Ep 48: The Fly Fishing Collaborative, with Bucky Buchstaber
Bucky Buchstaber is the Founder and Executive Director of the Fly Fishing Collaborative, an organization dedicated to harnessing the fly fishing community to fight human trafficking. Bucky decided that he wanted to dedicate his life to helping others, and figured the best way to do so was to channel his passion for fishing into nonprofit work. The Fly Fishing Collaborative uses money raised through direct donations, film events, banquets, raffles, flies, and other products to build aquaponics farms for orphanages and safe homes. These farms not only provide an eco-friendly way to produce healthy and delicious food for victims of abuse, but also provide jobs for them. In this episode, we cover Bucky’s upbringing as a kid with the fishing “bug,” how he came up with the Fly Fishing Collaborative, the work they’ve done so far, and also some incredible stories of fishing overseas.
Website: www.flyfishingcollaborative.org
Instagram: @flyfishingcollaborative
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 48 with Bucky Buchstaber on the fly fishing collaborative. If you just want to start, I'd love to just hear how you got started in the outdoors and your intro to fishing.
Bucky
Yeah, you know, I was one of those kids that was born with the fishing gene.
Katie
You just had it in you.
Bucky
I just had it in me. I honestly was pursuing fish in my earliest, earliest memories. I grew up early years in Lake Tahoe in Truckee and just chomping around the lake and in the tributary streams. We lived in a little log cabin out in the woods and my parents were kind of hippies and my dad cut firewood for a living and we were just kind of like barefoot wild. My brothers and I were just barefoot wild kids. My dad didn't really fish and actually he wasn't really around most of my upbringing, my childhood, which is actually a big part of my story. But for some reason, I mean, you know, I take kids fishing a lot these days and I've got four kids myself now. Unfortunately, none of them inherited the fishing gene. So I think it might skip a generation. They still fish with me, but not the way that I fished when I was a kid.
Katie
There's a difference, I think, between the people who just have it and who pick it up because someone takes them along and kind of forces it on them.
Bucky
One of my kids, one of my son's buddies, he's a neighborhood kid and he's got the gene and like it's eat, drink, sleep, fish. He reads himself to sleep with fishing magazines. His mom reads him fishing magazines before he goes to bed. They're not fisher people, but he's just like, he's got the gene and she just has to fish. He'll sit like for endless hours and you won't and he won't lose focus whereas the majority of kids you know you have to take them to a stocked pond to keep them interested and that's you know a fish every other cast but no anyways I was one of those kids I've always I've always loved to fish taught myself how to fish just because my dad wasn't in the picture and my brother my older brother and I so fast forward a few years so my my grade school years my mom moved us up to the bay area in California and in in the city called palo alto right by Stanford there oh yeah yeah and so we're just a bunch of wild country kids now stuck in like an urban area and we had no idea what to do with ourselves and there's no water there's freeways everywhere there's stores and and traffic and it's just it's chaos and that first year of living we were living at my grandparents house because they were kind of taking care of us for a while because we were pretty down and out at that time in our life and my brother rode his bmx down the street with there's just this look of just sheer like joy and excitement on his face because he found water with fish in it and he's like Bucky follow me You've got to follow me. I found fish. And I'm like, and I'm just like, oh, okay. Should I follow him? Because sometimes he played tricks on me and just gave me to follow him. And it'd be like some kind of prank or an ambush. And he'd love to throw me in the juniper bushes, which really sucked. But I could tell that that look on his face was real. So I followed him and he rode his bike out of our neighborhood, past the liquor store, which we weren't allowed to go past, but he went darting past the liquor store and around like three more blocks and then stopped at a dead end at this big hedge along the fence next to this five lane freeway. And then he just like disappeared in that hedge. And it's like, where is he going? And so I went through the hedge. It's kind of like, this is like, these are like magical moments in my life, like pivotal moments. This was like such an adventurous like day for me. We went through this hedge. There was a cut in the chain link fence and fence. And we climbed through the cut in the fence. And now we're on the shoulder of this file of lane freeway and cars are zipping by. I'm like 10 years old. And was I even 10? Maybe nine or 10 years old. And we're now we're playing by the freeway and my brother proceeds to go over the, onto the overpass on the freeway and climbs down the overpass. And there was a canal down there and I followed him down to the canal and there was just like loads of carp down there. Oh, really? Yeah. And so like that became our playground and that's where we really like honed in our craft of fishing. And doing everything we could to figure out what these fish eat and how to fight them and how to catch them. And we ended up just catching like so many amazing carp down there. And that's where I actually caught my first steelhead.
Katie
Really? Not where I would have expected to, or I guess it's not even where it's just like, I wouldn't expect to find steelhead with carp in any, in any situation.
Bucky
It might've been the last steelhead in Northern California. And I feel really bad because I killed it. And this was because this canal is an irrigation canal, but it connects to the bay. And some of these, you know, fish would migrate out of the bay into the canal. And so this steelhead had found its way up into the, I didn't even know what steelhead, never heard of steelhead. I thought it was this giant trout. And we're actually, we didn't even have our rods that day. Get this, this is crazy. We're like exploring the canal, walking up and down the canal. And I see this fish like tailing and, and, and just kind of like, you know, I saw this like V of this fish swimming. I'm like, what is that? That doesn't look like carp. And so I go and I follow this fish and it's like something I'd never seen before. And so we're chasing this fish around the canal and it's like two or three feet deep of water and there's some shallower spots and we're trying to corner it. And, and I took my shirt off and used it as a net. And finally, like after about an hour of chasing and trying to corner the steelhead I jumped on it and hugged it and caught this steelhead with my bare hands and like dragged it up the bank and was like look at this what is it we dragged it home to my grandma so she could see it and then the the neighbors like were so like baffled that we caught this giant trout looking fish in the canal underneath the freeway they called the newspaper. And we actually got put in the paper three, cause we had a buddy with us. And so three, you know, neighborhood kids in Palo Alto, California caught a steelhead with their bare hands.
