952 | Will Godfrey Shares 80 Years of Fly Fishing History

WFS 952 Transcript 00:00:00 Dave: Every generation inherits a better fishery because somebody before them decided it was worth fighting for. Today’s guest has spent a lifetime doing exactly that. From working alongside Bud Lilly in the early days of western fly fishing to building one of the first fly shops on the Henry’s Fork, to helping shape conservation efforts that still impact anglers today. Will Godfrey has seen nearly every chapter of modern fly fishing unfold firsthand. In this episode, you’ll hear stories from a time when fly shops were rare, when dry fly innovation was happening real time, and how a small group of anglers were helping shape define the future of the sport. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast, where I show you the best places to travel to and fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, and what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. Will Godfrey is here today, and we’re going to get into the history and the great names and stories of the last eighty years of fly fishing. Will has been around and is still doing it today. He’s still out there steelhead fishing. We’re going to hear about these stories of decades of steelhead fishing across Idaho and British Columbia. We’re gonna hear about the unlikely story behind opening one of the earliest fly shops in the West on the Henrys Fork, How this Came to Be and the famous anglers fly tyers innovators who gathered. We hear about how they used to sleep in the shop. He’d have passersby sleeping because there’s nowhere else to stay. We got some good stories today and lessons learned. He’s learned after nearly eighty years. Like I said, On the Water Wheel has lived through some of the most important changes in fly fishing. And. And today you’re going to hear you’re going to get a front row seat to hear all these great stories. So let’s get into it. Here he is, Will Godfrey. How you doing, Will? 00:01:46 Will: I’m doing well. 00:01:47 Dave: Good, good, good. It’s great to finally get you on the podcast. We I find myself after interviewing, you know, many over a thousand people now, sometimes I’ve had people that have been mentioned a lot on the podcast like you. And then we finally get you on. So it’s exciting to hear the story. I’ve heard from a lot of people, you know, many famous names that have said you’ve been a really important part in fly fishing. So we’re going to talk about a little bit on the history. You were an outfitter in kind of eastern Idaho. So I’m going to we’re going to pick your brain a little bit about the old days of what it was like and and then maybe talk, I think guide ethics. You do a lot of different things with FFI and some of the shows. So we’re going to. It’s going to be a nice action packed episode here. But before we get into it, tell us, how did you come into that eastern Idaho, kind of that area and become an outfitter? How that all start for you? 00:02:35 Will: Well, it was the Eastern Idaho thing started when back in nineteen sixty five. And, uh, I had, uh, graduated from Brigham Young University and, um, had won a scholarship to the University of Arizona to work on a master’s degree. And mind you, I’m not in the fishing world. Then I’m in. Agricultural economics is essentially my field. So I was headed to Montana. And while in Montana, um, I was newly married. That was in nineteen sixty three. And then, uh, finished the degree at Arizona in sixty five and then accepted, uh, a full ride at Montana State University in Bozeman to work on my PhD. So while we were there, we had our first child and our, our first child was Ben. And he was diagnosed with childhood, uh, leukemia. And so, uh, you know, my scholarship covered my books and all the stuff that goes with scholarships and stipends like that. But, uh, I didn’t have enough money to be paying for all the doctors and stuff. 00:03:45 Dave: Right. 00:03:45 Will: So, uh, I started looking for a side job, which was not exactly appropriate with Montana boys, but still, I had to do something. So I ran into a fellow earlier in my life and I just called him. That was Bud Lilly. 00:04:03 Dave: Oh, yeah. 00:04:03 Will: And Bud Lilly was in West Yellowstone and had a. He was just moving from an old shop to a new shop. So I said, is, uh, is it possible you could use a store man or something like that? Because I didn’t know anything about guiding in those days. 00:04:18 Dave: Or did you fly fish then? 00:04:20 Will: Oh, yeah. My father taught me to fly fish way back in, uh, right after World War Two. I started in nineteen, what, nineteen forty six? 00:04:29 Dave: Oh, wow. 00:04:30 Will: My first rod and my dad. So I just, uh, I bud gave me a job. 00:04:36 Dave: Yeah. He gave you a job as a store manager, essentially. 00:04:39 Will: Well, I wasn’t a manager that that’d be really a big statement, but, uh, he gave me a chance to work in his store and begin to learn. I began to learn, and I, I caught interest in that, uh, whole world of fly fish guiding. There were, you know, there were only a couple of us up there in West at Barnes was there. Jim Danskin the Eagle shop had a little bit. But Lilly was a major player. He and Barnes were the major players, but Lilly. 00:05:07 Dave: What was the name of Bud Lilly’s shop? 00:05:09 Will: It was Bud Lilly’s fly shop. 00:05:11 Dave: Yeah, that’s it Bud Lilly and the transition. Where was it when it moved? You said it was. Did it move to the place that it was before that it had been for, you know, the rest of the history? 00:05:20 Will: Well, the first shop was just to the north of Eagle Eagle’s corner there in West Stone, and his new shop then moved north about a block. And the store that’s up there now, it. The old Bud Lilly store is still up and running really strong. 00:05:38 Dave: Wow. So you go. And what was your PhD in Bozeman in? 00:05:42 Will: Well, I was straight agricultural economics all the way through, uh, in Bozeman. I went there because I was really keen on learning the ranching business, cow calf operations and stuff like that. I wasn’t going to be a researcher. I didn’t want to be a researcher. I wanted to be a cowboy. 00:05:59 Dave: Yeah. You want to be a cowboy? Move out west. Right. That was the dream of. 00:06:02 Will: You’re an outside guy. So I’m an outside kind of guy, and I’ve been fishing for a long time, and that’s great. 00:06:07 Dave: Where did you where did you grow up? 00:06:09 Speaker 3: Oh, boy. Let’s see. 00:06:11 Will: I was born and raised in the Salt Lake Valley. And, uh, when I was about sixteen, seventeen years old, uh, my father’s work transferred him to Denver. I went to Denver and then, uh, graduated from high school in Denver, started college at Colorado State University. And, you know, we were a farming family and background. And so I was still pretty keen on agriculture, but I had a real love for cattle and horses and all that kind of stuff that, uh, is associated with ranching. So finally I get, I get to Montana and I get to work on a ranching deal and study, but that was what I thought. However, the government decided that I would do better if I worked in the sugar marketing. So I worked worldwide sugar marketing for about four years before I got my degree there. 