Ep 103: A Life of Fly Fishing Travel, with Matt Podobinski
Matt Podobinski is a guide at Aniak River Lodge and host/guide at Fish Colombia. He is one of the most well-traveled guests I’ve ever had on the show, having fished in Alaska, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, India, Mongolia, the Seychelles, Brazil, Honduras, Panama, Argentina, and more. In this episode, he tells me about his adventures fishing around the world, including throwing giant spiders out of camp in the Amazon, fishing alongside fresh tiger tracks in India, and throwing squirrel flies for the biggest trout in the world in Mongolia.
Email: mpwilderman@gmail.com
Instagram: @Mpwilderman
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 103 with Matt Podobinski on a life of fly fishing travel. I love to start every episode by getting a background on my guests and how they got into the outdoors and fishing. So tell me how you got started in fly fishing.
Matthew
How I got it, I started in fly fishing. Well, I'll start how I got started in fishing in general. My parents have, I'm from Chicago, so it's not the most fishiest place you would think of, but actually a lot of good fishermen come from Chicago. Usually if it's a place with bad fishing, then you actually get good fishermen because you have to be a decent fisherman to catch any fish. But my parents have a house in Northern Wisconsin. And so all our family vacations were up there. we didn't go to Disneyland or anything like that. It was all drive up to the house in Wisconsin from Chicago. And we've got a house right on the lake. So anytime I got some free time while we were up there, I was either running around in the woods looking for salamanders or frogs and then fishing off the pier for bluegill when I was real little and then a little bit bigger bass and then a little bit older, musky and pike and all that stuff. I started fly fishing, I think in 2000. My cousin and my aunt lived in Denver and I went out to visit my cousin and I bought a fly rod to fish for trout. And I still pick up the spinning rod and casting rod and all that stuff, but definitely fly fish quite a bit, probably 50-50 between the two. But most of my working is guiding fly fishing trips at most of the destinations that I've worked at.
Katie
So how did you learn? You came out and bought a fly rod, but like what, you know, what resources do you have someone to show you or did you just kind of figure it out as you went?
Matthew
Yeah, totally figured out on my own self-taught. Well, I can't say totally self-taught. I mean, definitely picked up things at the different places that I worked or anytime that I met up with someone that was also a fly fisherman, picked their brain about casting a little bit better or something like that. One of the guys that helped me the most actually was one of my fellow guides in India. Bobby kind of helped me with the double haul, just letting line out on the back cast and the front cast. You kind of, when you're seeing someone do a double haul really well, you kind of don't know exactly what they're doing when they're letting line go. And he kind of helped me perfect it. I already could do it, but it took me from probably casting, I don't know, 60 feet to probably a full fly line.
Katie
People who do it well make it look effortless. And then you go to do it and you're like, I feel like I'm doing it, but I'm not doing it to the same degree that some of the pros are when you see them do it. And it just looks like they're not even trying.
Matthew
Yeah, I guess when you get good at anything, if you watch someone that's really good at it, it doesn't look too hard. And then when you look at someone who's not good at it, it looks like it's real hard.
Katie
Yeah. So how did you get into guiding then?
Matthew
In 2005, well, I was in Chicago, working in Chicago after high school. I'd gone to a couple semesters of community college and I didn't really like it. And it's not really what I thought I was going to be doing after I was, you know, out, grown up, I guess you'd say. I was working as a security guard and I was like, man, this kind of sucks. I thought I'd be doing something way cooler than this. And I got a job at Club Med in South Florida as a sailing and water ski instructor. And first I got a job working with the kids in the kids club there in South Florida. And then the sailing and water ski team kind of saw that I was into fishing and being on the water. So I got switched over to that and did that for three months. And then when I was done doing that, I was looking for other interesting things to do. And I found a advertisement for a rafting company in Colorado that would hire and train guides on the Arkansas River. And thought, what better way to be on the water all the time than to become a whitewater rafting guide? And then in my free time, I'll be on the water and I'll be able to fish. So I did that in 2000, either 2005, 2006, something like that. It's a while ago. And I haven't looked back. I've done that every, well, something either whitewater rafting related or fishing guide related every summer since then. After three summers of doing that, I got a job in Alaska on a river where you needed to have whitewater rafting experience in order to be able to guide people on fishing trips.
Katie
Okay. So when you started off rafting, it was just rafting. It was just whitewater rafting, but you just were kind of honing your fishing skills on the side?
Matthew
Oh, yeah. I mean, every time that I'm not really into kayaking. So a lot of the guys that were also raft guides were into whitewater kayaking. It's not really my deal. I don't like being upside down under the water. So anytime I have free time, we were done with rafting trips or whatever. I mean, a couple other guys, I was like, hey, you guys want to go back out and go fish? And they're like, yeah, let's do it. So I had a, like, I don't know, three or four other guys that were really into fishing also. And between the three or four, anytime that we got free time, I always had another guy or two that go out and chase some trout.
Katie
Well, that's cool. So where did you say you went next after you got that job on the Arkansas and you were kind of like honing your fishing skills? It sounded like you then went somewhere where rafting and fishing were kind of intertwined. Did I get that right?
Matthew
Yes, in Alaska on the tributaries of the Copper River. It was on the Gulcana and the Clutina. And the Clutina is a whitewater river. It's really, really fast. And obviously, if you want to take people fishing, you don't want to dump them into the water. So you need to be able to navigate down the river in a safe manner and take people to the spots in order to be able to fish.
Katie
So how does that work? Like, so you're in, it sounds like with the primary purpose of the, those trips be fishing, but you, you kind of need, like there's a, there's a necessity for being able to hit some of this whitewater to get to the spots you're going, or is it like people are booking trips and they want to both experience whitewater rafting and fishing?
Matthew
Probably 50-50. I mean, obviously, if you're in Alaska in the summertime going down a Whitewater River with all your fishing stuff and hip boots on and all that and all your gear, you don't want to be smashing into big waves a lot of the times because kind of the nature of the game is you don't always hit them 100% perfect and stuff could fly out. So you want to be able to avoid the worst parts of the rapids. And on that particular river, it's really fast. There's not a lot of gigantic rapids per se. There are some things that you got to watch out for, some log jams, some pour overs. But the water itself is really fast throughout the whole river. So you got to be able to read the water, use the river to get to the spots, be able to pull out and be able to get to those small spots. that you can fish in a safe manner so that, you know, people aren't falling out of the boat. The water's cold. It's a glacial river. So yeah, you definitely experience a little whitewater while they're there. But the prime objective would be to get to the spots, be able to fish. And yeah, I mean, people are enjoying the whitewater too. It's definitely fun.
Katie
Yeah. Now tell me, tell me about Alaska. Like, was it everything it's cracked up to be? Was it just like your dream job up there?
Matthew
You've never been to Alaska?
Katie
I have not been to Alaska, no.
Matthew
Oh, you've got to go. If you're into fishing, you're into the outdoors, whitewater, hiking, anything like that, you've got to go to Alaska. I've been to 40 countries. I've guided trips in 13. It's probably still right at the top of the list of best places that you can fish and best places that you can go if you're an outdoors person. The scenery is unbelievable. The highest mountains, biggest glaciers, massive rivers. you could, you know, spend your whole life just fishing in Alaska or one area in Alaska and not fish all the places that you could possibly go into. It's awesome.
