m 30s): And Yvonne loves to tell that story. As a matter of fact, on a zoom call, we did it the other day, we do a weekly zoom talking about flies and, and, and our adventures. Yvonne was saying that he was at that Spring Creek, very Spring Creek again, and he sat down and he, he hooked several fish just by sitting down, keeping low profile and sneaking along. And we always maintain in our fly fishing that you should wear the, the butt or the knee pads out of a pair of waiters before you do the feet because we do a lot of, you know, a lot of scooching along and covering very little water, but fishing, divisible fish. Dave (8m 5s): Amazing. That’s so good. Yeah. And I love you mentioned waiters because I’ve been, I’ve got a pair of Patagonia Swift current waiters I’ve been wearing and been loving them. And the knee pads are, are huge. Yep. The knee pads are huge. Craig (8m 16s): Well, that was my 10 cents years ago in the pair of waiters. Dave (8m 18s): Oh, was it? Yeah. Craig (8m 20s): I said, you’ve gotta have knee pads and waiters. Dave (8m 22s): Yep. It’s huge. It actually, because you don’t realize it, but like you said, I mean, if you’re gonna get some of these spooky fish, you can’t be standing up. You need to get down as low as possible. Craig (8m 31s): Totally. Yep, yep. You know, we, we’ve always said that successfully catching wild native trout is less about having thousands of flies in your vest and more about having faith in the few flies in fishing it where and when and how it should be fished. And you know, we talk a lot about technique and, and confidence and skill and how they always trump dozens of fly boxes that you have and you need, you totally need to do what the river tells you to do. It reads like an open book and match the flies to the technique to each specific situation. And we always contended focus, concentration and I guess observation are the keystone factors to successful fly fishing. Craig (9m 11s): Simply doing again what the river tells you to do. Dave (9m 14s): Right. That’s so awesome. Yeah. So don’t, don’t have any preconceived notions about what the day’s gonna be like. Just get Out there and be ready to adjust based on the conditions sort of thing. Totally. Yep. Yeah. Okay. And I just saw it here. So it’s episode 5 36 was the one that we did with, with you and Yvonne, where we talked about just your whole story in the background. So if people wanna take that further, they can listen to that one and hear some of the background. But I wanna hear on the dry, I think that’s, you know, without giving away too many secrets on the book, I think pheasant tails, I always think of nips, you know, the pheasant tail nph of course, but even wet flies ’cause there’s that. But dry flies. What does that look like with pheasant tail? Maybe describe that without giving away any secrets, what we’re gonna be looking at on your dry flies. Craig (9m 54s): Well, you know, the, the, and we talk about materials in the book and how to select pheasant tails and how to select Hungarian partridge, how you wanna get wild birds because the feathers and the fibers aren’t, aren’t nicked to, you know, you use cage birds, tame birds, and they’re always fighting and wild birds or not. And what’s really cool about tying, for instance, dry flies with pheasant is a lot of people have trouble with dubbing. They can’t seem to go the dubbing down as fine as they need to in terms of achieving proper proportion of dry flies. So you just take a couple of pheasant tail fibers and wind them and then reinforce them back by crisscrossing your them with your working thread. Craig (10m 38s): It’s basically indestructible. And by their frilly nature and by their coloration, they look exactly like 99% of the species, the insect aquatic insects that you’re trying to imitate anyway. And of course, pheasant tail in and of itself will sink like a rock. It will absorb a ton of water, but it also absorbs floating. So if you’re tying a dryly and you put floating on it flows like a cork. Dave (11m 4s): Wow. There you go. So, so describe a little bit of what this, like what would a wing be just your typical wing? Are you talking about tying, you know, I’m just thinking of the different dry flies that are Out there. A lot of the dry flies we hear about that work really well are the ones that sit down in the water surface a little bit. Right. Is that kind of the style that we’re looking at here? Well, Craig (11m 20s): Yeah. Yep. These flies, and again, they’re imitate different stages of dry flies, whether they’re mergers floating nymphs nymphs. But for some of the wings we use a blend of CDC and Zon or CDC and para post, for instance, our ex cadis who we use deer hair for the win. And we use pheasant tail fibers for the abdomen and the thorax. We use a dubbing, maybe a third of the fly, a third of the abdomen and thorax as, as a dubbing material to imitate the coloration of the natural insect. For instance, when a hydros psyche cadi, which is the main cas on the Madison River, when they emerge, they’re usually a very distinct amber. Craig (12m 6s): A bright amber for just a few seconds, and then they turn totally brown. Well, we imitate that amber coloration as it’s, as it’s emerging out of the pheasant tail fiber, the brown that’s imitated by the pheasant tail. So it, it kills two birds with one stone, so to speak. And while coloration isn’t entirely all that important at times, there are times when it is, so why not do the right thing and, and just put that little amber thorax in conjunction with the pheasant tail fiber. Dave (12m 36s): There you go. Perfect. And I’m actually looking now, I just looked for the title we mentioned pheasant tail simplicity. It’s actually on Amazon, it just popped up on top of Google for pre-order. Yeah, Craig (12m 47s): It’s just now, I guess it’s just now available. Dave (12m 49s): Yeah. So there he goes. And there’s a little summary of what people can expect here. So this is cool. Well, yeah, I’m excited about this. And there’s even, I can see a couple of the flies on, on the cover. So do you think on the flies that you guys have in there, there, yeah, it sounds like there’s a mix of dry flies of emerge then. What is Yvonne? What is his patterns that he’s covering? Craig (13m 8s): He does flims, he does soft tackles. He does an an Aerus pattern for an Aerus salmon and steelhead, and he also ties a bonefish fly just using pheasant tail and, and peacock dubbing. Dave (13m 23s): Oh wow. That’s awesome. Well, here’s the question for you. Do you know, I mean, I’m guessing you do, he is kind of different area, but Jim Tini, have you heard about Jim Tini? Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know Jim, well, Jim, he’s kind of a friend. We, you know, I’ve known him since I was a little kid and he came up with his, you know, the teeny nph, right? It was exactly, it was kind of his, and it was basically a similar thing, you know, but he maybe even simpler because his is literally just wrapping, you know, dyed pheasant tail around. He, I’ve had him say on the podcast, he’s caught, I mean, almost every, he’s never fished anything but that fly. And he’s caught tarpon and you name the species around the world. So it’s kind of a similar thing. Right. The fact that you don’t have to get too crazy with these flies, you can catch anything on a basic pattern. Craig (14m 2s): Exactly. Yeah. And, and Ivan has done the same thing. You know, I’ve caught a lot of warm water species and bowling fish on, on flies tied with pheasant tail. And you know, it, a lot of people, probably one of the coolest books I ever read was by Datu prop or what the Trout said, going back to trout fishing. And he relates that he knows that so many excellent fly tires and anglers who simply cannot tie these complicated fly patterns that you see nowadays. And I feel the same that fine anglers catch more fish than their peers. And as they explain, there’s no need really to tie difficult time consumed fly patterns just to achieve the purpose. Craig (14m 44s): And myself included, you know, the purpose for tying flies in the first place is to catch fish. So I tie simple fly patterns that do just that. Dave (14m 53s): Yeah, that’s so good. I love this because you’re kind of speaking to me a little bit. I always said for myself, my fishing, I, I’ve never been to the greatest fly tire and all that. So I, like, I’ve just had, you know, patterns that work for me or if I’m given patterns, but I’ve always felt like I’m a better fisherman than a fly tire than, you know what I mean? Like, I can, if I’m on the water, you know, gimme a fly and I’ll make it work somehow. Right. And it feels like you’re saying that’s okay to be that way. Craig (15m 17s): Yeah. You know, trout really aren’t impressed by complicated artsy flies or by human emotions. They’re impressed by simple functional fly patterns that they recognize in Keon that imitate the insects that they selectively defeat on. So why not just imitate those simple fly patterns? Dave (15m 36s): Perfect. This is great. Well, let’s take a quick little break here and for those people, because we probably have a lot of new people that didn’t hear that last episode or, or the first one we did with you back in the, you know, the day as well. But give us a little update on your background, just on, you know, because you obviously have a long background in all this. So give us the high level of how you kinda came to, not the connection with Yvonne, but just the fly fishing and everything you did previously. Yeah. Craig (15m 59s): When I was a little kid, I learned to fly fish by a couple old timers in northern Michigan. We had a summer home on a lake there, and I’d fish for blue gills. And then I got involved with tying flies when I was six and seven years old out of seagull feathers. And I was just intrigued with, with simple fly patterns at that time that caught blue gills and bass and that transitioned into trout. I, I developed a love for trout very young and ended up moving here to Montana as a police officer, the police chief of West Yellowstone. And we started our fly fishing business and I learned more and more about flies and fly patterns. And I had the luxury of being introduced to so many famous anglers, famous fly tires. Craig (16m 43s): My old, our old partner in, in the shop, John Ek, he and I one time, we spent as much time on our butts and our knees watching fish behavior and how they would take instance on the crossover fence that the Henry’s fork. We sat there watching these huge rainbow trout very selectively feeding on emerging pale morning duns. Wow. And we could not catch those fish. And as we sat and watched, it finally dawned on us that these big fish were taking, they weren’t taking fully upright duns, they were taking impaired duns that were caught in their, their nle shuck and Swisher and Richards, Carl Richards and Doug Switcher in their great book mergers came off the idea of, of a trailing shuck. Craig (17m 28s): But they used mostly duck qui segments that really didn’t impart any life. They didn’t impart that shimmering shimmering glow, if you will, of a nle shock attached, still attached to the Dunn’s legs or wings. So John and I went back and we used a material at that time by Jack Vic in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. It’s called Sparkle, just a sparkle dubbing material that we use for shuck. So we transitioned from that to Zon, but we thought we were really onto something with our sparkle done that incorporated a sparkly shimmering shuck. And we thought, boy, look what we invented. Well, I was reading Colonel ew Harding’s book in his story about sparkly shimmering shucks that he wrote in 1937. Craig (18m 16s): Yeah. So really, I like to say originality in fly time is merely undetected plagiarism. It’s done before. Been done before. Dave (18m 24s): That’s been done before. Exactly. And, but the sparkle dun is a pattern that I remember when I first learned about it as a kid. It was, I mean that was a famous pattern, but that is one that you kinda came up with. Obviously everything’s been done before, but, but that’s the, the sparkle done pattern is something we can find Out there, right? Craig (18m 39s): Yes, yes. And one of the, one of those gratifying stories I can tell about the Sparkle Dunn, a couple days later, we’re right back at the crossover fence and it’s raining and the pale morning duns are just emerging in number. And these big rainbows are selectively taking impaired duns, you know, caught in their, caught in their shuck. And, and we were just railing the fish. And someone walks up behind me and says, what in the heck fly are you guys using? Turn around. And it was Ernie Sweer, you know? Dave (19m 9s): Oh, no way. Craig (19m 10s): Yeah, andwe, we, we became instant friends. We showed him our sparkle done patterns and he thought that was the greatest thing in the world. I’ll never forget that. Dave (19m 18s): That’s so cool. Yeah. What is that like, because you’re, I mean, you’ve got this big name in the fly fishing, you’ve been in forever. You’ve had your whole, what was the name of your original fly shops you had? Craig (19m 28s): We owned Blue Ribbon Flies. There were three blue ribbon flies in Montana. And there we started one in Mountain Home, Arkansas, many years ago. Dave (19m 36s): Okay. In Arkansas Near the White River Craig (19m 38s): On, right? Yeah, in Mountain Home. Right where the white and the Norfolk come together. Dave (19m 43s): Oh, the Norfolk. Wow. That’s great. Yeah. I’m, I’m hoping to get out to that area this next year, but, but yeah, you, you’re such a big name Out there. You, we mentioned Yvonne, you know, Sweer, all these guys who are contemporaries of you. What, what does that feel like now as you look back? Do you look back and say, well, you know, we kind of expected to become these biggest names in fly fishing that everybody knows your kind of household names now, you Craig (20m 4s): Know, back when we were just fish bums and I guess we’re still fish bums, you know, we’re odds we have a great time and all of a sudden we’re the old men. Everybody that came before is gone and Right. All of a sudden. Yeah. I’ll be 77 years old the next time. No Dave (20m 22s): Kidding. Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s a what, what’s been your, your secret because you definitely don’t look like you’re 77. What’s been your secret to the success? Craig (20m 30s): Well, you know, you gotta keep chugging and again, you keep fishing. And I love to climb mountains. I love to elk hunt. We wore out four Nordic tracks and we just got a new Nordic incline machine because we wore out a Nordic incline machine. No Dave (20m 44s): Kidding here Craig (20m 45s): A couple weeks ago. Yeah. So I keep, you know, I keep on the Nordic Incline machine. I try to keep in shape, I watch the diet, I work out so that I can keep climbing these mountains, not only for hunting, but also to hike and fish high country lakes, which I love to Dave (20m 59s): Do. That’s awesome. So there, yeah, that is the secret. Just get outdoors, stay active and, and get in the Nordic track. Get in Nordic tract as well. Turn Craig (21m 5s): Race. Dave (21m 6s): All right, well, so this is awesome, I think, and the sparkle done I think is awesome too because I know when I was a kid, my dad tied the fly and the way we tied it, he kind of taught me is that, you remember there used to be that old green shag carpet Out there. We in different colors, we would take that shag carpet and that was our, that was our shock or you know, that’s what we would use for the sparkle. Oh Craig (21m 24s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. We used to sell chunks of shag carpet in the shop, different colors. Then we discovered zon and we just went to Zon ’cause it was very easy to dye. And we bought, we bought 526 pounds of it from DuPont. It was the last that they had. We bought a skid of it in the shipping was more than the material. Dave (21m 45s): Nice. So, so cool. So that’s, yeah, the sparkling down. Well, let’s go into, I know on the first episode we did episode 4 27, we talked a little bit about Caddisflies. I mean, of course there’s another famous person that, what’s the Caddisfly book? The probably the most famous book. Craig (21m 58s): Oh shoot. Gary Laine’s book. It’s the best book Out there on the subject, cataly. And I urge everybody to get a copy and read it. Dave (22m 5s): Yeah. Gary’s book. That’s awesome. And, but today, maybe we could talk a little about and stay on this book that some of the dry flies you, you know, have in there and then how you would fish those. And let’s talk may flies. Do you have a mix of may flies, cataly stone flies in that book. Yeah, Craig (22m 18s): May flies Cadis Midges. We have a a, a little sel and zon Midge that’s really simple to tie. It’s a takeoff of our old Zeon Midge pattern. Very easy to tie. But you know, going back to Cadis, yeah, I think that cadis are probably the insect that really baffles anglers. Dave (22m 39s): Yes. It baffles me too, for sure. Craig (22m 42s): Yep. They’re least understood by anglers and they’re probably the most significant two anglers, even above Mayflies. And there’s an amazing number of dryly patterns intended to imitate these insects that confuse anglers as well. And my wife and my wife Jackie and the ex cas everybody down and I credit for it, but it was Jackie, we’re sitting there trying to come up with a cas pattern just after our sparkle done for Mayflies. And Jackie said, why aren’t you just put a god dang shuck out the back of a, of a Cass on a bear hook and then dub some zon or Antron dubbing, and then put a simple gear here or elk air wing and it take an emerging cas and it works like a dream. Craig (23m 27s): And that was her, you know, her invention. And I think the main dilemma that most anglers face is recognizing Cadi hatchet. And they really have a problem with that. And it’s so simple. And I know Gary outlined three factors, three important factors that Im, that really angler should recognize because they lead to recognizing a cas emergence or a cas activity. And there are three clues. The first clue, and I love to, I love to fish evening cadi. And nearly every evening in the summertime, late June, all the way into, into the month of August, they start to fade ca emergences. Craig (24m 6s): But nearly every evening you can go to the Madison River that flows right through here and sit on the water and see small fish rising like crazy. They’re, they’re launching themself out of the water after, after merging cadi. So when you see a lot of fish jumping out of the water, that’s your first and probably one of your most important clues that you have a CAAs hatch ca occurring. But the second and strongest clue to a CAAs hatch, you do not see cadi on the water. Dave (24m 38s): Oh really? Craig (24m 39s): You can put your nose right to the surface of water and you won’t see any goddamn insects on it. Oh wow. But you’ll see small fish rising aggressively and then all of a sudden just before dark, everything goes dead. You don’t see any insects, you don’t see any rises, you don’t see any little fish launching out of the water. But now’s the time you wanna sit tie on tippet and get ready to roll with a, either an iris cadis or an ex cadis. Because about 10 minutes later, after all the activity stops, you’ll see a dimple and then you’ll see a porus roll and then you’ll see some tails breaking the surface. And that’s the bigger fish. They come out and kick the little fish out. Craig (25m 20s): And now the big boys are out and they’re feeding on cadi and they have taken over the pools and they own the pools. And now is the time you wanna single out. Hopefully the biggest fish don’t flock. Shoot there, be several rising fish in each pool and do your thing with the cas. Dave (25m 38s): Wow, that is awesome. And how do you know when you’re looking, how do you single out the big fish? Can you just see it coming up? Craig (25m 44s): Yeah, usually, you know, they’ll boil with probably the most volume of water as they roll in these porus rolls. But again, you’ll see a big tail. And yet if you see a smaller tail and then you see a great big tail, you go, I gotta have that big boy. And it literally, there’ll be dozens of fish in certain pools that’ll be rising to ca and I’ll, the anglers on the other side of the