In the Bucket #15 | Steelhead on the Dry with Adrian Cortes & Richard Harrington – Classic Flies, Painting

Adrian (2s): One day I might not be able to remember these stories, but I can look up at that fly on the wall with a tag and think, oh yeah, I caught that, that fly right there. The rambler muddler. We were on that Eastern River in the evening and I, I couldn’t see it, you know, I couldn’t see the fly anymore ’cause it was so dark. So I gave a, a location twitch where I stripped the line in and the fly burped up to the surface and the steelhead was on. And so I wanna remember those moments. So yeah, I have a, a whole pile of flies on the wall. Well, whole pile of flies not even on the wall yet, that I need to, you know, tag before I forget the stories. And yeah, that’s, it Makes Steelheading special for me. You know, 2 (51s): Welcome to In the Bucket, the podcast that explores the culture of spay fishing in the Pacific Northwest. A spectacular land of mountains and wild rivers where every cast has a story to tell. I’m your host, Brian Ska. In today’s show, I’m gonna be speaking with two of the nicest gentlemen in all of spay fishing. Of course, I’m talking about Dryly magician Adrian Cortez, and his very good buddy, Richard Harrington, host of the River Rambler Podcast. I’m really looking forward to chatting steelhead, bamboo rods and dry flies with these two legends. Let’s get into it. Right on folks, thanks for joining us today. I’m super excited to have Richard Harrington and Adrian Cortez on the show with me today. 2 (1m 35s): Richard, why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Richard (1m 38s): See, I’ll talk all day and as soon as this is about me, I’m like, yeah, I really wanna talk. I live just outside of Portland, Oregon, Oregon City for a little while yet I grew up out all around the northwest and then in high school my family moved to New York and it took me 40 years to get back here. So my steelheading started out here completely ineffectively. And then I started fishing in New York when the Great Lakes were really just kind of taken off. I graduated from high school in 1977, so I think Adrian was still in diapers if even born yet. But fishing is like the kind of constant in my life. I did have one stretch where I, I quit for a while. Richard (2m 20s): Life was just kind of too hard. And fishing gives you a lot of contemplation time. I paint and do printmaking for a living, which is not something I ever planned to do, just the way it turned out. And we started the podcast about five years ago, I think, urging, prompting, insistence of my eldest daughter who produces podcast or did she since, has people produce podcasts for her in New York. And decided because the curse of her father is that I’ve always enjoyed visiting. And she said, dad, you’d be a perfect podcast host. And I said, I don’t really know what they are. Richard (3m 2s): And my son is our producer. And none of it would happen if it weren’t for him. And in fact, it definitely wouldn’t have happened because before I got done telling my daughter I wasn’t gonna have one, he said, dad, I already bought the, the name. So I was kind of drafted in. I love to fish. I’ve always, I’ve loved to fish since I got my first fish when I was like three at one point I thought I was going to have a fly shop and do that for a living. And life has been a series of 180 returns. So now I paint, do print making and fish pled my dogs. 2 (3m 37s): Awesome. Adrian (3m 38s): My turn, I guess, huh? I think I’m gonna use that like, Rick’s blueprint of his introduction. First of all, I, I, I don’t like talking about myself ’cause I’m an only child. So whenever like a mic was thrust upon me or anything, I, I was always kind of shy. But my name’s Adrian. I, I was born in the Philippines. I live in the Highlands above Rick Harrington there and literally the highlands they call it up here. But I’m about 15 minutes from a couple of steelhead rivers, love fishing all my life, fish, salt water, fresh water. And for some reason, you know, I was a trout fisherman and steelhead were close by. Adrian (4m 21s): And since I couldn’t drive too far away and spend a whole day away from the family trout fishing, I decided to try my hand at Steelheading and kind of got lucky the first few times and fell in love with it. I just, I love the, the ideas, the traditions of steelheading. I love the stories, I love the lore, the mystique. I spent, oh, I don’t know, over a decade now, trying to demystify steelhead. I still haven’t figured it out, but it’s just, you know, they’re fish and they move up the river, they spawn and they head back out to the ocean. So I try to simplify things in that way. And every once in a while I think I have it figured out. Adrian (5m 2s): And then, I don’t know, weather system comes in and I can’t figure things out. I don’t even know how to put my socks on these days left or right, so, so how can I figure a steelhead out? But anyway, that’s my story. 2 (5m 15s): That’s awesome. You know, talking about the weather, one of the things that’s come up with the in the bucket show is there seems to be a lot of folks that love to steelhead fish that are also into skiing it, snowboarding. So what are these two activities have in common? Well, at the core of it, if you wanna ski or snowboard in powder snow, you gotta watch the weather. You wanna be a successful steel header, you’d be well advised to pay attention to to the weather. ’cause that’s obviously gonna affect river flow, which plus temperature is everything. Richard, I wanna talk about the podcast. That’s a great starting point for us. You know, that’s actually how you and I met, I was lucky enough to be a guest on your show and I, I really enjoyed speaking with you and you know, both you guys obviously are passionate steelheaders and it’s not just about catching fish, it seems like you’re, you know, purveyors of the culture, so to speak, and all of the, the stuff that surrounds steelheading, the characters, the terrain that we’re fishing in, the apre, the apre fishing, you know, the social aspect of it. 2 (6m 10s): I think that there’s a really solid ar mental health argument for steelhead fishing. And we’ll probably talk about this a little bit more, but I personally know a lot of people whose lives have benefited from the ability to get out on the river. And, you know, we, we could get all romantic about it and talk about, you know, the zen of it. But it’s, you know, at, at the end of the day, it’s definitely something that people really like to do. And, and a lot of folks try and change their life in a way that they can, they can do it as much as possible. So Richard podcasting, what was, you know, it sounds like it’s a family business more or less. I don’t know if business is the right term, but Richard (6m 46s): We’re trying to figure that out. Nice. S we’re five years in and, and at this point we’re trying to lose money more slowly. Yeah, it’s, it’s funny, as I mentioned, my, my daughter Emily is the one responsible for this going. She is, I don’t want to give too much specific, she’s the, I don’t wanna say who she works for, she’s the global communications director and more things for one of the largest law firms in the world. And she is super successful. You know, when you watch your kids grow up, you see parts of yourself and then you see, oh my god, I if I could do that too, I’d be so much more able. Richard (7m 33s): And she all, all three of my kids just amaze me all the time. But her podcast hosts are attorneys and she said to me at Thanksgiving a few years ago, dad, do you know when attorneys like to be in a conversation? And I, I said, no, honey, what? She goes when they’re talking. And, and I said, well, I guess. And she goes, but dad, you just like to visit with people. You like to hear them. I’m like, well that’s to me is just the basis of conversation is that you gotta let the other person talk. I, I mentioned that when we decided to do this, Adrian was my first guest because he’s a good friend. Richard (8m 13s): We’ve had some great visits, but I also, I like to visit and I was afraid I would talk too much. So I mostly sat on my hands and I didn’t talk hardly at all and just left him hanging there. So when I was done I thought, well damn, I was a really shitty host. 2 (8m 30s): Well, we’ll definitely talk about this at the end, but rather than make people listen to the whole show to find out if they wanna leave this show and jump over to yours right now, how do they, how do they find your podcast online right now Richard (8m 40s): On pretty much every podcast venue where the River Rambler. And so episode one from about five years ago is Adrian. And the night you’re back on episode three Adrian (8m 50s): I believe so with Todd Herano, right? Yeah, yeah, Richard (8m 53s): Yeah, yeah. I’m scheming to have you do another thing soon. So, Adrian (8m 57s): Well I didn’t think you were a bad host at all. You, you provided beers and laughs, you know, and that was an enjoyable time. Richard (9m 4s): Well it was funny ’cause we used to do it in person over the dining room table, which was a pain in the ass. ’cause I had to clean the whole house to get rid to have a podcaster. Now you can’t even tell I have crap everywhere, but all you can see is out the window behind me. And the other thing, it’s funny because of my wrecked voice, we actually get better recording through Zoom. So with Zoom I thought the podcast was over and my, my daughter just said, dead, just use Zoom. And again, I was like, I don’t know what Zoom is. And so we had to, you know, that’s not a big thing but we had to figure that out and we do get better recording quality. I just, now I’m, I’ve just met a young guy who was a, who’s a recording engineer and he’s helping me figure out some remote equipment. Richard (9m 47s): ’cause I have some ideas of things I would like to do with it, which is gonna drive my engineer son crazy. ’cause he wants pristine recording quality. And I’m more like, I want a good conversation. But I also think it’s like, I know people when they’re listening, like peripheral noise drives them crazy. And I grew up in a big, loud, abrasive family and I can sit in the middle of chaos and not pay attention to it. So it, I realize every different people are, have different reactions to things like that. So I guess five years in, we, you were saying you were still trying to figure it out. I’m still trying to figure it out. Richard (10m 29s): A friend of mine who’s since stepped away but helped start Shenango Valley shenanigans. It was a podcast back in Pennsylvania, A bunch of warm water guys, hardcore muskie guys, they love their small mouth fishing. Really good bunch of guys. But Chad said to me, don’t you get it? And I said, no. He said, people just like to hear a conversation. They just like to eavesdrop. And I guess maybe that’s true. Hmm. 2 (10m 54s): I gotta ask clearly. You guys are good buddies. How did you meet? Adrian (10m 58s): It’s gotta be through the bulletin boards online, right? Spade pages, Richard (11m 2s): Right? There’s through spa pages. Yeah, it’s, I suck at acronyms. Adrian (11m 8s): I knew this was coming, Richard (11m 9s): You know, one, one reason I I could not function very well in the corporate world is be in a meeting and people having a conversation with in acronyms. And I’d be like, what the hell is anybody talking about? And one day on spa pages, I was looking at Adrian’s post and I realized his handle, it says Fish and Asian. And I thought, damn, it can’t be Cortez, that’s Hispanic, I that can’t be. And I just couldn’t leave it alone. And like a normal person would just say, oh, I don’t get it. But I’m like, and so eventually I sent him a note and say, look, I don’t mean to be a jerk, or I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I essentially said, am I correct on this? Richard (11m 55s): And he said, yeah. And just, we just laughed about it. And then it was probably two years later moved to Oregon City and I stop in my local fly shop Royal treatment and get a notice that Avian Cortez is doing an in-hand fly time demonstration and like three weeks. So just based on that interaction we had online, I thought he seems like a good guy. And so I went to the, to the demo and if you ever get a chance to see Adrian Ty end do it because there’s dark arts involved, there’s some kind of magic dust involved feathers. Just, it’s, Adrian (12m 31s): It’s painful to watch them to go. It’s painful to watch, Richard (12m 35s): It’s phenomenal to watch. I, if you’re tired, it’s amazing to watch. But I waited till it was over and I just introduced myself and he looked at me kind of funny and said, I thought you lived in New York. And I said, I didn’t until three weeks ago. And he said, you don’t know where to fish. I said, I don’t. And he says, I’ll show you. And we started fishing together and we all fish together all the time. In fact, the last couple years it’s been not as much, but I always have a blast fishing with him. Yeah. And we’re both bamboo junkies. 2 (13m 3s): So rich, are you time flies in hand now? Richard (13m 5s): No, I keep wanting to, and quite frankly my voice as a result of, of cancer 12 years ago and outside of that is it tanked my, I didn’t tank. It flatlined my career. And so just as that was coming back, covid hit. So the career side is, I work a lot for somebody my age and it keeps me from having as much time as I would like to, to put into tie. And I really want to tie, Adrian gifted me some of his peer saws and I’ve got every, I’ve got more material. I probably have way more materials than Adrian. It’s embarrassing to admit piles of materials and I just haven’t got around to trying it yet. Richard (13m 49s): Also hand cramps. 2 (13m 50s): So Adrian, do you, do you remember the first fly you tied in hand? You know, where you just kind of said, I’m gonna go for this. Adrian (13m 56s): I do. You know, Rick mentioned that we met on spa pages and, and I was on spa pages ’cause I got bit by the steelhead bug, so to speak. You know, I was out at this local river, caught a few steelhead, but then I thought, you know, the flies I’m tying, they just, you know, they don’t live up to par for the kind of fish I’m angling for. And I thought, I gotta learn how to tie something pretty. And at that time, spay pages was a means to see other people’s steelhead or atlantic salmon patterns. And there was a, a tire, well a few tires, Mike Pepe from Ontario and he was time beautiful D patterns and I, I believe he had a elbow injury. Adrian (14m 43s): And so he started a tie in hand and he started tying D patterns in hand. And I was just, you know, in awe Richard (14m 51s): Makes a phenomenal tire. Adrian (14m 53s): Yeah. And shortly after he started doing that, Jen Wu Lee joined on the spa pages program for a bit. And then at that time I think Jen was also starting to tie in hand. I, I believe he started tying with a vice and then while he was on spay pages, did his first few ties in hand. And by that point I was just enamored by what they did and why they would do such a thing. And for me it was kinda like steelhead. I, like I mentioned, I was a trout guy and I was not someone that wanted a steelhead, but I ended up loving it. I was a reluctant steel header initially. Adrian (15m 33s): And that’s the same thing with tying in hand. I was a reluctant tire in hand. I was just drawn to the challenge and I thought, holy cow, if these guys can tie beautiful flies in hand, maybe I should try tying in ugly fly because I already knew that steelhead eat grotesque, you know, offerings that I toss to ’em, they don’t really care, you know? So I thought, well, you know, I, I’d like to, I’d like to make something pretty. And so yeah, the tying in hand thing, I tied a few flies in hand and I thought, well, they’ll eat that. And I thought I’d quit. But you know, something keeps challenging you as an angler, as a person. And that’s, yeah, that’s where it started. The, the tying in hand part, I think that was a question. Adrian (16m 15s): Did I answer the question? I’m not sure. 2 (16m 17s): Yeah, well I guess, I guess I’m trying to understand, were you a, were you a prolific fly tire with a vice beforehand? Adrian (16m 23s): I was. Okay. Rick was probably better than I was. You know, like I was, you know, it’s, it was decent, but nothing fantastic. So Richard (16m 33s): Yeah, my, my tying has been all over the place. ’cause when I was a kid and was first getting obsessed with steelhead, I just wanted to catch on classics and I couldn’t buy a fish. I hooked a few, I couldn’t land a fish to save my life. And then kinda life got in the way and I quit fishing altogether. And when I got back to it, one of the first fish I got was on a green highlander. I got one of a skunk. And then with a few years I was fishing string leaches. So it’s, Adrian (17m 5s): Why do you think that was Rick? What made you go from, you know, Highlanders and Scots to, to Richard (17m 10s): Be honest with you, I think painting, I started tying flies when I was probably nine or 10. I actually was walking home from school and not atypical of me, kind of was busy thinking about something. And I walked into my neighbor’s house by mistake thinking it was my house. And we, two big families were in each other’s houses all the time. All ’cause all the kids were about the same ages and stuff. And I walked in and I was probably 10 steps in before I realized it was the wrong voice as I was hearing. And the last thing I did before I left was I looked over and I saw an Orvis catalog and I was already fishing obsessed. I was already trying to teach myself how, how to fly fish, but I’d never seen an orifice catalog before. Richard (17m 52s): I’d never seen anything like it. And there was a fly on the cover and I went home and worked up my nerve to go back like next day and ask about the orifice catalog. And that’s where I saw fly time for the first time. And so once I started, I probably kept myself outta so much trouble because I was in my room tying flies obsessively. If I wasn’t doing chores or playing baseball, I was probably tying flies or drawing. And I spent a ton of time, time flies. So by the time I was 17, 18, I was really into salmon flies and all kinds of stuff. And I didn’t start really get into art until about my third year of college. Richard (18m 37s): And I think that desire to make something, I’ve always, I still loved Thai flies, but I, I use up so much of that energy painting and, and doing printmaking that I just don’t have as much brain space left for it. But I st I still really enjoy it. In fact, the whole, we did the year of the muddler last year with the podcast and that got me kind of juiced up on it again. Adrian (19m 1s): No, that makes sense. ’cause you know, that’s, that’s what I find myself these days is the energy. Like you have to, I have to focus my energy on something. And if I’m like tying a, a, a classic pattern versus a dryly or you know, or tying it to donate it to, you know, some.org, the energy changes, you know, or, or the, the, the passion changes whether I’m tying a fly for like winter dry lining, you know, I have to really concentrate. Whereas if I’m tying a grease liner, it’s just like, I could tie it on the river, but it depends on, you know, how much energy I have in me. Other times I’ll pick a fly outta my box tattered just because I don’t want to tie anything. Adrian (19m 44s): So I don’t know. Richard (19m 45s): Well there’s also the, the whole goofy phenomenon. I’m positive I’m not the only one that suffers from this. You feel like you’re only gonna catch a fish on the fly. You just tied. So you have boxes of flies and you’re like, I gotta get too tied before I go tomorrow. And you gotta tie at least, I actually think three because that way you can lose two and still be in the game. If you only have one, you’re gonna lose it. That to me, for years I felt like put jungle cock on that fly’s gone. That’s some rock magnet 4 (20m 17s): Stonefly nets nestled in the heart of the Ozarks Ethan, a master craftsman dedicates his skill to creating the finest wood landing nets. Stonefly nets are more than just nets. They’re part of our story. Each cast and every cast ready to make your fly fishing trips unforgettable. Visit stonefly nets.com and discover the difference of a handcrafted wood landing net. Don’t let the chill keep you from your next big fish. Heated cores next to skin heated base layer is your secret weapon for staying warm and comfortable during those early morning fishing trips or late seasoned adventures engineered with advanced heating technology. This base layer keeps you toasty all day long, ensuring you can focus on what really matters. 