Katie
What about it? Is it particularly the fishing that really drew you there? Like in terms of the fish you're catching, the quality of the fishing, or is it kind of the overall atmosphere? Because I think a little bit of, I'd like a little bit of both, but for me, I think the majority of like why I would like somewhere like Alaska is like the wildness of it, not so much the actual like quality of the fish itself. But like what about it for you really makes it so magical?
Matthew
Well, if you get into any of the areas where you're off the beaten path, which is not that hard to do in Alaska, I mean, on the road system, people can access it. And there's being more and more people that can, that are living in Alaska every year. So some of that stuff gets pressured pretty good. But if you're, If you walk or if you fly in the backcountry, any of that stuff, you're very, you're not very likely to run into anybody else on any of these trips. So the wildness factor of it, you're not fishing for fish a lot of the times that have been fished for a lot if you're getting into the backcountry. So, I mean, you might as well have the whole place to yourself a lot of times. And I think for almost all of us that are into getting into the outdoors and going fishing, if you could go to a place that was either full of people or had very little or no people, I think we'd choose the one with no people. So, yeah, it's awesome. And there's unlimited possibilities for doing that in Alaska. Basically, I mean, as far as you want to walk or fly or your money is a limiting factor. If you can't ever fly into the backcountry, if you don't have money to do any of those things, you can't go. But you can obviously hike way back in there and people have pack rafts now. So you can get to almost inaccessible places relatively easy.
Katie
Yeah. What's your favorite area in Alaska for the fishing in particular?
Matthew
I've done some cool ones, but it's such a big state. Probably my favorite area is the next area that I could go of a new thing. I've been to northwest Alaska fishing tributaries of the Noatak. I've fished tributaries of the copper, the big copper that drains into Cordova. I work on the Antioch at Antioch River Lodge. Antioch River Lodge is tough to beat. You can catch everything that you can catch in Alaska in one river. Pike, shefish, all five species of Pacific salmon, rainbow trout, Dolly Barton, grayling. So, I mean, as a relatively accessible place for most people, if you could get to the Antioch, that would be pretty cool.
Katie
Yeah, that sounds like my dream. I really like the variety. I like not knowing what's on the end of my line. I mean, I know, to some extent, you are kind of limiting yourself to certain species by how you're fishing and what you've got in the end of your line. But I like when I get a bite to not know that it's, you know, like, oh, it's a brown trout because there's brown trout in this river and that's it. You know, I like the variety.
Matthew
Right. There's a huge variety in that area. And it's, you know, not all areas in Alaska have that. Like the original place that I worked in Alaska on the Galkana and Klutina, you're pretty much going to catch either kings, sockeye, grayling, or rainbows. That was pretty much it that they had in that river. The occasional whitefish. Yeah, that's about it. But on the Antioch, you've got everything that you can catch in Alaska, pretty much. And we've had guys that have caught all 10 species of catchable fish in a day that they were there. Not just the week that they were there. It's crazy. You've got to get a little bit lucky and be there at the right time of the year, but it can't happen. And on a normal year, the last couple of years haven't been really that normal. The chum runs have been a little bit down. But it's like what you read about in the, you know, articles or books written 100 years ago. Like the first season that I was there, there's something like 500,000 chums that came into the river. Every bend of the river down from the lodge, once the chums were all in, was full of fish. It was crazy. Unbelievable. I'd never seen anything like it.
Katie
Is there a culture of keeping fish there? because I know, like I have no problem with keeping fish, but there is generally kind of a culture in fly fishing, especially when you're on a guided trip of, you know, we're putting this fish back because, you know, I want to still have a job tomorrow kind of thing. But because salmon fishing and kind of the heritage of that is, it goes so far back in Alaska with like it being a food source. Do you keep a lot of fish on those trips or is it still kind of a catch and release atmosphere like some of the guide trips down here?
Matthew
Well, you definitely have culture in the area of fishing for food because we're the closest, where you fly into is the village of Antioch. And there's a lot of native Alaskans that live there and people that are resident Alaskans that live there at least for part of the year. And so they're fishing for subsistence. Now, we don't do a ton of catching and keeping. We try to discourage people from trying to bring back a big box of fish. And in the couple of years that I've worked there, we've kind of eliminated that. But we definitely will keep a fish or two to eat while you're there. You know, keep a sheefish to eat for dinner or a couple pike or something. But try to get away from keeping the big ones and put those back because, you know, it's easy to think that it's a limitless resource. But like the sheefish, for example, I don't think they, I don't have the literature right in front of me, but I don't think they can spawn until they're about eight years old. So that's a relatively old fish. So if you're doing that a lot, then you're cutting down on the reason that you want to be there. You want to be there to be able to catch one of those big fish to, you know, experience it, whether you want to take a picture of it or not. But, yeah, you catch a couple four-pounders, sure. Take a couple back and have them for dinner or a couple pike or a couple dollies. Usually there's tons of Dolly Varden, and they're delicious. They're as good as the salmon or sockeye or whatever. All of it's really good. And if we get one that's looking pretty decent, we can have a shore lunch or bring one back for dinner or whatever.
Katie
Cool. Well, so how did you get into travel? Because I think that's kind of what we're mostly going to talk about today. I think you might be one of the most well-traveled anglers I've ever talked to, just looking at the number of countries you fished. So I kind of want to just dive into some of those places you've been and like what you've experienced along the way. But first, I just want to know, how did you get into this like international fishing scene?
Matthew
Yeah, I don't want to give away too many of my secrets, but no, I'm just kidding. Most of it has been a little bit of luck, a little bit of like friends that have been working somewhere else also. And then just being persistent and getting an idea of the place that I wanted to go or fish that I wanted to fish for. And contacting the companies that were there and keep contacting them until an opening opens up. And grab it when I get the opportunity to go there and do it. Because a lot of people talk about going to different places, but the difference is you actually take the opportunity when you get it.
Katie
Yeah. So it's just like these things have come up for you.
Matthew
Yeah. So the first place that I got to go, right away in that first winter when I was a raft guide, I got to go to Honduras. And I started working as a raft guide there also. One of the other raft guides at the place that I worked used to work in Honduras. And he told me about this raft company that I should go rafting when I went there. Came up in conversation that I was doing that in the off season because I had a friend that was working in Honduras as an English teacher. So I went down there. We went rafting. And the guy who owned the rafting company said, hey, man, do you want to work here? And I was like, yeah, sure. This river looks awesome. It was one of the prettiest places that I'd ever seen. And there was a little fish in the river, too, that I got to fish for while I was down there. So I took them up on that and kind of snowballed from there. The next winter, I went down to Brazil, worked there as a raft guide. And the summers, I would go back, work in Colorado or go back and work in Alaska. And then the next winter after that, I worked in Panama. And then I started to send out a bunch of emails to different companies as far as the fishing gigs were concerned. And my whitewater rafting got my foot in the door again. I worked in India as a fishing guide guiding for Golden Himalayan Mahseer. And you needed to have some whitewater rafting experience there as well because we're on pretty big rivers that drain out of the Himalayas. And once again, you want to be able to take your gear and your people down safely and not have anybody fall out or flip or anything like that. So I got my, there's not that many people that have all those skills all in one package, fly fishing, regular fishing, whitewater rafting, all that stuff. And I had it already. I had the international trips under my belt too. So I was, I was an easy hire.
