Ep 111: Brook Trout Updates and Troutman Success, with Palmer Henson
Palmer Henson is a regular guest on the show, also appearing on episodes 3 and 62 to talk about his ongoing Georgia brook trout project. In this episode, he updates me on where the project currently stands and also fills me in on his recent Troutman completion in Wyoming.
-
Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed podcast, your home for fly fish in the backcountry. This is episode 111 with Palmer Henson on brook trout updates and Troutman success. You know how it goes. I always start with how people got their background in the outdoors, but you've been on here so many times at this point that we can probably skip that formality. But instead, I would like to hear how things have been going with your brook trout experiment and maybe as a bit of a background for anyone who hasn't heard your previous episodes, maybe tell people just kind of a summary of how you got started in the brook trout project and where things have come and where you're at now.
Palmer
So the brook trout project, I'm based in Atlanta, Georgia. And 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I started focusing more and more on small stream fishing and eventually started catching brook trout in Georgia. And initially I had a personal goal of, let me see if I can find 10 streams in Georgia that have native brook trout. And then it became 20, and then it became, you know, 30 and 40 and up to 111 right now. Though I'm slowing down dramatically on the new finds. And along the way, I met some people with the Department of Natural Resources in Georgia, became good friends with them, and we started collaborating on all the different streams where I was finding brook trout and where they thought I should and I wasn't, and vice versa. And then we'll get deeper into the story. We've eventually pulled in the University of Georgia's Forestry Department into the project to work on some eDNA testing to further quantify where there are brook trout and where there aren't brook trout. We're running a lot of data and a lot of sampling. Eventually, we'll figure out what to do with all that, if it means trying to change fishing regulations or reintroducing brook trout in places where they were historically but aren't anymore. So the update from on that front from our last project, I think where we left last podcast, where we left off last time, eDNA sampling was, we knew about it but didn't really have any super familiarity with it, much less having ever tried it. And eDNA sampling is a methodology where as fish swim, they shed DNA when they bump across things and water just going off of them, and you can pull their DNA out of the water and basically you have to look for something very specific. So in our case, look for brook trout DNA. It won't just, when you run the samples, it won't just tell you everything that's in the water, but we can, you can look at the water and look at the samples and figure out if they're brook trout in a stream based on environmental DNA. So we've built this database and have been working with the DNR where, as I mentioned, I've found brook trout on 111 streams and there's another 120 or 25 that I've fished hard and haven't found brook trout. The DNR is backfilled and is gone back with traditional electric shocking and looked at streams where they thought I should have found brook trout but didn't. And actually this year for the first time they were, they embarrassed me. They found brook trout on a couple streams that I didn't, I had kind of written off. I mean in my defense there was one when I had my notes said I on time and got into an elevation just below where they sampled and found brook trout. But they've been doing that. And they also found brook trout on a stream that I hadn't sampled. So there are a few new ones in the database from that. But then, you know, this next evolution on the environmental DNA, we pulled in a couple of professors at the University of Georgia, Jay Sheldon and Brian Shamblin, who have a lab at UGA. And they've been kind of playing with environmental DNA, but hadn't really perfected it. So we got them through the Native Fish Coalition, which I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's basically an East Coast thing. In the Northeast, it's mostly about brook trout and protecting brook trout. but as you get down to Georgia, it's more protecting. There's 245 species of fish, native fish in Georgia, and it's about protecting a lot of strains of bass and other things along with brook trout. But they had done some EDNA testing up in Maine looking for Arctic char. And so we got the University of Georgia team together main team who had done that work, and they helped with protocols. We lucked out in that UGA had an environmental testing machine. It's called a Smithroot eDNA machine that is expensive. It costs about $40,000 that someone had bought and they just weren't using, and Brian Shamlin was able to kind of gravel to that, which was a big plus because it would have been a really expensive project otherwise, and started working on our protocols. It's taken a long time with some missteps. We initially we thought the sampling unit, every time you take a sample, it's going through a, you're pulling the water through a filter, and then that filter is what, where you're pulling the DNA off of, and each of those kind of filter units costs like $16 or something like that. And we're trying to reuse them, not the filter itself, but the plastic housing and things like that by cleaning them in bleach and they were deteriorated. So we had a bunch of missteps like that and some not great results early on, but the team, mostly the eGNA team working with Sarah, who was on your podcast, Sarah Baker, and Liam Brotherton, who I know we talked a lot about before. eGNA, working with the two of them, perfected the methods, and they did cool cage studies where they picked a stream with no trout in it at all and put three or four brook trout in a cage, and were able to detect them through DNA testing as much as a thousand meters downstream.
Katie
Oh, wow.
