Ep 77: Fishing Stillwaters, with Phil Rowley

Phil Rowley is the owner of Phil Rowley Fly Fishing and has over 35 years of fly fishing experience, primarily focused on stillwaters. He is also an author, speaker, video producer, brand ambassador, online instructor, YouTube creator, guide, and co-host of The New Fly Fisher TV show. In this episode, we discuss all things stillwater including flies, leaders, techniques, and finding fish. Phil also has a new book out called The Orvis Guide to Stillwater Trout Fishing.

Facebook: /PhilRowleyFlyFishing

Instagram: @philrowleyflyfishing

Website: flycraftangling.com (soon to transition to philrowleyflyfishing.com)

Stillwater Fly Fishing Store: stillwaterflyfishingstore.com

YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/FlyCraftAngling

Book: link

• Transcript

  Katie

  You’re listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 77 with Phil Rowley on fishing stillwaters. Hey everybody just wanted to hop in quickly and make a quick announcement before the show. We are rapidly approaching flyathlon season and for those who aren't familiar with the flyathlon it is a super fun race that happens a couple times each year and it's based around running, fishing, and drinking beer which are three of my favorite things. And if you'd like to hear more about the race you can listen to episode one of the Fish Untamed podcast where I interviewed Andrew Todd, the founder of the Flyathlon. But in addition to being a really fun weekend with a lot of fun people, the Flyathlon is also a fundraiser to raise money for native cutthroat trout conservation. So if you have a couple extra dollars that you would be interested in donating to a great cause to support native cutthroat trout, go ahead and head over to my website, FishUntamed.com, and you'll find a menu at the top called Flyathlon Fundraiser. That link should take you to the fundraiser and you can donate there. And any amount is greatly appreciated. This would be a great way to support the show and also support a wonderful cause for native trout. So that's all I've got for you and we can get on with the show. I usually just like to start with a background of my guests. So I just want to hear how you got your start in the outdoors and fishing in particular.

  Phil

  Well, I guess it all started back when I was a young little tyke about four or five years old in England. And I had a neighbor who took me fishing. My parents were gracious enough to let a, I guess it must have been about five or six go fishing with the neighbor's kid who was probably in his early teens. And we went fishing at a local lake in a place called Sefton Park because I was born in Liverpool, England. And there you fished for carp and rudd and coarse fish. And you kept them in a keep net. And then at the end of the day, you released them all. So kind of different that way. And that sort of got fishing in the blood. And then when we immigrated to Canada, I lived in British Columbia in the town of Chilliwack, which is about an hour and a half, two hours east of Vancouver. And my father took me fishing, though ironically my father was not into fishing at all. His passion was woodworking and cabinet work and those kinds of things. That was his hobby. Couldn't quite, he spent a career in the merchant Navy and I think he tried fishing a couple of times in ports but didn't like it very much. He remembered telling me a story about they were fishing with some leftovers off the ship in Durban, South Africa, and just goofing around throwing large chunks of meat and things over the side of the boat and a big shark came up and he said that sort of put him off 'cause he couldn't believe how big that fish was. I think it was little great whites there swimming around and probably other things with lots of teeth. Yeah, so that started it. And throughout my childhood, I fished and my father got employment over on Vancouver Island, again in British Columbia around the Victoria area. And that's predominantly saltwater fishing. So I spent a lot of time, there was some local lakes You could fish for bluegills and catfish, although BC is more of a trout fishing area, but Victoria is kind of a unique little climate that will support those other fish. It's got a really good smallmouth bass fishery around there too. And I also fish from shore and docks. We used to go crabbing and shrimping off the public piers and catch large sculpin and pile perch and you name it, we chased it. We used to row out in a little inflatable somehow got a hold of out to these rocky outcroppings offshore that were encrusted in barnacles, not a good place to beach a rubber raft. I can remember rowing back with fingers stuck in a hole, telling my friend to just row like crazy because it was a delicate balance between sinking and moving. But we would start out with buzz bombs and then we would run out of those. And then we'd have a little plate of Reese Davis anchovies that we would fish with those. And then we'd eventually run out of those. And then we'd take tinfoil and wrap it around hooks. 'Cause we were fishing for rock cod, we call them, which is rock bass, actually, kind of a saltwater largemouth. Every once in a while, a coho salmon or a juvenile chinook or spring would come in. And that would scare us to death, but we all wanted to catch it. And then the odd lingcod would show up too. So basically if it swam and ate, we were interested in it. And that sort of philosophy's carried over for me in fly fishing. If it swims and eats, I'll chase it with a fly.

  Katie

  Yeah, I feel the same way. What got you into fly fishing then? It sounds like this was mostly conventional.

  Phil

  Yeah, it was mostly conventional right up until, I left home and after school and moved to Vancouver, bright lights and big city, what young people do. And I had a friend, I played men's hockey and he was always trying to get me out. He was a fly fisher. And I was always kind of brushing him off and whatever. And my wife and I, early in our marriage, so we would have been in my early twenties, we went on a camping trip and we're trolling and doing the conventional stuff and had a pretty frustrating week. I think I'd caught one tiny little 12 inch trout that I only realized, I knew I had it as I reeled in to change the lure and with the weight I had to have on to get it down, I didn't even realize the poor guy was hooked. I've been dragging him around for a while, so I let him go. But one evening, this gentleman came down, as my wife and I looked back on it, It was a bit like watching Roderick Haig Brown come down. He had hip boots on and a wicker creel and a fly rod. And it was kind of surreal. And he waded in up to his knees and where we were camped, the campground was at an outflow. It's a lake called Cameron Lake on Vancouver Island, noted for its brown trout and it had rainbows and cuts and other things. Anyway, we had been frustrated for a week and I watched him and probably an hour, hour and a half, that, you know, catch his limit and hook and release a pile of others all using fly fishing, you know, all fly fishing. So that I said, okay, I'm going to phone my friend up when I get back. I'd had it. I'd, there must be something to this. And so made, got a hold of Richard and he said, sure thing, and took me out, gave me some rudimentary casting lessons. So I knew enough to be dangerous. And then I went with him and his father to a river east of Vancouver called called the Skagit River, which is a very popular but highly pressured rainbow trout fishery there. And I was fortunate enough to catch two trout on my first trip out on dries. I can't believe I actually got a drag free float long enough to actually entice a fish to come up and eat it. And I had never fought a fish like that before where there was nothing between the fish and myself, you know, with conventional tackle as all the other bits and bobs that go on. This was just fish versus me and it just tore me up and it was only maybe a couple of pounds. I was, no pun intended, hooked ever since. I just fell right into fly fishing right off the edge and I've been falling ever since. It's just totally encompassed my life at that point. That's all I wanted to do was learn more about this sport and learn as much as I could and fly fish all the time and it's just blossomed and grown from there.

  Katie

  Isn't it crazy how it just kind of takes your life over once you've gone in?

  Phil

  Yeah, it's ironic because sometimes my wife says, "Do you ever read anything else other than fly fishing or fly fishing about fly?" No. I'm always... What I love about it is there's always room to grow and improve. So that's my model of my website and the things I do is because you never stop learning because you never do. day you go out, you see something you haven't seen before, you learn something, you observe something, and it's just, you know, compared to conventional fishing, I was, all of a sudden there was this whole new world of how ecosystems worked, how rivers and streams worked, how lakes worked, what was entomology, that fascinated me as well. You know, all of a sudden there was this whole world, it wasn't just staring in water and weeds and logs, there was a whole environment down there waiting to be discovered and it on today.

  Katie

  I think that's a big draw to fly fishing and not that conventional fishing doesn't involve, you know, there's still a lot of like fish behavior and everything, but the entomology specifically, I feel like a lot of, when I used to just fish on spin gear, I would just pick a lure and go and hope for the best. And now it's very, it's much more of a strategic thing now where you have to kind of apply some knowledge.

  Phil

  Yeah, you're observing, you don't make a decision until you, you know, because a lot of times I get asked by people, what's your favorite fly the most, I don't know, it's not my favorite question because it's, you know, how long's a piece of string, right? It's just there's no good answer for it. And I don't like to go in with preconceived notions because you tend to make not information, not decisions based on the information at hand, it's on stuff you think or you thought might happen or what somebody worked last week. So you sort of can spend a lot of time with an approach, a pattern, a presentation that's inappropriate but you hang on to it for some reason because you didn't invest the 10 or 15 minutes to look around and snoop around and do a little detective work that'll save you a ton of frustration and time on the water. My addiction with bugs, entomology, it's a big part of what I do. I approach my fishing and particularly still water fishing from a science-based sort of point of view, understanding all the invertebrates and things like that, know, to the point for many years, I had a 30 gallon aquarium that I would keep, um, still water bugs in and observe them and study them and photograph them. And, and, uh, learned a ton of things that, um, you know, I even surprised some entomologists with that they had never seen, but I would show them a picture or my observations. And, um, you know, it was quite, it's a dog eat dog world down there. It makes Jurassic park look like, uh, you know, it's, it's a small world and Disneyland all happy and cheery, um, because it's, it's a rough and tumble world down there. everything's eating each other. Right. So it's a fascinating way to learn about the sport and about fly fishing, about bugs.

  Katie

  Tell me more about that. Like, did you just get a tank and go out and dig up some rocks and put the bugs in and did they proliferate or what was the setup?