Katie
And so what are you, like these days, what are you doing? Like if, is it, I guess I don't know enough about kind of the international world of fishing to know how they work. Because I know you've done some hosted trips, guided trips. What's the difference between those? And what are you doing these days, kind of dividing your time between those things?
Matthew
Yeah, so what I'm doing nowadays, I'm still guiding probably six to seven months a year. I guide in Antioch in the summertime for all the Alaska stuff. And then in the wintertime, the last two years, I've gone down to Columbia working for a company called Fish Columbia. That's got a bunch of different operations in the Amazon. through my travels through the other places. I speak Spanish. I speak Portuguese. So I was an easy hire, good fit for those guys there. And a little bit different guiding deal down there just because they've got a good deal. They want to bring in as many local people as they can to give them a reason to be interested in the fishing company as well. So the local guys drive the boats. I don't drive the boat there, although I could drive the boat, but you don't want to take a job away from one of those guys. So I'm in the boat as a translator, a fishing guide. And then when we're back at the lodge, I'm a translator between the staff and our guests. And then it's also, I guess, a hosted trip as well, just because I'm going back and forth in between the guests and the staff, making sure that everything is where it should be and that they're as comfortable as possible while they're there.
Katie
Okay. And I want to kind of maybe transition over into like hearing about some of these places like I know you have a lot of countries on your list here so I don't know if we'll have time to get through all of them in detail but tell me about I guess there's a kind of a common theme that there's quite a few in like central and south America which is something that we haven't really gone into on this show before and it's I think it's really intriguing like if all the places I could go in the world I think that would be a really fun place to go so tell me about the fishing in kind of central and south America like the Amazon, you mentioned Colombia, Honduras. What is the fishing like in these places?
Matthew
Great question. I'm glad you asked. It's awesome. It's as varied as it is in the United States, maybe more. A ton of different species. Obviously, there's thousands of different species on the Amazon. I guess once you get into Central America, going into the Amazon region, it gets very tropical. And the further you go south, it gets more and more like the Amazon stuff that you would think about with peacock bass and payara and all that kind of stuff. But there are some interesting fish in Central America, too. There's guapote, which is another big cichlid. There's another fish that they call a machin. There's some saltwater stuff that comes into the estuaries like baby tarpon and snook. So there's a bunch of cool stuff in Central America too, as well as bonefish and permit and a bunch of other stuff. But I think the freshwater stuff in Central America probably doesn't get talked about as much as it should. But I'm kind of glad it's a secret because it's good to have some secret fishing destinations to go to every once in a while. But the Amazon stuff is awesome. I mean, all the big stuff in the Amazon is incredible. It's awesome quarry on a fly rod. Peacocks are unbelievable. And there's several different species and subspecies of peacocks. The pyara, the big vampire fish living in fast water tributaries of either the Amazon or the rivers that drain into the Amazon. Wolffish, it's got a jaw like a wolf trap. Crazy looking ugly thing. Kind of looks like a bowfin, but jumps like crazy when you hook it. all the big crazy species of catfish that aren't super likely to be caught on a fly rod, but can if they're in the right spots and you're in the right spot at the right time. Yeah, the possibilities are endless. And then you go further down to Chile and you've got all the trout and all that stuff that's been brought down there. So it's awesome.
Katie
When you're in these areas that are so diverse, I'm thinking of the Amazon area where it's just, I don't mean, there's probably more species in one of those rivers than there is in the entire western U.S. How do you target a specific species? Obviously, you can kind of cater your techniques to what kind of fish you want to catch, but is it kind of like the luck of the draw of what shows up on the end of your line? Or are there very specific ways to say, I want to catch this species and I'm going to do such and such to make that happen?
Matthew
Depending on the time of year, the area that you're in, you can target certain species. But there is an element of you really don't know what you're going to catch and you get some oddball things that kind of pop up every now and then that are mixed in with everything else. Like the payara, they like a little bit faster water than the peacocks and they don't generally go into the lagoons, but there's sometimes when they do, especially on certain rivers and certain situations. And then the peacocks, for the most part, don't like super fast water, but there are certain subspecies of them that do like a little bit fast water. So it kind of depends on where you're at on how you target them and what you use. But for the most part, they're all fish eaters and they will grab similar flies, like a little minnow style fly is going to get you almost everything that swims down there. And you can scale it up or scale it down for some of the little stuff. But yeah, you can just tweak it a little bit. Like there's certain fish that likes to be a little bit closer to the bank or a little bit further off, faster water, slower water, deeper, or shallower. But yeah, they kind of have their little niches, but there definitely are overlap zones where you can kind of catch whatever.
Katie
And do you have a favorite species from this region that is just like super fun for whatever reason?
Matthew
I mean, the peacocks are awesome. The payara are definitely super cool. I probably got to say the Dorado. They don't share the same waters as the peacocks of the payara, but they're a little bit further west and south, but they're still in, I guess, where the Andes meet the Amazon would be the waters that you start to find Dorado in, just because they're a little bit more walk and wade type fishing than some of the boat bound stuff you would be in for peacocks. But it's all awesome. I mean, it's only I only pick that by just a hair. And I probably like walking and fishing a little bit more than I like fishing from the boat. But, you know, all the places are so pretty and so different. It's tough to pick a favorite.
Katie
And what's the fishing culture like down there? Maybe in general. And also, I'm sure fly fishing is becoming a bigger thing now that people are starting to do more international, more like destination fly fishing trips. But just in general, like what is the culture like down there in terms of fishing?
Matthew
Anywhere on the Amazon where you've got big fish or rivers full of fish like that, you definitely have a fishing culture. Most of it is subsistence fishing culture or selling fish culture. But any of those guys that are really into it, it's just like anything else. Like in your neighborhood, you might have, you know, everybody gets together when you're a kid and plays basketball. But there's like a couple of guys that really like basketball and will play basketball, you know, more than the others and are better at it. And it's the same with like the fishing deal on the Orinoco or something like that. In the local villages, everyone's kind of got to fish or be able to fish for food, but there are certain guys who are really good at it. And let's say tomorrow they didn't have to fish anymore. They would still go back down and they would fish because they like to do it. Some of the areas like that, they're not too much rod and reel fishing, a lot of hand line fishing or fishing with a cast net. But the guys really know the river and they know the places that the fish hide out. know what the fish eat. So while they may not be the most well-versed in lures and flies and stuff, they're definitely good guys to talk to about where certain fish like to be or how to get into a certain area or how spooky the fish are because they definitely know the quarry that they're going after.
Katie
So when you're down there, are you almost entirely fly fishing or do you participate in the other styles of fishing, like the handline and things like that?
Matthew
I haven't done a ton of handlining. the guys who are good at they make it look pretty easy we're talking about that before with fly casting but when you're so times I've seen I've seen a couple different ways one of the the coolest ways that I've seen it is in chili they take like a a coffee can and they drill a hole in it and put a piece of wood in there so you've got something to hold on to and then they use it like a spool like the spool on an open face spinning reel where you spin your lure around with one hand and you throw it and the line jumps off the spool and then you wind it back on the spool as you reel it in. And I've tried it and somehow I don't exactly know the movement that they're doing, but they don't seem to get a tangle. But I just got tons of tangles when I was doing it. I was like, man, this is way easier when I saw this guy doing it than when I tried to pick it up and go for it myself. And on Venezuela and on the Orinoco, the guys just kind of use it. They to like wind it back on while they're fishing. They just kind of pile it up. And sometimes they get a big pile of line that gets caught up on it and everything, but they're definitely good, man. They've got some technique while they're throwing their lure or their hook with a big fish on it or whatever. They're definitely good. They've taken it to the next level. I don't know if it's the art form level yet, but it's better than the newbie if you just pick it up and try and do it.