4 (20m 58s): Gear up with the heated core base layer and make every cast count this season. 2 (21m 7s): Now are you guys, are you tires who have particular patterns and you just tie the same fly over and over? Are you the type of tires that no two flies are the same? Adrian (21m 16s): You know, I, no two flies are the same for me, Brian. You know, I actually, the only flies I tie over and over are Hague, brown steelhead bees and grease liners. I am different than most. I try to tie as strict to the recipe as possible. ’cause it, it challenges me. It’s like, it’s like the game with rules, you know? And so I have to stay between the lines to, to win the game. So I, I try to get it as close as I can because it challenges me to like, to focus on how many slips or how many fibers or, you know, and just to be judicious in, in what I choose for the fly. Adrian (21m 57s): But I do like to change up ’cause I get bored. But the grease liner and the steelhead bee, you know, they’re just stand, I mean they’re just classic dry flies. You can’t, you can’t beat a, a Lumiere fly or a Hague brown fly. And so those have to be tied as they are. So I’ll keep tying those. But yeah, for classic patterns, Atlantic salmon patterns or steelhead patterns, I have to change. I have to go, you know, if I tie for example Jock Scott, then I don’t want to tie like another jock Scott, it takes too much out of me. I’ll tie something else like a mar lodge or something, you know, next time around. Or if, you know, I have a lot of friends including Rick, he’ll gift me hooks and I’ll see a hook and more so these days it’s a hook. Adrian (22m 41s): If I get a hook, I’ll stare at that hook and I’ll think, hmm, what does that hook need on it? How does it need to be dressed? Richard (22m 48s): I’ve got, so I’m sitting here for you right Adrian (22m 49s): Now Richard (22m 51s): For your winter season. 2 (22m 53s): So while all your tyings on irons, you’re not, you’re not tying on tubes or shanks ever then? Adrian (22m 57s): No, I haven’t tied on a tube or shank in, in over a decade. I think after my, I believe after my last sink tip, steelhead. I think that was the last tube pattern I tied effective. I think tubes are the most effective. You know, things at the end of a fly rod, whether dry or whether, you know, tied in the round. They’re, they’re deadly, they’re efficient, you know, you don’t bend them out. I mean you just, you know, switch the hooks out. But yeah, I, I just like the challenge. I like the hooks as well. I like the way the hooks are shaped. You know, I think it’s just more traditional guys. Adrian (23m 37s): Like, you know, those guys, those old icons, Lumiere Hague, brown, you know, McMillan, they all use hooks ’cause that’s what they had and you know, all the way back to Kelson, Taverner, all those dudes. So I like hooks. 2 (23m 53s): So tradition’s really important for you with your fishing then? Adrian (23m 55s): It is, it is. It really is. Again, it’s like the rules within the rules and some traditions are, they’re hokey, they’re not, you know, they’re kind of dumb, you know, some of the rules that came across from the pond, you know, and I get it. But I, I’ll still try to play that game at times just to see if I can do it. But yeah, I don’t impose the traditions on anyone else, just myself, you know, like if Rick’s out there and if he wants to fish, you know, t 14 ahead of me, I’m just gonna laugh if he snags up. Richard (24m 28s): Yeah. The, the, the problem is I always think, well Adrian goes through first ’cause he’s fishing a dry line and then he’s catching the fish and he’s catching the fish. So it doesn’t matter what I’m fishing. So I’m kind of done with that crap, 2 (24m 44s): Richard. It’s, it’s a win-win for you because if he catch the fish, you’re the, the gentleman who let him fish first. And that’s great. You get to watch your buddy get one and God forbid if you get one behind him, that’s a pretty good story too. Richard (24m 55s): Oh, it’s, that’s always good. It’s funny, I, you know, there’s such an emphasis on getting out early and, and just, well first off, I hate getting up early, but when I first met Lee PE I asked him Winter Steel had most active and he looked at me kind of funny and, and he said, from nine to three. And I said, so this whole getting up early is just to beat everybody to the water. And he said, yep. And I said, I don’t care. I’m, especially in winter, especially in winter, I don’t, you know, I think there’s fish moving all day long if the water’s up. So it’s like if you’re in a, on a, a summer river, I think the fish tend to become more resident for at least a a period of time. And so they’re not so inclined to, I actually, but based on what you said before, your summer fish are moving, they’re hauling. 2 (25m 41s): Well sure. Let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit. So, you know, we’re up on the cheena, we fish the, the lower Cheena from Tidewater up to just, just a little bit west of Kit Wonga. So we have a very long season. We, we fish march and April for winter steelhead and then we fish mid-July through the end of October for summer steelhead. Now we’d like to put steelhead in these two boxes. They’re either summer fish, they’re winter fish, and we, the further you’re from the ocean, the more that makes sense. But when you’re on the lower Chena, those lines get pretty blurry. So a quick example of that would be someone catches a bright fish on the Calum in November. Sure, we’ll call that a summer fish. If someone catches a very similar bright fish at the end of December, maybe we’re gonna call that a winter fish. 2 (26m 21s): It’s not a situation where those, those fish are coming in and spawning right away, like a true winter. They’re gonna come in and hang out for a bit. So at the end of the day, the, the nice thing about the cheena is we have these lower tributaries like the copper and the Calum. And if some other ones I’m not gonna get into right now that have this crazy runtime, I mean that’s literally spread out where you can get fresh fish 10 months of the year. But the behaviors change. And I’m gonna talk about two things real quick. So I wanna solidify my agreement with your point. Our program at the lodge is seven o’clock breakfast, seven o’clock dinner. The only time we would deviate ever so slightly from that is a crazy heat wave. And that’s more for angr comfort. And if I’ve got seven guides on the water spread out over 40 miles a river, it blows my mind how no one will catch a fish right away. 2 (27m 5s): None of them. But come about nine, 10:00 AM all of a sudden fish get caught. And you know, the steelhead liked that middle part of the day and anybody who wants to get up in the dark and get there first, their motivation is about beating someone there. Or the, maybe they just really like watching the sunrise on the river and I can respect that too. But you know, it’s from a fish activity standpoint, I love the hours. They’re they’re business hours, aren’t they? Richard (27m 28s): Yeah, exactly. Well, and the other part of it for me is that whole thing of beating people to the run. And I think, like I said, I got to fish up in your neighborhood once and, and some of the rivers are massive so you, so it’s not like you’re not gonna get a good run. And some of the rivers down here are, are not as big and are popular and on the weekends it’s gonna be hard to find a, a run that you want or they’re run that you’re favorite. But you can always find something and you can always go through second. And I don’t care about either one. I’m perfectly happy fishing behind somebody. I don’t wanna bring the motivations of the rest of life to be first to win to all that stuff to my fishing. Richard (28m 14s): I want to fish. I like the act of phishing. 2 (28m 18s): It’s crazy, you know how some guides really ruin things. And what I mean by that is they become stressed, they’re worried about what someone else is doing. They want to get there first and then that energy transfers to the client. And then we’re gonna get into this ’cause we had a good conversation on my last podcast that I recorded yesterday with Tim Arsenal and Matt Bentley about this idea of negative energy. And my point was in, you know, 30 odd years of guiding, 30 years of guiding, I have yet to see an angry person catch a fish. I’ve yet to see that I need a fish guy get one his happy go lucky buddy will catch fish behind him in places. I’ve never seen a fish with a fly that’s, you know, halfway tattered. 2 (28m 58s): So I don’t know if this, you know, we tried to rationalize it a little bit last night and say, okay, well he is, you know, he is fishing the fly better, he is more confident. But I can’t help but think there’s some way that negative energy transfers down the line because you know, a happy angler is productive. Richard (29m 13s): Oh, I totally agree. I totally agree. I dunno about Adrian, how do you, Adrian’s got a whole nother thing. No, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll I’ll lead back to Adrian. I’m gonna, I’ll tell you something. I’ve had a really rough year coming to terms with having to move back east. I adore my daughters and my grandchildren when we moved out here, I thought I was gonna be able to get back five, six times a year to see everybody. And it just hasn’t worked out, out, out that way between divorce and covid. I just can’t do it. And the one thing in my life that I knew I wanted to do is be a dad and I’m gonna go back east to be a dad and so I’m gonna be a tourist in the west again. Richard (29m 54s): And to come to terms with that, I had had a brutally hard year. And in fact, this, this march we’re getting ready to go to Hawaii for my daughter’s birthday. And right before I left, I, I went to the doctor and then said, what’s going? He said, what’s going on? I said, I’m feeling my pulse in my cheek and in my neck. I’m afraid I’m gonna have a heart attack and die in front of my kids in Hawaii. And I’ll, the last thing I’ll think is what an idiot, you should have gone to the doctor, you know, right as I die. So I got a stress test and he says, no, you’re, you’re fine. You need to figure out your stress. And so I did. But all through the winter I couldn’t buy fish. Richard (30m 35s): I didn’t get to fish very much anyway, but I couldn’t buy fish. And one day this spring in March, fishing on the op with Adrian and Mark Shamberg, ah, by the time we got down to the last run, the last run of the trip of the week, long trip of, of the day, everything else, I was a little better, but still in kind of a mood. Adrian went down with his dry line into the tail out and I was standing right next to the boat and I hung my, my D loop on the ore. And Mark had a really frustrating day with us. So we hadn’t touched, we hadn’t seen, touched, felt a fish were the day before. Richard (31m 16s): A couple of friends of ours had had landed three. And he says, just gimme that rod. He takes the rod from me, clears the D loop and gets the line all up and makes, goes to make a cast and he hangs it on the or, which just, just sent me if, if I could laugh louder, if my knees were more functional, I’d have been laying in the river laughing. And so just as I’m getting over my laughing foot, I stand up just in time for Mark to make another cast and bring my rod down right on top of my head, which made me laugh even harder. Adrian looks back upstream and I’m just crying. I’m laughing so hard. And Mark has just disgusted and says, you know, damnit, it’s, it’s seven o’clock I’m gonna fish. Richard (31m 59s): I’m like, good. I wish he would. So he takes his Rodney Coza stream and next thing you know, I look down, Adrian throws a beautiful cast, the sun’s streaming down. It’s just this glorious day. I’m on a river that I love. I’m casting better than I’ve cast all winter and 12 casts in i I nail a fish. And that felt really good. And then I go back into the rest of my year. You know, you have a glorious moment like that on the river. It doesn’t change your life. You still go back home and your life is still a disaster. It was before. And so I put my head down, I got a lot of work to do for the summer. I had a big show in August at the art center in Colorado and I just burned myself out and it comes around to fall and I’m kind of back in a funk and I hadn’t hardly fished for the year and I finally just decided, I’m fishing, I’m gonna fish. Richard (32m 52s): I got all kinds of stuff I gotta do. I don’t care, I’m gonna fish. So I fished a couple weeks in September, almost all of October and couldn’t buy a fish. We had one of the better returns we’ve had in years down here, and I couldn’t buy a fish and I’m positive it was because of my energy. And I was having a conversation with Tom Larimer and, and we were talking about this same thing. And I said, you know, the funny thing is I feel like I’m in a better place. I think I’m coming to terms with some things and getting my head around it. I think I’m in a better place. I think I’m ready to catch fish. I caught a fish two hours into my next day on the water. Awesome. And I’m positive it’s that it’s 2 (33m 32s): All about those moments. A fill your gas tank up for you. Richard (33m 34s): Yeah. But Adrian whole different place. I think he lives in that place. Adrian (33m 39s): Well, I don’t know. I’m, I’m in an anomaly, you know, ’cause I, I really do believe, you know, just, just going back to, you know, what you mentioned Brian and Rick about, you know, bank hours, steelheading, you know, when, when you don’t know much, when you start off steelheading, you know, you, you, I guess you grab a few tidbits from people that have steelhead fished and busy rivers and they talk about, oh, dark 30, hitting the water. And I was that guy, you know, when I was a new steel header, I, you know, fishing the north thumb quad, you know, and there’s certain rivers you have to be up early because of the sun. You know, that was, that was me back then. And that was because I didn’t have a lot of steelhead under my belt. Adrian (34m 21s): So I was like, I gotta figure these fish out. And you know, like, it just, I guess over time. And, and then I met Richard on the North Umpqua, well, he told me like his, his strategy was to wake up when he wakes up, make a cup of coffee, enjoy the morning sounds, and then head out to the water and then he’ll catch a fish. You know, and, and you know, oh, I’ve Richard (34m 45s): Been saying about catching fish. Adrian (34m 47s): Well, so, so that appealed to me, right? Because we fished all our lives. I mean, I was a kid, I, I, you know, as seven, eight years old, I’d say, dad, take me to whatever the lake, the river, the pond, you know, or the ocean. And I knew my dad wasn’t like really keen on waking up that early, but I, I always saw, you know, the early bird gets the worm. But anyway, that appealed to me, like waking up a little later, enjoy as, as as I got older and I was reading these books from like, Hague Brown, Harry Lumiere’s, you know, some quotes that he had tavern or you know, all these Atlantic salmon fishermen and stuff like that. Adrian (35m 28s): And, and a lot of ’em, like even Hank Brown said, and you mentioned it, Brian, like, you know, the people like getting up early to beat the other people to the river. That’s the game. That’s what they won. You know, and there’s some sort of macho satisfaction in, hey, I beat Rick to the run, you know, I get to, I get to swing through first, you know. But I’ve realized too that the steelhead, you know, they’re there at nine o’clock, at 10 o’clock, you know, at noon. And I’ve had the opportunity because I live real close to like test these things out on the river and see if, you know, do they take a dry fly with the sun, right in their eyeballs? I guess they do. You know, or do they take it, you know, if you’re, if a wet fly guy goes through the run first and then you follow with a dry fly, yeah, they come up and eat that as well. Adrian (36m 17s): So I’ve had that opportunity as far as having peace on the water. I think, you know, one can be upset, angry, and it’s not enjoyable. Even, I mean, you catch a fish, you have fun and then you know, you’re back to that, that whatever is welling up inside of you. So I I truly believe, like if you’re at peace on the river, it’s enjoyable. You catch a fish and you fish better. If you’re casting good, if you’re at, you know, you fish better, you fish more effectively and therefore you get the fish. But I mentioned the anomaly. There was one time on the local, there was a, a gear angler, conventional gear angler, and he was a jig and bobber guy. Adrian (36m 60s): And on the run that we were fishing, that I was fishing is typically a a, a fly fisherman portion of the river. It’s shallower. But for some reason this guy had waded out to the middle of the river and with his jig and bobber was casting to both sides of the river. And I don’t think he knew any better. And I thought, okay, so, you know, I went out there and I was just fishing my side and not saying much. I kind of waved to the fella and then he kind of wanted my attention. So I, I kind of said, Hey, All right man, you’re casting to both sides of the river. And then he, for some reason I diplomatically said that he was encroaching on my side of the river, you know, and I was fishing dry flies, but inside I was really upset, you know, because he basically limited what I could do, whereas he could fish the whole river now. Adrian (37m 55s): And so I don’t like confrontation, but at one point, you know, he, he kept, you know, it’s jigging bobber guys, every time they snag the bottom, they, they have this heavy hook set and just stirs up the water. And I’m like, man, you, you’re spooking all the fish now around where I’m fishing at. So I said, Hey buddy, you know, typically don’t stand in the middle of the river to fish the whole river. ’cause now I don’t have any spot to really fish. He kind of got the hint and he said he apologized. So he started casting to the other side of the river where I couldn’t, you know, hook a steelhead. And I don’t know why, but I made a point to cast all the way out to where he was. It was 80 feet out and he was standing on a rock. Adrian (38m 37s): And I knew steelhead held behind that rock. And it was a, a dry fly. I can’t remember what it was off the top of my head. But anyway, a steelhead rolls on it right behind the guy’s rear end, you know, and it misses, it totally misses the flight. It just rolls on it, it was dead drifting out there too. And I thought, okay, but I’m still angry on the inside. The next cast didn’t land in the right spot. The third cast, I threw it out there, perfect drift. And, but I saw like my tip, it had like a curly cue on there that I did not like. And again, this is dead drifting. So I was like, oh, that stupid fish is going to eat this fly right now. And it’s got a curly cue on my tipt. Adrian (39m 18s): Sure enough, steelhead comes up, it was an eight, nine pound head, bright fish rolls on the fly, takes it down and you know, tip it is all screwed up right behind this guy’s butt. The fish thrashes, the guy turns around and he goes, whoa, did you see that? And then he sees me fighting the fish and he goes, that’s your fish. And anyway, I don’t say anything. I reel it in, fight the fish, land the fish, remove the fly, release the fish. And then he says, congratulations. I put my fly back on the line guide and I just storm off the river kind of upset. You know, I, I wasn’t really upset. I think I was just trying to make a point to the guy, you know? Adrian (39m 58s): So, you know, sometimes you can catch a steelhead when you’re angry and upset. But it didn’t make me feel any better. That was just a good example of my mentality at that time or for that moment. It’s like, you know, I hooked that fish but I didn’t have a good time doing it. So, but yeah, I I much prefer peaceful, you know, steelheading a hundred percent. 