Christopher Teas is a lifelong angler with over 50 years of experience on the water. He has also spent years on Wall Street and has a unique perspective on the cost and accessibility of fly fishing. In this episode, we discuss how fly fishing has evolved over the last 55 years, including the move toward catch-and-release, gear changes, fly changes, demographics, pay-to-play vs. public access, and much more.
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fish in the backcountry. This is episode 192 with Christopher Teas on the evolution of fly fishing. I always start with the background of my guests and how they got introduced to the outdoors and into fly fishing specifically. So I'd love to hear how you were first introduced and how you first learned?
Christopher
Yeah. So that kind of goes back a few years. Maybe some of your audience is listening understands. I started when I was about five years old. At least I remember having a fly rod in my hands in Wisconsin on the rural river when I was about five years old. And from five until I was about 15, I was fishing in Wisconsin and then Aspen, Colorado. And so pretty picked some interesting places to fish as a kid before fly fishing was really a thing. So it started very, very early and adopted a lot of the techniques and programs throughout the years. But really, early years were, I'll call, formative years in fly fishing when we still had semi-glass rods and fiberglass were being introduced and kind of a new sport at the time.
Katie
Yeah, based on the kind of the things you filled out ahead of time, the common theme I saw across the topics you wanted to cover today was kind of like how things have changed over such a long time spent fly fishing you know a lot of people started when they were kids but maybe they dabbled for a while and didn't really pick it up truly until they were a little bit older or they haven't been doing it very long you know maybe maybe they're only in their 20s or 30s now but you started a long time ago and have stuck with it for so long that you kind of have a glimpse into the way the industry has changed, the sport has changed, techniques, things like that. And it wasn't really set out that that's what we were going to talk about, but it seemed like that was kind of the running theme in a lot of the things you're interested in is just kind of how the sport has evolved over the years. I'd love to kind of take it in that direction if you're interested in that.
Christopher
Absolutely. I mean, look, and there's going to be people that shake their head and throw things at the camera and others who say, I agree. So I'm going to hit both camps. I think from the late 1960s to the early 90s, maybe late 80s, it was the same sport, same technique, same material, same things with some slight advancements over a Pfluger reel or maybe a Hardy reel, or maybe a Fenwick rod turned into a Powell rod or a Thomas and Thomas or something like that. But for a long period of time, it was the same technique, the same flies, the same types of rivers and the acceptance of fly fishing really changed during the bass fishing insurgents. And I say that carefully because it was a big change. The historical fly fishing coming out of England and out of Europe was really built around dry fly fishing. And nymphing was a little bit of a downswing. And I say that carefully, but it wasn't people who were into fly fishing per se as purists. And I use that word carefully. So the purists were always dry fly and not streamers and not nymphs. It was dry fly. So much of my upbringing was around matching the hatch and really things that you weren't fly fishing. If you were down below, you're up on tops. And I would say that was a good chunk of 25 years of fly fishing. And I think that with the bass fishing evolution, what changed, Katie, is that catch and release became really a notable issue in terms of natural resources. saying, hey, bass fishermen, if we kill all these bass, we're catching. That's a bad day for bass fishermen. And the trout fishing gurus who really saw bass fishermen as maybe second-class citizens, I'm saying that very bluntly, adopted rightfully the environmental stance that bass fishermen took of catch and release. And that's a big change. And I know a lot of people are catch and keep, And that's fine. But I'm just saying the historical prism that I look through was fly fishing was about dry fly fishing. Fly fishing was about the purest fly fishing was fishing between six and eight in the morning and seven till close. And in between, you did other things. Fly fishing didn't become an active sport that people went out unless you grew up in it other than weekends or maybe holidays or some other things. So it wasn't a tractionable sport. And when bass fishing came along and said the average guy can go out or the average woman can go out and catch a bass, they can also catch fly fishing. You saw a huge adoption and change rate, both in technology, the curve of learning, of new techniques and so forth. And so we went from fiberglass and glass rods to graphite. We went from pall drag to click drag to smooth drag. And that all happened really at the end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s, when the adoption of new technology took place, if that makes sense to you.
Katie
Do you know what it was that kind of kept it stale for so long? And I use the word stale. I don't know if it's actually the word I'm going for, but it's what comes to mind. Where, you know, when you think of like historical fly fish, you kind of like you said, it's got like a culture of like how you do it. You know, this is the way you do it. This is how you dress when you do it. This is when you do it and the flies you use. And I almost feel like that kind of is a self-reinforcing culture where kind of, not to insult anybody, but like uppity people go out and do this uppity thing that makes them feel a little higher class than, like you said, kind of the bass fishermen. And it kind of perpetuates itself by, you know, you're kind of setting yourself above these other people. They perceive that. They don't want to be a part of that or they don't feel they could be a part of that. At what point did that kind of open it up to everybody else and kind of let people feel like they could try this thing and not feel like they're out of place by doing so? Does that make sense?
