791 | Smallmouth Bass Fishing with Wesley Hodges – Virginia

Dave (3s): Today’s guest grew up fishing with a can pool in Texas. Discovered fly fishing at a boy scout camp, and years later made a decision in a tiki bar in Ecuador that changed everything. He came home and built Virginia’s first dedicated fly fishing and hunting lodge. 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. In today’s episode, Wesley Hodges takes us behind the oars on the new and James Rivers. We get into why smallmouth bass are the most underrated species out there, how he built a year-round program that blends drift boats, dogs top water eats, and what it really takes to guide people from all walks of life, including brand new anglers and seasoned travelers. Dave (50s): By the end of this episode, you’ll learn how to think differently about trip planning, why you need to get super close to the bank, and why one inch can make a difference in a 10 inch white casting. Three inches off the bank is gold. And what makes Virginia feel like the New West? Here he is. Wesley Hodges from Wesley Hodges fly fishing.com. How you doing, Wes? Wesley (1m 12s): I’m Doing Great. How are you guys doing? Dave (1m 13s): We’re Doing Great today. Yeah, always good to have a conversation about fishing. We’re gonna talk about your area. I think you have some unique things going, not only fishing, but hunting. We’re gonna talk about the lodge you have out there and, and kind of where you’re coming from, which I think we have a, a decent chunk of people up in that part of the country, the northeast part. So we’re gonna get into all that today. Gives people some small mouth tips as well. But before we get there, take us back real quick on fly fishing. You know, how’d you get into it? What’s your first memory, Wesley (1m 42s): Man? I was, well, I think that, you know, the, the evolution of, of this, this career that I have, it starts way before I ever touched a fly rod. I was born and raised in, in Texas, northeast Texas, on a big piece of property that my family had. And it was a endless, you know, amount of adventure with rivers and ponds and hunting and fishing. I was always more fascinated by the fishing side of things with cane poles, you know, graduating up to zep code 30 threes bait casters, spin rods. And then I was also heavy in the Boy Scouts where I got my Eagle scout. Wesley (2m 25s): And the first time I touched a fly rod or even read about a trout, was in Colorado at a boy scout camp. And I snuck outta my tent one morning and went down to this high mountain lake, and there was an old man fly fishing on this lake. And I was watching him mesmerized completely by it. And I slowly creeped over there to him, like a little 13-year-old creep. And he asked me if I wanted to try it, and I did. And then I had about a hundred bucks that my mother gave to me for the trip, the week long trip. And I convinced the scoutmaster to take me into a local Walmart, and I bought a rod and some flies. Wesley (3m 6s): And that’s, that was the start of my fly fishing. Oddly enough, I did not do it again until I was about 26 and I of the military. But it did stick with me. It stuck with me basically until I was 26 and went to school at Virginia Tech. That’s why I started doing it again. Dave (3m 24s): Gotcha. Wow, that’s amazing. I, I always love, you know, it’s always cool to hear these stories because they’re always different, you know, but there’s always a connection, you know, like the planting the seed, the, you know, the guy there, which I’m guessing you only saw, you never saw that guy again. Wesley (3m 36s): Never again. No, never Again, someone, some would say that he was an angel and then, you know, some would say that have been in the fishing game for as long as, you know, as they have, they might say that he was a demon, however you wanna look at it. But it, it, it definitely, whatever, whatever happened, or me watching that guy do that and then catch these trout, it, it stuck with me. I remember, I remember laying, you know, in the, the sand of Iraq and on a mission, and it was really hot. And I was, I would reflect back on that, that morning and how cold that water was that we were standing in fishing for trout. And it stuck with me, it still sticks with me today that, that first memory of of, of seeing the fly cast go out and catch trout. Dave (4m 22s): Yep. Wow, that’s amazing. And what happened when you were 26? What triggered you to get back into it? Man, Wesley (4m 28s): I, I had gotten outta the military. I’d done, you know, spent quite a bit of, you know, just over seven years in the 82nd Airborne Division. And it was a very intense time. You know, the war was really going on. That was in 2000 and I guess 10 when I got out. So I, I was in 2002 to 2010 during the heat of the, the wars. And, you know, man, I was, I was laying in my house. I’d just gotten discharged from the military medically and trying to figure out what I was gonna do next. And I just had this desire to go camping in the mountains of North Carolina. And from there, you know, I, I went and bought a fly rod at an orvis shop on the way, and then just went to the Maggie Valley, North Carolina, set up my tent and just went and fly fishing and met another old man that had caught a bunch of fish and was kind of showing me how to swing nymphs in some of those mountain streams in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. Dave (5m 26s): Wow. There you go. And so eventually you get into where you are now, where you have outfit or guide operation, you’ve got a lodge. Maybe talk about that. Let, let’s talk about where you’re located now and kind of the main rivers and species you’re fishing for. Wesley (5m 41s): Yeah, man, it’s getting to where I’m at now was one hell of a process and journey. It’s, it’s comical, you know, it was absolutely necessary that it all happened the way that it did. But it was, it’s, there’s a lot of humor involved in it. I was, you know, going to college at Virginia Tech and I, I wasn’t really finished with my service to the country. I could say psychologically I was not finished. I still wanted to keep doing it. And that got me involved in some interview processes with some, some agencies, and which ultimately led me going to Ecuador and living down there for a little while, studying Spanish, getting cultural acclimation, becoming fluent in language, I guess you what? Wesley (6m 27s): And as well as the culture. And while I was down there, I was surfing, kinda living out of a t tiki hut, if you will, on the beach in between my classes. And I just said, you know what? I don’t want to work for the government anymore at all. I don’t wanna do it. And I made my mind up at a little tiki bar that I was gonna go back home and start a fishing business on the New River, which I did. I came back home, started a fishing business in December of 2013, and went, broke as hell within the first few months because no one starts a fishing business in the middle of winter. Oh, right. Yeah. And so that kind of led me down this journey of getting a corporate job for a little while, which worked out well for guiding, I was able to grow my business up. Wesley (7m 17s): And then I got offered a job in, in Maine, grand Lake Stream, Maine, to, to help manage a lodge. So I kind of put my guide business kind of on hold and moved to Maine and got to run this lodging operation at Weatherby Sporting Camps, which is a really historic lodge in the country. And in doing that, I fell in love with the hospitality, hospitality side of it all meeting clients, you know, showing them something different than just a casting class and, and landing fish. It’s a bigger picture that We are ultimately trying to make here, and that is creating a, an experience that is unmatched. Wesley (7m 58s): And when I left that season, I traveled around the country hunting, fishing, living out of a tent, and had this idea in my head that I was gonna start the first true hunting and fishing lodge in the state of Virginia. And that’s, that’s what I did. I came back from that, that time away from Maine, called the owner and told him that I wasn’t coming back, and I was gonna start one in Virginia. And that is, that was what I did. And yeah, man, it’s awesome. I love it. We know the, the lodge is located on the, basically the headwaters of the James River where the cow pasture and the Jackson merge. And, you know, we run year round bird hunting and fishing 365. Wesley (8m 40s): We’re taking people out somewhere to do something. We have a wild trout fishery just outside, just outside the, the bank, the, the lodge itself. Then we have the James, the Jackson, the ma, the cow pasture, the New River, and many other tributary rivers, you know, in the area. This place is unique because there’s so much water all merging into this major river system, the James River, that any given day, if one river’s high and muddy, there’s another one that’s, that’s fishable, so we don’t have to stop trips. Dave (9m 11s): Yeah. Wow. That’s awesome. So, and what’s the closest town to where you’re at? Or where is your lodge located? Wesley (9m 16s): It’s technically Eagle Rock, Virginia. Dave (9m 18s): Yeah, Eagle Rock. Okay. And then, so basically, and people are coming in year round for whether fishing, hunting, or both. Are you guys doing a lot of trips where people come in and do both? Wesley (9m 27s): We do, yeah, we do multiple days. It might be two days of fishing, two days of hunting. I mean, we, we have people to stay for a week up to just single day floats. We, we kind of do it all. We’ve got a pretty big operation, got about 10 