river running upstream, casting nymph, they just do not sit and concentrate and focus on these pools and watch for cadi activities develop. Dave (26m 14s): So, so finding a pool, ’cause there’s lots of ways to fish cadi, but if you’re fishing with a dry fly and, and a pool is, is a good place to be. And, and then also, what would be one of your flies that’s in the book that would be good for the situation? Craig (26m 26s): Well, I, I usually go initially with an Irish cas and an Irish cadis imitates, you know, a single emerging cas has a low profile but has a very visible wing because it has a wing, it also does double duty. It not only imitates the wing, but the gaseous bubble that the pupa utilizes to gain the surface of the water to emerge. And if you dress that with any kind of ict, you can see that white bubble, that white, you know, bubble that you make with zeon or a pose material. And that imitates the emerging cadis. Now as things get, as it gets darker and harder to see, I’ll actually go to an ex cadi which has an upright or kind of an upright wing of deer hair flared so that you can see that easily in contrast to the surface of the water and the, the beauty of virus and, and X cadis, you can skidder ’em some cat species like Centris, mother’s Day, Cadis actually skidder a little bit to try to get rid of that shuck. Craig (27m 28s): They’re trapped in it and they’ll skidder around the surface of the water. So you can do just that. You can pull just with a little twitch or you can pull your pattern to imitate that skittering aspect, that big fish golf keon. Dave (27m 41s): Right. That’s, this is great. So, so you got the Iris Cas, the Xga and the iris. So is that cadis, would that be called a, like an AER or a dryer, what would that be called? Craig (27m 52s): It is really an aer, it really imitates the pupa that’s caught in the shuck and you know, because the way that cat emerged, they rapidly emerged by that gas bubble in their exoskeleton that propels ’em up to the surface. They’re subject to all kinds of emergence difficulties and impairments. So quite a few of ’em, if you put a saint in the water, sometime leave your fly rod in your vehicle and go down some evening during a cat emergence with a little stain and you can stain up so many of these impaired cadi that are stuck in the shuck. Dave (28m 22s): Wow, this is great. So then you have the, and then the ex cadis might be for when you get to that point where you’re saying later when the fish are actually those big guys are coming out, the xca might be the one to use? Yeah, it’s Craig (28m 31s): Far more visible than they, whether they’re cas pattern. And so you can see it, but yet at lays on the water perfectly and it still has the trailing shuck that big selective trout keon. Dave (28m 42s): Yeah. And it looks like when you look at it, there’s different variations, but like an elk care cas just with the trailing shuck. Is that kind of what what It kind is, yes. Craig (28m 50s): Yep. Dave (28m 51s): Yeah, that’s it. Okay. And then body color can vary depending on what you want. But, and on, on the elk care cas you typically use elk care or do you use deer hair? Craig (28m 58s): Oh, you know, an elk care cas TROs elk care cadi is a very valuable pattern to have when fish are taking egg, laying cadi, you know, skittering egg laying cas. So that’s certainly one to have in your arsenal. But you can do the same thing with an xca just by skittering it. Mm, Dave (29m 15s): Gotcha. And is that how you fish? So if you were at that pool, it was in the evening, you’re in that just what you described and it’s getting dark and there’s these fish that are coming up, how would you fish that? Would you cast that xca it and then, then you do a little bit of skittering? Or would you let it sit? You Craig (29m 29s): Really have to observe and quite often fish are taking dead drifted cas then just give it to ’em straight upstream, dead drifted. But some of the bigger fish sometimes will only take, they’ll only seem to recognize in ke on a skittering cadis. So you have to get slightly upstream from them so that you can just barely skidder the cadis. Or sometimes they’re taking flies that are just popping up to the surface. And the beauty of of an ex cadis, you can pull it under, under just by a quick jerk and then allow it to pop right up because of that deer hair wing pop right up in front of the feeding fish. Dave (30m 5s): Oh wow. And Craig (30m 6s): It’s really a challenge. But it’s so cool to be able in the failing light to position yourself, you know, in that last light where you can still see that steely surface of the water and you can see those big noses and tails coming up and you watch that xca as you skidder it disappear under a big slurping brown trout, a big old hook nose rod brown trout. It’s so great to see. Dave (30m 31s): And, and is it, you know, we’re talking evenings or later in the day, is, are cadis, can you fish those early mornings midday, you know, throughout the day? Craig (30m 38s): You know, that’s the beauty of cas emergences and cas activity. Fish recognize that and they’ll feed on cas all summer long. And even during a salmon fly hatch, we find, you know, for a day or two the fish are on that big bug, but in the long run they really don’t want to eat that great big thing. They become very suspicious of huge flies like that. So I usually just fish a cas throughout the entire salmon fly emergence and just kill ’em on cadi. Dave (31m 5s): Oh you do? So when the salmon flies are hitting, you go just with a little smaller little cadis pat, like a what size 14 or something like that. Craig (31m 11s): 14 or 16. They, they take that much more readily than a big bug. They might bump a big size four salmon fly adult with their nose. But quite often, you know, you’ll hear anglers, they come in, Jesus crap, I had a hundred refusals. Well that’s what they were doing. They were just bumping it. Just fish a smaller fly a small cass and you’ll do very well. Dave (31m 31s): Okay, perfect. So, so that’s awesome. So that’s a little bit on the cadis and, and you have some CADs you mentioned in your, the new book, right? You have some cadis in there? Oh Craig (31m 39s): Yeah. Yep. We’ve got two very important cadis that you should, you know, the ex cadis and I caddis are in there tied with peasant tail and those are really the only CADs you need to fish cadis emergencies. Dave (31m 50s): Oh, gotcha. So the pheasant tail and so is the body basically the pheasant tail on the, on the xca? Yes. Oh, this is cool. So you’ve taken, you’ve taken some very famous, I mean the Xca is probably one of the most known names Out there and you’ve just tweaked it a little bit, just Craig (32m 4s): Tweak it a little bit and, and again, made it simpler. A lot of guys have a problem