Ep 100: The Gila Traverse, with Patrick Bauman
Patrick Bauman is a fellow backcountry fishing enthusiast and the owner of Colter Backcountry, a company focused on lightweight, backcountry fishing gear. In this episode, we talk about the hurdles of carrying gear on big trips, how he created Colter Backcountry, and his recent attempt at completing the Troutman. He also tells me about his upcoming adventure, the Gila Traverse, which is a 700-mile trek he created to fish his way through the historic range of the Gila trout.
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Website: colterbackcountry.com
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fish in the backcountry. this is episode 100 with Patrick Bauman on the Gila traverse awesome well I always love to start by getting a background on how my guests got into fishing so I'd love to hear how you got your start in in fishing in general and then in particular in fly fishing?
Patrick
Yeah. So fishing in general, I've been fishing about as long as I can remember. Grew up mostly in Kansas City in Missouri. And I had grandparents who had a lake house down at the Lake of the Ozarks. So that was like my first foray into fishing. Me, all my family, cousins, everyone would go down there in the summer. And then, you know, since I was a little kid, Started off just with like worms under bobbers. Got addicted to catching bluegill off the dock as like a really little kid. And that sort of spiraled. You know, we would spend like days, hours and hours as little kids. Just super basic setups, you know, like the push pull, push rod, buttons, button rods. And then, yeah, basically just catching a bunch of panfish off the dock. Slowly graduated from that into like getting more serious about bass fishing, going out on the boat. very much focused though on like traditional spinning rods bait casters that kind of stuff mostly going after bass panfish the ozarks does have like a little bit of walleye fishing but for the most part primarily interested in bass and then occasional catfish stuff I think I was probably like around 10 or so when I first picked up a fly rod the ozarks has a ton of really good fly fishing opportunities both smallmouth and trout which we eventually got into but like my first experience we went again another family thing with like all my uncles me and my dad my brother to it was basically like a a trout farm you know like a little resort you stay out and have a bunch of stalker rainbows and stuff which is funny to think back on now but like when I was 10 years old and there's all this new type of fishing you'd see the fish in the water It was like crystal clear, you know, the mechanics of working a fly rod and learning how to cast that was just super fun. So that was my first experience fly fishing and kind of just got hooked, hooked on the fly game from there.
Katie
Now, did you teach yourself or have like what resources did you use to learn?
Patrick
Yeah, pretty much self-taught. I remember my dad got us like some DVD of like learn how to cast a fly rod. And we all, you know, went in the backyard with dry lines on and just like practice the mechanics of it. But pretty much self-taught, just a lot of banging your head against the wall. At first, it's so exciting just to be cast in a fly rod that you don't really care, especially at that age, if you're doing it correctly. And then over time, yeah, really just learned on my own and eventually got better until I was actually legitimately fly fishing.
Katie
I think even if you have all the resources in the world, there's a fair bit of head banging that goes along with learning to fly fish, regardless of how much exposure you have or how many resources you have. Like there's still a learning period where it doesn't matter how many videos you've watched or books you've read or, you know, people who've taught you, you're going to be bad at it for the first couple of times you go. And you're just going to have to, like, you know, deal with it.
Patrick
You're like watching a video as a kid. Like, oh, yeah, I see exactly how that works. Then you go out and try to do it. And it's like a whole another thing.
Katie
Yeah. Well, I'll kind of let you steer the conversation from here because I know we're going to talk a lot about some things you've done recently and some things you have coming up. just in the world of backcountry fishing, which is going to be kind of the overarching theme. But I'd also like to hear about your company, which is kind of a backcountry fly fishing focused company, which I don't think I could name another fly fishing company that's specifically focused on the backcountry. So whichever way you'd like to go first, we'll hit on both of these things, but whatever is your preference, go for that.
Patrick
Yeah, sure. So I guess just to start off, I run a company called Coulter Backcountry. Like you said, it's focused on fly fishing gear specifically for backcountry fishing, which is what I love to do. I guess as sort of stepping back a little bit, I'll give kind of a long winding background to lead up to this and it might make a little bit more sense. Out of, I graduated college back in 2019, worked up in Wisconsin, sort of a traditional just like post-college gig in the corporate world. Did a ton of fishing in the Driftless area too out there, which is awesome. Something I definitely want to get back in doing because that's like a really fun type of fly fishing. But after a few years there for a couple different reasons, I decided to move down to Arizona. My girlfriend was down here. I was looking for sort of a change in career of one kind or another, not really knowing what that would look like. And decided that while I had the time off, while I left that job, that I was going to do something fun. So I had like a big board with all sorts of random outdoors related ideas. And then decided that I was going to do a through hike on the continental divide trail so that's like one of the one of the longer through hikes you can do in the the u.s at least kind of goes from Mexico to Canada and then mostly follows more or less along the continental divide so New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana went into that fully thinking that I was either going to go to law school on the back end or just go back into sort of the type of job I'd had before and was like yeah I'm gonna go play for months and this will be fun and then I'll like get back to real life. So kicked off that hike and quickly found out within like a month or two of hiking that if you're going to do that to yourself, you probably just ruined any shot you have at like going back to the quote normal world afterwards. I'd already done a lot of backpacking and loved being outside. But somewhere along the way, I definitely realized that I wanted to make more of an effort at, you know, aligning like whatever my career turned out being with what I love doing, which is being outside, backpacking, fishing, things of that nature. That hike also exposed me for the first time to sort of this ultralight ethos that the backpacking community is all about nowadays. I mean, I had like heard about ultralight stuff and had, you know, some lighter weight gear options, but I'd never really been exposed to people that are, you know, counting like the ounces of the gear they're carrying or down to the gram or all sorts of this crazy stuff and all these like high-end technical fabrics like Dyneema and just a bunch of other stuff that's out there in the backpacking world. And that really resonated me partly because, you know, at the time I was hiking big miles. So I was like, oh, like any way I can lower my pack weight would be awesome. But just more generally speaking, I love the idea of, you know, not having, not carrying a ton, not carrying stuff you don't need. I found it like really ironic as I was on trail that there were people out there who were going to be hiking for like five months and their pack weighed like a fraction of the weight of someone you'd come across who was out for like a weekend backpacking trip I always thought that was funny but just really really like that concept of less is more and being really deliberate about what you take and I also I kind of found that there was sort of a crossover there with the fishing I like to do I consider myself you know pretty generalist when it comes to fishing I know there are times where you really need to dial in, you know, exactly what you're using and want a big fly selection. But for the most part, as I'm sure you know, like when it comes to a lot of backcountry options, like a lot of different dry flies will get the job done. You know, you don't need to like carry the entire kitchen sink of all this stuff. Like it's super basic of the actual gear you need and, you know, technique and how you're using stuff is way more important than what you're actually bringing with you. So yeah, that sort of just fed into the idea of like, Oh, there's a lot of awesome fly fishing gear on the market out there. A lot of super high end stuff, but there's not a ton that's geared towards backcountry fishing in particular. I find that a lot of the stuff is, you know, just too big, too cumbersome, a little bit too heavy. If I want to go out and hike a ton of miles to go up to some, you know, Alpine Lake or some headwater Creek, you know, not to mention if I want to go on a multi-day backpacking trip, I really just want like some basic gear and have it be held in an organized, nice way that I can fish with, but it just doesn't like totally take over my backpack in any way. Yeah. So yeah, I decided to start this company, Colter Backcountry, and focus on basically pain points that I saw, and I saw others having in the backcountry and just tried to make really small, lightweight, and portable stuff for backcountry fly fishing.