2 (40m 20s): Let’s talk about that for a second. ’cause I, I did have this conversation with, with Tim Arsenal and, and Matt Bentley and when you do get down hold, and I’m of the belief that at least half the time when it happens, it’s just a educational thing. The person has no idea that what they’re doing. And I think that goes back to the, especially if it’s a gear guy, your typical gear guy’s fishing in front of them, we take up a lot of space. We fish below ourselves that doesn’t necessarily make sense to them, right? And so then you’re in this position of, okay, is this a teachable moment? And obviously if you’re smart, it’s not worth getting in a confrontation on the river for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which there, there’s not really a, a good positive outcome that’s gonna be likely. 2 (41m 2s): But, you know, is there a way to kill them with kindness, as my mom would say, I suppose, you know, and you know, I liked your, I liked your situation there, Adrian, though obviously your, your motivation wasn’t necessarily to be kind, but you taught that guy something and it maybe, maybe you just a right place at the right time or it was a knowledge bomb that you had. But yeah, I mean I, that guy probably still tells that story I bet. And hey, maybe he’s a dry fly fisherman too, but Richard, do you ever do, when someone walks in below you, do you just, do you let it wreck your day or do you just carry on? Or what, what do you do if that happens? Richard (41m 36s): Well, it, it’s funny because on the water, now, if you’re 20 feet from me, you can’t hear me. I used to be really loud. I, I had to use indoor voice outside. I was so loud and that was just my natural voice. And since we haven’t met in person, you don’t realize how quiet I am. But that alone, I was fishing with a couple friends of mine, we were floating and we’d done a three day float and we’re almost out and a guy walks in off the road and he walks in like maybe 60 feet in front of me was on that river up in Washington, Adrian. Oh yes. And Matt and Randall say, yell at the guy and I look at him and they’re like, oh, you can’t. Richard (42m 17s): And I said, yell all you want, I can’t yell. And it’s, it’s actually had, that might be the only positive impact I would say to my vocal situation in that if you take getting angry out of the equation, what’s your reaction? That’s what you can control is your reaction to things. And a lot of times, you know, on, on most steelhead rivers, really easy wayed runs are few and far between. So do I want to get out and walk all the way down and quit fishing for 10 or 15 minutes to have a conversation with the guy or do I want to just let it roll off and just keep fishing and I just keep fishing. Richard (42m 58s): I find the vast majority of people, lo homie are other fly anglers, which surprises me because I realize if you’re a bobber guy, you might not realize how’s pay guys fish. But when others pay guy does it, I I find that more irritating. But at the same time I still yelling, getting into a confrontation, getting my, i in my youth, I had a embarrassingly bad temper. I know where it lives. I don’t want it out. Once you got that in you, you’re jacked up for the day. I’m out there to enjoy my day, to let myself get really riled up doesn’t solve any problem for me. Adrian (43m 38s): Yeah, you, you really end up any confrontation I think you end up ruining your day. ’cause that’s all that’s present in your mind. And I think your question, Brian’s really, it bodes well, especially on the rivers that we fish down here south of the Canadian border, there’s a lot of, you know, like the Deschutes River, you know, it’s easily accessible within a couple hours from Portland. And I’ve had a few, you know, discussions with anglers and I think, I think I’ve had more than, you know, five discussions with ’em and all good discussions like, Hey, I’m gonna fish down the run, you know, which way are you going? Are you moving upstream? Or if they’re new to the two hand casting, you know, covering steelhead water, I sometimes will point them out where to start at the top of the run and move all the way down and then give them some tips as well as to, you know, the, the fish will hold here or there, but you want to cover each spot. Adrian (44m 33s): So I, you know, I think, you know, just kind instruction, you know, helps. Kindness always helps in any situation, almost any situation. But yeah, there are situations too that I realize, you know what, there’s, it’s just, you know, not enough time for this. You know, like Rick’s mentioning, if it’s a big hike or something, I’ll just go find another spot or I’ll let them fish through and enjoy the session I have left. So there’s always a reason for something. That’s my, my focus is like, if, if I got get cut off, well that’s okay. ’cause you know, I’ve had good times on the river before and I’ll have good times again. So, Richard (45m 12s): Well it’s, it’s funny, I, this makes me feel like an old curmudgeon to go down this track, but in the days of Instagram and holding your fish and all this stuff, I, I feel like I wanna see you’re doing it wrong. It’s not about, I mean it’s great I love catch fish or I wouldn’t be fishing, but the piece you can find out there is not from catching the fish, it’s from the act of fishing. And there’s a great quote in an old John Hazel video of fish, good water. Well, you know, just, I fished for, I think I was 55 before I fished with a guide 54 before I fished with a guide. Richard (45m 52s): I’d fished alone, I fished in the east where it was really crowded. The ideas of etiquette I had came from old steelhead books. And so I got, you get in the east, you get low hold just constantly. And when you’re fishing with guys that are center piners, you know, if you can fish a whole run from one rock at the top, you don’t have a concept of low holding or high holding, they just go ahead and fish. And some of the rivers I had most fun on in New York, it was just constant. And if you’re gonna let that ruin your day, you’re gonna have every day fishing ruined. And I just find it easier to move on and, and find peace someplace else. 2 (46m 31s): Growing up in Vancouver, so I I I grew up in Port Coquitlam, I said Vancouver, but I grew up in Port Coquitlam and you know, guided in South America for a year, spent some years in the interior teaching skiing and then moved to Whistler for 12 or 14 years and then Squamish so moved around, but more or less living in the same, same general area. So the two rivers that people fish the most, there would be the vetter and the Squamish. Now the Squamish has all wild fish, doesn’t have nearly as many fish. Broad, shallow river lends itself really well to fly fishing. There’s some fantastic gear anglers there. Some guys throw spoons, some short floaters, but you know, high percentage of fly anglers, but lots of space, not that many fish. Honestly a fantastic experience. 2 (47m 12s): The vetter has a lot more fish. It’s a hatchery there and a lot more anglers, a lot more gear anglers. And one of the things I always found really interesting, and I don’t know if you guys get this south of the border, is when the gear anglers are, are, are lumped up in a high concentration. A lot of them in a small area, they just kind of come up with a system where they kind of take turns casting so they can all fish the same water, but they, the one guy throws it up and the other guy throws it up. So their floats are all going along one after another, but they don’t tangle. And, and so they, they kind of figure it out and then along comes, along comes, you know, one of us with our, our goofy fly rods and we, we think we need 200 feet of river to operate. We just kind of kinda screw up the whole system. So we end up seeking out different water and you know, thinking about dry fly fishing Adrian, ’cause we haven’t talked enough about it yet. 2 (47m 56s): We, we gotta do that before the show’s over. Never Is, you know, a good dryly angler recognizes the part of the river that that works well for them. And oh by the way, it doesn’t work that great for us. Sink tip people. It doesn’t work that great for people. You know, fishing heavy spoons or float fishing, you know, your zone is is the shallow stuff that you know works really well for dry fly fishing. And by the way, the fish steelhead. That’s where they love to be. We, we see this on the skeena by the way. You know, I pick people up from the airport. I’ve got a, a little shtick I usually do to set them up for success. One of the, the pearls of wisdom, I’ll call it, I give them is wade shallow cash Short. There’s a bunch of other stuff in there, but wade shallow cash short, it’s a huge river. 2 (48m 39s): But you’d be surprised we catch fish in two and a half feet of water routinely. Richard (48m 44s): Is that because your travel lanes are closer in 2 (48m 48s): Okay, sure. That they’re moving fish. And I think there’s a variety of reasons. They, they like the shallow stuff. Avoiding the seals is probably one. I think the short answer, Richard, is because they’re not that affected by people yet. I think anglers push the fish out. I think without, without people standing in the river, they’re, they like to run the bank and they like to hang out in that shallow water. And if the water’s cold, I kind of think they’re like Alaskan rainbows where they like to sun themselves a little bit. Richard (49m 11s): It’s funny, up winter fishing we found fish in really shallow areas and then my buddy Terry Rogers and I used to do before we got closed out by a fire. ’cause there’s so much dangerous timber now. We used to do a red survey up on the headwaters of a local stream and I think we were, it was our third survey, our third pass through the stretch in May before we actually saw Sawfish. And it was in probably, it was probably close to a 10 pound buck and it was in 12 to 14 inches of the water with its dorsal fin out in a little patch of sunlight. Richard (49m 53s): And I, I’m, because it it is icy cold water. It was, I’m sure it was sun in itself. 2 (49m 59s): I love the way you guys, when you’re talking about your rivers, you, you’re not name dropping, you’re calling ’em the local river. Richard (50m 4s): Well Adrian and I have a local favorite that we would like to have remained anonymous forever. 2 (50m 11s): Nice. Richard (50m 13s): You know, it’s, it’s funny. I suspect that’s why my daughter named ours The Rambler. ’cause my daughter’s the one that came up with it and I said, I’m not being called the Stinking River Rambler. 2 (50m 22s): It’s a great name. Richard (50m 23s): Do you know, have you read the river 2 (50m 24s): YI don’t know if I have, I Adrian (50m 27s): Don’t believe I have Richard (50m 28s): The main character’s Father is like a fishing celebrity in the sixties, I think maybe seventies. And he’s just a blowhard. And to me that would be the river rambler and the la that’s the last thing I want to be is some guy who thinks he’s an expert on everything. Adrian (50m 45s): I got a, I got a good nickname for you now the blow. Thanks. Richard (50m 50s): Don’t start going to nicknames or I’ll come up some. Good for you. Adrian (50m 54s): I deserve it. Richard (50m 54s): See now, now I’m off topic. What was I gonna tell you about? I forgot. See, Adrian (50m 60s): It was about shallow steelhead. I don’t know. Maybe that, that wasn’t it. That was a segue. Richard (51m 8s): I don’t know. I I will jump backwards to another topic. We were talking about fly tying and, and I’ve kind of run the gamut all over the place. And I hated the muddler middle to like, like nobody’s business for years. I just hated that fly when I was a kid. I got really into him and I couldn’t buy a fish on one. I fished him every way he could think. I fished him as dry as I fished him with split shot. This is before I even heard of sink tips. I could not buy a fly. And again, when I met Lee Spencer, he told me that down on, and I, Adrian already brought it up, so I’ll say North Umpqua, but also because that river is special. Lee Spencer told me that those fish will come up through 30 feet of Blackwater to hit a hit a skater. Richard (51m 52s): And I said, what are you skate? And he said, A muddler. And I was like, I don’t have any muddler. And I dug through my box. I had one muddler left over from my muddler binge, and he, he hitched behind the head. And so I hitched behind the head and about three hours later I got my first north qua fish in water. So deep if I had have fallen and I’d drowned. It was dark, dark, dark, deep. And I watched this big nose come up and sit my skate and muddler down through a bunch of cutthroat. And that, that’s only fish I’ve caught on that river has been on skating muddler, I’ve since changed the way I tie muddler to skate. But then getting a look inside, well actually at Al Peron’s Instagram account and then getting a look at his fly boxes, Al doesn’t tie patterns. Richard (52m 39s): He just ties flies that he feels like tying. And it has in common with what I like is kind of a teardrop shape. If it’s a skater, all I care about is a wake. And if it’s a wet fly, all I care is about, is some movement. And I want a teardrop shape. And it’s, that’s I heart, I tie three of everything because I think my third one is usually my best one. And then I change. ’cause I can’t stand to sit and tie the same thing over and over again. I cannot do production work. My mind will go away from me. But it’s Adrian you that, that was it two years ago on the Eastern River that you changed flies every fish. Adrian (53m 21s): Oh, and you Richard (53m 21s): Caught a lot of Adrian (53m 22s): Fish. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, it was, I just wanted to, I just wanted to see what fish would come up to, you know. And I usually, I have one rod that Rick knows, well, her name is Becky. It’s a James Reed, 11 foot, five inch, six weight. And she’s, she’s the sweetheart. So she only fishes a steelhead bee. And so I’ll usually start with her on, on the, you know, summer steelhead rivers. But you know, like, like Rick mentioned, you can’t, you know, keep tying the same fly. Well, I mean, I can only fish a steelhead bee for so long before I want to fish something else. Adrian (54m 2s): So I have to put, I ask Becky, Hey, can I go fish the other rod? So I’ll go grab the other rod. And that rod doesn’t care what I put on that rod. It’s, it’s a, you know, it, the rod has no name. It’s another James Reed Summer run Rod. So I put whatever I want to. So that’s kind of like, you know, so there’s, you know, Rick’s muddler that he ties, I call it the, the Rambler muddler. And I’ll fish that on there. I’ll fish other patterns. And so when, when we were on this river, you know, I caught a few on the steelhead bee and I thought, man, let’s change it up. So then I started, every time I caught a fish, I’d retire fly, which I typically do, just to remember the moment. Adrian (54m 42s): And plus sometimes the, you know, the hook gets bent outta shape. So yeah, I just put more, more patterns on there or different patterns. So that’s, that’s always fun. But yeah, it’s, I think it’s effective too to kinda switch out flies. So especially if you’re fishing the same pool, you know, so whatever, if the fish are, if there’s a pot of steelhead, at least they see a different offering next time coming through. So Richard (55m 6s): I think Adrian mentioned that, but I think it’s actually a really interesting tradition that as effective a fisherman as Adrian is, he has all pile of flies that he is retired and with a tag on them that notes the fish and the date, don’t you? Adrian (55m 22s): Oh yeah, I, I do because I’m forgetful. I’m like very forgetful because, and I wanna, I wanna, Richard (55m 29s): There’s more to it than that. There Adrian (55m 31s): Is, I think too is, I wanna remember the moment. I think each steelhead is special. You know, it’s funny, I want to elevate the steelhead more than it is, you know, I mean a steelhead what a, a sculpin is just as important as a steelhead is just as important as a mayfly is just as important as a river structure. I mean, it’s all, you know, one big connected system. But I really do love steelhead. And so if I do catch a steelhead, I wanna memorialize it to remember that moment. And that’s why I kind of, you know, tag those flies and retire ’em. ’cause then, you know, one day I might not be able to remember these stories, but I can look up at that fly on the wall with a tag and think, oh yeah, I, I caught that, that fly right there. Adrian (56m 19s): The rambler muddler. We were on that Eastern river in the evening and I, I couldn’t see it, you know, I couldn’t see the fly anymore ’cause it was so dark. So I gave a, a location twitch where I stripped the line in and the fly burped up to the surface and the steelhead was on. And so I wanted to remember those moments. So yeah, I have a, a whole pile of flies on the wall. Well, whole pile of flies not even on the wall yet that I need to, you know, tag before I forget the stories. And yeah, that’s, it makes steelhead special for me, you know. 2 (56m 50s): So Adrian, how did you connect with James? James is obviously a legend in the, the bamboo rod building. James is someone I’ve known for a while when I used to put on my cast and blast events. And Squamish James was a big supporter of that. So James, if you’re listening, thanks buddy. One day maybe we’ll manage to get James on the