  Phil

  I don't think they proliferated. They all kind of kill each other. Yeah. It's tough to strike a balance. You know, basically it's like any aquarium. you have to, you know, establish the, the water chemistry. So you'd, um, you know, I originally tried putting mud in, but eventually I just built it like a regular aquarium and then tried to, you know, tried to get the plants established. Um, that was always hard. I used to end up buying, you know, actual aquarium plants. Like I remember getting, going in there and looking through all the plants, having somebody ask if they can help me and I'm saying, do you have any plants survive in like 50 to 60 Fahrenheit water? And they're all like, what kind of tropical, what kind of fish do you not tell them? And I was worried they might be embarrassed, but often or not, they said, "Oh, we always get these guys from the university. They're doing the same thing. And here's what we do." Right? So getting them established and then, then you, you know, dump in the bugs. You'd go collect them from a local body of water and, and find out who played with who and who couldn't be in the tank. Like things like dragonfly nymphs, not a good thing to put into a tank. I've got a story I've told many times, but I, in my 30 gallon aquarium, one time I put a immature dragonfly nymph in that was about an inch long in July and by and it was a pretty thriving aquarium you never get them in balance there's always something eating something you got to replenish something and I just noticed that the population was dropping and dropping and dropping and eventually that nymph came out you know because they the particular dragonfly nymph we nicknamed them Darners they're from the Anishinaabe family they're active predators. They stalk around like a cat. They've got a smaller species, the sprawlers we call them, that are kind of more squat and spider-like and like to just lay in the weeds and the rubble and they're ambush feeders. They wait for food to come to them. So they're not nearly as destructive, but these darners were, you know, they're the... I swear if you look on their bicep the word "mother" is tattooed on there because they are tough. They'll eat each other, you know, just lethal down there. Anyway, long story short, by October 1st, this dragonfly nymph was now almost two and a half inches long and he had cleaned out, or she had cleaned out everything in that tank with the exception of two leeches and actually tried to eat one of those, it was like watching an old Tarzan movie where he's fighting a snake and it's all wrapped around him. Um, yeah, just a, a bug that does not play with others.

  Katie

  That's crazy. Well, at least you know, uh, you know, that one doesn't play well with others. Who else, who, who, uh, in general were the predators and who were the prey? Like did, did a couple of groups really stand out as, uh, taking over?

  Phil

  Yeah, well, you have your, you know, your, your popular predators are your dragonfly nymphs and damselfly nymphs. So those damselflies are smaller, um, you know, more svelte, so they probably don't have the same, you know, don't grow to the same size, so they don't have that same appetite. They were a little more easier to keep in check. Um, and the next ones that were, were freshwater shrimp or, you know, or properly called scuds, um, they're omnivorous and they would. You know, one day they're eating vegetation. And the next day I'd watch a group of four or five of them, um, attack a damselfly and infant shred it like a pack of piranhas. So yeah, they were the, probably next to the dragonfly and imps, the scuds were the worst thing because they just attacked on mass and were kind of moody with their behavior. You're never know whether they were in meat or meat or veggie mode. Um, yeah, so, yeah, so you're always replenishing. You're always, okay, I'm low on these. And, and, you know, things like, uh, mayfly nymphs, particularly Calibaetis, um, swimming nymph commons in many Western still waters. They were tough because their external gills, they're, you know, they're, they're very susceptible if, if water temperatures weren't right and water chemistry was wrong. And I, I remember one time I decided I needed pictures of them. So I set up a little smaller 10 gallon aquarium, dropped, you know, collected them, kept them in this little thermos I'd had. I commandeered, put a bubbler in there, made sure they were well oxygenated so they could get home, dumped them in. I got some weeds from their environment and shook them out to make sure what I thought nobody was in there. Because that was a lot of times how you got. One time I got a water scorpion in there, which is like an underwater, not like, it's looks, it's not, it doesn't look the same, but envision it's sort of a, you know, a not too distant, not relative, but looks, has similar behaviors to a praying mantis, right? And they look like a stick, but they've got these big sort of praying mantis arms and their big long nose that they, they, you know, drink their, their victims from the inside out. Yeah. Not a nice, so, you know, things like that would accidentally get into the, into the hen house, so to speak, which is not a good thing. So anyway I got these, uh, Calabasas nymphs in this aquarium and there's lots of them and it's going well and I'm getting my pictures and every day there's less and less and less right It's not like all of a sudden it doesn't seem as busy as it was the day before and you know I'm looking around because at this time I was living in a more temperate climate to where I'm living now So I had them in the garage that was far as my wife would let them in the house because she I had You know damselfly hatches in February and you know, I had house spiders like tarantulas I think in the garage Because all the flying food I would provide for them But there was no signs of hatch. There was no duns flying around. There was no shucks on the surface and I remember one day I'm just staring looking at this trying to figure it out Just sort of staring at the at the weeds and the bugs and all of a sudden something Moved in the weeds and it was like one of those optical illusions You know, do you see it one way or do you see it another and as soon as I saw the movement? I saw what created the movement which was these sprawler dragonfly nymphs and I saw one of them that was about the size of a nickel and then Once I saw one I saw the other 15 I had and because I had brought them in with the weed so they're just thinking this is great, you know, I supplied them a lifetime supply of Calabasas nymphs to chew on so yeah, it was always a Always a balancing act trying to balance was probably a word that never really happened But to get it all sorted out try and get as many pitches as you could and observe what you could before everything ate each other.

  Katie

  Yeah, it sounds super cool.

  Phil

  Yeah, it was, it was fascinating. It was fast. I recommend anybody like studying, you know, I'm good friends with Rick Hafele, who's a retired aquatic entomologist. He wrote the book "Western Hatches" with Dave Hughes, "Western Mayfly Hatches," number of great books. And he's sort of my little, He vetted my, the entomology section in my first book, "Fly Patterns for Still Waters" on my most recent book, "The Orvis Guide to Stillwater Fly Fishing." So him and I get into some great bug discussions that are probably way, he actually pulls me out of the weeds 'cause I'll go way in on certain things. And, you know, Rick being an entomologist and fly fisher is just a perfect combination. So we were fish, I was at the good fortune to fish with him and Dave Hughes on the Missouri a number of years ago. And Rick and I were spending more time seining runs counting bugs and looking at all this crazy stuff. And I remember Dave sort of knee deep swinging a caddis pupa or something, looking at us too, like we were just out of our minds. Right? You know, there's fishing to be done. I said, "Well, look at all these bugs. These are fascinating. Look at them all. Look at all these betas nymphs. Oh my." (laughing) You know, and you could just see on the Missouri, a betas nymph is a pretty good thing to imitate 'cause there's a bazillion of them. So yeah, fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff.

  Katie

  Yeah, this is a good example of one of those like kind of side tangents to fly fishing that you can, that's its own rabbit hole, kind of like fly tying. There's people who tie flies that don't even fish anymore. And I feel like there's people who are at this point more interested in the bugs than they are in the fish.

  Phil

  Yeah, I'm all of it. I love the, fly tying, I never thought I, when I started, I never tied flies. You just sort of bought them and stole them and borrowed them, get ahold of them, right? And then all of a sudden you took a fly tying class and that was another addiction that started. And for me and where I've sort of professionally developed, that's fly tying was my entry in because I started tying commercially, had delusions that you could actually earn a living doing it which you can't, I couldn't. It just became so onerous, you didn't enjoy it anymore because you had to knock off so many dozen a day just to stay in touch. You'd dump them off at the store, watch some guy buy. You drop two dozen in the bin, he'd buy a dozen of them. And I'm like, go buy stronger tippet. You need stronger tippet. One flyer last year, if you don't break it off. That kind of stuff. But that, and then I started doing, teaching fly tying classes and doing tying demonstrations. And then that expanded into, from there into seminars and, you know, to where I sort of am today. Fly tying was the catalyst for that. And then photography is another rabbit hole you go down with this sport because you wanna record where you are. You wanna take memorable pictures of that fish or in the case with me with entomology as macro photography and getting into that. So I have just as much fun fishing sometimes or when I'm guiding people say, "How can you guide people?" Or, "How can you sit there in a boat "and just watch somebody else fish all day?" 'Cause I've got a camera with me and I can record that. And I get a big kick out of watching other people learn and be successful and hopefully get addicted to the sport like we are.

  Katie

  I have to say it's one of my favorite things if I'm not the one fishing, is if you are watching somebody else fish and you can see the fish and they can't. That is such an exciting partnership where someone's casting to a fish that you can see and you're kind of trying to direct them. And, you know, it's almost a team effort at that point.

  Phil

  Yeah.

  Katie

  Where you feel successful just being a part of that.

  Phil

  Well, yeah, because a lot of times, you know, especially if you've got people that, you know, don't have the same experience, you're trying to help them along. And of course, if they're struggling and not, you know, you've got to help them and you've got to figure out the problems. And sometimes you get thrown a problem It's like, wow, I've never seen this one before, but you've got to stay calm and cool because you're like, you know, I've got to figure this out. Or probably the most memorable one of that. I was, when I used to do schools in rural Manitoba in the Southwest, they used to have some incredible trout fishing there. And we were fishing chironomids on our indicators midges. And, um, I had one gentleman that was catching, you know, every 10 or 15 minutes and another gentleman was over an hour and hadn't touched anything. And, you know, the way these, their indicators were positioned, they than five or six feet apart and I really don't believe there's a special little fairy up there anointing somebody to be successful. So there's a reason for everything. So you know we go through all the usual what fly, what size, what depth and everything seemed to be as it should be but wasn't catching fish and it wasn't until a gentleman who wasn't catching fish asked me to put the two indicators together and then stroke them from the indicator to the fly to see if his fly was at the same depth that I realized his leader setup was a little different. He was using a standard tapered leader and when you indicator fish in lakes, you want to make sure that the leader between your indicator and fly is completely level so basically the leader sinks vertically. If you have a tapered leader on with differing thickness along it, it's going to sort of, because thicker stuff sinks slower than thin stuff, it kind of sinks in an arc. And that was robbing him maybe of six inches, maybe. But that was the difference because trout and lakes, you know, chironomids are the number one food source in our productive lake. And they're like easy to eat, they're small, they're rich in calories, but a fish isn't going to chase one all over the place. They get, the more bugs that are in the water, the more pupae that are suspending, the narrower their feeding zone becomes. And they just won't move very far. They'll just kind of swim in a level and kind of turn their head left and right and just open their mouth and inhale and move on to the next one. So as soon as we changed him up to the same leader system, boom, he was into fish and went toe to toe for the rest of the day, right? And it was that little, I'm in the middle going, I gotta figure this out, right? So that's, and a lot of times people go, oh, it can't be that. You know, I've had, you know, similar, I've had that issue appear two or three times with other guests and friends of mine and they just blow it, oh, it can't be that, right? And I'm like, whatever, right? (laughs) So yeah, but and then they finally reluctantly make a change and they catch a fish. It's like, well, there you go. I told you, I don't make, I told one friend, I don't make this stuff up to put in slides in a presentation. I said, there's actually, I come from the school of hard knocks. So it took me a while to figure, why is that guy catching all the fish and I'm not? And you, everybody, it's always the fly's fault, right? It's always the fly. And it's the presentation, 98% of the time, I bet. The fly just takes it on the chin all the time because the only reason if you're not catching fish, if it's the fly, is the angler. And most people don't like to come to terms with that sort of self-realization that they may be the problem. So, and I know long ago, I've been a problem many times. (both laughing) I'm used to it, so.