Katie
I guess when you've been doing it for thousands of years, like your culture has been doing it for thousands of years to feed themselves. You've got to get pretty good pretty fast compared to someone who's just picking it up and trying it for the first time.
Matthew
Definitely, definitely. Last year while I was down there, we were on a river fishing for peacocks, and we came into this lagoon. There was a guy in a small canoe, probably only like a 10-foot canoe, dugout canoe, and he was fishing with a hand line but with a rapala. And he had all these different casts that he would use. Now, mostly you're spinning the lure around and you fling it out kind of like you'd throw a lasso. But he could do it underhand. He could do it offhanded from the left side of his body if he was throwing it with the right. Overhand, he had all these different ones that he would use to get it up under the brush when he was casting it towards the bank. And I was like, oh, man, that's cool, man. Just like with a casting rod or a fly rod, whether you stop to cast short to kind of shoot it under the mangroves or do it a little sidearm or whatever. He had all the same moves, but just with a hand line.
Katie
Yeah. I feel like it's easy to think that something like that, you know, I'm picturing the coffee can on the stick and in your mind, you're like, well, that's nowhere near as like complicated or diverse as something like fly fishing, where there's all these different casts and lines and rods. And, you know, you could basically go down an endless hole if you wanted to, compared to this thing that it must be so simple. And then you realize that like people make everything very complicated when they either need to do it all the time or they just like to do it. Like people have fun, like trying, experimenting with different techniques and things. So it's easy to forget that something as seemingly simple as a coffee can and a stick, the person who's using that and has been doing it their whole life probably has just as many variations of how to work that and use it as someone with a fly rod does.
Matthew
Definitely. They're definitely good at it. There's no doubt about it. I tried it a couple of times and I ended up with a big bird's nest and somehow they're managing the line and getting it. I'm sure I would get it after a while, but they make it look easy.
Katie
Do you have any stories that come to mind from this part of the world? I just picture the Amazon is still such a wild place. I know there's lots of people that live within the bounds of the Amazon, but I think compared to what we're used to, especially in the US, it just feels like such a vast, wild place. And I have to have some mishaps or weird encounters or things like that that happened. Does anything come to mind as a crazy story that happened in that region of the world?
Matthew
Been pretty lucky as far as safety stuff is concerned. Never had any, you know, crazy boat flips or anything like that. Little run-ins with weird spiders and animals and stuff like that. Nothing crazy though on the Amazon. Have run into leopards outside the tent in India and tigers on safari in India and fishing in tiger tracks in India. Definitely fish right around where jaguars were in the Amazon, but never had anything crazy charge me or anything like that. But I mean, all the stuff is there all the time. And what would be crazy for normal for me, I guess, might be crazy for other people. You know, we've had poisonous snakes and camp, but you just pick the thing up and throw it outside of camp or you have some nasty spider. You just shoo it into a bucket and then throw it back into the jungle. You know, I mean, it's, you've done it 150 times so it's not that exciting but someone else might tell the story that you know the spider was as big as your head and blah blah blah blah but nothing super nuts that comes to mind but to each their own with that type of adventure you know what I mean.
Katie
So how big of spiders are we actually talking if you're not exaggerating are they still pretty pretty gnarly?
Matthew
Oh yeah there's real big spiders down in the south of Brazil this wasn't on fishing trips, but a spider they call the carangajera, which means in Portuguese, the crabber or something like that. I'm not sure how it exactly translates into English, but it's got to be a relative of the bird-eating spider. This thing is massive. I mean, if it was on your face, it would cover your entire head from the top where your hair meets your head to your chin, and there'd still be, you know, legs on either side. It's gigantic. If you're walking in the jungle or in the forest down there, you can hear them walking like you would hear a person walking. You hear like footsteps and the leaf litter. And you like think it's another large animal or a person walking and you stop and you wait and then you hear the footsteps and you turn around thinking it's going to be something big and then you look down and it's a spider. And obviously the spider's massive, but it's not as big as an animal or a person or something like that. You're like, holy crap, that spider's big enough where you can hear its footsteps going through the jungle.
Katie
Yeah, I think I'd have to get out of there if I saw something like that. I think I might lose it. And that's probably the most unnerving thing to me about the jungle is the creepy crawlies. I'm not a fan of spiders, even when they're the size of a quarter. And I can't imagine hearing one walking through the woods toward me.
Matthew
I got to tell you, I'm not a super big fan of spiders either. But having had all this experience with these different spiders, those big giant spiders are some of the most, I don't know, calm, non-threatening spiders that I've ever run into anywhere. You could literally scoop them up into your hand and they don't mess with you or do anything like that. And I wouldn't believe it. I would think the same way as you do if I didn't experience it myself. And I still, if I see a little spider around the house or whatever, I'm still not a super big fan of spiders, but whereas I would freak out when I was a little kid, I just like scoop it into a bucket and take it outside now. Cause it, it almost totally got me over my fear of spiders being in the Amazon and fiddling around with those things. Cause I mean, obviously if people are on the trip and they see me freak out, then they're going to freak out. So you kind of have to get over that stuff. if you're going to be that. I'm like the translator in between the locals and the local wildlife. And I don't want to be having to, I don't even know how you would smash one of those spiders. You'd need a dictionary or something. So it's better just to scoop it up. Yeah, right. Just to scoop it up and like say, you know, Hey guys, it's not that nasty. We'll just put it back into the jungle. Everybody takes some pictures of it. And then you just put it into the leaf litter and he goes off on his merry way doing his spider business. You know, I mean, most of the time we're in their, their house we're just visiting they live there all the time so they go back to doing their deal once we leave
Katie
maybe they're just so big that they know they're their top dog you know they they don't have that same like nervous energy that some of the smaller spiders do you said they're like very calm and I i have to imagine if I were a spider that large and I saw how people reacted to me I would I would get a bit of an ego and think I don't really have to to try too hard like I can just I can I can just cruise along and you know no one's gonna Everyone's going to part ways for me as I come through.
Matthew
It's possible. It's definitely possible. There are some ones down there that aren't quite as big as those that they do something, I guess you would say, like a rattlesnake does. A rattlesnake shakes its tail because it's letting you know that it's dangerous, right? There's some other types of tarantulas or nasty spiders that they raise up their front legs and show you their fangs. That's one of the ways that it shows you, like, hey, don't mess with me. I've got big teeth or something like that. And yeah, you see one like that and yeah, it's best to just go the other way. That's what I do most of the time. But I just say, yeah, okay. You're like, all right. As long as you're not in my tent, like you can do whatever you want.
Katie
Yeah, right. So tell me more about India. You mentioned India and like tigers and stuff. And that, you know, that's, I think spiders are one of those things that yes, you know, there are dangerous spiders out there. But for the most part, people are scared of them when they actually mean them no harm. Whereas tigers, I feel like are an actual, you know, threat. You know, that's you risking your life being in that area. So tell me more about the fishing in India and also just like kind of the environment of India. It sounds like a kind of nerve-wracking place being in a place where you're not necessarily the top predator.
