Ep 96: Swinging Flies for Steelhead, with Dave Stewart
Dave Stewart is the host of the Wet Fly Swing Podcast and has been fishing for steelhead in the PNW since he was a child. In this episode, we talk about how he built one of the biggest fly fishing podcasts on the market, his recent trip to fish for Great Lakes steelhead, how the Great Lakes population compares to the steelhead of the PNW, steelhead life history, gear and techniques used to target them, and the magic of hooking one on the swing.
Website: link
Instagram: @wetflyswing
Email: dave@wetflyswing.com
-
Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 96 with Dave Stewart on swinging flies for steelhead. Great. Well, I'm really excited to have you on today. Like I said, I've been a big fan of your show for a while, but I always hear you interviewing people. So I'm really excited to hear you on the other side of the microphone today. And I always start with the background. So I'd love to hear how you got your start in the outdoors.
Dave
Yeah. Yeah. In the outdoors. I mean, it has been from day one has been my start. My dad had a little fly shop growing up and he started probably, you know, a few years out of the garage before I was even born, I think. And by the time I was five years old, I was sitting there in the fly shop, you know, tying, you know, tying flies and doing all that stuff and going to the shows. So I pretty much my entire life, I, it's all always been outdoors and fly fishing pretty much from the beginning. So I guess I did a little, like most did a little bit of spin casting there before, but yeah, I think, you know, by the time I was eight or nine or something like that, I was on the, on the shoots, you know, catching trout and you know what I mean? Like I've had a couple of times throughout the, you know, where I've maybe taken little breaks, but it's been, you know what I mean? It's been over 40 years of just full on. I haven't gotten tired of it. So it's pretty cool.
Katie
So has steelhead kind of always been your species of focus then?
Dave
Yeah, steelhead. I mean, not always. No, it was always trout. I never, it was, what was it? Let's see. I mean, my dad gave him my first steelhead. He hooked one, gave it to me when I was probably, you know, before I was a teenager and landed my first steelhead. You know, I got into it fished in through high school, but I never really got into it hardcore. And this might've been partly because in that period of time, the numbers kind of dipped. kind of when I was in high school and then they slowly, you know, they creeped out. And, so I really got into it later, a little bit later, like hardcore, but yeah, so I've been steelhead fishing forever. And, but now, I mean, for sure the last like 15, 20 years has been steelhead has been my, my species. Although I've got like hundreds of species on the bucket list now with the podcast that I want to target. And I'm, I'm hoping to check off a few of this year.
Katie
I mean, I know how you feel. I feel like for me, it's like locations. I keep finding like sleeper states and, you know, you would never guess that so-and-so has an amazing trout fishing scene or whatever. I feel like I'm always adding places to the list to go and there's not enough time.
Dave
Yeah, it's hard to prioritize. I found that, I don't know what the secret is, because I know none of us are ever going to get to all the everywhere. So you kind of have to think like, okay, what are the, I don't know, maybe what's the low hanging fruit starting off? But you're right. I mean, everywhere, there's every state, you know, whether, I mean, we did an episode in the middle of like Arizona urban Arizona carp fishing, right? And this guy's fishing with, you know, shopping carts in the urban jungle right in the middle of, you know, it was Phoenix. And it was an awesome show. I mean, he got me fired up. I was like, man, I want to next time I'm in Phoenix, I am going to go fish and check this out because it sounds awesome, right? So I think that's exciting. And then all the, you know, the vampire fish. And I mean, I, I've never been a huge traveler, but it's like a huge goal that I want to keep doing more travel, especially with the kids. I want to get them out and exploring the world more. So I've got big goals, you know what I mean? Like a lot of big goals I want to do. I want to travel all around the world and fish all these spots and just experience the cultures, right? So that's a huge goal for me.
Katie
Do you have like a single bucket list place that was kind of like a, you've got one place to go before you die that you would choose or one species to target?
Dave
You know, it goes back that there's so many, but I mean, Atlantic salmon, you know what I mean? That's one I probably should have already checked off, but that's one I would love to hit. And probably, you know, the Scotland thing. I would love to do the Scotland thing just because like with my last name, the Stuart, right? Like we have like the actual ties a little bit, right? That whole thing, but it'd be fun. And then the cow, I make that whole thing again, going there and checking out castles and traveling and, and then getting onto one of those famous, you know, waters of Scotland and swinging up an Atlantic salmon. If I did get one would be really cool because there's a lot of, I do a lot of summer steelhead fishing. So there's two kind of within the steelhead there's winter, there's summer steelhead, summer steelhead are really active on the surface. They actually come up to flies and surface flies. And so Atlantic salmon are a lot similar to summer steelhead, but they're a lot bigger. They're, they're giant fish, right? They can get a lot bigger and they're out in the main stem. So they're deep parts of the river. So I would love to catch an Atlantic salmon for sure. But, you know, a permit, you know, all of the, you know, you name it. Like, I'd love to go into the jungle and catch a vampire fish. I would love to catch a, I'd love to go to China and catch, you know what I mean? The, the giant monster salmon looking fish over there. What's the timing?
Katie
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave
I love to do timing. I mean, I've got, you know, at the podcast, we've got like over 400 episodes. And I mean, every single episode, I would love to, I'd love to go for that. Right. So it's kind of hard, but I guess I'll start with Atlantic Savage to answer your question.
Katie
Since you brought it up, I know we'll talk about it again at the end as kind of a plug, but talk about your podcast a little bit, because you've got one of the, I'd say, bigger shows in the fly fishing world. we were talking before we got on that you're releasing like multiple episodes a week, which is just, you know, it's impressive as somebody who is in the same space and barely, barely keeps up with one episode every two weeks. I can't even imagine. So tell me like how your show came about and kind of like the route you've taken along the way and where the show's going.
Dave
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the show started, I mean, we, the idea, let's see. So 2017, we launched it. Two years before that, I made a goal because I was listening to a lot of podcasts and I was like, man, why don't I just do this podcast? Or do a podcast. This sounds like a great idea. And I had already launched the blog, the Wet Fly Swing blog. So I had already been blogging. Well, a year before that, I was kind of learning about online marketing and stuff like that. 2015, I launched the blog and it was like ghost town. You know what I mean? There was barely any comments and I was writing a lot and I was doing all this stuff. I was like, what in the heck is going on? This is, this is not good. And, and then two years went by right with this of trying to be a blogger, you know, being the blogger. And, but at that 2015, I said, you know what, I'm going to start a podcast. And I didn't know what I said, I love podcasting, like Pat Flynn and all the people that were helping me in the business space. I was like, shout out to Pat and all the crew. And so, you know, two years later I start, I, you know, the, the idea, I launched this podcast, Wet Fly Swing podcast. And, and it was, it was really cool because it was the ever that instantly I got feedback from people. Like people like, Hey, Oh, this is awesome. Great job. And I look back at all the blogging and said, wow, like this is actually working. Right. So it felt good, but it was the first time ever online that something really resonated. And I got that direct feedback and I knew right away, like as soon as I did it, like within the first couple of months, I was like, okay, this is, and, and I loved it. Like the whole, like we're doing now from the very beginning, when I first did that episode, you go back to episode two, you know, Jack or episode three, I had all these steelheaders on and it wasn't perfect, but I loved it. I love talking and I still do. I could do, I could do 10 of these episodes a week and I would not get tired of it. Right. So that's kind of the thing that I enjoyed at the start. And then we just slowly started, you know, we did one episode a week and, you know, again, the secret to our success. And I think anybody out there is staying with it. And we've done one episode a week for five years now. We just turned our, you know, 22 this Christmas was five years to the day almost. And so we haven't missed a week in five years, right? So that's kind of part of the success is just showing up and having fun and just bringing great guests on. And now we've, a couple years ago, we started testing two a week because I just, you know, again, I love this. I wanted to see how it worked out and it seems to be working well. And so now we're kind of testing three a week. And I think the secret is, is stick with what works, but always be testing things to keep it fresh. I think that I think it is important to stay true to what works, but I always like testing new things. And so we're still doing that. And this year, we're going to surprise some people this year. I think we're having, we've got a couple of big things coming up that I think are going to, I'm not sure if anybody else is doing it. Maybe there are out there in our space, but we're going to try something new and see if it works.