Christopher
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's no right or wrong answer to the question, but I noticed a perceptible change in the mid 80s, early 90s. And let's go back to Chip Perkins and Orvis as really the founder of the US sport of fly fishing. They were the go to. And to buy something at Orvis meant you had money, to be blunt with you. Waders were expensive. The clothing was expensive. The equipment was expensive. And then knowing where to fish was expensive. So access, not unlike a country club for golf, became something that you had to know somebody, you had to know where to go. It wasn't something you could pick up at Sears Roebuck or at JCPenney or at other, you know, Walmart certainly didn't even exist back then. So it really, to your point, is it was a sport that you needed to know where to go, you needed to know what to buy, you needed to know what worked and didn't work, and only a few people had access to that. And so the democratization happened really in the late, as I said, I keep going back to this, late 80s, early 90s, when saying fly fishing now has expanded beyond the Wervestore and Amicrombie and Fitch and that type of lifestyle to the everyday person that said, wow, this is pretty cool. I can go out and buy things one time and get out on the river and you're going to end up owning 10,000 flies. But at least it's a sport that once you have your gear, you can be in the sport at a nominal cost. And then the second question came up in the 90s and early 2000s of there was maybe one or two persons on the river as I grew up. Maybe you'd see three. You know, full holes were not something that you saw other than the spin casters or the bay casters that were out there. That's really changed. And so access became secondary to the equipment itself, is where did you go? How did you find the water? And so forth. And then exclusivity kicked back in, in the late, I would call it 2015 to 2025, of access became a premier issue, is do you pay to play? So you have a big transfer of 25, 30 years of latency in the industry. All of a sudden, the fly fishing shows became something that people gravitated towards and went to. And then it became a destination type opportunity for a lot of people. And along the way, we started fishing for things that people used to laugh at. You know, carp fishing became really, really cool amongst some folks in Colorado. Northern pike fishing and muskie fishing up by you in Denver became a really cool thing. But if you said that 25 years ago in Bozeman, Montana, people would laugh at you. So it's really transformed, A, the species that we go after with flies and at least freshwater. And two is the acceptance. That little bit mitigated statement in that fly fishing for salt has been around for 45, 50 years, whether it was foot pallet and the Walker Cay Chronicles, etc., which were really early adopters of chasing bonefish, tarpon, and snook on the fly. but though in permit but if you lived in central Wisconsin or Colorado those were just oft heart dreams of saying wow these guys lefty cray lives in a really cool spot someday maybe I get to go to Exuma and and experience that and and so people started wandering outside of classic trout fishing into other species including bass and that became on the fly something that just reignited the population of people who a tried it for the first time and two people that maybe trout weren't number one on the menu in terms of what we're going to do that day. Maybe we'll go chase some bass around down in Pueblo Reservoir, maybe whitefish du jour.
Katie
When you said that bass fishing was kind of the impetus for that, what specifically did it, though, that allowed people to access it? Because you said at one point Orvis was the place to go and it was expensive. This is before you could go just buy a fly rod at a gas station, essentially. Was it the stores realizing that this was a market that they could tap into and then they start selling this stuff and then people come buy it? Were people kind of going into things like Orvis stores and paying more money because they were interested in bass fishing and felt like fly fishing had kind of come to them?
Christopher
I don't think any bass fisherman walked into an Orvis store and says, you know, geez, we should go fly fishing today. I don't think those words were ever you said, Katie. But I do think that the concept of catch and release and natural resources, definitely were started with the bass fishing folks. I mean, in England, and I've fished for brown trout on rivers test and others, you kept your fish. They club them over the head and you ate them or you kept them. You never threw them back. So that was even a foreign concept going into the late 70s. And even today on certain waters, you kept them killed by design. And some of that was to keep out predatory fish, but others was just classic. That's the way we fly fish. God forbid you said wet fly up until about eight years ago, 10 years ago, and you'd be murdered for that. So I think that the transfer isn't just one thing, but I think that the accessibility of a sport that outside of this bass fishing became really interesting to people. And it became a technical thing and a fun thing. And it wasn't just snobs that could afford to fly fish. It became, you know, with 100 bucks, you could buy a fly rod and a couple of flies and go out and have a good time. So I don't think there's this one thing we can pin it on, but it definitely was a transfer of power, equipment, technology, and knowledge in the late 80s, early 90s.
Katie
How did you view that jump against the 92, 93-ish jump of A River Runs Through It comes out?
Christopher
Yeah, so I went to a school up in Pacific Northwest called Lewis and Clark. And I was a fly fishing guide on the Deschutes River and Metolius and some of the clack runoffs. And really still then, it was a cloistered sport, especially for Steelhead. And guys like Jim Tini and the Kauffman brothers really were the first into that market. So when River Run Through It came out with River Run Through It with Brad Pitt, I think the everyday person who woke up and said, wow, there's this cool thing. Look how neat it is that they're out there in the wilderness, in the water, chasing trout around. Maybe we should try that. I think it became kind of an enlightenment. But River Runs Through, it wasn't about fly fishing. That was a backdrop. It was about the human capacity to deal with family change, et cetera. Recently, as you know, there's a couple of shows that came out, Madison and others, that have been really popular. I don't know if they'll get another run or not. But ultimately, fly fishing is the upward trajectory to a certain level is really taken off. And that's because the expansion of new equipment, new technology, new techniques, et cetera.
Katie
it does feel and this is coming from somebody who didn't start fly fishing until the 2000s and obviously doesn't have 55 years of experience to have have witnessed this but it feels like the changes are getting faster and faster than you know and it sounds like based on what you're describing that was the case like there were there were big gaps of like here's how it is for a long chunk of time and now it feels like you know I've been I've been fly fishing for 14 years now 15 years, something like that. And I feel like I can think of like specific eras within that time of like what it is and how popular it is. Have you noticed the same thing that it's just getting, the changes are getting faster and faster?