show, but there’s no question. He’s definitely one of the best and most innovative bamboo rod builders around. How did you guys connect? He’s up here in Campbell River. Adrian (57m 14s): I know, it’s kind of funny. I was, again, on spay page is tying in hand and you know, I had, you know, some, some decent rods, you know, graphite rods. But I thought to myself, you know, one day if I ever, ever could afford a bamboo rod, I’d get a Bob Clay, you know, or something like that. And around that time I was actually on the, the phone a few times with Bob Miser. ’cause I thought I’m gonna get a miser rod. And I had talked on the phone with Bob a few times about what I wanted, but in the back of my head I thought someday I’m gonna get a bamboo rod. And, you know, spa pages has the classified ad section and fella posted on there that he had a James Reed rod that was a 12 foot seven weight summer run. Adrian (57m 60s): And it was a used price, but it was amazingly affordable. This was before James, well, like everyone knew before everyone knew about James, you know. And so I thought, oh, I gotta get this rod. So anyway, I asked my wife permission like a good husband should. And, and you know, my, my thing to her was like, Hey, this is the last rod I’m ever gonna get. I want a bamboo rod. This is the last rod I’m ever gonna get. She holds that phrase over my head, I think, until the day that I die because I have four James Reed Rods now. And so I don’t know, but that’s how I, you know, and James was on spa pages pretty active at that time as well. Adrian (58m 41s): And yeah, I think we met for the first time. I believe he came down and had a grassroots bamboo clave on the Sandy. Yeah, that’s where I met, that’s where I met Albert Choki. And yeah, Rick was there. Shamberg was there. Met Shammy there. Yeah. And so I believe that’s the first time I met James in person. But you know, as a great builder, is he, he connects with the people, his clients and you know, we just became buddies. We fished, you know, a few times together. I wish I could fish with him more often. And maybe, hopefully someday we walk around near the Campbell River just to look at old Roderick, Higgs, Higg brown stomping grounds and, and chat with James a bit. Adrian (59m 26s): And yeah, so that’s how we met. And I, I really, I really do love his rods. I not only are they beautiful, but they, they cast wonderful and they’re fish fighting machines as well. So yeah, it’s, it makes time on the water more enjoyable for me. And Rick’s got a few of his rods as well. Richard (59m 44s): Yeah, it’s funny, I, I ran a fly shop when I was 19 and my first Rod, I, I just redid my first rod. My uncle gave me a hors sson governor when I was probably five that he bought for my mom in probably 19, I guess 38 or 39. And my mom, you know, was a little tiny kid and he was so excited to have a little person to fish with and my mom didn’t take to it. So he fished it for a while and then just put it away. And when I came along I got my first fish with him and all I could think about was fishing with him. ’cause nobody else in my family fishes or is interested in the outdoors really. Richard (1h 0m 27s): And so every time we’d go visit I’d fish and he just ended up giving me the rod. So that was the only fly rod I had until I started working on, well actually no, just before I started working in the arvis shop, I bought, I bought a blank from a guy, but I was working in Arva shop just as graphite came along. And so the original Orvis graphite with the spiral wrap still on it, that was that hot rod, which is really funny ’cause I thought those things were just so blisteringly fast. And I still have one that just feels like a wet noodle now. But when I was at this fly shop and there was no internet, so people would come in, they had these rods they wanted to sell. Richard (1h 1m 7s): And I’d say, well, you know, you can put an ad in the paper, but if you don’t get any luck, you know, I, the shop doesn’t buy rods, but if there’s something I like, I’ll buy it. And so for like $50 a piece, I had a pretty nice collection of rods. But I got around to my last year of college and I was outta money as I sold the rods actually as a brilliant investment guy. I sold ’em for what I paid for ’em to my friends. And I still remembered having a few that I really liked. And so I’d just gotten back to a point where I was thinking about getting into to collecting bamboo rods when I got a chance to try spa casting finally. And I was completely obsessed with bay casting and real good fortunate of meeting Bob Meiser and getting my first, my very first spay ride was a miser 61 26 that I still love to this day. Richard (1h 1m 56s): And then when I was sick, about the same time I was sick, James posted on spa pages, his build process, and he had a couple of videos and I’m sitting home feel like there’s a good chance I’m not gonna survive this. And for some reason I got obsessed on getting one of his r and through kind of a comedy of communication, convinced him to let me pay for the rod up front, which is not something you do, you, you make a deposit and then you pay when you come up in the build schedule. And in the meantime, my ex-wife got a job out west and we moved back just in time for James to have the little cla gathering down in Sandy and Adrian and I went, met Chris Obuchowski, he was a good friend of ours who’s also a builder, not, not on the scale that James is, ’cause Chris is a, is a doctor and so is a, is a part-time builder, but met Shamberg there who built glorious rodham machines, amazing reels. Richard (1h 2m 55s): And I actually got to pick out a rod in person. And then there was the sandy clave was still going on. And so then James came down for that one year. And so I was obsessing over this rod and I finally said, okay, this is the one I want. This is the one I want. And he said, yeah, but I’m gonna make yours two inches longer and 5% softer in the butt and you’re gonna like it even more. And I was like, awesome. And he was right. I do, he, it came, I think it arrived about a year later and it is amazing. And then the mistake I made at that first get together, he said, is there anything else you wanna cast? And I was like, wow, I can’t afford this one. What am I gonna do? Richard (1h 3m 35s): Buying the second one? But I cashed a second one, of course I wanted a second one. So I have two, the, the first one I said to my ex, look, I, I don’t even know why I’m thanking this, but I’d really like to order one of these rods. Do you care? And she goes, where are you gonna get the money for? And I said, well, all my first illustration jobs were for Phish magazines and Phish books and I still have portfolios, all these. So I went onto the Drake message board and I sold through the classifieds about 40 old illustrations, really cheap, just so I’d have enough money to buy a rod. So there’s a bunch of guys off the Drake message board that are, are friends of mine now that have a bunch of old pencil drawings that financed my first James Reed Rod. Adrian (1h 4m 21s): That’s funny. That’s great. 2 (1h 4m 24s): So it sounds like, you know, you guys are both, at times been pretty active on message boards, the Drake Spa pages. Is that still a big part of your life? Richard (1h 4m 33s): I haven’t been on the Drake at ages. I still, Adrian is is the main entertainment on spa pages. Adrian (1h 4m 41s): I was just about to say, I’m hardly on spa pages as much as I used to be. Richard (1h 4m 45s): Yeah, but you took, you do really good, you do really thoughtful posts. Adrian (1h 4m 49s): Well, I think for me, spay pages, you know, it’s, it it really kind of changed my life, learning how to tie flies. It’s surprising the trajectory of my life. Again, I was a trout guy, I was into like, you know, like tying a perfect pheasant tail nph in all that stuff. And now I really enjoy steelheading. So I like to reconnect with the guys that are still on spa pages. And, and part of it too is I work night shift Brian in the hospital. I’m an rn I work in, in a, in a cardiac unit. And a lot of the, you know, downtime like two, one o’clock, three o’clock in the morning, I have to stay awake somewhat, you know, without drinking too much caffeine. Adrian (1h 5m 31s): So I’ll pop in on a spay pages and use that that time to stay awake, you know? And, and I hope my boss isn’t listening to this podcast about no, she, she’d be okay with it. But yeah, it, you know, and a lot of that is, you know, and then just sharing information about tying flies because, you know, to be honest, I think tying it’s like geek dumb, you know? I mean there it is just a bunch of tying geeks you can’t really share with the normal population. Like if I go to the grocery store and talk about fly tying, you’re on a park bench, it’s, you know, if you meet someone they’re like, oh, you like fishing and they’re gonna talk to you about their uncle who, you know, fished for, you know, I don’t know, whatever trout in a pond, you know, and no one can talk about fly tying. Adrian (1h 6m 20s): So I think like the message boards, it, it, it allows people, like-minded people to share some ideas or, or give some tips or get, get inspired. And that’s what I, I like inspiration ’cause people inspired me. So I like to share, you know, what, what might inspire others hopefully. So yeah, it’s, it’s part of my life. I think Richard (1h 6m 40s): It’s funny, again, not knowing what a podcast was, I didn’t know what a message board was. I went on the Drake website, I started buying the Drake magazine when I first came out. I had a, you know, a magazine stand and I went to renew ’cause I hadn’t seen it for a while. I went online and I saw a message board and I clicked and it was obscene, completely ungoverned outta control, rude, hysterically funny. There were some just outrageously funny people on there. And there was a guy that was a guy in Montana who went by outcast, who he was the most aggressive gatekeeper of a message board you can ever imagine. Richard (1h 7m 26s): And if you were gonna come on there and talk about that was the classic joke on, on the Drake was what’s your favorite five weight. Everybody was gonna come on and just destroy you. ’cause nobody wanted to talk about that. They wanted to talk about the better parts of fishing, not being a gear hound. And I just, I just read it. I was too intimidated even to post, ’cause you had to do this whole entry thing. And one day I, at two o’clock in the morning, I’m up clicking away trying to figure out how to post this movie as my intro. And I can’t figure out how, I can’t figure out how to load it up. And I get a message from this guy who’s a guide in Montana who’s this aggressive gatekeeper and he talks me through how to do it. Richard (1h 8m 9s): So I keep thinking, this guy’s a jerk. And he turns out he’s super helpful, really nice guy. We gotta the point where we were messaging fairly frequently and I’ve been self-employed for 35 years. I don’t get to see that many people. It’s actually kind of fun to go online and, and check out. And when you get to meet people that you’ve known online, sometimes it works out to be really good friendships. For my 50th birthday, my kids for Father’s Day gave me a rape whistle because I was fishing with people I met on the internet and it was driving them crazy. They still, they still mock me for it. Richard (1h 8m 49s): And I have some dear close friends that I met. I met Adrian on the internet. I mean, I met Mike Poppas and Dan Lfor that are mainstays on spa pages at Poppy’s clave this fall. Just great guys. My ex used to kind of mock me that she’d say, I could, I could drop you any place in the world. You’d have friends in 15 minutes. And I, I never thought that was a thing. I, I’m good at meeting people and I used to tease her. I’d say I really suck at foreign language. You know, it would take me 45 minutes, you know, but soon the most fun I’ve had in my life was in a pub in Scotland where I could hardly understand anyone just ’cause I enjoy people. Richard (1h 9m 32s): I don’t want to fish with all of them because I like to fish with like one or two people. But 2 (1h 9m 38s): Is is that your motivation with the podcast Richard? Richard (1h 9m 43s): The thing to me, I, I mentioned to you before we started, there’s a, there’s a great quote in James Lee Burke book that I will, I will trash, but I won’t, I won’t get it right. But it’s essentially, everybody has a story. Not everybody is comfortable telling their story, but when the basis of your conversation is your mutual love for swinging flies, for steelhead, he can usually kind of find out at least the fishing part of their story. And I, I think I find that fascinating. I mean, I think this is arguably the hardest way to catch fish, catch steelhead. I think to get to the point where you cast well enough to where you learn where fish live well enough, especially with populations thin and out. Richard (1h 10m 28s): It’s, why is that the appeal? And I think that that leads to a group of people that are fun to visit with. So it’s, it’s people’s stories. That’s why I, I’ve had people on one of the early, the first year we had Cali Prader Freeman and Shandy Danford came on with, with Nick Wheeler and Josh Lynn talking about both Cali and Shandy’s first steelhead. They were just beginning Josh and Nick both guide and they got them on their first fish. They coached them through their first beginning to cast. And I find that as interesting as people who are like big names in the fishing industry. Richard (1h 11m 9s): It’s, for me it’s the love of rivers. My love of steelhead probably has to do with my love of the northwest and the impact my uncle had on me that got me started fishing. But for other people, they have different reasons and I, I like finding ’em all out. And then there’s the whole conservation thing. 2 (1h 11m 27s): Yeah. And I think, you know, for myself with, with the podcast, what I hope happens is exactly I think what we’ve done today is we’ve given people some knowledge and we’ve told some stories and hopefully inspired people to, to try some new stuff. Whether it’s tying a fly in hand, which is pretty extreme, we can all agree, you know, you wanna talk about making something hard that’s pretty, but as far as you can take it. But at the end of the day, fishing isn’t about reeling a fish in fishing is about anticipation. Fishing is about a shared human experience. I’m quoting my good buddy Feet Banks in the bucket, episode number two feet Banks is yet to catch a steelhead feet. If you’re listening buddy, it’s, this could be the year, but the guy loves to fish. 2 (1h 12m 9s): And that’s what it’s all about is just, I think, you know, everything that goes around it. And to me, what’s missing a little bit in my life, and I’ve said this before, is I haven’t tried a fly in a decade. I feel like I’m confessing something here. It’s probably, maybe, wow, two decades. I don’t have a good excuse fly time used to be a big part of my life. Richard (1h 12m 29s): Wait, you do have a good excuse. How many kids do you have and what are their ages? 2 (1h 12m 34s): I’ve got four kids, two through eight. Adrian (1h 12m 38s): Wow. Yeah. That’s busy. Richard (1h 12m 39s): You don’t have any free time. 2 (1h 12m 41s): Yeah. Adrian (1h 12m 41s): And a new Wolfhound and 2 (1h 12m 42s): A and a new Wolfhound. But you know, it’s, it’s not an excuse. ’cause we got fly tying desks at the lodge. But here’s what I’m missing is when you sit down and you tie flies, you know, you kind of fall in love with what you’re tying and then you picture yourself using that fly and, and you brought it up earlier, I think Richard, about the best fly you have is the one you just tied. And that’s what I’m missing right now. I get, I’ve got lots of friends who are great tires. I I’m not wanting for flies. People give me flies all the time and, and I love those flies. They’re better than what I could tie, but I’m missing the part where I sit down for an hour and and build it myself. I think that’s gonna come as my kids get a little older. But right now, the my cop out excuse is the mess. I’m a messy fly tire. If I sit down and tie one fly, I’m gonna destroy the whole room. 2 (1h 13m 24s): There’s gonna be marus spreading throughout the house. Adrian (1h 13m 26s): Yeah, I’m, I’m literally right now where I’m sitting at. ’cause I had to move into this room. I’m sitting on a bunch of fly tying crap right now. Like literally if I turn around I’ve got, you know, like packages I’m sitting on. Richard (1h 13m 42s): It’s, it’s, it’s funny because I still do one art festival here, one street festival up in Colorado that’s just an, one of my closest friends lives there. And the show’s been really good to me. The town’s been really good to me and I love being there. And so I still go. But I used to do, for years, I did like 18 all over the country. And it’s funny, if you’re sitting at an art festival, I, I’ve never actually been, I am assuming you probably at some point went to promote the lodge to fly fishing festivals. Yeah. 2 (1h 14m 16s): But I’ve done my fair share of fishing shows before we had the lodge. But Richard (1h 14m 19s): So I’ve, I’ve never been, I’ve never actually never been to one of those. And part of the reason is I hated doing art festivals at the very first one I did. And I’ve done them for decades. I would be much happier painting if I never showed my work to anybody and I just painted. But at art festivals, probably half the conversations I have, which I hear other artists complain about all the time, and I’m sitting there bored in an art festival. So I’m happy to talk about painting, but I, I end up visiting with people who are wanting to learn how to paint everything from, from young people to, of my favorite people I’ve ever visited with in my life, our twin brother and sister on in Denver. And that they would never hear this. Richard (1h 15m 0s): So, and I don’t wanna get that personal, but we’ve had epic conversations about color, about abstract expressionism, about all kinds of stuff. But the thing, and they’re both really frustrated ’cause in their mid twenties now, he has a couple of kids, they’re both working really hard. And I said, but the thing is, making your living about it is not what it’s about. The act of painting is what it’s about. And if you get focused on, you gotta get a painting finished. And I have to, I gotta focus on that in order to make a living. But when my painting fell apart, when I was sick, my mind kind of left me and I painted like crap. Richard (1h 15m 41s): But I’m so stressed out about being sick about making a living and the else I still painted all day. And I’d go into my oncologist and and he’d say, I don’t get it. You, I know you’re concerned about living and you’re concerned about your career and you’re concerned about all of this. How do you have the pulse rate of a Galapagos tortoise And, and your blood pressure is like in the sink. And I said, doc, I paint like shit, but I still paint all day. It’s the act of painting is the value to the painter. Yes, I make a living doing it, but it’s the act of painting that is a is is what makes me peaceful. And that fishing casting, waiting and tying, to me, they’re all the same. Richard (1h 16m 26s): You’re, you’re mentally absorbed in something that is taking your full concentration. And to me, one