Palmer
Which is really super impressive. So anyway, it took a long time, but got the methodology nailed down where everyone had a lot of confidence in it. And they found we've run 40 or pulled 44 samples so far. Eight of them were in the early days and have been run already. One was really cool. There was a stream that I thought had rainbows and brown trout. The DNR thought had rainbows and brown trout. we're totally in line on that. And the eDNA testing showed it had brook trout. So I went the next weekend and fished it and caught two brook trout. But they kind of looked, they were too big really and they weren't, the colors weren't very vibrant and we're really excited that we had found this new brook trout stream that we didn't know about. But when we finally did the analysis. It was a tributary of a stream that was along the Georgia-South Carolina border, and this stream, the border stream, South Carolina DNR had stocked prokaryote in it. So a couple of... so they were basically stockers. But it's so cool that the DNA worked like that. Now we're about to run samples from, you know, nearly 40 more streams. And then there's another 30 on the collection list that'll happen in this fall, and then we'll run those samples. And then we'll, you know, I think that's really what we need to figure out if our database is correct and if it needs to be adjusted on where there were historical populations, where the populations exist today, how many have been lost, you know, is if we lost 25% of the historical populations or 30 or 10 or whatever, that's really what we're looking for, and then figure out what to do from there. And then simultaneous with that, another kind of genetic study that we've been working towards for a long time, several years ago, DNR in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey had collected fin clippings from brook trout. They collected over 500 fins from 15 different brook trout populations, but never had the resources to process them and figure out the lineage of those brook trout. So the The idea is you have southern strain brook trout and you have northern strain brook trout and slight variations of each of those. And the southern strain is what are native to Georgia and Tennessee and North Carolina and places like that. And the northern strain you'd find in Maine. The ones that are stocked in Colorado would be northern strain brook trout. But over the years people have kind of lost track of if there have been northern strain brook trout stocked in Georgia or, you know, in which populations are the true, you know, true, true native southern strain. And then also, one of the big negative, the biggest negative impact of brook trout is if rainbows get introduced in a stream and the rainbows just out-compete brook trout, wipe them out over a period of time. That's the single biggest challenge for brook trout, but one of the kind of the next on the list is if you have an isolated population, the brook trout basically ended up getting super inbred and develop all these weaknesses, genetic weaknesses, and that can wipe out a population as well. And so this true genetic testing, we'll see if there are more isolated populations, if there really are big differences and the genetics and if some of the genetics are kind of going downhill. And finally, the DNR for years, their view was we could spend $40,000 to run these fin clippings and do the tests or we could buy a new truck and we really need some new trucks. So it gets put off. So I had volunteered to split the cost with anyone who'd be willing to split it with me. Sarah found a bunch of money out of TU and also got the DNR to throw in, so we finally have the resources to run those samples. And I think Brian Chamlin at UGA is going to do the, there's a lot of prep work in the samples to get them ready to be run. And then the true owner of those samples is the US Geological Survey, and they're the ones who'll do the final runs on it. But at least we can kind of cut the costs a bit and speed up the time frame by having Brian run them. So I've been rambling here. I've been out with the team, the EGA team. There's a guy named Wesley Giron, who's, I don't know what he is. He's like maybe a grad student who works under Brian, who goes out with Leon and Sarah and collects most of the samples. And he'll bring some other students with him. And I've gone a few times. And it's really cool. The whole thing is great. So anyway, it's this awesome collaboration. Now it's gone like a whole other level since we talked maybe a year and a half ago with UGA. And the Native Fish Coalition, eventually, will probably have a much bigger hand in it when it comes time to trying to change regulations. None of us really are sure how to go about that. If you tweak even the slightest hunting or fishing regulation in Georgia, the blowback is just intense. I don't know how that'll go.
Katie
Do you know what the proposed changes would be?
Palmer
I have my suggestions. right now the catch limit for trout, any kind of trout, any size is eight trout a day per person. There are a few watersheds that are either artificial only or you can only keep brook trout if they're, or only keep any trout if they're over like 16 inches which effectively makes it catch and release. So that would, But if you wanted to kind of like quietly kind of bleed it in, you just add more watersheds that have those same regulations. But another thing you could do is say, you know, you can only keep brook trout if they're over nine or ten inches. You know, keep as many as you want that are over nine or ten inches, but they're, you know, it's a super rare thing. And here to find brook trout that are that big, most of them are, you know, four to seven inches or something like that. that effectively would block it too. But I don't know. And the reintroducing, you wouldn't have any, no controversy there, no public hearings about changing regulations and things like that to reintroduce some species in streams that had historical populations.
Katie
Would they really be at risk of being kept to the point of population decline when they are like four to seven inches? Like are people going out and wanting to go keep eight four-inch fish? Is that happening?