Matthew
Sure. So I worked in India, in northern India, on the border with Nepal, kind of in that region there, the foothills of the Himalayas. So it's a little bit different than in the south of India where you'd have like rainforest or something like that. It's, for the most part, depending on what area that you're in, it's a deciduous forest. So it's trees that lose their leaves, or if you're up towards the Himalayas, evergreens that keep their leaves all year. So it kind of looks like the forest back home, like in southern Illinois or in the Front Range in Colorado. It doesn't look too dissimilar from there, maybe a little bit more lush or something like that. But there are some, there's big critters. There's elephants that live there. There's sloth bear. There's leopards. There's tiger. One of the coolest things about India and all the animals there, all the animals there, from the barking deer all the way up to the sambar, which is a big deer like our elk, and everything in between, monkeys, peacocks, goats, everything has like a danger call for when the leopard or the tiger is around. So if all the animals start kind of barking or giving the alarm call, you kind of know that there's a big cat around or a big cat or some other predator like that. So you can kind of listen to the forest. You look at the forest, it doesn't look like there's anything there. And then all of a sudden, everything starts to go bonkers. And you know that, okay, there's a tiger or there's a leopard right over there. And he's moving left to right and up the mountain because that's the way that the animals are calling. So it is pretty cool. I guess it is a little unnerving also, but I mean, you kind of know what's going on around you most of the time. Like, I guess the tiger's probably going to hunt most of the time in the morning and in the evening, which is probably when, you know, fishing time is most good anyway. But you're not out on the river at dark if you're in, you know, the tiger reserve or anything like that. You've already made it back to camp because that's when stuff's moving around. But it definitely is cool. It does put you in your place in the food chain and you definitely have to be on edge. You've got a couple other people with you while you're fishing. You've got a tracker, fishing guide. So you've got some backup in case anything pokes its head out.
Katie
How common are tigers? Because I picture, you know, in the U.S. we've got mountain lions, for example, but most people have never seen one. And that doesn't mean they're not around. But for the most part, when you go out in the woods, you're not really that worried that there's a mountain lion behind every corner because they're not all over like deer are. But how common is a tiger there? Is it a very rare encounter that you find tracks or see one? Or is it kind of like, if you stay here for a decent bit of time, then you're probably going to come across a tiger or signs of a recent tiger visitation sometime in the past couple of days?
Matthew
Depending on the area, it could be fairly common. So one of the places I was guiding was Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve. Jim Corbett was a famous guy in India that hunted man-eating tigers around the turn of the century, 1800s into the 1900s. He lived in India up until the time of independence, when he moved to Kenya. And they named their first national park and their biggest national park after him. And it's got one of the most densely populated areas with tigers in the world. So they're there and you see their tracks fairly common in the buffer zone and down into the reserve. When I was there, you could still fish into the reserve. They don't let you fish into the reserve anymore, which is kind of a bummer because it was an awesome experience. And one of the coolest experience that I've had in my life being able to fish into the tiger reserve. But yeah, I've seen tiger tracks. I've seen their scratches on trees. I've seen the animals giving the alarm calls for when they're around. I'd say in another area that I fished in northern India, the leopard is probably a little bit more common where you run into signs of the leopard than probably the tiger is there. But they're definitely a big kind of dangerous, scary animal. And you have a fairly decent chance of at least running into the sign of them. I'm sure that I've been fairly close to both, but I've never seen either one while I was fishing. If you ever talk to Jeff Currier on the podcast, he's got a real cool story of where they ran into a tiger. I think they were walking either to go fishing or walking to go back from fishing. I've seen leopards as we were driving to and from the river. And I've seen leopard tracks a lot of the times while I was fishing on the rivers in northern India. but I've never seen a leopard while I was fishing. But that's just luck. I'm sure they were there.
Katie
Yeah. So tell me about the fishing itself. What kinds of species are you fishing for in India? Kind of similarly to what I asked earlier, what is the fishing culture like there? Is it a lot of fly fishing for these species? Is there a long fishing heritage there?
Matthew
They definitely do have a long fishing heritage going back to colonial times and before. Probably into the mainstream, letting other people know about it. Writing about fishing from that time kind of made it popular or piqued a lot of people's interest and probably kind of fell out of the radar for a while and then was brought back into the fly fishing scene by the company that I work for, the Himalayan Outback, and kind of started up the kind of the fly fishing renaissance over in that area for them. It's a really cool fish to target on a fly rod. They run probably harder and longer than any fish in freshwater. They can be in fast water, fast-flowing rivers flowing out of the Himalayas. They can be in some of the slow spots, too, if they have a buffer zone with a little bit of freshwater. Spots that you would think the trout would be in for the most part. They can grab dry flies, streamers. They're kind of an omnivore. They can grab anything that's in the river from organic matter and algae all the way up to little bugs or other fish. But super cool to fish to fish for. Definitely recommend everybody do it. India is one of the most spectacular places that you're ever going to visit. Tons of animals, tons of birds. And to catch a fish that runs that fast on a fly gear, I mean, it takes you all the way into your backing if you get a decent sized one in a second. I mean, just rips line off like crazy.
Katie
I'm looking at pictures of Mahseer right now, and they almost look like a combination of like a tarpon and an arapaima, maybe like a little carp in there too. Is that the fish you're talking about?
Matthew
Yeah, that's not a bad description of them. They are a large scaled fish. They're in the same family as the carp and the barbel. I'd say the European barbel is probably the closest thing that most people would get to the Mahseer. Because they both live in faster water, and they're both pretty fast. They're both pretty good fighters. but probably the difference with the Mahseer would be they've got the big scales instead of little scales like the European barbell's got. Yeah, they're definitely, they're a hot fish. Like if you hook one, you know it. Most of the time they don't sit there. They take off really fast. They don't have a ton of stamina. One of those really, really big long runs is about all they got. And it's kind of a little bit of a tug of war as you bring it back in. But if you're fishing for them with an eight weight, which most of the time is what you're using, then if you catch a 50 pounder, then you've got to fight on your hands.
Katie
Sure. And the last place that I kind of wanted to talk about that you mentioned in your list was Mongolia because that's, I feel like a lot of people's, it's on a lot of people's bucket lists now, I think. I think it's gotten more well-known just because of like time in fishing and stuff. Tell me about Mongolia. Is that what you were fishing for there? What other species do they have besides time? And what's the fishing like? Just give me an overview of Mongolia.
Matthew
Okay, so the river that I was fishing in Mongolia was the Egg and the Ur. I was working for Sweetwater Travels, Mongolian time and camps there. They were kind of the company that pioneered the trips there, fly fishing trips there. And they're kind of unique as they run the trips out of a jet boat. And some of the other companies run their trips out of either rafts or drip boats. And, well, I guess there's a romance to the rafts and the drip boats for fishing purposes. I definitely recommend going out of the jet boats because you can target the areas that have time in them and have big time in them. Because as you well know, not all areas in a river hold big fish or hold fish. There's a lot of dead area that kind of doesn't hold anything. But the other species in the river besides the taimen, taimen would be the top dog. Most of the rivers that have taimen also have lenoc, which is another member of the trout family. Grayling, pike, burbot, European perch or Eurasian perch, if you want to call them that. And some spots lower down have some catfish and some carp, but that's about it. Up in the higher regions where you've got the taimen, it's mostly the taimen, the pike, the grayling, and the lenoc.