Katie
I assume that you can't share much more than that right now based on your cryptic description.
Dave
Well, I'll show you. Actually, it's not that big of a deal, really. We don't have all the people lined up. But what we're doing is, so Phil Roy, shout out to Phil Roy. He's the Stillwater guru. And we've done some trips. So we have a program going. We have this school program where we're actually creating a whole trip program, essentially. It's kind of like mixing a hosted program with courses and things like that. So that's fun. We're doing that. But this is we're bringing on some of these people to actually host the show. So instead of me hosting, I'm going to bring Phil Rowley on to host. And again, there's no guarantees it's going to work. Phil might not love it. It might not work great. But we're going to bring. So instead of people coming, we're not going to do it every week, but once a month, something like that, we're going to sprinkle in a Phil Roy. And so our listeners, you know, so anybody who's our listeners and yours are going to hear this ahead of time because I haven't announced this yet. But I think it's going to be cool because Phil's going to come on instead of hearing me, they're going to hear Phil either doing a solo show or interviewing somebody else, some other great angler. Right. So I think to me, I think of myself as a listener of my own show. And I would love to hear that. I would love to hear Phil Rowley interviewing, especially if it's like his first time. It'd be kind of be fun to hear. And he's such a cool guy. So we're going to start sprinkling some of those this year. So that's just a little intro or a little heads up on it.
Katie
That sounds really cool because I'm picturing, you know, as somebody I would consider myself very much a generalist. I don't I don't have like a super deep knowledge in any particular topic, but I have a wide range of knowledge about different things. And so me interviewing, for example, you today about Steelhead. I'm going to have a lot of dumb questions about Steelhead because I've gone I've gone for like East Coast Steelhead once and I've talked to a handful of people about it. So like I I know some like basics, but I'm by no means an expert in Steelhead. So I'm going to ask maybe a different set of questions than somebody who is an expert in that. And so I'm just picturing, I interviewed Phil a couple months ago. Oh, nice. That's right. But having him interview somebody as an expert, I feel like he would think to ask different questions than I would as a somewhat novice Stillwater angler. Exactly. And I'm asking basic questions and he can really pick another expert's brain in a different way. So I think that sounds really cool, like a really cool idea.
Dave
Exactly. Yeah. And we do get listeners that tell us sometimes we'll say, they'll be like, you know, okay, let's get an expert. Let's get some more higher level stuff, right? And that you're right. That's right. That's what's happened is that I'm not a Euro-nipping expert right now, right? I might not ever be. But if I can get somebody on who is, that's way more valuable. So, yeah, we'll see. Check back with you. Maybe we'll swing back next year. We'll see how it's going.
Katie
Yeah, I'm excited to check those episodes out when they come out, especially if you've got, you know, I don't know if you're going to have kind of like a rolling list of guest hosts, But any topics that I'm looking to get more in depth on, I'll definitely be tuning in for those ones.
Dave
Yeah, we are. The goal is, and again, it comes down to timing, but I'm hoping to have not just Phil, but a few other people coming out to hit a bunch of the main topics. So yeah, it should be a lot of fun.
Katie
So tell me, you mentioned that you grew up along the Deschutes. Where along the Deschutes do you live or did you grow up?
Dave
So I grew up about an hour, hour and a half kind of west of the Deschutes. So basically Portland, Portland, Oregon, right? So square in the middle of the Portland, the big city in Oregon. But the Deschutes, the great thing about the Deschutes is it's only, you literally go over the Cascade Range and go an hour, hour and a half and you're on the Deschutes River, right? Great. Just amazing. And you're in the desert too. That's what's, for those people that don't know Oregon. I'm not sure. Now, where are you? You're in Colorado, right?
Katie
Yeah, I'm outside Denver. I'm right at the foot of the mountains.
Dave
Yeah, yeah, totally. So you guys are where, I mean, the mountains and stuff are amazing out there. So our thing, I mean, we've got the Cascade Range. It's not quite like the Rockies, but, you know, we've got a couple of good mountains and Mount Hood is right there. You know, just kind of you could see it. So you hop over Mount Hood and you drop over and then you're on the desert, right? Just like Denver. Denver's on the east side of the Rockies. So you get this amazing, it rains 10 inches a year versus like the coast, which rains 100 inches a year, right? So it's just one of those rivers. It's one of those great rivers in the country. And it's got huge rainbows and it's got steelhead, summer steelhead. And it's in the desert and you're out there in 95 degree temperatures in the summertime swinging for steelhead. And you're, you're, sometimes you'd knock yourself. You're like, wait a minute, is this really? And then you're camping in a remote, right? Pretty much a fairly remote canyon. So it's just, it's one of those rivers. It's one of those places I think everybody has to check out. And there's a few of them like that around the country. You know, I know I haven't been to all of them, but I've heard some of these other ones. But so I grew up on that river. We'd drop over, my dad was a guide, right? So, I mean, I literally grew up when I was like a teenager and younger. I was on his guide trips guiding with him. Not really, right? I was there, but I was helping new anglers out as like an 11-year-old kid showing him how to cast. Stuff like that, having fun, right? So I would spend my summers on the Deschutes. In fact, it got to a point where this is pretty funny because there's no way I'd ever do this with my old kid. My older daughter's 10 years old now, so she's getting close to that same age when my dad did this. But he would go on these trips where we would go down for like a three, four-day trip, and we would fish with foreign clients. He would leave me at camp, float out in the middle of the Deschutes, float out for like the weekend. And I'd be there for three days on my own. He'd swing back with another client group three days later and I'd be holding camp for him. And I was like 11 with rattlesnakes and stuff. Right. So I know. And I thought it was like no big deal, but I can't imagine leaving my daughter as like a 10, 11 year old on to fend for herself on the Deschutes. Right. I'd be like so worried. But I did it and I loved it. And so it's just, you know, it's a cool river and the steelhead. You know, we're taking a little dip, right? So the numbers kind of have taken this dip and they're kind of down here. But they're starting to pull out of it. And we're going to have numbers like we had in the past. I'm sure it's just going to take a few years to get back there.
Katie
Oh, I didn't know they were swinging back up.