Katie
Yeah, I may end up being like your biggest customer because I feel like this past year I've been on kind of a journey is not the right word, but my goal this past year was to kind of to pare down my backcountry setup. So I wasn't carrying my normal day-to-day fishing stuff into the backcountry because my fish pack, you know, it has a couple boxes of flies. It's got a whole thing, a tippet, basically everything you, all the little gadgets you want. And most of that stuff just like doesn't really matter, especially like you said, with backcountry fish that generally aren't that picky, you know, fish that don't get fish for a lot tend to not be that hard to catch so I got my my kit mostly down to this little mesh bag that's probably I don't know four inches by eight inches or so and it's got you know like a 5x and a 4x tippet it's got a little pill box of of different flies and split shot in there a couple little indicators some nippers some hemostats my license and I think that might be it. But then there's like the big stuff, which I know.
Patrick
Yeah, no, it's great.
Katie
But that doesn't change the fact that if you want to bring waiters into the backcountry or a net into the backcountry, like these things don't really get much smaller. So I don't know if you can talk about your net yet, because you had sent me this survey to fill out about this net. And I was really intrigued by it. But what are some of the things that you, if you can talk about the net, great. If not, maybe what are some of the other things that you've found is like a solution for the backcountry person who doesn't want to haul the bulky stuff into the backcountry? Because, you know, flies aren't hard to carry into the backcountry. Waiters and boots and nets and all these other things are. So like, what are your solutions for some of these problems?
Patrick
Right. Yeah. So I guess one product that we have out on the market right now is our last cast series of packs. So they're just really small packs that hold, they're designed to hold like kind of the kit that you just described, you know, a fly box, a couple of schools of tippet, some miscellaneous gear, and then just clip on kind of an easy fashion if you're going backpacking. Um, so more just around like the size and shape of the thing that you're bringing to hold your fly fishing gear in so that you don't have to throw it all in like a giant hit pack or something that is just too much to carry. Um, the net is something I'm super excited about. We are, so yeah, you saw kind of our, our digitized version of our prototype we've been working on. But basically, you know, nets are tricky because a lot of people in the backcountry, they're either like, well, you know, a 10 inch fish is probably like the biggest fish I'm going to encounter. So I'm just going to totally forget a net, which sometimes is true and totally valid. Other times they're like, there are plenty of backcountry fishing opportunities where there are legitimate big size fish that you do want a net to have. Yes. And then of course, there's the case where, you know, sometimes the fish that are smaller, you still just want to be conscious. Maybe of cutthroat that you know you don't want to be holding fish out of the water for too long you want to treat them gently with a net so there are reasons why you do want to bring a net into the backcountry and for me that was just one of the biggest pieces of gear it's like okay well I don't really want to strap you know an extra large tennis racket to my backpack every time I'm going out or have them like hitting me in the back as I go hike 10 miles or whatever up to this lake so we've come up with a design that basically packs down I don't know how well to be able to describe this, but packs down into multiple pieces and sort of has a net that the netting itself fits around the frame. And there's sort of a little cam mechanism in the handle that then locks that netting into place. At Colter Backcountry, we'll have some actual product info coming out soon. So people who are interested can give us a follow and kind of see what that actually looks like. But I'm super excited because it's something that you can then pack down to like, you know, we're not totally finished with the size yet, but like the size of a water bottle and you can just slide it into the side of your pack or whatever and then have like an actual net that can handle real fish when you're far away from a road and have been hiking.
Katie
Yeah, I think what appealed to me about it was that I've looked at other backcountry nets in the past and the standard design I've seen has been like a handle with some sort of almost like wire-based frame that comes out of the netting then is held on to. And so then you can kind of twist the wire, fold the thing up into a little small package. But the problem is that I'm trying to picture a large fish in that net and I feel like the weight of the fish would pull that wire frame just down out of shape. And you'd almost be holding it in like a sack at that point, which makes it feel maybe more destructive than just handling the fish without a net, like having it in a sack that you're trying to fish your hands down into. And what you had was basically a regular net, like a full frame made of, I mean, I don't know the material, but a rigid frame that's going to hold the weight of a fish. And I also liked that it had a ruler in the netting. So you can quickly see like how long the fish is.
Patrick
Yeah, that's a nice little feature we added. One of the goals with Colter Backcountry that I have is that a lot of the sort of ultralight backcountry versions of equipment are, I feel like there's some sort of a sacrifice. You know, like you mentioned with that, like, oh, you know, I can only really carry this. It's the only feasible thing to carry, but it's not going to stand up to like a 20 inch trout if I happen to find one somewhere. Or, you know, I mean, plenty of people love fishing Tenkara, which is awesome. But some people want like a full size rod and reel that they can bring in for whatever situation they're fishing for. So I think people in the backcountry should be able to have like their best tools on hand and just have tools that are light enough and small enough that you can bring into that kind of situation.