00:07:05 Dave: That’s really cool. And so yeah, you’re in that field. And then when did the you know, I know you did a lot of work in the kind of the conservation field. When did all that kind of interest start for you? 00:07:17 Will: Well, that came after the fact, you know, that I got my degree in and a lot of water had gone under the bridge. I got my degree in sixty nine, but at that time I was not working for Bud. I worked for Bud in, uh, see sixty five, sixty six and part of sixty seven. But when you start doing your research, the school gets pretty tense about what timing you’re going to put in your work. So I didn’t have my summers free anymore, and I had to do my research, and they did it in Montana, traveled the whole state with a corpse in the back of my truck. 00:07:54 Dave: Yeah. 00:07:55 Will: And and, um, there’s another fellow I’m trying to think of his name, but he was down in Ennis, Montana, that I would go and guide for periodically. And, uh, in those days, you know, your license had to be with an outfitter. You didn’t have the privileges that we had that the guys have today of being an independent guide and working for several outfitters. And the rules are state by state, so you never can’t tell. But I worked for, um, a feller down in Ennis for a couple of trips and then occasionally got called by Bud, but in sixty seven I thought, and this is a little bit, uh, I don’t want to be a little braggy here, but this was this is, uh, I thought I can do this. 00:08:40 Dave: Yeah, yeah, it was doable. 00:08:42 Will: And, and, uh, what would be a guide when you could be an outfitter? So my business partner was George Wright, and he came out of, uh, we were classmates at Brigham Young University and we fished together, hunted together, and did everything together as families. And I talked to him and said, uh, what do you think? And he, he said, well, let’s give it a try. So he was my business partner. And, uh, we decided we bought some ground down on the Henry’s Fork at Last Chance. And it was kind of swampy. We had the we filled it all in and, um, we built our business and there’s a lot of neat stories associated with. 00:09:20 Dave: It, really. And what was that place? What did you build there? Do you build a, a shop? 00:09:24 Speaker 4: Yeah, we built a shop. 00:09:25 Will: And we build a shop. We’re going into business. We’re going to be competitors to Bud Lilly. 00:09:29 Dave: Right. So you built a fly shop on the in the Henry’s fork. 00:09:33 Speaker 4: And the Henry’s. 00:09:33 Will: Fork at last chance. The store that’s there now. Um, Dave is um let’s see, there’s a headhunter and then Mike and Mike Lawson’s. 00:09:44 Dave: Yep. 00:09:44 Will: Okay. But I was before them altogether. There wasn’t any of those kind of stores there. We just built the store. There was a service station. And the lot, the old Last Chance Inn was there, but not functional. And, uh, the store, uh, the cigar store, I think that was called. They had a gas station. There was a Texaco station. And then I built the shop. 00:10:07 Dave: You built the shop? And what year was that when you built the shop? 00:10:09 Will: We started in sixty seven, and our first trips were in sixty nine, sixty nine. 00:10:14 Dave: Wow. And so at that point, were you all in or were you still doing the AG and all that stuff? 00:10:19 Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. 00:10:20 Will: It’s one of my problems in life. I try to do a little bit too much. 00:10:24 Dave: Yeah. So you have both got. 00:10:26 Speaker 4: I didn’t. 00:10:26 Will: Have a lot of money. My business partner was sort of the finance side of this thing, but I had some clients with that I had developed with Bud Lilly. Bud really had a neat clientele that came from a large part of the East Coast and the West Coast and the ball brothers were doctors out of Southern California, and I was their guide for those three years. I’d been their guide. So I’d developed this rapport with these guys. And make a long story short, I flew down to Southern California and met with them and told them what my dream was and all that sort of thing and what they did, and they funded me. 00:11:06 Dave: Oh, wow. 00:11:07 Will: I came back with the money in the bucket and that we were able to start and build the shop, but we’re still a bit undercapitalized, quite frankly. And, uh, guys like, uh, Dan Bailey of Livingston, he was my supplier. He saw me through two years. 00:11:24 Dave: How does that work with the suppliers? So he, he basically gives you everything you need in the shop. 00:11:28 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:11:28 Will: And doesn’t impress me too much to get paid quick. 00:11:31 Dave: Right. As opposed to going to the, the brand, you know, all the companies where you have to buy a certain amount of inventory. Right? 00:11:37 Will: Right. It’s so much different now. I mean, I, it was just leaning on friends and shake hands, and we’ll be on the other side of it was that, um, once we beat the building, the bucket was empty. 00:11:50 Dave: Right? 00:11:51 Will: So we had to have inventory and, uh, and then then Bailey helped really helped me out a lot. And fanning hardware out of Idaho Falls was another one of those people that helped me. 00:12:01 Dave: What was the name of your shop? 00:12:02 Will: Well, it was a great story. We were afraid. I mean, nobody ever stopped to fish the Henry’s Fork in nineteen sixty five. In that period of time, nobody would come up the highway going to West Yellowstone and fishing Yellowstone waters and the Madison River. Nobody’s stopping on Henry’s Fork. 00:12:22 Dave: No kidding. So everybody’s going right by the Henry’s Fork and not even fishing. 00:12:25 Will: How do I get people to stop? Wow. It was a little a bit skittish about calling it a fly shop. 00:12:32 Dave: Because you didn’t have the inventory. 00:12:33 Will: Yeah. And so we call it Island Park Sporting goods. 00:12:37 Dave: There you go. 00:12:38 Will: On the first sign that we put up. We learned quickly as we developed the business that that’s not going to work. So then we named it the Will Godfrey Fly Fishing Shop because the reputation was starting to develop. And so it was called Will Godfrey Fly Fishing Shop. And then it turned into fly fishing centers because I ended up with three stores. 00:12:58 Dave: Oh, wow. 00:12:59 Will: So Boise and up at Mack’s in on the Henry’s Fork and then the main store there in, um, in Last Chance, Idaho. 00:13:08 Dave: No kidding. 