of, because of the way I’m wired, one of my hardest things is settling on focus and fishing especially does it for me because I have so much the wind, my buddies that I striper fish with, they, the weather with the weather would be going in the toilet. They’d say, let’s go get a beer. I’m like, no, it’s just getting fun. And I finally realized that’s when I can really focus when I’m getting blown all over the place. Adrian. And I just had amazing day. I know it was probably, that was maybe the first year of Covid I got that fish on the hill on our local. Richard (1h 17m 7s): Oh yeah, yeah. That was hilarious. That was one of my favorite fish ever. Yeah. That I, at the last minute, Adrian settled into his perfect rock chair with a beer. And at the last minute I thought maybe I should put my raincoat on. And within about 10 minutes I hooked a fish just as this started hailing so hard. It was unbelievable. And Adrian tailed it for me and he was just a cluster and he was so, I mean, I’ll remember that moment forever ’cause there was so much going on and you’re in that moment that’s so absorbing. Adrian (1h 17m 38s): And you know, it was funny, it was like one of those moments that I also will remember ’cause we showed up at the river like, you know, 9 30, 10 o’clock and the pool that I wanted to take him, you had to wait across another pool above that section and it was raining and I was a little concerned ’cause this is before he had his knee surgery that could we cross that tail out and then come back, you know, with water rising Richard (1h 18m 4s): And it was kind of dicey Adrian (1h 18m 5s): Crossing too. Yeah. And I thought, and then once we got there, you know, the, there were two guys that were already fishing that hole and I thought, well what are we gonna do pout, go find another pool or just, you know, try to wade the river. And and we did, we crossed the river and you know, we took our time and we did just fine rested, walked down to that pool and there was no one there and and you hooked that fish. So it was a great moment. Richard (1h 18m 29s): And I’m, and I’m pretty sure we waited out those two guys ’cause we didn’t want them to know you can cross. Adrian (1h 18m 35s): Right. Yeah. We had to wait a bit. Yeah, because Richard (1h 18m 38s): It’s, it’s depending on the water level, it’s a little bit of a dicey weight and it’s above not good stuff to go into. Yeah. Adrian (1h 18m 47s): Yeah. 2 (1h 18m 48s): So Richard, I wanted to ask you about the art. Does fly fishing influence your art, your painting? Richard (1h 18m 54s): Yes, but not in the way you’d think. My buddy James Samsel is a phenomenal painter. He’s a plain air painter. Plain air is painting on location and he’s finally quit harassing me about going and doing it with him. ’cause I did that for several years and I hate it with a red hot passion. I thought that’s what you did to be an artist and you had to go on location and paint your landscape. And like I said, I’d never intended to do what I’m doing for a living. It, I was a freelance illustrator and the internet launched and I was out of business so fast. I didn’t know what was happening. I made it a decent living. Richard (1h 19m 36s): I wasn’t getting rich. But this is like 30, 35 years ago I was making 65, $70,000 a year and I was taking 12 or 14 weeks a year off. And I just loved my life. And the internet launched and put me outta business. And I have three kids and I had bills to pay and college to help with and had no idea how to do it. ’cause I, you know, at the time I was 36 or seven and I’ve always, the reason I was a freelance illustrator is I just wanted to be either home or in wilderness. Richard (1h 20m 16s): And I painted on the side because from being in wilderness, that’s what I love doing is paint, landscape and painting has gone all over the place trying to make a living and just what my own interest in painting is and then getting sick messed up my approach to painting and I’m still trying to figure that out again. But when it comes to landscape, I find landscape when I’m out. So I find landscape when I’m walking. My dogs used to be a lot when I was paddling, running rivers and when I’m fishing and the year I got sick, I referred to it as the year of too much good luck because I won the trip to Wally’s Lodge, to Spay Lodge. Richard (1h 20m 57s): And of all things, my friend Bob White sent me an email out of the blue and he says, do you know how I was artist in residence at Bristol Bay Lodge last year? I said, yeah. And I’d actually said to my ex that when I, he did a report about being artist in residence, I said, I just don’t know how that happens. I don’t know how you make that happen. And she goes, we gotta figure it out. I’m like, I don’t even know how to ask about it. And I get an email from Bob, he says, you wanna be artists in residence at Bristol Bay Lodge? And I’m like, what? And he says, do you wanna be artist in residence at Bristol Bay Lodge? And I’m like, yeah. And I said, but there’s a problem. I said, what? He goes, I’m not a sporting artist. I don’t paint. Richard (1h 21m 37s): I mean there’s, there’s a whole tradition of sporting art. Bob is probably at this point, maybe the most well known. He’s done the covers of John Arch’s books for years and illustrated his column for years. And he’s guided in Alaska for decades and, and just has a great following. He’s a wonderful painter. CD Clark is another contemporary that kind of follows in the footsteps of Chet Renison and Ogden Kleisner. Frank Benson was earlier. But that’s, I thought at one point that’s what I was gonna do. And my love of painting took me much more contemporary. And at this point I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with it. Richard (1h 22m 20s): I’m, I had been painting, if you go to my website, richard c harrington.com, there’s an initial C in the middle there under landscape. You’ll see where my real passion is. It’s large format landscape work. It’s like 10 or 12 feet wide. And I just did a show that this summer out in Colorado, ’cause I’m trying to get back to it, but for the longest time I couldn’t paint that anymore. And I’ve been trying to get back to it. I’ve been painting some smaller landscape and somebody said, how come there’s never fishermen in your paintings? And I always say, when was the last time you got to a run? And you said, oh good, there’s somebody in it. So what I told Bob is I’m a landscape painter, not a sporting artist. Richard (1h 23m 2s): And Bob said to my benefit, Bob said, I don’t care. We don’t care. We just want you to come and see what you do. And so I got up there and I, I said, you know, the problem is I love to fish. I might just come and fish the whole week. He goes, that’s fine. So I got to go to Bristol Bay Lodge, a place I can’t begin to afford to go to. And I had a wonderful week with some great guys. I got to be there with, with Bob, with CD Clark and with Jeff Kennedy. We had a blast together, Jeff and and CD and Bob all du plain air painting. And I’m fishing and all of a sudden I turned to a guy and I said, can I take, can you take me over there? And Chris and Jeff were just hammering Char. And I caught about three char and I was kind of bored with it and said, can you take me over there? Richard (1h 23m 48s): And he goes, well we don’t go over there. There’s no official event. I said, no, I wanna go over there and look back at this angle. I think I wanna do a drawing. And so at that, what I do, what my work has evolved to is I do sketches when I’m out and then I paint from those. And what I’m looking for is more abstract shapes in the land where plain air painters tend to go to a place and figure out how to make a painting out of it. When I’m at a place long enough, eventually I see something that makes me subconsciously find shapes in the landscapes that I feel like make an interesting painting. And so it has more to do with, to be honest with you, I think it’s how we navigated before there’s map on Compass and GPS, you remembered landform. Richard (1h 24m 37s): And so I go from that to my more contemporary thoughts on art about how you design an interesting painting. And if you combine those two things together, I find paintings when I’m outside, I don’t go outside and set up and do a painting. So it influence influences my work a lot. But not necessarily the way people would think. I just shipped a painting yesterday, it’s 15 feet wide, four feet tall and 15 feet wide. 2 (1h 25m 8s): I gotta jump in and ask, how do you ship something like that? Well Richard (1h 25m 11s): That’s, that painting’s on three panels. I spent a day boxing it up and then I use an art shipper. I use I transport, which all they do is ship art. And they’re way more expensive than shipping FedEx. But two years ago I got a call from Summit Gallery in Park City where I show, and they said, can you repair a painting? And I said, yeah, I can repair depending on what’s happened. And he said, well we, we sold one of your pieces to a couple down in Texas and he was Dan damaged in shipment. And I said, well, how, how is it damaged? And they said, well, we’ll have to send you a picture. Richard (1h 25m 51s): They paid to have it crate. And the only thing I can think of is someplace along the way, a semi rig ran over it because the crate was impressed into the painting. And they said, no, that that painting needs to be burned. That painting is not fixable. There’s conservators at the museum, the National Museum of Art cannot face save that painting, that painting is destroyed. So I ended up something I would say I can’t do. They asked me if I could do it over again. It was kind of funny. In the middle of Covid I couldn’t even get stretcher bars the same size. So I had to do a slightly larger painting. I cannot repeat paintings. Richard (1h 26m 32s): I think the second one I did was actually better than the original. But I have, since I only use eye transport because all they transport is art. And I’ve had great luck with them and it took me years to find them. I used to box stuff up, I used to create stuff myself and ship it and with more traditional transport. But once paintings get big, you need to use an art shipper. Adrian (1h 26m 55s): You know, you mentioned that painting the second go at it, you thought it was better than the original because my only perspective is from fly tying. So, you know, the, the flies that I tie from before, they’re not as good as the flies I tie now just because I’ve learned technique from the art, you know, perspective in art from your, your end. Is it just because you, you didn’t have the same emotion, passion, you know, as far as reproductive work, or Richard (1h 27m 25s): The same reason I can’t tie more than three of a fly. I don’t wanna repeat a painting because I, when I paint, I do a small study and then I’ll do a medium sized piece, like 30 by 40. And if I feel that works, then I’ll do a big version of it. And each step along that path of 1, 2, 3, there’s two parts to it. One, I don’t want to make the larger one have more detail in it. I wanna make all the marks bigger. And to me that’s just my interest in painting. I think the painting itself, the surface of the paint, the way the color and texture and values work is more interesting. If you don’t add detail, you add yeah, bigger mark making, which I hate even talking like that ’cause it sounds like I’m a professor and I have no, I have a very limited art education background. Richard (1h 28m 17s): I mostly learned to paint by looking at work that I loved in museums and a few books and painting my ass off. When I first started doing art festivals, I was desperately broke. I didn’t have, I drove to Florida with a van load of the family van with the seats pulled out full of paintings and my booth without enough money to get home without enough money to pay my rent that month. And I couldn’t believe I could sell a painting. I thought the only people that were gonna be interested in buying paintings was like old people. And if I didn’t sell a bunch of paintings in the next five years, all the people that were interested in painting were gonna be dead and gone. Richard (1h 28m 58s): And I was never gonna make a living. And at this show in Naples, Florida, this young family pushing a stroller walked in and, and bought three paintings. And I was just floored. And as they left, this woman said, oh, I’m so upset. They bought the painting I wanted. And I said, well that’s one of a series of can you watch my booth for me? And she said, what? And I said, well, I have the last one of that series in my van, I’ll go get it. So she watched my booth for me, I ran over to the van. As I opened the back of the van, I hear a honk and I look up and it’s the family that bought three innings waving at me as they drive by. I go back and I sell this woman the fourth in the series that they bought. Richard (1h 29m 40s): As she leaves the husband from the family comes back and says, we liked him so much, we want that one too. And I called my then wife and said, we’re okay, we’re okay this month. And then I had several more shows in Florida and, and I made money. And I, I, at that point, I think I had sold, I think I had sold maybe five paintings in my whole life. And I sold on that trip to Florida, I sold like, I don’t know, 26 paintings or something. And at this, at this point, I’ve sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 paintings. I still don’t know why anybody buys paintings. Richard (1h 30m 20s): I don’t know why anybody listens to podcasts. I, my my father got real upset with me a few years ago and said, you don’t even have a plan. And I said, dad, I had like 14 plans and they all tanked the internet, put me outta business. And I pointed out to him, he got transferred all over the country. He went where his job took him. And I was a divorced father, I wasn’t gonna leave my kids. So I lived in western New York and I had to stay there and I didn’t have any skills that I could make a living with. And so that’s what led me to painting. And I was shocked that it worked. And it wasn’t until I was 50 and I was on the verge of being done paying college tuition that I felt like I had the freedom to really start pushing what I was doing with my work and try to make it something more about what I wanted it to be. Richard (1h 31m 20s): And just as I felt like I was really getting dialed in is when I got sick and it all kind of fell apart. So now I’m back at my age trying to figure it out again and hoping to have like another 30 year run. We’ll see. 2 (1h 31m 34s): Pretty amazing to be able to make a living creating something, right? And to find out that there’s an audience is it’s gotta be very satisfying. Richard (1h 31m 43s): You know, you know how I mentioned that the value of art to the artist is the act of making, I think painting is, is can be close to athletics. It can be where your mind and your body are, are completely focused. And that’s when I paint best. When I paint best, I’m completely focused and I’m moving and you’re making interesting marks. And as soon as I’m worried about whether somebody’s gonna like it, I start being really careful. And that to me leads to boring painting in a, James Reed and I were chatting the other day on text and he doesn’t use the Morgan hand mill very often, which most of the guys I know the build are using a Morgan hand mill. Richard (1h 32m 27s): And I sent him a notice, said, oh, I, I thought you’d used that. And he said, no, it’d be like you painted with a broom. And I actually, I said, oh, I’ve painted with brooms before, but mostly right now I paint with either wadded up rags or pieces of broken insulation foam. And he said, what? I said, yeah, I like using ink sprayers too, like a roller. And he goes, you don’t use brushes. And I said, not very much because I don’t want, I don’t want perfect paint. I want when I’m outside, the thing I love about being outside is realizing that you’re in the middle of chaos. That like all of life is going on around you. And I want the surface of my painting to reflect that. Richard (1h 33m 8s): And so if I’m busy trying to make a perfect painting, there’s no chaos in it. So I want the surface of my paint to be as chaotic as the natural world is. And I want those layers of chaos to build up and bring you the representational image. So I guess at some point that started with you asking me about how it applies to fly time. My fly tying is a little bit the same way. Is what I’m looking for is that teardrop shape and whatever kind of materials I want to combine is where the creativity part comes in for me. So I go back and forth with, this year I was kind of obsessed with what I know a lot of people refer to as guide flies that are really simple flies. Richard (1h 33m 50s): But for me it was almost a challenge of how spare can a fly be and still be an effective fishing tool. Adrian (1h 33m 57s): No, I, you know, I think, I think that, you know, that bodes well for each and every person. There’s a challenge, you know, like in your art, I you said the value of the art is in the, the, the Richard (1h 34m 9s): Act of the act of making it. Adrian (1h 34m 11s): Yeah. And I, I kind of feel that way with steelheading it, with fly tying, you know, there is value in steelhead, they’re wonderful fish, but how we hook them or how we catch them, you know, there’s this process, you know, and it’s just sitting down tying and thinking about the fish and then getting that fly, whatever material you wanna put on it, whether you wanna limit it to three items, you know, or you wanna put a full dress on and then, you know, translating that into the river for a specific run, for a specific time of day, you know. And then when you hook that fish, the, the value is in the act. You know, that anticipation that you’re projecting something you know, onto that hook or you’re projecting something onto your canvas, you know, from what’s going on in your head. Adrian (1h 34m 59s): And I think that’s what makes it special. Richard (1h 35m 1s): And I, I would argue it’s that level of concentration throughout that, through the tying, through learning where steelhead hold in a run in a river, learning to cast, learning to space cast learning where you have your anchor based on the wind learning how you adjust your, your rod angle depending how deep you’re weight, all of that. It’s a level of concentration that’s people all the time will say, you know, I don’t remember, you know, where my day went. It’s because you were concentrating so much in that moment. I mean, it sounds corny now at this, in this day and HSA, but it’s a level of meditation that I think brings you peace. Richard (1h 35m 42s): And that’s what I wish people would understand, like a piece of the ecosystem. I value steel that as much as I value, actually probably more than I value almost anything else. I love steelhead, like I love bears and dogs and a few other things. But all the things in my life that I have loved doing from being a father to painting, to tying flies, to fishing, to running rivers, all require a level of concentration that you are so caught up in the moment that it brings you peace. Yeah, Adrian (1h 36m 16s): Yeah, I agree. Richard (1h 36m 17s): And I wish I, I wish people would quit concentrating on, I gotta catch a fish. Adrian (1h 36m 21s): Yeah, I, you know, it, it’s funny, I went fishing