Christopher
Absolutely. It's getting bigger. And you know, like anything else, think that you have to just step back and look, there's only a couple of ways to make a fly rod. Okay. And there's only a couple of ways to make a reel and the fish don't care about either. The reality is if you get the fly in front of the fish, the fish is going to be happy. If you have a broomstick in your hand or a hand reel, at one point, Tenkara was a big deal with a single fly with an attached line to the tip of the rod. And all my Tenkara friends would hike up in the mountains and explain how they're catching 60th brook trout on Tenkara. That was a big thing for a minute at a time. And then the explosion of reels, it started with reels coming outside of Abel Reels. Ross Reels in Colorado was a big deal from about 88 to 95. The Cimarron's and the Ross Originals were really made in Colorado and Gunnison. And so there were only a handful of reels available that were high-end. Abel led the list and there was some others. Sage tried to get in the business. Everyone tried to do secondary markets. But if you look at the number of reels available over the last 10 years, I'm not going to promote anyone, but there's 50 different reels out there, most of which are sitting on a shelf behind me somewhere. So reels became a big thing. Rods became a big thing. Different length rods, different flexibility rods. You used to just walk out with a five weight, maybe an eight weight for steelhead and, you know, 11 weight for tarpon and snook and so forth. But really, I had one rod for most of my life. And then all of a sudden I had a three weight. I had a two weight. I had a five weight, two different five weights. I had a nine foot five weight, a 10 foot five weight. Then Euro came along and Euro fishing said, oh gosh, we have to get a whole new set of equipment. So the market's been driven by technology, a burst starting with reels, leading into different rod makers. And it wasn't just two or three, it became 15 or 20 or even homemade rod makers that were getting more expansion in the market. And then fly development really flipped around with Euro in terms of having the jig head style nymph versus, you know, the traditional, even beadhead was a big deal. In the late 90s, beadheads were kind of the thing that came up. So I think that the evolution can't be pinned to just one issue. I think there's a number of issues. And since Katie, you started, I think the evolution's really been towards the Euro side. And in terms of the technicality of fishing more than one fly, Hopper dropper, you know, was still kind of a blasphemous thing to say 15, 20 years ago. Today, it's standard fishing three or four tags. I'd never seen that in my life until probably 2015. And some Euro champions showed me that they were fishing three flies, which is illegal on some streams. But it really changed. And then you have an adoption of younger people who are maybe close to your age who said, hey, this is really cool. And it's a good way to spend a day or week or after work is to go out fly fish. I don't have to spend $250 on a golf course. I can go out with what I have and enjoy myself for an hour or 15 minutes or the entire day.
Katie
What's interesting is when you were saying that about how you have 10 different rods these days, whereas back in the day that might not have been as common, in some ways I was thinking, well, we kind of have the luxury now of you can catch a fish the way you want to catch it. I also have a three-weight, a four-weight, a five-weight, a six-weight, And some days I'm feeling one over the other, not because they wouldn't both do the job, but maybe today I'm just feeling like making those small brookies feel bigger on a three-weight rod than just being able to haul them in on a four or five-weight. And so I was thinking maybe that's new. But then I was thinking back to how you said when fly fishing first came over here, it was all about doing it on a dry fly. So in some ways they were still very concerned about how it was done, but it seems like the two means of getting there have changed. The goal is still doing it how you want to do it, But back then it was kind of like there is one way to do it. And if you're not doing it that way, you're doing it wrong. And now it's more like a choose your own adventure. Like you can create the perfect experience for yourself by having this specific rod and this specific weight and this specific length with this specific leader on it. And at the end of the day, you're going to catch the same fish as somebody else. But it's all about how you did it and kind of making it your own experience.
Christopher
I think that this – and I was remiss not to mention flies have changed. And, you know, again, going back, I always like to say 100 years, going back a long time, we use 4X and maybe 5X tippet. The advent of 6, 7, and 8X didn't happen for a long time. A size 20 was not in my fly box until probably the teens, 2010, 12, 11, somewhere in there. Microfly, size 20, 22, 24, even 26s weren't in our fly box. It was a size 12 renegade or a size eight wolf up in Canada. It was big flies. And big flies meant big rods. So there was a big transfer of big rods mean big fish. And I still remember talking to a guide friend of mine using a three-weight to land a 28-inch brown. I said, how did you possibly land a 28-inch brown on a three-weight? The disconnect between the weight and the size of the fish was a big issue. You would fish a seven weight or an eight weight. Now, if you're fishing a size 20 Griffiths gnat out there, you're using a three weight, maybe even a two weight. It might be a 10 foot, but it really dynamically changed when flies got smaller versus just the standard size 12 and size 14, whatever fly you want to pick it. And then with the advent of midges and midging and micro midging, that changed everything as well, where sensitivity and line connection became something really huge. And then you've got a whole different contingency that does the cast and duck technique or various float and float structures that bop around the bottom. That's also, you know, there's a whole camp that does that out west that loves that technique. So I don't think there's any one style that I can point to that changed other than nymph to micro midging really, really changed the business. And unless you want Silver Creek fishing tricos size 20, that wasn't a subject. You had your five weight, your six weight, maybe a seven weight for everything. Now, as you have, Katie, you have six rods behind you. You have a bunch of reels. We always feel like there's something better, newer, but the fish don't care. They still don't care.