00:13:09 Will: It’s on now. It’s an Orvis, uh, type store owned by Three Rivers. Uh, they’re really a great group of people and they own the store now, but it had another buyer in there when I sold out. And then when I finally sold everything, I sold my licenses and, and went another direction in my life back in that all came about in about nineteen eighty six, eighty seven. 00:13:33 Dave: Oh, wow. So eighty six. So basically eighty six, you sold everything you built and you had the three shops going in eighty six. Yeah. Wow. Why did you sell in eighty six? It seems like that’s right. In the things are really going hot and heavy, right? And then river runs through. It is right around the corner, right? 00:13:49 Will: Oh yeah. That and in fact, I owe Doug Godfrey here because you can’t predict the future. But that pre dot com and the river runs through it. That was just all that which really kicked fly fishing off big time. 00:14:03 Dave: Yeah. Seven years later. Right. Yeah. 00:14:06 Will: So here I am. I’ve got a family now. I’ve got my wife and, and then, uh, I’ve got three kids. I’ve got Ben, Sean and Kim, and I’ve got to give them some support. I’ve finished my degree. I started at Central Washington State there in Ellensburg and went there. And I was an assistant professor of business and economics on a teaching contract, which allowed me to have my summers free. I worked during the year, so summers were free and the shop because of regulation from Idaho Fish and Game and Montana Fish and Game, I could only operate about one hundred and fifty days a year. It’s the way the regulations were. And so one hundred and fifty days a year. And that day and age didn’t support a family. 00:14:53 Dave: No, one hundred and fifty days. So that’s all you could work was one hundred and fifty days on the water. 00:14:56 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:14:57 Will: And, and we were still young and developing and that sort of thing. Um, so I, I sold in eighty seven because I had to stay with my career. It just had to be. And I thought if I tell you eighty seven, that’s twenty years, you know, from when we got started, man, I was a tired dude. You know, eventually someone has to be the business person in the business. 00:15:22 Dave: Exactly. Yeah. You gotta make a profit. 00:15:24 Will: Cash register. And somebody’s got to organize it and keep it going. And my original thought was, I want to be in this business because I love the fish. 00:15:34 Dave: Yeah. You want to be fishing? 00:15:35 Will: What happened to fishing with Will Godfrey? 00:15:38 Dave: That’s right. I’ve heard that story a lot about the fly shops. 00:15:41 Will: Oh, my God, it was hard. I’m not kidding you. I wish we had expanded by then to international fly fishing. Did we? Our licenses were huge in terms of, um, in the United States, but we had no license to go to New Zealand or to or to Canada. So we were just renegades. 00:16:04 Dave: Oh, you’re just going for it. So you’re going fishing. What do you mean by light? So you had to have, like, an international license. 00:16:09 Will: Well, you’re supposed to, but, you know, the industry in those days was not sophisticated. Going to New Zealand, there were no guides. 00:16:16 Dave: Wow. So when were you doing that? When did you start your international? 00:16:20 Speaker 5: That was about seventy. 00:16:23 Will: seventy five. Right in there. Seventy. Seventy five. I got connected with one of my clients, which was Mike Adams. He was the marketing director for Lucky Strike cigarettes. 00:16:34 Dave: Oh, wow. 00:16:35 Will: And then he quit his job and became the marketing director for, um, Northwest Orient Airlines. And he wanted to build he wanted to put people in seats from coming out of Asia and coming out of Australia and, uh, out of New Zealand. So I worked with him and I took the New Zealand trips. 00:16:56 Dave: Check out Montana Fly Fishing Lodge, a twenty twenty four Orvis endorsed Lodge of the year finalist, where luxury meets adventure on one point five miles of private, wild and scenic East Rosebud River frontage. Experienced world class fly fishing on numerous Yellowstone Basin streams, gourmet cuisine made from locally sourced ingredients and rustic luxury accommodations surrounded by breathtaking wilderness. You can book your all inclusive Montana fly fishing adventure today and discover why they are the premier destination for unforgettable fishing experiences. Head over to Montana Fly Fishing lodge dot com right now. Check out Jackson Hole Fly Company today. Premium fly gear straight to your door without the premium price. Jackson Hole Fly Company designs and builds their own fly rods, reels, flies and gear. Delivering quality you can trust at prices that let you fish more and spend less. Whether you’re picking up a fly rod for the first time or guiding every day, they’ve got what you need. Check them out right now. That’s Jackson Hole Fly company dot com. Jackson Hole fly company dot com. What did you do? What was your role? How did you work with Mike to get people to New Zealand? 00:18:04 Will: Well, first of all, I went to New Zealand. 00:18:07 Dave: Yeah. You went there to check it out. 00:18:08 Will: Didn’t even know where it was. So in New Zealand with Mike and just do our own research and find out what’s going on down there, because I’ve been reading all these articles about big brown trout and all that stuff. And I thought, well, let’s go down and find out what’s going on. So we met a guy in New Zealand named Graham Marsh, and, uh, I stayed with him on his station. That’s like a ranch, a big sheep ranch. But the Mataura River on South Island ran through his ranch. And so we set up an operation where we cut my sports coming out of the United States would join me in the month of February and some in March down on that ranch. And then we fished. We started fishing New Zealand, the charity in Aurora, the Matera, these rivers and bringing people in. I’d go down and stay and then my sports would come down for a week, ten days, fly in that sort of thing. But we didn’t. There was no licensing. 00:19:10 Dave: No, you just went there and did it. 00:19:12 Will: Yeah. And but it took off, man. It took off. 00:19:15 Dave: Oh, really? So you had lots of people in the US coming through the shop that heard about it. 00:19:19 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:19:20 Will: Well and the guide business down there got very sophisticated in a hurry. You know, when you go to New Zealand, I don’t know how it is today, but when you go in, you better show a ticket to get out because they don’t want they don’t want a lot of. 00:19:32 Dave: You don’t want people living there. 