Katie
Now, are these the same northern pike that we have in the U.S., or is it some other species of pike?
Matthew
It's depending on which way the river drains. You've got two different species of pike in Mongolia. They drain east into the Amur River. You've got Amur pike, which have black spots on a light background. And if they drain north into Lake Baikal, which is like the rivers that I was guiding on, then you have northern pike. So those would be the same ones that we have. So they do behave a little bit differently. I haven't fished for the Amur pike really at all. But from what I understand, talking to people that have fish for the Amur pike, they're a little bit more of an open water predator. as the northern pike likes its little ambush spots. But yeah, you would definitely recognize them right away as the pike that we've got here at home. And they can get pretty big too. Probably the biggest that we caught in the egg in the order was probably low 40s, low 40 inches, not pounds. But they definitely take a backseat to the taimen as being the top predator. They are not so much in the fast water. They're in a little bit of the oxbows and lagoons and stuff off the main river. But every once in a while, you'll catch them in a riffle or something.
Katie
Yeah, I'm looking at pictures of this Amur pike now. And if I didn't know better, I would say it was a brown trout crossed with a pike. Like it looks like a pike that has kind of the spotting of a brown trout.
Matthew
Yeah, they look very similar to our Great Lakes muskie, our spotted muskie that we have here. But it's got rounded fins just like a pike. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to fish for them yet, but they're on the list. I'd love to do a special trip where I go for just those and the trophy size ones of them. but right now Russia's kind of off limits. I think some of the best size Amur pike are in Russia, but they do have some decent size ones in Mongolia in the, geez, I can't remember the Amur river drainages that you fish in Mongolia. I can't remember the names of the rivers there off the top of my head that, oh, the Onan, the Onan river, I believe drains into the Amur and they've got Amur pike on the Onan, but I haven't done it yet, but it's on the list. If I go back to Mongolia, I would definitely love to target them.
Katie
Is taimen still kind of the top dog in terms of what people want to come and catch when they come to Mongolia?
Matthew
Definitely. I'd say probably 90% of the people that are coming to Mongolia want to target taimen. There's a couple of oddball other species there too. There's the Altai grayling, which in Western Mongolia supposedly is the biggest grayling in the world. And there's the Altai azman, which is up in the mountains and mountain lakes up there, which is, I guess, a big species of minnow. I guess you could say it's probably in the Mahseer family, something like that, that inhabits those lakes up there, which would be a cool fish to go after just to kind of see the scenery and catch the fish. But the taimen's the big one. It's the hot, you know, sexy big trout that grabs surface flies and big streamers and stuff like that and jumps. So definitely the top one that people want to go after.
Katie
How big do timing get? You know, like what would be a good size timing if you went out and reeled one in? Like what would be a trophy fish?
Matthew
Anything over 40 inches is a good timing. Anything over 50 inches, I'd say, is a trophy timing. And then anything over 60 is, you know, a holy crap timing. I can't believe that I just caught that thing. But they're there. I mean, there's every year while I was there, we had encounters with fish that would be that big or close to that big. And camp record, I think, was like 63 inches or something like that. So they get that big for sure and bigger. You know, if the camp record is 63, then I'm sure that there's fish there that would be 65, 68, something like that.
Katie
And you said they eat on the surface. What kinds of surface flies are you using for these massive ones?
Matthew
The timing in Mongolia is a little bit special because there are so many rodents in Mongolia. There's, if you look at the Mongolia book of mammals, the rodent section is like a third of the book. There's kangaroo rats, there's gerbils, there's lemmings, there's rats, there's mice, there's tons of ground squirrels, everything. It goes on and on and on and on. And then like a whole bunch of other little subspecies of those little different rodents. And at one time or another, those animals have to cross the river to get to the other side, just like any other animal. It doesn't really make sense why they cross to the other side, because you've got 8 million trees on one side of the river and there's 8 million trees on the other side of the river. And if you spend enough time on the water, you'll see a squirrel swim from one half of the river to the other side. I think to myself, why would he do that? Why wouldn't he just go walk the other way instead of trying to swim across? But they do swim across, whether it's because of wildfires or there's a sexy lady squirrel or lemming on the other side of the river. And when they do, the time and grab them. And so poppers, chuggers, titanic sliders, wake flies that are just like a big ball of deer hair, any of that stuff will catch fish. They definitely are drawn to the surface more in Mongolia than they are in Russia or Europe. In Europe, they have the hucho-hucho instead of hucho-taimen. And talking to the guys that fish for the hucho-hucho, they say they almost never get them on dry flies. They're all on big streamers. So that's just because they don't have all those rodents that are swimming across the river. And no, I mean, they'll eat anything that's in the river. If it's small enough to fit into their mouth, a big taimen's head is as big as a St. Bernard's head. So, I mean, they can grab anything. So a squirrel, a snake, whatever, a marten or something like that, a beaver, anything like that that swims across, they could grab them for sure. Not a full-grown beaver, a small beaver. They could definitely get it.
Katie
So the flies you use for this, you know, I'm thinking of, you know, your typical mouse flies that someone might use for like a brown trout. Would you use that size of fly or would you take your typical mouse fly and basically beef it up until it's the size of like a rat? Like do you have like squirrel flies or are those like too big to cast?
Matthew
No, you can cast as big of a fly as you can cast on those trips. If you can cast a really big fly, you'll definitely move big fish. Now, when I first started there, guys were throwing a little bit smaller flies and they throwing there when I left. We had some musky fishermen and stuff that came while I was down there, kind of changed the game a little bit, but I was definitely pushing for big flies once I went down there and was telling the other guys and guests like, man, you guys got to throw some bigger stuff because, you know, from fishing musky or big brown trout or anything like that, that's a big fish, you can catch a big fish on a small fly, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way to move a big fish. Like probably, I don't know, 70% of the time or 80% of the year, the big fish isn't going to move to a small fly. They, they will do it over the course of the season, but if you want to consistently move big fish, you've got to be able to throw a big lure, a big bait out there to get them to move. And it's no different from the timing. If you can throw, you know, and obviously fly tying techniques have gotten way better than they were back in the day. Like now with like a big hollow flies and beast flies and stuff, you can tie a 15 inch fly. That's relatively easy to cast because it's just a kind of reverse tied deer hair. That's hollow that like gives the illusion of being really big, but it's actually, you know, it's not that big and you cast it fairly easily on a 10, 11, 12 weight or whatever like that. So, you know, there are ways around it, but if you're a good caster, you can cast, you can cast that giant fly and move the bigger fish, you know, move those 40, 50, possibly 60 inch fish more than you would on a smaller fly. No doubt about it.
Katie
That's got to be such an exciting take when a 60 inch fish grabs a big ball of fur on the surface.