Katie
That was my first steelhead. Oh, I hope you have that, that newspaper article framed somewhere. That'd be an awesome thing to have on your wall. I do. You know, that's, that's kind of like a universally kid thing to do to like, want to, capture something at all costs. Like if I saw a a fish swimming around these days that I wanted to catch, like it would never occur to me that I should try to corner it and like jump on it. But I remember that's something that would definitely have crossed my mind as a kid is we need to spend the next however many hours it takes to figure out how to capture this fish, regardless of the method. Like we just, you know, you think of all these plans and like, how can we do this? And the fact that you even described it as like cornering it, like that's something that doesn't, I feel like cross, you know, adult anglers minds, but it's front and center of a kid's mind to just figure out some strategic way to like quarter and capture a fish. so how are you catching these carp? like what were you using at the time?
Bucky
corn all the way we just bring our cans of corn down there and and yeah and just wait for the the carps that would do the schools of carp would just kind of swim on by and we just wait for them to come by and we just throw our corn at them and then adventure we're we're fishing we're catching these carp one day and my brother sees this massive fish in the deep water and he's like there's something down there and he casts at it and we're we've got you know 30 pound line and some you know pretty beefy rods because some of these carp are pretty big like you know like I don't know I'm two three feet two two feet and and he catches this and you know these canals they have a a steep bank down into the water and we're We're sitting at the top of that steep bank. It's concrete, you know, and he cooks this fish and it just takes off and makes this massive wake. And my brother goes sliding down into the water and this fish surfaces and it's literally like five or six feet long. It is this massive fish with bones coming out the side of it. It looked like a dinosaur. And we're like, what? We're freaked out. And, and it just, it ran again and bucked and splashed and broke my brother's 30 pound line. And then we, so we just jetted home and we looked in all of our, and like cycle encyclopedias and books, try to find out what kind of fish, like we found out it was a sturgeon.
Katie
I was going to say your description sounds like a sturgeon. I don't know what else could possibly fit that description, but I don't really know where all they're found. So I wasn't, I wasn't sure. Well, that's awesome. So you never, never saw it again.
Bucky
Never saw it again. Never saw another sturgeon there. But, you know, we caught some catfish and caught carp and one steelhead and hooked one sturgeon in that canal. And that just, I mean, that just really planted the bug of fishing for me. I mean, I just, just loved every minute I spent. And also because I was going through a pretty traumatic childhood. And so like what the, the times where I was fishing was when all those like worries and stress would just disappear and I would just kind of be in my own world that was safe for me. And that was what I didn't know at the time was really healing for me.
Katie
Yeah. I think a lot of people have had experiences like that, but I feel like a lot of the time I hear it from adults who maybe have like, you know, a stressful job or, or going through a divorce or something like that, where they just need to get their mind off it. But yeah, I don't, I don't hear it often in, in, in regards to someone's childhood. Cause I feel like most people when they're children are just kind of like, you know, they're oblivious and just going through life and having fun. So yeah, that's interesting to hear that, that you had that experience much younger than a lot of people do.
Bucky
Yeah. Yeah. I know, obviously it wasn't intentional. I wasn't like, you know, 10 years old saying, man, my heart hurts. I'm going to go. But I just, I found something that I love to do that was life-giving for me. And I'm so glad I had that as a kid. my brother and I could share that together was really special.
Katie
Yeah. So, when you were, I know you mentioned that you grew up kind of near in the Tahoe truckie area. Um, how were you getting around when you were that young? Cause it sounds like, once you were in Palo Alto area, you could ride your bikes around and everything's kind of, you know, accessible via roads and stuff. But how, how did you guys get around at such a young age when you were out, you know, more in the open, open wilderness?
Bucky
Yeah. Basically whenever my parents wanted to go to the lake to party, I would just be exploring the water. Okay. So they'd throw us in the back of the pickup and we'd make our way down to the lake. I see.
Katie
And so at what point did you pick up fly fishing? Cause it sounds like this was all still gear fishing at the time, which, you know, figures for being younger kids and fishing for things like carp and stuff. But at what point did you transition over and pick up a fly rod?
Bucky
Yeah. When I was about 15 years old, my grandpa, who I had lived with a lot growing up because my family was pretty broken and my grandparents would take me in quite a bit. I'd spent the summers at my grandparents' house in Oregon, where I live now, on the banks of the Rogue River. My grandpa lived on the Rogue River. And he occasionally fly fished. And when I was 15 years old, he took me out on the back lawn and taught me how to fly cast because he had planned to take me to Montana the next summer and to go fly fishing because he's actually he was actually an old Montana bred cowboy and loved to go back to Montana and and that's where it all started for me and unfortunately my grandpa died a year later so I only got to fish with him one time I got to fly fishing fly with him one time but he had this really beautiful eight foot four weight Dickerson taper bamboo fly rod that he fished with on our Montana trip. And now that's what I fish with. Oh, that's awesome. Really awesome. Yeah. So did you pick it up like right away?