guides, four hunting guides as well, the whole staff chef, everything at the lodge. And yeah, we can get, you know, we try to keep it to about 10 people at a time that show up to the lodge, kind of keep it small and intimate so it’s not, you know, overwhelming, but we can get up to 15 people. Dave (9m 58s): Yeah. Okay. And the species is, or one of them you, you mentioned is smallmouth bass, that that’s one that a lot of people are coming for. Yeah, man, Wesley (10m 7s): We are making a huge push, you know, across the board to inform people of small mouth baths, you know, all, all too often, I was just in a really deep conversation with the anglers at the lodge last night, and I was asking them why trout? Like, why is trout what, what you want to catch? And they said, I don’t know, it’s just what we, what we, what we see everywhere. And it’s like, okay, well we’re gonna change your mindset, you know, you know, a lot of people think that fly fishing equals trout. Well, fly fishing is simply just a tool. The fly rod and reel line is just a tool to catch any species you want to catch. And smallmouth is, is our game here in Virginia. Wesley (10m 48s): I tell people often that Virginia, we have trout, but We are a small mouth state. That’s what We are, you know, unlike, you know, Montana, they have some small mouth, but they’re a trout state. And so kind of the same concept here. You know, we, everywhere you go, you can catch smallmouth in the state of Virginia and that, that makes it just a really unique, you know, system itself. And on top of that, smallmouth are readily available and ready to eat roughly nine months outta the year. You can almost push that to 12 months outta the year if you, if you wanna fish in the dead of winter. But our season starts March 1st, and it runs all the way until basically almost Thanksgiving, to be honest with you. Wesley (11m 30s): We pushed the, we pushed it last year And we were catching lots of small mouth all the way up until Thanksgiving. Yeah. Dave (11m 35s): Gotcha. Okay. And, and the, and March 1st. So now as we’re talking, we’re kind of going into June’s, like right around the corner. This probably will go live later in July, maybe even August. Talk about that, like if it’s, let’s just take it to like August, early August. What’s that look like for Smallmouth during that time of year? Wesley (11m 52s): Well, you know, the, so the seasons we have, as far as smallmouth are concerned, we start calling out pres spawn roughly March 1st. It’s really dependent upon water temperature. But March 1st, you know, we, we have officially put away our shy guns up until Turkey season, And we start just going after smallmouth. You know, it’s not a numbers game in March, it is a quality game, is what it is. You’re looking at potentially catching four to five fish a day that are gonna be just world class, you know, four to six pound bass. That’s what you’re looking for each day and catching, you know, multiple of fish like that, of that size. Then you go into the spawning timeframe, you know, that usually runs somewhere on average, late April until early May. Wesley (12m 38s): You know, you’re looking at a two week window for the vast, the large amount of small amount to be spawning in that timeframe. We always say the last full moon in April is the trigger for that, that to actually occur. So you got pres spawn up until that last full moon in April, then you go into your spawning phase, then you go into posts spawn, and that usually is mid-May, you know, all the way until about beginning of June. So we’re, I would say that we’re kind of in post spawn now. This year is a little bit, I would say forward of that, meaning I think they spawned earlier and they’re more into their trying to get into their summer haunts right now. Wesley (13m 20s): We had a warm spring, and then you get into that, that mid-June all the way until about early October, and you’re in nothing but top water season and just throwing big frog patterns, boole bugs, some homemade cork poppers, stuff like that. All, all summer long. I mean, you’re talking top water from sunrise to sunset, that, that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s interesting fishing these river systems, you know, everyone thinks that, you know, you’re casting at big logs in the middle of the river, and yeah, you do catch fish, but what we target is about three inches off the bank and about a foot and a Half of water. These big fish Dave (13m 59s): Three, three inches off the bank. That’s Wesley (14m 1s): Right. Yep. It’s, you know, there’s an old rule of thumb by a guy named Ellie Rhodes, who used to get on the James one inch from the bank equals 20 inch fish, two inches from the bank equals a 10 inch fish. Dave (14m 12s): And and why is that? Is, is that because the, what are the, what do the big fish know? Why do they wanna be closer to the bank? Wesley (14m 17s): Well, the couple reasons the, the topography of the river system, there’s always a small ditch right along the bank that can be from current, kind of, you know, causing kind of an undercut bank. It could be from logs and rocks, getting pushed down river off the bank, but it creates a little bitty depression for the most part, the entire length of the bank. And it’s just a small ditch, you know, and it only takes a couple inches in change in depth, couple inches I say. And that can hold a big fish, a 20 inch fish that doesn’t take much for these fish to hold, but they’re in there eating crayfish, they’re eating cicadas, falling off the trees, frogs, stuff like that. Wesley (14m 58s): Now, I’m not saying we don’t catch big fish in other places, but that’s typically what we do. Also, psychologically that gives a target for the clients to cast at, which kind of keeps their head in the game the whole day, you know, hit that rock just off the bank, hit that log, hit that little, that little depression along the bank. It’s much easier to keep clients entertained when they have a a bullseye. They’re trying to cast that than just have ’em throw it aimlessly out in the middle of the river. Dave (15m 25s): So when you guys are floating down, are, are you guys floating this? Talk about that. What are the boat, are you guys using rafts or drift boats? What’s that look like? Wesley (15m 32s): That’s correct. Yeah. We’re using graf, grafs and Drift boats. We’re recently, you know, gotten away from our rafts and using this one particular model of drift boat that is kind of our go-to go anywhere kind of drift boat. I think they’ve been on your podcast Blue Ridge Boat work. Oh, yeah, blue Ridge, yep. Yeah, those boats are, they’re, they’re incredible for what, what we do. Nice. Yeah. So we’re kind of getting away from our rafts altogether and using just the drift boats. Dave (15m 59s): Yeah. And, and is Blue Ridge drift boats? Are they, what type of boat is that? Is that a wood boat? Wesley (16m 4s): No, no, it’s a, don’t get my, Dave (16m 8s): Yeah, Wesley (16m 8s): Think it materials nomenclature wrong here, but it’s like A-U-H-M-W really high dent. That’s right. Kinda like a Boulder Bow works, but maid, specifically for this kind of east coast fishing we do, they, they don’t catch on rocks or logs, they just slide right off of them, which makes it really nice for us, you know, and we’re, when we’re fishing in these areas, you talk, we’re only fishing in a foot and a half, two foot of water sometimes. And these big fish get really spooky by a boat that rocks and makes a lot of noise. We call it a boat that’s pushy, if you will. And having the right boat does help us out because when we’re in those really shallow gravel flats targeting these fish, it, we gotta be completely still and noise free to, otherwise we’ll spook these fish out. Dave (16m 56s): Gotcha. Yeah, it was episode 5 83 with Brownie Lyles Drift boat. Yeah. He talked about, yeah, it’s a real unique boat. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that because it’s, it definitely has a unique design and like you said, with the material is also a pretty unique, so, but that’s quiet. So that boat is pretty quiet in the water. Pescador on the fly offers a full range of fly fishing gear for any angler at any budget. With premium rods delivered directly to you. The L ray G six is the most packable high performance fly rod on the market, performing like a four piece rod, but with unmatched portability in six pieces. And you can get 10% off your next order right now if you use the code wet fly swing at pescador on the fly.com. Dave (17m 40s): Never fly without your G six. Discover the L Race series and more at pescador on the fly.com. Patagonia just launched the next evolution in waiters and they’re built for anglers just like you. The Swift current line includes ultralight, packable options for the hiking crew and expedition ready waiters. 