Ep 153: Fishing Every Day for a Year, with Steve Veals
Steve Veals did something very few anglers have likely ever done: he fished every day for 365 days straight. In this episode, Steve tells me about how the idea came to be, what his stipulations were, the challenges and surprises he encountered along the way, and what his life has been like since finishing the challenge.
Website: www.stephenveals.com
Instagram: @steve_the_cholo
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Intro
You’re listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 153 with Steve Veals on fishing every day for a year.
Katie
Well, I start every episode by getting a background on my guests and how they got into the outdoors and into fly fishing. So tell me how you got started before we get into the fishing every day for a year.
Steve
So I got started fly fishing probably when I was 10 years old, 11 years old. up doing the bait casting, spin casting with my dad. It was kind of, this is like mid-90s, so growing up there wasn't a lot of resources on how to fly fish. I joke about this, but it's kind of true. You kind of had to have a wealthy doctor friend or a lawyer friend that could show you the ropes. Maybe you could get a book from the library, but it was really inaccessible. I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so there's also not a lot of water around either. It took hours and hours to drive to big reservoirs. So once my dad would set us up with a rod and a couple buckets of worms, he would just go and grab his fly rod. And we're sitting there for hours waiting for hits on our lines. And meanwhile, we're looking over our shoulder and watching his line just get blown up with dry fly eats. And I remember just even at 10 years old, seeing that excitement of just that explosion of the take and thinking, "What am I doing holding this rod? I want to fly fish." And so my dad would slowly take us on more and more trips after school. We fished the Pecos River, which is outside of Santa Fe where I grew up. And that was the first time I ever had a fish on a fly rod on a dry fly. So my dad was over the moon, excited, you know, just cheering me on. And I think that really just unlocked a core memory and moment. And I thought, this is it. Like I'm never going to spin cast fish again, you know.
Katie
And was that trout fishing in the Pecos or what kind of species were in there?
Steve
Yeah. guess species in quotes yeah stocked rainbow trout okay I think historically maybe they had you know real grand cutthroat I'm not quite sure on the exact biology of the ecosystem but yeah it was it got hit pretty hard by the locals there so you had to kind of go in spurts and see if you could find a few rising fish.
Katie
You mentioned before we started talking that you spent some time up here in Colorado and you're now in Idaho were any of these fishing related or did you move different places for different reasons? And it seems like you're still in good fishing spots this whole time, but was fishing a part of that movement, North?
Steve
I would say it was... My dad moved us around a lot growing up, so I was actually born in Phoenix, Arizona, which is my dirty secret. I don't like to tell people that. So I lived there until I was about two and a half, three. We moved to Tucson, Arizona. From there, I lived there until I was about four, four and a half. We moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. And really my formidable years were in New Mexico growing up, um, doing the high desert fly fishing. Um, my dad was really good about getting us out backpacking and trying to find high mountain lakes, even in New Mexico. So that really solidified that love of fly fishing. Um, but then we moved halfway through high school to Durango, Colorado, which I was just floored when I arrived there. You know, I had no friends. You have like an awkward face full of braces and you're just hating life in high school. But fly fishing and the outdoors was really my outlet to get away from all that. Um, you know, bullying and things like that. So I really latched onto it and just continued to fly fish. Even on my own, we had the Animas river going right through town. So we were fortunate enough to have public school classes where there was a fly fishing class, you know, and like you learned how to tie flies, you learned how to nymph and, you know, fish to rising trout, and we would go fish the San Juan River down in New Mexico. So that was just huge. But I joke, I joke about it, but we basically like we're rounding the four corner states. And then when I met my ex-wife, we actually moved from Fort Collins, Colorado to Idaho to support her career. And so, yeah, I've been in Idaho since 2016.
Katie
So this would be a good time to transition into why I reached out to you and what you've become semi-famous for at this point, which is that you fished every day for a year. And I really want to kind of hear the origin of this and obviously go through the logistics and what happened. But how did this come about? How does someone decide that they're going to fish every day for a year?