Matthew
Oh yeah. It stuns a lot of people like, you know, comes up and makes this gigantic swirl and people freeze and they don't set the hook or they just, you know, automatically do the little trout set or scream and don't do anything. and you see the gigantic splash and then the fish is gone. But yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome. It's definitely the draw. A lot of the people will say that you talked about time and fishing will tell you like a time and doesn't fight. I think because you're getting a lot of people from the trout world coming over and fishing for time. And they're thinking it's going to be like a steelhead and go on like these big, crazy runs. But a time and definitely does fight. I mean, they dive down, they jump, they charge the boat, they crazy head shake. But it doesn't fight like steelhead. It's not going to scream off 100 yards of line for the most part. It might take you into your backing, but it's just not the nature of the way that that fish fights. But I definitely say that fights. It's super exciting. I mean, you're getting a fish that big to come up and take a fly and then shaking like crazy on top of the surface. That's awesome, man. So I think it's just the people that you're getting to come over and fish for the time and are thinking more on the trout side. If you're fishing for a big rainbow, in order to deliver a size 20, whatever, you know, pick your fly, Adams or something like that. You're fishing to an area where you can possibly catch a big fish. You've got it scaled down and you're using four pound test or five pound test or even lighter sometimes. And if you get a 30 inch rainbow to take it, yeah, the fish is fighting like crazy because you have to baby it. Now, if you were fishing with 30-pound test for that same rainbow, you could rip it out of the water and drag it up on the bank. So, yeah, you can put a lot more pressure on the Timon because you're having to cast a size 8-0 hook with the mouse on it or the big giant streamer or whatever. But, yeah, they definitely fight. If you're fishing for the Timon with, you know, a size 20 Adams and you're hooking a 15-inch Timon, chances are you wouldn't get it in and you'd be singing a different tune about it fighting.
Katie
Yeah, it sounds like they fight more out of their size than their personality. Some fish just have an oversized fighting personality. I'm picturing a smallmouth bass. You can have a 10-inch smallmouth bass on and you think you've got a monster. Or on the other side of the spectrum, we've been talking about cutthroats recently and how the take is exciting, but they don't put up a hell of a fight. And it sounds like a timing. If you're bringing a 60-inch fish in, yes, it's going to pull hard because it takes a lot of effort to pull in something that's 60 inches long. but the personality might not be what someone would expect thinking of other like large trout species.
Matthew
I'd say that's fair. I'd say you could, it's kind of like a big giant brown trout where you could catch a big giant brown trout and it could do either one of two things. It doesn't really know that it's hooked and you get this thing close to the raft or the shore and your buddy with the net comes over and scoops it and you've got it. This is the biggest brown trout you've ever caught. Looking back at it, the fight wasn't that crazy. or you can get your big giant brown trout that goes absolutely bonkers. It's out of the water four or five times during the flight. It ran back and forth across the pool four or five times, and you barely got it in. And as soon as you get it out, the hook falls apart or something like that. You know, it took you to your absolute limit. And they can do both, right? The time and sometimes it'll be the craziest thing ever. It's jumping out of the water, going down, screaming line out, or you get this big fish in relatively easy because it didn't even really know that it was hooked yet. and the chances of a big giant small mouth doing that pretty low it's probably going to go crazy one way or the other so it probably has yeah more of the attitude of the big giant brown where you might get one that goes nuts and you might get one that kind of comes in relatively easy
Katie
gotcha well the last thing I wanted to ask you before we wrap up is like you've you've traveled to so many places is there a place that's still on your bucket list that you really hoping to go to someday that you haven't been to before
Matthew
oh yeah so two things I love to talk about I'd like to go. There's a few places I'd like to go. And there's one thing I want to mention before I forget about it. So one of the companies that I work for fishing for Dorado in Bolivia, they just opened up a new place in Brazil fishing for a special type of peacock bass that there's not a ton of places to fish for this peacock. Most places that you fish for peacocks, they're not necessarily in fast water. And this peacock is called the Panima peacock bass. And can target them with a fly. And this new lodge, Panima Lodge, it's just going to be just fly. So you're not having to worry about other people targeting the fish with lures and stuff while you're there. And the first season opening there is going to be this fall. And if you've never been fishing on the Amazon before, I'd highly recommend it because it's going to be awesome once it gets up and going. It's in a super pretty area, clear water, fast water, rapids. And you've also got the opportunity to catch a Bikuta, Payara, probably some other incidentals while you're there. And as you can imagine, peacock bass fights pretty crazy anyway. And if you put the other obstacle of fast water in there and a fish that lives in the fast water, it's that much stronger, that much cooler. So that's definitely a place that I want to go. I haven't been there yet, but I'm probably going to be either hosting trips there in the future. And if people want to contact me about hosting trips there, that's great. or guiding there possibly not this fall, but next fall. So it's definitely on my radar of places that I want to go. But yeah, I'm always wanting to push the limits of different fish that people haven't caught on fly before. So there's some ones that I've got on my list of things that I want to catch for sure. There's the mangar, which is a relative of a mahseer that lives in tributaries of the Tigris and Euphrates. Probably one of the best places you can catch it would be Iran. And we don't have the best relations with Iran now, so I probably won't be going there super soon, but I'd still love to do it. There's some interesting fish in Southeast Asia. The yellow-cheeked carp, which is in China, and tributaries, the Amur River, is a really cool one that I'd love to target on a fly or conventional tackle. The jungle barb or jungle perch would be cool. Giant snakehead would be cool. There's the pike barb, which is another cool one. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that I'd like to go after. Africa is another big one. I haven't fished in Africa a ton. I fished guided in the Seychelles, but I haven't gotten tigerfish yet on a fly. So that would be definitely cool to go after the tigers.
Katie
So it sounds like you base your destinations a lot on the fish you want to catch. Like it's not as much about like, oh, I'd like to go to this place and then we'll see what the fishing is like. It's like you have a bucket list of species you'd like to check out. And then that kind of takes you around the world in search of those species. Is that kind of an accurate description?
Matthew
Yeah, I'd say that's fair. I was, you know, that's exactly right. You know, I think of some places have such a draw that there's such a cool place that you wonder what there is to catch there. And there's definitely that aspect to it also. but definitely some of them I've got my target already. And I'll go through whatever it takes in that area, visiting there to like get to the target. And at the end of it, at the end of the trip, when you've gone through the trip and done all of it, you've got like a thousand more reasons to go back. Like you've got a bunch of friends or a bunch of cool stuff that you didn't know was there besides the, like the original target of the fish or whatever. But yeah, that's most of the time the original target is the fish. And then we go from there.
Katie
Do you know how many species you've caught? Do you have a running list?
Matthew
No, my list is all stuff that I want to catch, not the stuff that I have caught. So I've got like a few years ago, maybe like 20 years ago already now, I made a list of like stuff that I wanted to go after. And I'd like to go back and check it out and see how many of the ones that I checked off of it. I haven't done that in a while, but definitely checked off a few. But there's definitely some more on there. How about you? How about, you know, having talked to me and talked to a whole bunch of different people over the place. What kind of places would you like to go and experience and fish that you'd like to target? That kind of thing.
