Ep 3: Hunting for Hidden Brook Trout Streams in Georgia, with Palmer Henson
Palmer Henson is a climber, long-distance runner, and fly fisherman from Georgia. For the past few years, he’s been on a mission to find as many native brook trout streams as he can in the mountains of northern Georgia. His story is truly a unique one, and he provides lots of insight about hunting down the elusive wild brookies of the southeast.
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Intro
You're listening to The Wild Initiative Podcast Network. Learn more and check out all the shows at thewildinitiative.com.
Katie
listening to the Fish Untamed podcast where we talk all things fishing, conservation, and the outdoors. Today on the show I'm joined by Palmer Henson who's trying to see how many native brook trout streams in Georgia he can find. All right welcome to episode number three of the Fish Untamed podcast. Today I'm talking to Palmer Henson. Palmer and I got connected a couple months back when he had reached out to share with me a personal project he'd been working on for the past couple years and is still working on where he's trying to find as many native brook trout streams as he can in Georgia. Of course that immediately piqued my interest as someone who really enjoys fishing for brook trout but doesn't get to fish for native brook trout. I was just immediately interested in hearing his insights and experiences you know fishing these streams that rarely see any angling pressure in the mountains of Georgia. So super interesting conversation, completely outside my wheelhouse, so I was soaking it all up. Apologies though, we did have some microphone issues kind of halfway through the recording, so if you hear any static that's what that is, but highly encourage you to stick it out through that static just because Palmer's got so many good stories and insights that well worth sticking it out to the end. So without further ado, here is my chat with Palmer Palmer Henson. Hey Palmer, how's it going?
Palmer
It's going great. How are you, Katie?
Katie
Pretty good, thanks for hopping on today.
Palmer
I feel honored to be joining you.
Katie
I think we have a lot to talk about. We've spoken once before on the phone, just kind of hashing things out. And I remember having to kind of stop you because we were already getting into things that I wanted to say for this conversation. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say. Just as a little background, you and I crossed paths because you came across Fish Untamed and reached out and we've been kind of in contact since then. And then you had mentioned that you are in this, what is it, a four-year process, I think, of trying to find as many native brook trout streams in Georgia as you can. And that just sounds like the coolest project I've heard of.
Palmer
Yeah, it is an undetermined length. I'm probably three years into it and have a good long way to go. So it's definitely long term, but lots of fun.
Katie
So I want to get a little background because I know I want to get into all the brook trout stuff. But when I sent over the kind of bio for you to fill out, you filled out even more than I was expecting to get. and that just took me down a bunch of other rabbit trails. So first off, I wanna hear about Lost Angel Fly Fishing, 'cause that's kind of how we first got connected because your Lost Angel Fly Fishing group is, seems to be very in line with Fish on Tame's mentality of kind of getting back into the middle of nowhere and chasing fish that don't see people very often. So I wanna hear more about that.
Palmer
Yeah, absolutely. So Lost Angel, the concept behind it is fly fishers who've left the flock and are out fishing out on the periphery where few other people are going now. And in reality, there's not a whole lot to it. It's a fun name and there's, you know, really just four of us who think of ourselves as members with several kind of honorary members. We don't have meetings or dues. There's no benefit to being a member, but it's a fun concept. And when we do fish together, we 100% are trying to get out, you know, past the crowds, you know, whether that's backpacking somewhere or up in, you know, deep in the Georgia mountains or fishing in the back country in Yellowstone, whatever it might be.
Katie
So how do you know everyone in the group?
Palmer
Well, one of the members is my brother. And a good friend of his is another. And then a good friend of mine who's here in Atlanta, who's kind of my local fishing buddy, Jeff Giuliano. And we do an annual Montana trip. My brother and I used to do it with my dad. I think we did 15 years with him. And eventually, he passed away. and Jeff and Kevin Lane, who's my brother's friend, have kind of filled in from there. And we still do our Montana, which is mostly a Yellowstone trip, but then fish together other places other times as well.
Katie
Are you all based in Georgia?
Palmer
No, Jeff and I are here, and my brother and Kevin are up in Connecticut.
Katie
Okay, quite a distance.
Palmer
Quite a distance, yeah. Most recently, my brother's name's Phil. Phil, Kevin, and I fished last week up on Cape Cod. We were fishing for stripers. And it felt pretty back country, even though it's saltwater. Fishing small channels among marshes in a really shallow bay, pleasant bay up on Cape Cod. So we definitely had the Los Angel theme going, that we're schooly striper fishing.
Katie
Yeah, it's probably a little different than what you're usually targeting.
Palmer
It is totally, totally different, but really fun. And, you know, caught some great little stripers.
Katie
So are all the people in the group kind of on this brook trout journey with you or is that just a personal project for you?
Palmer
It's pretty much a personal project. Jeff comes along when he can. He's got, I'm sort of a half empty nester. My daughter is off at college and I've got a stepdaughter who's still at home, but her dad's kind of fully engaged in her life. So he's the one doing the soccer coaching and things like that. So I've got some pretty good latitude on what I do. And my wife is super supportive, letting me head out pretty much every Saturday to go search for brook trout with the caveat that I'm home by five and she doesn't have to listen to it.
Katie
That's not that strict.
Palmer
No, no, it's pretty good. And Jeff comes along when we can. Usually when Jeff's going to be with me, we pick some larger streams that he'll generally fish those and larger is still really small. I'll hit up some of these tiny tributaries and won't force him to beat his way through the brush and right in the bedroom and things like that.
Katie
And it sounds like you do a lot more, like you said that you have pretty lenient, I guess, permissions to go do whatever you want. It sounds like you do a lot more than just fish though. You send over that you trail run and climb and do like ultra marathons. I have to admit, when you first reached out to me, I was just like, "Oh, this..." Because you're a lawyer, right?
Palmer
I'm a banker.
Katie
A banker. Okay. I was like, "Oh, yeah, this guy just is a hobby fisherman and just wants to reach out and make connections." And then I saw what all you do and I was like, "Holy crap, this is way more intense than I expected."