Steve
That's a great question. I would say, like most great things, it starts off with a bet, you know, and kind of giving your fishing buddies a hard time. This was, gosh, it would have been, I want to say December of 2017. My best friend here in Boise, Fred Simpson, he's a Boise native, local fly fisherman, a legend in his own right. And him and I were talking after a day of really cold winter fishing, you know, we had the frozen waders and whatnot. And he was basically saying, I'm going to get, you know, over 75 days on the water in 2018. And I looked at him and I know he's like trying to start a family at the time. And I was like, I could beat that. Like I'll have that beat by March, you know? And we just kind of looked at each other like 75 days, huh? Okay. Those are like kind of rookie numbers, you know, like we could pad those stats. So when January 1st hit, I was on the water. January 2nd, I was on the water. Like frozen islets, frozen waders, just hating life. But we have a tailwater in town, so it's super accessible to just keep fishing all year round. And by the time the end of February hit, he was like, you prove your point, man. Like, you know, what do you want? Like, here's a beer. Like, we're celebrating the fact that you're already going for my record. And he's like, are you gonna stop? And I just looked at him like, no, I'm gonna keep going, you know, 'cause the hardest part is starting a habit, but once you're in it, like, I was just super locked in and wanted to keep going. And it really got going kind of seasonally too. So like runoff started to happen. And I always kind of knew there were like weak parts of my fly fishing game where I thought, I'm not really good at high water fishing. I'm pretty piss poor when it comes to throwing streamers at the time. Like I want to get better at this part. And so I think deep down inside, I use it as like, I'm gonna mentally just work on different parts of fly fishing, you know, the still water on big reservoirs, the throwing streamers, you know, fishing for bass and pan fish, you know, on a fly rod, those kinds of things. So I'm big on personal integrity. And I kind of told Fred like, hey, hold me accountable, but I'm gonna fish a minimum of 15 minutes a day. But everyone knows once you're out on the water, it's so easy to just keep going for hours. And there were only maybe like 30 out of the 40 days where I could only fish like 15 minutes. And I was able to check that box because sometimes I would start fishing at 11.30 PM, check off that day's fishing, and I would fish into like 12.30 in the morning of the next day. So I was able to like kind of knock off two days right in like one fell swoop. And it worked a lot because I was traveling a lot as a freelance cinematographer. So I had a lot of shoots like in California, Colorado. And so I would have to like, you know, plan ahead, fish these two days, knowing like the first few days of a video shoot are kind of hectic. And so I could already check that off, you know, late at night or early in the morning. And that was like kind of how I was able to keep it going. But then it just became like a big joke to like, even the people I was working with, they're like, "All right, we gotta stop the video shoot "so Steve can go get his fishing in." And people just rallied behind it and it just got bigger and bigger out of just a bet stream side with my buddy Fred.
Katie
That is crazy. And hearing that you were traveling at the time makes it even crazier to me 'cause on one hand, you're like, okay, if you're a freelancer, you might have a slightly more flexible schedule than the average person, but at the same time, there's something that's nice about having a rigid schedule that you're like, "Oh, I pass by the stream every day on the way home from work, so every day I stop for 15 minutes." And it's kind of easy to get in that rhythm and just consider it a part of your daily routine. But if you're traveling, like I do a lot of traveling for work in the summer and I do fit in fishing, but it's sometimes pretty hard, especially after a long day of work, to be like, "I don't even know where to go around here. I'm new. I have no idea where the public land is. You have to pack your gear." So what was that like trying to fit it in? I mean, you mentioned it a little bit, that people kind of rallied behind you, but was one of the more challenging parts?
Steve
It was super stressful, I'm not gonna lie. Like, there was a trip in there where my ex-wife and I went to Europe at the time, and so I brought my fly rod on board the plane 'cause I didn't trust the luggage system and like, oh, bags are gonna get lost. I had like a pocket full of streamers on me at all time when I was on the plane, and I would literally fish like an hour before our flight, you know, go like night fishing, basically at like four in the morning, go throw some streamers, run to the airport, and after I had fished, I would start a stopwatch. Since I was going over time zones, I knew that once I hit 24 hours and if I wasn't able to escape an airport or a layover or whatever, basically the challenge was over. The travel days, and especially the international travel days, were the most stressful. There were other things that happened in there that I couldn't have foreseen when I started the challenge. My father-in-law actually passed away during this challenge, and so I felt really, really awful going fishing on the day of his funeral. My mother-in-law at the time and my ex-wife, they were really supportive, and they said, "No, you've got to do it. John would like this. He's looking down on you. You've got to keep the challenge going." At this point, it was already maybe 175 days in. That was amazing because I was on Boulder Creek in Boulder, Colorado and still caught probably 30 or 40 fish that day. It was just a cool sort of semi-nod from him looking down like, "I got you. This is going to be a great fishing day. Don't worry about the funeral. Just show up on time. Support my daughter," all those things. It was cool because him and I shared some cool moments on the river where I taught him how to fly fish even when he was going through chemo. I think had we not shared that experience, I probably would have ended the challenge right there at the funeral. So yeah, I think to answer your question, logistically, it was very challenging. When you're traveling for freelance, that client is paying your mortgage that month, so you have to listen to them. I think in the industry I'm in, people want to just hang out with cool people. They're basically hiring you because hopefully you're good at what you do, but also they just want to have a good time on set. They want to shoot the shit with somebody who's going to have fun with them after the shoot, go out for drinks, and just show up on time and prepared for the next shoot. They knew that fishing was part of the package deal, so they really rallied behind it too, which was neat. family did, my grandmother did. There were times when I would run out of an Easter barbecue, that kind of thing. Family dinners on Christmas and Thanksgiving, of course. I was like, "I got to get my nighttime session in." It just got wildly out of hand.
Katie
Yeah, I think it might be a requirement at my funeral that everyone has to go fishing that day before they come attend.
Steve
You already know the answer if you don't ask. You know, it's no, so you got to put that request in ahead of time. I like that.