Katie
Yeah. And like you said, I mean, there are times that I do find large fish in the backcountry and those nets that are kind of flimsier. Those are the fish that I'm bringing a net for. Like for the small fish, for the eight inch fish, I'm generally not bringing that at all. I feel like I can get that fish in fast enough that even if it takes me a couple extra seconds to handle it, the fish is going to be fine because it took me two seconds to bring it in. It's those big fish that you might be fighting for a minute or two where it's like, okay, once I get it to my hand, I want to make this as quick as possible, especially if you want to get a photo of it and all the other things that go along with, you know, landing a big fish. That's where you need that extra like oomph. So I'm super excited to see what comes with this net. And I might be one of the first people signing up for it because I've been looking for a solution like this for a long time. Do you have any other solutions in the works? I'm trying to think of other kind of bulkier items. Obviously, the rod can get a little bit bulky, but I'm not sure how much you can really sacrifice that unless you get into the ultralight reel making business. But are there any other items that even if you don't have anything actively in the works that you have a goal to fix a problem that you've come across where you're like, this thing is just too much for me to carry?
Patrick
Yeah, we have a few other things actively in the works. And then I do have like a long backlog of like issues I would love to tackle. As far as actively in the works, I don't like having to carry rods in their heavy rod tubes. Every time I go backpacking, there's definitely like a way lighter weight solution to have something that's protective of the rod, but it doesn't weigh whatever those weigh and isn't quite as bulky. So that's something else that's being prototyped and workshopped at the moment. As far as like future things that I'm currently not working on, but would definitely love to dive into is waders. You mentioned them. That's like the big X factor when you're going back hacking, especially if you're older outside or there is going to be some wading involved. They're really hard to pack. They take up a ton of space. They're heavy. They're like wet all the time. It's just like a nightmare, a nightmare piece of gear to deal with if you're back hacking or just doing a long hike. so something you know some like maybe hip waders or something that's sort of just like a regular pair of pants that you could legitimately hike in would be awesome
Katie
yeah waders are a tough one because I feel like when I use waders in the backcountry it's often in an alpine lake where I may reasonably want to wade up to almost my chest which is hard because like if I'm wading something that's up to my ankles I don't need waders it seems like there's not a lot of in between in the backcountry like if it's a small stream waders typically aren't needed And if it's an alpine lake and you're trying to get out over a shelf that might be, I don't know, 30 yards out, you kind of have to wait. And a lot of those shelves are not super shallow. So it's like there's not a lot of options apart from covering yourself up to the chest. And it just like I can't picture what sort of solution there could be apart from like a really, really thin pair of waiters, which seems like it would just be a disaster. You know, if you walk a long brush or whatever. What have you found just in your own personal life? have you found any hacks for getting your kit really light or small? Like for example, for me, I wear waders over my Herb Tevas over my wader booties. Like I won't wear boots. I'll just pack a pair of Tevas and those are generally enough to get me around on the rocks. But like, have you found anything similar to that where it's just not a product per se, but just a hack that you've found in your day-to-day life?
Patrick
Yeah. I do a similar thing with the boots where I usually wear like a ultra for a lot of my hiking. That's just a shoe that works for me. That's lightweight. And so When one pair gets like too beat up to wear, then that usually becomes like my pair that I force over the booties on my waders. So I don't have to carry like boots anywhere into the backcountry, which is honestly, it gets the job done. They're not as stable as boots, but seems to work pretty well. I'm trying to think what else fishing specific I do.
Katie
Or you can just tell me about your kit. Like, what do you take?
Patrick
Yeah, I mean, I really I have like a really strong personal rule that like if I'm aside from preventative weather gear, If I'm not for sure going to use something, then I really don't bring it unless I'm testing it out. I want to be like, oh, I wonder how well this will work. So my kit's pretty minimal. I have a tent. I use a tarp tent, which is pretty lightweight. It's a freestanding tent, but it still has a pole in the middle, so it stands up pretty well. I use a quilt instead of a sleeping bag, so that shaves a little bit of weight off there. And I like the quilt because it's less restrictive. So for all you crazy sleepers out there, it's definitely like a much more comfortable than trying to squeeze into a mummy bag, I think.
Katie
I was curious whether I'd like the quilt and I've grown to really love it. Like as long as it's warm enough for it, which it does surprisingly well in cold weather, but it is just really nice to be able to, you know, pull it down if you're a little hot, pull it up if you're cold and there's not that all that wasted material underneath you.
Patrick
Yeah, the quilt's great. It has a little toe box to your little foot box that you can zip up. So that's nice. It's like snug where you want it to be snug and then wide open the rest, which is great. My sleeping pad, I go back and forth on. I currently have like a three quarters length foam pad, which I'll be the first to say is not the most comfortable option. But I love that I can just whip it out at like lunch or snack break and sit on it, you know, on like an inflatable pad that is going to pop. So that's awesome for me and gets the job done. But like I said, I'll be the first to say that's not nearly as comfortable as like a nice inflatable pad that you can bring.
Katie
Sure. Going back to your CDT trip, and I know we're going to get into some other trips that you've either done or are planning. I have to say, I think you're probably not the only person who's gone on that trail thinking, you know what, I'll get it out of my system. I'll come back. I'll become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. And then completely throws out the window like a weekend. I'm sure that this is the common narrative of people on that trail. Did you meet any other people that were out there to to find themselves or or had these plans and they got back that just didn't pan out like what just tell me some stories from from the CDT
Patrick
yeah I'm trying to think of people I don't know it's it's kind of hard to know like what people's personal life was before the trail and what it turned into after just because like it's almost like this weird world that you inhabit for five months and you like know people in that capacity but not like in whatever their normal day-to-day life was before. But yeah, I did the trail like two-thirds of it. My younger brother accompanied me on, then he had to go back to college. And then my dad actually joined me for like the last third or so of it. So I spent most of my time with those two guys, which was awesome.