for the first time this year, yesterday I thought I gotta get out on the water and you know, we’ve all fished thousands of hours, but you know, I usually take a break during, you know, December just for the holidays for family. And then I start up again, you know, January. But during that month of just, you know, family, all the hubbub, traffic, travel, all that stuff, and not having been in the river, I had to find that moment of, I don’t know, just calm within those moments. And then finally when I was on the river yesterday, there was that calm that I missed, you know? Adrian (1h 37m 2s): And when I got home, my daughter asked me, did you catch any fish? I said, no, because you stuck a banana sticker on me the night before on my jacket and bananas are bad luck. And she laughed. That was just a joke. And then, and I said, well, what did you think about? And I told her, I thought about absolutely nothing. Not that I didn’t think about anything, but my mind was empty. Which, you know, at least for me for that moment in time, it was precious because I emptied my brain of a lot of things. Although I do say I, I did something which I hadn’t done for a while, and I fished a, a technique yesterday that I struggled with and I had to focus on that challenge because I couldn’t get it done right. Adrian (1h 37m 45s): But after I did, I figured it out, I was in peace again. So you get these little moments of tension because there’s a lot of chaos, you know, and then you gotta adjust, gotta adjust. And then just finding that, that moment of, oh, I’m in the groove again. And, and then you feel, you know, as much as we can say, like you said, hokey, but at one, you know, with where you’re at. And it’s, it’s something really that I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know if many people can find that, you know, I hope they could. Richard (1h 38m 14s): There’s a, a woman, I think her name is Karen Armstrong, and she was a nun and was assigned to study prayer. And at some point her study of prayer led her to want to study things beyond prayer. And the church told her no, that was not the pur her purpose. And she felt so strongly about it, she left the church. And I heard her interviewed one day and she said, through all of her study of different forms of all kinds of things, she’d come to the conclusion that anything done to the point of total concentration is a form of prayer. Richard (1h 38m 54s): So that you could concentrate on your rosary beads and say on your rosary and get yourself into a cadence that becomes prayer. But you’ll also find hiking as you’re walking along, that cadence can become very peaceful. And next thing you know, you’re noticing things you didn’t notice before. And talk about when you’re faced with like a 150 yard or 300 yard run and you’re gonna start making casts and swinging it. I would personally argue that you want to pay attention to special points in there and cover them with a slightly different cast. But there’s still a cadence to that that brings you peace. Richard (1h 39m 36s): And if you add to that, oh my god, this moment I step in water, I’m just, the pressure I used to harass my ex that if I can get a little jacked up once in a while and I’d say all I get do is touch me, I’m just a dog, just put a finger on me, I have contact. And that contact can be wind, that can be water, that can be all kinds of, could be by dog brushing up against me. And I’m happy as a climb and I’m peaceful. 2 (1h 39m 59s): I like that you used the term cadence there. I think that that’s really suits it well. Kind of on a weird tangent here, but something that drives me crazy is the fan above our oven. And you know, you’re cooking, you gotta run that thing the second that thing gets turned off, I get this like very quick wash of, that overwhelms me of just calm. And that is exactly the same feeling I get when I step into a river that’s moving the right speed where steelhead like to hang out. And I’ve been blessed at certain times in my life, not, probably not recently, to be able to link up a bunch of fishing days in a row. You know, someone goes on a week long fishing vacation, eight, 10 hours a day, 5, 6, 7 days in a row, boom, they’re fishing. 2 (1h 40m 39s): You can get into this rhythm that it just becomes so natural and you just feel so connected to what’s going on. And to hear you talk about Adrian, you know, you, you had some time off, you took some time off with the family, but then you just had to step back into the river and you were fairly quickly able to, to get back into that zone. Athletes talk about being into zone, this is perhaps similar, but it’s, it’s just this, this, this feeling of, I think the retention and the release of tension and then the cadence of, of just the rhythm of the whole thing and, and the way time travels or the way time passes when you’re, when you’re in the river, casting is crazy, isn’t it? You know, that 10 hour day goes by like that. Adrian (1h 41m 18s): Yeah. It’s, it’s the, you know, it’s the weirdest thing about rivers, you know, ’cause I fish and salt, I, I fish and we’ve all have fish, but for some reason that water moving, you know, and, and just the hope of steelhead, it’s given me that sense of peace that nothing else has. You know, like, or, or that, that rhythm, however, I was gonna ask you two, have you ever been, you know, in that groove, in that rhythm, but sometimes you step into a run and you just know that the steelhead or there, and it gives a different feeling within that groove. You know, it’s like an excitement level that you’re like, oh, they’re here, but you’re still in the groove. You’re not like spazzing out, but it’s like, ah, I, you know, it’s gonna grab right now. Adrian (1h 42m 3s): I, I’m sure that’s happened to you guys. Richard (1h 42m 6s): Some of my favorite memories are those moments. You’re certain there’s a fish in front of you and then you catch it. There’s nothing about the moment, the river at that moment that you would say, you know, you wouldn’t lay money on it, but you just know there’s a fish in front of you and you’re fishing well and you’re gonna catch that fish Adrian (1h 42m 24s): And nothing’s changed at all. But you just have that feeling. 2 (1h 42m 28s): Yeah, I mean it’s, how many times do you hear it where people say, oh, I knew I was gonna get one. And you could rationalize it and say, oh it was, you know, it was the speed of the water was familiar, whatever it was, but we’ve all been there and that, that that confidence that you have and maybe it’s triggered by a smell, maybe, you know, just the fact that you recognize the river’s conditions are perfect. There’s something there that you know is familiar and it gives you that, like you say that that knowledge that something good’s about to happen and maybe it’s energy. I don’t know. Well Richard (1h 42m 57s): It’s, I think it in some way it relates to that same thing about, you know, too pissed off. People catch fish. I think if you’re quiet enough, I didn’t grow up with dogs. I got one, my kid’s mom and I went through a divorce. The first thing we told my kids, my younger daughter was the first of the kids to speak. And I was just destroyed. And my daughter looked at me and says, dad, does this mean we’re finally getting a dog? And I said, as soon as I can find a place to live, we’re going to, we’re getting a dog. And we did. And I’ve had two dogs for, I dunno, 30 something years now. And one of the things, especially, I had a dog Finn, who the whole family laughed about was my dog. Richard (1h 43m 39s): And I, I don’t know why, but she and I were just joined at the hip and there’d be times I never had to ever run a leash. We’d be out snowshoeing at 11 o’clock at night in the wintertime. Snow showing in the winter. Yes. And I’d just feel a pole and I’d look and she’d be 80 yards away in the moonlight staring at me. And I would just hold a hand up to her and she’d happily go off. But I could feel the pole, I could feel her looking at me. And I think there’s things going on that civilization have tamped down on us that we don’t begin to understand. And I think the more peaceful you are, the longer you’re outside for extended periods, the more you can, I, I don’t wanna say tap into that, but experience that a little bit. 2 (1h 44m 28s): So here’s a, here’s an interesting one. And I’m, I’m definitely getting off off topic a little bit, but, but it feels, it feels like it’s worth mention. I, Richard (1h 44m 36s): I didn’t get the topic list. Did you send that? 2 (1h 44m 38s): We didn’t, I, I never, ever, I never ever make one. Richard (1h 44m 41s): Me neither. 2 (1h 44m 42s): I got a guy I’m doing a show with tomorrow with, with some other folks. Travis Bader is his name. And, and I really like Travis. He’s got a podcast himself. Everyone’s a podcaster now, right? But Travis has been doing it, doing it a long time, silver Core. And my oldest son has autism. And Travis said, Hey, you gotta check out this, this podcast called the Telepathy Tapes. And you know, there’s different styles of podcasts. There’s like, we’re doing, we’re just hanging out and talking. And, and this one is more of, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like a show. But anyways, the, the short version is it’s about how certain kids who are on the spectrum can communicate with a parent without talking. 2 (1h 45m 22s): And the podcast is crazy. I mean, it’s, it can’t be fake and it’s certainly not something that affects a lot of people. But to think that this might be possible, and then you bring that back to this idea, and I’m not suggesting the crazy notion that we’re communicating with the fish, but, but why the heck is it that people who are pissed off don’t catch fish? It makes no sense. We can’t rationalize it. We just know what happens. And yeah, so once again, anyone listening, if you wanna check it out, it’s an interesting, listen, it’s called the Telepathy Tapes. And obviously you can find it anywhere. There’s podcasts and I’ve been listening to a few of them. Richard (1h 45m 53s): My oldest granddaughter is on the spectrum someplace, and when she was probably three, my daughter called now her ex and said, what’s, what’s going on? Why did you, why did you buy her 12 movies? And he said, I didn’t buy any movies. He goes, well, there’s 12 movies on the Disney account, she can’t do that. And he said, well, I didn’t do it. And so, come to find out, at three years old, she had watched them log in to their iPads, go onto Disney and sort through movies and go through the purchase process. And at three years old, she figured out how to do it for herself, looking over their shoulder. Richard (1h 46m 35s): And she’s, she’s just a wonderful kid. But now she loves watching, say movies over again. If she’s watching on her iPad, she’ll watch like a sentence that’s her favorite sentence. And then she’ll just hit it with her finger and the movie just screams past. And she’ll go and watch another two or three sentences and then scan past this movie just like so fast. It makes you crazy to even look at it and touch it and stop it at just the right place and watch crazy. She watches the highlight reel, just like scanning. She’ll watch like 15 movies. I don’t know fifteen’s probably too many, but she’ll watch a couple of movies in like 10 minutes just watching her favorite parts. ’cause she knows ’em so well. Richard (1h 47m 15s): But she can function with that equipment so easily. So there, there’s, I don’t begin to understand any of it. Adrian (1h 47m 23s): That’s fascinating. 2 (1h 47m 24s): So let’s, let’s get political for a second. That’s always fun. I wanna talk about No, no, no. Just stick with me. Stick with me. Hard hitting Question for you. Is fly fishing only a management tool? Should we have rivers that are fly fishing only? Richard (1h 47m 43s): I’m so glad this is where we’re going with that question. Adrian (1h 47m 46s): I was thinking like maybe, you know, ’cause ’cause I just heard on the news that a certain president wanted to buy Greenland and I was like, no, let’s buy British Columbia. No, I’m kidding. 2 (1h 47m 56s): Whoa, whoa. Richard (1h 48m 0s): It’s actually funny. Several years ago I was, I was listening to NPR back in the east in, in Rochester, and they had a guy on talking about the difference between Canadians and Americans. And I listened to this for about 20 minutes. I thought, oh my God, I think I’m Canadian. But it’s funny, I wish it was that easy ’cause I would, but, but it’s not. Can it be an effective management tool? I think it can be, and I think to an extent, like especially with steelheading of spay fishing, I do think it’s less effective. It can get nearly as effective. If you fished behind Adrian, you can see how devastatingly effective it can be. Richard (1h 48m 44s): But it takes, I guess I’d say probably more effort per fish. And so you’re gonna slow the catch rate down. I don’t think you can get through public approval enough people to go for it to have substantive effect. 2 (1h 49m 4s): Okay, so here’s, here’s where I’m going with this whole thing and I’m talking BC I don’t know anything about what happened south through the border. I’m not gonna pretend to have strong opinions for what you guys should be doing up here. Our managers don’t have a lot of tools in the toolbox. And when we have periods of low abundance, people get concerned, say, oh, we gotta do something. There’s not as many fish as there should be. What are we gonna do? Well, the one lever they have to pull is, is a closure. So then they, they close. And I have a fairly strong opinion that there’s not a lot of examples of of rivers that a closure has had a positive influence on fish numbers. I’m of the opinion that anglers generally are pretty low impact. 2 (1h 49m 43s): And I’m of the opinion that anglers who tie their flies in hand and fish bamboo rods and dry lines have a really, really low impact. But is it fair to say that, God forbid, let me use the Thompson as an example. So the Thompson got closed due to a, you know, low returns. And those low returns are based on an estimate off of a test fishery, which is essentially a gill net that catches and kills a certain number of fish. There’s a multiplier. So those dead fish get extrapolated out into a, you know, a run size estimate. Okay, so we can’t have a fishery. Now when the Thompson’s open, you can fish with floats, you can fish with spoons, you can bottom bounce. It wasn’t even that long ago. You could do this all with eggs as well. 2 (1h 50m 26s): What if they turned around and said, Hey, the Thompson can be open, but you can only fish a dry line. You can’t fish, NSCA can’t fish a sink tip, you can’t fish a weighted fly, just dry line only. And that’s it. I believe what we would be doing first off is we’d be giving a lot of fish sanctuary. The second thing that we’d be doing is limiting participation because there’s not a lot of people that, you know, have the confidence to fish that way. And then the third thing is, of course, even the ones that are good at it aren’t gonna catch that many fish. We get all the social and economic benefits of hang having anglers on the water. Not the least of which is the fact that it dissuades poaching. But also there’s a scientific side to this too because hey, this is gonna give you a better idea of what’s there. 2 (1h 51m 7s): It creates an opening for scale sampling and all sorts of other good things. But is it fair, I’m gonna piss off some people by saying this. I’ve got another idea we’re gonna go to after this, but, but I wanted to get you guys to jump in real quick. As guys who like to fish a dry line, this to me is a logical tool that the manager should have in their toolbox. Or is it just too unfair? Adrian (1h 51m 28s): You know, like from my heart, you know, I think it’s a good tool as an example, as a North Umpqua, you know, a river, ’cause there’s a fly only section, the upper part of the north thumb car river. And people are limited in what, what they can do on that section. And it, you know, it protects the fish. You can’t use weights on that river like they did in the past. So I think it’s an effective management tool. Is it fair now the, the lower regions of the North Umpqua, they can fish gear. Unfortunately, there’s certain pinch points that they fish it too effectively. Adrian (1h 52m 9s): There’s a dam there on the lower portion, but it’s tough because you will piss people off. But it does give a chance for us to see how well the fish are doing And also limits our interaction with a fish. Boy, that’s a, that’s a good one. I don’t know. What do you think Rick? Richard (1h 52m 28s): It’s funny, down on the north Umpqua, the campground a couple years ago, my neighbor and his family, he was a firefighter from, or he is a firefighter in San Francisco. Super nice guy with this adorable family, this wonderful wife and these two little kids that I ended up trading flies with the kids. But it was funny, after we’d visited a couple of days, he outta the blue, he said, here’s a whole bunch of people in this campground pissed off at you. And I’m like, I don’t think I know anybody else in this campground. Why are they pissed off at me? He says, oh, ’cause the most recent podcast. I’m like, oh shit, I didn’t even think of that. And the most recent podcast had been people from Native Fish and Conservation Angler talking about closing the fish hatchery down there after the fire. Richard (1h 53m 18s): ’cause the hatchery got destroyed. And there’s a whole bunch of people down there that are, that want that hatchery because their idea was that if there’s no hatchery, there’s no fish. And I’m pretty firmly that with occasional rare exceptions, I’m anti hatchery. I think if hatcheries were effective, we’d have, we wouldn’t have any return problems right now. ’cause they’ve been around for like 150 years. I think there are, there are times in, in reestablishing populations that have been wiped out that they can be effective. But for the most part, I think they’ve proven to not be effective. And but to get people engaged, to learn enough to want more information and to make an informed policy choice is, I don’t know how you do that. Richard (1h 54m 8s): I don’t know how you get people to, like right down here, you, you said, when we first went down this path, you said we’re gonna talk politics. And right now in our country, you can’t. Both sides are so furious of each other. And the funny thing is, I just, I just saw a thing, there’s a guy, oh, I wish I could think of his name. He’s recording conversations between people who identify right and left to help them find common ground. And I can still remember years ago there was an earthquake, I can’t remember where, in a foreign country where people were, you know, look very different than you and I. And they’re trying to interview this guy and he’s coming unglued and they finally, he just turns to ’em and says, I just want to find my children. Richard (1h 54m 57s): And they wouldn’t leave. They, that’s all he cared about. That’s all he could think about. And they’re trying to stick a microphone in his face, getting a, get an opinion from him. And I think that, you know, people just love their kids. Leave him alone. Help him put your camera down and go help him find his kids. Go out and dig outta the rubble. We wouldn’t fish for steelhead if we didn’t love steelhead. How do you get people to realize just because you paid for a a license doesn’t mean you’re owed a fish? Doesn’t mean you get to kill two fish, five fish, 10 fish, 15 fish. Doesn’t mean you need to limit out every time you go. How do you get people to understand there’s so many more people fishing now, so much more effectively than there were in the past that we can’t treat the resource the way we have in the past. Richard (1h 55m 44s): So yes, I think it could be an effective tool, it can be an effective tool. But how do we get the information out there to get people to come along and understand why, to understand that you gotta bring more to the game. 2 (1h 55m 59s): So here’s another, another strategy is, okay, well what if you didn’t get into the tackle box? What if instead you made it illegal to catch more than two steelhead in a day, but you could fish whatever the way you wanted. We’re still gonna minimize the number of fish being caught. We’re still gonna to lower participation, which will in turn lower the number of fish being caught. The best way to reduce catch and release mortality is to catch less fish. You can make a pretty good argument that also limiting the number of times a fish gets caught over and over again. So the whole re repeat capture scenario. But I, I guess my, my big thing right now that, that bugs me is the NGO landscape, which perpetuates this idea that we’re in a state of crisis and because we have a crisis, the government needs to do something. 