Katie
A question about like your stipulations. I know you said that you kind of wanted to have like a personal integrity about it. And so you had stipulations like you have to fish for 15 minutes at least, things like that. And I read in your bio that it, you know, it had to be a real fishing experience. Like you can't go cast a line into a swimming pool and count that. Like there has to be fish there. But I do wonder how much do you have to try to actually catch the fish? And I understand that the part of the hard part is just getting there and getting out. Once you're there, like there's no reason not to actually try to catch a fish. But you could also easily go out, throw on the first fly you pull out of your box, like haphazardly throw it out in the in the stream for 15 minutes, then pulled in and hightail it out of there. So like, how how engaged were you? Were there any days that you were like, I just need to check this box, I'm just gonna like throw something out there and not really try? Or were you were you pretty much like on it while you were going after it?
Steve
That's a great question. I would say a mix of both, right? There's some days where it just was not convenient to go fishing, you know, like you're stressed, you're exhausted from travel, you've got like a family emergency to deal with obviously, and so I would be lying if I told you like, oh, it was easy, you know, and I just like gave it 100% when I was out on the water. Like there is times where I'm just like exhausted, it's one in the morning, I'm trying to just slap streamers out there, stripping things across the river, and all of a sudden sometimes a fish would take it, you know? And in this challenge, I caught one of the biggest brown trout of my life was just by not having a lot of time. You know, it's Halloween night. I'm supposed to be already dressed and show up for my ex-wife's Halloween party at her office. And it was just like kind of a joke, you know, like I have 40 minutes to get this fishing done. And I'm fishing with my buddy, Fred. He already had fished this stretch of river. So I'm fishing, you know, quote unquote, his trash water. And I threw a big five inch streamer out there, started stripping it back. And at the time it was a 24 and a half inch brown, the biggest brown I'd ever caught, 10 minutes from my house, you know, downtown Boise. And I just flipped out, you know? And so I kind of had tons of little moments like that throughout this challenge where I knew that if I was rushed and stressed, sometimes if I wasn't paying attention, that's when I would have the take of a lifetime, you know, where it just spools you at night and your eyes get super dilated, you're like, what could have been had I landed that? So I think a few moments like that early on in the challenge really kept me focused on it. Like the hardest part is getting to the water, but once I'm on the water, like I wanna be focused because I could have a fish of a lifetime. And by fishing every single day, I gave myself probably 20 quote unquote fishes of a lifetime moments. I didn't land them all obviously, but I had those enough chances where I was able to keep failing each day and I would go back and try a different pattern or a different stretch of river and sometimes it paid huge dividends. It kept me focused.
Katie
I could see one of the biggest benefits to doing something like this is I'm sure you learned a thousand times more than you had known beforehand because you're going to be forced to fish in a lot of situations that you wouldn't normally go to. I go places that are convenient and sound fun to me. But those places are often not challenging. I go there because I'm like, oh, I usually catch a lot of fish there when I go or whatever. But if I had to fish for 15 minutes every day, I'd be like, I don't know, there's a little ditch by the road. Like, I guess I'll go cast into that. And you might discover something like, oh, shit, there's a big fish in here or whatever. Or you have to try a new technique or something like that. So I'm sure that the learning aspect was probably a big part of it.
Steve
Yeah, you're absolutely right. When you're traveling to Southern Arizona, it's like, OK, well, we've got carp in golf course ponds at night. We have maybe some largemouth bass in a retiree community. We've got some other miscellaneous panfish that we can go for. So it allowed me to target different species too. And I did a video shoot in Napa, California. And at the time, they had striped bass running up the Napa River from I think it's San Francisco Bay. I don't have a map in front of me, but it was all this kind of interconnected ecosystem and so I talked to the local fly shop and they're like, "Throw some clouser minnows, if you got those." They were just, once they heard about my challenge, they were trying to help me out as best they could. And so I'm in wine country with, at the time, wearing like spary top siders trying to look like some big wig behind a camera. And I'm out there wading through tidal flat kind of mud and just ruining my pants, ruining my shoes, and just sitting out there at night like, what am I doing? This is crazy. I don't even know why this challenge has gotten so out of hand. So it allowed me to target new species and then take some notes on that and just go, oh, well I didn't really know how to target an ocean running fish before, so now I know. I'd never caught a steelhead before this challenge. Granted it was a stocked one, but completely by accident, hooked a nice 21 inch steelhead in downtown Boise. So it really pushed me as an angler and allowed me to kind of look at a game and fish, those like infographics showing which fish are in your state and just kind of go through the list and be like, let's try a lake trout on a fly. Like let's try a golden trout and just go down the list methodically.
Katie
Was there ever a risk of you not getting your fishing in that day? I know you mentioned things like the funeral and international flights, but was there ever a time that you got called for work and you're just like, there's no water around where I have to be working? Or were there days where you're like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get it in today?