  Katie

  Yeah, it's crazy how much such a little difference like that can make you, In my mind, I would assume that fish are trying to get by. Like they're taking in such small food sources that you'd think that they would take whatever opportunity they're given. And then you have these situations where changing a couple inches of depth. And I'm like, I have to imagine that fish could see that. And you'd think that it would want to take that opportunity. But so often, it's a matter of a couple inches. And that completely turns your day around. And it's just crazy.

  Phil

  Well, and it's-- the analogy I use is a human. And we always try to put human, how we interpret problems and assume fish problem solve the same way. And they're, you know, let's face it. They're thankfully not that smart, right? If we gave them the intelligence, if they had the intelligence we perceive they do by some of their behaviors, we'd never catch them, right? They're, you know, we're not dealing with Stephen Hawking kind of intelligence with these things, but they're driven by instinct and just reflex. And, you know, I often joke, you know, If Oprah Winfrey still had her show on television and she interviewed a trout, she would ask it, especially still water trout, "Why are you so affected by weather change?" The trout would go, "I don't know. Just am." "I don't know. Never thought about it." Whereas we're just analyzing analysis to the point of paralysis. We can't make decisions sometimes. That's the fun. Again, that's the fun of it too because none of us are ever going to be a fish unless reincarnation is real different night, different subject. We will never know. And that's part of the fun of it, right? You just, you know, you do your best out there and experience and time on the water and talking amongst yourselves and problem solving. And again, back to that learning, go back home, study, get on the internet, grab a book, ask questions and try to make deductions and see if those deductions the next time you're out hold some weight. If not tweak them a little bit. And it just keeps going and going and going. I don't fish the same way five years ago I did now. I'm always changing and evolving, right?

  Katie

  Well, it makes it more satisfying when you figure it out too. 'Cause if you try five things and six thing works, then you know that you've come to that, you weren't just lucky, you've come to that point from trial and error.

  Phil

  Well, I think sometimes, I gotta be careful how I say it, but sometimes people's egos can get in the way, right? Their own, and I've learned things from raw beginners. They've been out there, how'd you do? I caught this and this, I had 20 fish and, you know, gladly show me what they were doing. And they may not have the experience or the understanding yet to, you know, dissect what they did. But I'm fortunate a little bit after close to 40 years of doing this that I can and go, okay. And I don't forget, right? You never know where your next source of information is gonna come from. So you can't just sort of say, well, they're new to fly fishing. So how could they, you'd be surprised much you can learn because to me a beginner has no biases, they just react and do based on what they thought was right at the time. A lot of times it is and they may not know why, but you can help them understand or it's a great learning experience. They go, "Wow, I'm going to start doing that now." Sometimes I think as we get more experienced, we tend to complicate the heck out of everything.

  Katie

  Especially when what you think should be working isn't. I feel like there's times I go out and I expect a hatch of a certain type. And then when that's not happening, I almost feel lost. Like, well, now what do I do? Um, whereas I might've been better off had I just not even considered that and just picked something and tried it. And I'd be like, that's what you're talking about with the beginners. You know, sometimes they pick the right thing. That's not what you'd expect. But if, if you go in only having like plan a and plan a doesn't work, then, then what do you do? You know, you've got to, you've got to start to think outside the box to find out, you know, maybe they're not behaving the way you expected. And you might not know why but you've got to at least get to that point to figure it out.

  Phil

  Yeah, you just try it What do you got you're not catching anything now, so give 15 minutes of a new theory in charge and see how it goes Yeah, because it's again. That's that's just the fun of it all right. It just keeps you you you know people I Joke when sometimes I do seminars or you know say something and say wow that's pretty prophetic I'm like, where do you come up with this stuff? And I just say it's Stuff or a word that starts with s for stuff Stuff that I think about while staring at an indicator, right? Because I'm news, you know, sometimes I think with indicator fishing people think it's oh, it's kind of brain dead you just put this float on and wait till it pulls under and It's not like that at all. It's arguably my indicator leader system is the most complex leader system. I use in still waters It's very it's you know, if you want to be consistently good at it. You've got it's a bunch of little innocuous things that add up to being successful or not. You know, and it's back to that example of leader construction. You know, you wouldn't think that a leader diameter would make that much difference, but in that situation, it did. So it's all that stuff. You're always thinking why things are happening. Like, why am I having a good day? Why am I doing this? What's going on? I'm always observing. My ears are always listening for the sounds of moving fish, watching what other anglers are doing, all that kind of stuff.

  Katie

  This might be a good time to switch over to talking about still waters specifically. And I wanted to start off by asking like, what got you so into still waters? 'Cause you're kind of known as one of the still water guys.

  Phil

  Yeah, well, growing up in British Columbia and when I really got into it, BC has lots of great fly fishing opportunities in it. In the Southeast corner of the province, it's got some wonderful river and stream fisheries for bull trout, cutthroat, rainbows. But that was a bit of a haul drive-wise. It had anadromous fishing too, living in the lower mainland, every spring we got runs of fish back, salmon, all five species of Pacific salmon, steelhead, but they were seasonal. And then the really good steelhead fishing was up in the Skeena River area, which was a significant drive from there. And the interior of the province had a rich history of still water fishing. You know, there's over 20,000 lakes in British Columbia, where I'm living now is about 600. So a little different, you know, the way the earth formed. And that, you know, basically down North America, either side of the Rockies is just the perfect conditions for some world-class still water fishing. So it was just readily available, easy to get to. You know, at that time when I started out, I'd purchased a float tube. So it was something I could throw in the trunk of a car. I could blow it up with a cigarette lighter driven pump, you know, and I was fishing, you know, whereas all the other stuff. And I just fell in love with it. I just like, you know, it's like most fly fishing opportunities. It's a huge puzzle. Lakes, you know, a lot of people are intimidated by lakes 'cause they're large, they're featureless. They're not like a river that you can, you know, see the other side, wade across. You could see, you know, areas, likely looking areas. If I was a fish and trying to rest, I would sit there. I wouldn't sit in that raging current necessarily. All those kinds of things. Whereas a lake is like, wow, it all looks the same. It's deep in spots, but once you figure it out, they're actually not that challenging to read.

  Katie

  So I wanted to clarify, just 'cause I'm not sure what the lakes around you are like, at least where I am in Colorado, most of the lakes, apart from the handful down here in Denver that are more warm water species, most of our trout lakes are high alpine lakes, 9,000 plus feet all the way up to 12, 13,000 feet. Is that the type of lake, like still water that you're usually fishing or is it?

  Phil

  Lower, lower, lower. We have high elevation lakes too, 'cause we share the same rocky, right? They go right up the continent. So we have a high alpine lakes there with, you know, that have been, some have been stocked with brook trout. A lot of them have, you know, Alberta where I am, the native species is cutthroat. Some have golden trout in them as well. Those aren't as productive. They have a short growing season, but you're bet, you know, the productive lakes I'm talking about, if you think about the interior of British Columbia, your average elevation anywhere from three to 5,000 feet. And just the way the lay of the land is, the lakes, a lot of them are landlocked or have seasonal or what they call ephemeral streams. So all the nutrients that get washed into the lake, stay there. And because the lake, the water doesn't change or flush like a coastal lake does, it has high amounts of rainfall and inflow river and outflow river that just takes, you know, the minerals, the nutrients don't have times to settle. And of course, when they settle, they create a rich fertile base for plants to grow in. And plants provide habitat for food and the whole circle of life, the food chain gets going, right? Your Colorado lakes have them down the lower elevations, lakes like Ontario and Spinney. Reservoirs, perhaps not as much, there's some very productive reservoirs, but they are subject to drawdown. So that can impact because the shallows are the first things to draw down. And that's where food tends to live. most of your trout food is in water 20 feet deep or less because of the sunlight penetration, photosynthesis, stimulating plant growth, all that kind of stuff. So those lakes in the interior of British Columbia in Alberta where I am, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Eastern California, Sierras, California, Nevada with Pyramid Lake. That's a little different. That's a very alkaline fishery. Yeah, there's just Oregon, Washington State, Eastern Washington. You know, I've had the good fortune to fish all, into Arizona, you know, and I also fish in the Eastern Canada and Eastern United States too. And those are a little different. Those are particularly the lakes in Eastern Canada are more shield lakes. They sit on a rock base. So they're not as productive. So you just got to change your strategies a little bit and those kinds of things. But that's why, again, just BC, I was just in the perfect place to learn about still water fishing.

  Katie

  Okay, good to know, because I wasn't sure. I feel like still water is often used kind of across the board. And there's so many, I almost feel like there's more difference in lakes than there is in rivers.

  Phil

  You could argue no two lakes are the same.

  Katie

  Yeah.

  Phil

  They have common, it's like trout. I firmly believe fish have personalities too. You have really aggressive ones, moderately aggressive, slightly aggressive, they're all aggressive 'cause they're predators, but they all, you know, I remember one, we're going off topic here. I remember one time hanging something under an indicator clear lake, watching one fish swim by it like it didn't exist. Another fish swam by it, circled it once. And then, and then the third one came in not even a minute later and hit it on a dead run. Right. So you got three fish with three totally different responses, you know, so lakes are, you know, to use that analogy, they're all a little different. You know, you've got lakes that are really productive. We call those eutrophic lakes. I call them, you think euphoria. That's the analogy, you know, sort of the, what is that technique where you use word associations anyway. And then you've got a medium level of productivity called mesotrophic. And then you've got your really low productivity lakes oligotrophic. And those are the ones typically you'll see on the I saw on the west coast of British Columbia. So deep, you know, you could be sometimes a rod length from shore and you're in 45 feet of water, right? That's not a lot of place to grow, to grow plants. So fish in there constantly starving, poor things.