2 (1h 56m 49s): And the danger of that is often that leads to the hatchery discussion. But the science shows there’s not really any examples of wild runs that have been recovered through hatchery intervention. The science shows that if the habitat’s there, the fish will use it. The science shows that you can build a hatchery run if you have the funds to pay for it. You don’t need a ton of habitat to do that if you have the dough. But you can’t have both at the same time. It just doesn’t work. And I guess that gives us two products, if you will. You’ve got, and I’ll go back to my examples earlier where I, where I grew up, we got the Squamish for the wild fish offic in autos, low catch rates, lots of space. We got the vetter, there’s more fish, you’re gonna have a lot of company, you might get down hold. 2 (1h 57m 31s): And I guess, you know, when it comes down to it, some people would make the argument. And I think it’s fair that fly fishing only is discriminatory because someone has to be able to cast a fly rod and we’ve gotta leg up because we’re all fairly decent at it. So maybe the, the fairest way to manage a dwindling resource is to spread it as wide as possible through catch and release limits. But they’re hard to enforce, aren’t they? Richard (1h 57m 55s): That’s I think that I like the idea of, of having a one or two fish limit, but how many people do you know that would self-police that 2 (1h 58m 3s): It’s gotta be an educational thing, right? Or a cultural thing. It’s, it, it’s tough to make it a regulation. Richard (1h 58m 7s): Well, and when I was fortunate enough to meet Lee Spencer down there on the North Qua, I don’t, I don’t Are you aware of him? 2 (1h 58m 15s): I’m not, the name sounds familiar, but I I’m not aware. So please ask. Richard (1h 58m 17s): He was the keeper of the dynamite hole. Oh, 2 (1h 58m 21s): I gotta stay, I gotta tell you. Do you guys know Darcy Bacca? Yeah, Richard (1h 58m 25s): I know who he is. I don’t know. 2 (1h 58m 26s): Okay, great. Darcy’s been on our show a couple times. Darcy’s a good buddy of mine, episode four, which might be my favorite podcast I’ve ever done. I had Darcy Bacca and Daniel Pendergrass, two snowboard photographers that never met each other, but they ran in the same circle. It was just slightly different ages. And I asked them, what was your favorite photo you ever took? And Darcy’s favorite photo was a photo he took with Lee and he told the whole story of Lee. So I’m sorry I jumped in there, but I wanted to pitch that out there. Richard (1h 58m 54s): It’s, it’s actually funny what I, my first visit with, with Lee, I stayed like three and a half hours up underneath his tarp looking at his pool of fish and just talking about steelhead. But, and it actually one of my favorite fishing photos have ever taken. I fished with him the next day and his dog sis and I got a picture of sis in the foreground with Lee making a cast in the background and, and gave it to him as a thank you for, for taking me fishing because that was my first intro to the North Umpqua was second day I was, or third day I was there. Lee Spencer showed me like six runs. But he fished without a point on his hook. He would leave the bend on the hook, but he’d cut the point off and file it round so he could use it as a hook keeper or as a, as a keeper. Richard (1h 59m 37s): So keep his rod strong up, but he fished without. And I keep, you know, talking about the whole meditative part of fishing. I keep hoping I can evolve to that, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to, ’cause I still like to catch fish. 2 (1h 59m 50s): Well, well Richard, if you’ve listened to some of our previous episodes, I had this discussion with Tim and April, I had this discussion with Kenny Morris, Bunky Dax, a bunch of people. I think what we should have done on the Thompson when numbers got low is taken away the hook points. We should have still let the anglers go fishing just for bites. Wouldn’t Richard (2h 0m 8s): It be interesting to me how many people would still fish? 2 (2h 0m 10s): I think we’d be surprised. I think a lot of people, because of, remember we started this conversation, you got the social aspect, the camaraderie. You’re still out there, you’re in the river. Those fish are still gonna come up and eat your dry flies. You just don’t have to reel them in and you don’t get a photo. Who cares? But you’re still there and you’re still contributing and you still have that, that history, that tradition. And that’s, I’m getting a little passionate about it because I, I’m concerned about this is a middle aged guy. The Thompson’s been closed long enough that we’ve lost that tradition. The the younger anglers, there’s guys who’ve been space casting 10 years who’ve never fished it. They didn’t get that experience. Oh, Richard (2h 0m 41s): I’ve never seen it. Yeah. 2 (2h 0m 43s): So what happens now? So what happens next year, the year after or whenever that test net suddenly runs into 30 or 40 steelhead and all of a sudden they say, okay guys, the fish are back. We’re gonna drop the rope. Everybody can go fishing. Do we have a, an sorry guys, an American style opening where the river suddenly opens on November 1st and the fishermen sit and they’re marinating and all of a sudden they get over the head with everything. Is that a better situation than to have anglers? Just a constant pressure. Richard (2h 1m 8s): They’re all, they’re all gonna be caught then. 2 (2h 1m 10s): Yeah. To have a constant presence of anglers, I think is better. And to have that tradition and there’s the waterbed effect. When we have these fisheries that get closed, it pushes pressure to other areas. So I think that as anglers, we really need to help guide managers to find alternatives to closures when we have periods of low abundance. But at the same time, we need to work hard as anglers to minimize our impacts, even if that means fishing without hooks. Adrian (2h 1m 34s): I totally agree. You know, the Thompson is one of those rivers that sit in my, I’ve never fished it, I’ve driven past it, but just the lore, you know, the, the people that have fished that river, the, the majestic strain of steelhead in that river that come up all the way to the surface, that gnaws on me. And I’ve thought before, you know, if I was able to fish that river, even with a, a hook list tube fly, I’d love to do that. But you know, now that you bring that up, you know, the passion comes out of, out of me because it’s like, of course, you know, fly fish limit, limit the options that we can, you know, cause harm to these fish. Adrian (2h 2m 15s): And, and like you said, you know, not like have a, an opening where then all of a sudden all the people, all the, the steelhead anglers, all the community wants to go over there all at the same time and fish that river. I mean, yeah, I mean to me what you propose makes sense at this point. Richard (2h 2m 32s): To me it goes back to, I do think fly fishing has reputation of being elitist, which I think is really too bad because it’s more affordable to get into it now than it’s ever been. I mean, there’s, there’s more expensive stuff than there’s ever been, but there’s also cheaper stuff than there’s ever been. So it, it doesn’t need to be a a dollar barrier keeping people out of it. I think the learning curve is harder for the most part. And I center pin guys will say it’s harder to learn to cast a center pin rod than it is a spray rod. I don’t care. That doesn’t make any difference to me. It’s less effective than the center pin. It’s 2 (2h 3m 8s): All about catch rates. Yeah. Richard (2h 3m 10s): And I get the impression that you guys up there have the same problem. I’m afraid we have down here that our resource managers are not managing with the same goals in mind that we would wish they had. I’m not convinced that Fish and Wildlife services are that invested in wild fish. They have a model of fish hatcheries and they’ve been, and the the people manage and management positions now have come up through the whole fish hatchery model. Is that just managing that model or is it looking to manage the resource effectively? And when does it get to the point where, where fishing is in any different than any other extractive resources? Richard (2h 3m 55s): And that’s what’s being managed for is the, the hatch rate. How much of our hatchery system is taken up by commercial fishing out in the ocean? How much of the, of the salmon and steelhead are swept up, you know, in ocean nets? And we have no idea what, you know, our license fees have paid for hatcheries where we do better off putting those in and realizing that each stream has a carrying capacity, putting more fish in there doesn’t do anything effective, doesn’t do anything positive. 2 (2h 4m 28s): So guys, I had a couple great conversations with John McMillan now on the show. And John is a really unique individual because, you know, he’s, he’s got credibility in the science world and he’s got that network, but he’s also a, a legit steelhead angler. And a lot of times, you know, people kind of live in one world or the other, but he’s got experience on both sides. And he made the exact same point you just did there, Richard, that it’s so expensive to produce these fish that essentially we’re talking about taxpayer dollars, they go out to the ocean, we don’t know where they end up. You know, maybe that same, you know, resource taxpayer dollars could be better applied to the healthcare system or, or elsewhere. 2 (2h 5m 9s): But we don’t really have a good understanding, or at least your average Joe bag of donuts doesn’t have a great understanding of what it costs to produce these fish where they end up. And I don’t think from a management side, they take into account the amount of dollars per fish generated. And where I’m going with this is if I go out and I catch a fish every 10 days, hopefully I do a little better than that versus someone who goes out and catches 10 fish in a day. I’m generating a lot more economic impact than that person is on a per fish basis. And when we’re talking catch from release, we, we could also have a, another conversation about, you know, how do we minimize our own impact when it comes to catch from release mortality. So I think, I think we’ve moved the needle quite a bit on this in the last couple decades that the fish photography now is primarily in the water. 2 (2h 5m 54s): We’re using barbless hooks. People are, are cognizant of how they’re playing fish, how they handle fish. I think we’ve done good things to, to release mortality to a pretty, pretty good kind of 5%. But could we do better? Sure. But if, if you’re telling me that there’s a river south of the border where, you know, it’s fly fishing only above a certain point, but below there it’s anything goes and these very same fish are being subjected to crazy high catch rates with gear that’s got a higher catch and release mortality. But then a little further upstream, they’re managing them in a really sustainable way. There’s something totally disjointed and broken there. Yeah, Richard (2h 6m 30s): Yeah. Oh, I I think that’s very true. Well, and, and talking about the keeping fish wet, there’s a, there’s a whole Instagram account of this, of steelhead and probably one in 20 pictures on that are fish in the water there, people setting up their iPhone, holding their picture up their camp and they’ll say it was only outta the water for 15 seconds. It doesn’t need to come out of the water. Especially now your iPhone’s waterproof, stick your phone under water and take a picture. Yeah. But there was, I saw several pictures of over in a clear water this year of people landing fish netting them into the boat, keeping them in the bottom of the boat while they got all set up taking, they probably had the, the fish out of water for several minutes and then released the fish and they’ll say it swam away. Richard (2h 7m 20s): Fine. It’s swam away. That doesn’t mean it’s swim away. Fine. Well, I guess the point I’m trying to make is I think we’re kind of in a silo of people who have the interest that we do. And so our idea of cape fresh wet and maybe maybe run sections for fly fishing only to control. But we are the vast minority of anglers that, that we are a tiny percentage of steelhead fishermen. Most the vast majority of steelheaders are, are gear and float fishermen and stuff like that. And I don’t wanna say they all don’t have the same concerns, but a lot of ’em don’t have the same concerns. When I first moved here, I went to a meeting, I live in Oregon City, the, the falls and the Willamette are right here in town. Richard (2h 8m 5s): And there are a big barrier to fish passage. Before there were dams upstream fish used to migrate when the river was so flooded they could swim right over the falls. And it’s the second biggest waterfall in, in the United States. It’s a big water. It’s not a huge drop. It’s, it’s not like Niagara Falls, which is so tall and wide, but it’s a wide drop and it’s, it’s a fish barrier except when the spring floods are coming through. And that’s why they only had winter run of fish in the summer. The the water was, the falls were too steep. So they’re trying to get resources to manage the fish passage better and trying to hold odf w’s feet to the fire on getting more feeder streams available. Richard (2h 8m 47s): So I went to this meeting with Native Fish Society and I just sat down in an open seat and I didn’t realize, I sat down in the middle of people who don’t just despise the Native Fish Society. They hate the Native Fish Society, red hot passion. And it was the vast majority of the room. I don’t agree with everything Native Fish Society does, but I like what I like what they’re trying to do overall. I like their mission. How we make the tent bigger is I think the struggle. How you get even people would think, ’cause when they, when I had so much pushback at Susan Creek down in North Qua, it wasn’t gear guys, it was all fly guys up in the fly zone. Richard (2h 9m 27s): They were mad at me. Nobody would come talk to me about it. Nobody would have sit and have a conversation about why I felt the way I did. ’cause I’ll a sudden talk about it all day long. But they wanna say, so-and-so says this. I’m like, okay, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about how hatcheries have proven ineffective. You know, but nobody wants to do that. They wanna say, I want to, I want to catch as many fish as I did when I was 14. It’s a long time since I was 14 and could catch a limited fish and feel good about it. Adrian (2h 9m 57s): Brian, is there, is there a harvest mentality of steelhead up in, in your neck of the woods or is it, you know, because that seems to be an underlying theme here in the lower 48. It’s, you know, they, they wanna catch steelhead, they wanna harvest it, you know, and, and make a meal out of it or stock their freezer. Richard (2h 10m 16s): Yeah. What’s the point of fishing if I can’t eat it? Adrian (2h 10m 18s): Yeah, so, 2 (2h 10m 20s): All right, so here on the cheena, you know, steelhead are all wild. It’s now illegal NBC to, to retain a wild steelhead. It’s surprisingly not that long ago that there were certain rivers where you were able to kill a wild steelhead. But that’s not the case anymore. So now you’re confined on a harvest side to hatchery rivers. The vet’s, the granddaddy of them. It’s not the only one. There’s a couple others throughout the province of BC but hey, I, I think the, the reality is, is hatcheries are expensive to run and we just don’t have the, we don’t have the dollars to do it. And we’re also blessed to have a really small population at lots of open space. And the secret sauce of the chena is the fact that there’s so much water spread out. The system’s so diverse, the fish are so diverse. 2 (2h 11m 1s): Different age classes, we don’t have huge numbers of fish per mile. People down south are really surprised to hear how few fish we have. And I’ll tell you right now, over the last 70 years, the average run size for the entire chena system is just ever so slightly larger than 30,000 fish. Okay? Twice in that same time period, we’ve had estimated returns over 60,000 escapement, over 60,000. It’s not that many fish when you take into the size of the area. So what we learned from this is that, you know, there’s natural fluctuations in, in run size. Fairly recently, 2021, we had the lowest previous to that. The next lowest I think was 57. 2 (2h 11m 42s): So it goes back ways in the early nineties we had a, a very similar period of low abundance. And okay, here’s the most interesting thing about it. The average age of a returning cheena steelhead is six years old. Okay? Four years fresh, two years salt, that’s your average fish. There’s a lot of variation there that could be all over the map. But that’s, that’s the most common one. 91, 92, 93, 3 of the lowest cheena returns on record. 98 and 99, 2 of the highest cheena returns on record. How’s your math? So what we learned from this is that the prodigy could fair exceptionally well. And I think part of that on the skeena is the situation that when you have a low return number of adults and you have all this habitat, you know, there’s a lot of groceries there. 2 (2h 12m 24s): There’s not as much competition. And the challenge when we start talking about hatchery programs is we’re trying to increase survival from egg to smolt or god forbid, a fry program. And what do you end up with that? Well, you end up with this, the slug of oat migration of fish that create a boom and predators. And I think it even speaks to just behavior on a fish by fish basis. And what I’m, where I’m going with that is if a fish is raised in a raceway, it’s used to, you know, not chasing food sideways a wild fish, which is going through the whole natural selection thing that that sucker needs to bust a move to get fed. So I think there’s a reason that guys who swing flies catch more wild fish than than hatchery fish on rivers where there is that mixed system. 