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So stop settling for flimsy mass produced gear, level up with the gear that’s built to last and engineered for real adventure. Go to wet life swing.com/intrepid right now to get started. That’s I-N-T-R-E-P-I-D Intrepid Camp gear. Get started right now. Wesley (20m 8s): Oh, it’s very quiet. Yeah. I mean, you know, a fiberglass boat, you hit a rock and it makes a loud hollow Yeah. Thud these boats, it just absorbs it super well. You don’t really get that crash, if you will. It’s more of a slide on top of a rock and then slides off of it. Oh yeah. Which is really unique. That’s Dave (20m 26s): Awesome. Yeah, I think I joked with Brody on that episode. I think I was like, this thing looks, it’s like the Tesla of, right. I mean, it’s so unique and it kind of has those cuts almost like, actually, now that I think about the new, you know, the Tesla truck or whatever, but it does your boat, is it, does he have one standard or what, what would your boat, how would we see a picture of your boat out there? Wesley (20m 45s): Well, so you’ll see, we, we can get you a picture of it. Yeah. The, I personally use what is a different boat called a high country drift boat, which are custom made in banner elk. That’s the one that I use. I’ve been using those for a while. But all my guides, I supply their boats for them. And we just using the, the, the Blue Ridge boats just because it’s so, it’s such a workhorse boat. And the best part in my opinion is if anything goes wrong with it, Browning and his team will drive up on site and fix it on site and then leave. Hmm. Wow. Which is, you don’t see that kind of service in the industry. Dave (21m 21s): Yeah. That’s service. Yeah, that’s right. And where, where are they located? What’s their, where’s Wesley (21m 25s): Their brownie is out of, like, down by Bristol, Tennessee. Dave (21m 29s): Okay. Tennessee, yeah. Wesley (21m 30s): Yeah, on the, on the Watauga River. So he has his operation. Yeah, he has his operation down there. Dave (21m 36s): Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So, so you have the drift boats that are there and then, you know, as you’re floating down, maybe describe that a little bit. Let’s, I mean, we’ve got these different seasons. You talked about, you know, the summer. Let’s just go to the top water because I think that’s something people are interested in. What does that look like when you’re floating down the river? Give us a, a kind of a day in the life. Are you guys, you know, describe that when you’re on the water. Wesley (21m 59s): Yeah, so the, the days, you know, they’re, they’re, they vary. Some days it’s gonna be an early morning float. We’ve done sunrise floats to about noon when it’s really hot, get guys off the water, they come back to the lodge and they hang out. We’ve done noon to, to dark floats. Typically speaking, we see the evening bite is best. Typically speaking that, that six o’clock till about eight 30 by window is usually really, really, you know, incredible. We start seeing significant drops in water levels, usually late June. Right now. We’ve had a lot of rain recently, so the water’s up, which has made really epic frog bites, big chugging motions, disturbing a lot of water. Wesley (22m 42s): But in the summertime we’re talking low water conditions, little reference point, the James River is probably about 2000 CFS for good summertime. Top water flows like we’re looking for, we’re talking 700 to 600 flows. The New River, which is a massive river system, it’s pushing three to 4,000 right now, maybe a little bit more, which is still fishable for us, even on top water and streamers, you know, we’re looking for around a thousand to 1500 in the middle of summer is what we’re wanting. Yeah. Just because it opens up the river bottom so much so that we can target certain things, logs, rock piles, depressions in the river, bottom ledges, stuff like that. Wesley (23m 29s): So anyways, you know, our floats typically run eight hours long, you know, and it is a lot of casting, a lot of floating lines. I mean, we’re getting really technical with ’em too. You know, 10 to 13 foot liters we’re using floating lines that we cut down, down and kind of custom taper ourselves by adding different monofilaments to ’em just to minimize the amount of splash and spook, you know, that we might cause with these fish. You know, there’s a couple fly lines out of there, and I don’t know the names of them yet. Hotlines fly company, they use them a lot. They have a clear shooting head on ’em so that, you know, the, the, the shadows won’t spook the fish as they float over top of them. Wesley (24m 11s): Yeah. All that comes into effect. We’re getting really technical with these big small mouth in the middle of summer. Really technical. Yeah. And then if a top water bite is not working, we custom tie these specific crayfish patterns that we use that we almost dead drift down super banks, very lightweight, very small in size. But these, these, these crayfish that we have are just, they’re everywhere in our river systems everywhere. You can’t get in the water without spooking out 30, 40 crate fish. Dave (24m 45s): Oh, wow. Nice. So if they’re on the poppers, you guys are going strong on that. If not, you’re getting down. Are you, and are you using sinking lines to, to get those down? No Wesley (24m 54s): Sir. Floating lines. Yeah, Dave (24m 55s): Just all floating. Okay. Yep. What does that, let’s take it to the top boil, let’s say it is a good, you know, it’s that summertime you’re floating down, they’re, they’re on the top water. Are you still casting towards that, you know, within as close as you can get to the bank, typically? Wesley (25m 8s): Yeah, We are. And it’s kind of a team effort and it’s kind of hard to really, you know, show this without being on video. The guy in the front of the boat. So there’s no angler that cast or lands his fly parallel to the boat. Every cast is going downstream of the boat. ’cause we want our flies to reach those fish before the boat does, if that makes any sense. So a lot of downstream casting, very, very, very, very minuscule movement. Just the dimple of that fly hitting the water alone will alert fish within 10, 15 feet and then we just dead drift them. If we do move them, it is a very faint little wiggle just to make the, the legs move a little bit and then we dead drift. Wesley (25m 49s): Oftentimes we’re dead drifting 15, 20 seconds and then we pick up and drop it again toward, towards a rock, towards a log. A lot of times we can see these fish move, we see the big shadow come up underneath the poppers and stare at ’em. It’s incredibly exciting. You know, we have a lot of clients that blow it. I mean, we as guides blow it too, because we’re watching the fish and he’s hovering underneath your popper, staring at it. And if you tickle it too much, they go away. It’s really intense. Wow. Really intense. But, but a lot really enjoyable too. Watching a 20 to 22 inch small mouth bass just basically have his lips against your popper and you can’t move it. Wesley (26m 31s): Wow. Dave (26m 31s): Oh, and you can’t, yeah, you can’t mess with it. So how does that look? Let’s, so if you, you’ve got this fly drifting down, trying to not putting any movement on it, and I’m, I’m assuming the water’s pretty slow. Are you guys fishing kind of like pool type slow glides, or what, what, what’s the water current look like? Wesley (26m 46s): That’s right. Yeah. A lot of times what we’re looking for is, you know, we have a couple rods rigged up with different things. We get into a riffle, we’re gonna throw crayfish and we’re gonna strip some small streamers bait fish patterns through riffles. Once we get into that tail out, that long tail out into a long pool, we’re picking the poppers up and we’re targeting fish on poppers. We typically are not throwing popping movie like poppers in fast moving water. It’s typically what we call pond water or frog water. The long tail outs in between the next rapid. Dave (27m 19s): Right. The long tail outs. Gotcha. Okay. So, so as that fly is drifting down the popper, maybe first talk about that. What, what are some of the fly patterns that you guys are using? Are these your own custom creations or what does that look Wesley (27m 29s): Like on the top water side, and we’re Boole Bug guys, we throw Boole bugs left and right. I just dropped five grand on Boole bugs. Dave (27m 35s): Wow. What’s the history on the Boole bug? The, Wesley (27m 37s): Well, those are made by Boole Bug and Cell. I think they’re outta Alabama. They’re really hard to come by. They are just a cork popping bug. They make a couple different variations of them. They have a, you know, a, a lip face if you will, like, you know, a standard popping bug kind of face. Then they make a slider similar to a sneaky pea, but it’s something about those bugs. They’re cork and then they, they dip them in like an epoxy paint and they just slap the water really well. A nice little slap is what we’re looking for. They’re not big at all. They’re, they’re, I think the size we use typically a size four. We use yellow white And we use baby blue or electric blue is their actual color and the popping bugs and the sliders. Wesley (28m 25s): Some days you give a little, the, the chugging action, you get a little movement. It makes a little bubble. The fish don’t like it. So you throw a slider that kind of dives under the water really, I guess you’d say delicately. And that’s what the fish want and they eat it. Oh. Depends how spooky. They’re Dave (28m 40s): So, so sometimes they’ll want it just under the surface. Sometimes they’ll want it on top. It depends. That’s Wesley (28m 45s): Right. Dave (28m 46s): Well, how do you know, are you just experiment? Do you start with just floating it dead drift, no movement or how, what’s your process look like to find out what they’re taking that day, how they’re taking it? Wesley (28m 55s): Well, it depends, you know, a lot of times it’s what we had tied on the last trip. So we start with that. And then the guides, you know, we’re on, we’re standing on top of coolers, we’re watching and seeing spotting for fish. And then we, We are watching the bug And we see a fish swim underneath it and like swirl at it, but not take it after a chug. We know that’s too much for ’em. So we change the fly out. Then you can go back to that same fish that you saw come