  Katie

  So let's talk about how you approach a lake, because you already mentioned this, that it's a little overwhelming to people sometimes because you don't have these obvious features. I know there are some lakes that do have some features, but for the most part, if you walk up to a lake, it almost looks like just a big bathtub. And unless it happens to have a really prominent shelf or some big boulders around the edge, it's kind of just like, well, now what? So when you walk up to a lake that you haven't been to before, how are you going about finding out where the fish might be hanging out?

  Phil

  Well, actually it starts at home. I actually have a presentation I call this, "How to Approach a New Lake," and it starts at home. You can do a lot of research at home. You know, obviously, just like any fishery, you can't beat local knowledge. So if you can find out information from friends who've been there before, a local fly shop, internet forums, now Facebook groups, Google searches, you know, and then you look at Google Google Maps, Google Earth. Again, if you think about us fly fishers in lakes, I believe we're most productive in water 20 feet deep or less. And again, that's for two reasons. First of all, like the one I mentioned because of sunlight penetration, it's influenced on weed growth and habitat for bugs. But it's also from a presentation perspective in water 20 feet deep or less, I have lots of tools at my disposal. I can fish indicators. I can fish slow sinking lines, intermediate lines. I can do fish fast sinking lines. can do all kinds of different things, different techniques. Whereas you get out into deep water, there's not a lot of food that lives out there. Fish will spend periodic times out there. It's sort of their timeout room, I call it, where they go and they're not terribly happy or things aren't in their favor. Or water chemistry issues, water temperature issues, it'll drive them out there too. It's still a productive area, the upper part, that gets influenced by the sun. But your presentation options drop and you're dealing with depth. So anyway, so you're trying to identify, take that lake and using those resources at home and bathymetric maps. If you can get hold of an underwater contour map, then you get this sort of 20,000 foot view of where, and you're looking for things like, I love fishing drop-offs. That transition from the shallow or shoal areas to deep water, fish use that like a game trail. They'll cruise along the edge of that. They can zip in on the shoal and have a few bites to eat. If something spooks them, the security of deep water is nearby. So that's a favorite spot of mine. points of land because of that, you know, they have drop-offs around their edges, sunken up weed beds, that kind of stuff. So you're trying to use that bathymetric map, Google Maps, and Google Earth, 'cause sometimes you can drill right down and see structure. So that's all done. So I have this kind of mental picture, and of course, making sure your equipment's all good to go, because if you're battling your equipment all day, 'cause you forgot something or didn't whatever, then you're not focused on, you know, you're too busy, upset with yourself you forgot your nippers, you ran out of tippet, you left that fly box at home, those kind of things, you brought the wrong rod, all that stuff. That kind of stuff just, I don't know about you, but it sort of gnaws at you all day long, right? It just gets you not focused. So then I get to the lake shore, and then that's where you invest that 10, 15 minutes. Get yourself ready, of course, and then go walk the shoreline and look for signs of what might be going on. over rocks and logs along the shoreline, see what's living under them, how big is it, what color is it. You don't necessarily have to have a degree in aquatic entomology, but it's good to know what a mayfly is and what a dragonfly is. You know, some insects like dragonflies and damselflies crawl out of the water to emerge. So you'll see there's shucks on the weed, on the vegetation and logs. So you're looking for signs of hatch. You'll see shucks that are drifted in. If there's been a wind activity, it creates foam that's white. It's And then you can sort of say, okay, I got my bathymetric map. I can sort of orientate it and say, okay, that's over there. And that's there. And I'm looking at the surrounding topography, right? If there's a gentle slope into the lake, that's going to carry under the water as well. That's going to be a shallow area that there could be some weed beds. Whereas a stiff vertical drop into the lake is probably more indicative of deep water. And you may want to sort of stay away from there, right? So you've got that. And from home, I've kind of built a route map looking at, okay, I want to go to that drop off. I wanna go here, I wanna go here, and I'll work my way around. But when I'm moving around, I'm also constantly looking for moving fish, right? We jokingly call it the two fish rule. If we see a fish move in an area once, we pay attention, twice, go see what's going on, because active fish, they may not be feeding, they could be just, you know, their cruising pattern has broke the surface, whatever, they're active. And I always joke, if there's a leash, you know there's a fish there.

  Katie

  Right, that's the first step.

  Phil

  Although fish in lakes, people gotta remember like rivers, the water moves and the fish doesn't. Lakes, the water moves, but not like a river, you know, wind induced current, those kinds of things. But for the most part, the water doesn't move and the fish move, they're cruising, right? So they don't hang out and haunt, you know, large mouth bass would. But trout, what we're talking about here are cruisers, right? So they may have somebody, you always gotta go by that point. There's a big brown that lives there. He doesn't really live there. He cruises by on a regular basis, right? It's part of his, you know, you imagine a mountain lion or a pack of wolves, they cruise a territory and trout are no different. So they'll cruise around. So you're looking for those things. If I see birds working low to the surface, like swallows, terns, nighthawks, those kinds of birds that feed on insects, you know, if they're concentrated in one area, 'cause your hatch is like any, like on a river, they could only be occurring in this pool or that run or that riffle, same thing. So you see those birds working like helicopter gunships low to the water. That's a sign is probably some bugs coming off. And just like the ocean going angler uses seagulls to find bait balls, we're kind of finding bug balls, I guess. So we're using that to locate fish as well, right? So, and then finally, I'm looking for three factors much like river and stream fishing. So comfort, protection and food. So comfort to me are the, of those three, I'd probably say in my reference are the most important because that's the needs, the trout needs to survive, to function, it's metabolism and primarily oxygen content. So that's why water temperature is so important. Trout have, you know, compared to other fish, a pretty narrow range. I'm looking for about 50 Fahrenheit to 65. That when the water temperature is in there, and it's not about whether the trout are cold or warm, they're cold-blooded, it's about oxygen. The warmer water gets, the less oxygen it holds. And a fish function with the oxygen content in that 50 to 65 range, when it starts exceeding that, they get stressed and they won't eat, right? And if you do catch them, you run the risk of killing them. So you're looking for that kind of water. So comfort, weeds give off through photosynthesis, weeds give off oxygen. That's part of the by-products of photosynthesis. You know, weather systems, trout and lakes are susceptible to weather change. There's lots of conjecture why. I think as humans, we always look for the one thing and it's usually probably about 12 things that are going on. You know, we only realize six of them. But I always say this, like the world's a snow globe and mother nature just gave it a really good shake. And while that weather transition is going on, it kind of puts them off. So they'll slide off deeper. They won't be as active. You got to slow your presentations down. Maybe go work that deep water adjacent to a drop off, that kind of thing. The next thing is protection. Just like rivers, trout like to feel secure when they feed. So in lakes, that's about light levels. You know, a fish is not gonna come into the shallows or is going to be very cautious in a shallow, clear environment. A little bit of surface disturbance caused by wind works like a riffle on a river. It breaks up light. It masks the presence. It masks our presence. Wind, actually, most people hate it, is actually, I view it as a friend. Unfortunately, it's a bit like a puppy. It can't come over in a nice, controlled, balanced fashion. It's gotta come roaring in, jump up on you, bite you, nip you, all that kind of stuff. And after spending three trips down to Argentina and fishing Lagos-Drobo, where a 30 mile an hour day is a calm day, it's you have to learn to accept wind and use it to your advantage. So protection or things like that, adjacency to deep water, those are things. So those drop offs, those points of land, sunken islands with deep water refuge around them. And of course the final thing is food. You find the food, you'll find the predators, right? So it's weed, again, back to weed beds. That's the Walmart, Costco, Safeway of the underwater world. That's where, you know, if you wanted to, if you were feeding on humans, bad analogy coming up, and you were a predator hanging out in a supermarket parking lot, probably be a good hunting ground, right? Cause we're always going in there to get stuff. We can jump us in the parking lot. Um, you know, um, I'm full of these crazy medicals. So, um, so, uh, that, those are the three things. And then you find all three of those things in one spot. That's a prime lie. So in still waters, that would be a weed bed, right adjacent to a drop off or a point with a weedy point weed bed underneath of it, something like that, where they've got the protection of the weeds, the oxygen, the weeds generate, you know, when they're living and growing, maybe not so much in the late fall when they're dying off, because then they're consuming oxygen. Food lives there. They've got the security of deep water nearby. So again, you're just trying to take this lake and break it into bite-sized chunks and focus on the chunks, right? Don't get, it's no different than fishing, you know, I've still had fish in some huge rivers, right? Or even just trout fish, big water. And it's like, wow, that's a lot of water. and you just got to break it into, you know, that's, that little spot's a riffle, right? I'm just going to fish it like I would fish a riffle on a stream that's 10 feet wide and just focus on that, right? And you know, don't get overwhelmed by the size of it all.

  Katie

  Yeah, it's almost, almost in the same way that, I mean, when you look at a river, it's what, you know, where's the fish most likely to be? The difference is just that a river, it's, it's often very obvious, but it seems like it's the same process. It's just not as clear when you first look at it. You kind of have to put the pieces together and say, "Okay, what adds up to good trout habitat versus, well, there's a huge rock right there surrounded by fast current, so if I were a fish, I would hang out in that area." Sure, I'd hang out there.