Katie
Why were flies so large before? Like, why not? Why didn't they size down? I know I know in some ways it's probably because certain fish in heavily pressured areas, you know, are known for taking smaller flies. They've gotten more picky, but it's not like small bugs didn't hatch before that happened. So like, why were flies so large?
Christopher
I don't think we had the knowledge level of entomology. And I think it was a real science of talking about a bluing olive size 18 or a chironomid size 20 in some lake, people didn't have the knowledge level. And if you look back, I have about 100 leather press books that go back over 100 years on fly fishing. None of those flies were featured. They were the classic damsels in distress. They were the wolf style, the humpy style, the leeches, double bunnies, and so forth didn't come along until the late 80s, early 90s. If we were looking at streamers as one structure, look at dry flies being really centered around the royal wolf, elk hair caddis, and variety of atoms as the core flies. It really wasn't until people said, hey, wait a minute, there's more bugs on the water and let's try something else. And that adopted mostly in the West, to be very frank with you. It didn't make its way out to the East until much later. But whether you're fishing the chalk streams in Pennsylvania or up in New York, bigger flies meant bigger fish historically, just to put it there. And smaller flies, Dupuis, Spring Creek, Spring Creek, and so forth required smaller and smaller and smaller. And the smarter the fish got, the smaller the fly you had. But that was really a transformatory change. And I can't put a time or date on it. Your audience will. But it was sometime in the 90s that I realized that, you know, having one box was good. Having, you know, I'm looking at having 300 boxes must be better, right? And I probably have a whole garage full of these things, each with 10,000 flies in them. So it became a smorgasbord of I have to have more flies. I have to have more flies for the stream that I'm on. And gosh, I might be missing out if I don't have this clink hammer or some other special fly that they're using on the San Juan that day. And I still remember guys using San Juan worms, which was verboten. You just didn't do it. And these guys were catching fish hand over fist on San Juan worms. I'd never seen that before in terms of a chenille wraparound. That was really borderish, like kind of clandestine looking down the bottom of your nose at someone that uses San Juan worm or egg. Now I see guys pegging all the time as the upper fly and so forth. So things have changed.
Katie
What's funny is, yeah, I feel like a San Juan worm at one point was kind of blasphemous. And now a San Juan, I think, sits above a squirmy worm, where if you're using a San Juan worm, it's like, oh, you're not cheating by using rubber. You've got chenille on there instead.
Christopher
Yeah, why not just spray it and call it Chick-fil-A, right? So at the end of the day, there's been trash flies or trash flies. And I still think that two of the trash flies should just be illegal as it is. There's two in particular that if they were my trout with my social security numbers, I wouldn't let people fish certain trash flies. So we'll just leave it at that.
Katie
You're not going to name them?
Christopher
Nah, I'll get more hate mail. Some guys trash flies another person's trophy. So what am I saying? If it works for them, you know, I used to tie a lot before I turned 60. And my carpets, you could tell where I live by the carpets by the flies. So different chenille and different shag rugs made its way into mop flies back when mop flies, no one knew what it was. I used my golden retriever's hair for various fur, a bunch of squirrels outside, et cetera, deer. But fly tying was adapted and trash flies came. Again, I can't put my finger on it, but sometime in the 90s was the first time I saw a mop fly. And I was like, I've been doing that for years with my carpet. I didn't tell anyone because if I got caught, someone would laugh at me, if that makes sense.
Katie
How much do you think the digital age has changed fly fishing and or accelerated its progress?
Christopher
Wow, that's a loaded question, and we only have 40 minutes left. So I think the digital age has changed everything, and for better and for worse. So access to information is something that you had to have a map, you had to have a compass, you had to know where to go, or at least have access. The digital age has changed that. So, you know, I'm not a spot burner, but I'm very careful on telling people where I'm not. It became something within five seconds, someone can geofence you, figure out where you are, what you're using and so forth. And that's added a lot of pressure on the business from the from the good side of digital and AI is get more information faster about things that we're curious about. And so at the end of the day, I can learn about foreign destinations. I can learn about what's happening on the Platte River much quicker. I can find out stuff about conditions on the blue or lack thereof very, very fast that before it was a show up and pray, if that makes better sense to you. So digitally, we've changed access to information in terms of mapping, in terms of strategy, people sharing ideas. So I see a lot of YouTube with, I call them kids, but 24 to 35. Some are guides, some are constantly streaming and putting influencer type materials out. And that's, you know, listen, it's just access to information. It levels the playing field.
Katie
What are your thoughts on that kind of culture? And I'm not saying in terms of like, is it right or is it wrong? This is just a personal opinion that I'm looking for. Like, do you view the kind of proliferation of content as a good thing? Or do you think it's kind of taken some of the spirit or the soul out of fly fishing to have, like you said, people just like streaming the whole thing. Do you think that takes away from their experience? Or do you think that it's just the new age of it?
Christopher
That's a tough one for me because I don't post my trout. I don't post videos. I'm for the experience of where I am. I'm a good photographer. So, you know, as a former guide, you're a doctor, photographer, you know, surgeon, chef and everything else. I'm not a see what I caught kind of person. So for me, it's digitally. I don't spend a whole lot of time and I have probably a lot of GoPros. Maybe I could use them. I'm not out there trying to create content for a user. I'm out there having a good time. And I do take photos of people I'm with and everyone wants to see a trout. But after you catch 1,000 trout, the next 10,000 trout are pretty much the same. So for me, it's about the experience and not necessarily broadcasting to everyone where I am sitting or what fly I'm using or what technique I'm using.