out, drop it in there and give it a little tickle and it kind of dives under the water. And that’s what they take. They like that, that non chugging action. Hmm. We use other bugs when they’re really technical and getting really spooky. It’s called, it’s variations of the Mr wiggle legs, which is a tot lines fly from up in Wisconsin. Wesley (29m 42s): That’s really good and really low water kind of mimics the dams will fly on the surface. Really No splash, no movement at all. Just little tickles. And those weg, those legs really kind of get moving quite a bit. If we do get high water, shots of high water in the summertime, we’ll go right back to our big frog patterns. Chugging those things. Yep. Dave (30m 3s): Gotcha. Yeah. So frogs and the, the, the Boole boole bug. And then what was the other, what was the, the other one? The wiggle Wesley (30m 12s): Mr Wiggle Dave (30m 12s): Legs. Yeah, Mr. Wiggle legs. Okay, perfect. Yeah, we’ll try to get some pictures and videos if we can in the show notes. Here. Notes. So, so, and these flies are imitating and on the surface, what are they imitating? Typically? A bunch of different things or One thing. Wesley (30m 26s): So flies is some of the things that we kind of try to emulate. Frogs is another thing we try to imitate quite a bit. Bait fish, you know, of, of some sort. We do throw some non legged slider patterns that have their small little diving minnow head with maroo. We’ve even gone as far as doing stuff called a popper dropper rig. Throw a big popping bug with like a, a weightless crayfish underneath it. And you dead drift that down. Banks or in, in, in, you know, certain runs like ledges give the popping bug a little chug. It’ll draw the fish out and they eat the crayfish that’s drifting below it. Dave (31m 7s): Oh, right. Gotcha. Wow. And, and the crayfish pattern. What, what are you working there? What’s a typical pattern? Wesley (31m 12s): Man, it could be on, it can be a weightless wooly booger. It could be like just some of the, the, the custom stuff we tie up that have like, like rubber eyes on ’em. If you can imagine a rubber barbell eye just enough to get it below the surface, then it’s just bu and, and hackles and stuff like that. That’s the beautiful thing about smallmouth is they really don’t give a shit. They, they, it doesn’t have to look great to them. They don’t, they, they’d much rather eat a crayfish than a size 22 Midge. And so that’s the thing is if it’s in the water and it looks edible, they’re gonna eat it. They Dave (31m 48s): Are. Wow. What’s the, what’s the craziest thing you think one of these basses has eaten? You’ve seen or heard a potato chip. Oh really? A potato chip. Wesley (31m 57s): Yeah. During lunch, you know, we drop potato chips and water and you’ll skin up and just smack ’em. Oh, wow. Dave (32m 2s): Potato chips. That’s, yeah. It’s funny. We just did an episode a while back here of carp fishing in the middle of like, Phoenix, Arizona. And they were talking about how Yeah, Cheetos, they eat lots of Cheetos, right? Huh? They’re eating all sorts of stuff. But it’s interesting ’cause these fish are, you know, I mean, trout are opportunistic too, but they’re not going to eat really. But I, at least I’ve heard, you know, haven’t heard that as much. But the bass and some of these species are really just whatever. What, what do you think, I mean, do you think they’re eating this stuff and then spitting it out? What, what’s that look like as far as the, or when they hit it? Are they on Wesley (32m 35s): No, I mean, you know, that’s why I love smallmouth is that they, man, to be honest with you, they really just don’t care. Yeah. They’re just so aggressive that once they commit, they’re pretty much gonna eat it no matter what it is. Yeah. And that’s what I love about ’em is their aggression of it. They don’t, they don’t care. Yeah. And even if that fish does want to eat it and spit it back out, we’re gonna be, we’re gonna have that hook set on ’em before you can do that. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And you know, they’re, they’re very forgiving fish. You can have a horrible cast. That’s okay. These fish don’t care if they see it and they’re gonna eat it, they’re gonna go after it. Wesley (33m 15s): Outside of, you know, some of the stuff I’m talking about them being technical of splashing water, man, they’re a very, very forgiving fish for any angler. I mean, we get many of young kids, eight to 12, 13 years old that have never held a fly rod before that are slamming these small mouth baths and They can only cast 30 feet by the end of the day. Hmm. It just, they just don’t care. And that’s what we love about ’em. That’s, that’s Dave (33m 42s): What’s awesome. When you’re on the water floating down. Talk about that getting set up. It sounds like you guys are, are you drifting? Are you ever, do you ever anchor up or are you always drifting? Wesley (33m 52s): Yeah, we will anchor up some. It’s not a common practice of ours. We’re typically just drifting right along. Floating, you know, depends on water levels, you know, high water, 12 miles, low water four miles, just depends on, on what’s going on. It’s not uncommon to not see another guideboat all day long, very isolated where we’re at. It’s not, it’s rare that you see a home on the river banks, oftentimes you think that you’re in a complete wilderness area. We are very agriculture based in most of the rivers that we got on. Wesley (34m 33s): Huge tracks of land owned by the farmers. And you, you can’t develop the, the farmland, which yields, you know, this, this, this allure of being in the middle of nowhere. Right. Which means you, you kind of are, I mean, Western Virginia is, is very remote, but yeah, man. And you, you float. We don’t wade fish a lot. I mean, at lunchtime guys will get out and wade fish and riffles and stuff, but it’s just a lot of ground to cover. There’s very little public access except for the boat launches. So once you’re out there, you’re just floating the whole day. You Dave (35m 5s): Are. Wow. And this is awesome. And, and it sounds like Yeah. So there’s not a ton of lease in that area of gut. I mean, we were down there a couple years ago. We were up actually in Harrisonburg doing, doing the Mossy Creek, and that was pretty awesome. Right. That was for trout. But you’re not, I mean, you’re, you’re a little distance. How far are you from all that, that area up there and, and kind of the, Wesley (35m 26s): About an hour and a half. Okay. Dave (35m 28s): Yeah. You’re pretty Wesley (35m 28s): Close. You know, I know the, the tr brothers fairly well. And it is, it’s a, that that whole area, especially along the Shenandoah, it’s, it is developed. That’s just the, the geographic location of it. Where we’re at. It’s not at all, man. I mean, it’s crazy. You know, we got boat ramps. We’re dragging boats with ropes and cables up river banks to get ’em out of there. Right. It’s, it’s a wilderness area. Right. We’re about, as a crow flies maybe 15 miles from the West Virginia border. Oh, okay. We are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of, of acres of national forest. Wesley (36m 8s): Huh. Dave (36m 9s): Well, what, what, what National forest is that? That’s Wesley (36m 11s): The Jefferson and George Washington. And George Washington. Dave (36m 14s): Right. Wesley (36m 14s): Wow. Yeah. And then to our west, we have the Mangala in West Virginia. Yeah, of course we have the Greenbriar State Forest too, just over the border, which yeah. I mean we’re just surrounded by public land that just yields almost no development whatsoever. Dave (36m 27s): Amazing. I think, you know, I think it’s really cool because, you know, we’ve been, I’ve been out east, you know, a few times now and it’s cool because, you know, the west is kind of known as the mountain and you know, the mountains and all that stuff. But really, you know, once you get out in the east, you realize, like you’re talking about, you got these little areas, well, not even little, they’re huge of, you know, forest and it’s remote. Right. And you got these rivers in this, this picture of you’re painted. It’s pretty cool. Did, do you feel like, I mean, it’s a little bit, you know, under the radar a little bit. I mean, are people coming out now more from the west? Are you seeing people from all over the country coming out with you guys? Yeah, Wesley (37m 2s): All over the country. We get a lot of people from overseas France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Yugoslavia. We’re trying to get a guy that wants to come in from Pakistan to fish and hunt with us just because it’s, it is, you know, our reach is pretty strong as far as getting the name out there. We, we have it trademarked that Virginia is the New West. Anything that someone would want to fly out west for, they don’t have to. It’s right here in Virginia. Wild River systems. Big Rapids. Oh really? We have Whitewater. Yep. Oh yeah. Yeah. We have good, great white water in certain areas. Great. Whitewater kayaking, world class kayaking on John’s Creek when the water’s up. Wesley (37m 46s): I mean, there’re when the water levels are up. I guarantee you today ’cause all the rain we got there is gonna be a waiting line for kayakers to get into some of these areas to kayak. These Dave (37m 56s): Are whitewater kayakers. Wesley (37m 58s): Oh, big town. Yeah. Big town. Yeah. And you look at like the New River, for example, they’re trying to put in a new white water park. Sure. Roanoke, Roanoke, Virginia is a great place to fly into. You know, matter of fact, we’re hosting the, the man Ben sitting the huge fly fishermen. Oh yeah. He’s bringing a big group of people from out west here to stay for a week and fish with us. And he was scouting out Roanoke and he is like, dude, this is incredible here. Yeah. How easy it is to get into this, this airport and then be in the middle of nowhere in 40 minutes. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a really unique location. I’m super fortunate to have, have found this place. Wesley (38m 38s): And the best part is the, the local governing bodies. They wanna keep it that way. So they, they are very strong in protecting this area. Right. Keeping Dave (38m 47s): It wild. Keep development and all that. Yeah. Nice. And then you also have the hunting piece, right? So, which is a whole nother thing that kind of separates you, you know, you have this hunting and talk about that a little bit. What, what is the, is this mostly bird hunting? What, what are people coming in there for? Wesley (39m 2s): That’s correct. Yeah. We do, we’re not big game hunters. I mean, we do guide people that wanna do that, but it’s not something that we push publicly. The big thing we do is our wild bird hunts, the grouse and woodcock hunting we have, especially the grouse. You know, a lot of people are under the impression that the grouse are non-existent in the Appalachian Mountains anymore. And we will argue strongly against that. Well, to be honest with you, we want people to think that, ’cause they just don’t come here. And it’s more birds for us. But we have been honing in on these birds for, for over 10 years now. And there is plenty of rough grouse in the area. Wesley (39m 43s): The only thing that’s hard to find is people’s physical abilities to go get ’em their desire to work that hard to find them because it’s a lot of work. I mean, you’ve gotta, it is comparable to an elk hunt. You’re up and down mountains, you know, crossing over creeks into big, big canyon style stuff to find these birds. But they’re there and they’re really strong population of’em here too. Oh wow. And we know, we know how good the seasons are gonna be because during the spring season when we’re Turkey hunting with clients, these, we hear the grouse drumming all spring long. So we know the population is growing even more, but they’re in areas that people would not often look because they, they typically are on map looking for forest cuts and the birds don’t need that. Wesley (40m 31s): They need, they have different areas they hold in, so people often don’t look there. Yeah, Dave (40m 36s): Gotcha. Wesley (40m 37s): Which is kind of good for us. ’cause we, you know, we scoured these mountains over 10 years finding these birds And we, we’ve honed in on where the birds actually are living at. Dave (40m 46s): Huh. Are, are the, you said you have some guys out there this week. Is, is this time of year kind of the, you know, late May June Good for hunting? Wesley (40m 54s): The seasons are technically over. Turkey season ended for us two weeks ago. Our bird hunting seasons, they start in October and go all the way until March 1st. That is when we, that’s our upland, woodcock and grouse. And then our Turkey season starts the second week, usually in April and then goes all the way until the third week in May. And then it’s, it’s over as well. Yeah. Our Turkey hunts are a really hot thing. We sell out every year, usually by Thanksgiving for Turkey season because the way in which we do it, and I’m not gonna say that’s proprietary. Yeah. But in some ways it is. But it is a true cast and blast. Wesley (41m 35s): I’ll put it to you. That Dave (41m 36s): Word. Right. Yeah. It’s good that it seems like that would be the cool thing. It sounds like the hunting, you know, might be a little more work maybe than the bass fishing, But I, it, it would be cool to do both or people coming there for, you know, like a day, a couple days week. There’s a diversity of kind of how long people are staying there. Wesley (41m 53s): Yeah. So our hunt, our hunts are always a two night, two day minimum stay. Those are all inclusive from the alcohol, food, lodging, hunting, fishing, whatever it is. It’s built into a package and it’s a two night, two day minimum. We do during woodcock season. ’cause those birds are migratory. We do allow people to come in and do one single day hunts for those. But they typically will batch a couple days together. Now our woodcock hunts, those actually take place east of the mountains, Charlottesville, Virginia area, east towards Richmond. That’s the major migration route for those birds. And we, you know, we pack up the, the, the airstream and head that way with the guides And we camp out along certain areas where the birds are coming through. Wesley (42m 38s): That’s where we hunt ’em at for, you know, a week or two at a time. Dave (42m 41s): I see. So you had had basically east to rich towards Richmond. That’s Wesley (42m 44s): Correct. Yeah. Just set up a little base camp and guys meet us and hunt with us. Yeah. While we’re out there. Yeah. So it’s fun, you know, we have guys that stay for, like I said, a week up And we do people that just come out for the day to fish with their kids or friends. Oh, gotcha. Dave (42m 58s): Whatever, it’s, do you ever get any, a lot, do you ever get any people that are there that, you know, with the hunting, you know, that are like brand new to it, they heard about, they’re like, oh, I’ll give this a shot. Do you take on like new hunters? How, how would that work? Wesley (43m 9s): We do, yeah. That’s a good question. We do, We are, We are not known for being, lemme rephrase that. We are known for being purists when it comes to wild game. We only go after wild fish and wild birds is what we go after. Yeah. We do not, I should say we will take people to stock trout water, we will take people to preserves, but that is pretty much on a educational basis. Yeah. If we’re teaching someone, you know, the sport of fly fishing and or bird hunting and they wanna learn more about it, we take ’em out there. We, we teach ’em the casting techniques. We complete the full circle experience by getting ’em on fish or having dogs go on point and point some birds so They can see what it looks like, fulfill that trip, if that makes any sense. Wesley (43m 57s): Yeah. And then we take that, not fish, but the birds, we take back the lodge And we prepare them and show them how to clean them and cook them and stuff like that. Just making good stewards, making good people that are fully educated on what this process looks like so that, you know, maybe they don’t like it and they don’t want to invest that time and money into it anymore, but at least they know what the full process looks like. Yeah, that’s awesome. Outta respect for the, the birds, the fish, the sport itself, just, that’s one of the ways in which we, we practice conservation. Is that through education? Right? Dave (44m 29s): Through education, yeah. I think it’s, you know, I feel like for those people who haven’t hunted, you know, you know, birds just take it to that. It seems like it’s a, there’s a good overlap there. You know, I know we’ve talked a little bit about bird hunting on here. You know, John Chewy is a big author out, you know, out west and he’s, you know, talked about, you know, he’s a big bird hunter and there’s a lot of overlap, right. But it’s getting into it, right? So you don’t have a gun, you don’t have anything. It feels like you might be that place that you could, you know, kinda get people that first touch of what, what does hunting feel like? Do you, do you find like it’s a small percentage of people that are kind of new to it? Or do you get a good mix? Wesley (45m 4s): Oh yeah. All the time. Yeah, all the time. And we make it easy for people too, because that was the one of the big hiccups I saw in the sport is to get into this, you know, you, you know, you’re dropping thousands of dollars. Dave (45m 17s): Yeah. You need a gun. You need, first of all, you need a shot. Although there are shotguns out there, pretty good ones that, that don’t cost probably. They’re probably less than a, than a fly rod. That’s Wesley (45m 24s): Right. Yeah. And, And so we, we, my concept kind of my, my, I guess vision of this was anybody new that wants to come in, don’t buy a damn thing yet. Just come to us. We’ll, we’ll show you what works, what is good. We’ll show you why it’s good and why we, we use certain things that way. That when you buy it, you buy it once and you’re done. You don’t have to go out and buy all this different stuff, buy different shotguns for different purposes. We’ll show you how to buy or pick the right gun, how to fit it for yourself. Same thing for the fly rods. If you’re looking to buy, you know, a fly rod, but you’ll know what, what species. We’re gonna help you navigate that as well. We have people that come here that wanna try out drift boats before they go buy one. Wesley (46m 7s): So we take ’em and got ’em down the river, let ’em feel the boats, see what the boat’s about, and then we help them purchase that next boat for themselves. Dave (46m 13s): Sure. Yeah. It, it sounds pretty awesome. I think as we’re, you know, like you said Ben, the huge fly fishermen, you know, I think that’s like he’s bringing, I’m guessing, bringing out some fly anglers, but I I feel like a trip would be cool where you’re bringing out a group and Yeah, you’re doing a little bit of everything. Right. You got the drift boats. That’s right. You got the hunting and all that. What would be, if we were talking to you right now saying, okay, we’ve got a small group that want to come out and and fish maybe do a little hunting. What would be the