  Phil

  Yeah. It's like, if you wanted to not get run over, you don't stand in the middle of the highway, pull over and stand on the shoulder or stand behind a parked car and get out of the traffic a little bit, right? Exactly. Yeah. So, again, more bad metaphorical analogies, but yeah, very important. Once you get, and you know, make notes. Every time I'm on the water, you know, I used to write them down. Now you've got smartphones, you can just type notes in and things like that. Now, instead of drawing, you know, you catch a bug or something or see something, instead of trying to draw it and figure out what color it was, you can just take out your smartphone and take a picture of it. - Take a picture, yeah. I don't know what, some people bemoan phones. I'm like, "God, they're everything." Google Maps is on there. All these kind of, it's almost like if the thing rings, like my two sons, if it rings, I joke sometimes they think it's broken, right? 'Cause they just text and all that stuff. It's like, you know, you phone them, you don't get any answer, two seconds later you get a text, what? So, not really, but you know, that's the way they go, right? So yeah, it's an invaluable tool. Taking those notes, 'cause you'll find the notes you take on one lake and you get to another new body of water, there's a lot of overlap. Oh, I've seen this before, I've seen this, I know this, I've seen that bug, I've seen this behavior, right? you start building on it. It just builds confidence on it, right? So yeah, that's sort of my Reader's Digest tour of how I approach a new lake.

  Katie

  I wanted to ask you regarding wind on still waters, I generally have a favorable view of, like you said, it kind of a, if you can get the not crazy puppy wind and kind of get something a little more consistent. If you've got an indicator rig, I know, you know, that kind of stirs up, it might give your fly some movement under the water, but I haven't had a ton of luck in the wind with dry flies. Have you found that you can catch fish on dry flies in the wind or does it kind of turn them off for you?

  Phil

  Sometimes, for the most part, you definitely get better in a light wind or flat comms. Part of me, I believe the fish see their prey easier. The water, the surface isn't broken up. It's not diffusing light. It's not masking their target. I don't think their target acquisition systems work so well in the chop. Um, but that said, you know, sometimes if they're eating, you know, the bigger the wave, the bigger the fly is generally the rule we go, um, you know, maybe they're eating size fourteens, but you can coax them to a 10, um, because it's big. Um, they see it better. You see it better. Um, you know, some, you know, in Argentina, even though there's Lagostrobo, the primary food source for those fish in there are scuds, snails, and zooplankton. Um, there's no discernible feeding on anything else. They'll eat a mouse pattern. There are mice around, I'm sure they get in the water, you know, and those fish are averaging 15 pounds, so they don't pass up much, um, picky, you know, you don't, they're not like humans when we get big, we're all like cutting calories and getting exercise and, you know, getting back to our goal weight and all that stuff, they're just trying to eat more and more and more, right. So, you know, we're fishing chubby Chernobyl's and stripping them to make a So sometimes we, you know, a lot of times in lakes, I think people with dries think, oh, just let it sit still, move them, retrieve them, make a wake, draw something. You know, we get big caddis, we don't have this caddis and mayfly populations that river and stream anglers do, but we get, particularly with caddis, we get some big ones. We call them traveling sedges or sometimes in certain areas of states, I've heard them referred to as motorboat caddis because, you know, they're like golden stone size. So when they run and scurry, they create a wake that a fish can find and explode on. So we do that. A lot of times when we're dry fly fishing lakes too, we just don't pitch it out there and wait for all eternity for a fish to find it. Typically we're fan casting, so we're constantly spraying casts around us in kind of an arc. I was using an analogy like a clock face, anywhere from about 10 o'clock to two o'clock, 2.30, 9.30, whatever. and just let the flies land. And as soon as they hit, usually you're gonna get a response within 10 or 15 seconds. Because I think the splat pulls them over, you know, it lands delicately, you know, you don't pile drive it in there. And they come over and investigate and take it. And then you pick up and lay it down again. Of course, if fish rises, you cover it. Those kinds of things. And I actually fish dries and lakes sometimes with a mid-strip line. And a mid-strip line is a floating line. The original midge tip featured a 39 inch, three foot, a meter long, 39 inch clear intermediate tip. And so people go, "Why would you fish lines with a sink tip? That just doesn't make sense." Well, a lot of our flies in lakes, dry flies, particularly if you look at some of the English style dries, they're not like a traditional Adams or a Catskill dry that's sitting up proud on the hackle because all the currents, the insects kind of got to be up a little bit. In lakes, they sit quite low. And of course, a lot of times they're not actually taking the adults, They're feeding on, you know, cripples and emergers and those kinds of things, 'cause that's easy prey. Bigger silhouette, all those reasons. So it's not, so the flies we use, you know, some of the English flies are literally a dubbed body with a, you know, relatively inexpensive hackle in the front. They're like a, more like a wet fly than a dry. So with this midge tip, you cast them out, you dress them up, they sit there for a bit. Eventually, you know, that midge tip will pull the flies under and the second they go under, you just start a slow hand twist retrieve and track those flies back just underneath the surface. And that's the zone where the fish are coming up, the rising or dropping down a foot or two to window a vision stuff to see a little better, probably some predator avoidance in there, that kind of thing, safety, and then come up to feed again. So you're just tracking those flies through a zone they're feeding on and they'll take them right. Quite often the retrieve fly will get that subsurface fly will get more action than the dry. So it's a great two for one presentation that you can do. There's another technique called the washing line that we use, which is a buoyant fly on the point. You can use it at the surface, you can use it at depth. And basically the buoyant fly in conjunction with your fly line holds other flies off droppers if you're in an area where you're allowed to use droppers like clothes on a washing line. So you can have a fly, you know, there's a popular fly now on lakes called the booby with big round foam eyeballs. When you retrieve that at the surface, it creates a wake. So trout will come up and look at that and they might eat it or they'll be attracted to it and then look around and see your other more natural offerings hang in there and take one of those too. So just some of the tactics are a little different and we use wind as well. We will, trout like to, trout and lakes are, it's in their DNA, they're river and stream fish in their DNA, rainbows, browns, brookies, all that. They're put in lakes or found their way into lakes. And so they like current and any wind induced current they'll swim into, right? So a lot of times they'll swim upwind. So you see a fish rise, my first cast would be upwind of that position 'cause that's most likely where that fish is going to be. 'Cause the thing with a rise, it's telling you where it was, not where it is. So you gotta learn to little tricks like that to anticipate where they might go.

  Katie

  That's a good tip. Now, I know you brought up lines and leaders a couple of times. How are you choosing a line and leader setup? I'm sure it's different based on the conditions and what kind of rig you're throwing, but what are some considerations for choosing a line and leader?

  Phil

  What I'm doing with it, I guess? Simple terms. You know, with floating lines, this may seem a little off, but for me, if I had one line to fish in the lake, it would be a floating line. Because depending, I can fish dry flies, of course, like we talked about. I can fish indicator systems and we can fish long leader nymphing, a technique we nicknamed the naked technique because there's no indicator on the leader, the leader is naked. And that's long leaders 15, 18, 20, 25 feet. And we're typically using these methods from an anchored position or you can fish downwind, we call it lock styling. We use a big underwater parachute to slow and control your drift. Allows you to cover water and always presenting your fly to fresh fish because the flies proceed you as opposed to trolling, you move through and then your flies follow. So, I can reach 20 feet down easy with that long leader technique. It's, most people, especially if you're coming from rivers and streams where a 12 foot leader may be long, to throw 18, 20, 25 feet freaks people out a little bit. They just have these visions of spending all day on doing knots. Once you, if you follow good basic casting principles, smooth application of power, rod stop, don't let creep, you know, appropriate application of power, you know, you're not going to tangle. You just, obviously the longer the leader is, the more tangle prone it becomes because your margin of error is less. So fish with those. When I'm fishing subsurface, the general rule, single fly, 'cause when you add multiple flies, additional flies, again, if legal to do so, adds leader length 'cause you need separation between them. So, but the general sinking lines I follow is the faster the sink rate, the shorter the leader, because you invest a lot of money in a fly line that sinks at a set rate, and you wanna make sure when you're using that inch per second sink rate and doing some mental math of to how long you let your fly sink to get to a zone you're trying to target, that your fly and leader is gonna be somewhere in the vicinity. If your fly is, if your leader is ridiculously long, sometimes you're, and not, you know, not the same, You know, we use a lot of predominantly level leaders, subsurface, maybe a little bit of, you know, typically for people starting out with a sinking line eater, I say just get a seven and a half foot tapered leader. Half of a tapered leader is butt sections, about four and a half feet is thicker stuff. And then just add tippet after that, equal or similar diameter, because that keeps all your flies more or less on the same plane, you know, not tungsten bead heads versus, you know, foam-based flies, something like that, So there's a lot of difference in how they sink. But it's just an easy system that you can add and subtract to, right? So yeah, that's sort of the, and fly lines. Well, if you come to lakes, you realize that we have a lot of fly lines. I looked the other day, on any given day, I probably have at least 15 fly lines with me of different types. You know, your core lines in still water fishing are gonna be your floating line for the, again, the dries indicators, long leader stuff. Probably a clear intermediate that sinks at about two inches per second. It's a good cast and retrieve line. You can work shallow water. The slow sink rate allows you to let the fly sink to match retrieve speeds, depending on the speed the bugs go. And you know, most insects, well, everything in lake doesn't have a rocket pack attached to it. So they're not zipping around at a thousand miles an hour. Any activity level of the fish, which is closely related. If the fish is sort of within that temperature window I talked about before, and they're in an active frame of mind and we're willing to chase, you can get away with a faster sinking line because you can strip your line, you're flying faster without the risk of it hanging up. Whereas if they're in an inactive mode, after that weather change or cool water or other factors that we'll probably never know the real answer to, and they're not aggressively chasing, then you got to fish slower. And then you want something three to five inch per second sink rate somewhere in there. And those three will carry you. But then you start filling in the blanks with hover lines and midge tips and midge tip longs and type threes and type fives and type sixes and type sevens and sweep lines. And then even some lines that are not designed as I use a lot, I use real lines and they have a line called the coastal quick shooter, which was designed for beach fishing in for the Sea Run Cutthroat in the Pacific Northwest. It features a 34 foot clear intermediate. It's an integrated shooting line. It casts a mile and it's just a great still water line because you can cover a lot of water. It's a great line for fishing the shallows, those kinds of stuff. It's very versatile, but again, sometimes the name of the line may mask what it, people just, "Oh, I don't fish the coast, so I'm not doing that." You gotta look at the line and the properties and, "Wow, that's very applicable to what I do, why not?" So, and competition anglers are even more paranoid than me. (laughing) I did a little bit of competition fishing many years ago, but, you know, they could have 30 fly lines with them because fly lines come and go and they'll discontinue a line but it had some great properties to it that were unique to a situation. So the analogy I use with fly lines is a bit like golf. You can probably golf with a small suite of clubs, know, wood, favorite iron, sand wedge and a putter. And I'm a lousy golfer. I spend most of my time trying to get my balls out of water traps. Maybe that's just a sign I should be on the water. And then after a while, if you get more into the sports and you start buying those other clubs and then going to the driving range and learning how to use them. So our driving range is obviously the lake and one of the things I'm a big believer in is if you're fishing and you're having a good day fishing and you're catching fish, that's the time you start playing around with new techniques you may have thought about or read about or whatever wanted to try. That's the time to try them because you'll develop confidence. You know, the fish are in a, you know, willing to play and you can hook a few fish. And then the next time you're out and the fishing's tough, you might try that method because you know it works. And then that might be the key that unlocks the puzzle that day as opposed to trying it out when the fishing's tough. And if that method doesn't work, you don't know whether it was what you were doing, maybe you got something wrong, or it was just a fish or a combination of both, right? So, you know, I have a lot of lines. I recommend, you know, people say, "Oh, do I need that many?" And I joke and say, "Well, of course." But don't buy something unless you're gonna use it. You know, if you're just gonna buy it and put it in your kit bag and never take it out, that's a complete waste of money. You need to learn how to use it, understand its properties, its application, how it performs, how it casts, what scenarios it'd be good for, all that kind of stuff.