Palmer
So no, not for a, you know, small fish, but and this is this is a big problem and honestly I'm not sure if anyone really knows how big a problem it is. There are people who, so they're in the southeast everyone calls brook trout specks because they've got specks on them. So and you'll hear again and again that brook trout tastes the best, you know, of all the trout and taste better than rainbows and browns. I mean, everyone, it's almost like everyone's decided that's true. I have no idea if it's true or not, but there's, if you go up into North Georgia, everyone wants to eat specks because they taste the best, and they'll just go bait fish and collect 40 of them, just fill a bucket, complete poaching. And when you go to a stream that's close to a road that maybe Trout Unlimited or the DNR, someone's done stream improvements on, it's just uncanny. You won't find any fish in the stream improvements because everyone knows they're there and they've been cleaned out, but if you go a quarter mile, half a mile upstream, you'll start catching brook trout. So I think it's very possible that you can wipe out brook trout by overfishing, but a lot of people don't believe that, including a lot of people who know a lot more about it than I do. I have seen one stream that, oh, I fished it the first time in maybe like 2019 and caught brook trout on it, and it's one that's, it's not easy to get to, but it's reasonably well known, and I've fished it each of the years since then, fished it hard and gone back a lot, and haven't found a single brook trout. I mean, that would be the one stream I've seen in the years that I've been doing this that I've seen has been wiped out. That's on the list to pull an EDNA sample in the fall once the weather cools down. So we'll see what that turns out. But I've fished it a lot, and I don't think there's a single fish in there. And there was, and I wouldn't be surprised at all and just cleaned it out or got it down to where there were so few fish they couldn't repopulate.
Katie
Gotcha. I have a couple questions about the eDNA process that I'm not sure you'll know, but if you do, then great. If not, you can just pass on it. You were talking about the stream that has browns, rainbows, and now brook trout too. When they're doing the eDNA testing, is the question that they're putting out into the world what's in here, or is the question are there brook trout? As in, are they picking up that there are browns and rainbows, and then they also picked up that there are brook trout? Or are they only looking at brook trout, and it's just a yes or no, a one or a zero for whether there are brook trout? Are they using it to see what else is also living in there at the same time?
Palmer
No. They have to just look for- it's too difficult to look for- you can look for a couple of things. And interesting, there's a- I guess it's an amphibious lizard called a hellbender. you'll have to look at the picture of it. They're crazy looking.
Katie
Yeah, we had those where I grew up.
Palmer
Okay, so they are coincidentally also, because we're doing it and they're curious about hellbenders, they're looking for brook trout and hellbenders.
Katie
Okay, but it's like they go in having to know what they're looking for. They don't just get like a platter of, here's all the stuff that's here. They have to be deliberately looking for a thing. And if they don't care about rainbow trout, then they're not gonna be looking for rainbow trout.
Palmer
Correct.
Katie
Gotcha.
Palmer
Yeah.
Katie
And my other question is in the order of operations that these things happen. So it seems like the three big techniques that are going on are you're fishing, someone is electro fishing, and then someone is doing eDNA in any order or whatever. I'm just wondering, what order does this happen in? Is it just all over the place where resources are available? Or is it like you go in first and fish, and if you catch a brook trout, then that answers that. And then they come in and do other things? Is there an order of operations that keeps costs low while getting the information they need? Or is it kind of what's available at the time?
Palmer
No, there's definitely an order to it. So there are streams that they've electroshocked for years and years and years. And they do it on, I don't know, there's like 16 or 17 that they do it on an annual basis. And they're weighing out and measuring all the fish. And so over time, they can see how that population's changed. And it may be more than, it may be in the 20s. But as I fish, if I don't find brook trout, they've been going back and electro-shocking to look for the brook trout. And they've been doing that now for several years. And now where they're not finding any, but they used to have brook trout, now we're going back and doing the eDNA sampling to see if there are brook trout there. So that's kind of the order. Phishing, electroshocking, EDNA.
Katie
Okay, that was kind of my guess.
Palmer
They're exceptions, but that's sort of the order.
Katie
And I may have asked you this on the last episode, or maybe even the first episode, but forgive me, I don't remember. For the streams that you said the few that you got embarrassed on, 'cause you went out and said, "I didn't find any," and they came along and found some, how thoroughly do you fish a stream before you comfortably declare that there are probably not brook trout here. How do you know when you have gotten a good enough sampling yourself?