time you think would be a, a good time to do that for some folks if you had a mixture of really experienced and non-experienced? Wesley (46m 44s): Yeah, sorry. And you got the lawnmower going in the background now. Oh yeah. So that’s a good question. And you know, the, if, if hunting is more of your pursuit, I would say for the group you need to be looking in that early to mid-fall timeframe. Dave (46m 59s): Yeah. So like October, the Wesley (47m 0s): Fishing will That’s right. The, the fishing will still be good. It’s not a peak season fishing, but it’ll still be good. But you can overlap some hunting with a day or two of fishing as well. Now if, if fishing is your thing and you want to dabble with some hunting, look to the spring, the preserve that we take people to is open all the way until about mid to late April. So we can still run some hunts, you know, run a couple days of fishing trip, really hot fishing time, and then overlap a day of bird hunting in there too, just to break it up. Dave (47m 34s): Yeah. So that, that would be the time. So if you had that, it would, and then people, if they could hunt maybe for a day or maybe they just stick fishing, but the fishing’s really good in the spring because that’s the, is that the, that just that pre that spawn period where they’re just super, talk about that. Why is that? And it’s also not a lot of top water, or are you getting some top water then Wesley (47m 52s): You can Yeah, we, we, I was, my guides make fun of me because I throw top water year round. You Dave (47m 57s): Do, right? Wesley (47m 58s): Yeah. And we catch, we will catch smallmouth year round on top water. Just depends if you’re willing to only get one bite all day in the middle of winter. But, you know, we were catching fish as early as March the second This year on top water. We had a couple really warm days in a row and I told the client, Hey, if you catch another fish on a streamer, we’re gonna switch over to top water and give that a go. And he did. And then we caught fish on top water throughout the day as well. So the, the reason to answer your question on, on why that is, you know, why is spring so good? It’s because they, the fish, their metabolism is speeding up, okay, they’ve gotta get ready for this spawn and they’ve got to feed up and gain some weight. Wesley (48m 42s): There’s bug life going crazy as the water temperatures warm minnows are starting to come out, crayfish are coming outta rocks, everything is starting to move. And it just triggers this response for fish to start feeding heavily as they prepare for the, the spawn and the females, the big females, the ones we’re really going after when they, when they go onto their nests to start laying eggs, they’re not leaving there until the eggs are laid. Okay. And so they’re not there to eat more. They’re simply there to, to, to lay eggs and then, and then, you know, produce babies basically is what they’re there for. So you’re trying to catch these big fish in that window when they’re really aggressively feeding because they’re not gonna be feeding when they go into spawn. Wesley (49m 25s): So Dave (49m 25s): Yeah, we were talking about, you know, this trip, like if we were to put one together, I feel like the spring would be a good time because you’ve got the good water, you’ve got the good spawn action and like you’re saying, maybe describe that again. So the key with the, the spawn is so key because fish are getting just fired up for that time of year and they’re just aggressive on, you know, if it’s not top water, it’s something else. Wesley (49m 45s): That’s right. Yeah. That, that springtime bite again, those fish are, they’re getting, they’re, they’re filling their feedback for, for the spawn, which will happen, you know, anywhere from a month to a few weeks after that kind of peak prespa timeframe again, that’s triggered by water temperatures coming up, getting into the 50 degree mark bait fish are moving, crayfish are out, you know, darting around bugs are starting to hatch off the water just triggers this whole ecosystem to start moving. Yeah, there’s a lot of streamer fishing. Some days we get really good top water fishing on frog patterns, sinking lines, intermediate lines, but you know, big moving flies is what we’re going, going or fishing with. Wesley (50m 28s): Now also, keep in mind then our wild trout fishery is on fire at that time too. So a lot of guys will come in and they’ll book a day or two of small mouth a day or two of trout. Okay. And the Jackson River is a really unique river system. Again, those are all wild fish. They don’t stock it whatsoever. Dave (50m 46s): Are these wild, are these browns or what, what are the species? Wesley (50m 49s): Yep. Browns and, and rainbows. Yeah. They do not supplemental stock that river system whatsoever. It is. They left them to the wolves and then we have ’em and they’re, they’re big brown trout. I would say that on a day, on the water, you should expect, you know, on the right conditions to get multiple fish over 18. Between 18 to 22 inches. Yeah. It’s a, it’s, it’s a, it is truly a quantity, or, sorry, a quality fishery over than a quantity. And Dave (51m 20s): That’s in the spring. So you could, you could do some brown trout and bass fishing during the same time. That’s Wesley (51m 25s): Right. That’s correct. And also we got about a month window where it’s really good. It can be really good dry fly fishing. Yeah. Really good. Dave (51m 33s): Gotcha. We have, you know, I think a lot of people out there we’re trying to, you know, paint the picture of this operation you have, which is obviously you’ve got a doubted in because you’re guiding there with the lodge and everything too. But sometimes people are out there thinking, you know, where do they, you know where to go. Right. Let’s, let’s just take it to that. If somebody was out there and they’re thinking, this is interesting, they’re in this area. What sort of advice would you give that person if they don’t know where to start and maybe they couldn’t get out right away with you on a trip, what would be your recommendation? Wesley (52m 3s): Well, so our small mouth waters and, and if you have your own personal boat, you can fish anywhere you want to. Yeah. Launch at a public launch and float down the next one. The trout water is a little bit different because we do suffer from the King’s grant issues. Now. You can wait fish at any of the public boat launches on the Jackson River, you know, in that area. And all those areas that you can wait fish from are actually really good fishing, especially if you’re a MP fisherman. They’re really good. So, you know, it’s just technical because there’s certain sections of the Jackson River that you can’t, you can’t access by boat. Oh, you Dave (52m 40s): Can’t. One foot. Oh, right, right. Yeah. There’s certain places where there’s no boat ramps, so you just can’t get there. Wesley (52m 44s): That’s right. There’s places that you, you can’t even fish in. You can float through it, but you can’t fish it. Dave (52m 52s): Oh, really? So you can’t even, I mean, not you can’t anchor up, but you can’t even fish at all, even if, even if you’re not anchored. Okay. That, that’s an interesting, that’s one law we haven’t heard of. It sounds like most places are, you know, you could at least float through. Maybe you can’t anchor, but there’s places where you can’t even fish while you’re floating through. That’s Wesley (53m 9s): Correct. That’s correct. Yep. That’s part of the issue with the Kings Grant area that we have. And so, you know, when, when, when people ask me, they call and say, Hey man, we want a fish on our own. Where’s a good place to go? You know, you know, the question is, do you have a boat or not? Right. Well, if they have a boat, then we typically point them typically to small mouth water, because once you’re on the water, you can fish wherever you want to. On the trout water, it gets complex. If they’re gonna wade fish, that’s fine. We point out the public boat access points and They can wade fish right there. But if they’re gonna float the Jackson River, it’s my recommendation to everybody to get a guide for a day and just have the guide fish you and show you where you can and can’t float at. Wesley (53m 56s): Because the landowners, they, they 100% will prosecute you. Dave (54m 0s): Right, right. Yep. Gotcha. Then that is a smart move. And yeah, you do have some, you some tools out there, you know, trout routes, onyx and things like that, that have lanter, but still there sounds like there, there’s some questions you probably want to get that more dialed in. And a and a guide trip is a easy way, you know, a good way to do it for maybe even if it’s a day just to show you the where you’re at and then fish the rest. That’s Wesley (54m 19s): Right. Yeah. You know, a $500 guide trip is way more economical than a $10,000 fine for, for getting caught up in a trespassing, you know, issue. Dave (54m 29s): Yeah, that’s no good. Yeah, that’s, that’s totally it. Yeah. We’ve, we’ve had some, actually, I think we’ve had at least one episode on here where we talked about some of that, you know, just the law and, and it is very confusing ’cause it’s by state, you know, state by state, you know, I’m sure even province by province, wherever you’re at, things are, the law is different, so it’s confusing. Yeah. Wesley (54m 48s): If it’s something, if it’s something you guys are interested in talking more about, there’s a man by the name of Bo Beasley. Dave (54m 53s): Yeah, I was just gonna say, we, we’ve had Bo Bo on, and he’s, I was trying to remember his name, but yeah, Bob Beasley