  Katie

  It sounds like you're carrying lines the way a river angler would just carry fly boxes. I think most river only anglers have never even considered getting a second line because for the most part, a floating line is 99% of what you're using on a river. So it's just kind of a completely different world. I feel like a lot of people have never touched a different line.

  Phil

  We don't carry as many fly boxes. Just our fly boxes are bigger. I'm now carrying two Montana Fly Company boat boxes with leafs in them. So I'm probably, those leaves hold 300 flies, depending on the configuration, I think it's 300. And I've got them stuffed and I got two boxes. So I got, you know, one of the people say, well, what's one of the reasons, if you're a hatch matcher, right? Lakes are the place for you because we've got, we got caddisflies, mayflies, chironomids, midges, same thing, dragonflies, damselflies, water boatman, backswimmers, scuds, leeches, forage fish, crayfish, terrestrials. Did I say water boatmen and back swimmers? Zooplankton. We got, if you like figuring out the hatch or what they're feeding on and matching that, there's a lifetime of things. So we have flies that cover all of those scenarios. Plus the sort of generic suggestive flies that cover the bases like a hares ear nymph, those kinds of flies, woolly bugger style, those things that can be everything and nothing. We got attractor flies that look like nothing fish would eat, but we use those flies to trigger a reaction, a regression, curiosity, or territoriality, something like that, where they're not necessarily feeding. We kind of trigger them to grab. A bass angler would call them a reaction bait. It's kind of our reaction bait.

  Katie

  Now, I know every lake is different, so there's not like a golden rule, but what are some of the common flies that you find in lakes that are generally pretty productive?

  Phil

  Oh, the old fly question. Well, if I had to have leeches, I'm a big fan of leeches. One of my favorite is a balanced balance leech, which is a leech. We tie on a jig hook with a small pin and a tungsten bead. And under an indicator, that fly will hang horizontally, which is the way most things. It's also a fantastic cast and strip fly because it's a little jig. So the fly just undulates. Now we're using, you know, slotted beads and jig hooks. these tungsten head turner beads or true teardrop kind of tongue, they got lots of different names. I work closely with a company in Canada called Canadian Llama that brings a lot of these products in. And Kent does a great job of appeasing to my fly tying needs and wants that may not be the rest of the world's but we use those beads. So balance leeches are a big part of it. Chironomids of course, huge component of fishing. Freshwater shrimp or scuds in productive lakes are a common characteristic. Attractor flies, blobs, boobies, fabs. We also use bead-headed blobs when they get on zooplankton in the summer months or in the late fall, early fall, to imitate a cluster. What else? And just generic nymphs, that kind of stuff. You know, Denny patterns are great for that kind of thing. Seal buggers, still water nymphs, that kind of fly that has a lot of different attributes. There's a favorite fly of mine that comes out of England called a D-I-A-W-L, it's B-A-C-H. It's actually a Welsh name, it stands for little devil. And it's just very sparse. You know, the original version I started using was just a few strands, a few reddish brown hackle fibers for the tail, a peacock curl body with a rib, and then a little, the same material used for the tail as a bead, it just looks like nothing. And it's just a great little buggy. It looks like mayfly nymphs, it looks like small scuds, it looks like a slender damselfly nymph. Those are two other patterns I'd have too, a damselfly nymphs and dragonfly nymphs, 'cause a dragonfly is big, so it's a bit of a confidence fly because I think a lot of people get intimidated. I remember when I was early in my chironomid addiction, and having some experienced angler, veteran angler come up to me and say, you wanna catch fish in lakes? And I'm like, duh. And then puts this little size 14 standard shank hook, slender, you know, basically the body was the same diameter as the hook and a little bulbous thorax on it and a silver wire rib on it. And I went, you're out of your mind. I'm gonna throw that tiny little fly into all that water. You know, I wanna throw a big dragonfly nymph that's two inches long and a big, something with some meat to it, but trout make their living eating small stuff, right? You know, you see that in rivers. And whenever there's a hatch on, they always inevitably, what are they feeding on? The smallest thing, right? You know, when you go and fish, you know, I fished in Missouri a lot, 'cause it's, you know, reasonably close drive for me, you know, in the fall, they're feeding on tricos and pseudos and these things are like 22, 24s. I can't even believe I'm throwing, you know, it lands on the water. I have no idea where it went. Can't see it. Just hope it drifts along drag-free enough that I can see a rise in the area. So you'd wanna have those. The reason I like the dragons and damsels is 'cause they're predators. So predators move, they're always on the hunt. So they expose themselves, right? It's like a golden stone is a good river and stream pattern because they crawl around the rocks as a predator, they get swept off into the drift. It's something trout are gonna see, right? And betas, nymphs, they swim. So they swim around and they get in the current they can't handle and they're gone, right? And in rivers you've got behavioral drift and phenomenon like that as well that also influence things in the drift. So that's probably it. So leeches, chironomids, damsels, dragons, some wooly bugger style flies that are kind of generic, cover the bases of Prince nymph is good, flashback pheasant tails, hares ears.

  Katie

  I feel like those are good anywhere.

  Phil

  Dragon nymph, yeah. Well, hares ear looks like a scud, looks like a mayfly, depending on how robust or slender you tie it, those kind of flies. But having said that, I have a, sometimes I joke I can't make a decision 'cause I got so many flies to choose from that I'm paralyzed. You're waiting for one of them to speak to you. Put me in coach.

  Katie

  And you pick one, you're worried that it was the wrong choice. You're just thinking about whether you could have chosen something else instead.

  Phil

  Oh yeah. Well, we usually, if I'm fishing a fly slowly, I might change it after two casts, right? But the analogy I use in lakes is I call it DRP, because again, back to our early discussion, everybody blames the fly. It's always the fly's fault. I didn't have the right fly. They had the right fly. And if you were to ask somebody on any lake, river, stream, what fly are you using? They may be less than truthful. I won't say lie, but they may tell you one thing and it's completely opposite. they may give you some crazy name. You know, there's so many fly names out there that have nothing to do with, you know, even the word woolly bugger, what is that? Is it made out of sheep's wool? You know, those kinds of things. So they'll guard that, but the, and it's not usually the fly, it's the first thing that's most important in lakes is depth. So that's what D stands for. Is my fly at the right depth? R is retrieve. Am I moving it at the right pace? And then think about fly patterns. So sometimes, you know, somebody being successful, you know, they're probably gonna be defensive of their fly, perhaps, or give you a name you don't know, but you can ask them, how deep are you off the bottom? Or are you up near the, you know, well, I'm just a foot off the bottom, especially if they're using indicator setups. Are you moving it fast or slow? No, I'm just letting it sit there and let the wave action bounce the indicator around. And from there, you can sort of, if you have a basic understanding of entomology, you just put something down there and move it at that pace, you're probably gonna run into a fish. 'cause they're generally opportunistic on depth and selective on food, right? Obviously they're gonna eat what's most prevalent and around them all the time, but a lot of times that's, so, and if I'm fishing in an area, if nobody's around me and I don't see any signs of fish, and I believe I'm fishing at the right depth and I'm moving the fly at the right pace, and I've got a fly I have confidence in, it's worked before in this scenario and not working now, if I don't see any signs of fish, I'm probably gonna move because the first thing you need is fish.

  Katie

  Step one.

  Phil

  (laughing) Yeah, so you could move, and I don't mean an exponential move, like from the north end of the lake to the south end of the lake. It might be one or two cast lengths down the shoreline, right, if you're fishing anchored, or, you know, if you're lock styling and drifting, you might make a couple of casts, nothing, and then change something up, change something up, right, until you figure out, you know, that's the, lake fishing's like a puzzle. If you like puzzles, I think you'll like fly fishing in general. You like that problem solving. But some days the puzzle's like a puzzle for a three-year-old six pieces it goes together great. Most days it's like a 50,000 word, 50,000 word, 50,000 piece puzzle of a blue sky and you barely get the border.

  Katie

  And you don't have the box to look at.

  Phil

  You don't have the box top either so you just see, Jesus, a lot of blue colored pieces in this thing. What's this a picture of? And that's that's sort of it. Some days you do really well and other days and I actually find myself, I learn more on those tough days and the drive home and the analysis you go through as to, you know, okay, and you start thinking about it, you know, and just take the emotion out of it and the frustration and just, okay, let's think this thing through, right? And that's where you come up with some pretty unique things to try next time that actually work.