Steve
Yes. There were just times where golf courses absolutely saved me. I would call the pro shop and tell them like, hey, this is what I'm trying to do. can I fish your golf course at night or way early in the morning before you have people teeing off?" Usually they were like, "If you're on day number 230, who are we to ruin that streak?" Shout out to random pro shops. I was in Norway with my ex-wife and we were trying to catch a flight from Oslo to go back to the States. There was just a random perch pond on the side of a busy highway that was in a city Park and I saw a couple old guys fishing there and I was like, "That's the spot. This is what's going to save it." We had an hour and a half before an international flight and going through customs, which is always stressful. There were just moments where I was like, "Thank God. This random little piece of water saved me." I would try to plan out ahead of time with game and fish planners in certain states. Then knowing if I was going to be near the ocean, that helped a lot too. In Europe, there's a lot of big major rivers that they still use as waterways for transportation, barges, canals, things like that. I knew that there were at least going to be bass in there, some kind of warm water species. That helped a lot, but it is absolutely stressful. There are so many moments, probably 15 or 20, where it could have ruined it outright.
Katie
Was there any part of you that was ever hoping it did just end so you didn't have to keep going?
Steve
Yes. There were so many times where it would just be so cold outside, 10, 15 degrees, winds howling, and you're sitting on the couch, it's 10 o'clock at night, the sun sets already at 4 o'clock here in the wintertime, and you're just sitting there so comfy and the heat's on in the house, and you got your slippers on, you're like, "I have to get up now and go fishing, and I really don't want to go fishing." As someone who loves fly fishing, it was hard to reconcile that and say, "Yeah, I hate fishing in this moment, but it was maybe like 30 or 40 times out of the whole year where I was just over it and I thought, "I'm just checking a box here," you know? And randomly on Christmas, it was either Christmas Eve or the night of Christmas where I went out and I was like really tired, really cold, really exhausted, you know, tired of like being around family all day. And I hooked like a 21-inch brown, you know, at night stripping streamers. I'm like, "This is why we do the challenge." The fish always can convince you that it's worth it again.
Katie
I don't know if you thought this far ahead, but if you had failed for whatever reason, did you have a plan where like, "Okay, I would pick it back up and start over again," or was this kind of like a one and done, like, "I'm going to see how long I can stick this out and if it doesn't work out, then maybe it wasn't in the cards"?
Steve
That's a great question. There were times I thought about like what would failure look like and I probably wouldn't have hyped it as much to friends and family I would have just kind of slowly let it die off and if someone brought it up at a dinner conversation I go. Oh, yeah, you know, we got 180 days out on the water, you know, maybe next year but I think having the support of friends and family like it just is that extra push that gets you out on the water and Once you have that momentum rolling and the local fly shop is asking about how you're doing You know your employers asking how you're doing with the challenge Like there was a lot of people that had like a horse in this race, you know, I really wanted to see it win. So Yeah, I kind of took all that enthusiasm momentum on my shoulders when I was out there fishing to keep it going
Katie
Yeah I think if I did something like that I would have to tell like as many people as possible because I'm like I can't let that many people I can't I can't face that many people and tell them I failed. So I'd have to just like stack them up.
Steve
They will keep you accountable, you know, like especially a fishing buddy that like is there's always just a mild undercurrent of fierce competition, you know, you'll never say it but...
Katie
They're just waiting to give you shit.
Steve
Yeah, they will keep you honest and keep you fishing for sure.
Katie
Well, I wanted to move on a little bit just because I sent out this bio to you and I thought we were gonna talk mostly about this challenge but then you brought up so much other stuff that like since then that I was like, how could the bigger story be after the year of fishing? So I'll let you take it away because it sounds like there's a lot to cover. And I think you'd be best to deliver it. So I will let you just take it away. What happened after the challenge?
Steve
Absolutely. So challenge ended January 1st, 2019. Of course, as we all know, the pandemic you know, started. Everybody was locked indoors, you know, we're all trying to quarantine super hard. And so at the time, you know, my wife and I, we were of course, like any other family, just trying to survive and like, you know, help each other out, help the neighbors out. But I think being with each other 24/7, you know, for months at a time really started to like grind us down in our marriage. And so we ultimately ended up getting a divorce way through COVID in 2021. And so that was tough because obviously, like, there's the layers of divorce is really tough. Starting out on your own is really tough again. But in this whole fishing challenge, the biggest kind of like headline that got captured from this whole challenge, you know, from the local newspaper, from podcasts that I was on, from like country music radio stations reaching out, even backcountry hunters and anglers, a lot of the stories that were written kind of started off with like, here's this guy that fished every single day and he's still married, dot, dot, dot. And so if you still Google me now, it comes up as like, married man, fished for 365 days, still married. And now that I've been divorced for a couple of years now, I'll inevitably match with someone on a dating app and the gal will look me up, right? Do your due diligence, like who's taking me out for drinks? Who's taking me out for a hike? And they come back with like, I'm seeing a huge red flag here. It says you're still married. And it's almost like I need to like put out like a rebuttal statement or like, ask Google to take down webpages. I don't know how that whole process works with the internet. I'm just one man against like 10 pages of search results, but it's like really messed with my social life, you know? And a lot of people have kind of like laughed about that, like, "Oh, yeah, well, he couldn't stay married even after the fishing challenge, you know, there's no hope for the rest of us." So, yeah, I think that stereotype of like, you know, the married guy still out there fishing, like he's got that supportive wife, that unfortunately didn't hold up, you know? So that has changed since the challenge.