00:19:33 Will: But I think that I don’t know how it’s changed down there since that’s fifty years ago. 00:19:38 Dave: Right? That was fifty years ago. Yeah. So you’re early on. Wow. So you’re doing all this travel and you’re. And this is in what year? This is seventy five, right? When you kind of started this. 00:19:48 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:19:48 Will: We started down there in seventy five, seventy six, seventy seven, seventy eight. We were down there several times. So here, here’s the thing, man. There on the other side of the world. 00:19:57 Dave: Yeah. 00:19:58 Will: And I’m supposed to be teaching at my university and doing research and all that kind of stuff in the winter, but that’s their summer. I’m supposed to be down there, too. 00:20:08 Dave: Oh, right. You got two. You got. So how’d you do it? How did you get your research done and do New Zealand? 00:20:13 Will: Don’t ask me. 00:20:15 Dave: I didn’t sleep. 00:20:16 Will: If somebody gave me the history on that. And I had to follow that path that I followed. 00:20:20 Dave: I have no idea. Lots of coffee. 00:20:22 Will: We just did it. We worked at it. We had a mission. We had a vision. I just did it. And that you stayed with it. 00:20:31 Dave: How long did you stick with the education, like with the college? Did you do that for your like, life or did you end that at some point? 00:20:38 Will: The international I got to back up just a little bit because the New Zealand transferred into other parts of the world too, as in the Maritimes for brook trout in eastern Canada, as in steelhead fishing, in British Columbia, as in the Arctic. 00:20:55 Dave: What was it like, the Arctic? What were you doing? Like we’re way up. Way up. 00:20:59 Will: Um, we were chasing, uh, with fly rod, the Arctic char, and we were fishing out of Arctic char camps and way up north. That was in middle summer because they only have. We only had five weeks of ice free water. And so two of those weeks were taken by Audubon and the bird watchers. And then, uh, I had about three weeks to chase Arctic char, and that was about two hundred and fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle. So we were really remote. Really, really wild. I had nothing like that in my life since as being wild and tough and experimental. 00:21:42 Dave: Yeah. 00:21:42 Will: Scary. 00:21:43 Dave: Right? 00:21:44 Will: So so we’d we’d gone international a lot to expand our business. That was what we were trying to do. We were a little you know, Mike had come on with anglers. And just after Teton Dam broke in what’s in four seventy five somewhere. So we were expanding. We were expanding our whole thing. 00:22:05 Dave: Right. And then there’s more shops coming in. So you got Mike, you got Lawson’s shop coming in. And so it’s and really at that time, we’ve heard about that before from a number of, you know, anglers who are similar to you. They’ve been around a long time. And there was that period in, you know, that seventies where the fly shop, just the fly shops took off like before you started yours in sixty seven. There weren’t a lot of fly shops right around the country. 00:22:25 Speaker 5: None. 00:22:26 Will: I only knew in my territory, you know, down in Ennis, Montana. Williamson had a really nice shop down there. And then there was Bud and Barnes and and DEP and those guys up in, uh, West. But you had to really search. 00:22:40 Dave: You had to search. Did you notice that when you were, as you know, you opened the shop and then for the first ten years just realized, wow, the fly shops are starting to boom out here. Did you notice it or was it just like a slow creep? 00:22:50 Will: I started, it was slow, but I it really started to take off when I had, uh, a client by the name of Joe Brooks from Outdoor Life magazine, and then the Wolf’s Joan and Lee. And they were. These people were really well known. And then I don’t tell you that Ernie Schwiebert was one of my clients, but he came through, Bud. He was Bud’s client. And then, uh, Ed Zurn, he was the writer of Exit Laughing and Field and Stream magazine. So these guys are coming out. And Charlie Kroll, who wrote the book Squaretail they came to me, they came out, they were exploring too, and they became clients. I mean, I guided Joe Brooks and Mary every other day for one month. 00:23:38 Dave: No kidding. 00:23:39 Will: Every year. And they wrote about us and they talked about us. 00:23:43 Dave: That was it. 00:23:44 Will: And then another great thing that happened with me was, um, the book Selective Trout was in progress with Doctor Carl Richards and Doug Swisher, and we were the guides. I was there, uh, we were their guides in fishing as well as in clicking insects for that book. 00:24:02 Dave: Oh, really? So you helped collect the insects for that book? 00:24:05 Will: Yeah. On the Henry’s Fork. We were on the Henry’s Fork. 00:24:08 Dave: Right. Wow. 00:24:09 Will: There may be some other guys that helped there, too. Sure, sure. 00:24:12 Dave: But I and they were East Coast guys. 00:24:14 Will: They were Midwest guys. And so selective trout. The book chain was one of those major things in our world of fly fishing that changed because there’s where the name’s no hackle, a merger, a paradigm. 00:24:30 Dave: Right. Roy, they all came out of that era. 00:24:32 Will: Came out of that era right there. And another guy in our area. I have to really give him credit. And this was I got tied up with, um, Renee Harrop and Bonnie and their superb fly tires. And they’re the ones that they are the ones that worked with Swisher and Richards and they’re highly skilled fly tying to develop the this new approach to surface fishing to, you know, dry fly fishing in our country there. 00:25:01 Dave: Yep. Wow. So all those no hackle merger paired on those huge, I mean, game changers as far as. So before that, it was just the standard Catskills dries. 00:25:11 Will: Holy smokes. We were only about two years out of Snell flies. 00:25:14 Dave: Yeah right. 00:25:15 Will: I mean my dad was one my dad he’s just like worry the Orange Asher special. 00:25:21 Dave: What were the flights? So back then? So before this period, the flies were these. What was it that was like back to the day where they were? Yeah, they came in packages. Right. With the leader on them packages. 00:25:32 Will: There were no place you bought them except at a service station. 00:25:35 Dave: Right. 00:25:36 Will: Or a car dealership. 00:25:38 Dave: And they were wet flies. Were they wet flies and dry flies. Is that what they kind of. 00:25:41 Will: Yeah, both. Yeah. Hackle yellow gray hackle Peacock orange. So special flies that worked. 00:25:49 Dave: They worked. Yeah. I just actually had an episode with David Walton. We did another one on Wet Flies. And I mean, that stuff still works. There’s no question, right? 