Palmer
You know, I kind of got to fishing more from the outdoor athlete aspect rather than the the more traditional kind of hunting outdoorsman path. I, growing up my dad's, you know, two favorite pastimes were fishing and including a lot of fly fishing and birdwatching, which made for a super painful childhood having to walk slowly and quietly through woods instead of, you know, running free, the exact opposite of what I wanted to be doing. But so I grew up exposed to a lot of fishing, though, honestly, I don't think my dad really had the patience to teach my brother and I how to fly fish, and we didn't have the patience to learn. So we spent a lot more time spin casting like many kids do, but also did other sports. I, in high school, I played soccer, and then I grew up in New York, north of New York City, Far enough north that we had a ski team. So in the winter I skied I raced slalom and in the summer mostly race sailboats and fished and and I I spent from when I was a little kid up until I was in my Kind of mid 30s and I'm almost 60 now. So one of the reason I've Got a lot of things on my plate is I've just been at it for a really long time. I Spent you know years and years Racing sailboats really hard Got really close to winning some national championships and things like that and then I got married It was hard to kind of keep up that pace there You know, it's getting a little burnout anyway, and I had started doing some rock climbing So I spent probably I don't know. It was almost 15 years Doing tons of rock climbing but then also running a lot and doing a lot of trail running Along with rock climbing those two fit together really well and I mean, so when my daughter was born, when she was really young, even as young as two years old, my friends and I would bring her rock climbing and she'd hang out at the bottom of the cliffs and play in the dirt and chase lizards and stuff like that while we climbed. And then eventually she was old enough, someone would always be on the ground with her. Eventually she was old enough that she could start climbing. And so she would climb with us and we would climb. And as she got into her mid-teens, she started playing soccer, so it was hard to cut out every Saturday. I kind of had a hall pass back then too because I was taking my daughter with me.
Katie
Right. Just take her with you and just plop her down somewhere.
Palmer
Exactly. She even has a climb up in North Georgia named after her. We would every year take trips out to Yosemite and Canadian Rockies and places like that and climb. We did some fishing on rest days for climbing if we were going to be up in the mountains where there were some good trout lakes and streams, we'd fish there too. This is turning into a longer story on this, but I did a lot of running. I had a long-term goal of doing qualifying for and running 10 Boston marathons. It took me 16 years, but I finally did that. Did a bunch of trail running. And then eventually I was, then I started doing triathlons. And some of my, when my daughter started playing soccer, we didn't climb as much. So I started doing triathlons instead of just running. And had a good long run there and was getting burnt out on that too. And it had always known I would, fishing would take kind of a more prominent position my hobbies as I got older and got burnt out on some of the other sports. So that was probably five years ago. I started fishing more and more. I still run a lot and bike a lot and things, but fishing more and more. So now I'm at the point where pretty much every Saturday I'm heading out somewhere to fish and more often than not, it's up to the mountains to search for brook trout.
Katie
Interesting because I assumed that you had just been like kind of fishing this whole time. So you took a quite a long hiatus from fishing as a kid, kind of got into some of the more active sports I guess, not that fly fishing can't be active, but some of the more taxing I guess, physically taxing activities and then just came back to fly fishing?
Palmer
Yeah that's 100% right. I came back to it, you know, call it 20 years ago, my dad had just retired and he had, he had had a big cancer scare. He had like a 20% chance of surviving. And so he survived and coming out of that, we were always a really close family and did a lot of vacations together. But my brother, dad, and I hadn't really done much, just the three of us in forever. So that's when we started heading out to Montana and I, uh, in 20 years ago, I literally bought, you know, the dummies guide, you know, one of those guys, the dummies guide to fly fishing and yeah, I, I'd fished a lot, but I kind of had to relearn how to fly fish. Um, every lesson that I had learned as a kid was long gone. Uh, but read a lot, even when I was doing all those other sports, I was reading a lot about fly fishing. And again, as I say, kind of had it in my mind that eventually I would do a whole of it. And then five or so years ago, I did a big trail run in the Grand Canyon called Rim to Rim to Rim, which was probably the pinnacle of my running career. Not that it was super fast, but it was 45 miles and each side is like a vertical mile. So it was a big goal.
Katie
It's quite a feat.
Palmer
I worked for a long time to build up to that and had a good solid time. And after that, it was sort of like, OK, I'm going to start fishing a lot. And Atlanta, I mean, coming from Colorado, I mean, you must look at Georgia and scratch your head. Does anyone trout fish in Georgia? But it's a great kind of hotbed for all kinds of fishing, but including trout fishing. The top, call it 50 miles of Georgia, right underneath the Tennessee and North Carolina borders or up in the mountains, there's 4,000 miles of trout streams, which is probably half what you have in Colorado or a state like Pennsylvania or something like that. But still, 4,000 miles is a lot of stream. Yeah.
Katie
You're right in that when I first think of Georgia, that's not what comes to mind. But I feel like in the past, I wouldn't say year or so, I've been hearing a lot more about it. It seems like it's kind of coming into the fly fishing scene the way that Colorado did, you know, years ago. And now it's kind of old news and it seems like Georgia is kind of the new hot spot to go to. I hear a lot of people talking about going to North Georgia.
Palmer
Yeah, it's, you know, it's, and part of it is we fish all year round. So you can come to, you know, come to North Georgia in the middle of the winter and still have good fishing. have a great tailwater too. There's a lake that's called Lake Lanier that's 60 miles north of Atlanta that the water comes out of the lake into the Chattahoochee River, our tailwater at you know 50 plus or minus degrees all year round. So it has wild brown trout and stocked rainbows and holdover rainbows. I think there's probably are rainbows that actually spawn and reproduce as well. But it's a great tailwater. In the winter, they actually stock that all the way down into Atlanta. In the summer, after about 30 or 40 miles, it gets too warm to hold trout. But the first 30 or 40 miles, we've got trout fishing year-round.
Katie
What is South Georgia like compared to that? Because I always hear about North Georgia.
Palmer
Yeah, yeah, it's totally I mean the trout habitat except for that tailwater the trout habitat stops in the First 50 mile within the first 50 miles coming south of the Tennessee North Carolina border. So it's The what it's just too warm and and the mountains, you know, Atlanta is the very bottom of the Appalachian Mountains. It's called the Piedmont area. So it's starting to flatten out and get too warm. And as you get South of Atlanta, it's flat and hot. And there's all kinds of great warm water fishing, but you're well below where they're trout. But the mountains are taller than they are in Vermont. I mean, people are shocked when they hear that. rains a ton. There are sections of the North Georgia mountains, particularly in the northeastern part of the state, where it rains 75 inches a year in a normal year. And you know that which is I think 75 inches is right about the cutoff for it being a rain forest. It's a little less as you move to the west, but still you know good 60 inches, which is nearly twice what say Seattle has. So we have lots of rain, it's incredibly lush and dense, and the mountains are super dense and you'll laugh at the elevations. The higher elevations are 4,000 feet, but most of the trout fishing is kind of two to two and a half in that range. Super low compared to what you have, But for the East Coast, it's, you know, it works. And it's, you know, for all trout populations, it's the very bottom, you know, North Georgia's the very, very bottom of the trout habitat on the East Coast. And the brook trout, you know, it's even fringier, you know, the 4,000 miles, there's probably 125 or maybe 150 miles that have native brook trout. So it's real fringy.