Katie
Were you, were you hooked instantly or did it kind of take a while for you to, you know, have more interest in a different style?
Bucky
Yeah. So, you know, I wasn't hooked onto fly fishing instantly. I still conventional fish cause it's really what I knew. Uh, and then when I was about, so, but I had some fly fishing experiences, especially that trip in Montana. And then when I was probably 19 or 20 years old, I went down to the local fly shop there in Southern Oregon, just because I just, I wanted to, I wanted to take fishing to the next level. Like, I mean, kind of the techniques that I was using was just getting a little tired. And I, and I, and I had enough of a taste of fly fishing where I thought, I'm just going to go, I'm going to go see if I can fly fish. And so I bought like this, you know, totally like low end, fly rod kit and, and had the, the guy, I had the guy at the fly shop. When I bought the kit, I just took the rod out. I took it out of the box and I said, Hey, can you show me how to cast this thing? And so we went out to the parking lot and he showed me how to cast it. And I, and I was just like, okay. And he's like, Hey, you've done this before. Haven't you? And I was like, I've done, I did this once when I was a teenager. So I just tell me everything I need to know. And so he told you, he spent like an hour with me. And then from that point on, I think it's only been fly fishing.
Katie
Yeah. That's, that's interesting that happens to people. Cause I feel like, there's a lot of activities that people start with and then they kind of progress and branch out a little bit, but there's always that kind of home turf to come back to. But, I feel like a lot of times when people pick up a fly rod for the first time, they never, ever go back. And, I go back occasionally, but a lot of people I know, like haven't, haven't touched anything but a fly rod in decades. Yeah. Yep. I mean, I'm one of them kind of transitioning over to, your work now, how did you, how did you become interested in this? Was this, something that was kind of inspired by your childhood or did you, did something else bring you into the world of nonprofit work and trying to help people who are, you know, not in a great situation?
Bucky
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so I've always had, I would say a bleeding heart for kids, especially kids that, you know, don't have a lot going for them. Kids that are abused and, and are treated very unjustly. It just, it just wrecks me. I just have a real burden for them. And I think partly just because, I understand some childhood trauma just from my own background. Um, but I just, I just have always loved kids. so then when I was in my 20s I really started working with kids I became a children's pastor at the local church and just loved it and then and then I became my 30s I became a director of camps of summer camps for abused and neglected kids in the foster care system and that was I mean powerful I mean and that's by that time I was living in Portland Oregon And I would take these kids for a week out of a time from a lot of these kids were in between foster homes. A lot of these kids had backgrounds that just would just crush you, just just heart wrenching stories. And I get to spend a whole week with them. And and it's just, you know, it just was so rewarding to say the least. just knowing that you're bringing some kind of joy into these kids' lives in the backdrop of so much pain and trauma was just awesome. And then I got to a point, and this is, you know, it's a little bit hard to explain, but I just have to talk about what was happening just in my soul at the time. because I got to a point in my life and this is, you know, in my thirties and I'm just, you know, always fishing. It's, it's just what I love to do. It's every, you know, free moment I have, I'm going to go, you know, swing a fly for steelhead or go find some trout to, you know, catch on a dry somewhere or something. But at a certain point, I just realized that Life is so much more than just living for yourself and doing what pleases you. And it became kind of like a period of my life where I just was challenging myself to stop being so materialistic and self-serving. And this great realization started to form in my thinking, in my worldview. And that is that when we exist, not just for ourself, but for the good of others, then we're going to thrive as the human beings that we're supposed to be. Okay, so we have that. I mean, that's really important to how I want to live my life. Not just living for myself, but living for the good of others and benefiting the lives of the good of others, especially those that need help the most. And when we do that, not only are we helping other people, but we're thriving as the human beings that we're supposed to be. So there's that. But then on top of that, I just have this realization that we don't have to conform to somebody else's methodology to do good in the world, but we can simply be who we are and do what we love, what we're passionate about, but funnel that for the good of others.
Katie
Right.
Bucky
Like find a way to channel something that you already believe in and you're already putting your time into it, but do it for other people instead of just as a way to enjoy yourself in your free time. Because when you do that, when you channel your passions for the good of others, because doing justice work is exhausting and it can, it's sacrificial and it can take a toll and it's, and it's emotional. Um, and it, you carry a burden with you doing justice work is not easy, but if you can do it through something that you're passionate about, I believe that's where you can last the long haul because, because you're still doing something that is life-giving for you. So I began to ask myself, how can I use fly fishing to do better things in the world than just serve myself? How can I use fly fishing to actually benefit the lives of those that need help the most, especially kids? And so I just started to ask that question and kind of look at fly fishing through a different lens, like not just something that's good for me, but something that's good for others too. Something that I can actually funnel for the good of others. And there's something so beautiful about a community coming together with shared passion and joining forces and doing something amazing together. It's a powerful force.
Katie
Now, did you just, did you have this, was this, I mean, I assume this idea kind of, you know, formed over time. Like maybe you have that, that spark of idea and then you're like, okay, well, how can I, how can I do this then? You know, I want to help others. Um, and I know I want to do that as, you know, channeling through my love of fly fishing. Uh, how did you kind of come up with the idea that you did? Like, are you going out on the river and tossing ideas around in your head? Are you bouncing ideas off other people? Like how did you arrive at the final product, if you will, of what Fly Fishing Collaborative is now?
Bucky
Yeah. Great question. Um, and at this point, I don't even think our listeners know that we'll probably don't even know what I do with fly fishing collaborative.