  Katie

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, that analysis, I keep a fishing log of when I go out where I, you know, I marked on the weather and if I'm on a river, I mark on the flow rate and stuff like that. And it's actually really, really helpful to go back and I've got it digitally so I can just search it and say, "Hey, last time I was on, you know, fill in the blank body of water, what was it doing and what worked?" And then from there, it might not be the exact same conditions, but I can say, "Okay, it's a little bit cooler, so I can adjust for that," or whatever.

  Phil

  Well, yeah, it takes a lot of the guess, you know, you don't have to go right back to the start again, right? You've got this framework and you start to see similarities. You start to see, even though I was on Lake A and now I'm on Lake B, wow, that's the same, same We were there in July. Now it turns out it was September 12th. We're both wrong. All that kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm a huge believer in keeping all those kind of notes. Like you said, the weather conditions, the wind, the water temperature. That's a big one for me. If somebody has to take water temperature, I'm like, "Oh my God, it's like driving around with putting a bag over your head and trying to drive down a highway." It's the hatches you see, fish you caught. We use throat pumps and we do throat samples of fish, right? So what food sources were on the menu at that time, those kinds of things. What flies did you use? What presentation techniques? And just the general notes, you know, I tried this, I fished from this time to this time, we moved here, we fished there. And you just start, you know, oh, that, that, that, that, there's a cross, you know, they all cross. That looks like something we can apply somewhere else or in the future again, the same way.

  Katie

  Yeah, so speaking of specific techniques, something I kind of want to wrap up with that I think, for me at least, comes to mind when I think of classic still water fishing that is very, very much a unique still water technique is the indicator with a really long leader and a and I think usually a midge. I'm sure you could throw on a variety of things. But the chironomid on a long leader under an indicator is just a very unique still water setup. And it's not something I have much experience with. So I'd love you to just kind of walk me through you don't have to pretend. I am somebody who is very new to this technique. So walk me through, like a beginner, how this technique is set up, how you work it, and why it is so effective.

  Phil

  Well, to answer the last question, it's so effective because it controls two of the elements I think most people coming to lakes struggle with. Getting your fly at the right depth and holding it there. Typically in lakes, it's one to three feet off the bottom. That's where food lives, it's safe down there. and then you retrieve speed. And you have with an indicator, you can just let it sit and let the wave action animate, animate the indicator, which transmits down to the fly. You can strip it in a little bit. You can slowly hand twist it in, different retrieves come in. You can let the wind move the fly for you. So it does, you know, and that's again, the two things. Most time I see people on lakes struggle with, they just cast it out there. As soon as the fly hits, they're ripping it in, right? I often joke up your diehard river and stream streamer fishermen, you know, fishing, you know, articulated what’s-a-monots and everything. They're hard. I almost have to medicate them to slow down. You know, when you're, you know, when you're casting out and you're going to let a fly sink for at least 30 seconds, that's agony to some people. That's like line up at Starbucks or, you know, in a bank instant teller line up at a bank and you can't get your cash out quick enough. Cause there's people in there doing their bills and everything else. You've not heard of online banking those kind of things But your basic indicator setup it you know we use a lot of long rods and lakes Nine and a half I use rods by mystic there the M series. It's 10 foot 3 inches long So one of the benefits of a long rod is roll casting because that's a cast I'm a big advocate of for indicator presentations because we're not making distance cast in fact you've got to see that indicator To see a take and react to it and my general rule is the deeper I'm fishing below my indicator the closer I keep it so I remember fishing Crowley Lake in California where you routinely are fishing seven You know when I was there we were routinely fishing 17 to 19 feet below an indicator We barely had a wrong length of line out because if a fish takes that fly As soon as it puts the fly in its mouth It's gonna realize not what it thought it was and I really believe a lot of your indicator takes are right in the roof of their mouth and I believe that's because they come up, they put their mouth on the fly and they realize, uh-oh, not that. And they're actually in the process of spitting that fly out when it registers as a take. And of course you set the hook and pull the fly up into the mouth and that's where you get, why you get the hook up there. So you wanna keep it close. As I mentioned with that, indicate the leader system we use and I'll get to that in a second, it's tangle prone. It's thin, it's predominantly level, it's tangle prone. If you've got multiple flies on there, those kinds of things, all those different points of contact with weight, just, you know, that's what helps screw casts up and tangle. So you don't wanna be casting that long distances because the more times it's in the air, the more time it's gonna tangle. So that roll cast comes into play. Your fly line plays a role. Any floating line will do, but most floating lines for trout are designed for casting dry flies. So they have a long front taper for allowing gentle dissipation of casting energy, no big splat on the surface of loud presentation. In lakes, we need a line. So I worked with Rio to help develop their Stillwater floater line, because we wanted a line that had the horsepower, the mass, the short aggressive front taper, oversized head, a long back taper for roll casting, to be able to turn over an indicator rig or turn over a long leader, right? lines, you know, to turn over weight or length, you need mass to do that. And that line is designed for that. And then the leader setup itself. I use, again, Rio makes a line, a leader called the indicator leader. It's 10 feet long out of the package. It is it says tapered on there, but the taper is only about three feet. So I keep right where that transition point is from the butt section to the level portion, the seven foot level leader is where I put my indicator because with casting indicators, you like to keep your indicator about three feet from the end of your fly line. You never wanna have that indicator creep way out 10, 12 feet away, it just, everything's out of whack. You end up overpowering the cast and just bad things start, you know, tangles start to happen. So what you get with that butt section between the indicator and the fly line is a little bit of backbone to the leader 'cause the rest of the leader's level, thin, level leader, you know, eight pound or less, typically breaking strength, you know, three X, two X. and then you've got that loop to loop connection if you use that. And because it's thicker diameter, it's not going to cut into the fly line coating. I know some of my friends, they use level leaders, eight pound test the entire length. And the trouble is if you not that, you use a loop to loop connection, that thin diameter stuff can cut into the coating and damage an expensive fly line nowadays. And also because it's nylon, it's gonna sit more on the surface, whereas a fluorocarbon level leader is going to get under the surface. And if the fish are taken softly, you got to sort of rip that out of the water first. As part of the hook set process, it may cost you a fish. So that leader I said is 10 feet, seven feet's tapered. Okay, that's great if I'm going to fish seven feet down, but that's not always going to happen. So we have to add equal or maybe one size less diameter tippet material to the end of that leader. So to summarize all this, as far as leader, let's say just an example, I'm gonna wanna fish 16 feet below my indicator. So I have a 10 foot leader of which seven foot is level. Remember, I wanna have level leader from my indicator to my fly. I'm trying to keep this, again, this is the most complex system I have. So I've only got seven feet. So I need to obviously add some tippet length to get down to 16. Now my final tippet section, I always like it to be about 24 inches, two feet long of fluorocarbon for abrasion resistance, all the stuff people use fluorocarbon for. I like that two feet and I've got seven feet a liter. So if I take seven feet of that level liter on the indicator liter and two feet, you add that together as nine. So I take nine and I always subtract that from the depth of water I'm trying to target. So nine less 15 is six. That's how much liter I have to add between the end of the indicator liter and my final tippet section. And typically we use a small barrel swivel to connect that, like a 12, 14 or 16, 'cause it adds weight, it spins and rotates. The releasing indicators we use, the leaders passes through them. So if you break a fish off, that's gonna trip the indicator and without any kind of stopper in the way, it's gonna slide right off the leader and you're gonna lose it. So the swivel acts as a stopper, other benefits there as well. So my overall leader in that 16 foot scenario a 10 foot indicator leader, six feet, let's say it's a two X leader. So I'll have maybe six feet of two X or three X fluorocarbon and then the swivel and then the final two feet. And I call that mid section of the leader, the adjustment zone. So this is where I ebb and flow the leader length. So if I wanna go deeper, I'm gonna add to it. If I'm gonna fish shallower, I'm gonna cut it back, cut it out, whatever it takes, because you only wanna fish a leader long enough as necessary. You don't need to fish 20 feet a leader to fish seven feet of water, right? It's just, you're asking for trouble. You're gonna have your indicator too far away from your fly line. It's just gonna be a disaster, right? So I know that I'm trying to make that simple. So in summary, and the reason being is when that line hits, everything lands in the water, that leader is gonna sink straight down below the indicator and you're going to, your flies are gonna reach the depth you're set at. If you use a nine or a 12 foot trout leader, Again, designed for fishing to surface feeding trout, 50% of that leader's butt section is thick and then it tapers down in the final tippet section. So if you use that as the foundation of your leader, even though you're set for 16 feet, you may not reach it because you've got three or four feet still of that thick butt section that's gonna sink slowly and you're gonna get that leader to, it sinks more of an arc or a droop than straight down. And you're not gonna fish the depth, You're gonna think you are, but you're not fishing the depth that you need to fish because your leader won't let you.

  Katie

  Now this might be a kind of a dumb newbie question, but so I know obviously this level leaders, the goal is to get it to go straight down. Do you ever add any weight to really enhance that straight down pull?

  Phil

  Sometimes, there's a number of ways, in windy conditions, you need more weight because wind will create current, wind induced current. And of course, then it starts to behave a little bit like a river, it starts pushing things horizontally and they can't get down. So a swivel does that. You can step your swivel size up. So, you know, I, most times I'm fishing about a 14, but you could fish up to a 12. You could put a split shot above the swivel, a little bit of tungsten putty. You could use a tungsten fly. I tend to use brass bead flies when I'm chironomid fishing. If I'm fishing other flies, I might be tungsten because a chironomid is a pretty slender bug, it sinks quickly, and indicators are not the only way I fish chironomids. I use a lot of other techniques as well, and in the other techniques, the fly simply sinks too fast and gets into the muck. You can add a second fly or a third fly, if you're a real gambler, as far as tangles, and that adds weight too, right? So there are situations where you do add weight, particularly when the wind comes up. That's when you only add what you need to add. Don't slap all that weight on unnecessarily. So it could be a scenario early, you know, in the morning, the wind, the daily winds haven't come up, you're fishing no swivel, and then the winds come up a bit, you put a swivel on, and then the winds come up more, stick a split shot, maybe put a tungsten based fly on. You kind of have to, 'cause what'll happen is you can, you'll be catching fish, you're seeing signs fish are still around, you've got bugs hatching, the hatches, the beauty of chironomids is they tend to hatch prolonged periods throughout the season day. So those fish will just, and because they're small and they process them, you know, then about 12 hours, they're all digested and they're on the feed again. So it's a great, just this constant feeding cycle going on. You know, and they hatch in the hundreds of thousands of bugs at a time. There's over 2,500 species in Western North America alone. Chironomids outnumber all the other bugs in the lake combined, right? They're just a massively important food source. So, you know, you can be and all of a sudden you start not catching as many fish, but the wind has come up. So you adjust, you know, a little bit of weight on and all of a sudden you're back in the game again because your flies aren't getting blown because just like nymphing on a river with an indicator, too much current and all of a sudden everything's moving more horizontally. You're not getting that straight down angle anymore.