Katie
Has the fly fishing culture that's kind of developed in the northern areas because of the trout, has that started to leak down into southern Georgia? I know there's no trout down there, but is it a lot of warm water fishing with spin rods or has that fly fishing culture kind of seeped down into the warm water species as well?
Palmer
You know, it definitely has. And it's particularly sort of around Atlanta. In the summer, in that same Chattahoochee River, when it warms up too much, right around Atlanta, it's a whole trout there, striped bass that migrate upstream into that area. And people within the city limits of Atlanta in the summer, you can fly fish for stripers. And then the whole, the coastal Georgia for redfish and other saltwater species, there's tons of fly fishing there. But if you went to just your average bass pond in South Georgia, no one's fly fishing. But we have all kinds of great fly fishing resources, which when I started getting a you know, five years ago or so, I had all these incredible resources at my disposal. We have, you know, the premier fly shop in the Southeast is called the Fishhawk. It's a mile and a half from my house. You know, anytime I want, there's, you know, five guys standing around who know more about fly fishing than I'll ever know that I can stop in on and ask questions. And we've got a great guide service that called River Through Atlanta that fishes that whole tailwater section. We've got a year old infant guide who named Big T who does nothing but teach people how to year on it. I mean, we've got, Atlanta is big enough, six and a half million people or whatever that it can support all kinds of great resources. And we also have an awesome airport. So the people in Atlanta travel constantly. We can fly almost anywhere direct with Delta based in Atlanta. So it's a traveling crew. I mean, people are heading out West, they're heading to down South, lots of great saltwater destinations. It's a big active community here.
Katie
Yeah, I didn't even think about that. Isn't Atlanta, I think the most traveled through airport in the country or maybe the world? I don't want to say the world because I'm not sure, but I think it might be the most traveled through airport in the country.
Palmer
Yeah. I think it's back and forth between Atlanta and O'Hare. I think Atlanta is probably leading right now. And then I think maybe Heathrow has a few more people. But yeah, exactly.
Katie
It's a hub.
Palmer
And Delta is a great airline. It's right here and we can fly literally almost anywhere directly with plenty of options. So it's a traveling group here. But then we have all this great fishing here locally as well.
Katie
So how close are you to, A, fishing at all, and B, the smaller brook trout streams that you're generally hitting?
Palmer
So the first part is, yeah, I'm 15 minutes from my house. In the summer, I can be fishing for striped bass, shoal bass, smallmouth, panfish, stuff like that in the Chattahoochee. And then in the winter, six months of the year, they stock that same area with trout. So in the winter, I can fish stocker trout 15 minutes from my house. But to get really up into the true, where you've got wild fish and then native fish, It's an hour and a half to the farthest corner of North Georgia where it's an awesome place for brook trout is two and a half hours probably. So I'm getting up, Saturday I'll get up at four, 4.15 and be out the door by five, drive two or so hours and then fish hard and try to be back in the car by two or two-thirty or three or something.
Katie
And is there, what kind of land are you accessing there? Is there a national forest in that area or?
Palmer
There is, there's the Chattahoochee National Forest is not quite a million acres, you know, and it spreads across North Georgia. And there's, for trout, wild and stock trout, There's a lot of trout on private land, but there's a ton of public land also. I mean, that whole Chattahoochee National Forest and brook trout are almost exclusively on the public land 'cause it's the higher elevations, it's the deeper, you know, deeper ravines and things like that. I mean, for brook trout to survive in, you know, this far south, it, you know, generally you've got to have a north facing ravine that's maybe never been logged. Eve, hopefully no one stocked it with rainbows. Or if they have, there was a barrier falls in there somewhere. And you have to be generally above about 2,400 feet of elevation, which again, to you, it doesn't seem like much. But it's definitely a little bit higher up.
Katie
Coming from sea level, I mean, that's still a good deal up
Palmer
Yeah, yeah So it's it's definitely a lot of driving And a lot of but they're great for service roads. You know when I'm when I started looking for brook trout I ended up sort of breaking North Georgia into ten geographic areas which were largely Wildlife management areas, but it some were just basically watersheds And, you know, I'll hit one area after another. I mean, that's basically what I've been doing for the last three years, just concentrating on one of those geographic areas. And each of those are, you know, call it 20,000 acres or so. You know, the smallest ones are the ones that have the fewest streams might have eight target streams and the bigger ones are 25 plus. But yeah, it's a lot of driving, a lot of driving on kind of beat up forest service roads too.
Katie
Yeah, okay. So I have a lot of questions on this brook trout project. I've just been thinking of them as you've been talking. But first off, what got you started on this project? What triggered the idea?