Katie
My number one has always been Kamchatka. And I think that will stay number one until if and when I can go do that. Hopefully, like Russia is still an option, you know, into the future. But that would be my number one choice. Alaska is a definitely a much more doable. Like it's not really a matter of if that's a matter of when we will end up in Alaska at some point. We're doing Belize in June, which will be our first saltwater trip. So I'm really excited to check out some of those species. But apart from that, like destination wise, I think South America would be really cool. We're talking about doing a Slovenia trip in a couple of years. So marble trout might be on my list there. So apart from Kamchatka, that's like the one that's like the one crown jewel on my bucket list that I'd really like to check out and apart from that like I just like catching new species I'm not I'm not a species snob in that when I go somewhere I have to catch like the one game fish that is there like I want to catch as many species as I can wherever I go any species is valid to me so basically I guess maybe I'm the opposite of you whereas I like to go I like to go to a place and then find out what is there to catch here and then just catch as many things as I can while I'm in that place but I don't of like species on my bucket list specifically. Yeah, I guess I've got more destinations, but really anywhere. Like I just, I like to see how fishing is around the world and different places. And I haven't done much international fishing. I've done some fishing in Australia and I guess that's mostly the extent of it. But yeah, I guess I'd say Kamchatka is my number one.
Matthew
Where'd you go fishing in Australia?
Katie
Oh, I was, I lived in Townsville for six months. So I just did some fishing like in and around Townsville, a couple of the rivers, I guess just one of the rivers in town I fished. And then we did a little bit of ocean fishing, not with a fly rod, with a like squid on a hook that we dropped down. I caught like a little hammerhead shark. I didn't catch a lot of stuff when I was there. I didn't have my own gear. So it was like if I could find locals who had gear, I would borrow it and go out for the day. But it was cool. I'd like to go back and do some more intentional fishing there at some point.
Matthew
Where's Townsville on the map? where's Townsville on the map if you're looking at Australia
Katie
northern Queensland
Matthew
northern Queensland okay haven't done Australia but I lived in New Zealand for a year and I got to fish all over the place while I was there in New Zealand I'd love to go to Australia loved I you know I didn't mention barramundi or queenfish or murray cod or any of that stuff but that's definitely on my list too I'd love to do all that stuff that's there in Australia and then going to the northern territories in the outback and all that, that'd be really cool. So I haven't done it yet. Been there in the airport, but it was on the way to New Zealand. So I haven't gotten to check that one up. If there's anybody out there listening and wants to invite me in Australia, I'd definitely take them up on it.
Katie
You know, it's funny because New Zealand is obviously like a world-class destination for trout. And it's, you know, it's got the monster trout that you don't really encounter very often in North America. But all things considered, like compared to other international destinations, it's kind of similar to the U.S. in terms of like you go there and you catch like browns and rainbows. They're bigger than what we have here. But, you know, compared to Australia, which is right across the ocean there, like barely. And they've got a completely different set of species. It's kind of interesting how similar New Zealand is to the U.S. in that way.
Matthew
Yeah, it's because we put all the trout there, not the people from the United States, but the people that moved in there. I wish they would have had a little bit more imagination when they stocked the fish and would have dumped in all the species of Salmonids and seen which ones would have taken. It'd be cool if they put in marble trout and time in and grayling and everything. And you could catch all the different stuff that would be there. And one crazy trout menagerie of, you know, the island of Dr. Moreau of trout would have been a real cool thing to do. If I could go back in time, I'd suggest that to them, but it's pretty cool. And you're right. It's similar to the United States to speak English. And that's kind of the goofy thing when I see people going over there and spending tons of money on the guides and stuff in New Zealand is, oh, what are you money for to go fishing in New Zealand. You know, if you go to the Amazon, sure, you got to spend some money to go there because how do you get to the destination? How do you get to the middle of nowhere? And then you don't speak the language. And then you have to be with someone because there's, you know, quote unquote, killer animals and stuff around that knows the area. But in New Zealand, there's no killer animals. They speak English already. It's just trout. We know how to fish for trout already for the most part over here. And, you know, there's not all those different barriers to go through. You can just go there and walk into the outback and figure something out and fish, which is what I did. I caught plenty of big fish while I was there. Not to talk bad about the guides and stuff over there. Go ahead and pay for the guides and stuff in New Zealand if you want to, but you can definitely do a DIY if you want to walk in New Zealand.
Katie
Yeah. It kind of feels like if you're flying that far around the world that when you get there, there should be something exotic and exciting. And then it's just like, well, you got to be able to find the big fish and catch them. Getting them to eat is, I'm sure, no easy task. But at the end of the day, like, you know, the techniques, you just gotta, you gotta pull it off.
Matthew
Right. Yeah. Which is what we did while we were there. It was cool. Loved it. I would definitely go back. I've been back three times since I, since I lived there and loved every minute of it. It's, it's, it's crazy being in an area that wild or, you know, outbacky because you're, you can get as far away from anything as you want to get in New Zealand. But the only thing that you've got to worry about is like the Outback itself. There's no bears, there's no crocodiles, there's no anacondas, there's no leopards or anything like that. I'm used to watching over my shoulder and listening to all this stuff. Who cares? I left my food out. I did whatever the heck I wanted. You didn't have to worry about anything. I'm in there waiting around, just shorts on. You don't have to even wear waders. It's great.
Katie
Well, it sounds like you have lived, you've traveled to more places than most people will in their lifetime. So it's just a really special thing that you've gotten to see like all these different, these different areas that are so different from each other. It's, it's such a cool way to kind of experience fly fishing.
Matthew
Oh, it's been, it's been awesome. It's been, you know, it's, I wanted to be Indiana Jones when I was a little kid and I've come, I think as close to it with a fly rod or a fishing rod in general as you can. I've gotten to, you know, see, find artifacts in the bottom of the river as I was fishing along. I've gotten to eat with local tribesmen in Northeast India. I've gotten to make a fly fishing movie in Northeast India. I've gotten to meet a lot of really cool people out of other, you know, fishing personalities and stuff and be on podcasts like, like yours. So it's, it's exceeded my expectations and hopefully it keeps going the way that it's going because I like it.
Katie
I'm not surprised. Well, just to wrap up, where can, you know, do you have any social media? Where can people find you if they want to follow along or shoot you a message anything like that?
Matthew
Yep. We've got MP Wilderman, M-P-W-I-L-D-E-R-M-A-N at Instagram is my Instagram and then MPWilderman at yahoo.com is my email. If anybody's interested in hosted trips and any of the destinations that we talked about on the show, they can contact me and we can figure it out or wants a little bit of information on when the best time to go is or what flies to use or any that stuff. I'm always happy to talk to people about it. And if anyone wants to organize some sort of side trip to any of those destinations or something like that, I'd be happy to talk about it. So yeah, I'm pumped to talk about fishing for anything, anywhere, with just about anyone.
Katie
Sounds great. Well, Matthew, thank you so much for taking the time. I had a great time chatting with you today.
Matthew
Yeah, and I with you and Katie. Let's do it again. Let's do another podcast sometime if you want, or meet up again on destination in Colombia with Fish Colombia or Panima Lodge in Brazil or wherever. You got to make time to take time to do the stuff that you want. And I hope, hopefully we see you there. Or I didn't mention this with Kamchatka. Obviously Kamchatka we can't do right now, but Antioch River Lodge. It's close to Kamchatka as you're going to get to it. A lot of mouse fishing up there on the Antioch for big rainbows. You are in the middle of nowhere. Don't see that many people. It's not Kamchatka, but it's close.
Katie
Well, you know, I'm almost absolutely certain that we will end up in Alaska before we end up in Kamchatka. So I will definitely hit you up if we find ourselves up that way.
Matthew
All right, for sure.
Katie
All right. Thanks, Matthew.
Matthew
Thank you.
Katie
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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