Katie
So it was kind of a family affair. Do you have any particular fishing experiences on it that stood out to you?
Patrick
Yeah, we did. So we packed fishing gear, which felt really dumb when you're in like the the boot heel of new Mexico it's not a drop of any free-flowing water for like hundreds of miles but we had a like a tin car rod and a fly box like one spool of tippet and I think that was probably about it maybe a little thing of floating northern new Mexico had had some fun fishing and like you know there's a bunch of creeks that feed in there Colorado you know there's just like a ton of water everywhere a lot of it was frozen on the southern end of the state when we were up just because the trail is so high altitude the the truth with the fishing though that was just a huge bummer and this would be my only like one of the big reasons why I probably would never do another through hike is that especially with the CDT there you're really just spending so much time walking and hiking that it's hard to fit in good fishing time and I know like to someone listening it's like oh well how could that possibly be every day you're walking by all this water it's true it just you know to do to do that trail to get it done in time with the two weather windows like on you don't you can't really start before April because there's too much snow in Colorado and then you know you're you're kind of risking it all if you want to go into anything past like mid-September up in northern Montana just because they have early season blizzards and whatnot so to fit all that in you're doing like really big miles every day you know and most most days would look like up at 5 30 and then wrap up at about 8 p.m hiking so they're just like it sucked because going into it I really thought that there would be some awesome fishing and we definitely had a few days where we just took off and did a bunch of fishing or would stop for lunch and you know catch a fish here there but overall it was definitely like much less fishing than I was anticipating
Katie
did you do any zero days to like stop at a lake or anything like that?
Patrick
yeah we did a few zero days where we saw something on the map it looked good and we're like all right we're just gonna take off here and do a bunch of fishing the best well we also lucked into this little week where right when we got to Colorado there was just so much snow that it was like really really hard to hike and my parents happened to be staying in Durango that week they were like on vacation themselves so we we decided to take like five or six days off trail, went to Durango, and then went down to fish the San Juan. So that was just kind of a fun little side trip from the hike.
Katie
Yeah, I feel like it's hard because like you said, you picture that you're walking past water all the time. But let's say you cross water like three or four times throughout the day. That's three or four times you have to take your pack off, get your stuff out, get rigged up. It's not like you're going to be hiking with a built-up fly rod in your hand the whole time. I know you said you had Tenkara, but it's not... I mean, Tenkara telescopes out, but it's not fully built up in your hand. Like you still have to take your stuff off, pull it out, telescope it out, add a fly, you know, that adds up and then putting it back in your bag. And say you're trying to do this every time you cross water, which might happen, you know, maybe up to a dozen times a day. I don't know. Like there's a lot of creek crossings. I feel like you've got to kind of be selective about that. And then you're just, I don't know, beat at the end of the day. So it sounds like a dream, but like you said, I can picture how it quickly start to become more of a hassle than it's worth for, you know, one or two little trout that, you know, you've, you've caught that species before you've caught a million fish like that before you could get another mile in before dark. Like it starts to, you have to weigh the pros and cons each time.
Patrick
Yeah, it's too bad. And I also, when I am fishing, especially when I'm fly fishing, I feel like I kind of just like to sink into it without any time constraints, you know, you're like learn the rivers, see what the dynamics are, see what the fish are doing, all sorts of stuff, you know, and for me that takes a while. And the one thing I hate when I'm fishing is to have some sort of like a clock ticking. I need to be somewhere. So I'm not a huge fan of like, oh, let's take 30 minutes here and just hit this creek really quick. I'd rather just totally sink in and have like an entire afternoon to go explore wherever I want to. So that was also something that I just wasn't wild about doing was like, you know, a few casts here and there.
Katie
So what I was going to ask you was, have you considered doing something like the Colorado Trail, which is, you know, I want to say about 500 miles and you wouldn't have that same weather window time constraint. And I realized that that might be kind of what you're doing with the Gila Traverse. So tell me about the Gila Traverse and how you came up with this idea and what your plan is for it.
Patrick
Yeah, so the Gila Traverse totally made up name that I made up. So if you haven't heard of it, that's why. But yeah, so I live out in Arizona now. and a ton of the exploring I do is along a region called the Magian Rim, Magian, depending on who you ask. But that basically runs from like Sedona all the way over to the White Mountains. So it's about a third of the way up from the bottom of Arizona, if you're looking at a map. And geologically, it's like more or less the bottom of the Colorado Plateau. So you have this huge flat plateau, and then it just kind of drastically drops off. So the rim is about 2000 feet high and basically just runs across most of Arizona. So I do a ton of fishing through that area and kind of, yeah, since I've been off the CDT, I was sort of like looking for another like bigger project to tackle. And I've looked at that area and fished in that area a ton and done some backpacking and thought, oh, this is like a really prime place to do like a cool trip. You could probably string together some trails, a bunch of fishing. So that's sort of been on my mind for a while. and recently I was like in the fall of last year I was sort of looking at some maps and realized that that whole area not only is like continuous national forest but also discontinues to feed into New Mexico once you get past the white mountains and then you start to get into the Leopold wilderness in the Gila wilderness which are like two of the biggest wilderness complexes in the lower 48 so there's just like this huge tract basically from the middle of Arizona all the way in through like eastern New Mexico or western New Mexico that has a ton of national forests, a ton of wilderness, tons of fishing. I was like, okay, I need to figure out like a great, a cool way to attack this as like a backcountry project. So the other thing that we have in Arizona that's really neat are two species of trout, the Gila trout and the Apache trout. They aren't found anywhere else. So the Gila trout also is in New Mexico. The Apache is just in Arizona. But I started doing some research on sort of like what those fish were. I had fished for them both and caught both of them, but kind of did a deep dive on like where they came from and how they ended up there. And basically thousands of years ago, there was some ancestor of the Pacific salmon that swam all the way around the Baja Peninsula and up. What is that? the sea of Cortez?