Katie
So yeah, we can get, we can start with that. we'll save it for the end and just drop it as a, as a surprise.
Bucky
Yeah. We'll taunt them a little bit, tease them. Um, here's, here's how the, the, like kind of the, the fly fishing collaborative was formed was I was just kind of like toying around with like, what can I, so I just started throwing parties at my house. So I thought, man, I'm going to, I'm going to like, I'm going to look at fly fishing differently because being a steelheader, like in the Northwest, you know, you'd get up at like four in the morning because you want to get, you know, your special piece of water before anybody else gets there. And you want that low light condition for those summer fish. And you want to be the first in the run. So whenever you would run into people, you'd be like, oh, man, dang it. I wanted I wanted this spot for me. And I just now I'm fighting with this kind of new mentality of fishing. It's like, how can I actually like be better to other people through fish fishing? And so I started meeting, you know, being more intentional about giving people water and meeting people on the river and inviting them to my house and throwing these kind of fly fishing focus parties. And and it was fun, but it just wasn't enough for me. Like, how can we do justice? How can we do something radical? And I'm just kind of I was probably for about a year. I was just really kind of contemplating that. And some friends of mine had learned how to build aquaponics farms. And aquaponics farms are an incredible little farm system where you raise your own fish in these little self-enclosed fish tanks. And next to the fish tanks, you build these grow beds where you can grow vegetables and all sorts of produce. And the waste from the fish fertilizes the vegetables. And in that little self-enclosed ecosystem, it also captures all the nutrients from the waste of the fish, filters into the grow beds, and that filtered water is now purified and gets pumped back into the fish so it recycles all the same water. So these incredible little farming systems that are so eco-friendly, that are incredibly environmentally safe and organic. And they learned how to build these to help support orphanages around the world. And they're like, we want to go. They were connected to a couple of orphanages in Asia and Africa. And they thought, we've learned how to build these farms. And we want to go build them for these orphanages. And then they got done with those projects. And they didn't know what they were going to do next. And so then my wife said, why don't we fundraise through fly fishing? And why don't we fund some of these farms? And that's when I knew that's it. That's what we're supposed to do. And so we just thought, okay, so I've got a bunch of friends in the fly fishing community. We know a whole bunch of guides. Let's just hold a fundraiser. And there was a safe home in Thailand that I was very well aware of that was caring for about 130 kids that have all been either rescued from brothels and from trafficking or were being prevented from entering into trafficking because they had, you know, were living in extreme poverty. And so there's a bunch of kids living in the safe home. And I thought that man, that safe home could really use an aquaponics farm to help with its sustainability. Let's, let's call the out the fly fishing community. Let's create some kind of fundraiser and let's go build a farm for that safe home in Thailand. And so we just started asking, like, it was just totally raw and organic and grassroots. And we just thought, we just started asking guides if they would donate trips and we'd put together this little auction and, and create this little fundraiser. And it only took a few months and we raised our first $10,000 and we were on our way to Thailand to go build one of these farms. It was in, that was in 2014. It was incredible. It was life-changing just knowing that, oh my gosh, just me kind of reshaping my thinking and how I pursue my simple hobby of fly fishing is now feeding 133 kids in Northern Thailand that have all been rescued from trafficking. This is a big deal. This is huge. Like this is a game changer for me. And, and I realized that, gosh, I have been putting so many limitations, self-imposed limitations on what I actually think is possible for us human beings to accomplish together, even through something so ordinary and so simple as fly fishing. And so I came back from the Thailand trip and realized that like, this is all I want to do with my life. Like this was too good not to keep doing and to pursue and to grow. And so that's you know, the FFC, the Fly Fishing Collaborative was officially formed and we became a 501c3 nonprofit and just kept finding safe homes and orphanages and kept building farms. And so now it's seven years later and we've built 12 farms in 10 different countries around the world. And it's what I do full time and it's incredible.
Katie
That's awesome. So how does, walk me through kind of how the fly fishing community connects to these aquaponics farms? I assume it's mostly a fundraising through donations. You mentioned guided trips and things, but how does the money get from fly fishing community guides, anglers, et cetera, to the finished product of an aquaponics farm in another country to help orphanages and other homes. So how is the money raised and then how is it spent? I guess how do you harness the fly fishing community to fund these projects?
Bucky
Great question. Maybe a simpler way to ask that. Yes. Yes. So basically through three different avenues, we've got kind of three different fundraising streams, so to speak. One of them is through our events. And so, and our, I just love our events. Our events are just a blast because it's bringing the fly fishing community together to celebrate what we've done, but also just to mobilize them to do more around the world. And so we have an annual banquet every single year in Portland, Oregon, that usually, you know, we bring in like 250, 300 people at this big, you know, fundraising banquet. And at that banquet, we have a, you know, large auction and we've got a, you know, like an oral auction. We've got an auctioneer and we've got all these guides. We've got a network of amazing guides and outfitters that donate trips and experiences and lodges that will donate stays at their lodge. And we'll auction those off at our fundraisers. Or fishing companies will donate rods and reels and gear and swag. And that all goes to our auction. So our auction is a really big fundraising platform for us. It's kind of the backbone of all of our fundraising. And then we'll do like fly fishing film tour showings. So we've got, so we've got ambassadors in different regions. You know, we've got ambassadors in, we've got, you know, Montana and in Oregon and gee, I think it's just, oh, oh, some ambassadors in BC. We've got, you know, different ambassadors in different regions that will like host a fly fishing film tour at their local theater and ticket sales will go to FFC and they'll do a little raffle and things. So just fun events like that, that bring the fly fishing community together. We get to share about our next projects and then we'll raise some money through raffles and auctions. Number two is we have some products that we developed. So we partnered with this, leather company in, Texas and we, they helped us design these incredible, like little heirloom quality, like fly fishing, fly wallets and paces, all leather and wool, you know, kind of like the stuff that your grandpa would have fished with old school style school, like, you know, heirloom stuff. It's so cool. Um, and so we've designed a bunch of those cool little leather products and we sell those and that kind of, you know, creates a fun little fly fishing oriented, revenue stream for us. And then it's direct giving. We just have people that just love what we're, and I mean, we have families that will be like, man, we believe in what you're doing and we'll write a check to sponsor the next farm. And obviously direct support is huge for us. Just people that just need to make a tax-deductible donation and they'll make it to Fly Fishing Collaborative and we'll go do something awesome with it.