  Katie

  So it's just adapting to the conditions, you know, as you would with any, any technique really, I guess.

  Phil

  Yeah, because you're like, "Okay, I'm catching fish and I'm not catching fish. Why?" Start doing the analysis to figure out, right? It's not all of a sudden they've just said, "You know what?" And some days, yeah, it might be, "Okay, you've stuck me enough. I'm good. I'm gone. You've had your fun. It's time to go home." I always joke at the end of the day, sometimes it slows down a little bit and it's almost like, "Okay, the fish has said they played enough. They want us to go now. They need some recovery time."

  Katie

  Yeah, at some point you feel like you've taken what you deserved and it's time to leave the resource alone.

  Phil

  You're getting greedy, right?

  Katie

  Well, Phil, we can get wrapped up. I know you have a new book out, so I wanted to give you a chance to plug that. I wrote down the name, "The Orvis Guide to Stillwater Trout Fishing." So feel free to plug however you see fit. What's in it, what do you cover, and where can people find it?

  Phil

  Just buy it, just buy it. (laughs) It is sort of the compilation of 35 plus years of stillwater fishing, from lessons I've learned, lessons people have graciously passed along to me. It's a heavy book. It weighs about two pounds. It's over 110,000 words and close to 300 images and diagrams. Um, it covers a lot of what we talked about. For example, that indicator formula we just struggled through. Um, there's a diagram there that explains it all. The, the floating line chapter I did for fishing subsurface. So just indicators and a naked technique was about 7,000 words. I wrote on that. So I went into depth. I went off the deep end. there's entomology in there, floating line techniques, dry fly fishing techniques, sinking lines, equipment, both rods and reels and all the other accessories, lines, a little bit introduction into lock style, fishing from that drifting boat I mentioned, a tractor fishing, a big entomology chapter, again, Rick Haefeli, 'cause that's such a big part of, why you'd wanna fish lakes, watercraft, you know, boats, pontoon boats, float tubes, how to anchor a boat. You know, it's just not lob it over the side and hope for the best. There's an actual art to it. All those kinds of things are in there. So it's sort of all of the presentations I've done. It shows all that stuff in one stop. And you know, you can get it in many places. Myself and good friend, Brian Chan, another fellow still water addict. We have our own online still water fly fishing store called the stillwaterflyfishingstore.com. And that store came about because a lot of the unique stuff we use in lakes, it's not easily found. And so we just decided one day we're gonna try and help still water anglers worldwide find the stuff they need. All the little, we do our indicators there, bobber stops, depth locators, swivels, leaders, all of our signature flies at Montana Fly, ties on our behalf, our books, our DVDs, everything, it's a one-stop still water shop. Maybe we should have called it that. So we're always adding to that as well. So that's where you can get it. And the good thing is, is the prices are in Canadian dollars. So for my American friends, that's, you know, 20% off

  Katie

  Well, built in discount.

  Phil

  Depending on the exchange rate. So yeah, we ship our products all over the world. So that's the best, and all of our books, you know, Brian's books are there as well. They're all autographed as well, so.

  Katie

  Well, that sounds like a great resource. I hate to, I don't wanna throw shade at, you know, just general fly fishing books, But without a little bit of a base knowledge of how to fly fish, it's pretty difficult to learn how to fly fish from a book. But I feel like once you have a grasp on how fly fishing works, something like this where you can see diagrams of, like you said, leader setups and stuff like that, suddenly that becomes, I feel like, really valuable to see.

  Phil

  It's a reference point. You can go out and come back and refer to it because, unlike today, I kind of envy today's anglers because when I learned to fly fish, books were all we had. And if you were fortunate enough to get mentored by somebody who knew more than you did, or become involved in a club, and now you can go to YouTube and Google and all these, you know, and there's so many schools and seminars and workshops and fly fishing shows you can go to, you know, I really enjoy speaking at those as well, because you can have that interaction and that discussion. Well, okay, explain what you mean and come back at me again and show me. And you know, it's a lot more visual and tactile than it was before. you just go to a library and look. You know, when I started tying, books had diagrams in them, they didn't have pictures, right, and then there was black and white pictures, which were just slightly better than diagrams 'cause of the contrast issues, and then full color was holy smokes. And now YouTube, and you can just how to do this, and somebody's done a video on it, and I'm even now doing online learning, online courses, because with the pandemic, it's sort of, it was a concept I had in my mind for 25 years ago, but the technology wasn't there. And now with programs like Zoom and StreamYard and all these things, somebody can take a course. And I just look at what the frustrations I went through to learn and the constantly running into walls and all that kind of stuff. It's sure nice to be able to take that learning curve off so you can enjoy the fishing and not get frustrated 'cause I love watching other people have the same amount success I'm fortunate enough to have.

  Katie

  Oh absolutely. Well where can where can people find you if they want to reach out if they want to follow you on social media or watch I know you said you have got YouTube videos where's best place for people to find your content?

  Phil

  I mentioned the Stillwater store I've got my own website at the time of recording is called flycraftangling.com but really soon will become philroleyflyfishing.com. Flycraft was a sort of a parent company I set up and nobody really knows what the heck that is, but they know who I am. So somebody says, why are you calling it that? So things you learn about self-promotion as you go with a podcast. What'd you got? Um, um, the store, um, I've got my own YouTube channel. I've got an active YouTube channel with, uh, instructional fly fishing content, uh, vlogs, and a lot of fly tying on there. Um, so yeah, please go pay it a visit, subscribe, like all the things you make the algorithm happy. You can find my two primary social platforms are Instagram Facebook. So Phil Rowley Fly Fishing on Facebook and Phil Rowley Fly Fishing on Instagram. Stay pretty active doing things and I'm at shows all you know I I'm on the tour with the fly fishing show so I'm usually all over the United States this year. The season's just wound up I was in Boston, was going to New Jersey but did because of the pandemic but did the my shows via zoom there. I was in Salt Lake City at the Wasatch Expo. I was at the Pleasanton Fly show, the Denver Fly Fishing Show, so get around.

  Katie

  You'll be passing through at some point, I'm sure, for most people. Well, Phil, this has been just an absolute wealth of information, and maybe you've inspired me to try some new techniques. I tend to stick to dry flies when I go to lakes because it tends to work fairly well for the lakes I go to, but I think I need to expand my horizons. There's definitely days I show up that it's not working, and I need to expand a little bit there.

  Phil

  Well, you're in Colorado, right?

  Katie

  Yeah, outside of Denver.

  Phil

  In the Denver area? or yeah well I will be down there in August. Myself and Landon Mayer, you've probably heard of him. I have. Being, is it a Coloradian?

  Katie

  Coloradan.

  Phil

  Coloradan. We are getting together and we're doing a bit of a fly shop tour focused on still waters and of course I'll be exploring during the day. I said to Landon yes I'll come down and do this but we better be doing some fishing. So I'm coming down the first week in August, 6th, 7th or 8th or something like that through then. So, you know, keep an eye out. We'll be doing it a number of the shops in the greater Denver area doing these sort of evening in stores for a couple of hours or so. So a great place to, you know, if you want to come talk still waters, we'll be doing a combination of fly tying and the rigging and all that kind of stuff. Okay, now you tied this fly or show me this fly. How the heck do you use it kind of thing. So that's what it'll be all about too. So I'll be in your neighborhood. So neighborhood, so you'll I'll have to drop by and say hi.

  Katie

  Yeah, yeah. I'll definitely check out the dates and if I don't find them, I'll reach out to you. Do you happen to know if you're coming to the Golden fly shop? 

  Phil

  I am. 

  Katie

  Okay, well that's right down the road for me.

  Phil

  Let me just, it's on my, Landon text me the agenda, so just bear with me. I'll look up the, oh, face ID, okay. Hold on, by the time you unlock the iPhone, you forgot what you're doing. These are the shops I believe we've got set up, so I just have to scroll through. I know we're going to the Golden Fly Shop. I believe that's on Sunday. Just let me bring up my calendar here. Oh, I actually have them up there. So on the Saturday, the 6th, I believe we're at Angler's Covey. On the 7th of August, we're at the Golden Fly Shop. On the Monday, the 8th, we're at Trouts. And on Tuesday the 9th, we're at the Peak Fly Shop.

  Katie

  Perfect. Well, I know this is just kind of us, you know, figuring out logistics here, but I'll leave this in, 'cause I'm sure a decent portion of my listenership is probably in the greater Denver area. So in case anyone else wants to come and attend those, I'll definitely mark my calendar for August 7th. If I don't have anything going on, I'll head over to the Golden Fly Shop. It's right down the road. That's my go-to. So I'll see if I can…

  Phil

  No, we're going there. I talked to Justin J9. So, spoke to him about that and looking forward to it 'cause now Justin's involved with Montana Fly too. So that's, it's all good.

  Katie

  Cool, well, I hope to see you then. That'd be great to see in person and say hi. But once again, thank you so much for this. It's been really informative and I just really appreciate you taking all the time.

  Phil

  Oh, I'd love to do it. Usually you can't get me to shut up is the problem.

  Katie

  That's the best kind of guest, don't worry. (laughing)

  Phil

  You too.

  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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