Dave
Yeah, you know, it's a little, it's hard to tell exactly. I mean, there's ups and downs. I mean, you got climate change. You don't know exactly what's going to happen. But I mean, just as far as fishing, you know, fishing and catching and stuff like that, There's definitely more fish than there were a couple years ago. Oh, that's good to hear. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, yeah, I'm positive. I mean, again, you mentioned talking about the early 90s. We can date myself a little bit. But the early 90s is when we had the other tank, where it tanked down in the early 90s. And actually, my dad was a guide during that time. He quit guiding for steelhead in that period because that's how bad the numbers got, right? So that was early. And you can just see. So early 90s tank. And then it came up, climbed up, and then we got into the 2000s and the mid-2000s and we had crazy numbers of fish, right? And so we got these big numbers and then 2010, 2000, and somewhere along the way it started taking the curve again. And now, you know, whatever that was, mid-2015, started dropping. Now we're back down to where it was, right? So it is, I mean, natural popularity. The problem is when you have this and then you mix in climate change, you don't quite know, right, what's going on. And then is the trend kind of going this way or is it kind of going, you know, you don't quite know. I'm an optimist. You know what I mean? Like I, I'm just an optimist with stuff. So I always feel like you kind of have to be in this day and age with all the stuff that's going on around the world. I mean, I'm not a big news person, like watching the news because I, it kind of, I don't want to go down that tangent, but I'm just optimistic about stuff. I think like, gosh, there's some bad stuff out there, but you got to stay positive, right?
Katie
Yeah. I think a healthy mix of realism and optimism, you know, there's no, there's no need to be a, a pessimist just for the sake of it. Uh, unless there's some actionable steps you can take to fix it. Exactly. Exactly. So what caused the tank in the early nineties then? Like I know you said, it is kind of cyclical, so that might've been it. Was there, was there something like, was there, you know, pollution or something going on that was causing some sort of change at that particular time?
Dave
Yeah. I mean, it goes back to the, you know, basically the, the, I mean, the biggest thing it always goes back to is ocean conditions, right? So you got ocean fluctuating ocean conditions, you got all this stuff going on. I'm, you know, can't dig into all that, but there's a whole thing of when the ocean conditions, the are down where those fish are migrating, you know, because they essentially are migrating out and growing in the ocean and coming back. When those are down, that's, that's, you know, you see changes in the populations. The scary thing really, and now we can get pessimistic, pessimistic is Alaska because Alaska is kind of the last great place where there was just seemed like it was just abundance, right? All these fish, but we're seeing like with King, with Chinook salmon runs, which are the, you know, the massive apex salmon, we're seeing these crazy stuff right now. We're seeing things going on now that runs are going down and it's, that is probably commercial fish related, right? All this stuff there's, who knows what's going on. So that's scary. And, so yeah, it's always, it's always something I, you can always narrow down whether it's steelhead or probably salmon or anything, the four H's, right. That's, that's the, the impact. So you've got like, you got hydroelectric, which is the Columbia river has a lot of dams. So dams aren't good for fish, you know, you have harvesting, right. So that's everybody fishing out there. Um, and you've got, you've got hatcheries and you got habitat. Those are the four things that you can narrow down the problem. And I know you had Rick Hafele on. I listened to that episode and Rick Hafele is awesome. I had him on as well. And you did a great job. The questions you asked there were awesome. And he said as well on the Deschutes, he was talking about how, you know, there's the Deschutes is a tailwater. It's a tailwater fishery. And so it's, there's a dam upstream a hundred miles up that controls. So it's not natural, right? It's not very, it's got cold water. So what's going on now is they've changed that regime to be more natural. So it's, It's kind of warmer during certain times of the year. And so that's, you know, being more natural is a lot of times what we want, right? That's a good thing. So there's that whole discussion there, like, well, do you want, do you want that? Or do you want more of the tailwater like it was to keep these really cold? So a lot of people, you know, there's some people that are saying, you know what, we want to keep it really cold. And then there's some people are saying, well, more natural, you know, let's remove the dam, right? So there's always two sides, just like the Columbia, go to the Snake River Dams in the Columbia, there's people that are so hard against snake river dams. Like we need these dams there. They're helping everything up in Idaho, right? All that stuff. And then you got people like, well, we need to remove the four snake river dams. It's the best thing you can do to recover salmon up to the snake river, right? And all that stuff. There's always going to be arguments and there's never an easy answer. That's the reason why we're still here. There's multiple things like, you know, you asked what it was. It's not just ocean. There's all these things. And humans, we're right in the we've taken down this, think of it, right? We've done in like 100, 200 years, the damage compared to thousands of years. So that's, that's what's scary, you know? So anyways, there's my pessimistic look at it.
Katie
Do you guys have a lot of free flowing big rivers up there? I feel like when I think of the, you know, I know it is kind of in the context of salmon and steelhead and things, and that's why it comes up a lot. But I feel like when I think of the big dams in the country. You know, the Pacific Northwest comes to mind as a lot of those big major rivers up there with all the dams. Do you have a lot of free-flowing undammed, like major rivers or are most of your free-flowing streams kind of the smaller little mountain streams?
Dave
Yeah, they're pretty much, I mean, it's mostly been dammed, probably a lot like Colorado and some of the inner mountain West and stuff. But the largest river we have is the John Day. And I can't remember the exact, the Deschutes is a 200 mile long river. The John Day, I want to say, is probably less than that, but pretty long. You know, it's, it's a long river. And yeah, when you look at the John Day during the summertime, it is low. You can't even float it. Right. And it's a similar river to the Deschutes. So the Deschutes, I don't know what it would be like if you remove the dams, but I'd imagine it'd be something closer to that, where there would be a lot more fluctuation. If you had a drought year, like we've had, you know, in the last five years, we've been in a drought. Well, you know, conditions aren't going to be perfect in the summertime when it's a hundred degrees. And so the John Day is one of those, let's see, is there any other ones we've got some longer ones on the coast but most of the bigger ones are dammed
Katie
so diving into steelhead a little bit when I when I talk to somebody who is more of an expert on like a deep dive species like this I usually like to start by having them kind of give me like an overview like a 30 000 foot overview of steelhead you know I don't know if you've if you've done west coast and east coast steelhead I know there's a touchy subject about whether The Great Lakes ones are called steelhead. I call them steelhead for convenience. But if you've gotten to fish both of these species, have you noticed any differences between them and how they behave? And I know we'll probably talk mostly about West Coast steelhead since that's where you're at today. But do you have kind of an overview of just steelhead, their behavior, their life cycles, and maybe some comparisons between the two populations if you've encountered them both?