Katie
For sure. I think it's important that you have the events and things you do because I feel like there's a lot of organizations out there that literally just take money and they do things with it, which is great. And I don't mean to take that away from them or the fact that you guys also accept direct donations. But I think it really helps to have these community events. Even though a guide could just straight up donate, let's say, a daily trip with them costs $500. They could just donate $500, which is the equivalent of giving away a guided trip for free. But there's something different, I feel like, about having people donate their time instead of their money. I feel like it makes people feel more invested. I don't particularly love sending out my credit card number and just being like, here's 50 bucks to a year cause. I don't really feel that connected to it. I send it away. I kind of forget about it. But I don't mind at all being like, hey, I'll take two hours out of my time to donate that in some way to benefit somebody else. Because it feels like I'm a little bit more connected with it. I remember that. I have a memory from it. And then when I see the good that comes from it, I'm like, oh, look, I helped with that. And I just don't get that same feeling if I just write a check and send it off. And I think that's awesome that you guys do these events where maybe you're not taking money directly, but they host a film tour for you. And now everyone who comes to that is well aware that their money is going toward that cause. And it brings more of a community aspect to it than just somebody sending off money and forgetting about it and not remembering who you are a month later. So I think that's really awesome that you do those kind of community-based things and having people donate their time and their resources instead of just writing you a check directly.
Bucky
Totally. And yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up because from the founding of the collaborative, I've always wanted this to be shared. I don't want this just to be something that I'm doing or our team is doing. I want it to be something that our community is doing together. And so we always strive to have as much involvement with the greater fly fishing community as we possibly can. And so there's actually some other cool little ways that we do that as well. We have a lot of fly tires that tie flies for the organization, because it's the same idea of doing what you love to do and what you're good at, but doing it to benefit the lives of other people. So we've got this team of fly tires because they love the fly ties or tie flies and, and they're good at it, but they don't want to just keep doing it just for their fly box. You know what I mean?
Katie
You can only have so many woolly buggers in your box before it's kind of full. E
Bucky
xactly. And so they'll tie flies and donatethem to FFC and we sell them on our website. So we've got like this whole team of fly tires now that tie flies that will, you know, go for sale on our site to directly go towards our farm projects, which is really awesome. And then we also bring volunteers on our trips, which is huge. Like we don't just go build these farms by ourselves. Like we rely on a team of volunteers and we usually bring like eight to 10 volunteers on every farm build that we do.
Katie
Yeah. Well, I'm making an assumption here, but I'm sure it's not terribly hard to find volunteers who want to go to another country and, you know, experience that and contribute to something greater. Like I, you know, that sounds, that sounds like a great time. Especially when you add in a little fishing at the end. I was going to finish up today by asking you if you’ve, you've gotten to fish in any of these other countries. So we'll hold on that, but I would like to hear a little bit about that at the end.
Bucky
Yeah. It's what I do. I mean, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's how we do it. So we definitely, you know, add in fishing in, in some portion
Katie
So tell me more about the aquaponics farms themselves. So you mentioned like an orphanage might get a farm and that helps feed everybody. But how does this actually contribute toward the limiting of women and children being sold into sex trafficking? Are they getting jobs working on the aquaponics farm or are they just being sheltered and they're reaping the benefits of the food? What are all benefits, I guess, come from these aquaponics systems that you guys set up?
Bucky
Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll answer that just kind of by saying, I mean, this is the harsh reality is that it's estimated right now that there are 24.9 million people in the world that are being trafficked today. And out of those 24.9 million people, 50% are exploited and sold sexually. And out of that 50%, 70% are women and young girls. And most of them around the world are being exploited and sold simply because of a lack of resource. They don't have enough food. They don't have enough water. They don't have any way of income to provide for themselves. And so they basically become their own only commodity is their bodies.