Katie
But it wasn't because of the fishing, right?
Steve
Yeah.
Katie
Yes, it didn't work out. But the fact that you stayed married during the fishing challenge still stands. Like, fishing wasn't what got you divorced. So it's still a little misleading, I feel like, to claim that, oh, after all, you can't fish every day for a year and remain married.
Steve
Absolutely. Yeah, we did go our separate ways. We were two very different people. And it was tough because I think in a marriage, like if you don't have the same love languages, that can be really tough. It's like sometimes like ships passing in the night where I'm super high on like acts of service, physical touch, quality time. And my ex-wife was a lot more like very gift centric, and really received love and gave love through gifts. So that was really tough for me 'cause at the end of the day, I'm just a dirtbag hippie, you know, like I love to just, I've got the '03 Toyota Tacoma, it's gonna run 'til I'm 80 years old. I've got the fly rod in the back of my truck all the time. There's always sand on my floor mats from all my waders and like wet waiting and stuff. And it just piles up to inches at a time of just like river debris. So that's kind of who I am at the core. And I was married to somebody that I think started off really liking the outdoors and, you know, liking these backpacking trips and the fly fishing experience. And then slowly grew out of that, which I get. It's fine. People go their separate ways. But we realized that we were growing apart in that relationship. And unfortunately, she ultimately had an affair. And so I had to deal with that. And I basically realized I no longer want to be in this marriage. and I've got to heal on my own. I've got to try and shield my feelings and realize that if this person doesn't want to be with me, that's okay. Obviously, there was a lot of therapy involved in processing what had happened and the shock of this. All of a sudden, your best friend of five years, and we were together for seven total, is just gone, out of your life and doesn't want to be a part of your life anymore. So I think that was really tough because she was a very big champion of the 365 challenge and even went so far as to make me a trophy, which I still have as a divorce relic. It's sitting behind me here at my desk, but it says, you know, Stephen Beals completed 365 days of fishing and she's got the dates on it. It's got a trout, you know, jumping out of the water. And I still look at that as like, it was a cool marriage, you know, and we did have great moments, you know, it's not to like, paint it all with a broad stroke and a, you know, broad brush and say, like, this was absolutely a failure. The fishing challenge is also what pushed it in this direction towards divorce, you know, so like most things, you know, like fishing is always in your life. Sometimes it takes a backseat, but there were times where it was front and centered like the fishing challenge And people were there rooting me on including my ex-wife, you know.
Katie
Do you think that it was doomed with before the the fishing challenge like you think that that's where it would have ultimately ended up and maybe maybe that like spurred things on at all or do you think that it was kind of completely unrelated?
Steve
That's a great question. I think I'm a super loyal person, you know, and I would look at that little, you know ring on my finger that little circle that says you got to ride this out no matter what and roll up your sleeves and even if you're arguing every day and having you know fights about money or finances and you know who saves more who spends more there was always kind of an undercurrent of that where Lifestyle wise and kind of life outlook wise we were mismatched You know, I grew up pretty solid middle-class, you know we would roll pennies nickels dimes quarters for years at a time with my dad on his Master bedroom floor and that's like what got us an Alaska trip, you know five years after we started rolling change you know back in the 90s rolling change was kind of The middle class way of like having a piggy bank and saving for these big excursions And those lessons really taught me, you know, delayed gratification and really appreciating these fishing trips. Whereas, you know, not to knock my ex-wife, but she grew up in a family where trips to Italy were done at the drop of a hat, you know, traveling to England was a yearly experience. You know, having the condo in Vail was a big time thing. You know, having the family RV where they could just do excursions, you know, whenever they wanted. And growing up in a town where, you know, just to survive, I think just an average home is like a million dollars now, you know? So it just was like two very mismatched people coming together and having some great years. You know, we had a lot of great experiences in the outdoors and the pets that she brought into my life, ultimately one of them became my fishing dog, my dog Zoni who passed away. But she was just always sitting by the riverbank cheering on any kind of dry fly strikes. She'd sit there and just whimper, you know, and I would show her the fish. She would of course try to bite them. We would tell her no, you know, let the fish go. The dog just looks at you like, "Are you serious right now? Like this is all my love and joy," and you just let it go.
Katie
Right. You had it right there in your hands.
Steve
Yeah. Yeah. So there were, to circle back to all that, there were just some great moments that I think marriage brought to me and really, I want to say, hopefully set me up for the next relationship, you know. I'm part of the practice marriage club as I like to call it.
Katie
There you go.
Steve
You know, rebranding.
Katie
And now can you just lay this all out on your dating profile and be like, "Hey, you're going to find headlines that say I'm still married. I can assure you I am not currently married." Just to like head it off at the pass? Or is that too much? Is that like over the top?