with dubbing. All they have to do is tie on four fibers from a pheasant tail and wrap ’em. And it does the same thing as dubbing. Dave (32m 14s): I know a dubbing isn’t, again, one of my nemesis. I always like everybody you strongly put too much on or too little. And then, well, Craig (32m 20s): And that’s the beauty of this little zon midge that that’s featured in the book for a dryly, you know, you take one or two pheasant tail fibers and just figure eight ’em around a wing of zon and you’re good to go. You don’t have to sit there and dub. And so many people have trouble dubbing a, a body of a midge, a 22, 24, 26 Midge, when all they have to do is wrap one or two strands of pheasant tail. Dave (32m 42s): There you go. So you just solved, you made a lot of people’s days better right now. So, okay. And and that’s it. And then the tip, because that is one thing because pheasant tail, if, if you don’t do it right, it can, like a fish eats it and all of a sudden it all breaks apart. So you’re saying talk about that. How do you protect it so it doesn’t break apart? Craig (32m 59s): Well, I’ll wrap up the pheasant tail material. Say I’m tying an xca if I tie the shuck in and I tie three or four strands of pheasant tail and I wrap ’em forward halfway. And then what I do with my working thread is I go back and crisscross through the pheasant tail material, just making four or three x’s, if you will, crisscrossing with your working thread. That fly is, is indestructible. The first time I ever used pheasant tail for any fly was tying big steelhead flies, dry flies fishing the dean in the bulky river years ago. And I would just take a big october ca pattern wrap pheasant tail, and then go back over it and figure eight or X through the, the body, the abdomen with my working thread. Craig (33m 44s): It’s indestructible. Dave (33m 45s): Okay. So that’s it. So basically, yeah, you wrap your pheasant tail up and then you just go back over it with a few wraps back and then back to the front and you’re good. Craig (33m 52s): Back to the front. It does not impact the, the flowability of the fly, but it greatly enhances the durability. So it’s worth just a couple wraps through with your working Dave (34m 1s): Thread. Okay, perfect. Well do you wanna, you mentioned the z om midge, we’re kind of, you wanna mention one more you have there on, on the dry so we can start thinking about this thing. Yeah. Craig (34m 11s): Matter of fact I’ll mention two more if you don’t mind. Yeah. One is the Elon Midge and one is the the beetle, but the Zon Midge, I stayed away from Midge fishing for so many years, like a lot of anglers. So you think, God, you know, a 24 26 fly with a big fish, we’re gonna be able to hook and land that fish. Well the beauty of of hooking a a, a fish that large with a small fly, you have a heck of a time even getting a barbless hook out of a fish. A lot of times I leave that barbless little midge in the fish in their jaw ’cause it’s hard to get out. Those little hooks bury into the material of a fish’s mouth. But at no time during the course of the fly fishing season will you find more rising fish than you will during the winter when they’re taking winter midges every day they’re on Midges. Craig (34m 55s): I’ve caught fish on Midges when it was six degree one time it was 22 below zero, geez. And Reynolds Pass who had the famous fly tire from Boston, Jack Garside. And Jack was off for Christmas spending time in Yellowstone. He said, I wanna go, go down and catch a winter Midge fish. I said, Jack, you know, it was 35 below zero in West Yellowstone. I said, you know, it’s gonna be 20 below. And the Madison, we get down to Reynolds pass, left my truck running, went down in between fish, we’d run up and warm our hands Wow. In the, in the truck. But they feed on Midges all winter long and it’s a lot of fun. Very few people take advantage of that. Dave (35m 32s): Yeah, that is true. Midges are huge. So throughout the winter you’ve got the midges and, and Bluing dogs. Right? Well you’ll see like later, but I guess more as you get towards spring. Yeah. Craig (35m 41s): You’ll, you’ll see bluing, you know, they kind of end here in, in November. Sometimes it’ll go as late as Thanksgiving and then they come back again in March. So, you know, and they’re multi brooded and I, I brought up the beetle only because I tie a very simple beetle pattern with foam and with pheasant tail for the body, you can make a big bulbous body out of pheasant tail and then just pull the foam over the top, put a couple of rubber legs out the side and you can imitate beetle. And I’ve caught fish God on living Livingston Spring Creeks and on the Madison Gallatin Henry’s for 12 months out of the year on beetles. Wow. And you know, a beetle has to plop, a beetle cannot land like a may fly just gently on the surface of the water they have to plop. Craig (36m 25s): And that’s why you tie a pheasant tail body to create a little bit more weight. So it plops when you cast it and fish a lot of times tear that fly land and they just roar out and grab it. Dave (36m 36s): Oh, right. And, and to make it plop. Is that something where, talk about that as you kind of, how do you do your cast so it plops? Craig (36m 42s): Well, you know, I fish what I call a splat cast. People look at me when I cast and they go, what in the heck are you doing? And it’s almost like making a pile cast. When I come forward with my cast, a lot of times it’s not a real delicate stop it at at nine o’clock and let it flutter down gently to the surface. I drive it into the water well ahead of the rising fish so that I can see my fly where it lands on the water, particularly small flies. And I call it a splat cast. My buddy Forrest Mankins from Whitefish came up the talented, the photographer from from Whitefish came up with it. He said, man, he said, you’re landing your fly with a splat. Craig (37m 23s): And I probably see why so that you can see where your fly landed and keep track of your fly. Dave (37m 28s): Nice. Yeah. The splat cast. That’s good. Yeah. And that’s how I know, I guess that’s kind of what I do too, when you try to get that thing just to, we were fishing mice up in Alaska and those, those splat just on their selves. But there are times that you know, you wanna make a, you wanna let them know it’s there. Right. Yeah. You want And it’s kind of similar with a beetle. Yes. Craig (37m 44s): Similar with a beetle and with an ant, you know, you want ’em to splat. Dave (37m 48s): Okay. Talk about that a little bit. So we, we talked about cat, that’s a good one. Right now as we’re talking, it’s, it’s, you know, mid-August. This episode’s probably gonna go live in October, so we’re kind of in the summertime, fall summer. But are those beetles, so you can fish those year round? Is that the