Katie
So it's not that they're necessarily being captured as much as it is that they're resorting to
Bucky
it's very much both so I mean some are you know resorting to prostitution but so many are coerced into it because of their vulnerabilities like the the trafficking industry thrives and preys on the vulnerable and so when they find those impoverished vulnerable communities they will either abduct them which we have seen a lot of horrific, horrific stories of children getting abducted out of, you know, hill tribe villages in Northern Thailand, or the Himalayan villages in Nepal. And they'll literally just kids will just literally disappear and get sent across the border and where there's language barriers and just be stuck in a brothel for the rest of their life. It's horrible. So there is that there's a lot of abduction but there's also a lot of tricking too where traffickers will come into a destitute village and they'll you know see a grandma trying to raise all of her grandkids because the parents have died or they're gone or whatever or just some you know village parents trying to raise some other kids and they're and they just can't and so they're you know they go in and they say hey we work for this factory in the nearby city and we see that you're struggling to take care of your kids and we need workers in the factory and we will employ your children and give them a good wage and educate them. And they'll even offer them some front money, to gain their trust. And so they'll send their kids off to go get educated in jobs and they'll end up in just in brothels. It's all a trick. And so, you know, and so there's that there's, there's, you know, ways where, you know, traffickers, and this is actually more common also in like domestic trafficking in the States where, you know, the traffickers will get the vulnerable girls or women hooked on drugs and they become dependent on the trafficker. And there's a whole grooming process. And then, you know, and then they'll hold all, you know, they'll even get them pregnant and then they'll hold their lives of their children as leverage for them. If they don't do what they want them to do. And they're just making money hand over fist for, with these women and girls. Um, and they're just strung out and dependent on their traffickers. And I mean, so there's, there's lots of different methods, but the common thread is that they, they, they pray and, and, and feed on the vulnerable. So when we, when I learned this, I just thought, man, And if so many kids are getting sold around the world simply because they don't have enough food and water, let's create a sustainable resource for them so they have enough food. So they can sell produce in the marketplace and they can make a good living or they can sell fish in the marketplace and make a good wage. And that will lessen the risk of them being sold into trafficking.
Katie
Right. It's no longer enticing to go off and try to scrounge out a living somewhere else because your life isn't in shambles where you are.
Bucky
Totally. They're being empowered.
Katie
Okay.
Bucky
So when we set out to build these farms, we set out to build them for two different types of scenarios. One is the safe homes and orphanages that are already caring for the kids. And we want them to be more self-sustaining. And so if there's a safe, some of these safe homes are basically just a couple of parents in the village that don't want their children to be stuck in brothels. And so they'll open up their home to these kids to keep them from falling into the traps of, you know, the industry that is praying around their region. And so, so they'll try to finance their homes, these safe homes themselves. And, and so we come in and we build them a farm so that they can feed the kids And so that they can offset their food budgets and not rely on Western money, but just to be empowered to create their own source of income themselves. And so they can have food to feed the kids. They can have produce to sell in the marketplace and create their own little revenue stream so they can expand their budget and take in more kids. So that's one way that we do it. And another way is to actually provide farms for communities to create jobs. And that one's a little, you know, that one's a little more challenging for us to do because we're not already working with a trustworthy safe home that is already doing the good work of rescuing kids or preventing kids from into trafficking. So, you know, most of our farms have been for orphanages and safe homes, but we have a project in Belize, for instance, that is actually coming up in the next couple of months where we're building a farm for an entire village of 300 people. And that's going to be something that's going to create that there's no jobs in that village. And because of that, the kids are really suffering. And so we're actually going to build a farm that's going to create jobs in that village.
Katie
Now, what's been the response of the people who end up with these farms and end up working on them? Do you keep in contact with anybody after the fact to see how things are going and how the response has been?
Bucky
A hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We offer lifetime support. I mean, we give them the farm, it's theirs, we get nothing from it, other than the fact that, like, we're doing something awesome for that community. And yeah, yeah, we've got lots of stories where, you know, we just received a really cool video from a farm that we did in Thailand, they're caring for about 160 kids, every single one of these kids have been rescued from brothels in the most horrendous situations. And it's a really, it's a very high security farm or a home because the traffickers, you know, I mean, every one of these kids is in witness protection. And so we built a pretty large scale farm for them. And they just sent us a really cool video thanking us for one, but showing us that they actually expanded the farm. So now they're adding onto it, which is really, really cool. And they're also working it into their, they teach the kids, they educate the kids in the home. So now they're working it into their agricultural education program.
Katie
Oh, cool.
Bucky
Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, we, yeah, we track with the farms that we've built as much as we can and offer just lifetime assistance if and whenever needed.
Katie
That's good to hear because I actually, I mean, I was aware of this, but I came up again within the past couple of days, kind of the harmful side of, I think it's called like volunteerism, you know, where people go over to Africa and like build infrastructure for villages over there, which seems like a great thing. But then when they leave, you know, you're relying on a village that doesn't have a lot of money or a lot of skills to maintain a Western building. You know, people have built over there to our standards where we have plenty of resources and electricity and water to maintain these things. And the village is kind of left out in the cold just trying to figure out how to maintain this thing that they didn't have the resources for. So it's great to hear that the communities you're building these for, not only are you providing the support, but it sounds like they're also equipped to continue maintaining those and benefiting from them and expanding them, it seems like, when they want to do so.
Bucky
Yeah, training is a big deal for us. And so in order for us to actually take on a project, there's got to be three things in place. Obviously, there needs to be a water source. There needs to be a power source because, you know, whether it's solar or they're on the grid or whatever it is, because there's a small pump that recycles the water within the system. But there's got to be a farm manager that is dedicated to operating that farm that's trustworthy and that we can train. And that's that's I mean, without that, we just can't build a farm because we need some because knowledge is power. And so we spend a lot of time training the farm managers and how to make it productive and keep it productive.
Katie
I'm sure that also goes well with, like you said, that it's a little bit easier to build these in existing homes because, you know, these these homes are obviously already functioning. So you have to have somebody in place who is responsible and knowledgeable and can handle something of of kind of a grave significance of running one of these orphanages. So I feel like that kind of lends itself to, there's probably someone around who could, who could handle the responsibilities of running the farm and wants to, I'm sure.