Dave
That's great. I will say sometimes you get these where you'll get a guest. I'll ask questions on my own podcast and I'll hear them saying, that's a great question. You know, that, and they'll say that a lot of times and it makes you feel good, but it sounds kind of weird when you're in editing because you're like, oh gosh, do I want that person to say that? You know, so sometimes, but I will say that is a great question you ask because it's, it's the question. It's such a good question because yeah, there's this battle between the Great Lakes, Steelhead and the West Coast. And I'm on the way. And the funny thing is, is that we just recently put together a trip to Ohio and we just did it this last month. So I'm fresh in my mind, my first trip to the, to fish for steelhead in the great lakes. And, and after coming back from that trip, I have a great comparison because I fished all the Western stuff and I know what it's like. And, and Jeff Liske, shout out to Jeff. He's our, he's our guy. He put this trip, this amazing trip together. And to be honest with you, the fish itself, I mean, I will say, and it probably, you know, take some flack from this. I mean, I think there's, they're very similar. I mean, it's the same species, right? It's the same species. The only difference is that, I mean, one of the big differences is one goes out to the Great Lakes and grows and the other one goes out to the ocean. So there's obviously differences and there's sub, you know, there's species, there's populations in there that probably are different than others. And, you know, I fished the Skeena and had those giant fish cartwheel on the fly. And, you know, I've hooked summer steelhead, like I said, coming up to the surface and doing all this tip tap and following your fly and dry fly stuff. But, you know, it's so it's different. It's not, I'm not saying it's exact, but I will say Ohio, we were in Lake Erie and we were fishing smaller streams with more compact Skagit type lines and shorter rods. And it was a lot of fun. I mean, it was a lot of fun. And the fish were chrome bright. They were bright fish. These weren't, sometimes you'll see these fish from the Great Lakes, some of the salmon that are really red and they're all, you know, kind of getting, they're turning in that. But these fish were super bright. I remember looking at Jeff and it was the same thing. We had, I had just as much fun fishing there as I would have fishing for winter steelhead on the coast. And more action that here's the irony, right? The irony is, is that because of the numbers we talked about a little bit, some changes, their numbers are huge over there. So we had, we went out every, almost every run we went to, we caught fish. I think maybe we did catch fish in every one. So we were catching a lot of fish too. And they were active. And we had some fish, you know, be really active to the fly, which is cool for these fish. So let me just, high level, I would say that on the steelhead, and even Jeff Liskay will say, he's kind of more like, well, they're not steelhead, they're anadromous, or they're not anadromous, they're lake-run rainbows. But I feel like they are pretty, you know, it's pretty similar. It really is.
Katie
that's good to hear from somebody who has experienced both in kind of a deeper way, you know, you growing up on the West coast, because people get so worked up about it. And for me, I just kind of, I say it out of convenience. Like I'm not going to say anadromous rainbow trout every time I want to talk about that fish. Like that's just, you know, too annoying to say, so I'll say steelhead and I'm not, you know, going to be pretentious about it, but, you know, I feel like sometimes people bring up, you know, while they are different, you know, this fish is going up to the salt and this fish is not. So they want to kind of have a, something to differentiate them. And they want to kind of move away from the word steelhead just because it is a different situation. But it is good to hear that all in all, it's not terribly different. I've only fished for steelhead out of the Great Lakes. And I think I've heard the same thing where there's a lot of fish. There's a lot of opportunity to be had fishing those runs. And you might get lots of fish in a day. I've never fished the Pacific Northwest, but I feel like what I would be drawn to there is the the environment, the scenery. Um, you know, I was kind of shoulder to shoulder with a lot of people and kind of a small Creek. It was, you know, not, not a beautiful stream really. I was right outside the city. Um, is that something that you have experienced? Like, I don't know what it's like fishing in the Deschutes, but, is I feel like there's kind of like a majesty to it that I think.
Dave
Oh, there is, there is. Yeah. And I'm not talking, that's that, this is not a direct comparison, but yeah, I mean, the Deschutes you're out there, you get the right spot and you have an entire, you know, a mile of river, it feels all right. There's nobody around you. It's 90 degrees. It's the evening. The caddis are going crazy. You're sitting there on your camp and you're just like, wow, is this really happening? Are we, and you're getting up at like five in the morning to go fish for steelhead. Okay. You're right. And so in the next, next night you're fishing. So there's no comparison. I will not, I will say there's no comparison to that. That's just like, you know, that's up here. And for me, I mean, that's up here. Everything else is below, but I haven't done everything. I haven't done the Dean yet and things like that, But I will say Ohio, and again, I would never have thought Ohio, we flew into Cleveland. And we were only, you know, we weren't that far from Cleveland, an hour or whatever from Cleveland. And driving around there, I mean, it really felt like it was, you know, December, but it looked around. It didn't look that much different than Oregon, to be honest with you. I mean, the leaves are gone, stuff like that, right? So the only difference is there's no mountains. You know, there's no mountains. But I mean, we were on some really cool streams. We were on some streams that were just, I mean, we weren't shoulder to shoulder. And then maybe that was because we had a guide, you know, Jeff knew where to take us. So we were going into places that, you know, that weren't totally super. And we did have one, you know, on the first day we rolled up to a place and there was like 15 cars in the parking lot. And we were all, and we had a whole crew. We had like an entourage because we had a film crew and stuff. Right. And, and, and I was thinking like, oh man, okay. Is this what it's going to be? 15 cars at the boat. And we went down there. The funny thing is we found a little run. Nobody was around us. We worked our way. We did have one of the gear guys came down and he fished, but he like gave us the run. And, and we had a run and we caught four fish, I think, in that little run right there. So, but yeah, I mean, it was, you know, definitely more urbanized where we were at than some of these other areas. And it isn't, it's not Alaska, it's not Canada, it's not something like that, but I really loved it. All aspects. I definitely, we're going back this year. That's all I have to say, right?
Katie
I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's good to hear that those little pockets of little hidden gems are still available even just outside a major urban area.
Dave
Exactly.
Katie
So from here on, I guess I'd like to focus on West Coast Steelhead just because that's where you have kind of gotten your bread and butter. And that's what I have less experience with. So tell me kind of the life cycle of a Steelhead and the different runs. Because I know there's multiple runs with Steelhead and sometimes they come back and I don't know a lot about it. So I'd like to hear just kind of the overview of how they live their lives.
Dave
Yeah. So basically the steelhead can be broken down into, I mean, pretty much simply you could say winter, summer steelhead, right? You got these, you got winter steelhead, you got summer steelhead. They come in during different times for the most part. Summer steelhead in Oregon, you've got essentially the, for the most part, Columbia River is the river, this giant river that's on that separates Oregon and Washington. It flows all the way, starts up in Canada. It's this massive river. And, and summer steelhead in that river. Um, you know, I mean, that's what that river is all the way up. Those are summer steelhead. So they, they're traveling further. Winter steelhead, have a limit of how far they go up to Columbia, right? So they're more closer to the ocean. So for example, I always use the coast. Like right now I'm on the coast. I'm within miles of the ocean within a few minutes of here are great rivers that flow right into the ocean. And these are all winter steelhead rivers. So for the most part, you know, it's winter, summer, right? When are they, when are they coming in? When are you fishing for them? So here for, let's just take with winter steelhead, some of the early parts runs, you might be fishing around Thanksgiving. There's some fish coming in. December is early, but January, February, March are prime times for winter steelhead. You can also catch them into April. The bigger rivers will be open April, May, but for the most part, after June, July, August, there's no winter steelhead fishing, right? It's they're, they're out, they're doing their thing. And then summer steelhead, you know, it's a little different summer steelhead. So they're coming in, they're actually, you're catching them in the summertime. So June, July, August, September, October, November. I love to fish July through, you know, October. Those are great times. So that's kind of the difference, right? So you've got the summer and then the life history, essentially, you know, without going too deep into all of it, these fish are coming in, they're rainbow trout, right? They're the same species, Oncorhynchus mykiss. So the only difference is, is that one, they have a different life history. Rainbow trout, you have rainbow trout. We have them all around the country. They're for the most part, resident fish. They come in and spawn and they live for the most part near where they spawn. Steelhead are rainbow trout that spawn. And instead of living where, you know, where they are, they head out to the ocean. Sometimes, sometimes thousands of miles and travel around the ocean. They grow. And for the most part, after a couple of years, they turn around, they come back and then they go right to where they, they were born and they spawn again. Right. So that's the life cycle of the salmon. That's what's the beauty of the anadromous, right? That's the anadromous fish. It's this fish that there's no way, like some of these places you think about rainbow trout, these giant fish, like, I'm not sure in your area where you find giant rainbow trout. You probably have a few places here, like probably a lake, right? Lakes, they can get really, but, but some places, if there's not enough food, it's hard for these rainbows to get really big. But for the steelhead life history, that's why they go to the ocean. it's advantageous for them to grow really fast. And now they come back as a giant 10-pound fish, whatever, 20, 30-pound fish up in Canada. They have fish up to 35 pounds, steelhead.