Steve
Yeah. No, I've not said that. I think I kind of let the conversation naturally flow and like, "Okay, you're divorced. Okay, I'm divorced. know, you know, would you like to go out for drinks? Here's a date in time. By the way, you know, here's my last name too. Here's my Instagram, you know, kind of offer up any kind of red flag material of like, you're gonna see a lot of fishing picks out there, you know, like, yeah, this is kind of par for the course if you do end up dating me. But no, I've not like warned him ahead of time, before even matching with somebody.
Katie
It is funny that the headlines ran with that because I, until we started talking, I didn't know that either. And I remember seeing that in whatever bio I read about you. It was like, they really wanted to highlight that you were still married, which I get, like the trope, you know, if you're going to go fishing every day for a year, you're, you know, you're good luck keeping your partner. But it is, it is interesting that that's like really what people locked in on. That's like the clickbaity headline.
Steve
It really is. Yeah. I mean, in journalism, like there's obviously like some low hanging fruit that's just like, "Okay, here's a good feel-good story. Kid from Idaho, goes fishing every day, still married. We all go home and walk off into the sunset together. What a great feel-good story." I think maybe half of the outlets ran with that side of it. A lot of other outlets allowed me to write my own piece and submit my own story. Then they published that as my own account, which was great. outlets went with, here's a guy who also used his 365 challenge to not only teach neighbors, friends, family members who didn't know about fly fishing but were fly curious. I used that challenge to really encourage people to get out on the water with me and just pass on on these skills that I was learning almost monthly. And I used it to kind of encourage other people in fishing forums of like, hey, I'm out on the Boise River every day. I'm seeing lots of trash out here, right? Like, and it's fishing related trash. I don't wanna point fingers, but like, could we all do a better job at taking care of our local river? Here's some of the fish that I've caught in this local river, just so you know. It's not just like a trash dump kind of canal. like this is a serious ecosystem. So a guy on the forum reached out and said, these are the kind of vibes we want here in Idaho, people who take this upon themselves, picking up trash. I think I hauled out one day 150 pounds of trash, like old sleeping bags that were waterlogged and tire chains and things like that, just really gross stuff that was just sitting in some of these holes in Idaho and downtown Boise. And this guy, Jim Swartz, he reached out and he said, "I've got a sturgeon pond. "I know you're a fly fisherman, but I think we could try it. "I've only had one other guy come out here with a fly rod "and he actually caught a sturgeon." He was all about brainstorming. He's like, "I got some ideas for the tackle you need. "We're gonna set you up with a tarpon shock line. "We're gonna set you up with 80-pound tests." I mean, he was all about it. And I think the daily passes there were like 30 or 40 bucks, you know, and he gave me two free ones. So I thought, you know, that's great. Like, thank you, man. I really appreciate it. I will be out there. I'm gonna take my uncle who's never sturgeon fished. I had never fished for sturgeon. And we were out there with, at the time, this was like way undergunned, but like we had like an eight weight at the time with like this heavy duty tackle, but the rod itself was destined to snap, you know, like it was just not set up for that. And we marinated some streamers in some of this guy's dead herring, just kind of sauce that he had in these jars, this really nasty stuff, and let it sit on the bottom and would occasionally just jig it up a little bit. And these sturgeon would come and just hoover it up. And the wildest part about a sturgeon set is it's not like a trout set. As soon as you see your line set, your lines start to move, in trout fishing, people just rip right up. That's like what you're taught. But with Sturgeon, he was almost like counting to three. Like we would just watch my line cruise around the pond. And I'm like, can I set yet? And just looking at this guy, Jim, and he's saying, just wait, wait, wait. And then he'd tell you, put the wood into him. And you would just like swing for the fence. And then this six and a half foot, almost seven foot long Sturgeon just takes off in the pond. And it's just like being tied to a jet ski. I mean, it's just cruising all over the place. It took hours to land, you know. My uncle and I are like handing off the fly rod, like drinking a beer on the side of this pond, you know, trying to just like have a moment. 'Cause we're just exhausted and this thing is kicking our ass. But we finally landed it and I've just never like gotten in murky water with what looks like a great white shark, you know. Like you know this thing's not gonna bite you but it has a massive amount of strength when it's over 110 pounds. And when you grab onto the tail of it, it can physically pull you in the water and drown you, like easily. So you have to like kind of grab it initially and then slowly roll it over. And it's wild, this six and a half foot long sturgeon just goes to sleep almost in your arms. Like it's just like kind of suspended there. And you gently remove the hook, kind of right it, and you're still keeping it wet in the water. Get like a slight little hoist out of the water to get a quick, you know, grip and grin photo. And when you let this thing go, it's just like a swirl of water and other sturgeon come up 'cause they're worried about this sturgeon, you know, like they all kind of look out for each other. So like their distress like brings in other sturgeon. And I just, I've like never would have had this experience had it not been for this 365 challenge, you know.
Katie
That's super cool. What do sturgeon normally eat?