Palmer
So I usually fish them incredibly hard, like all the way up to what I call where it's splinters, where basically, you know, there's just a spring seeping out of the side of the mountain. On the two where they found that, one, as I mentioned, I did plan on going back to it. I just hadn't gotten to it. So that was a working process of mine. They kind of beat me to it. I was very excited that they did though. Got me right back there. And then the other one, I was just, I mean, embarrassingly, I was just lazy. In my mind, I was convinced there weren't any brook trout and I fished it up a little ways and it got to a road crossing that looked really small on the other side. And I mean, I would have had to go upstream another quarter or half mile. And eventually I did that when they found it, but they came in much higher and found the fish immediately. But normally, normally I'm not that lax. I'm much more diligent. And then the one they found Brook trout that wasn't even on my radar was a pretty small tributary. And I've been going back over the last four years, going back, and particularly the last two or three years places, you know, watersheds and areas, wildlife management areas that I'd fished but hadn't really checked like every stream and really dug as deep as I can. And that's where this year I've found other streams that fell in that category. You know, I went and hit the obvious stuff, hit the bigger stuff, and then moved on to the next, you know, wildlife management area or whatever piece of geography. And remember, we're talking about a big, small relative to a state like Maine, but for still like 40 miles by 60 mile or more than that. So it's a relatively big area. In total, it's probably a million and a half acres or something that I'm trying to cover. And some of it is you're hiking in five miles to check a stream. So it can be pretty time consuming.
Katie
What is keeping the brook trout in these specific stretches? You said they went just a little bit farther and found them there. It sounds that's maybe elevation related, but what's preventing the fish from spreading out and filling up the whole stream? Is it just elevation and water temperature that's keeping them up in some very specific section of the stream, or is it unknown?
Palmer
It's partly cleaner, cooler water. And a lot of us are just pushed up there by other trout, largely rainbow trout. So the typical situation is you've got rainbow trout back in, starting in, I don't know when, like the '20s or '30s. They just, every time a road crossed the stream, they dumped rainbow trout in. I mean, just across all of North Georgia. But eventually, as you're working up those streams, you've got some kind of waterfall or natural barrier that prevents the rainbows from going any further up. And the brook trout are above that natural barrier. They do like cleaner, colder water. They can adapt better to those sorts of environments. They can adapt better to pool after pool after pool, separated by little waterfalls and stuff like that. So brook trout like those conditions a lot more than other trout but part of it is they've just been forced up there you know the ones below a certain level you know get wiped out by rainbows and where I was in that one stream I just talked about there were I was catching rainbows down low and you know there wasn't any kind of obvious barrier but but there were you know and sometimes that this just happens even without the barrier the rainbows will stay lower and the brook trout will stay higher and they will will survive happily together, but usually not.
Katie
Last thing I wanted to ask about is just where you stand at this point. How many streams are you at? How many streams, do you have any on your list that you're still waiting to check out? Do you have a feel for how far along you are in the process?
Palmer
I think we're pretty far along on that side. So the database has roughly 250 streams and there's probably 25 or 20 maybe that I've been to that I need to go back, or there's some that I think are longer shots that I just haven't been to yet. And there's constantly streams added. So by the time it's all done, I'm sure it'll be well over 300 streams, but it's slowed down. I mean, my peak year was probably three or four years ago. I found like 40 new brook trout streams Last year I didn't find any. This year I've found, I've gotten five so far, but with a little bit of assist from the DNR and then I found a couple on my own. But it's definitely slowing down. But we do have, we've pretty much covered all the streams that were in the historical DNR database that, you know, we've definitely covered the ones that historically had brook trout in them. So that was the real challenge, because most states have, you know, the fishing area is just so big, you have no chance of like getting to a number and saying, you know, we've lost 25% of our population in the last 40 years. I mean, we have the real chance to get there because even though it's a big area, you know, it's still manageable. And we know that, you know, there are a limited number streams that had brook trout historically in the database that we can really come to a number which is unique. And then the other all the other facets are cool. Most states have done the genetic testing that we're trying to get those samples run now to check out the lineage. And there are places that are doing some, starting to do some eDNA testing as well. So it's cool. It's still fun.
Katie
Well, I'm excited that, I'm both excited and sorry for you that you're kind of slowing down because I feel like on one hand it must be satisfying to know that you're, you know, you're kind of running out of streams to sample. And at the same time, it's like then you don't have any more streams to sample and you just have to go, you know, fish known streams. So I'm sure it's a little bit bittersweet kind of slowing down to the point of, you know, having years where you don't find any new streams.
Palmer
You know, a little bit, but it's also been really fun to go back to streams that I fished one time five or six years ago. And my notes just rave about how awesome that stream was and, you know, to go back and fish some of those. I've been doing some of that. So it's all good. And I'll keep finding. And I'm sure three or four years from now, I'll still be looking for new brook trout streams. just going deeper and higher.
Katie
Well, I wanna switch gears a little bit and hear about your trout man attempt. You will be the second person I've talked to recently about trout man, and I'm excited to hear your story because her story, I feel like it's gonna be a bit different from yours just because she lives up here. She lives in Colorado, she lives up in the mountains. She has kind of like a local route she can do that she's pretty familiar with, and she knows where the different species exist and all that. So, it's a matter of just doing it. And for you coming out West and trying to complete this, you're kind of coming into unknown territory in a way. So I wanna hear about, I guess I'd like to start with how you planned it, because that's, I think, probably one of the biggest hurdles and obviously we'll get to the story itself as well and how that played out. But start me off by walking me through how you figured out where you were gonna go, how you planned this trip, how you found out about the fish that were gonna be there and all that, and we'll kind of go from there.