00:25:56 Will: Yeah. No question. But we get to thinking now we got to use foam, we got to get real cute. But let me tell you, I fly. The fly world is tremendous today. It’s just tremendous. It’s so different than it was in those days. 00:26:09 Dave: Right? Yeah. It’s cool to see. 00:26:11 Will: I go tie. I’m going over to Mike Lawson’s, uh, fiftieth anniversary. This is this year in August. And we’ve there’s a five or six, uh, six, seven of us been invited to come and tie on that occasion. 00:26:26 Dave: Oh, is this a public event? 00:26:27 Will: It’s a public event. 00:26:28 Dave: Oh, cool. 00:26:29 Will: And so Mike and I, you know, we’re competitors and we had our days together and our and our arguments and all that. But Mike, I got a great respect for Mike and what he’s done for our industry. And, uh, we’re just, I think we’re pretty good buddies. We, we fished occasionally together, but not very often. I think some of the tires are going to tie his dirty dozen. I’m going to tie probably our very early, uh, stoneflies, the old sofa pillow. 00:26:59 Dave: Oh, the sofa pillow. Right. 00:27:00 Will: Bullet head. I’m going to tie some of those old, old patterns. 00:27:03 Dave: Yeah. What was that? The owl. What was the bullet head? 00:27:06 Will: Oh, I I. 00:27:07 Dave: Yeah. 00:27:07 Will: Troth, I just flipped out. Owl truth came from Pennsylvania. He ended over on the beaver head over at um. ever see what Dylan over at Dylan Montana, but he, he worked for me for a year and maybe even two years. And, and he, he was a superb fly tyer and he developed several patterns. And I’m going to tie some of his old patterns that we used for the stoneflies for the big copter. 00:27:33 Dave: So before the before the chubby Chernobyl was out there. Right. These were there. 00:27:36 Will: Was no chubby Chernobyl. 00:27:38 Dave: No, no, there was no foam. 00:27:40 Will: There was no foam. We used hair and feathers. There was no foam. It’s like today I was with my wife over on the, um, over on the Bitterroot and our, our guy at Dave Hughes, he was fishing, we were fishing, and I’m using Muddlers. Okay. The old Muddler Gilpin Muddler had come out of Michigan River and, um, my wife’s using his foam hoppers. 00:28:04 Dave: Right. 00:28:04 Will: And, and it got down to the point where, um, he, my wife was catching all the fish and I’m not doing too well. And I said, give me one of those damn foam flies. 00:28:14 Dave: Right? 00:28:15 Will: They says, well, God, you just gotta remember in Montana, use the foam or go home. 00:28:20 Dave: That’s right. That’s right. Foam works out there. 00:28:24 Will: Oh, you know, the flies in those days it was really traumatic when Doug and and and Doc Carl Richards to develop that new, whole new series of flies called the no hackles. And I put, uh, Bonnie Harp and Renee Harp there. They’re just tremendous tires. They were so good. Can I tell you a quick story there? 00:28:49 Dave: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. We got tons of time. 00:28:51 Will: Okay. So, um, I’m in my shop, and. And, you know, my shop was headquarters in the seventies, and this book was a sixty nine book. It was the right one. We were getting started. So there was no place to stay. And all the guys that would come fishing. And these were just fishermen. They bedded down in my shop. 00:29:09 Dave: Oh, really? Like in the shop? Just threw some stuff on the floor. 00:29:12 Will: Yeah, we just do sleeping bags on the floor. 00:29:14 Dave: Oh. It’s amazing. 00:29:15 Will: And I lived in my shop. 00:29:18 Dave: You did. 00:29:18 Will: Shop? Yeah, we had a we had a bunk bed and a refrigerator and a stove, and we were doing our own cooking. 00:29:25 Dave: Wow. 00:29:27 Will: This is pioneer stuff, man. 00:29:28 Dave: This is so cool. 00:29:29 Will: It was so awesome. We loved it. We just loved it. And it was hard. And people would look at it and say, how could you do that? But we just did it, you know? 00:29:38 Dave: So good. 00:29:39 Will: I had a vision and we had a mission and I was driven to get this. So, okay, we’re all sitting around my fireplace and we’re, we’re gassing about, uh, the fish we caught and all that. You know how guys eat together. 00:29:51 Dave: You’re sitting there with Swisher and Richards. 00:29:53 Will: No. You just. I don’t think they were there then. 00:29:57 Dave: Yeah, but just whoever was fishing that day. 00:29:59 Will: Yeah, they just come in and. And where are we going to stay tonight? Where are we camping and just throw it back out here. We’re good. 00:30:05 Dave: Right? Right. They didn’t have to pay for a night stay. They just threw their stuff out. 00:30:09 Speaker 6: Here we are. We’re all. 00:30:11 Will: Um, we’re ISIS was in June, I believe, because I remember June twenty one, we got a pretty good snowfall. 00:30:18 Dave: Of what year was this. 00:30:19 Will: Early seventies, seventy one seventy. And the door opens and in walks a gal, I don’t know if you know the old comic strip Li’l Abner. 00:30:29 Dave: Yeah, I think, yeah, I’ve heard of it. 00:30:30 Will: Little Abner and Daisy Mae, it’s little girl. This girl walked in, Daisy Mae cut off jeans, you know, open collared, sexy and all. Get out. And she walked in and said, is there anybody in here that would like to buy flies? So I stepped up because being the owner of the store, I took a look at their flies and holy mackerel, let’s make a deal. 00:30:58 Dave: Huh? Really? 00:30:59 Will: These were really good flies. Really good today. You know that that fly sells for, you know, up in the six dollar a piece market. So they’re really good. And these guys were so skilled. 00:31:11 Dave: And who was Daisy Mae? 00:31:12 Will: She was in the cartoon with Lil Abner, but Bonnie Harp looked like Daisy Mae. 00:31:17 Dave: Oh, right. So this is Bonnie Harp coming in with the flies. 00:31:20 Speaker 6: Yeah. That’s funny. Here. 00:31:22 Dave: Oh, man, that’s so cool. 00:31:24 Will: Well, they lasted with me two years, and Orvis got him. I couldn’t compete there. And they weren’t a big company. They were. They were doing their own tire. And so they joined up with Orvis. To their good credit, I’m sure, but I couldn’t hold them because I’m a little guy. Jeez. 00:31:41 Dave: Yeah, yeah. It’s wow. That’s crazy. So they. So. But she came in the store and was like, here’s some flies. 00:31:47 Speaker 7: And oh my gosh. 00:31:48 Dave: How do you know when you see a fly? When you saw those flies, how did you know the quality. How can you tell? 00:31:53 Speaker 6: Oh my gosh. 00:31:54 Will: It’s inherent in me. I can look at a fly and say, hmm. Mhm. It was just the quality of material. And remember, these are no hackles. I’m looking. I’m like, I don’t even know what this is because a no haggle doesn’t really have a Palmer Hackle on the front of a dry fly. 00:32:11 Dave: No, it’s just got the wing right. It’s just got the wing on there. 00:32:13 Will: And their float capability come on the basis of the foundation of the wing as it was affixed to the shank and then allow a float quality. And I looked at those, I said, oh my gosh, listen to this. I bet I could sell this for fifty cents a piece because our flies in those days, you know. 00:32:34 Dave: What they sell for quarter. 