Bucky
Yes, totally. Yep. Yeah. So I really see us as like, you know, a organization that is entirely geared up to support people that are already on the ground doing amazing work and rescuing kids. And now we come in and build them a farm so they can do it more sustainably.
Katie
Before we talked, so I tried to do a little bit of research before I talked to somebody just so I have a background, but I don't want to do too much so I can ask good questions. But I was confused before we talked about how this all worked with the fly fishing community. But that's awesome to hear that it's kind of like, it's almost like two separate things. Like you're not taking necessarily fly fishing. Like it could be anything, I guess is what I mean by that. It's fly fishing because that's what you're passionate about. but it's not trying to take fly fishing and somehow weave it into people's lives because you feel like you need to. You're just using that to raise the money to do something in the best way possible for these people. I think there's people who would try to bring fly fishing into this somehow beyond just raising money and it wouldn't be the best thing for the people on the receiving end because you'd be trying to force what you like into that portion of it. And instead you're harnessing your love for fly fishing on one end of it. And then the other end is just exactly what needs to happen over there without getting them muddied up together. And that's why I was a little confused before I read up on you guys, like how fly fishing actually plays into this. Because I knew it was aquaponics farms and helping vulnerable women and children. But I was like, where does fly fishing come in? So that's really cool that you're kind of keeping them separate in order to get the most benefit on the other end.
Bucky
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. It's just, you know, it's what I'm passionate about. And it's the community that I feel like is a powerful force. And when you have a group of people, a community of people that have shared interests together, and they funnel that to do something amazing, a lot can happen. And I feel like it's, you know, it makes it a lot more sustainable and fun for me. It's like I get to do what I love and work within the community that I love, but do it for something so much bigger in the world.
Katie
Right.
Bucky
Right. Right. Absolutely. Well, to wrap up, do you want to, I do want to hear some stories,
Katie
if you have any about you traveling to all these other countries and setting these up, I'm sure you have gotten quite a bit of time to explore around and, you know, see some unique species and places like, do you have any highlights from, from your time overseas?
Bucky
Oh boy. Yeah, I do. Um, gosh, you know, this, one of the, I think one of the experiences that always comes to mind when talking about just kind of our international fly fishing trips, and our travels was, you know, there was a, there was a fish that I always wanted to catch. Um, it's called a mahseer. Do you know what mahseer are? I don't know. I've never heard of that. Oh yeah. There's golden mahseer, which is the bigger of the, the mahseer family. And they live in like in, mostly in India, some in Nepal, but mostly in India and in North of India. But, how do you spell that by the way? M H S E E R. I think. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to look that up. It looks like. Yeah. Oh, it's amazing. They're amazing. And so we were on our way to Thailand and I knew that Thailand had mahseer, but I had no idea. I didn't have any connections to anybody that knew where to fish for mossier in Thailand. And most people in Thailand, when you ask them like about fish, they just have one word for fish, it's fish. And so they don't identify like the, you know, the people in the streets and everything's like, Hey, do you know where you got to find any mossier? They're like, obviously it was fish, fish. And they're like, Oh, fish. They'll show you a bunch of dried fish at the market. But, and so I'm just like, I was getting, I wanted to take the team after our farm build to go find some mossier somewhere. And finally, like right before we were gonna fly out to go build the farm I got word from this guy that takes that knew how to fish for a moss seer down in southern Thailand and I knew nothing about him but it was my one connection and so I emailed him and he emailed back and I said hey I heard you can fish for moss seer can you take a team of like six people to go moss seer fishing we'd love to join you after we go do this project in Northern Thailand? And he said, yeah, I can take you. And it's, you know, this, this much money I'll take you. And it was like nothing because everything is cheap in Thailand. And, and so I just booked it. I knew nothing about him. I knew nothing about where we were going, but all I knew is that we needed to dedicate at least four days. Cause he's taking us so deep in the jungle. And so I asked the team and they were up for it. They were, Like they were ready for an adventure. And so we, he had us meet him down at this, this big lake, huge lake with kind of at the foothills of the jungle. And all these feeder streams would kind of feed into this lake from, from the hills, from the, and like had all these veins, this lake, just massive veins and feeder streams everywhere. And so we met him at the dock and we threw all our luggage in there. He's the one English speaking guy. He was actually Dutch. And everybody, everybody else that was taking us out with him were all native Thai people that actually lived in tribes in the jungle. And they were pretty, you know, pretty hardy. It was. And so we hop in the long tail boat. drive for about a half a day down one of these channels of this lake and park at this floating bungalow. And it's just breath. This jungle is like what you would see in Jurassic Park or something. It was just absolutely the most beautiful place I could ever, I have ever seen. It's just indescribably beautiful. And we wake up, so we're sleeping and we can't sleep in the jungle because there's too many wild animals in the jungle and too many critters and too many crazy insects and snakes and so we're sleeping on a little floating bungalow that's just a bunch of planks tied together with a canopy on top I mean there's really not logs and planks and canopies is all that we had to sleep on and we wake up early the next morning and he says you guys looks like looks like you guys can hike we're gonna hike up up the rivers and for a while and and two of the the Thai guys were standing behind him with like machine, like literally like machine guns. Like, okay, now, now we're either, I'm a little nervous. We're either going to have the best fishing trip of our life or they're going to kill us. And I don't know which way this is going to fall. And so I asked the guy that spoke English to say, what are the, what are the machine guns for? And he's, and he said, Oh, because of elephants and tigers.