Palmer
Yeah, and I do have to thank you because I heard on your podcast with, there was someone who had just done the Pacific Coast Trail or, and maybe had attempted a trap, man. And that was the first time I'd heard about it. You all talked about it briefly. So I have you to thank for it or blame for it, however you want to look at it. That was three or four months ago when I heard that. And I had already had a trip planned, a fishing trip planned to sort of where the Continental Divide goes through Wyoming. And it's an area that I've been to, oh, maybe a dozen times or more, going back to like the early '90s. So I used to do lots of climbing and we used to go into that area to climb. And every two or three years, I've gone back to that same basic area. And the climbing eventually became fishing trips and more like just back country trips. But the last year I went back to the same area and climbed, full on climbing trip to that same area. So it's an area I knew really well. I already had a trip planned, airline tickets booked, everything, you know, a couple of my close fishing friends, Gene Wilson, Jeff Giuliano were going with me and they've been, they went with me four years ago to the same area. So it wasn't, you're right, I was going into an area where I had like one shot at it. It wasn't like if I had bad weather, I could come back the next weekend or something like that. And also it was coming from sea level to the area. I never got below 10,000 feet pushing 11 for a lot of it. So that was a big unknown what would happen with just the altitude. I mean I've climbed enough that I knew I'd acclimatized well enough that you know I'd be okay but I didn't know if I could really run coming from sea level to 10,000 feet. But I also I fished there enough that I knew where and part of the problem with the area is you've got rainbows and cutthroats together a lot of areas and I didn't really want to have like a hybrid fish and you've got golden trout and rainbows together a lot of places and there's all this mishmash. So I had to find streams where you had just cutthroats and an area, I mean brook trout were easy because they were by themselves anyway, but there are no browns in the area. And then an area where it was just pure golden and pure rainbow, but I found them all. And I had several days before I actually attempted the run to kind of map it out, including, you know, working there. The cutthroat stream was probably, I don't know, a third or half a mile from the main trail that I was running on. And so I had to, in the prior days, go up where I found a big aggressive group of cutthroats and then track over to, with my GPS, over to where the trail was. And I stuck like a corn along the trail so I could get back to that same spot in pretty quick order. And then it was, I mean, the biggest thing with the planning for me, though, was the The last, on paper, I'm a great person to have done this. I've done tons of marathons and trail marathons and longer ultras and Ironmans and all this endurance stuff, but that all kind of came to an end in 2015 or '16. In 2014, I did rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, which was like 46 miles with an 11 or 12,000 feet of elevation gain. It's hard and it went great. And then I started, I had a qualifying time for Boston for spring of 2015 and the training, my hip was like really hurting. I was going slow and I ended up with like, it's like a 345 or so. It wasn't like an embarrassingly slow time, but it was slow and I hurt. And so that's summer of 15. I was like, I'm gonna take summer off. I'm gonna bike. to do anything but run. And then there was a marathon in February of 2016 in North Carolina, a trail marathon called Black Mountain, that I started training for in October, November. And once I got above 13 miles on my long runs, I was just shut down. My hip killed me. And so I abandoned that idea, went to an orthopedist. and they took x-rays and they said, "You've got like almost no cartilage in either hip left. So you can try PT for a while, but if that doesn't work, we're gonna have to replace your hips basically." And so that didn't work. And so in the fall of 2016, I had one in my right hip. They didn't actually have to do a full replacement. There's a thing called a resurfacing put a, you've got the ball in the cap and, or socket, ball and socket, and they put a cap on the ball and a matching cup in the socket. But still, it's like titanium, you know, setting off metal detectors and stuff like that. So they did that on my right hip, and then my left hip was done the beginning of 2017. And after that, I, yeah, I got, I was kind of saying, okay, if I can run five or six miles three days a week, I'll be completely happy. And I got pretty quickly got back to being able to do that. But one of my hips still hurt. And so from 2017 till like April of this year, that was all I was running, five or six miles, three days a week. So when I heard about the Troutman, looked it up and started doing the math, it's like, well, I could power walk a lot. if I was really smart about my fishing and really efficient, I could like power walk a lot of it, run some flats and downhills, and I could definitely get it done. And then I started really thinking about, so I started running more, like immediately after I heard your podcast, I like jumped to eight miles. And figured out it was, the thing that was really hurting me was my piriformis, that piriformis syndrome, which I don't know, it's a muscle that goes across your butt, And when you move your leg sideways, it engages, which isn't a big deal, but your sciatic nerve either abuts it or sometimes goes through it. So when it becomes inflamed, it's like you have sciatica. So I started aggressively addressing that and running more. And so I got, I still slow, but, and I still would stop every few miles and stretch