was on the podcast. He, he did, he’s been on multiple times, in fact, and we’ve done a few episodes. So he did talk about that, and so that’s great. Wesley (55m 7s): Yeah, he, he wrote a book about it, I mean, not a book about that specifically, but warning anglers, Hey, this is what you might run into. But he went down a, he went down a pretty dark rabbit hole trying to get to the bottom of that. And, you know, I heard a, I don’t know if you wanna go over it, But I heard something recent that kind of, kind of blew me away and made sense on why that all happened, actually. Dave (55m 28s): Oh, now what happened? Exactly. Wesley (55m 30s): So this is just a rumor from different landowners that I talked to, and I know, I know some of the guys that own the land, I mean, I’ve guided them and they explained that it wasn’t a problem until local government started taxing them for owning the river bottom. And because they were taxed more Oh, on the river bottom, they said, fine. Well, you’re taxing me on it then that is my property. Yeah, Dave (55m 52s): Right, right. So before when there were no taxes, they were like, well, yeah, it’s, But I own it, but I’m not gonna worry about it. So go ahead and fish it. You can whip the way there. But as soon as the government said, no, no, we’re gonna start taking more money now, it’s like, okay, well we can lock it down then and not allow people to Yeah, Wesley (56m 8s): That’s right. That, and that is, I’m sure it’s deeper than that, but that is the most recent thing that I’ve heard. And that, I mean, to be honest with you, that, that kind of makes sense to me from that perspective. If, if navigable water is gonna be deemed taxable to the landowner than, than it’s no different than owning extension of your yard at that point. So, you know, who knows who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s different, but that is the case of the Jackson. Dave (56m 39s): Yeah, that’s the Jackson, right. You have some of that going on. And I do, I did find it here. It was River Access Laws with Bo Beasley. That was back in August of 2024. So we’ll have a link to that one. People can take a look and that was a good one. So, well, let’s, wes let’s take it outta here with our, our gear talk. I mentioned that before our gear talk segment today. This is presented by Patagonia Swift current waiters, which is Patagonia obviously has some great stuff. You mentioned Orvis, who’s also a great company. Patagonia obviously is leading in a lot of the conservation stuff and everything they’re doing. I was out this week with the swift current waiters and yeah, they’ve got a couple features on there I think that are a little bit different than some of the other waiters. But let, let’s start there with our gear talk segment for you. Dave (57m 22s): First shout out to Patagonia. We all love them and what they’re doing out there, but what’s your, what’s your go-to gear? If you’re talking summertime, is there some piece of gear that is like you’ve gotta have when it’s in the heat of the summer out there? Wesley (57m 34s): Yeah, man, number one, my Chaco flip flop. Dave (57m 38s): Oh, Chacos, me too. I’m a Chaco. Yep. Chacos Wesley (57m 40s): Are the best. I love them, dude. They’re great water shoes. We, we wear the hell out of those. As far as clothing’s concerned, man, I really believe that the Patagonia with their natural fiber sun shirts are incredible. Okay. I love those hoodies they make. They’re, they’re incredibly breathable and I love ’em. As far as, let’s talk about terminal gear. The, the boat boxes that are made by Orvis with the Tippe spo, those are absolutely incredible too. The train coming through. Oh yeah, I Dave (58m 13s): Hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s let, let’s let him, let’s let him stop his horn. He’s really laying on that horn. Wesley (58m 20s): Yeah. He doesn’t like fly fishermen. Dave (58m 22s): Wow. That’s, that’s a quite a, is that, that’s not because somebody’s on the track, he’s just kind of letting folks know he’s coming through. Wesley (58m 28s): That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. They, they do that through all that, the mountain towns tradition. Dave (58m 33s): Yeah. Tradition. Right, right, Wesley (58m 34s): Right. Yeah. They, because workers, apparently workers would run down the train to jump on the train to go to work. So it’s kind of a tradition. They kind of keep up. Dave (58m 42s): Oh, right. Got yeah. Let everybody know. Awesome. Are they, are they about good there? Wesley (58m 46s): Yeah, they’re done now. Yeah. So the back to the gear stuff, you know, we’d love the, the Orvis boat bag that they made This year. Oh yeah. Tippo boat bag. That’s a great bag that carries everything for us. We love those rods themselves. I mean, we love rolling the, the new Helios rods. They’re great rods for beginners to use. You can feel the rod load. It really helps with the Dave (59m 15s): Cast. Oh, you, are they more of a Oh yeah. Are they more of like a, a medium action rod? Wesley (59m 19s): A little bit stiffer than that. Yeah, but they’re, they’re a little bit stiffer, but the way that they design the tip of it, you can feel that tip flex, which is, is so it’s stiffer through the butt section up to the middle of the rod, probably the last third of that rod. You can feel it flexed really well. And then when you hit that sweet spot as a new, you know, I guess you say client or new angler with the fly rod, you can really feel that rod load and know when to go make your forward cast. Yeah. So that really helps a lot too. Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah. And that’s stuff that we carry all the time, you know, as far as equipment’s concerned. Wesley (1h 0m 0s): I’m trying to think of anything else. Yeah, that might be, yeah, those are Dave (1h 0m 2s): All really important. Those are all huge. I mean, I think you mentioned the, the chacos, the sun shirt, the, the Orvis bag, the rods. I mean that’s definitely a good, we’ll we’ll get some links out to some of that gear too in the show notes. You know, we talked casting a little bit. It sounds like that’s an important piece to have there because what maybe an inch might make the difference between a, a giant fish versus a small fish. What’s your tip with somebody with casting? You know, we have kind of always thinking about that. What, what are you telling somebody? Do you have a tip that would help somebody get more accurate or better at casting? Wesley (1h 0m 32s): The number one thing that I would say is, is typically probably the most important thing involves timing of the tempo. Slow your cast down, number one, your thumb. The thumb and how it lays along the spine of the rod. And what your thumb does in the cast is one of the most important aspects of it. Your thumb on your back cast, you should be trying to create a thumbs up position with your rod. Your thumb should be, you should be making a thumbs up. And then when you start your forward cast, your thumb actually should be pushing that rod forward the whole time. Dave (1h 1m 9s): Yeah. Your thumb. So you should be actually putting pro, not just your arm motion, but your thumb should be really be Wesley (1h 1m 15s): That’s right, yeah. That thumb. You, we, we always tell people to lead with your thumb on the back cast, lead with the thumb, and then lead with the thumb on the forecast, push that thumb forward, which is gonna create, it’s gonna eliminate that whole wrist flexing action, if Dave (1h 1m 30s): You will. Oh, right. Oh, so that’s gonna stop you from like breaking your wrist? Wesley (1h 1m 34s): That’s correct. Yeah. Dave (1h 1m 35s): Oh, right Wesley (1h 1m 36s): Now this is the, the obvious, this is the, the the strange thing, you know, people always hear don’t break your wrist, don’t break your wrist. Well there’s a difference between a break in the wrist and a flex in the wrist. ’cause there is a slight flex on the back cast and a slight flex forward as well. But it’s not a break. Yeah, it’s not a break. ’cause that flex moves the rod tip out of the way of your fly line, otherwise your fly line is gonna collide with your rod tip, which I’m sure we’ve all done before. Yeah, Dave (1h 2m 5s): Gotcha. So, so there’s a difference there, right. Between the flex and, and breaking the wrist and then, okay, so, so yeah. So I think that’s an awesome tip. The thumb for sure. That’s something we haven’t talked about specifically. I think that’s a killer tip. We’re, we’re doing a kind of a fly casting challenge coming up here, actually it’s gonna be close to when this goes live. So we’ll have that going. But let’s just give us, you know, as we get out here, a couple of random ones for you and then we’ll jump out. First I wanna give a shout out to our Wetly Swing Pro community, you know, wet fly swing.com/pro is where we’re doing some good stuff and we’re basically bringing the community together there. Brandon Farley, I wanna give a shout out to Brandon. He’s actually up in your neck of the woods. I’m not sure if he is aware of your operation, but he is this, you know, fanatical fly angler. Dave (1h 2m 50s): Right. And he’s also got a connection to some of the, the military stuff as well. You know, he does some stuff with project healing waters and everything. So why don’t we give a big shout out to Brandon today, but give me, as we take this away, just a couple of tips. We’re talking smallmouth bass. What are you telling somebody if they’re coming on the water with you, you know, to have success? Maybe a couple things. Wesley (1h 3m 9s): Smallmouth bass, a couple things about them that, you know, people