Palmer
So I, when I started fishing in more seriously, I was, you know, trying like all kinds of stuff. And it's all fun. I love to do it all, you know, whether it's tenkara or Euro-nymphing or, you know, whatever. Started all these things, but definitely felt drawn to small streams. So I started focusing on the smaller streams in North Georgia just because, I don't know, I just felt drawn to it. And started working my way through a fishing, there are two or three fishing guidebooks for North Georgia. Started working my way through one, hitting all these small streams. And then, you know, there's not very many of the streams that get mentioned in the guidebooks as having brook trout, but found one and hit that stream and caught, you know, a native Georgia brook trout. And it was fantastic. And if you read some of the online sites and things like that, that cover North Georgia, a lot of people have that, they just wanna catch a native brook trout is kind of a goal. And so I did that. And then I started looking around and trying to find a few others. I thought, boy, wouldn't it be great if maybe one day I could find 10, catch brook trout on 10 different streams and started working towards that. And in the meantime, I had read that article that Zach Matthews has the loneliest book trout in the world that I sent to you. And that definitely kind of sparked my interest that much more. And he describes what it's like down here, great in that article. So that got me going and trying to get to 10 streams got me going. And then, you know, it just kind of morphed into, well, if I can hit 10, you know, can I hit 20? And then I wonder how many brook trout streams there are. And there's a book called "Brook Trout in Dixie" which covers, it talks about brook trout in all the Southern states, West Virginia. It may even start with Maryland and works its way all the way South to Georgia. And I think in that book, it was where I read it, estimated there were maybe as many as 80 streams that have brook trout in Georgia. only named one or two of the better known ones. But if I can get 20-- and so I started spending all this time online looking at my Saturday evenings or weekday evenings or whatever. I was just pouring through websites and online searches, trying to find names and finding-- I might find a scientific report that talked about it, a 30-year-old genetic study about brook trout in north Georgia, and that report might have a table that listed some streams, the streams they sampled, and then some of the local trout on limited chapters would do stream projects for brook trout, so I'd pick up those names and then eventually I'll organize them into this database and started just working through it. So now there are 160 something streams in the database of which I've caught brook trout on 74. There are another 45 or so that I've fished and have dismissed as not having brook trout. I still have a long way to go and every you know, every so often as I get deeper into a particular area, you know, more and more streams get added to the list. You know, you're fishing in a wildlife management area and working through the streams there and you know you've got some info on some of the streams but then you're fishing the ones that are similar and you know have all the right characteristics to be a per trash stream and then you see another one that was never in the database and so you add that to the database and eventually go fish that. So it just kind of snowballed. And then along the way I met, just pure happenstance, I met a guy from the Forest Service. It was a funny story. I was down this remote Forest Service road, hadn't seen anyone all day, which is the normal case. I mean, when I leave my house at five in the morning, I'm not talking to a human being until I get home at five. usually. And so I was driving, I was heading out at the end of the day. And in the middle of nowhere, there was a sign that said all traffic must stop in half a mile, you know, regular roadside. And, you know, drove a half mile and said, you know, all traffic must stop for a survey. And there was a guy from the Forest Service standing there. And I was the third, third car that had passed by He'd been there from, you know, nine to four. I was the third car that had passed by and he had just a usage survey, you know, 50 questions on what I was doing. I was spending money in the area and things like that. And so he and I got talking about what I was doing and he introduced me to another guy at the Forest Service who spent a lot of time with the Department of Natural Resources and and they're trout biologists and try to limit other people. He was spending a ton of time on trash streams. So he and I sat down together one day and kind of compared databases and he gave me some new ideas. I gave him some streams that he wasn't familiar with and didn't realize held brook trout. But then he introduced me to a biologist at the Department of Natural Resources I've just recently spent time with, I kind of wanted to get to the point where I had like a really big database before I approached that individual, just because he wasn't going to be very excited about sharing BrickTrout streams. And I'm not excited about sharing stream names either. It's a, they're all pretty tenuous and can't handle much pressure. But he, it was interesting. We sat down together for a couple hours and he said, he was relatively new to his position and they hadn't had a trap biologist for about 10 years just because of budgetary restrictions. And he said, I've had all these things on my plate but I'm finally getting to the point where I'm gonna try to catalog and update where all the brook trout streams are. And I had, you know, since the beginning of me being in this position, I had thought maybe there were some fishermen I could recruit. And, you know, I was, I don't know which of us was more excited. You know, I had this huge database and he had a huge database and was about to start, you know, electro-shocking streams and working on his and I'm constantly working. So anyway, we're in close contact now and swapping emails and data all the time now. So we'll see where that goes. And that, for the past three years as I've been working on this, I've thought, I'm building this database that I really can't share with anyone 'cause I can't, you can't publish the names of these streams and they're just a little too fragile. hopefully some good will come of it because it's really hard work and it's a big effort. This is finally hitting a biologist who is really curious and he's trying to work through the genetics of the different streams and things like that. Anyway, finally some good is going to come of it, I think, rather than just me hitting a personal goal.
Katie
Was your goal when you met up with him with already with a database under your belt just to I know I talked about this sometimes like referring to hunting where you don't want to just call someone up and ask where to go you kind of want to come in showing that you've already done a little bit of legwork was that kind of your goal here to prove that you're not just some Joe Schmoe off the street who wants the answers to where all the brook trout are and show that you know you've done the legwork you just want some verification and you know a little bit help from the biologist?
Palmer
Yeah, exactly. I definitely wouldn't have reached out if I wasn't as far along as I am. And even the original Forest Service Ranger, I wouldn't have followed up on that introduction to the guy I met alongside of the road. At that point, I was probably 50. I found brook trout on probably 50 streams. And his database was, it's probably 20 years out of date and a little less accurate. But in that spending time with him, there are a few streams that I had crossed off and he was like, "No, you need to go back and you need to re-fish that one because I'm sure they're brook trout." And he was right. And that's the same thing has happened a little bit with the guy from the DNR, but we're still comparing notes.
Katie
So do any of these streams, are there any that aren't named or are not even like really documented? Have you come across one out in the field that you look on a map and it's just not there?
Palmer
There are, no, I've never found one that's not on a map at all. There are very few. There's maybe three in my database that are unnamed tributaries. And that kind of raises the question of a couple of different paths we can head down. One is topo maps, and the other is you've got streams that have brook trout, but then separate populations. One of the big themes from that Zach Matthews article was you've got these isolated populations. So if you've got a stream and they're brook trout above 3,000 feet and above a barrier where no other fish can get up to them, that little population is completely cut off of every other brook trout population out there. And that's why he named the article, "The Loneliest Brook Trout in the World," is these little remote populations that are just by themselves. And that's what the DNR biologist is trying to get at, is checking the DNA of those and seeing how much they differ. You might have a population that's been isolated for 300 years that has developed its own little DNA. And then there are other ones on my list that you'll have a stream that has brook trout in it and then two tributaries and all three of those streams can intermix. So if I've got, you know, whatever, 74 brook trout streams that I've found, so you know, confirmed, and there's probably 45 different populations in that. So there's some group that can intermix, but some groups that are isolated. One of the coolest streams I found is an unnamed tributary of a stream that holds brook trout, but this tributary flows down into basically a swamp, and it's on the map as connecting with the mainstream, but it's not even a trickle, even at pretty high water, and we've had a really rainy, it rained 100 inches last year in the area I'm talking about, so we've had high water. You never see where, you basically, that tributary never connects with the main river, it just comes down into the swamp and it's sort of absorbed. But when you get higher up on that stream, they're brook trout, so even though that's a tributary of another brook brook trout stream, it's this totally isolated little population. Maybe if it was really flooding, some of those brook trout could wash down into the mainstream or maybe a fish could swim up into there. But yeah, it's cool.
Katie
Do you ever find other species in these creeks? I mean, obviously, if something like a rainbow or brown came in, I'm sure the brook trout population probably wouldn't last too long. But do you ever catch little chubs or anything?