case? I Craig (38m 3s): Fish bees year round. Yeah. It’s kind of interesting. You go down 30 degrees in the wintertime, 32 degrees, and you’re standing there on the Madison, you sit down, all of a sudden you see fish rising to midges and you’ll get a fish or two every now and then that won’t take a midge. And you can see particularly these big browns, you can see them waving around on the current and they’re taking subsurface midge pupil. What I do is I launch a beetle Out there and they’ll come over and they’ll just inhale that beetle. It’ll just make a small sucking noise as they suck the beetle in. Dave (38m 35s): Right. Cool. So beetles and then ants, is that probably the next number two terrestrial you should have in your box? Yeah. Craig (38m 42s): And you know, ants and you can tie ants with pheasant tails. One isn’t featured in the book, but just simply use the pheasant tail to create the ant, the gaster on ants, you know, a four gaster and wrap, one or two turns of hackle between. And man, you’re, you’re fishing ants, you can tie that fly in 30 seconds works like a groove. And this is, this is ant time right now. The flying ants swarms are out and the fish real, the big fish Keon ants. Dave (39m 9s): Oh, okay. So August is a good time for ants. Yep. Craig (39m 11s): August is your time for France and Yellowstone Country. Dave (39m 13s): Yellowstone. Okay. And this, it sounds, it seems like a lot of what we’re talking about too would apply. I mean, I’m heading out to the Deschutes next week and we’re gonna be middle of summer, it’s probably gonna be 90, a hundred degrees, but there’s gonna be trout fishing and it sounds like a lot of this could apply Out there too. I’m, I’m guessing ’cause cadis are huge Out there. Yep. Craig (39m 29s): Tomorrow uses all, all our fly patterns in Italy. We fished these flies all the way down into Patagonia, Argentina, Chile, Germany, Sweden, they’ve been fished all over the world, Japan. And they work wherever Trotter found. Perfect. Dave (39m 44s): Well this has been great. I I I’m glad we got into a little bit of the, because I know people love this, you know, getting some tips on the fishing back to the book a little bit here. You got this book coming out as you get ready that this goes live, I think this episode’s gonna go live when the, the book’s out so that people can check it out here. Are you thinking already a another book or is this kind of, what are your thoughts there? You always have another book thinking about it? Or are you kind of not? Craig (40m 6s): Oh, I’ve been working on a book for years about my police chief time in, in, in Yellowstone. And my old friend Tom Broka, a lot of you remember Tom, he was with nbc Oh yeah. News and him and Dave Gru and, and our, all our wives were having dinner one night. Dave did sound effects for on Golden Pond and some other other hits. And Tom says, would you tell us a few stories about your police chief here? And we won’t get into that. But I told the few stories I had on their hands and knees laughing. And Tom said, you gotta promise me that you’re gonna write, write this up. Oh, Dave (40m 41s): Nice. And I thought Craig (40m 42s): That a hundred thousand words, and every time I think I’m closing in on it, one of my old buddies calls up and says, you gotta tell this story. And you got, so I got a list a mile long again of some other stories I have to tell in this book. Dave (40m 54s): Oh, that’s great. Craig (40m 55s): It’d be my only, I think I’ve authored and co-authored nine or 10 fly fishing books and this would be my only non fly fishing book title. Dave (41m 3s): You gotta do it. I think I, I agree. I think you told a couple stories on the first podcast we did where it was a unique time, right? You had the, there was a biker gang right in West Yellowstone at the time. Craig (41m 12s): Oh God. There was a local gang and of course all the gangs hadn’t to Sturgis would stop in, in West Yellowstone and raise holy heck. And you know, we had a great relationship with the bike gangs, we got campgrounds for ’em and and treated them right. And they treated us right and everybody got along harm. Dave (41m 30s): That’s cool. Yeah, I think that’s the success on all this stuff stuff is that, you know, everybody Out there has got a different, you know, whatever agenda, but everybody’s pe just people, most people are good people. Right. So it feels like, yeah, some Craig (41m 42s): Of our, our first, some of our first fly tires were prisoners and the judge, local judge at the time when we, we, I was still the police chief when we started our business for the first couple years. And she would let me give them the key to their jail cell and they would go to blue ribbon flies at night and tie flies all night long. Pay for their upkeep, pay for their meals. Wow. It worked out for everybody. It was great. Dave (42m 5s): There you go. That is crazy. That good stuff. Nice. And of course, yeah, Tom broke eye, you gotta whatever he says you gotta go with. Right. He, oh God, I love watching him because back in the day he had that style. It was almost, I don’t know, how would you explain Tom Broka style? He was like serious, but at the same time not he had this funny comedy right behind it. Yeah. Craig (42m 23s): He always had that little smile and we had that, that liquid, liquid voice. And he was so, such an honest reporter, he never very totally unbiased. And he told news exactly like it was. And we had the privilege of spending time with Tom and, and his wife Meredith at their place in New York for a few years. And we go to the production of NBC Nightly News every night with Tom. And it was quite a joy to watch that whole production. He was, he was the best. Dave (42m 53s): Yeah, definitely. So you were there, so you actually saw that whole production on whatever the, I think it was at Channel eight, right? Or the NBC, right? Craig (43m 1s): NBC, yep. NBC Nightly News with Tom Broka. And I, I have photos of Jackie and I sitting there at the desk at Tom’s desk with NBC Nightly news, you know, the sign right above our head Dave (43m 13s): Right there. Nice guys. Well on this book, you know, so you got another one coming, likely, hopefully we’ll see this one. What is that experience like for you? Is it just easy to pump out a book or is that a serious effort? Is it take a lot of challenge Craig (43m 26s): Once you get going? You know, once you start writing and you, you put your mind to it and you write, you know, a few hundred words a day and then you move on, you go fishy. You know, I certainly can’t sit there for eight hours and write and some that you, you, you might write for an hour or other days you might write for four hours, but you have to write when the mood hits you. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and you go, God, I gotta write this right now. And I do that quite a bit as well. But I get excited, I get excited writing about fly time and, and you know, and, and fly fishing and Yvonne Marrow and I always talk about that we are so excited to write, to put our thoughts and do a little bit of this QR code filming for this. Craig (44m 10s): And we’re so excited for this book to come out. Dave (44m 13s): Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. I I feel like the, the book is great because books, you know, are never gonna go away. Things have changed, you know, we’re doing a podcast now with audio only, but I feel like being able to take it the next step, like people listening now, how do they take it to the next step? Well, they can listen to some podcasts we did maybe read, they can read your books. But for what you do with the QR code, people can actually watch you guys on the water doing the techniques and they can implement this stuff. Right. Yeah. Craig (44m 37s): And you know what’s, what’s really cool is we try to bring this to, you know, so many anglers make fly time and fly fishing seem like something that they have to do to conquer. You know, it’s, we have to do this to conquer what we like to think of in our pursuits of fly fishing and fly tiger. It is just opportunities to learn. And, you know, there, when we focus on simplicity, enjoyment, fun and efficiency and effectiveness, they’ll follow along. Once, once you’re having a great time and you do what the river tells you to do and you tie your flies accordingly. Dave (45m 12s): Yep. And on that note, just what the river tells you is really a key, but what does that mean for you? So you get out to the river, it means looking at the hatches, seeing, just sitting there, right? Like observing for a little bit before you jump in. You know, Craig (45m 24s): I’m not a patient person. I’ve become more patient elk hunting and, and wild Turkey hunting. Mm. Dave (45m 31s): Yeah. Craig (45m 31s): Taught me patience. But I’d like to get to the river, not even tie on any tippet, just walk to the river, sit on the bank, string my rod, tie on tippet and just watch what’s going on. Watch for surface activity, look for insects along the bank. And again, it j it unfolds just like opening up a book. I’ll never forget, I had people move here from Las Vegas a few years ago just to slow down. They were kind of retiring and, and they wanted to winter midge fish. So I get ’em down to the river and we’re sitting on, I’m sitting on the bank and they’re standing there and I said, now of course you see all those fish rise and they’re nervously walking around in the snow. I thought they were cold. Craig (46m 12s): No, they were looking for rising fish, but they didn’t see ’em. And I said, it finally dawned on me, they were winking at each other when I’d say, see those fish? And it, when yeah, sure. I said, sit on the bank. And we sat down and I watched, I’ll never forget the young lady’s eyes got real big and she went, oh my God, look at the fish. They didn’t see ’em because number one, they were very impatient. They were stomping around number two, just getting on the level, sitting on, on the bank. And all of a sudden they started seeing those noses and tails and their eyes got big and we tied on flies and they each caught a few fish and it really made a difference to them. Dave (46m 49s): There it is. That is, so observe is a good tip from this episode today. Patagonia (46m 53s): Let’s take it outta here with our, this is our conservation corner segment where we’re gonna talk about, you know, I know you guys have done some amazing work Out there, so I wanna touch on that today. This is presented by Patagonia. Obviously they can go to patagonia.com, they can check out the book and all the great stuff that Patagonia has going. But first let’s do that. So, so people can find the book that’s easy, that’s gonna be Out there everywhere. Give us a conservation, maybe something you’ve done in the past, something people can check out or, or what you, what would be a takeaway message you would have. Because obviously Patagonia has done some amazing stuff over the years as well. 1% for the Planet (47m 26s): Well, you know, it’s cool that Yvonne and I co-founded 1% for the Planet and next year, this upcoming year is, is our 25th anniversary. Hmm. And it’s really cool because it coincides with the fact that we’re gonna break $1 billion in conservation giving 1,000,000,001 billion. That’s amazing. We’re almost there any, any, any week now. We’re gonna cross that, that magic $1 billion mark. And neither one of us a few years ago thought we, we’d see that. But it’s, that’s so gratifying to see a little, little deal that was started. He and I sitting on the bank of the Matt River talking about the, the little projects that we’re involved in from a conservation standpoint, not knowing, even though we had been close friends for many years, that we were both doing at least 1% of our gross, The same thing. Sales, The same thing. Not net profit, but gross sale. And we started the found or the organization at that time, at 25 years ago, almost 25 years ago to the day we were sitting there talking about what we were gonna do. And we did it and, and now we’ve stepped back. But to watch what that organization has done and some of the conservation projects and locally, you know, a lot of people in Montana go, whoa, what’s 1% done for, well, you know, it’s done million dollars worth of conservation in the state of Montana. Oh, it has? Yeah. Yeah. And you know, businesses, member businesses can dictate where their money goes to conservation. So if it’s really, it’s like paying your income tax, but telling the government where you want your money to go Where you want. So that’s the cool thing about 1% is that once you get involved, you can actually direct your money to certain places that you want to see it. Exactly. So it, and it’s infectious once you start it, you know, the first check’s the hardest check, you write it and you go, God, I hope we can do this. And all of a sudden you can’t wait to write the next check. And from an advertising standpoint, it was huge. We didn’t, that was not our intent. But when customers find out that you’re supporting what they love, they support you big time. Yeah. That’s so great. And if people want to check out 1%, they can just go to just 1% for the planet and they can get more information. 