Katie
Now, will they go back out? Like, I know salmon will come up and die, but I think I've heard that steelhead will turn around and go back out to the ocean. Is that the case?
Dave
Yep. Yeah, a certain percentage. It's just like humans, right? There's old age thing, and there's a certain percentage that die. Yeah, but there's a certain chunk of those fish that will spawn multiple times. And again, it's all about the life history. Up in, if you take it up in Canada, some of those summer fish, they go out and stay out in the ocean longer and grow bigger and come back. Sometimes you'll get fish that'll go out. They'll come back, spawn. They'll go out again. Sometimes, maybe even multiple times. But again, the more you do that, the better chance you probably have to get killed, right? Because you've got all these dams to hop over and predators. So, you know, it seems to me like the life history, the one up in the Skeena Basin makes a lot of sense. You go out to the ocean, grow really big for three, four, five years, and then come back and then spawn. And, you know, but yeah, there's, I don't know what the percentages are, but there is a percentage that, that re that head out again.
Katie
Now, what, what causes the, the winter versus the summer run? Are these just different, like different times that fish were born and they're coming back at different times? Or like what causes the two different waves? Are there two different sets of fish entirely that are coming back or, you know, might a fish come back for both?
Dave
Yeah. You know, I think it goes back again, rainbow trout. They're super diverse. They're super resilient. All these fish are, they've been around for millions of years. if you think about it, right? So they're resilient and they know how to figure it out. So they've just built this life history, a winter run life history based on their environmental conditions. They've evolved that over time. Summer steelhead, they've evolved that. It's all about timing and water flows for the most part. That's how the evolution has worked. So for example, there's certain flows, like we said, the John Day, there's certain flows where if the river, if the fish don't get up there during a certain time of the year and migrate through that area, it's going to be too low for them to migrate to get to their spawning beds, right? So they've evolved that summer steelhead. And that's why, you know, part of that timing is they have to get up through these areas, jump falls, waterfalls, before the water changes, right? But I will say you do see also environmental changes in rainbow trout and steelhead, where you'll see rainbow trout that are rainbow trout. And because environmental conditions change on them during this is like a population, they can change and migrate out to the ocean and become steelhead. So there's all this, you know what I mean? There's all this resilient population stuff going on. And it's beautiful because even straying is a good example, right? There's a certain percentage of steelhead and salmon that stray to the wrong river. So instead of coming back to where they spawn, which is what most fish do, most, you know, salmonids, there's a certain percent that stray and they actually go to the wrong river. And that's a good survival instinct because what happens with, say, for example, Mount St. Helens, which erupted right in Washington back in the eighties, well, it ruined the entire river. The Toodle River was destroyed. There were no fish, zero fish were left. But now there's steelhead back there. How did they get there? They naturally fished straight and a couple of pairs, right? So there's this amazing thing about, and I just go back to, again, the history of the planet and just think about us. We're this tiny speck and salmon have been around for, you know, millions of years, literally, right? So it's kind of one of those things where I just, I give it to them to think that they're going to figure it out. And that's why we have to like do our best to give them more room to figure it out because that's what they need.
Katie
That's awesome. And I'm sure the straying also helps with genetic diversity. I feel like it wouldn't be good if all the fish came back to the same river. You'd end up with these populations that might have some sort of gene that's lingering that can't escape. But if you've got a couple of fish mingling into different rivers, I'm sure that keeps the populations robust and healthy.
Dave
Yep, exactly.
Katie
Now, you mentioned that the winter-run steelhead don't go as far up the rivers. Is that because the river, the flows are too low for them to get higher up? Or is there a reason they stick closer to the coast in the winter?
Dave
You know, it's partially, I mean, if you just look at the life history, like right now is a good example because it's December, there's fish coming in now and partly it goes back to that flow. It goes back to that life history, right? There's water there now and they're coming in now during the right conditions, right? But there is a lot of variation in it and there is some overlap, but you're not going to see in this area, for the most part, you're not going to see summer steelhead in these rivers because the life history doesn't fit. It just, it wouldn't work here. The rivers are too low. These are all based on water, on rain events. And so the coastal or the inland rivers are all based on snowmelt, right? So you actually have snow, which is, so they have water throughout the year. So it's, it really is that it's the environment, the changes, it's that environment they've evolved around. And there is going to be some variation. There's even, you know, there's going to be fish there even earlier that some people might call them fall steelhead. There's going to be like spring steelhead. So there's, there is, I mean, literally in Oregon every month, you can probably catch a steelhead. That's how diverse it is. So you do have these breaks where we call them summer versus winter. But it's, there is some overlap and I, and, and they have evolved right for millennia around these, you know, they've evolved this based on water conditions for the most part. That's what this and survival of their species, right? That's what it's all about.
Katie
Are you allowed to fish them year round in Oregon?
Dave
In some rivers you can. Yeah, some rivers you can. I'm trying to think which of the rivers that you can. I mean, a lot of rivers, small rivers you can't. There's some rivers that aren't open at all because they're small enough that they're spawning in there. But, you know, the Deschutes, you can, there's certain times where you wouldn't want to fish for them anyways, right? So during the springtime, the fish are still around, but they're kind of, they've been, so summer steel had come in in the summer and they stay around throughout the whole summer and through the next year. And they don't spawn until the next spring, like winter spring. Right. So they're getting pretty snaky and they've been in the river. So you wouldn't want to catch those fish, but you do occasionally catch them. And I'm trying to think, yeah, I think for the most part, the bigger rivers are open. It depends again on, on the time, the run sizes and things like that too, because you have closures and there's stuff going on the shoots right now where you, they've actually been closing it in the summertime because of low runs right so it's it's hard to say typical year most rivers do close for steelhead though for sure they most of them do close yeah
Katie
and how about like techniques between the two different runs. like do you fish winter and summer steelhead in similar ways or they're kind of two distinct styles that people take on to mimic whatever the fish are doing that time of year?