Steve
I think they eat a lot of just like dead fish below dams. Like here in Idaho, they usually pool up behind all our hydroelectric power dams. So they're eating dead fish going through the turbines. And yeah, like basically kind of like, you know, what catfish are eating, you know, just kind of scrounging around on the bottom. Yeah, they're not really rising up or really coming up much off the surface of the river, off the bottom.
Katie
You didn't break your rod, did you?
Steve
So I put a ton of micro cracks into it and then I went streamer fishing like probably the next weekend and I hooked into like maybe a 20-inch rainbow and I had the fish on and the rod shattered in my face and like shot, you know, bits of graphite everywhere and I was just like, oh my gosh, like almost got me in the eyes, you know, like luckily I had my sunglasses on but it just blew up the rod, you know, just on like a regular fish. So I know it was from the stress of like a three-hour fight with a sturgeon on a fly rod.
Katie
I love that it survived the three-hour fight and then gave out the next time, but I guess way better than having it blow up on you at like hour 259, and then it blows up.
Steve
Yep. Yeah. Went into that experience so naive, probably should have a 12-weight rod. I mean, I'd never really fished for ocean species, so I'm thinking like, "Yeah, this will be fine. It's fresh water in Idaho. How bad could it be?" And these things get to be like 12 feet long, like it can get wildly out of hand.
Katie
I know that you mentioned in your bio ahead of time that one of the things you want to talk about was kind of like the mental health side and like connecting with other people as an adult with a life and you know, you're still trying to fish and find community. And that's a struggle. I kind of want to hear like how that ties into, you know, everything you went through after the 365 day challenge. Like obviously you were left kind of alone, not that you didn't have other people in your life, but you know, your marriage ends, and then at the same time, it sounds like people your age, who you have friendships with, are also, you know, they're kind of moving on with their lives and having families and things are busy. So like, how, you know, how did that work with you going through all that? And like, have you found a way to kind of connect with other people to build a community beyond that?
Steve
Yeah. Going through divorce was really tough. I think there's that initial rush of support from friends and family. And then people just their lives get busy, right? And you're still going through, you know, month after month of, you know, talking to lawyers, you know, going through settlement documents, things like that. So it does just get really exhausting. And I think there were moments where I realized like, okay, I'm at that point now in my mid 30s where people have already been married for a long time. They're coming up on almost 10-year anniversaries. They've got two kids. A lot of my friends are starting families or have started families. A lot of the people I used to fly fish are just busy. They can't make it out on the water like we used to, especially during the fly fishing 365 challenge. I've had to fish a lot by myself. I've had to try and just bring people up that were just, had casually mentioned at like a water cooler conversation at work, like I would love to fly fish someday. I'm like, let's go this weekend. And they're just blown away that like, really that's all it took to get me out fly fishing. So I've really tried to use the skills that I got from this challenge to help people out. I volunteer every year with Real Recovery And we take men with cancer out on the water, and some who've never fly fished at all, and we put them onto amazing, fine spotted, snake river cutthroat out here in Idaho. And these guys have an incredible three day retreat. And our job as volunteer guides is to give them an outlet. If they wanna talk about cancer, and the medical emergencies they've been going through, great. If they don't, we're also there to just be high fiving them giving them fist bumps, putting them on to awesome fish. And there's all these little moments in the truck where you're just inevitably driving from one fishing hole to the next, where you'll have a really tough guy. Maybe he's a rancher from rural Wyoming or Montana. And sharing feelings is not what they like to do. And these guys, in their own way, will just have that moment of looking at you like, I think for the first time today, I didn't feel like wanting to die or like wanting to like leave this earth or that maybe I wasn't good enough for my wife or I'm gonna go back from this retreat and like I wanna be a changed person. I'm not gonna yell at my wife because I'm secretly really upset that I got this testicular cancer and now it's affected our sex life or now I can't be the man I used to be 'cause I just don't have the strength or one of the guys I took out, he had an amputation from cancer. They literally took, I believe it was his right leg. He used that as, I'm going to not only volunteer at Real Recovery in the next year, he wanted to come back as a volunteer guide. But he then, I think, started his own organization where he was taking people out who were amputees. He's taking these guys out and fly fishing for the first time. So the mental health side of fly fishing is really interesting to see as I've gotten older where it really doesn't matter about the fish sometimes. And it's just like the camaraderie, the getting out there and allowing the river to just be a medium where people can feel comfortable where they want to open up. If that's the case, great. If not, you know, it's just like you're both in that same environment, just taking it in. It's a meditative thing, feeling the water around your waders, and just knowing that you're physically there with that other person. You've got their back. You're helping them across the river. You're putting them on fish that they never would have had access to. And from doing this fishing challenge, I realized I caught a ton of trophy fish, and I'm super blessed to have that experience. But now I want to encourage the next group of people to have that experience and have that amount of connection with fishing and with the rivers I've been on. I've been fortunate enough to fish.