Katie
I guess I've just always called it like Baja the Baja area I don't know about the Baja area um
Patrick
I got access to the Colorado river which you know historically drained in there now I think it's like mostly dry dirt by the time it gets all the way down there but swam up there and then the Gila river is one of the biggest tributaries to the Colorado down low and it the Gila riverbed comes into the Colorado and like right around Yuma, Arizona, which is sort of where Arizona, Mexico and California combine. And then from there, it runs like 600 plus miles up into eastern Arizona and a bunch of little headwater creeks up there. So this salmon ancestor got access to the Gila, eventually swam up way up into the headwaters of like most of the tributaries of the Gila. And then at some point, temperatures changed and there were isolated populations in the headwater creeks. And the descendants of those fish are now the Gila trout and the Apache trout. So I thought, oh, that's super fascinating. I was doing more research and kind of saw a map somewhere in one of the Game and Fish websites, I think in New Mexico, that showed what the historical range of the Gila trout is. They basically defined it as the Agra Freya River, which is about running through central Arizona from like Prescott down to the Phoenix area. And then the upper headwaters of the Gila River all the way over in eastern Arizona. And then most of the tributaries between those two points probably had Gila trout in them at some point or another. So I thought, OK, there's my angle on like this trip I'm trying to do in this awesome area. So I thought, well, that would be super cool to do a backpacking trip to traverse the historical range of the Gila trout. And then along the way, just do a ton of fishing. So from there, I did a bunch of route planning and have a route that I think is pretty doable. It'll be like a combo of some trails here and there and then a lot of cross-country travel in between, which I'm super excited about. So that's my goal, not through all at once, but to hit like throughout the course of 2023. I think it's about a little over 700 miles, give or take. And yeah, a ton of fishing packed along the way. So I'm super excited about that.
Katie
I know you're doing it in pieces. So like legs, are you dividing the legs up in any sort of logical way where, you know, this is like this territory, you know, this fish's territory or whatever, or is it more like, I've got five days, I'll see how much I can cover in five days and just call it quits at the end of that. Like, is there a designated kind of cutoff for each section or what's your plan to go about that?
Patrick
I split it up into nine sections, but they were based like purely on logistics of like, when would I cross this road or this would be a good place to park or, you know, someone could pick me up or help shuttle me here or there. So yeah, split it up into sections, but I think it will be a lot more of like the, oh, I have five days off. I'm going to go try to knock out whatever, whatever section seems most appropriate at that time.
Katie
And tell me more about the actual planning of the route. Because, you know, were you trying to link up specific bodies of water that you wanted to fish? Was it more dependent on where trails went? Or like, how did you come to the final route that you're planning on doing?
Patrick
Yeah, it was a little bit of both. There was definitely a lot of creeks I wanted to fish. And there are trail systems. So it was kind of like linking existing trail systems and then trying as best I could to in between trail systems. You know, rivers act as like a great trail in themselves because like you can either walk in the river or you can follow the river and know exactly where you are. So sort of linking, linking together existing trail systems with waterways. And then there are a few, a few places where it's just totally cross country and dry Arizona desert that I needed to get from one place to another. Yeah, for the most part, thinking about it like that. And I've done, I mean, I've done a bunch of fishing in this area before. So I do, I did have like a pretty good framework for at least like, I don't know, close to half of what the attempted route is of like, oh, I've been in this creek, I've never cracked the longest stretch and kind of had a decent idea of where I could get in and out.
Katie
Do you know what the longest section without any water is? Less from a fishing standpoint, more from a, like, do you have to cross, you know, 40 miles and carry your water the whole time? Because I'm picturing like a really dry landscape in between some of these places.
Patrick
Yeah, there definitely is. I mean, my strategy on that for a lot of it is to stay below the rim. So I talked about this Magian Rim, which is like actually a geologic feature that, you know, is more or less like 200 or 2000 feet high. Above the rim is super dry. Below the rim, There are a lot of like everything draining off that lower end of the Colorado Plateau is there. And there are a lot of perennial creeks. That being said, yeah, there are a couple of really dry stretches. So on the map, there are springs and there are cattle tanks and troughs. There will be a few places where I'm probably going to call ahead and try to get some intel on if there's any water there. Because as I'm sure you know, just because something's on a map doesn't mean it actually exists, especially when it comes to water. So there are a few dryer sections. And yeah, I'll probably, I don't know if it's calling whatever ranchers nearby there or whatnot. But definitely would like a little bit more intel before going in blindly.
Katie
And when are you planning on starting the first leg?
Patrick
Next week, I'm actually headed out to do the first section.
Katie
Oh, wow.
Patrick
That's coming up.
Katie
So by the time this airs, because this will come out, I'm not sure exactly what order they're coming out in. So sometime in the next two to three months, because I'm trying to record kind of far ahead. So you'll have likely finished this and maybe another, I don't know if you have any other plans coming up, but like maybe another section or two by then. So I'm curious to hear how it goes. Cause it sounds like you'll have already, you know, completed a little bit by that point.
Patrick
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. In the next few months for sure.
Katie
And do you know how frequently you're going to be able to get out on the trail?
Patrick
Hopefully pretty frequently, I guess. I mean, I'm constrained by like working on Coulter Backcountry. And then I also have like a part-time job guiding trips with REI. So I do like a lot of their trips around the Southwest, backpacking and other types of trips as well. But generally speaking, I have a decent amount of free time. So hoping to carve out at least like one section a month in that. I feel like that will put me on a good track for finishing it within the year.
Katie
So is your goal to have it done by basically December 31st of 2023? Or do you hope to have it done before like a certain time of year just for weather reasons or anything?
Patrick
yeah that's the goal I mean it's not like a hard goal I do think it would be cool to do it all in one year and that is the plan right now realistically most of the area is going to be a little dicey to do probably after you know early November or so just depending on snow and cold and whatnot so ideally we'll get a bulk of it done in the spring all the dry sections in Arizona before it gets too hot and then throughout the summer it's just awesome time to fish and be outside
Katie
do you have any dreams or goals of making this into almost like a network of these native ranges? like native range traverses because you know I know we're going to talk about the troutman you did too but it kind of reminds me a bit of the Flyathlon which is kind of you know it's it's grown over the years to support different native populations in different areas of the country and I'm just picturing the Gila traverse is kind of like that or like a western native trout initiative. you know they're a thing where you can go catch a bunch of different species and get kind of a badge saying that you did it. I think it'd be really cool to have this exist in some way for like all the different species across the West where there's like a traverse associated with each one, where there's a set route that, you know, if you complete them all, you get something or like, is that, is that in the works at all? Or is that a pipe dream or something you've thought about?