00:32:35 Will: Well, when I moved to fifty cents, I was scared to death because I didn’t think anybody would buy flies because everything was like a dime a dozen. 00:32:43 Dave: Dime a dozen. Right? Oh, was it really? It was. Yeah, basically. Really a dime a dozen back then. 00:32:47 Speaker 6: And there was a lot. 00:32:48 Will: Of stuff coming in from Japan. You know, we used to say those flies will dissolve in water, but. 00:32:52 Dave: Oh man. 00:32:53 Will: But the my flies were really coming from Dan Bailey and those were good flies. 00:32:58 Dave: And where was Dan Bailey getting his fly. Any idea? 00:33:01 Will: Well, Dan Bailey had. 00:33:03 Dave: His own program. 00:33:04 Will: His store had big bay windows, and in the bay windows behind the windows were the tying girls, and they tied all day for her, and they were great flies and Dan Bailey flies. Jes those were fifty five sixty cents. 00:33:17 Dave: There you go. Yeah. 00:33:19 Will: You believe that. Oh. So and then on top of that, well it didn’t take long for some of the guys in the industry. And I can’t even remember who they were approached selling flies from overseas, you know, offshore flies. And we couldn’t resist them because, you know, a dozen offshore flies to me would be like, maybe I paid three fifty, a dozen, and then I could sell them. You know, I could mark that up for two or three times. And when we moved, we moved to seventy five cents a fly. 00:33:52 Dave: We heard the story of the, um of Umpqua right when they first got started, I think it was in that same time. Right. 00:33:57 Will: They helped me out a lot. I gotta tell you. 00:33:59 Dave: Yeah. Umpqua, that was, um, it was who were the two guys there? Umpqua was, uh. 00:34:03 Will: Black was one. 00:34:04 Dave: Yeah. Black. Yeah. Black. And it was in Kaufman, I think. Were the two Kaufman boys. 00:34:08 Will: Yeah. 00:34:09 Dave: Yeah. They came over and they, they basically drove over from kind of Oregon and sold flies all the way out to, to your area. 00:34:14 Will: Exactly. And I bought a lot of flies from those guys. Bailey couldn’t. I finally got large enough where Bailey couldn’t service me totally as loyalty as one. But I stayed with Dan all the time. But, uh, yeah, the Kaufman boys really did good. And Dennis Black and those guys were great, but, uh, flies now were moving up to. Jeez, they were getting up around ninety five cents. Buck. 00:34:39 Dave: Yep. Getting up there now. Yeah. That’s right. What was the is there the salmon fly hatch? We mentioned the flies a little bit. Where what’s the river? Around there is the Henry’s fork. Which one has a good salmon fly hatch. 00:34:49 Will: Okay. So I did some research on this in my lifetime. Uh, any, any stream that is a freestone. That’s what I was looking for. Freestone stream have stone flies, but fork has. And they weren’t called stoneflies. They were called salmon flies. And the reason they were called that is because this big californicus is an orange bodied fly, you know, and it was big. It was three inches long. 00:35:15 Dave: It was huge. 00:35:16 Will: Oh, huge flat, huge hatches. I mean, the road would get slippery. 00:35:21 Speaker 7: Wow. 00:35:22 Will: I mean huge, huge. And then we started to mark them. And when they came and that sort of thing. So they started the real river that kicked that off was the Madison River and the big River. And they had the same big fly, you know, and people would come and fish the salmon flies. That’s what they were called. 00:35:41 Dave: So they were coming for the salmon. And when that was in the June period, right. 00:35:45 Will: Always in June, we used to say to our customers, uh, June twenty first, eleven thirty. Well, excuse me, that was green. That’s green drink. The salmon flies were before them, and they would start in the lower river down around Saint Anthony sometime, probably in, uh, late May, middle May somewhere in there. And they, they came up as the it got brighter and the water warmed and that sort of thing. Those salmon flies came off the box canyon on the Henry’s Fork, and it was a match of what’s going on with the reputation of the Montana Medicine hat and the Gallatin. You know, those are big rivers for the stoneflies. And when they came out, fish go crazy. You know that? Steak and potatoes to them. So. And our river, we were rainbows. And the box Canyon was unbelievably good. I mean, I never had any trouble with a client going into the Box Canyon in the Stonefly period, and not catching fish in that four pound, five pound category. 00:36:49 Dave: And on dry on the big dry. 00:36:50 Speaker 7: Yeah. Big dry, big dry. 00:36:52 Dave: And these were the these were the ones you mentioned. What were the what was your number one fly back then. Do you think you liked. 00:36:57 Will: Sopapilla then then albatross fly. 00:37:00 Dave: What was his. 00:37:01 Will: The bullet head tied with elk hair and big trudes. Eventually stimulators took over. Kind of like stimulators. And then there’s all kinds of big fuzzy stuff. 00:37:11 Dave: Yeah, lots of big stuff. 00:37:12 Will: Big foamies and all that stuff. 00:37:13 Dave: There was one I had. I just had talked to John Hazel, you know, on the Deschutes River. And he talked about the it’s called the Northwoods Special. And I think that was a regional fly. I think that was just to maybe that area of Oregon. But there must have been a lot of those flies to. Right. Some of these flies that people maybe didn’t know about that were, you know, that didn’t become, you know, national flies. 00:37:32 Will: Well, you know, we have Pat Barnes and sig was his wife. She tied flies in his shop on a sewing machine, the old singer sewing machine. And she was a superb tire. And they were big bushy flies. She had two flies. She had the her sofa pillow, the Barnes sofa pillow and uh, and the other was, uh, big hoppers and I believe, uh, I believe Jacqueline Bob. Jacqueline is a great friend. Bob. Jacqueline really expanded that market and his skills were really good. 00:38:07 Dave: Yeah. Bob, is Bob still out there right? Still going. 00:38:09 Will: I think he shows up at his shop periodically. I know he’s been for sale for a couple of years here. He’s had some health concerns, but he’s still there. 00:38:18 Dave: What’s the name of the fly shop? 00:38:19 Will: Bob. Jacqueline’s fly shop. 00:38:21 Dave: There you go. There you go. Yeah, I’m looking at the sofa pillow. Yeah. It’s interesting because the sofa pillow, you know, is a you know, it looks a little bit like a stimulator, essentially. 00:38:30 Will: Well, it has a red body. It has a peacock that metallic peacock tail and a red floss body. And then, uh, three or four Furness hackles. Palmer on the front with a red squirrel tail. That is a wing. Excuse me, a red squirrel wing. 00:38:49 Dave: Oh, yeah. Squirrel for the wing. That’s right. 