out my piriformis. But I got up to, so my longest runs were like 20 miles. super slow, but I would stack, on the weekends, I would stack, like on Saturday, I would go hike 17 miles and stop and fish two or three streams. And then Sunday, run 20. My dog, my dog was hung in there with me the whole, all the way through. He was putting in the longest weeks for like 38 miles of running and 18 miles of hiking. He didn't do the hiking with me, but he was there for the runs. So it was cool. It all was like falling into place. And then I had to think about, I ended up carrying everything in a, like one of the bigger camelbacks. I swapped a hundred ounce bladder for a 50 ounce bladder 'cause the area I was in had tons of water and just put all the food I needed for the day in that, plus gels and stuff like that. And then I took a six and a half foot three weight rod, which was kind of small and light. It sounds counterintuitive, but small and light with the smallest reel I could find. I was able to pull it apart, but not take the line out or take the fly off and just kind of collapse it all together and it fit in, there's like a side, almost like a water bottle pocket on the camelback. So it would slide right in there with the reel on it. And then there's a clip on the top that would hold all the line and the pieces of the rod together. So I could run with it and it worked great. The rod was a, I actually built the rod on a Sage Dart blank. A Sage Dart is like a super fast action, small stream rod, which also kind of counter to what you normally see. So I could, even though it was only six and a half feet, I could cast it pretty far, I mean, plenty far enough for where I was. So it worked great. The trails were rockier than I thought. I ran, I was running in running shoes, trail running shoes. I have a really wide foot, so I left my shoe, I always leave my shoes like a little bit loose and on the uneven terrain, my feet were sliding around more than I realized. So the last four miles I had, I was just taking Advil and those caffeinated cliff shots. So I had these huge blisters on like the forefoot both feet which my when I got back to camp yeah we were like 14 miles from the road where we're camp so because we kind of packed in 14 miles and my buddies Jean and Jeff got to pop blisters on the bottom of my feet for two days before we hiked out tape them up.
Katie
Did they do it too? I know that the trout man you're supposed to do in like you know a group but that doesn't mean everyone's actually doing a trout man it just means that you know you have someone there for safety like did your friends also complete the trout man challenge or were Are they just there for support?
Palmer
No, no, they were, they were, they actually went fishing while I was doing the Troutman. They wished me well and I thought they'd be back at camp when I got back. It took me like 10 hours and for anyone who doesn't know that, so the Troutman, you have to run a trail marathon with at least 3,000 feet of elevation gain, totally self-supported and along the way you have to catch four different species of fish. And you've got 12 hours to do it.
Katie
You forgot one of the most important parts.
Palmer
Oh, the beer at the end?
Katie
Yeah.
Palmer
So I got a couple waivers. So I got a waiver on being allowed to do it on my own. And then I got a waiver on, I drank but not like a lot. And at that elevation, I got them to sign off and I ate like a bag of 15 mini donuts a quart of powdered milk.
Katie
Oh, God. That sounds way worse.
Palmer
Yeah, that's what they thought. That's what Andrew thought. So I got a waiver on that. But I came in, it's funny, you come to the finish and for an Ironman, they're like, "Palmer Henson, you are an Ironman," or you finish like a Tough Mudder, "You are one Tough Mudder." there's you know just like I actually caught the golden at the very end and took a picture of it let it go and hit stop on my watch and it's like stand there by myself inside of this stream and then like limp over to where we're camped and the other two guys showed up right about then there's this other couple to shout out to Mike and Ellen you know you are Colorado couple that an older couple that we ran into out there and hung out with a lot. But that was it. That was my trout man. I got super efficient. My brook trout from when I took my pack off to when I was, you know, putting it back on again after disassembling the rod again, everything took six minutes. My rainbow turnaround time was ten minutes, but I also refilled my water bladder on my pack. I used those aqua tabs instead of pumping to purify the water. Cutthroat was probably about 10 or 12 minutes also, not including the, obviously I was able to run over that half mile to get to where it was. And then the golden, I'd actually caught a golden sort of like as I was getting ready to start, my team and Jeff were like hanging out with me and I was like, I'll just tack on another, like my second cast, Catch a Golden, and I was like, "I'll just tack on 10 minutes at the end." But then I started feeling bad about that. So when I finished, I actually like recaught a golden before I stopped the watch, so to make it a little more legit. Anyway, that's it. Andrew told me I've got the designation of the OKF oldest known trout man.
Katie
Oh, wow. That's quite the prestigious honor.
Palmer
Exactly, exactly.
Katie
What was your total time on the Troutman? Because I feel like you, the way you're describing your fish, they were pretty quick. And a lot of people struggle, it sounds like, with the fishing, because you can't really guarantee anything. And if you go to a place that has multiple species, you might be there for an hour trying to get the one brown trout that's in there trying to fight off all the rainbows. So what was your total time? And did you feel like it went pretty efficiently?