Palmer
So one great indicator that there probably aren't brook trout is if you catch chubs. Because chubs are going to be, you see chubs mixed with rainbows all the time and maybe even brown trout, but I never ever see them mixed in with brook trout. I think the brook trout need just like a notch colder water. I do, there's a couple streams that have brown trout and brook trout mixed together. And there's two, I think, in my database that have rainbows and brook trout mixed together. But generally, and all those 40 whatever that I scratched, maybe a third of those, I didn't find anything at all. And 2/3 I probably found mostly rainbows.
Katie
And that was going to be my next question. How long will you fish a stream and not catch anything before you chalk it up to there's nothing in here versus maybe you just haven't gotten to the right spot yet or you just haven't seen any?
Palmer
And I'll give it a hard, hard effort. So I'll fish a stream all the way up to where it sort of disintegrates. and it sort of splinters it near its headwater spring. I mean, I've had streams that I've fished as many as four times, which is four days, looking for brook trout before I've given up. The other other ones that you just get on it, it just feels immediately like everything's wrong. But yeah, I'll give it a pretty hard go before I'll give up on it. And I've gotten better. The last three years, I've gotten a lot better at it too. Some of the ones that I'll eventually go re-fish that I had scratched off the list, I just feel like I'm better at knowing where I'm going to find them and everything about my technique and equipment, everything's just better. It's kind of like a miner going back and mining an old claim with modern technology or something like that.
Katie
Do you go back and fish ones that you've caught brook trout in again or is that kind of like a checkbox and you move on and you'll go back to ones that you haven't caught them to try to see if you just missed something or you go back to ones that you fish just to catch fish again?
Palmer
If a stream that I've caught brook trout in is near a stream where I'm spending a lot of time and I've got an extra hour or two. I'll definitely stop and re-fish. Re-fish a stream or or maybe if I fished it in the dead of winter and caught one brook trout. Yeah, maybe I'll go back in June, you know prime season and re-fish it. Generally, I'm moving on.
Katie
What about in the same day? Obviously, you're probably going for a couple hours and I'm not assuming that you catch one and leave, but have you had any where you catch one and then you don't catch anything else, but you still chalk it up as a win? Is your goal to consistently catch fish out of one before you consider it a solid brook trout stream?
Palmer
If it's a nice stream and I'm enjoying fishing it, I'll fish it for several hours. If it's a total nightmare of rhododendron and brush, I usually like to at least catch two. But there are definitely ones on my list where I've only caught one. Those are largely ones I hit in the winter. But I like to at least get a couple. And if it's a nice stream, I'll keep going. And some of the streams lend themselves-- you'll have a group of streams right together. And so there are days where I'll get-- I've gotten a couple or even three streams in one day. That's rare. But that definitely has happened, too, which helps offset some of the four days on one stream with nothing to show for it.
Katie
That article you sent from Zach Matthews, do you know where he was, and have you fished any of those areas?
Palmer
I do. It took a while to figure out which stream it was, but I definitely did. It's um, it's not the southernmost brook trout stream in Georgia, you know, and I think he'll admit to that too There are some that are further south, but I definitely found it. I I had brought a copy of the article with me with pictures and kind of verified the spots and it is I mean he talks about in the article that it's a great brook trout stream and it really is it's it's an all-star stream it's bigger than Most of them, it's got a great healthy population. It's a really good one. Yeah,
Katie
I really enjoyed the article. It was-- I liked the pictures. I liked the writing. And I saw one of the comments on it said that someone had kept coming back to read it every year. And I think I might be one of those people now, too.
Palmer
Yeah, it's definitely motivating. And there are other-- so there's probably 10, at least the ones I've found, 10 just great brook trout streams that are pretty decent size and kind of open and easy to move up on where they've got big healthy populations where you'll, on a good day you can get 10 brook trout in an hour and some on the bigger size which might be eight inches or something. I mean they're still still small. So there's some really good streams and where the access isn't too bad but there's years of the how many days I've done this now, I've seen one person one time. Literally, every single day I go do this, I never see a single person from when I walk away from the car to when I get back to the car.
Katie
Was it shocking when you came across someone?
Palmer
It was so early in it. It was maybe the third stream I got that I didn't really realize how rare that was. And it's a stream that's better known and has really, really easy access. There's basically a forest service road that goes alongside of it. And it's right in the middle of, really close to the Appalachian Trail and right in the middle of lots of other good streams and things like that. So it's, in hindsight, it's not terribly surprising. That one also, someone sent me a picture of a natural tiger trout. That's one of the ones that's got a few brown trout mixed in. And I was shocked to see a natural tiger trout. That was really cool.
Katie
You caught one?
Palmer
No, no. A friend of mine did and sent me a picture of it. But it was for that stream where I saw the person. But I go-- I mean, I just go day after day up there without seeing anybody. And when you're doing it, I joke that, and these streams are so small and so tight and so hard to fish that hardly anyone wants to do it. This project, I joke that it's become a way to catch a ton of tiny rainbow trout while experiencing the absolute worst fly fishing in Georgia. I mean, I use a six and a half foot rod. I could suit it up when I'm leaving the car just 'cause it's so dense. So if I can possibly help it, I don't wear waders. There's maybe three months out of the year where I have to wear waders, but even when it's mid-December, I've got wading boots with gravel guards and then a heavy pair of neoprene socks on the inside of that. And then on top of that, I wear snake gaiters, which in the winter, you know, when snakes are down is just to protect my legs. But, you know, they're, all these streams are snake infested and you can't see the ground when you're walking through the brush. I've got knee pads on, you know, camo shirt. And then I've got, all my fishing stuff, I keep in a really small chest pack. You know, I really just have one box of flies. a spool of 5X Tippett, nippers, things like that, some floating, but hardly any fishing stuff. And I'm almost always fishing. I have three different variations of common flies that I fish, dry flies. One I call an LA special, which is a Los Angel. Well, let me go to the first one. my true confidence fly is a variation of a pink post parachute Adams, where I tie it, I have what I call a jog bra tie where if you envision a runner with a fluorescent pink jog bra and a you know, Heather Gray tank top over it, you can see, you know, kind of a pink hue coming through the Heather Gray and around the fringes, you can see some pink and so when I tie my jog bra, called a job about three PA three PA's the pink parachute Adams I use fluorescent orange thread and I use regular gate great dubbing but I dub it kind of lightly so you can see the pink hues come through and then when I whip finish it and things like that you obviously have like a tiny little pink hot spot up on the head so I fish that 75 percent of the time then I have another parachute Adams variation that I call an LA special which Los Angeles special which Dave Whitlock had written something I read that said bricktrout are attracted mostly to orange or more to orange than any other color. I have no reason to doubt him and I rely I would rely on him more than me so I started tying very similar with an orange post but I the part of the fly in front of the post I dub with orange dubbing instead of gray dubbing so it's got a bigger hot spot. And then a classic brook trout fly is an a sable wolf and I tie that with the wings I make them orange and I use a still a rust orange but it's it looks much more orangey than rust colored on the and I call that a lone wolf. And part of part of the bright colored posts and wings are you're so deeply in the shade it really really helps to be able to see the fly.