should always keep in mind is, number one, there’s always gonna be an aggressive smallmouth bass no matter what time of the year it is always. And if, if, you know, you’re out fishing for a bass and wondering, you know, what do I throw, where do I throw it? Whatever it is, just know that 90% of a small mouth bass diet is crayfish. That is like, what they’re designed to eat is crayfish. So if you’re throwing crayfish, chances are you’re gonna have a high chance of catching one of those small mouth. And you know, for the guys that, that are small mouth fanatics, they love fishing them in top water. Wesley (1h 3m 50s): Oftentimes what I see is they do have a sensitive side to them, meaning that, that, you know, they will eat a whopper popper off the surface. They’ll eat a huge musky fly if they want to, but there are times in which they get really sensitive and you’ve gotta really go down to a, you know, a size six hopper and throw a double taper floating line on a 13 foot liter because they’re getting really spooky. So, you know, don’t, don’t, don’t think just because they’re really hyper aggressive fish, they don’t get sensitive. And then the last thing we catch more 20 inch small mouth bath out of a foot to a foot and a half water than probably anywhere else in the water column. Wesley (1h 4m 36s): Wow, Dave (1h 4m 37s): That’s amazing. Wesley (1h 4m 38s): Yeah, those pitchbooks are super shallow and they will sit like a rock and not move it all until a fly comes right in front of ’em and then they dart out after. That’s Dave (1h 4m 47s): So good. I mean, it makes sense too, right? Because I mean, if fish is down in the deep, they could be eating cr crawfish and stuff, But I mean, the shallow water, it’s easy for them to get all that top water stuff, right? It’s just less work. That’s Wesley (1h 4m 58s): Right. Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. Dave (1h 5m 0s): They’re just, just, they’re the, are they, how, how similar are they to a muskie kind weight in their lie and weight? Right. Then they attack Wesley (1h 5m 7s): Not, Dave (1h 5m 8s): Not that much. Wesley (1h 5m 9s): I mean, they will, they, they will attack anything, but, you know, typically speaking, what we find is these, the small mouths are constantly roaming constantly. Oh right, Dave (1h 5m 17s): Yeah. Wesley (1h 5m 18s): Yep. Constantly moving. You know, they don’t get in super, they don’t get in schools per se, they’re kind of isolated. So when you’re out fishing, you know, you know, just, just, it’s a lot of casting and we’re gonna have people casting from the time they start to the time they finish. So if you’re looking to really enhance your cast and really become a really good fly angler, go small mouth fishing. ’cause you’re gonna be working on shooting line stripping, line roll, casting, mending. You’re gonna be doing all the casts throughout the day and the guides, you know, if they’re not getting you or working you up to that double hall or to where you’re casting 70 feet of line out, you know, then, then you know, that guy probably needs to be pushing that angle a little bit harder. Wesley (1h 6m 7s): But, you know, the, the, you know, to answer your question more about that, that muskie comparison to smallmouth, they have some similarities, but overall it’s, they’re almost nowhere close. You know, that muskie’s gonna hang out beside that log for the most part of a day until something comes out in front of them, a small mount. They’ll, they’ll cruise. Yeah. They’ll kind of cruise along like little marines looking for something to attack. Yeah. Dave (1h 6m 31s): Gotcha. That’s interesting. That’s such a good one that we haven’t even talked muskie, so maybe we might, might have to leave that for another one. But no, I think this is good. I will a couple, like I said, a couple random ones here and then we’ll take you out here. The Airstream, I, I’m always interested in the camper camper chat. How long have you had that Airstream? Why, why are Airstreams all, you know, they look different than everything else. Are they everything that they’re, they look like, are they pretty much the best camper out there? Wesley (1h 6m 57s): Yes, they are. Number one. They are worth every single penny. They’re incredible. Yeah. Dave (1h 7m 2s): How are they different from say, you know, just any other normal camper, you know, you, you name whatever the camp, you know, you see ’em out there. How, how is the Airstream different? It looks like it’s just like a bomber, super durable. Is that it? Or how, how would you describe it? Wesley (1h 7m 15s): That is correct. Yeah, it’s the, the materials they’re made out of are super durable. Meaning it’s not a vinyl side, it’s actually aircraft aluminum. Oh, right. Yep. They’re, they’re fairly lightweight. They have aluminum framework built into ’em, so they’re very rigid. They have very little wood in it so it doesn’t Dave (1h 7m 35s): Rot. Oh, No kidding. So there’s not much wood in those things. Yeah. Wesley (1h 7m 38s): Like the cabinetry and stuff like that, but it’s not a lot of wood, which is really beneficial in the long run. I mean, this campers up Dave (1h 7m 47s): Oh, that is a big thing because these, these things, I mean, basically it’s a moving campers are like moving homes on, right. So if it’s a lot of wood, it’s eventually gonna come apart probably. Wesley (1h 7m 55s): That’s right. Yeah. The way that they do their coatings on the outside and the, the maintenance on it is pretty damn simple. You know, you just kind of re-talk it. But you know, if a walnut falls on a vinyl Coleman, it’s gonna put a hole through it that the Airstream, you just get a little dent in it, you know, big deal from solar panels to, I have two AC systems in mine. I live in mine year round. Oh, you do? All time. I live in mine. Oh yeah. Yep. Dave (1h 8m 23s): Goes this is the big one. How big is this guy? Yep. How many feet? Wesley (1h 8m 25s): Mine is a 30 footer. Dave (1h 8m 27s): Oh wow. Yeah. This is a big camper. Wesley (1h 8m 29s): Yep. Big camper. My daughter and I live in this thing. It’s at the lodge. We park it at the lodge And we live out of it while the, the season’s going crazy. And then during bird season, I pack that thing up And we chase birds all over the state. Dave (1h 8m 43s): Oh, that’s amazing. Wesley (1h 8m 44s): Yep. It’s nice. And I, I love it. Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth the money? Yes. Is it the best one on the market? Yes, it is. Dave (1h 8m 53s): It is. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. I love that. No, I, I’ve always thought of it. ’cause you see ’em out there and you’re just like, man, they look so cool. Again, back to the Tesla, it looks different than everything else out there, right? I think that was the, yeah, the Tesla came up with their truck for, you know, there’s all, it’s got all the, the stuff in it, right? It’s got all the technical stuff, aerodynamics, but you know, I think he wanted it to look as weird as Right. As different as possible. So it sticks out. And the Airstream does that too. Right? And the Airstream does that as well. You’re gonna about to buy another Airstream? Wesley (1h 9m 21s): Yep. Oh yeah. I’ll have it for another place for, for clients to sleep on or sleep at if they want to. If they want something more private, I’ll just, I’ll park it on the riverbank and let clients just stay in that, you know, especially husbands, wives, couples that come in, you know, they might want a little bit more privacy than the main house we could put ’em in. Put ’em in the Airstream. Dave (1h 9m 40s): That was great. Awesome. Well, well Wes, this has been great as always on these great podcast episodes, it’s hard to leave them because you got so much good stuff going. But I think we’ll send everybody out to Wesley Hodges fly fishing.com if they wanna connect with you, have questions on any of these trips, which sound amazing. And yeah, hopefully man down the line, we’ll be getting out with you too. Maybe we’ll get a crew and follow up with you. But I appreciate all your time today and all the wisdom and we’ll talk to you soon. Wesley (1h 10m 4s): Awesome. You guys take care. Thank you. Dave (1h 10m 7s): If you’re fired up and excited to fish Virginia’s Wild Rivers and get going here at the true cast and blast, if you wanna get it dialed in, you get over to Wesley Hodges fly fishing.com. If you’re interested in this trip, if you want us to put this together, you can go to we fi swing.com/pro, sign up there or send me an email, Dave, at we Fly swing.com. And if I get enough interest, we will talk more on this. I’m feeling like this is gonna happen. We haven’t yet done the cast and blast. I think this might be a good springtime trip. So check in with me, check in with Wesley, let him know you heard this podcast and, and that’s all we have for you today. Just wanna let you know, we’re also heading down very shortly to the White River. If you’re interested in this trip, if you wanna get involved, you can head over to we fly swing.com/giveaway. Dave (1h 10m 52s): You can also send me the email, Dave at We Fly Swing, like I said, and I’ll let you know what’s going on. We’re fishing with CJ CJ’s real Southern podcast, our host down south there. It’s gonna be an epic trip. We’ve been talking a lot about it. So if you wanna get involved in that, please let me know. And I just wanna thank you for sticking in to the very end today and hope you have a great morning, great afternoon, or an amazing evening wherever you are in the world. And I appreciate you for stopping in for an hour today. We’ll talk to you on that next one.