Patrick
I have not thought about that until you just said that, but now I'm super excited about thinking about other routes you could do. So no, I think that would be awesome. And like, you know, the Western native trout or like the running rivers with the trout man and that stuff. I think it would be awesome if I figure out, you know, a way to do some fundraising for conservation with these fish. So that'll be something else that will be forthcoming, whether it's through proceeds from Colter or, or otherwise, I definitely want to tie it in. You know, these fish, like the reason they're not in their historical range anymore is primarily from habitat destruction. And the various agencies involved have done an awesome job of, you know, bringing back their populations from where they were. So they're actually in, you know, a somewhat stable place. And there's been a few streams opened in the last several years to recreational fishing for wild populations of these native fish, which is awesome.
Katie
Well, if you need any help planning a greenback cutthroat trout route, let me know. That sounds like a, I mean, I love looking at maps and I love fishing. So I would, I would definitely be in on trying to help plan a traverse if that's ever in the works. So we mentioned the trout man. Tell me about the trout man. I'm familiar with it. But for people who aren't familiar with the concept at all, before you get into your attempt of it, remind people what a trout man is.
Patrick
Yeah. So I guess like if people don't know what a Flyathlon is, maybe I'll start there. Although if you're into fly fishing and running, chances are you've like maybe heard of this, hopefully. And Katie, jump in if I'm missing any points here. but there there's an organization called running rivers in Colorado they're based somewhere and I don't know when this started like a decade ago or so but they they put on a series of races called Flyathlons that are essentially a foot race combined with fly fishing for trout and then usually some beer drinking after the end of the race so just kind of like a fun thing and they raise money for trout conservation I first heard about them during the pandemic in 2020 my brother my younger brother who did the trail with me and it's like really fishy guy himself he he had signed up for a Flyathlon and was super excited about it and tell me about it and then that got canceled but then they introduced a like a remote Flyathlon that you could record on your own throughout the year so we did that throughout the summer and had fun like submitting submitting the fish we had caught and the runs and hikes we had been on so that was my first introduction to Flyathlons and somewhere along the way I noticed that on their page they have what they call a trout man which is more just kind of like a more I don't know a long a longer version of the traditional Flyathlon and the the parameter it basically is a set of parameters and a challenge that you go out and do on your own so the parameters if I remember correctly off the top of my head are you run a trail marathon so that's 26.2 miles with at least 3 000 feet of elevation gain and you catch four different species of trout and drink one beer that is at least 12 alcohol and do all the above in under 12 hours so that that's the official challenge that they have so read about that was like oh this sounds really awesome I think probably the first time I read it, I just bookmarked it in my mind. And then last summer I came back to it, I was like, oh, we should do this. And again, my younger brother was in on it. So we're like, okay, well, this sounds like something that would be awesome to do. So let's go out to Colorado and attempt this this summer.
Katie
So what do you think the hardest part of that is? Like before, not related to your attempt, because I'm not sure what happened yet. But if you were just to think of those things that are listed, those criteria, what would you say is the hardest part?
Patrick
I think the hardest part is catching the four different species. And it's not like, you know, it isn't difficult to catch four different trout. But when you cut into the four different species, then all of a sudden, it's like, okay, how good is your ability to understand like where trout live? You know, how good is your like researching ability online to figure out where these different populations are? You know, are you good at planning? Do you know, sort of where to look for the different types of trout? That to me was the biggest one. And a little bit, cue the foreshadowing that will come into play talking about this. Yeah, that's definitely the most challenging. I mean, the miles are doable, even if you're not running the entire time. And then the beer, if you need to get it done, most people can probably chug a beer in a short amount of time if it came down to it.
Katie
Well, I think the fish part is, what's different about that is that it's not entirely in your control. Like you could, you could link up different places that have all these species, but that doesn't guarantee that when you get there, you're going to catch one of those species. Like if you go to a place that has browns and rainbows, you might catch nothing but rainbows for two hours and you've got to keep moving. And like you can, like you said, you can force a beer down. You can power walk that 26.2 miles and probably get it done in time. But the fishing is like in some part out of your control. And it would, you know, it sounds like that might've been what kind of threw your attempt off, but I can just picture myself watching the clock and just getting stressed as I'm like taking more casts. Like I can finish this thing, but I've only got one hour left to catch this species and finish this last, you know, five miles. And, you know, just watching that clock, you can just watch your time run out and there's nothing you can do about it.
Patrick
Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah. It could be, it could be quite stressful. I had a lot of like, a lot of stressful dreams leading up to the actual attempt probably because of that.
Katie
All right. So tell me, tell me what, walk me through your whole process. Like how did you find the route you were going to do, the research you did to find like what species you were going to catch? Um, and then tell me about, you know, how it actually went down.
Patrick
Yeah. So we figured, so I don't live in Colorado and like, you know, I've hiked through Colorado and been up there for several fishing trips, but don't know like a ton of different spots. So that was already kind of a tricky part was like, okay, you know, the research on this, we're kind of going in a little bit blind. Um, I guess we've, you know, we figured off the bat that like from a pure elevation standpoint, we probably have to start a lower elevation where brown trout are most likely to be. Um, and that the cutthroat would probably be at a higher elevation that would help get our elevation in the elevation requirements over the course of the race. Um, you know, from there, then you have to narrow down like a ton of, a ton of the creeks in Colorado, brook trout have taken over instead of cutthroat at the high elevation. So figure out if that was in play and then the, in the drainage we were planning on going to. And yeah, so I, it was sort of just a process of like looking at a million streams on a map, like, oh, this looks interesting or this looks interesting. And trying to find reports and like anecdotal evidence of different species being caught in different places. I think, I don't know, in Colorado, if it's the Parks and Wildlife Division, I don't know what they call their Game and Fish Agency, but they have an online resource for all the water in the state. And, you know, sometimes those aren't incredibly accurate. They might say that a species is somewhere that, you know, maybe it was the last time they did a survey. And who knows how many years ago that was. So at the end of the day, we kind of took it with a grain of salt and narrowed in on more or less a place we just really wanted to explore ourselves, regardless of the trout land. So we were in the South San Juan wilderness on the Conejos and then a tributary up from there that went up to the divide, which is another cool thing is the planned route had our turnaround point on the continental divide. And it was actually on the CDT. And I remembered walking by the specific little series of lakes that we were planning on fishing. So I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. I go back to a place we've already been. That's the turnaround point. And that'll be fun. So, yeah.