Katie
Isn't that like the best thing about brook trout that you don't need to take a lot when you were talking about how you only carry basically a handful of flies with you and I swear I need to trim my my fly pack down because every time I go out I'm usually usually there's multiple species that I may encounter and my mindset is always like I need And then inevitably when I go after brook trout, all I use is a parachute Adams. And I question why I'm still lugging around all my flies when I pull the same one out every single time.
Palmer
You know, that's exactly right. And some of these fish may not have seen it. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I've had plenty of streams that I don't think anyone's fished in years. and the fish are so aggressive. I mean, they're not very, you know, I mean like a typical freestone, they're not very fertile streams and so you can cast through a brook trout and they'll, it may be the fourth cat, I mean they may hit your fly four times before they finally hook up, but unless you truly prick them, they're not going to give up on your fly. And you know, it really doesn't matter that much. If it's raining or something, maybe I'll throw a foam beetle just because I have to it's easier to keep floating and occasionally when a stream will be big enough that'll drop like a an unweighted uh hair hares ear pheasant tail nymph off of it but yeah they're being it it's not complicated once you it's hard to find the fish and it's hard to get into them. But once you're there, you know, if you can cast into a pool or a pocket, you're going to pretty much know that fish are there. But then I, so that's the fish, you know, fishing gear. And then I've got a couple different short rods, but my go-to is a like a six and a half foot medium kind of action three way. I'm always surprised when I look at rods that are available by different manufacturers that more people don't have six and a half foot three ways. It seems like everyone you talk to says, yeah, you know, small streams, you can still be throwing bigger flies. So you should go with a three way instead of a two way. But everything under seven and a half foot seems to be two ways these days. And I've got a shorter fiberglass rod that is fun, but I think everyone should try fishing with a fiberglass rod, just like a 10-car rod. It's just fun, but it's not really a go-to. And people on small streams tend to go with really soft rods, just the concept that they'll load a lot better with these really short casts. But something that Dave Hughes had written in a book about small streams, he had this theory that you want a bit faster rods so you can throw tighter loops and get them into narrower places. And I 100% agree with that. I think it's really easy to go too soft on a rod. One of the rods I have is much faster. It's a And that might be a little overdone, but half or more of your casts are going to be bow and arrow casts. And you can sling a tight bow and arrow loop a really long way with that rod. It's super impressive. And those are the techniques, right? Your bow and arrow casting, your dapping is probably a little overrated, but it definitely works sometimes. And it saved some days for me. You're roll casting, and occasionally, once in a great while, you'll have enough room to actually do a real cast. But that's kind of what you're up against. I've become-- and if you bow and arrow cast enough, I find sometimes when I could make a regular cast or roll cast, I'll just instinctively go to a really long bow arrow cast. Joe Humphreys has an awesome video on the proper way to bow and arrow cast, which I think everyone should look at. If you go to YouTube and Google Joe Humphreys bow and arrow cast, you'll see it. But most people try to hold the fly and they just don't get the distance or the accuracy that they need.
Katie
I think the whole topic of fast versus a slow rod on those small streams and how a lot of people tend to associate smaller streams with slower action rods, I wonder if that kind of comes from the fact that you are fishing in a, it sounds like a very tightly forested area versus something like the high country of California where there's just a meadow stream. I feel like that would be better for a slow action rod where you don't have, you don't Like the pinpoint precision casts, you're just getting the fly on the water. I think that's where I would take a slow action rod. But where you are, it sounds like one, you know, one inch to the right and you're caught up in a tree branch, which is probably why you need that faster action. Is that, you say that's accurate?
Palmer
Yeah, I would 100% agree with that. And the, you know, you're not, it's not like you're trying to make a soft presentation on really still water. So in the waters, you know, it's, these are tumbling streams for the most part. Even the slower section, there's usually decent current. So you're not, you don't need that slow action to deliver a dry fly, you know, really lightly onto the water.
Katie
Do you find that when you show up that if there are brook trout that you tend to find them right away? Like what's the longest you've fished before you found one?
Palmer
Two miles.
Katie
Okay. And how far up have you hiked? I know you said you go up to basically the headwaters or the spring that forms these creeks, but what's your average or what's the farthest that you've had to go up to reach that point?
Palmer
It's probably not, from where I would start fishing, it's probably not much more than a couple miles. Okay. There's a huge variation. of the streams you might have to hike three miles to get to the elevation and where you think the, and this is what I've gotten better at. I used to just start at the bottom where a tributary hit a main river and just battle my way from the bottom to the top. Now I figure away in from the side and hit a higher elevation where I think I'm more likely to find brook trout. But you might have a three mile hike to get in or you might park the car where it crosses underneath a Forest Service road and just start right up. I mean, there's some that, yeah, there are plenty of streams I've caught brook trout with inside of my car and there's plenty of others that it's been way, way up there. And it takes a really long time. I mean, the woods are so dense and you're constantly climbing over and under and you're pouring sweat. I mean it's a battle moving up these streams, so to go a mile takes several hours to fish a mile worth. And you usually kind of have a frequently have the same battle just getting back to the car too. Now you can, what I call a rhododendron line, you know, the streams are for the most part just encased in rhododendron and when you finish, you're fishing upstream and when you finish fishing, you can climb, you know, 100 yards up the hillside to get above where the rhododendron is or, you know, 75 yards or whatever and then start trying to make your way back downhill And I do things like when I'm researching a stream, there's a bunch of Topo maps that I'll kind of cross-reference. So there's, I don't know if you're familiar with Topo Zone. Topo Zone is awesome. You can get on there and find a stream. And then there are two different Topo maps. One is a forest service version and one is, I don't know, another version. And then it also has the same sort of Google map format and then a satellite, a Google satellite image too. And you can zoom in on an area and then toggle back and forth between all four of those. And you can get a really great view of what you're coming up against when you're you're gonna fish that stream. And then there's another program called Cal Topo, which does a better job of having hiking trails and things like that. It'll often have things that you won't find on Topo zone. And then the Garmin, the regular Garmin GPS will often have a trail or have something that those other two don't have. So I'll cross check with my GPS as well. And then, do you know Stream Maps? Stream Maps is an app for your phone that is incredible for searching. You can pick a state and then search for the name of a stream and it'll pull it right up and it'll have a color code in one color and the streams it flows into are color coded another color. It's an amazing app that, you know, and you kind of, if you, to do this project, you sort of have to have a love for maps, which sounds totally nerdy. But, you know, if I'm sitting around, like, waiting for a dentist appointment, I'm probably like pulling out my phone and scanning on stream maps, you know, to look at where I might be fishing next weekend. You have to be completely obsessed with maps to make all this really work, to find the streams and figure out the access and figure out the best way. And I mean, it may be as simple as there's a stream and a ravine below a dirt road. And if you look at a satellite image, you can pick out where there's less just heavy vegetation. it's just maybe like pine trees or something. And then you end up driving to that point and picking that path of least resistance and heading downhill for half a mile to hit the stream, versus if you picked a more vegetated area, it'd be a huge battle to get down through all that mess.