Katie
what are your thoughts on the the current state of access not access to the water but access to the sport because I feel like I still on occasion hear people talk about the barriers to entry and not that there aren't barriers to entry but I feel like this is the easiest time in history to get into basically anything you want I mean not just fly fishing any any sort of hobby you can get into via YouTube, via podcasts, via books and articles. And the information is endless. I also think that it's been a bit overblown about how much things cost to at least get started fly fishing. I know you can spend, you know, tens of thousands of dollars on the fanciest gear and traveling to the destinations, but it really doesn't cost more than a couple hundred bucks to get a rod reel and go down and catch some panfish or trout. What do you think the reality of access to the sport is? And what do you think the perception of that reality is to somebody who doesn't fly fish, but might want to? Do you think those are in close alignment? Or do you think there's kind of a gap there in terms of their perception versus how hard it actually is to get started?
Christopher
You know, that's another loaded question. You can get started for 150 bucks. So, you know, at the end of the day, fly rods, whether they were made in 1970 or made last year are still fly rods. So you can get into the sport much easier today with really good equipment today than you could maybe 25 years ago with the standard lamina class or Fenwick or some of the early Scott and Powell rods and even Orvis rods. What did change, and I was a ski racer growing up, Katie in Colorado, and I'm going to use the example. My first pair of boots were 150 bucks. My last pair of boots were like $800. So they're still boots. At the end of the day, they're still boots or they're still fly rods. So the advancement, the folks that fly fishermen and some others might take exception to those. But the advancement is something that I think we're spoon fed by folks that want us to buy the material. You can go out and get a good rod for $150, $200. You can get a reel for $200 that has decent drag on it and be on the water for under $500, depending on the kind of waders you get if you wear waders at all. But we're told that you need better. You need more expensive. You need a $1,500 rod. For years, the top end Sage rod was $500, $550 at the top end. Now rods go into the thousands. Forget about the exotics and bamboos and so forth. But just your straight rod off the shelf at a good shop is between $800 and $1,500. Is one rod better than the other? Well, that's because the guy that's selling it to you thinks it is. Or maybe you saw someone catch something on it. And the real story is that in all sport, whether it's golf, tennis, ski racing, or fly fishing, the advancement of technology is every year there's something new. And or else once Katie buys it, you might not go back and buy something else. So we got to create new product categories to have the FOMO, fear of missing out, that I don't have the newest thing. And if you look as one sleeve of that recently, it's really been in the apparel side of the or the accessory side have really taken an advancement. I'm holding it. I'm holding something from a manufacturer that is very simple. It was made. I wish I had had these for 25, 30 years. I used to use medicine cups. This is, I think, a fish pond specifically. But, you know, all you need is this and a dozen flies and you're off to the races. But this particular device wasn't around 20 years ago or even 15 years. You had to come up with your own little, I used to have, I think they were called Perrin or Perrin metal fly containers that would rust. Right. And then we had a whole, you know, I had a whole probably a thousand flies and sheepskin with a leather cover. Again, you had to lay out and dry at night or else they rust. So the apparel business, the technology business that for accessories really changed over the last 10 years. even duffel bags or what you think you need to keep your waiter bags and I used to just toss them back my truck that's all changed you've got to have this even rod carriers right pre-rig rods on top to save that extra 10 or 15 or 20 minutes or maybe breakage that's all changed so the dynamic shifted from real capacity and I would say real real bearing strength in terms of drag to different rods to different categories of rods that you need this if you're going to euro fish You need this for dry fly. You need this for a wet fly. The fear of saying you need this drives sales. And, you know, we need sales in all businesses. But again, going back to the phrase, do you really need it? Probably not. The fish don't care. It's for you. And maybe it's a quality of life or convenience factor.
Katie
I wonder if that kind of ties into the whole digital age thing, because part of it might be that people think I'm not going to catch a fish if I don't have a thousand dollar rod but part of it's I want people to see me with a thousand dollar rod like I want to look the part I want to play the part and when someone sees me I want them to know that I'm a fly fisher and so I wonder if that kind of goes hand in hand with like social media
Christopher
I'm not I'm not sure that's going to go anywhere I'm not sure that's going to go anywhere outside the parking lot so you know I used to I started my career on on wall street where I used to see certain individuals walking down the street with fly fishing vests as as a they were camera vests that that they decided were really cool as a fashion accessory. And I was like, that's an Orvis fly fishing vest or a whoever made it vest. But, you know, the adoption of real cases were also in fashion. Certain creels, I'll call them creel structures, whether they were wicker or otherwise were adopted by the fashion industry. But outside of that, I don't know a whole lot of folks that say, look at me, I have this Orvis Helios rod versus a Sage rod versus a Clackamas rod or or any other kind of rod that's out there.
Katie
Oh, I don't mean outside the industry. I'm just thinking like if you're on, say, Instagram and you want to look like you know what you're doing to all the other fly fishermen who are going to be following you, you don't want to be the chump that's fishing with a $200 rod when someone might think that you don't know what you're doing. You know, sarcasm included.