1% for the planet. Yep. Dot org, and they’ll see all the projects. Our biggest growth right now is in France. We’re signing up hundreds of members from business. Oh really? From France. Yeah. So you’re going all over basically. This is not just the us this is all over the world. Yes. All over the world. We have almost 5,000 businesses now. Love It. Yeah. Dave (49m 56s): It seems like we’re, I was just watching, I’ve been watching some history, you know, and it, you go back to the, you know, the founding fathers, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, during the Civil War, you know, the, the World War ii, like all these huge giant things, which were big, right? The biggest, I mean, it could have gone the different way. I feel like the environment is that next thing. Do you feel like that is the thing we’re at now similar to all these other big events in the past that we have to take this on? Is that how you guys feel about it? Craig (50m 23s): It, it better be here. We’re all done. You know, I mean, when you look at climate change and when you look all the, at the environmental factors that are coming at us like a freight train, we better start to invest and investigate and do something about ’em, or we’re not gonna be able to be good ancestors to our kids and grandkids. Dave (50m 43s): Exactly. No, this is so cool. And I think that’s what’s been awesome for me to have you on and Yvonne, and you know, really just be talking about this because the more people that take action, you know, that’s how we’re gonna get there. And so this is good. Well, let’s, we will definitely put links out to that for 1% for the planet. Let’s get a couple of tips out here and then we’ll take it out. One, you know, just on what we were talking about, you gave us a bunch, but what else? Somebody’s going out this summer and they want to go catch some fish on dry eyes. What else would you tell ’em? Is there a tip or two you’d tell them to have more success? Craig (51m 13s): Well, you know, there’s so much information Out there and you really have to shuffle and be able to separate the good information from the bad information. But what I really stress, if you’re a beginner and you’ve never been before, let’s say you’re gonna wanna come out and fish the Yellowstone River or the Madison or Henry’s Fork, whatever, take one day, walk into a fly shop and say, I need an instructor guide. I need somebody to show me the ropes. And I don’t wanna sit in a boat all day and throw, take a rig with two bobbers and mindfully watch two bobbers. I wanna learn how to fish, whether it’s dryly, nymph, whatever. And you make that known to your instructor. I think that pay sets huge dividends to beginning anglers. Craig (51m 56s): And for, so guys become a little bit more patient. I know a lot of guys are here for four or five days and they want to fish as much as they can, but just go down, park at the parking lot, walk to the river and sit on the bank and spend 10 minutes just watching what goes on. And watch the insects. Take a look at your flies or walk into a fly shop and say, you know, I’m here to fish a couple of of days. Can you gimme a half a dozen fly patterns that are gonna work and do what the river tells you to do? And you’re gonna have a great experience. Practice your casting before you get here, or take a casting instruction lesson. I know my old fly shop, they give lessons. Craig (52m 38s): My old buddy John Ek gives caption lessons. The dividends at that half an hour casting session pace is well worth the small price to take that lesson. Dave (52m 48s): Yep, definitely. Awesome. All right, Craig. Well that’s well said. We will send everybody out to check out pheasant tail simplicity recipes and techniques for successful fly fishing. If they wanna check out the book, that’s gonna be, I’m sure everywhere they can go to patagonia.com. But yeah, appreciate all your time today, Craig. This has been awesome and we’ll hopefully keep in touch with you as we go. And Craig (53m 6s): Do me one favor, if you’re around Bozeman on October 7th, come to Montana State University and come do our kickoff event. We’re gonna have Keith McCafferty’s gonna moderate it, MSU libraries and James th are gonna host it. Oh, nice. It’s gonna be a great, great event. We’re gonna have a lot of fun there. Dave (53m 23s): Oh, perfect. So this is October 7th, 2025, right? Yes. And this will be at Montana State University? Craig (53m 30s): Yes. At seven, probably seven o’clock. There’ll be a whole bunch of information coming out of it. And the following day on October 8th, if you happen to be in Di Montana at the Patagonia outlet story, Vaughn and I will be there in person. We’re gonna tie a few flies and answer a whole lot of questions and have a great book signed Oh, sweet. On that date. So please, if you get a chance, be there. Dave (53m 53s): This is awesome. I think that this is great because I think this is the perfect segue and so everybody can do that. I hopefully we’ll maybe be able to get Out there as well. So October 8th, and then, then I can see you guys in person as well, get some, are you doing like a little book signing? Yeah, Craig (54m 6s): We’re gonna be signing books on the eighth at, at the Patagonia store. And on the seventh we’re gonna just have a big party and, and a big kickoff event that night. And a, a key question and answer time moderated by Keith, so it’ll be a fun event. Dave (54m 21s): Okay, great, Greg, well, we’ll get all links in the show notes for everything we talked about today and then until then, yeah, definitely have a great rest of the summer and we’ll, we’ll talk to you soon. Craig (54m 28s): And likewise, Dave, thanks so much for this. Dave (54m 31s): Like we said, you can find Craig’s book and Yvonne’s book here at Pheasant Tail Simplicity, pheasant tail simplicity, we mentioned it. patagonia.com will have it anywhere Out there. Search it up and let Craig know you heard this podcast and, and we will hopefully get him back on the podcast down the line. Always an amazing episode. If you haven’t checked into Wet Fly Swing Pro, this is your best chance to connect with our community, build trips together. And we’ve got some good ones coming. The Atlantic Salmon Newfoundland trip is right around the corner. We’re gonna be giving away a big trip to that here shortly. So if you’re interested in that trip and want to get a spot, send me an email, dave@wetlyswing.com. That’s the best way to find out and get access to all the good stuff we go have going for Atlantic Salmon, everything this coming year. Dave (55m 17s): All right. That’s all I have for you today. Hope you have a great afternoon. Hope you have a great evening, and if it’s a morning, hope you’re enjoying it. I’m not sure where you are. Maybe right now you are out hunting, getting ready to do a little bit of hunting. You’re listening to a little fishing podcast to get you fired up, Craig. Hope this gave you some energy on your day, and we’ll look forward to talking to you soon and seeing you on that next podcast. Outro (55m 40s): Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly, swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly swing.com.