Katie
Yeah, I've definitely been in the same boat with the mapping and the maps not agreeing. I haven't used the resources that you've mentioned, but I generally have the same problem where I'll have three or four different mapping programs or trail apps or things like that all together and then have to piece together the trail because each one only has a portion of it. And then you get there and it doesn't match one or the trail just disappears and it says it was there because it used to be there. And I think that's half the fun, is just trying to figure it out because I think it's exciting when I come across areas like that because I know that it's probably not heavily trafficked because anywhere that's heavily trafficked is going to be well documented.
Palmer
Yeah. And that's the Caltopo, the trails that are on there are definitely trails that are used a lot more often. But people still aren't taking those trails into fish areas. But I agree with you. That's part of the cool part about all this, is all the exploration. And finally, Saturday morning, you get to go and actually see what's really there and see if your premise on how you're going to access that stream really works out, and if there really are brook trout down there.
Katie
It's like Christmas every Saturday.
Palmer
Yeah, yeah. It's really all the catch, six-inch brook trout. It's cool, though. And there's another aspect that we haven't talked about at all that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention is there's a big sort of backwoods travel safety aspect that anyone who wants to do this shouldn't hold back on at all. You're heading into areas, you're losing cell coverage several miles before you ever leave your car. And then you're heading in areas where there are all kinds of snakes. There's bears, there's wild pigs. And you're climbing through brush and up and over, falling down trees. Maybe a tornado went through an area and you've got to go through a whole tornado mess. You know, we're in Georgia, there are tornadoes. And so you're always going to fall. I don't think I've ever gone out where I haven't fallen, maybe even a couple of times, including like falling 10 feet down a waterfall and I was like halfway up in the old rock climbing experience. Comes in, but it turns out, turns out wading boots don't have the same grip on wet, algae-covered rock as sticky rubber does on clean granite. But so I have my fishing gear in the small chest pack, but then I've got-- pretty much all the time, I've got a backpack that has bear spray in it. It's got this little survival pack that's got stuff like a flashlight and a space blanket and some fire starters and a whistle and some real basic stuff like that, but pretty compact, water bottle and food. And then instead of a first aid kit, I carry a trauma pack. I don't know if you're familiar with those. It's about the size of a first aid kit you would bring, but it has sponges soaked with a chemical that will help stop bleeding and compression bandages. The theory is that the average first aid kit that a hiker is going to have solves problems that can pretty much wait. It solves cuts and scrapes and headaches and bee stings. problems that can't wait, like you slice an artery, that's what a trauma pack solves. They're light. They don't take up much room. They're not that expensive. You can get them on Amazon.
Katie
Do you take that in addition to typical first aid things like bandages and gauze, or is that just a replacement and you figure if you scrape an arm that you'll just rub some dirt in it and wait it out?
Palmer
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a reply. I mean in that little survival pack there a couple of gods bandages and but there's very little maybe a roll of first aid tape, but basically i'm relying on the um, on the trauma pack and then the other like really important thing is uh Plb, I don't know if you're familiar with that as a personal locator beacon. So it's um It's where you buy the unit, you don't, there's no subscription fee or anything like that. And it really just has like one big button on it that if you, and you register it, you know, every couple of years you have to go back and re-register with your contact information. But if you become incapacitated, you know, you pull it out and hit that button and it sends an emergency signal with your GPS coordinates. and just transmits for the next 30 hours. And that gets to, if I leave my car at 7.30 in the morning and a mile and a half upstream, and break my leg at 10, my wife generally knows where I'm going, but I change, sometimes the road is closed or I change a lot too, you don't necessarily stick to the original plan. So it's not, at five o'clock, if I haven't called her and said, "I'm almost home," she's calling me to ask where I am. And at 5.30, she's gonna call me again, and this time be really mad. And maybe it's 6 or 6.30, she's gonna realize there's a problem and start trying to figure out where I am or who to call. And I'm basically spending the night before someone has any hope of finding me. Whereas with this, if I break my leg at 10, at 1001, there's a signal going out and here's where he is. And he's got a problem and has to be rescued. So that's, and because I'm always alone, I think that's just hugely important.
Katie
Yeah.
Palmer
That the bear spray and, one kind of North Georgia tip if you're moving up a stream and the water suddenly gets cloudy like it rained, but the level doesn't come up. There's a herd of pigs somewhere not too far above you. They make a total mess. Bears, pigs, snakes. And then honestly, the only thing that's really hurt me is three different times I've walked through yellow jacket nests, each time good for eight to 12 stings. But I'm always really wary about pigs and bears. Bears pretty much are heading the other way if they see you.
Katie
Have you ever had an encounter with a bear or anything while you're out?