00:38:51 Will: And then there was another one called Bird Stonefly that came out of, uh, Dan Bailey. That’s a great flag that laid really flat on the water. It didn’t puff up and float real high. And then there was all kinds of versions of, um, sofa pillows and we used orange bodied ones. I’m going to tie some of these over. 00:39:12 Dave: Oh you are. Yeah. You’re gonna tie some. This would be cool. So we can check you out. We can, people can show up for that. 00:39:16 Will: And we give them away. You know, we just tie them and get myself into. But I I’m always a big fly guy, especially on the Madison and on the Box Canyon. I mean, I partner on the Madison in our trips. I use number six and number eight, Royal Wolves. That that was sort of a secret to us. 00:39:37 Dave: Oh, it was. 00:39:37 Will: Because there were big browns in there and they big browns like big flies. 00:39:43 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:39:43 Dave: What was the Royal wolf imitating back then and fishing there? 00:39:46 Will: You know, the royal wolf is a white wing tip tail upright wing has a red portion of the abdomen and Uh, thorax. It has a peacock curl in there, but it’s a great floater and it’s a great attractor fly. It didn’t imitate anything. 00:40:03 Dave: Right, right. Just imitates a bunch of it could be anything, could be a hopper. 00:40:06 Speaker 7: Or a. 00:40:07 Will: Wolf. I mean, it was it was developed by Lee Wolf. 00:40:10 Dave: Yeah. That was Lee Wolf’s. I mean, he fished that. I think he developed that for fishing, uh, Atlantic salmon. 00:40:15 Speaker 7: I wouldn’t be surprised. 00:40:16 Dave: I know we’re heading up there to Mountain Waters Resort, which was the the lodge that he created back in the day. 00:40:23 Speaker 7: Oh, I’m. 00:40:23 Dave: Gonna fish the same waters he fished, so it’s going to be pretty exciting. I’m gonna try to fish. I think I’m gonna have to fish a royal wolf. I’m gonna have to get one on it. 00:40:30 Will: It’s one of my favorites. I’m still my my wife here. Uh, we fished together a lot up on the North Fork of the Clearwater. 00:40:37 Dave: Oh, yeah. For steelhead. 00:40:39 Speaker 7: No. 00:40:40 Will: Westslope cutthroat. And they, uh. And she’s called the royal wolf. Queen of the North Fork. 00:40:45 Dave: No kidding. 00:40:46 Will: And when we, we, uh, a year or so ago, we visited John Wolf, uh, back in, uh, I forget the name of the town. It’s where the Hall of Fame. 00:40:55 Dave: Oh, yeah. Um, back in New York. 00:40:57 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:40:57 Will: And we spent an afternoon with her. Joan is a person that, uh, she starts every trip with a Royal Wolfe and finishes with her Royal Wolfe. 00:41:07 Dave: Oh. She does? 00:41:08 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:41:09 Will: And, Joan. Geez, she’s approaching one hundred. 00:41:11 Dave: She is, isn’t she? 00:41:13 Will: Yeah, she’s really something. Anyway, they were the developers of that. That fly and that. My wife does the same thing Joan does. Now she starts with the Royal Wolfe and ends the day with Royal Wolfe. 00:41:24 Dave: That’s a great idea. That’s something. Yeah. 00:41:28 Will: We we traded Joan with that one. Uh, she’s such a grand lady. Such a grand lady of fly fishing. 00:41:34 Dave: I’m reading a book right now just in preparation for the trip. It’s about Lee Wolfe. It’s his biography, and I’m hearing all the stories of everything, and he. He was amazing. Uh, you know, he was an amazing promoter. You know, he really that was it. But he was also a big conservationist, big time. You know, Atlantic salmon was big, right for him. 00:41:53 Speaker 7: I was his. 00:41:53 Will: Partner at the first symposium in West Yellowstone for wild trout. When I say partner, we were we were there together to speak for. Trout were way too valuable to catch only once. 00:42:08 Dave: Oh, right. That that was huge. 00:42:10 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:42:11 Will: And and we were both advocates to that. But I give you know, Lee, that’s Lee’s thing. I was just an outfitter because we required all of our clients to release. You did know there’s no harvest. No harvest in my shop. Not one fish. 00:42:27 Dave: Where did that conservation, you know, that mindset come from for you? 00:42:31 Will: That came from Lee. 00:42:32 Speaker 7: It did. 00:42:33 Will: Yeah, I learned I learned it because I was a kid that just grew up fishing. You know, you take home a mess of fish and you’re doing a lot of hero pictures and stuff like that. And, and you’re showing off to your girlfriend and, and all kinds of stuff. 00:42:46 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:42:46 Dave: You got a line like a stringer, a twelve giant fish sitting there on the bank, right? 00:42:50 Will: I’m only one generation off sustenance where they cut trout and kept them for food. Okay, so it just hit me. I think maybe one of the things that really hit me hard was the waste of, um, the Yellowstone cutthroat fishing bridge. I’d been going there with my father and mother for years. I’ve been there every year for eighty eight years. 00:43:12 Dave: No kidding. Wow. 00:43:15 Will: So people would come to fishing bridge, stand on the bridge, catch a fish, put it in the garbage, and keep on driving. 00:43:23 Dave: And the garbage? 00:43:24 Will: Yeah, they threw them away. 00:43:26 Dave: Why? 00:43:26 Will: They didn’t have any way to keep them. The fish. They catch the fish. 00:43:30 Speaker 7: Off. 00:43:30 Will: The edge. And so pretty soon the authorities just said, hey, we’re not doing this anymore. This is a waste. It’s a big waste. But that’s what happened. 00:43:38 Dave: Oh my gosh. 00:43:39 Will: And so there’s no kill at fishing bridge. There’s no harvest. And then when I met Lee and listened to his philosophy, he and and and the people of the, uh, what? The old Federation of Fly fishers, their philosophy was, you know, a fish is just absolutely too valuable to catch only once. And that that stuck with me. And it’s been part of my life. Mind you, I’ve got trophies and I’ve kept trophies, and I’ve never. It’s been a long, long time that I didn’t buy my fish at Albertsons. 00:44:12 Dave: Right. 00:44:13 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:44:13 Will: If I’m going to eat salmon or something like that, I just don’t. Killing a steelhead, for example, is like killing your brother to me. 00:44:20 Dave: Right. Yeah. And you. That was a big part, right? Maybe. Was the steelhead your biggest other species you focused on for conservation? 00:44:27 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:44:28 Will: But you have to focus on salmon. 00:44:31 Speaker 7: Because. 00:44:32 Will: Salmon is tied to the indigenous people, and they fight hard to keep their salmon. And if you fight for salmon, you’ll also fight for steelhead. Just incidentally. 