Dave
yeah totally I mean pretty totally different I would say I mean it's the Same technique, a lot of the thing. I mean, the swing, like the wet fly swing, right? That's the podcast that I host. It all started with kind of a throwback to swinging flies, right, for steelhead and trout. But the wet fly swing is this classic style of fishing where you're swinging flies, right? You're putting on whatever, whether it's a trout fly or a steelhead fly, and it's the wet fly. And for summer steelhead, a wet fly is just a fly that's down kind of in the surface film that's swinging. You also have dry flies for summer. Some people fish dry flies like literally on the surface and they're, and they're twitching them and they're doing, they're making the fly make a commotion. And these steelhead are so aggressive in the summer that literally these big 10 pound fish will come up and just chomp on this dry fly. Right. So that's, that's kind of, yeah, that's, that's kind of crazy. Um, and then, but winter steelhead is totally different. So summer steelhead, you've got warmer water conditions, fish are more active winter conditions. The water's colder. The fish are down deeper. They're down closer to the bottom. So you actually have to get down to the fish. For the most part, those fish aren't going to come up for a dry fly. Although there are, we've done a couple episodes with people on the podcast who literally all they do is fish for dry flies with their flies. And they fish for winter steelhead and hook winter steelhead on dries too. That's, you know, that's a shit. I'll put link. All right. I'll give you those. We've got a couple of those episodes that we've done. And it's just unbelievable because those guys are hardcore, right? They're just dedicated to stay with it. But for winter, you know, that's the big difference. Winter steelhead are down at the bottom. Summer steelhead are moving a lot more. So when you're out there on the chute swinging for summer steelhead, you might get a fish that comes up. And it's pretty subtle because if you haven't fished for steelhead before, you might not know it. But you'll get what we call like a tip or a tap. And you'll just feel this little or a tug. You'll get this thing. It's almost like it's kind of, it's just kind of barely pulling. And sometimes you'll get a pole. Sometimes you'll get a grab, right? All these little things. So these fish are down there and your fly swinging across. And they're just, they're curious. And the funny thing is these flies, a lot of times are small, little, you know, tiny flies, size sixes, size eights. And so you might hook up a 10 pound fish on this little, but before they hook up, they might touch it. So your fly's swinging, you might feel a tip. It might not get anything else. You'll put the same cast out, you'll put it back, same spot. You'll feel maybe a little something else. You put the same cast out and you'll like be working this fish and then finding the fish might hammer and take out your line into the middle of the river and be gone. So that's where I really get awesome. It's really exciting because you're sitting there and you're like, oh man, you're so close. You know this fish, it's the same fish. And you're this close to getting it. And it could be a 20 pound fish. You don't know. And then you're on it. And then finally, when it hooks up, you're just like, oh my God, everything's, it's off the hook. Winter steelhead, you don't get that really. So winter steelhead, you're using heavy skagit lines. You're sinking it down towards the bottom. These fish aren't moving that much. So you got to really getting in front of their face. And really, you know, the fish is sitting here. you're trying to put that fly right in front of their face. You're working these fish, right? And then they're taking it out of aggression, which the summers do as well. So that's the big difference. One fish is down and kind of down and dirty and cold. The other fish will move a lot more. So that's just on the surface technique-wise is what we're doing.
Katie
So when you say that you're getting down deep for those winter fish, are you like indicator nymphing or are you still swinging a fly in that case?
Dave
You can do both. I've done both equally effective. In fact, indicators work great. I mean, you can catch tons of fish on indicators. There's a big split, like you said, the Great Lakes versus the West Coast Steelhead. The same, there's a split between indicator fishermen and swingers, right? So I love everything. I've caught a bunch of fish. But I will say right now, I'm on a swinging kick, so I love swinging flies, right? So that's like the ultimate. To get a fish on the Deschutes River on a swung fly is the hardest thing to do, right? we've had multiple guests, lots of guests that have talked about that. Like that's the stage of, of fishing. We all go through it, whether it's rainbow or you name the fish, you start out at the stage where you just want to get a fish, right? And then you start getting better and better and better. And you, and you start trying to make it harder and harder and harder, right? That's what we all do because you want to challenge. Well, swinging flies for steelhead is the hardest thing to do, right? That is the hardest thing. So I love, that's what I love. So, and so when we went back to the Great Lakes, same thing. We could have nymph fish fly crazy, but we didn't. We swung flies the whole time and nobody else, very few people were swinging out there, right? Because it's growing and popular there as well now, but it's not as popular. Um, so, so the swung fly is what it's about. Swinging flies with a Skagit line for winter steelhead on the coast is also amazing. You just got to get more, you know, you got to get your line, right. You got to get your Skagit line, you got to get down. And so it's this whole thing, right? This whole process, but it's, it's the swung fly. And I will say right now, that's the kick I'm on. A lot of people are on.
Katie
That kind of brings me to my next question, which is like, what is the magic about swinging flies? You kind of touched on it being more of a challenge. Um, but there's something that seems to really, kind of entrance people about swinging flies where that's all they want to do. And they'll, they'll go for like weeks without catching a fish just because they want to do it on the swing instead of, like nymphing or whatever else. Um, what is it about swinging flies that really just like encapsulates this mentality of, I don't know, people are just like mesmerized by it.
Dave
I think for me, I mean, there's kind of a, there is kind of a meditative thing in it. Okay. You know, you are out there, you're, you're swinging, you're not really looking at a bobber, right? So you're not looking at any of that. You're not looking down. You can look around like on the Deschutes, you're sitting there looking around and you're like, oh my God, are these giant, well, this isn't right. So you get that. So it's kind of meditative. Sometimes use it as that. They're like sitting out there. It's just quiet and calm, but you know, it is the heart. It's, I think again, it's the challenge. I think it goes back to that. It's something that is harder to do. And it's for some people, I mean, some people have already swung flies and they're, they've mastered that. They've probably gone onto something else too. You know what I mean? They've gone onto fish for permit or something like that, which is, you know, I'm sure much harder than, than steelhead, or musky, right. That's another one musky. Uh, but I, for me, I guess that's simple for me. I think it is. It's the challenge. And, and the take is pretty amazing. I will say when you get a take, especially on a summer steelhead, you can get a take, like you're swinging. You don't get those on nymphing, right? The take on nymphing is you're bouncing it down on the bottom, you know, and they take a take on a swung fly can be just crazy. I mean, you'll get these takes where the fish takes it, you know, your fly swinging, they'll hit it and they'll be gone into your backing. And then you'll see a, like a fish cartwheeling out, jumping out of the water. Right. So it's pretty spectacular. And I think you do get some jumping, obviously it's a steelhead no matter what, but I just feel like the excitement and even if you don't land the fish, the excitement of the take on a swung fly, it's just, it's amazing. Right. And I fish for trout, dry flies, all that stuff is super like there's, that's pretty hard to beat as well. But I think that's it. I think it's that thing like, and then it also takes so long. sometimes you'll be out there and you'll be swinging a whole run and maybe not get a touch. You're like, okay, what did I do something wrong? Was there no fish there? What is going on? Right. So for me, that's what it is.