Palmer
The only bear one, so I've seen several bears and I've all been headed in the other direction except one time I was heading into fish a stream and the road had washed out in a heavy rainstorm so the road was closed so I was mountain biking in it was like four miles in which is awesome if you ever see a closed road it means you've got like this whole wilderness to yourself if you're willing to go in there and so I So I started mountain biking in real early. It was in the winter, so it wasn't that early. And I could just start seeing-- I could see the road totally fine, but just start seeing into the woods. And the road was on a big, big slope where it dropped off dramatically below me. And I saw ahead of me this jet black thing moving up a tree. And I was like, what is that thing? and I got closer and closer and realized it was a bear cub. And it was like a nature film where, you know, you're taking a picture up from a tree canopy because the tree was down below me. And I never saw the mama bear, but I'll tell you Lance Armstrong fully juiced up, couldn't they beat me out of there? But pigs, I accidentally cornered a herd of maybe 20 pigs one time. they saw me and headed up what turned out to be kind of like a dead end. And they had a bunch of, pigs are like the opposite of bears. Bears, if they've got a cub there, that's when you have to worry. Pigs, if they've got like those little wiener pigs with them they're just trying to herd them away from you. They have no interest in you. They're just trying to get away from you. And so this herd of pigs had to come back like right past me to get out of, just work themselves in this corner. And then a couple other times I've come across like single adult pigs who've stopped and like squared up to me, but have always, you know, always moved on eventually.
Katie
Yeah, we don't have any of that up here. Just bears. Bears and nice mountain lions, but I don't, I don't think you guys have any of those over there, do you?
Palmer
We have, you know, North Georgia might have 20 mountain lion sightings a year, which is dramatically fewer than the Sasquatch sightings. I'm sure we have 200 Sasquatch sightings.
Katie
We have quite a few of those up here too.
Palmer
Yeah, right. Exactly. And then the snakes are, it's just so... The snake gaiters are just critical. And wearing full-length boots. In the summer, Sims makes this boot that is designed to wear with bare feet, but it's like a full wading boot. And if it's a little cooler, you can fit like a thin pair of neoprene socks inside of that. So in the summer, I'll wear those, but it's a full boot and then it's got the snake gaiter on top of that. And then as it gets colder, I'll switch over to like regular wading boots, as I mentioned, with the gravel guards and the neoprene socks kind of layered up. And that's good till, I mean it can be raining in 40 degrees and uh, it'll feel totally fine, you know, particularly in the Maybe not in the end of February when the water is colder, but in the December It feels totally fine. Uh wading wet like that and the yeah the waders just kind of the waders I do wear when I wear them are just the waist high.
Katie
Okay
Palmer
They're still hot and they're still constrict movement and you're tearing them up. I started getting holes in my waders, I would get AquaSeal and carefully search out each hole and dab some AquaSeal on it. And then now I just turn them inside out and go buy a big tube of silicone seal at the hardware store and put a big bead of silicone seal along the inside of the shins and knees and seat and smear it around with like a plastic butter knife. And it's, you just rip everything up and all that, the briars and stuff like that. Another great tip, my own invention, but I'm sure Patagonia and Orvis and Simms will have their own items out after this podcast comes out. In the winter, I'll wear what I call rain shorts where I take a pair of rain pants and not ones with zippers down the side, but just cheap rain pants and cut them off at the knees. And so if it's raining, you know, it's 40 degrees and raining, you're waiting wet. Uh, if you pull those on, it makes all the difference in the world.
Katie
That's a really good idea. I've never thought of that before, but yeah, your feet in the water will be basically protected from getting cold once they get used to it. Right. And then it just keeps your upper legs dry. Is that the goal?
Palmer
Yeah. keeps your, you know, everything from the waist down dry. I mean, you've got a raincoat on and the raincoat I wear is a little bit oversized, so it fits over the chest pack, so that's protected. And then the backpack, I mean, given how much it rains, you know, the 100 inches last year, I've got a waterproof backpack, so everything can be sealed up there. So with a raincoat and that, and then by pulling the rain pants on, keeps your shorts dry and everything, I mean, it's so, again, it's so dense and sort of loamy. And, you know, it's just, if you're up there in the, and when it's raining, it's filthy dirty too. It's, you know, you're, everything's wet and dirty and you're slipping and sliding down this like loamy soil. And, you know, it's, I mean, I have, the clothes I wear when I fish are, you know, permanently stained, you know, dirt colored. It's never coming out.
Katie
Well, I'm not jealous of your... I've been jealous of most of what you've been talking about today, but I'm not jealous of the amount of rain you get there, it sounds like.
Palmer
I know. And, you know, if you were to ask me my ideal fishing day, it'd be out west without a rhododendron or tree in sight.
Katie
The grass is always greener.
Palmer
Yeah, yeah.
Katie
Well, Palmer, we've been going for over an hour now, so I can let you get going, but I'm excited to hear how the rest of this brook trout project goes. You say you're around 70 streams right now?
Palmer
Yeah, 74. Right now, I believe I'll end up over 90. I don't know if there's any chance we'll get likelihood target, so I'm pretty confident I'll get over 90. And honestly, when I hit that, then it gets super interesting because then it's really even getting further off the grid and really exploring and finding streams that are even more remote and things like that. So I have a long way ahead of me.
Katie
Yeah, I think it sounds like it'll just get more and more challenging, but probably more and more fun too as you start to find more of your own streams that haven't been documented or don't have names or just take tributaries up and things like that.
Palmer
And there are a lot like that, too. There's a bunch of streams on my list that they do have names, but I never found a single mention of brook trout in all my searches. And I've never found anyone who thought they were brook trout on them. So there's some-- and those are obviously the coolest ones.
Katie
Yeah, for sure.
Palmer
Yeah, the self-discovery.
Katie
Do you know how many streams you get on average each year?
Palmer
Uh, so last year I fished more than I would have only because it rained so much. So a lot of the other fishing I would have done was blown out. So I hit the mountains more, you know, which you can fish in the higher water a little better. And I think I got 30 or so last year and I'll, I'm probably ahead of that pace this year, right now.
Katie
Well, maybe we can check back in in like a year and see how this year and the beginning of next year like stacks up to previous years, if you'd be open to that.
Palmer
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'll definitely keep you informed and meeting, spending time with this Department of Resource, Natural Resource Biologists, I'll add a whole nother element to, so that's just beginning.
Katie
Very cool. All right, well, I will let you get going, but look forward to keeping in touch hopefully check him back in. We could talk about this stuff all night so I think we'll tune back in another time and hear what's new then.
Palmer
Perfect and thanks for having me on.
Katie
Yeah thanks for coming on this has been great. And that's a wrap on episode number three. As always if you liked what you heard go ahead and go over to the Wild Initiative podcast. You can subscribe there. You'll get my show every Thursday as well as all of Sam's other shows throughout the week. You can also follow me on Instagram @fishuntamed or on go wild at my name Katie Burgert and until next time take care.
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