Katie
It's going to be a good trip.
Bucky
Yeah.
Katie
Exciting.
Bucky
We ended up spending the day in the next several days hiking up elephant trails. And if you think about like hiking up like dense jungle, but the elephant trails are like six feet wide, like clear cut, like because these elephants are not small. So we're hiking elephant trails along the rivers. It was just amazing. And stalking these streams. And we find a pool. And we literally, these fish are so spooky. You can't even step into the water because once you step into the water, they'll sense you and they're gone.
Katie
That's interesting. Like I would expect something that's not in a heavily pressured area to not care about humans at all.
Bucky
I have never fished for a spookier fish than these blue mossier. They were so spooky. But if you could, if you could approach that pool, especially the big ones, the big ones were tough. But if you could approach that pool without any kind of trigger, we would use these big giant foam spiders. Because there's a lot of canopy in the jungle and the canopy hanging over the creeks and these big spiders would fall down.
Katie
Oh man, it sounds creepy to have to use a fly of a giant spider. Because I don't know if I want to fish somewhere where the fish can just feast on giant spiders all the time.
Bucky
It was amazing. Yeah, it was, I mean, we saw an elephant. We didn't see a tiger, but we saw a leopard. Which, a clouded leopard, which is really rare. And we caught so many of these, just gorgeous blue mahseer.
Katie
Yeah, I looked them up. It almost looks like an arapaima combined with a carp or a catfish or something.
Bucky
Yeah, those big scales, but they're shaped more like a bonefish, but they've got like the scales of like a carp or a tarpon or something. Yeah. Giant scales. And they're fast. I mean, they're lightning fast. Yeah.
Katie
That's sweet. I don't know if I've ever talked to anybody who's fished in this region of the world before. Like, it's not one that comes to mind when you think of, you know, the fishing destinations. But it sounds awesome.
Bucky
Yeah, it's not a destination. That's why it was so hard to find. And the one downside to that trip was we absolutely got annihilated by leeches. I mean... Yeah. Eaten alive by leeches. Not in the water. The leeches in Thailand are, they are on the trails in the mud. So when it rains, the leeches come out of the ground in the mud and they go crawling and they crawl like an inchworm. They've got mouths on both ends and they crawl like inchworms. And they're anywhere from like tiny millimeter size to like the size of your pinky. And they're like little alien creatures. And they got everywhere under our clothes. And, and, you know, you can't feel them because they have this anesthetic. So they're just, they'll just latch on.
Katie
You don't know it back.
Bucky
We get back to the bungalow and we literally have like, we're like polka dotted with blood spots all over our clothes where leeches have been eating us. Oh, wow. It was kind of, it was kind of like psychological torture, but if the fishing is good enough, you don't care about the leeches.
Katie
Yeah. I mean, the worst mosquitoes I've ever braved have been to go fishing and, and it doesn't stop me from doing so. but I would never want to just like go through, go on a hike through those clouds mosquitoes. You know, you'll, you'll do a lot, a lot worse stuff if there's a fish at the end.
Bucky
Yeah. Yeah.
Katie
Stories like that make you realize how good we have it in North America. Like we've got bears and stuff, but big, big things that you can avoid. And then you hear these stories about, it's always the jungle. And I lived in Australia for six months and it was, it was the same thing where you're just constantly worried about, you know, there's just creepy crawlies over there that you can't even imagine. because we don't have to worry about stuff like that over here. We have all the normal stuff.
Bucky
Yeah, Australia has got a lot of dangerous critters, unlike New Zealand, which has like none.
Katie
Nothing, nothing at all. There's just nothing there. Yeah. All right, well, that was an awesome story. I gotta say, I've never talked to anyone who's fished over there and that's just very interesting to hear about. But just to wrap up, do you want to share where people can find you guys if they want to learn more about the Fly Fishing Collaborative or ways they can help? I know the banquet just finished up, so the timing's not ideal, but I'm sure this, you probably guys probably do this every year. So just share how people can help if they're looking to contribute, even if it's events next year, once things start to open up back up again.
Bucky
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, we, we kind of set up for our banquet all year long. Our banquet's in March, but we're always trying to collect, donate, donated trips from guides and find new, you know, partners to partner with and, and geared, you know, to auction off. So, you know, we take donations for, for our auction all the time, which is awesome. And we also have a couple of fly fishing film tour events coming up this summer and fall. I think all the ones that we're doing this year are in Portland. So I think we got, or in Oregon, we've got one in Bend and one in Portland, and I think one in, in Southern Oregon. But flyfishingcollaborative.org is our website and you can just, yeah. check out the website get more information there facebook fly fishing collaborative instagram fly fishing collaborative so yeah follow us yeah and just you know we've got a newsletter that you can we always share stories through our newsletter you can just connect you know sign up for our newsletter through our website but yeah that's that's about it
Katie
awesome well Bucky I really appreciate you coming on and this is a really fun conversation despite the kind of the dark side. It's really great what you guys are doing. And I really appreciate you coming on and sharing that.
Bucky
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been fun.
Katie
All right, guys, thanks for listening. Don't forget to head over to the website, fishuntamed.com for all episodes and show notes. And also please subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. That'll get my episodes delivered straight to your phone. And also, if you have not yet, please consider going over to Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating or review. That's very helpful for me, and I'd greatly appreciate it. Other than that, thank you guys again for listening, and I will be back in two weeks. Bye, everybody.
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