Katie
One of the things you mentioned was guy-to-guy connections. I feel like I obviously can't speak to that, but I feel like I've heard from people before that a lot of guys have trouble opening up unless they have something that they're doing together. Sitting there talking to each other is not going to do it for you the same way that women might. Just sit down and, "Hey, I want to tell you about what I'm thinking about right now." Maybe that's not fishing specific. Maybe that's just having, you know, you could be working on a car together or whatever. But like, is that true? Is that something that you've noticed that like kind of having some kind of shared goal you're working toward, like really helps people kind of open up in a way that they might not be comfortable doing otherwise?
Steve
Yeah, absolutely. I have friends that are super stoic, right? Like you would never know they're going through like some really gnarly depression or they're having like a really tough time in their marriage. You put a three-hour road trip just to get to the fishing spot on the calendar, and on hour two, pretty soon they're opening up about it. They want to hear about the therapy that I went through to process my divorce, and what makes a successful marriage. What is bidding in a relationship? Doing these little things that show that you're constantly wanting that connection with your spouse or significant other. What are love languages? How do those tie into what makes a successful marriage. Just having conversations where we're on the river and you're able to slowly talk to them about it's okay to have emotional intelligence as a guy. We don't have to just be these stoic heroes that everyone is expecting to never experience pain or heartbreak. I think through fishing, I'm able to allow my friends to open up more about that kind of stuff and hopefully by sharing my story on this podcast, it lets people know that we all struggle, we all have terrible heartbreak in our lives. If fishing is the way that we're able to talk about that stuff, more power to fly fishing. That's what I think I'm here to champion is you don't have to go it alone. Fly fishing is a nice low-key way to get some of this stuff off your chest. always an option in my friendships.
Katie
Well, Steve, just to wrap up, I want to hear, do you have any other plans in the works? I know that this is a couple of years ago, so it kind of stands alone, but do you think you'll ever do something similar where you set another wild and crazy goal for yourself just to see if you can do it?
Steve
That's a great question. I think fishing-related goals, I definitely want to travel a lot more internationally, I think, you know, really save up for those bucket list trips, the Kamchatka Peninsula mousing kind of trips, the Christmas Island, I think, permit trips, those kinds of things for sure. But now as I've become an uncle since this challenge, so I think now my goal is to make sure my niece and nephew, you know, hopefully they can experience fly fishing in the same joy that I experienced growing up, maybe take it on even a little bit earlier than I got into it at. And so I'm just seeing, I'm not a parent myself, but now I'm seeing like, oh wow, this is what it's like to pass something on generationally, you know? And that's kind of my goal with fly fishing now. It's like anyone who's even curious about it, like I want to be the biggest ambassador to fly fishing because it's honestly taken me to some of the coolest places, the coolest high mountain lakes, biggest peaks, lowest valleys, that kind of stuff. So as far as goals, yeah, continue with conservation efforts. I'm always trying to raise awareness about, there's a lot of mining that's been proposed here in Idaho. So the Stibnite mine is a big one on the South Fork of the Salmon River here. So would be incredibly destructive to bull trout habitat and it's just, I think it's already got initial approval through the Forest Service, but I mean, it's been a fight ever since I've been here, you know, probably an eight year fight to try and keep this mine from happening. I'm not against mining. I get that we all consume resources and, you know, live in a modern society, but does it really need to be right at the headwaters of like one of the most incredible whitewater rivers for rafting and fly fishing? I would argue no. So I think, yeah, some of my goals are just trying to raise awareness, like, everywhere you are in the United States, there's a local environmental fight that's there, you know, 50 miles away, 100 miles away from where you like to fish and could absolutely endanger places you call home and places where maybe you learn to fish for the first time or you want to take your kids. And if people didn't stand up in the 60s and 70s for some of the waters that I fish currently, we would not have some of these amazing gold medal rivers. I try to really think about that and what's my legacy going forward. I want to do more for conservation for sure and work on the back end of fly fishing, not just checking off big fish goals.
Katie
Well, I really like that message. I think that's a good way to end it. I really appreciate you coming on. Is there anywhere you'd like to send people if they want to find you online or read headlines about you still being married when you're not?
Steve
Sure, yeah. I'm on Instagram. Very humble 600 followers. They get the best in fishing and cinematography content, so a lot of cool nuggets there. I'm Steve_the_cholo, so that goes with the New Mexico roots. Went and did a study abroad in Argentina, so I speak Spanish. have a lot of good friends that still live in New Mexico, so that's a shout out to them. I also have a website, stevendeals.com. That's where I have all my cinematography work, some of my reels. And Facebook, we all know that's just for Facebook Marketplace, just to find fly rods. I'm not even really active on that. But yeah, you can find me on two of the three.
Katie
I feel you. Well, Steve, thank you so much for coming on. I know I just kind of messaged you out of the blue, and I just appreciate your enthusiasm and willingness to come on and had a great time chatting with you.
Steve
Absolutely, Katie. I really appreciate the invite. I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I think you have a wonderful style of interviewing and it's very inquisitive. And you're a great storyteller as well. I loved hearing about your year-end fly fishing goals and how you met some of them and how you had some challenges with meeting the others. So yeah, I'm just a huge fan. Thank you.
Katie
Thank you. It's been a fun time. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find the 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 all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care everybody.
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