Katie
This has been a common theme that's come up lately on the show. I don't know why, just by chance, but the excitement of the take, because I had, I had a guy talking about pike fishing and how, you know, the draw of pike fishing is often the take, you know, once you get it on the line, it, it doesn't put up as big of a fight as some other fish. But getting a pike to take your fly is just kind of a really exciting moment. And I had someone else compare pike fishing to cutthroat fishing kind of for the same reason, like cutthroats don't put up a huge fight, but you can often, you know, if you're in these high alpine lakes, you might see the fish coming from a mile away. There might just be this tank of a cutthroat that slowly rises to your fly. And it's all about that couple seconds right before it hits and then when it hits. And then after that, it's kind of like, yeah, we'll fight it and bring it in. But it's all about that, you know, five second moment of watching the fish come up and take it. And when it finally takes, there's just kind of like an adrenaline rush when it happens.
Dave
Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, it's the rush. That's pretty much it. So that dry fly, that sounds pretty awesome, too. It's all good.
Katie
So tell me about the different, I guess, I don't know if it would be the rod type, the line type, like the Skagit and Spey and Switch. All these things are completely foreign to me in the middle of the country. I have a very surface level knowledge of them. But kind of walk me through the difference between these different rod types and line types that people are using to swing flies.
Dave
For sure. And I'll give a shout out to Marty Shepard because we had a podcast we did a while back and I asked him the same question. And he was just straight up. He's like, you know what? We don't have to make it that hard. We do, right? Because you can. Just like fly fishing, right? You can make it. You know, I talked to people. I talked to David Gravette, professional skateboarder and fly fisherman. We did an episode with him on, and he talked about that as well. He was like, you know what? I didn't get into fly fishing because I thought it was going to be so hard for all these years. Like he just thought, you know, it's just too confusing. But once you get in it, you realize, oh, actually, no, it's not that bad, right? You just get a fly rod. You learn to cast. It's not, you know what I mean? You can just go do it. And spay is the same thing. So spay casting is for a lot of people like, oh my God, all these lines. You got Skagit. You got Scandi. You got long belly, short belly, you know, all these different lengths. But at the end of the day, you can boil it down really simply. A Skagit line, you know, we're talking two-handed for the most part, two-handed rods, right? So the two-handed rod is the, people think of it as the spay, right? The spay rod, that's what it is. But there's only really two main types of lines. You either get a Skagit line, which is a really short belly line, which means a shorter, like it's thicker. So you can basically toss heavier flies. So with wintertime, a lot of times you're tossing bigger, heavier things. You're getting down. Your sink tip, you have a tip on the end of it. I'll get more into this in a sec, but you have a tip on the end of your line. So you need it to get down. So that's winter fishing. So you can just go get a Skagit line right now. Go get a two-handed rod, get a grain weight that balances with that Skagit line. You're good to go. Get a couple of tips, 10-foot tip, and you're fishing, right? Get a fly, get your leader. It is pretty simple. The opposite again. Now we go to summer steelhead or even Atlantic Sam and stuff like that. Now you're into more where you don't need to get down the bottom. So you don't need a heavy, thick line. You actually need a floating line. Okay. So the Scandi line is essentially similar to a Skagit. It's just longer. It's thinner. It can be a little harder to cast in the wind and all that. But essentially, it's just a thinner line. And it's more enjoyable to cast with smaller flies because you're on the surface. It's just like you're fishing a nine-foot, you know, your typical five-weight line. It's lighter. You're swinging it down. It's really nice. So that's your typical kind of Scandi is in the middle. You also have like a long bill. So this goes back to the start of, of, spay casting. If you go back to Scotland, they use what were called long belly lines. And these are these 15 foot rods, longer rods, and they did more of a single spay type of cast. So instead of doing with some of the skagit casting, you do snap tees and certain, casts that get your, your line in placement to make your cast. Well, with long belly lines, you actually just pull up and cast the whole line and, and you use, and it's a really long, I don't actually, this shows you my skill level. I don't even cast the long belly lines. That's like for people that are, you know, I mean, upper level stuff, right? You got to be really good to do that. I'm more Skagit casting. I have a Scandi line. Those are my two lines. So I don't even worry about the super long belly stuff, right? And if you haven't talked to Simon Gawesworth, I would definitely get him on because he's, you know, we've had him on way back at the start and there's a bunch of people that are great with it, but he's, you know, he's been doing stuff with Rio since the beginning, you know, since the first Speylines came into the U.S. and stuff like that. So we had an episode with him. He breaks down more of this. But that's it. It's pretty simple, really. Are you fishing for winter steelhead? Go get a Skagit line. If you're fishing for summer steelhead, then a Scandi line will work. You can even fish. There's lines now that overlap, you know, that kind of have a little bit. They're not quite a Skagit. They're not quite a Scandi. The Fist is one of those lines that I have that kind of works great in the wind. But at the end of the day, that's your choices. Do you need to get down? Get a Skagit line. If you're fishing for summer steelhead, a Scandi line will probably do it.
Katie
Uh, tell me more about the, the grains too, because I feel like most people are, are used to like five weight rod, five weight line, you match those up. How come, these lines are done in grains instead of like a weight?
Dave
Yeah. The grain rate. And I think Simon said this on that podcast episode is there's two, and again, I'm not going to do this justice, but there's two schools of thought. Um, in, I think is it after I'm going to not, I'm going to, I'm not even going to go into this, but there are two schools. There's the nine foot, like you said, everybody knows of the nine foot, 10 foot, five weight, six weight, all that stuff. That's your standard, right? Everybody knows that. In the spay lines, it doesn't go by that. It goes by grain rate. And to be honest with you, it makes more sense to use the grain weight because the grain, all rods have a grain weight, right? So you might have a rod that's 11 and a half foot, seven weight that says this rod is set for this grain weight, which says, you know, it's between 175 and 250, the grain weight, right? And that's just balancing the weight of the line. because if you get, if you have a line, if you have an 11 and a half foot rod and it only can go up to a 250 grain weight, a line, if you put a 350 grain weight line on there, it's not going to cast or it's going to cast poorly. Same thing. If you go on the other end and put a really light grain weight, it's not going to cast very well. You got to get that sweet spot. So all rods have a grain weight. Even the, the nine foot five weight has a grain weight. It's just that they don't use that standard, right? They talk more at standard, like nine foot five way. Okay. We'll get a five weight. So I think that may, I guess they did that because it made it very clear for people and maybe grain weights a little more confusing, but when you get into it, you realize grain weights actually, more, you can get more scientific about it. You can be like, okay, this is exact. So that's the two schools of thought. And with, with spay, you know, for the most part, that's how you do it. So if you went out right now and you bought a rod that was a, a 12 foot eight weight, that rod manufacturer would have a grain weight window. You'd say, okay, this thing could handle this. I'm going to go be fishing for winter steelhead. I need a Skagit line and here's my grain weight. It says 250. I'm going to get 250 grain weight. Boom, I'm good to go. Now it balances up with your, now you add a tip onto it if you're using a sinking line. So you might need like a 10 foot, you know, like a T10, something like that, which is just a whole nother realm of sinking tips, but you add your tip on and now you're fishing. Now your Skagit line is casting it. You got your tip, you got your leader, you got your fly, you're balanced. It's all about, you know, just like your nine foot five weight, it's all about balanced. And even in the nine foot five weight example, sometimes you could get a line that's maybe, maybe you go a line up or you go a line down depending on what you're doing, right? If I'm, if I'm casting in the wind or depending on the rod, I might want to use a six weight line on a five weight rod or a four weight, right? So, so that's what it is. I mean, it's, I'm not an expert on it. Again, Simon, those, the folks like that would be able to clarify exactly, but that's kind of where it comes from.