Palmer
Yeah. So it was, so there's a little more to the story too that I'll tell you. So my total time was 10 hours and four minutes. You know, and the reason I got there was because I was super efficient on the fishing as I've mentioned. So the, I did it last Wednesday. And the Tuesday before I was, my dog Hobbs and I were out for a run and we oftentimes will run at a track where I'll stop every lap or so and do either some pull-ups or push-ups or something like that. So I did a set of push-ups and I was getting up and I did something to my right leg and like popped something. So I stood up and Hobbs, as I stood up like starts running and I'm not following him and he stops and looks back and kind of like, "What the hell, let's go." And I couldn't run at all. I could limp, I could barely walk. And this was like eight days before I was supposed to do it.
Katie
Oh no.
Palmer
So Hobbes came back and he just kept looking at me and he knew something was seriously wrong. And so it limped, it was like three quarters of a mile back home, kind of limped home. and didn't do anything the next day and did like an easy spin bike workout the next. And then we flew out to Salt Lake and drove up to Wyoming. And by Saturday, I could walk okay. And it got a little bit better each day, but I still couldn't run great even, you know, by Wednesday morning when I was gonna do it, I was okay on the flats and kind of okay downhill, but was being really careful. So the fact that I was so efficient on the fishing, I could, as I mentioned, I could just like power walk hard. I mean, I had two trekking poles. I was walking a little over three miles an hour. So when you average in the fishing and refilling the water bladder and stuff like that, I came in like right around a little better than I don't know, 2.6, 2.7 miles an hour overall. And that terrain, it's like super hard terrain to, I mean, if you were just like normal hiking it, you'd be lucky to do two miles an hour or so. And I had a heart rate monitor on my watch and it would, on the uphills, it was still hitting like 140 or 140 plus. But anyway, that's kind of the, I didn't really run very much, just power walked hard and was super efficient. But you're right, I mean, that's one of the challenges of the Troutman is you could, everything could line up and you could not catch that brown trout. All the work I did ahead of time, searching out the fish, paid off, and I was in a super fishy area. Two days before the trout man, I probably caught 25 goldens, caught as many rainbows as I wanted, where I was gonna catch a rainbow, caught tons of cutthroats. I mean, there's a lot of fish, and they all would hit like a 14-parachute Adams.
Katie
That's the nice thing about the backcountry fish, Like if you can find them, they're not usually too hard to catch at least.
Palmer
Yeah, yeah. The last one, the golden I got on a, like a 14 Chubby Chernobyl. I tie them with like just one wing so they're a little smaller, but it just crushed them. It was, that part was awesome. The only thing that didn't go right was the blisters the last, you know, four miles or whatever, but everything else was, went great.
Katie
Now I have to ask, do you have another one in your future, do you think? Do you have like an East Coast one, like a Georgia mountain stream one?
Palmer
I don't know. I probably not, but I probably will do a triathlon. There's one in North Carolina next year. I might do one. The trick with the East Coast is, since there are only three species of trout on the East Coast, you have to add like a smallmouth bass or something, and they live in pretty different areas. It'd be pretty contrived. you'd end up, you'd almost end up having to run on some roads and things for a lot of it. It wouldn't be like a true trail experience.
Katie
Yeah, I was kind of wondering about that because I think in the instructions it does specify that it has to be for salmonid species, but I can't imagine that there wouldn't be some exceptions for people who live in places that don't have for salmonid species. The same way that you need to drink a 12% beer, but obviously you can replace it with something far worse, like a bag of donuts.
Palmer
Far worse, yeah.
Katie
I have to assume that they would make an exception if you catch three trout species and one of any other kind of fish. Like you said, if those trout are all in the mountains, then you might be stuck having to do it right on the edge of the mountains, which might be hard to straddle and actually get all four of them, since that one would be in a much different environment.
Palmer
Yeah, it would be pretty... There's somewhere on the website where it says they're trying to figure out an East Coast solution, which would include some other sort of game fish. But again, I think it'd be pretty - I mean, the problem with running and fishing out here is you end up - unless you have a forest service road that's closed, a lot of places you can just get to more easily. You just drive up really close to them. So it feels a little contrived. It feels like you're forcing it. It's still, I mean those training runs or hikes I was doing where I was hiking, you know, 17, 18 miles and fishing along the way, those actually were really, really fun. So I don't know. I'm not committing to another one, but I might.
Katie
I've been wondering what their explanation would be for some of the longer ones. Have you seen the longer ones that they have now, like the old trout and I think they've got a fin sanity now that's like 100 miles. Have you seen those on their website?
Palmer
Yeah, and Andrew emailed and said he was going to- it's like early September. They're going to try the all trout. And I think the fifth there might not be a trout. It might be something different.