Christopher
I think there's a sarcasm included with that. I think there's a level to it. But, you know, two of my favorite rods are still from probably 1983. three weight rod that Joan Wolf gave me that I absolutely adore. And I have a five weight rod that her husband had that I still use and they're 45, 50 years old. So, you know, if people look at those today, it's, wow, you have an antique, but they're still, to me, you know, it's a stupid rod with a cork grip. I think that the, the, the concept of being viewed as a poster person for fly fishing might snap back at you a little bit as well. So I can pretty much tell within 10 seconds who's who on the parking lot based on what they're wearing. And the majority of the folks who've been around are a pretty ragged group of guys. I'm not saying that men and women. They're not in the newest outfits that are out there or the best colors. They generally have a little bit of creep around them. So that's not a good thing or a bad thing. But in skiing, if you go to Aspen, there's a group of people who will sit at the Little Nell who didn't ski all day long, but they still have their snow pants on and their gloves and their hats as if they did ski. Right? Just to show, to your point, I haven't ever met anyone sitting in a parking lot that didn't go fishing that was dressed up. But I'm sure they're out there somewhere. One of your readers will say, oh, yeah, I happened last week on the frying pan or something.
Katie
I mean, I feel like most people probably go through some kind of evolution like this. And I certainly did where you start off and you have nothing and you quickly want to get everything because it's new and exciting and fun. And, you know, you finally feel like you know what you're doing. And then the longer I've done it, the less stuff I've kind of needed to have every time I go out. And so it's like I rarely wear waders these days. Part of that's because I don't fish much in the colder months. But, you know, the less I can take out there, the better and more free I feel. But there was a time where it was like I wanted everything.
Christopher
Yeah. And that, listen, if you had to categorize me and pin me down, I would say a few big things changed. Going through the vest to the front pack was a big change. Doing the waist belt with wading stick. I'm 60 now. I need a wading stick. I would have laughed at myself 30 years ago having a wading stick. But you know what? It's a survival issue going across the screen. Three is I'm not going to say that there's any economy of scale in waders or foot gear. You need, you know, aside from maybe wet wading on a nice day, you need waders and foot gear. That's not going to change. It's still expensive. But ultimately, the fly pack has changed. The nets have changed dramatically in terms of the netting structure itself, having the rubber soft versus we had fiber nets in the past or nylon nets. I think that the tippet has also dramatically, both tippet itself and what you get the tippet out of, how do we do our reels? Reels of tippet have changed dramatically. I think that the tools of the trade became a little cooler and you felt that maybe you were missing out if you didn't have, you know, a nail knot maker, which I wish, you know, I learned how to do nail knots on my own for 30 years before I found this nail knot tire, which is the greatest invention of all time. But really, there's only a handful of things. And if you're a fly tire, it's a whole different universe. So I've got a room with fly tying equipment that has more sewing type materials in it, which we used to have to scrub away or go to Hobby Lobby to try to find stuff. Today it's available. So going back to your technology, I can get materials, hooks. It's not just one Daiichi hook set. You can get lots of different things with hook, with barb, without barb, different shanks, different styles, you know, thin, fat, whatever. and and and that industry really the fly tying is stagnant because it takes a lot of time it it's very painful to do and and if you not are really patient there's I'd rather spend my you know it used to be a buck a fly now it's probably three bucks a fly I'd rather spend my time on the water but fly tying has not advanced the same way we all have the same great vice you buy one vice you buy some squirrel tail and cast tail and bunch of stuff go there amy grig actually is one of my heroes in Colorado Springs and she ties great flies and shows them off down in Pueblo and Cheeseman Canyon. But fly tying itself kind of stayed more static than the equipment evolution has. So we now will go out and spend $3 on a fly or $2 on a fly versus tying it yourself. But that was the only way to make flies. And I used to tie very aggressively about four dozen a week for myself and for clients. And we all had a little spin on them that weren't available in the fly shops. So especially in the streamer side and the meat chucking side really advanced dramatically over the last 10, 15 years.
Katie
One thing, going back to kind of the accessibility of it, but in fly tying, one thing that I have found frustrating, and I know this is kind of a self-imposed thing because I'm, you know, reading a quote unquote recipe for a fly, is that, you know, the specificity with which they call for things. You need a hook of this style with this shank length and this shape and this color dubbing of this material. It's like, you don't though. You don't. And I get why if you're reading a fly pattern, how to tie it, they're going to give you the specifics. Because if you're cooking a recipe, you want to know what you're supposed to put in the recipe. That's why you're reading the recipe. But sometimes I feel like that makes it seem as though if you don't have that specific thing that you can't tie this fly. And it's like going back to the trout don't care. You know, on occasion, there's a material that really makes a difference, you know, something that floats better. So you're not having to redress your fly all the time, things like that. But at the end of the day, you know, whether it's this shade of gray or that shade of gray, you know, maybe the fly is traditionally tied that way. But in some ways, I feel like that is off putting to new tires who feel like they can't do something if they don't have every single material on earth right in front of them.