2 (2h 13m 6s): And I think its simple explanation is, is the fact that you have, you have a situation where these fish have to compete and that’s important. Yeah. Richard (2h 13m 13s): Well and if you have the natural cycle of SMT in the river and par in the river and it’s what essentially the population of the river has been for several centuries or more, and then you dump more in, all of a sudden all those fish are competing at even higher level. Even if, if their competition is not as able as them, they’re outdone by numbers and it’s gonna make it harder for those wild fish to survive. The other part of it is, you know, if a fish, if a river could produce more fish, I think it would, yeah, if there has enough food to support par and smt, I think there’d be more there. Richard (2h 13m 59s): So putting more in is just stressing all the ones that are already there more. And I think part of that is getting to the point where we recognize that everybody can’t catch all the fish they want to catch. You have to recognize that if you kept six fish this year, maybe that’s your share. 2 (2h 14m 17s): So gosh, well I could talk to you guys for hours, but we should, we should probably find a, a nice way to finish this and get outta the political thing because my blood is boiling right now thinking about all the lost opportunity. But it is, it is frustrating because you think, okay, well we’ve got this tremendous resource. It’s vastly misunderstood, it’s vastly just devalued. And you know, to me the answer’s so simple. And that’s, that’s basically just, you need, you need to find ways to minimize the catch rate. And fly fishing only is a tool for that. It’s maybe not the only one. On previous shows we’ve talked about limited entry, you know, kind of like the Z system in Quebec. But I kind of have a problem with that ’cause I’ve enjoyed this free access in BC and I don’t know if I wanna make reservations to go fishing. Richard (2h 14m 59s): Well, and there’s, there’s in New York, when I first started on the Salmon River, you could fish any place you wanted. Now the lower stretch is all private and they’ll say, yeah, you can get on there for $50 a day. I’m like, why do I wanna pay $50 a day to fish next to people? I don’t want private entry 2 (2h 15m 16s): Cheaper than a round of golf. Richard (2h 15m 18s): Well, yeah, I don’t have to worry about that. You know what I like about, you know what I like about golf, it keeps people off rivers. Yeah. 2 (2h 15m 24s): That’s pretty good. Alright, so I’d like to wrap up the show with, with two things. I I wanna give you guys a, another opportunity to let people know how to, how to find you and promote anything that you wanna promote, whatever that is. And, but I do have a couple of questions and what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna start with Adrian with a couple, and then I’ll move to you, Richard. Richard (2h 15m 43s): I might have opinions on Adrian’s answers. 2 (2h 15m 46s): Well, well that’s why we’re starting with him. So Adrian, you’re, you’re approaching legend status. I mean, I don’t even, I didn’t even know you before today, but I certainly knew of you. Richard (2h 15m 55s): He’s like traveling with a celebrity on the fly fishing circuit. 2 (2h 15m 58s): Well, here’s why, because he’s, he’s established some rules and he’s sticking to ’em. He’s, he’s made fly fishing, which is pretty hard to begin with even harder. And he’s not, you know, he is not interested in making it any easier, but he’s, he’s getting the most enjoyment as he can on a per fish basis by, by doing it on his terms. And I absolutely love that. But Adrian, if there’s anyone listening who wants to get into dry fly fishing for steelhead or, or wants to try and tie a fly in their hand, can you give them a couple of knowledge bombs here on how to get started so they don’t get super frustrated and they can set themselves up for success. Could be anything. That’s what I’d love for you to share. And then Richard, my question for you is actually a little more broader and it’s, you know, I admire the heck outta you because you’re, you’re a guy who’s, who’s managed to make a living doing things. 2 (2h 16m 43s): You love you, you’re a painter, you’re a podcaster, you, you’ve greatly influenced me with, with this podcast. So what can you share with people about following their dreams? And then also maybe trying to find a way to tie in, you know, time on the water to help achieve those goals. So we’ll start with you Adrian, and then we’ll finish up with Richard. And don’t forget to plug yourself, I wanna hear that art website before we’re done. Again. Adrian (2h 17m 7s): First I wanna say I I’m no legend. I, you know, I just, I really just enjoy the, the culture of fly fishing. And I mentioned before the traditions, you know, I think I just actually read Hank Brown this morning and he said something to the effect that you wanna respect the fish by the way that you angle for ’em. And that’s, that’s what I really want to do with a steelhead, is I wanna respect their journey. The, the, you know, what they have to go through from, you know, being smolt back out to the ocean and then to come back in again and spawn and then go back out. Adrian (2h 17m 47s): That’s an amazing journey that they have to go through. And so as far as dry fly fishing, dry line fishing, I think it, it, for me, and, and I hope to share it with some people is, is that they, they find that challenge, that enjoyment out of it. It’s not an easy road, especially if you don’t have a mentor. And I’ve been fortunate that I was intrigued by dry line fishing that I met with a good buddy of mine, Todd Herano, and you know, and through him I got to meet Bill McMillan getting Bill McMillan’s book Dry Line Steelhead and other subjects. And just going through that, you don’t have to read through the whole thing, but just a few of the excerpts just could provide some passion, some inspiration on some data, and then finding another fellow that enjoys a dry line or drive fly fishing because you need to have some sort of encouragement, you know, ’cause you don’t have, if you don’t, if you’ve never done it before, you don’t have something to draw from and you can get easily discouraged and put on your, your sink tip. Adrian (2h 18m 54s): Again, there’s nothing wrong with sink tip fishing, you know, under the right conditions. So yeah, just dry line steelhead, you know, put your dry line on and then fish, fish all summer with it. Steelhead will come up to the surface. You don’t have to go deep, you know, those are active fish. As far as dry flies, you know, I just, I personally enjoy natural style dry flies. I still say the grease liner is the greatest steelhead fly of all time just because of the conception of it. It from Harry Lumiere, one of the great tying legends icons of steelheading. And it’s effective and it’s simple tie on a grease liner, but if you want to tie a foam, fly a foam tube, do it, it, it’ll work and just stick to it. Adrian (2h 19m 44s): That’s how I started. And then I hook a fish and I was surprised. But pretty soon you’ll be successful, you’ll start knowing the holding lies. And like you mentioned earlier, Brian, steelhead don’t hold deep. You know, they, they’re, they’re pretty shallow. I’ve had ’em in ankle deep water. You just have to be observant. You have to be cautious. Like Harry Lair, you know, he said you have to stalk him like a heron. You gotta, you can’t go clunking around, you know, right into the pool. You have to stop at the top of the pool and start, you know, fishing from the bank, you know, not in the water and, and just observe what you’re doing every day. And as far as tying in hand, you know, it’s a different challenge. Adrian (2h 20m 26s): It, it’s, well one of the reasons was other people inspired me and I realized, wow, there’s more connection to this tying. And then to the steelhead, once I tie something in hand and it gives me a sense of excitement, but just start with a simple spade pattern, you know, just dub some small hook and then put, you know, wrap some hackle around it and use that. Start with that. You’re gonna hook a fish on it and then you can say, wow, I did that. Hook the fish and next time add a wing. Simple stuff, strip wings. It doesn’t need to be fantastic. And then, you know, you’ll find out soon enough if you wanna, you know, challenge your way in that part of fly fishing. Adrian (2h 21m 11s): Others, it, it may be too much of a distraction for me. You know, it gives me that sense of focus, like Rick was mentioning earlier, it allows me time when I’m off the water to think about steelhead And also gives me a, a, a, you know, something that I’m satisfied about once I take it to the water. There are a few good tying videos I believe on online. You know, you just Google, you know, tying in hand on YouTube. There’s a few fellas that’ll show you how to tie in hand. Off the top of my head, it’s Jin Lee. But it, it, it really is something that you have to get used to. It’s hard to watch a video and tie in hand. Adrian (2h 21m 53s): You just gotta do it. But, you know, that’s, that’s really me in a nutshell. I just try to, you know, hopefully promote steelheading to the funnest. It can be, you know, we can dredge for ’em, we can, you know, use bobbers for ’em. But for me it’s a dead drifting. A dryly swinging a dry fly, seeing that surface attack or maybe tying, you know, a, a hook, a dry line, dry lining, a hook in the winter with minimal materials and then getting a fish to come up in the upper part of the water column column and, and just, you know, yank that hook. It just sends a shot of energy through you. Adrian (2h 22m 35s): But yeah, that’s, hopefully that’ll help some people on their angling. And I do, I do donate some of my flies to Native Fish Society And also to fly fishing collaborative. But they, they also, you know what, what they do is they, through the fly fishing community, they, they try to raise funds to help those in need in underprivileged children. They fight human trafficking in our country as well as other countries. So it’s a, it’s a great organization, good people behind it. And yeah, And also one more thing is, you know, I, I wanna learn how to paint. And so, ’cause I get inspired by Richard and other painters, he mentioned James Samsel. Adrian (2h 23m 18s): So when I can’t fish, I’ll sit down and I have one brush. That’s all I have. And I thought, you know what, I, I think I could try this out with one brush, with watercolor. So I tried something once and my wife took one look at it and she said, that looks like a sandwich. And it was supposed to be like, you know, you know, it was supposed to be a river with, with a desert in background, the desert hills. And anyway, I hope next time to paint more than a sandwich. So 2 (2h 23m 43s): That’s awesome. And if, if someone wanted to get ahold of you, do you talk to people, Adrian (2h 23m 48s): You know, mostly they send me like messages on Instagram, Adrian Cortez, steelhead, what else do I have? I, I think that’s mainly the most part. I, I’ll be on spay pages as as Fish and Asian, which is FSHA, what is it? I can’t even spell. F-S-H-N-A-Z-N Richard (2h 24m 10s): No vowels. 2 (2h 24m 11s): That’s awesome. And I love, I love the tip about setting yourself up for success by not trying to tie a complicated fly at the beginning, but just, just trying to get a few materials on there and then take it fishing and then build upon that. I think that’s a wonderful tip. So thank you for sharing that. Adrian (2h 24m 25s): Thank you Brian. 2 (2h 24m 26s): Okay, Richard, you’re up. Richard (2h 24m 28s): I already forgot my question. Like I said, I never intended to do this. It was a lifeboat for me. I love to paint, I absolutely love to paint when I’m coming unglued, I need to make something and painting is what does it for me most it, it just grounds me. It’s, I don’t even know if it’s satisfying as much as absorbing to do, but what it really takes to make a living at it is this full-time hustle. So the problem is there’s no path to follow. You’ve gotta be willing to dive in. If I could find a could, I found a mentor. One of the things that’s been fascinating to me on the podcast is almost everybody I’ve run into that’s in the industry had a mentor that had them kinda led them down the path. Richard (2h 25m 14s): I never in my life ran into that. It’s just, I don’t wanna say bad luck, it’s just the chaos of the world. I never had that good fortune. I’ve had a lot of other good fortune. My kids are my anchors. I’ve had times in my life where I didn’t know what I was gonna do and I thought, but I have kids, I gotta move. You gotta move forward. You have responsibilities, the people you love. The other great blessing in my life is my friends, my two fishing buddies back East Coop and magic. We’ve been friends for 30 years from paddling. Some of my best friends. So when I wasn’t fishing, I was, I was running whitewater. And there’s not too many do or die situations in fishing, but there are in paddling. Richard (2h 25m 56s): And the guys I paddled with, we’re gonna, I don’t paddle much anymore, but I’m gonna be friends with those guys till I die. My buddy Driscoll walked into the fly shop I ran 47 years ago and said, how’s it going? And I said, good, how you doing? He said, good. We’ve been friends ever since. I used, I used to fish almost always alone. And when I moved out here and met Adrian, he introduced me to a group of guys and I met some guys through the Drake. I met some guys on my own that it’s just, it’s a really tight close community. And art is the same way. I have kind of two, three bodies of friends. I have all paddling buddies, my fishing buddies and my painter friends, and not all painters, sculptors, jewelers, all kinds of stuff. Richard (2h 26m 38s): And it’s that common interest, that common thought process about life that is the basis of friendships that just kinda sustain us. And I think it’s way more important than what you do with your time. It’s really an inappropriate, I guess, socially to ask people what they do. I guess when people say, oh, you’re an artist, and they always think that’s loaded. I’m like, I’m a small business guy. What I’m is a small business guy who makes and sells something that is completely unnecessary for almost everyone. It’s really funny, it’s Dan Ritz is involved in Swing the Fly and, and I can’t remember exactly what he said to me, but how do you sell your work? Richard (2h 27m 23s): Or something like that. And I said, the funny thing is, I have people all the time that like my work, and they won’t say it that way, but, but they don’t value my work. And I recognize part of my work has gotten to a point where, I don’t even like to say out loud how much it costs, but one of the reasons I do printmaking is it’s pretty affordable. But there’s still people that, that four or five or $600 is too much money for them to spend. They buy things that cost them much all the time, but they don’t, they won’t spend that money on art because they don’t value it that way. And that’s fine. It’s not my place to tell you what you should value. I would say you should value your friends, your family, your kids, and your spouse and your friends. Richard (2h 28m 4s): But beyond that, it’s up to you. I drive a 20-year-old truck with 320,000 miles on it. And I have fly rods that will make wealthy men faint because they’re so nice. Because I value that. I value things that people make by hand. I have two shamberg reels. He made everything down to the springs and the screws that hold the reels together. I have several bamboo rods from James Reed, from Chris Obuchowski, from Patrick Leba, Jay Moon. I can’t wait to get my hands on a, on a shamberg. They make every part of it. I love that. I value their labor and so I’m willing to save my pennies and, and pay for it. Richard (2h 28m 48s): And that’s what I want my life to be about. And that to me is more about, it takes a lot of hustle. You won’t talk to anybody who does that and makes a living doing that, that doesn’t have to hustle their ass off. I know running a lodge’s gotta be a lot of work. 2 (2h 29m 2s): Wow, let’s not worry about that right now. But what I’m picking up from you is, and I’ll bring this back to fishing, is it’s, it’s all about making another cast and keep it moving through the pool and eventually, eventually you’re gonna find a taker. Richard (2h 29m 13s): Yeah, you gotta, you just gotta keep moving. It is kind of funny. I know several artists in the same situation that, you know, as the economy goes up and down, right? As that got to a point where I thought, I finally figured this out 14 years ago, we had a huge housing collapse down here, financial collapse down here. And I don’t know if it hit Canada the same way, but it tanked. It tanked the economy down here. And I used to sell, I sold, I painted much smaller and I sold to a different group of people. And those people have almost not ever returned to buy an art again because I think it hit them so hard financially. And at the same time, the painting that I love for the most part is enormous. Richard (2h 29m 54s): And I’ve always wanted to paint bigger and I started painting bigger ’cause I wasn’t doing anything. And all of a sudden I started selling paintings as a candidate. It occurred to me, oh really? Wealthy people, they’re always really wealthy. And so finding your market, identifying your market, having faith in your ability to reach that market, all of that plays in. But most of the thing is don’t quit. 2 (2h 30m 18s): I love it. So Richard, speaking of, of buying art, how do people find your art and buy your art? Richard (2h 30m 24s): The most direct way is my website. There’s just two websites. There is Richard C. Harrington, there are a lot of Richard Harrington’s who paint. If you don’t use my initial C in the middle, you’ll find somebody else. But richard c harrington.com and then the river rambler.com has some, a little bit of painting on it too. But most of it’s on richard c harrington.com and some of it is available through me, but there’s a page of representation on my website that shows the calories that I show at. 2 (2h 30m 56s): Perfect. Well guys, I really appreciate your time today. It’s been wonderful speaking with you and I, I hope I can encourage you to come up and see us on the Skiena sometime and we can continue our, our talks on the water. Richard (2h 31m 8s): Oh, I can guarantee we we both left too. 2 (2h 31m 12s): Well that was a fun discussion. I want to thank Richard and Adrian for sharing their knowledge and passion with us today. I’m not sure I’m gonna be tying any flies in hand, but I’m definitely inspired to get on the water with a James Reed Bamboo rod this season. Thank you to everyone for tuning into the show. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. You can find in the Bucket podcast online@www.in the bucket podcast.com. If you’re on Instagram, you can follow us at in Theb Bucket podcast. You can reach me directly on email at info@skeenaspay.com. Look for the next episode of In Theb Bucket Coming Your Way in the first week of April. Until then, I’m host Brian Ska and you’ve been listening to I In The Bucket Podcast, brought to you by the wet Fly swing.