Katie
That's what I was wondering, because the long one, the 100 miler, I think requires 10 species of fish. Because there's one guy in the group who is crazy and has done all of the previous challenges they've thrown at him. And so they threw this one at him, which is the 100 miles, 10 fish. I don't even know what the- I feel like the beer is bordering on wine at that point and something like 10,000 feet of elevation gain. And I'm like, there aren't 10 species of trout to catch around here. So that one has to be opened up to other species. But at that point, you've got to catch four or five different types of trout. And I feel like a bluegill and bass and a pike. And to find 10 species of fish all in a little area you can run seems like the hardest part of the whole thing.
Palmer
Yeah, that would be really hard. Even 5 is really hard, I think.
Katie
Yeah, yeah, I think 5 is kind of the upper limit before it starts to get pretty challenging, at least out here. You know, we could potentially throw in like a grayling or a golden or something like that to get that 5th.
Palmer
Yeah, I was going to say, because you have, I know you've got grayling in Colorado, or not grayling, no, golden's in Colorado, so you could
Katie
Well, both of them.
Palmer
You could definitely… oh you do.
Katie
yeah
Palmer
Ok there you go.
Katie
Yeah, yeah, graylings aren't too hard if you know where to look. So that, I guess that could get you five or six depending on how many you need. But yeah, that's, that's a tall order. Tell me about your flyathon plans. You said that you're going to maybe do the North Carolina one. Are we going to end up having to donate to each other's next year?
Palmer
Maybe, yeah. They're, coincidentally, we've got a good friend who's got a house in Salida. So I don't think they've published the dates yet, but I've got a place to stay, so I'll probably go do it. And I don't even know how, how does it work from a time stamp standpoint? You've got your six or seven mile run, and then do you get time deducted if you, or your time gets reduced based on how many fish you catch?
Katie
It's not based on how many. You can submit one fish at the end, one fish of your choice. You can catch as many as you want and then you can submit whichever one you want. And you get a time deduction based on the length of that one submitted fish. And I don't, that might vary per race. I think for the one I do, it's like three minutes per full inch or something like that, that you get deducted off your time. And if you don't catch a fish, it's like a major time penalty. And the one I do, the fishing's pretty easy. Like I think this year every single person caught a fish, so that one's not too bad. The other one I used to do, it was definitely not guaranteed that you could catch a fish. It was a much harder river to fish. And there'd be years that a quarter of the people to half the people wouldn't get one. So they'd have a time penalty. But yeah, it's usually a time off per inch from your race time. And you don't have to drink a beer during that event, because that is an actual existing event on Forest Service land. So I think they can't require you to drink anything. But it's just highly encouraged that you take a swig of whiskey at the halfway point or chug a beer or something, but it's not actually part of your race time like it is in the Troutman.
Palmer
There you go. Well, I'll be looking forward to the one in North Carolina next year.
Katie
When is it?
Palmer
It's either April or May. They don't have a date for it. I actually, when I heard about the Troutman, I looked on their website and saw it, and I'd been up there like two weeks before and I just missed, I didn't even know about it until I looked on the website and I had already missed it. But sometime in the spring, it's a great area. It'll be three hours from Atlanta, something like that.
Katie
Yeah, it's cool that they've got these popping up. I don't want to say anything for sure yet, but I want to say I heard that they're looking into doing another one kind of in the East Midwest. And I don't know anything for sure, so I'm not going to say too much, but I think they other areas in the works and I think it's really cool and that one at least I think is not gonna be trout focused it's going to be bass focused so that'll be kind of a fun a fun thing to see how that turns out.
Palmer
Fun change I love it.
Katie
Well Palmer I will let you get going I know it's a little bit later for you over there but as always it was fun catching up and hearing about your brook trout progress I'm sure we will do this again in the next year or two to hear more and you know especially if you do a Flyathlon maybe that'd be another good time to check back in after after you finish that we can hear how that goes here how brook trout are going and just thankful for all you're doing out there for the native trout in Georgia.
Palmer
If everything falls in place we'll have a lot of sample results by the time I do a Flyathlon so yeah we'll do it.
Katie
Perfect. All right Palmer well thank you so much as always I appreciate it and I hope you have a great night.
Palmer
Thanks for having me on and you as well.
Katie
All right that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening if you want to find all 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 @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
Note:
These transcripts were created using AI to help make the podcast more accessible to all listeners, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or anyone who prefers to read rather than listen.
While I’ve reviewed each transcript to correct obvious errors, they may not be 100% accurate. In particular, moments with overlapping speech or unclear audio may not be transcribed word-for-word. However, every effort has been made to ensure that the core content and meaning are accurately represented.
Thank you for your understanding, and I hope these transcripts help you enjoy the podcast in the way that works best for you.