Christopher
Yeah, you quickly become a fly shop in the tying business. And so you have to decide where you want to spend your time and energy. You know, I sent you a two pager and on the bottom is 12 flies that are pretty much my go to flies. That being said, I have like 5000 flies sitting in front of me. But my 12 go to flies are 90 percent, maybe different sizes. But if I'm not going to get on a pheasant tail, I'm not going to get it on a bird's nest. I'm not going to get it on some other related entity to that. So I think that we all think, wow, I didn't get it because I didn't use this particular fly, whether you tied it or not, or I didn't get that fish. Reality, 90% of it is you're not deep enough, you're not on the bottom, or you're not up top without drag. Let's just cut to the chase. 90% of it is presentation, and people can take exception to that, but that's 90% of the game is presentation. And I would defer to anybody, whether it's down and across or up and over or otherwise, if you don't get the fly in the feeding lane, you ain't catching fish.
Katie
Yeah, I think there's a handful of exceptions to that. You know, specific hatches run off where they're not going to see the fly or whatever. But I think you're right. For 90% of you're going out on a random nice day without some very specific hatch going on of some very specific size, you're going to be able to find many flies that can catch fish that day.
Christopher
You will. I mean, there are exceptions. If you're in peekaboo and you're on Silver Creek at 530 in July, you better have size 22 tricos. And you better have, you know, a size 18 to 20 comparidun right behind it or a bluing olive. And then, of course, the brown drakes coming off. You're only going to catch them on that. So I'm not going to say that rivers don't have specific fly ratios, catch ratios that are higher than lower. but across the majority of western waters and even eastern waters the same 10 flies and different sizes are going to represent 90 of what you're going to catch and there's you know I i remember I i was fishing in Cheesman with a friend of mine who hopefully is still alive out of of angler's covey collar springs and he showed me a fly called the desert storm and his son was in Iraq and so they called it the desert storm and you know it's a size 20 with this little tiny tiny blue kind of flash on it in a little black dubbing and that was it and and and that thing outfished everything because the fish had never seen it and then we went to this whole period of red midges and the red midge the various red midges small zebra midge style on red became kind of the craze then the beadhead craze came and then the anti-beadhead craze came saying well they don't float the right way or they don't move through the drift the right way so there's always something better in fly fishing, which is half the fun, right? There's a new fly, there's something. But if you're just serious about getting on the water, the same, maybe it's 15 flies and someone will write in and say, no, it's 25. Whatever it is, it's not the 10,000 I have in front of me. So I could, you know, I could arm a small country with the flies I have and it would still do no damage.
Katie
Absolutely. Yeah. I've got boxes full of flies and I always hesitate leaving without one.
Christopher
The two issues, you're going to run out of 5X at some point, and you're going to swear to yourself both mono and fluoro. You're going to run out of 6X precisely when you need that 6X because you didn't measure enough. So that is sacrosanct of having doubles of 5 and 6 and even 7X. No matter what, I've got to have that. Two tips is a second. I've broken more tips. World record fly breaker, fly rod breaker. So if there's a fan or a door or a car door, gosh darn, it's going to find my rod. So if I don't have two tips or ding in, I probably broke a dozen with streamers, just the neck and the back wind and done. Your day is ruined. You're out. So you got to have at least a spare rod or a second tip. That's a no brainer. Always having extra 5X, 6X and 7X, both in mono and fluoro is critical. Everything else I kind of can work around, whether it's strike indicators or some other stuff, whether I have a tippet ring on, which is also a new thing that people didn't use to use. You know, 15 years ago, tippet rings were ridiculous. Today, it's a whole, you know, there's lots of different setups and so forth. We go into that. But there's been a lot of changes and advancements. But if we still go back to the root of what it is, it's putting a fly in front of a fish six to eight yards ahead of it or below it to the side of it, not hitting it on the head, making a good cast, hopefully getting a decent drift and lots of praying and hoping along the way.
Katie
The next question is probably going to be unanswerable in some ways, but I just want to know what, if you had a crystal ball and had to guess what's the next big thing, and obviously you might not know this specific piece of gear or something, but do you have a sense of where things are going?
Christopher
Yeah. And so let's break it down into four categories. From technology point of view, graphite, graphene, and additives to fly rods and components will always be an advancement of something better, better flex, better recoil, something. Lines have changed dramatically. So now you're seeing segmentation of lines that weren't just sinking and floating, but different types of styles. And Sunray in particular is shooting lots of ads around the Internet with different lines that shoot better, do this, that. So line technology, it's like I see. Fly technology is really outside of the trash flies. They're the same group of flies for the last 20 years. Wader technologies changed fairly dramatically from the front zipper to even mid cuffs or waist highs versus the full. And neoprenes were the only thing we used to have. Right. So the fly waders that weren't neoprene, that were Gore-Tex, always leaked and didn't work. So that's been solved. If we go to bucket number two is geography and accessibility. If you said you went to Iceland fly fishing or to Reykjavik or to somewhere in Kamchatka or Australia, people kind of looked at you with 10 heads. Today, especially among your generation, people are flying around the world to go fly fishing, not necessarily just for trout, for all sorts of peacock bass and snook and tarpon and all sorts of other exotic species. So I think that from a geography point of view, the expansion of the sport has been dramatic on international basis. The third bucket is domestic. And what we've seen is a real divergence between pay to play fishing and public waters. And that's not a popular discussion for a lot of reasons among people that, you know, public water should be public waters, not the bottom, not the top. Whole thing's public. That debate's raging on. But pay to play fishing has really taken off. And so that you pay $300 to $1,000 to go pay for a day for a private