Katie
All right. So tell me how it went, because it sounds like you've at least done enough planning to have an idea of what the plan for the trip is, you know, in terms of species. Like, we think we're going to be able to catch all four of these. And like you said, the Colorado Fishing Atlas, which is the online resource you were referring to, it's definitely not correct all the time. I've checked a lot of places that I am like, I fished there last week and that's not what's in there. So it's hard because like you've got to use the resources you've got, but, you know, you've got to trust them, too. So, so how, you know, compared to what you had envisioned in your mind, what, what actually happened? And, maybe we can kind of dissect, you know, why it happened the way it happened after afterward.
Patrick
Yeah. So the first issue I ran into actually had nothing to do with the fish and it was finding a 12% beer.
Katie
Yeah.
Patrick
I think I, I mean, obviously I knew that was going to be more of like a specialty shop that would have something like that, but kind of realized too late that we're very far away from any sort of like brewery that might offer something like that. So we had kind of allotted. We got there at night and then we had allotted the entire second day just for some exploratory fishing on our own. So after fishing in the morning, I just got in the car and was like, all right, I'm going to go. I'm just going to drive until I find a liquor store or brewery or whatever that has this beer. So that turned into like a whole debacle of like a four-hour drive to a town I don't remember the name of and eventually found a brewery. And I think I just burst in and was like, do you guys have any beer that's over 12%? And they looked at me weird, but were like, yes, actually we do. So tracked down some beers. So that was already like, things seemed like they were teetering on the edge to do that whole beer finding mission. But we got that checked off. Do you remember what it was? Ready to go the next day. What was that?
Katie
Do you remember what kind of beer it was?
Patrick
It was a milk stout. A milk stout aged in a whiskey barrel. So the exact kind of thing you want to drink after a long run.
Katie
Do you remember the brewery that made it?
Patrick
No, I don't. I'm sure I could look it up. It was in a small town.
Katie
No worries. I was just going to shout him out if you did, because I was like, I wouldn't know where to find a 12% beer either.
Patrick
Yeah, no, I would love to. Maybe the name will come back to me.
Katie
Okay.
Patrick
So anyway, we're all set to go. So the next morning, get up super early. The one issue, the one thing that was troubling us is that our first day of fishing, we only caught brown trout, which was surprising. there were supposed to be rainbows in that stretch of the river so we were like all right like not the greatest sign in the world but I'm sure they're in here it's probably just a smaller population so you know it might just come down to like having the time to pull one out so started it started the run my brother also hurt his knees so he was going to be out on the trail but wasn't going to be running and was probably not going to do the official trout man who would just be like out fishing so he was kind of like my my scout that was scouting out areas which was awesome start the run and we get up to this I get up to this series of meadows so that was like really fun technical you know meadow fishing where the fish are super spooky and you kind of have to look at what's going on for a while before you make any casts so caught a brown trout in there which is great and then that took longer than expected I think I probably fished for almost an hour there so I was like oh man that was kind of a lot of time burned on the clock but whatever the other thing I should mention is that we started at our campground and our goal was to get up to the divide there's a series of lakes and the there was a sign at the start of the trailhead that said 13 miles up to the lake so that was our plan was like oh this is perfect because you know 13 times 2 26 right on so I'm running I've already caught one fish I my watch says that I've on five miles feeling pretty good I hit another sign and it's like 10 miles to the lakes so now I'm like okay well so somehow the mileage isn't adding up here because now it's going to be 15 miles to get up to the lake and the lakes have the brook trout so I like had to go all the way to the lake so I'm like all right this is all right we have a few extra miles to cover today nothing nothing too serious get up to the higher elevation past the meadows into a section that we had read had cutthroat trout sure enough it did have cutthroat they were super easy to catch so I think like on my first or second pass kind of cutthroat took a quick picture kept on going and then so the way this trail goes is it kind of dead ends in this big basin and then that drainage ends right there so the river ends there and you have to climb out of the basin and there's kind of a series of lakes up in a saddle that are unconnected to that that drainage below it and as I got closer and closer to the basin there was just more and more blown down trees oh yeah first it was like oh there's one here there's one there and then got closer and closer and realized like the entire side the entire wall of the basin was just nothing but blow down trees and I battled it for like an hour anyone who's gone through thick blowdowns knows like how slow going that is and how scraped up you get I'd like blood all over my legs and was just like super bummed out because as we had planned you know the only the only brook trout in the whole system were up in those lakes so fought it for a while but eventually decided partly because I was on my own and it probably wasn't the safest idea but also just like time wise I had I had to turn around so turned around started running back fished my brother for a while in the meadow and no rainbows he was like okay I got good news and bad news good news is I just caught a rainbow. Bad news is it's taken me eight hours to catch one. Like I've been catching nothing but browns. I was like, Oh, so yeah, I, I at least wanted to get three. It wasn't able to, to get a rainbow and that stretch just all Browns again. So yeah, eventually ran back to the campsite. Um, I think logged about a little over 30 miles, pushing 31 miles on the day. Um, and was shy two species of fish. So that was the first trout man attempt. I'm definitely like itching to do another one and learned like quite a few lessons on the planning aspect of it, but also just unforeseen stuff. Those blowdowns were tricky. You know, specifically with the species, because I think we already agreed that that would be the toughest part.