Katie
I remember reading something interesting when I was, I was kind of diving in back when I was doing blog posts about like overlining and underlining by a, by a single rod weight. So, you know, if you're, like you said, if you're casting into the wind, you might want to overline it a little bit. And one of the things that I feel like was a little bit subjective was that, you know, there is supposed to be kind of a standard for how many grains correspond to a specific line weight, but not all manufacturers are following those standards. And so if you don't look at what they are considering a five weight line. And then you try to overline that they may have already over lined it. Like apparently a lot of companies will already kind of overline it. You know, they say it's a five weight, but it's almost verging on what a standard six weight line would be. And so then if you overline that by a single weight, you may have actually kind of like double overlined it. Um, and I seem like the grain weight is a, is an easier way to actually like, this is, this is the number it is. There's no like subjectivity about what they're considering a certain weight line, it's just weighs this many grains and that's that. So it seems more straightforward.
Dave
I think it is. I think the reason it hasn't changed is that the industry, you know, I think is, you know, they're whatever they're, that's what they've done. They're stuck on that. It is simple to say nine foot five weight. It keeps it simpler. My guesses would be in the future, we're probably going to see it go to a grain weight. I would guess maybe not, but it seems like, yeah, just to get, but yeah, that's, that's what it's about. So it's, it's all fun though. You know, like any of this, you can dig it as deep as you want on the space stuff. I mean, you can get super nerdy and just, I've had some people on that have dug deep on kind of all the nerdy stuff. And, you know, that's what's great about fly fishing. You will never, none of us will ever master it.
Katie
Yeah.
Dave
Talk to the greatest angler in the world, right? Any of your guests, any of my guests, they will say the same thing. I have not mastered fly fishing. And that will be the same way our whole lives. That's why we love it, right?
Katie
I feel like that's why, you know, everybody's got their deep dive hobby that they want to get into. And I know it's kind of trivial to say fly fishing is a hobby. I feel like most of us would say it's, you know, it's a lifestyle or whatever. Right, right. But, you know, whatever you're into, skateboarding or painting or, you know, pottery making, it could be anything. You know, you never get to the end of it. There's always something deeper you can dive into. And I think that's what draws, like, everybody back.
Dave
Totally, totally. Yeah, and I will say on that, just remind me back on that skateboarder on David Gavette, that episode, that guy, it just shows you how powerful fly fishing is. The guy was, well, he is a pro skateboarder. He's broken every bone in his body. He told some of the stories on it about like all the crazy stuff. He literally, he can barely skateboard anymore. That's how he's only 35, right? He's a youngster. He's only 35, but fly fishing, he said it, right? Gives him the same passion as jumping off of whatever he's done. Right. I mean, so it is, I think we don't realize the, well, we do realize the addiction, but how, I don't know what the word is for it. It's pretty cool to see. I mean, it's a tiny little niche, but those that people that get involved, I feel like everybody almost always goes over the top.
Katie
Yep. Well, that's something that comes up a lot too is that, you know, and you mentioned this too, fly fishing seems very overwhelming to someone who's never done it. And then I feel like sometimes, you know, someone goes out for the first time and they're like, wait, this is it. You know, all you have to do is just cast this out and then, you know, you can catch fish. It's not that crazy, but part of the fun is that once you get to a certain level, you can dive really, really deep. though. But I feel like that's what kind of gives fly fishing this kind of air of pretentiousness or difficulty or the expense. Like it doesn't really cost that much or take that much effort to get started. But once you decide you like it, you can dive way, way deep and make it really expensive and make it really complicated and all these things. But that's the fun of it for people who are really into it.
Dave
Exactly. Yeah, it is. It's awesome.
Katie
Well, Dave, just to wrap up, tell me again or tell tell folks again where they can find your podcast it sounds like you've got a lot of stuff coming up in the next year and you've got a ton of content already out there so where can people find you listen to your show find you on the web yeah yeah so so wetflyswing.com
Dave
is the best best place to track down and we're obviously everywhere out there your app of choice just search for wet fly swing podcast and it'll pop up and yeah we've got we're doing at least two episodes a week we're going to be throwing in some of these bonus episodes well we might have three in there if you get lucky. But yeah, if you go to the website, you can sign up to the newsletter. That's the best way to keep in touch with us or just, you know, kind of follow us on any of the apps you listen to. And yeah, we're doing some cool trips this year as well. We were going to be heading back, like we said, Steelhead Alley, but we're going to be putting together some saltwater trips and some other schools that we're doing. So we're trying to bridge the gap between, like we said, how do you upscale your level of where you are? You know, we're bringing together some of our best guests with on the water kind of training and fishing. So yeah, if you want to check out that, do that. But I'm an open book. If anybody wants to ping me, Dave at wetflyswing.com. I love answering questions. If you have a show topic, that's an open door. If you have something you want me to put together, I love talking to people. And so that's the easy way to do it.
Katie
Awesome. And I will kind of vouch for you if people are interested in learning more about Steelhead. You did like a whole season on Steelhead. I feel like you still cover it fairly often, much deeper than we went today. So if we do, we, at the start we had a whole, and then we,
Dave
Jeff Liskay, which, you know, I didn't note this earlier, but he's probably going to be our steelhead host. So when we get in this new program, Jeff's going to be our steelhead guy. So we're going to literally have one of the best. So all the stuff that I flubbed today, I did, I did, I didn't do a good job. Some people are going to call me out on this, but if you really want to hear from the expert, come to the podcast and listen when Jeff does his monthly, show where he'll be interviewing other experts. So that will be the real deal. For today, I always use the joke. It's just like me on the host of trips. I'm here for comic relief. You know what I mean? That's part of the thing. So I hope you enjoyed it for that. But that's about where I come from.
Katie
Well, lucky for you, I don't know anything about Steelhead. So you could say whatever you want. And I would just nod and smile and nod.
Dave
Totally. Yeah, it's all good.
Katie
All right, Dave. Well, I will let you get going. But thank you so much for taking the time. I hope people check out your show. And I'll talk to you again soon.
Dave
Yeah. And let me say, too, just on your end, your podcast is awesome as well. I want to give a shout out. It's for sure. Again, we talked about this off air is that how many female podcasts. I'm sure there's a lot more now, but you're nailing it and you're doing an awesome job. Your questions you ask are great. And I think I'm excited to keep seeing the good stuff you're putting out there as well. So appreciate all that.
Katie
I appreciate it. And I know you've mentioned multiple times, like a rising tide lifts all ships. There's room for everybody. And I feel like we're all kind of helping each other out. It's just a really nice community to be a part of.
Dave
Exactly. Cool. Talk to you later.
Katie
Thanks, Dave.
Dave
All right.
Katie
All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find a contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody. you
Note:
These transcripts were created using AI to help make the podcast more accessible to all listeners, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or anyone who prefers to read rather than listen.
While I’ve reviewed each transcript to correct obvious errors, they may not be 100% accurate. In particular, moments with overlapping speech or unclear audio may not be transcribed word-for-word. However, every effort has been made to ensure that the core content and meaning are accurately represented.
Thank you for your understanding, and I hope these transcripts help you enjoy the podcast in the way that works best for you.