stretch of water instead of being surrounded by 500 people. I've seen a lot of that advancement in terms of geographic specific, especially in the Colorado area, Wyoming, Montana, pay to play is a big deal. And then if we look at the sport, new entrance in the sport, women have become very, very active in the sport, which is amazing because it's a great sport. It's a great equalizer. All my fly fishing clients who were women out fished the men 10 to 1 because they were better listeners, better patients, much, much better on the stream in terms of etiquette. So I think women have adopted this as a great sport to get into where maybe 30 years ago, fly fishing wasn't for women. Maybe it wasn't focused on, but today it's great. And then your last bucket is the education component tied to digital. The only way to get information was fly fishermen and related, you know, cast or whatever, whatever magazines were out there, saltwater or otherwise. Today, you know, I can't scroll through my phone without getting 500 different local shops showing different technique, showing what works for them, showing new flies, new leader setups, etc. So the television and technology has reduced the cell phone thing where we all have this and it's become a computer. and you can find out what I'm using, what you're using. I could see some guy in Sheridan, Wyoming using one thing and some guy maybe on the Willowemack using something else. Five seconds later, we're in the past, we never knew. It was kind of a story. Well, he caught an 18-incher in this river. We're not really sure where. Well, now I can tell you it was at yellow breaches by the bridge. So that's a good thing and a bad thing. So education through digitalization has been both a benefit and a detraction to the business. And it's created maybe some noise in sectors that previously, you know, last week, there's a big, I think the word's kerfuffle about someone talking about their favorite secret place in Colorado. Southern Colorado secret place got exposed and about 10,000 people online saying, thanks for spot burning me. Well, this place has been around forever. It's just people didn't know about it. So absorbing new places to go is kind of a sport in fly fishing. And unfortunately, because of digital and because of computers and cell phones and other secret spots are no longer secret because everyone knows where they are. And that's the downside of technology.
Katie
Yeah, I feel like that's been my kind of least favorite part of it. I'm a bit turned off by just the personality of a lot of the digital space. And that's just a personal preference thing. I fully support their right to do whatever they want to do in terms of just kind of looking like a d-bag at times. But the oversharing of spots, thankfully, most of the places I go are just, you know, it's a blip on the map or a blue line on the map. So I'm not too affected by it. But it is a shame. And I can see the perspective of people who feel like they have their own little secret place. And somebody shows up and now everybody knows about it. I can see the frustration from that point of view of we had a good thing going. Where did it go?
Christopher
And that's real. I mean, the Miracle Mile was a miracle mile for about 15 years at New and New between Antero and the Canyon. Taylor was another one. Taylor River in Gunnison, no one knew about that, where we were just, you know, killing them on mysis shrimp. And there's a number of other rivers that were kind of exposed to the world that weren't there. Northern Colorado has a number that are great, but the big floating rivers are still pretty pristine. So the Platte is, you know, The Arkansas have had some of my greatest days of all time, both as a fisherman and as just hanging out on the Arkansas, which was really for years looked on as a trash river in Colorado. Not bad, but just not a place you would go to first on the river. Now it's still a brown trout, Mecca, maybe not this year. But I think that the absorption of information is cut against the purists. And they probably don't like that part of the message because their favorite spot now is 15 cars when they pull up. So you have to be more creative and find different places to go. And that really pushed people in a real way, Katie, to other species, bass and specifically carp. Again, people would laugh at you, say, I'm going carp fishing. I'm in Bozeman. Aren't we fishing, you know, the Blue Ribbon Water? And we're like, you know, we're going to spend an hour and a half above the dam and catch some carp. People look at you like crazy. carp is like a bonefish on crack. It's the greatest thing to catch in the world. If you haven't caught one, they're enormous and they're fun. But that was an outlier. And now today in urban settings, it's become much more accepted. You'll see a guy with a fly rod or a person with a fly rod at their local country club or whatever catching, you know, bass or snook or carpenter or ladyfish or whatever it is. So, you know, we don't always have to chase trout is what I'm saying.
Katie
Well, just to wrap up, I don't know if, I know you don't have a super big like fly fishing online necessarily. But if people wanted to reach out to you, do you have a place that they could shoot you a message or anything like that?
Christopher
Yeah, you can use my work and put in fly fishing in the subject line and I'll read it. Otherwise, it goes right to junk. But it's cts at parksouthcapital.com. You can put it in your comments. I do read my emails. Those that aren't soliciting to me, I look at fly fishing as kind of the great extension, Katie. With my kids, my daughters and my sons. It's a bonding thing. And it's an amazing way to get out and spend time with someone. I'm very active with military and PTSD in particular, and working in those who know me in those channels for flies on the water, specifically about working with the military segment, using fly fishing as a therapy is amazing. So I think, no, we don't go out and promote fly fishing. I have nothing to sell. I'm not sponsored. I won't talk about lodges in that way. And I'm not going to tell you about my new bounce rank so you can go buy it. But I am very active in talking to people as a community on a global basis about where to go and what they do in general terms and what's working and what's important. What you find if that on Earth's at Katie is it's about a humanity. And fly fishing, 90% of the fly fisher persons out there are just really good people. I'm going to say a majority are just down to earth people who I want to spend time with, even if I'm not on stream.
Katie
Same, same here. Thanks for joining me and I'm sure we'll keep in touch.
Christopher
I appreciate it. Good light, tight lines and catch a lot and let them go. Thank you.
Katie
Thank you. All right, that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find the contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
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