Katie
I think within that, the toughest part would definitely be catching a rainbow versus a brown. Because I'm trying to think of like the, you know, most places I fish either have cutthroats only, brook trout only, or rainbows and browns. And for some reason, when I fish a place that's got rainbows and browns, I tend to catch nothing but browns and some people might say that's a good problem to have because they like browns but I've actually grown to like rainbows because I never catch them when I'm fishing a place that has them and something else and I feel like you can really target the places that have a cutthroat like you're like I'm going to this lake there's only cutthroats in there I'm going to chalk that up as I will get a fish there and then I will get a brook trout there I know you didn't get your brook trout but it sounds like you knew that if you got to those lakes that's what you would catch it probably wouldn't be terribly hard to catch one yeah but then you go to those brown trout rainbow rivers and like you said you could spend five plus hours trying to catch a fish and you could be catching a fish every cast and it's just not the one you need and you can't do anything
Patrick
it's like oh like we're catching fish like the fishing was great honestly. it was super fun it was just like ah not the right fish
Katie
I feel like it's just harder to separate the browns and rainbows like it's hard to find a place that only has browns and only has rainbows it's you know they kind of overlap fairly often. So, I mean, I'm not as much of a runner, it sounds like, as you are. I do the Flyathlon once a year and I train for it like for a week ahead of time and then feel, you know, like a stiff board the next day. But my goal is to ultimately do a trout man. I've toyed around with some routes and I've struggled to find one where it would be that separate, that stratified with like the different species in different spots. And you kind of have to like go in with a prayer and hope that you catch what you need to out of those spots. Are you considering doing it in the same place? Or would you come up with a new route the next time?
Patrick
You know, I would probably come up with a new route just, you know, if for no other reason than to have somewhere else to go explore that I haven't been. I will say of the people that have done, so on their website, they have a list of all the Troutman finishers, of which they're, you know, they're only like 10 or something. Not a huge event. But most of those have some route information underneath them. And a lot of them have taken place in the same area. And I think at the time, my brother and I were like, oh, we're going to go do our own trout man route. That'll be awesome. And then, of course, when it happened, it was like, okay, why didn't we just follow the people who have already figured out a good place to go?
Katie
There's a reason that they're all going to the same general area. And it doesn't take away from the fact that you still did. The hard part is, I mean, it is hard to find a good route. But the hard part is running the 26 miles and catching the four fish and drinking the beer. Like, you know, there's no shame in doing a route that's been done before.
Patrick
Right, right. Not at all. And, you know, at the end of the day, it was still like a super fun day of just, you know, a totally random challenge. But a blast nonetheless, even if we didn't finish it.
Katie
Sure. Have you considered doing a fastest known fish?
Patrick
I'm not sure I know what that is.
Katie
Okay. Well, it sounds like you're a runner.
Patrick
Yeah, I like to run. I mean, I don't know how, like, I'm not really a serious runner, but I definitely, I run enough that I can like do races if I need to.
Katie
I mean, yeah, you're able to do a trail marathon. So I'm talking you up to like you, you run. So I assume you're familiar with the concept of a fastest known time.
Patrick
Yep. Yep.
Katie
Okay. So take that, but you have to catch a fish before you finish. It's like the fastest known, you know, trip to this lake having caught a fish. And so the fish is part of that time. So it takes, if you can run there in an hour, but it takes you five hours to catch a fish, then your time is six hours through the same folks, the running rivers that do the Flyathlon and the trout man. But I think they started it last year, maybe the year before, where you can get your name on the website. And this would be something that you can choose any route. You can choose to beat a route that's on the website. You can beat my super slow route that I set last summer, or you can set your own route. But there's not a lot yet because it just started. So you could go out and basically fish anywhere. And there are stipulations that you have to go at least, you know, I don't know, a couple miles and it has to have at least 500 feet of elevation. It's not, it's not prohibitive. There are some stipulations, but you could use a couple of those to train for the trout man if you wanted and just set a couple FKFs.
Patrick
Yeah, no, that sounds awesome. I was not aware of those, but I'm glad I am now.
Katie
Yeah, it seemed up your alley. Have you been running for a long time then? It seems like you've, you're at least pretty active doing the CDT and, you know, attempting a trout man.
Patrick
Yeah, I was like a mediocre runner in high school, but did run high school cross country in track. So that was sort of kind of my my background and competitive sports. So I've, you know, continued running something I enjoy doing.
Katie
They they go really well together. The fishing and the running because it's just like you can fit in. You realize that when you're running instead of hiking, you can fit in a lot more fishing like, oh, I've got work at 9am. You know, I can get up at five and go run up somewhere and go fishing before work. And like, that's not really available to you if you're moving at a walking pace.
Patrick
Oh yeah, definitely. There's also a weird crossover I found between people who are really into running and people who are really into fly fishing. So something about, something about those two, like just attracts the same kinds of people.
Katie
Yeah, I think it attracts the same kind of people. And I think it also, they don't compete with each other. Like you don't have to choose one over the other. You can run and then fish and then run back. Yeah. So they, they like go hand in hand with each other. But cool. Well, I'm excited to see where Colter Backcountry is going, hoping to see any more products after the net. I'm already looking forward to seeing the net, but also just really excited to see what you guys come out with after that. And where can people find you and Colter Backcountry if they want to either see what you're up to with the Heeler Traverse, which I know I'll be keeping up with that, or if they want to check you out in Colter Backcountry and check out what products you've got.
Patrick
Yeah, so Colter Backcountry is probably going to be way more exciting than any of my personal accounts. CoulterBackcountry.com and then just at Coulter Backcountry across socials. So, you know, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. I do run a weekly newsletter through Coulter Backcountry. So you sign up for just gear updates and then usually include a blog in those as well. So I'll likely be blogging all of my HeLa Traverse sections through that blog. So if you sign up, then you can get a double whammy and see all the gear we're working on and then also catch up on the HeLa Traverse.
Katie
Awesome. Well, this was a really fascinating conversation. And just it's fun to talk with other people that do equally crazy things to catch a five-inch fish, you know, 10 miles back. So I had a great time talking with you. And I'm definitely going to keep up with your progress on the Gila traverse. That's super exciting. And I can't wait to watch your progress on that.
Patrick
Yeah, no, thanks, Katie. I really appreciate it. Love the podcast. I was excited to be on.
Katie
Thank you. All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find a contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
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