00:44:42 Speaker 7: Can’t win that without. 00:44:44 Will: The without the Indian people. 00:44:47 Dave: On to. Mark Lodge offers a world class experience with one of the finest rainbow trout and brown trout fisheries in the world. They’re family owned and operated. Missouri River Lodge offers comfortable accommodations, delicious home cooked meals, and personalized service that make you feel like family. Days on the water are capped off by appetizers, beverages, dinner, and stories on the back deck and around the campfire. Book your stay for an unforgettable fly fishing adventure where memories are made and the fish stories are real. You can head over right now to wet fly dot com slash mark. That’s O n d e m a r k on D mark right now to book your magical Missouri River trip. The Clearwater. Was that your steelhead river? 00:45:33 Will: Is that my steelhead river now? Yeah, my steelhead river was where I really did well and spent quite a bit of time guiding. I’d better be careful about saying guiding, hosting, Hosting right on the Sabine River, British Columbia. 00:45:48 Dave: Yeah. So you did the Sabine. So you like, was this back flying into the camps there? 00:45:52 Will: Um, North lakes. 00:45:53 Dave: North lakes. Was that back then? Well, when was that? I guess this was in the eighties or seventies. Seventies were they. How did you get in. Because they do helicopters now to get in there. 00:46:03 Will: Yeah. They go to the lower river with helicopters. That’s the Hilton camp. 00:46:07 Dave: That’s the Hilton. 00:46:08 Will: Yeah. And I was upriver at the we’re at the very out of Bambi Lake. So I indicated to you that Joe Brooks had come with me. And Dan Bailey was another one of my mentors. So down in the Dan Bailey shop, there’s these huge rainbows. What I thought were rainbows. They’re big. There’s twenty pounders. And I said, what are these? And you know, I’m a I’m a Utah, Idaho guy. I don’t know about these big things called steelhead. So that’s where I got tied into steelhead. And I talked to Dan about it. And then he talked. Talk to me about Joe Brooks and how Joe Brooks goes to the Bambino all the time. Okay, so pass by a long time. Take me into now, the early eighties, maybe the tail end of the seventies. And I meet a guy by the name of, uh, Van Sickle. He has a young son named Billy. And Billy became a guide for me. But Joe owned Van Sickle Industries, which made, uh, brick shoes for beech aircraft and Cessna and all those space. He became one of my really good clients. So every year he would come and fish with me on the railroad ranch, which he just. It just was a disease to him. 00:47:26 Dave: He, he. 00:47:27 Will: I’d get away from it. He came on and he loved the, the challenge of those big rainbows with all dry flies. Well, one year he called me on Christmas Day and hired me to take him and his management staff worldwide. Any place that I decided to take them for dry fly fishing. So in the long, long and short of that story, he hired me and I took them to the Arctic. I took him to the Upper Dene in British Columbia. I took him to New Zealand. I took him all over the world as acting outfitter and guide. Having never been to any of these places. 00:48:09 Dave: Oh, really? Wow. 00:48:11 Will: For several years. One of the places that I took him was the. Was Babine Lake for the great Stonefly hatch that occurs on that lake. So when we get there and we’re with Einar Madsen, he’s the owner of North Lakes. So I go into the lodge and I see this big fish on the wall again. You know, like I saw in that Daily Show. I said, what is that? And he said, that’s a steelhead. And he said, we got to talking and he has a steelhead camp called North Lakes. And so I said, man, I got to try this one. MM. 00:48:46 Dave: That was it. 00:48:48 Will: In taking Van Sickle into the British Columbia area, it was about using sofa pillows on the lake for these big stoneflies and these fish that were coming into the lake. 00:49:01 Dave: That were steelhead. 00:49:02 Will: They were steelhead. 00:49:03 Dave: Wow. You were catching steelhead in the lake on stoneflies? 00:49:06 Will: Yeah. 00:49:07 Dave: That’s nuts. 00:49:08 Will: No, we didn’t do a lot of that because we stayed. I changed my venue and I, I started going there for the steelhead in the Sabine River. 00:49:17 Dave: Yeah. Down below downstream of the lake. 00:49:19 Will: Yeah. 00:49:20 Dave: What were they doing? So these fish were. Yeah. Just migrating up through the lake to spawn up up above. 00:49:25 Will: They were captured at the weir at the Indian village there on Indian Village. And then they were um they gathered the eggs and all that they captured there, but some of the fish got through and would would be released into the upper river. 00:49:41 Dave: That’s cool. That’s something we haven’t heard about here before. Catching steelhead in the lake. That’s pretty cool. 00:49:47 Will: It was something else. 00:49:49 Dave: Wow. 00:49:49 Will: But the river was the best. I mean, for the. And these were. We’re talking pretty big fish here. 00:49:56 Dave: Yeah. That’s the thing about the Bambi I fished the bad been, uh, once or twice, but one big trip we did and I mean two still to this day. My two biggest steelhead in my life were on the Babine. 00:50:07 Will: Oh my gosh. Where we’re at. What camp were you at? 00:50:09 Dave: Well, we did something really cool. We did this amazing trip. Shout out to Tyler and you know, and my buddies. But basically we floated, we put in at the Weir and floated all the way down to the Skeena and out. And it was crazy. 00:50:21 Will: Yeah. She went down through the canyon. 00:50:22 Dave: Yeah. And exactly. It was one of those trips where we didn’t know what we were getting into. So. So we ran into a Canadian guy and we somehow found this guy. We met him at a bar and he gave us literally wrote on a napkin like a couple of the rapids you had to be careful of. And he’s like, stay right or die. But when we got into it, I mean, God, there’s one canyon there where it’s almost not even wide enough to get your boat through. And you know what I mean? So we were safe because we had dry suits on. We were full on. It was ten days and we were we were had helmets. It was the full thing. But, but we did it and we fished and we fished. And the cool thing, because we were fishing by the lodges. And as soon as we got down to a point where they couldn’t get their jet boats, we had the whole river to ourselves. 00:50:57 Will: Oh my gosh. 00:50:58 Dave: Yeah, it was cool. And that’s where we got into a couple of fish. And actually, it was also the time when I first picked up a Spey rod and I learned and I literally my first time catching a fish on a Spey rod was on the Babine. And it was like an eighteen pounder. So it was fun. 00:51:10 Will: And I was thirteen years on the Babine. 00:51:13 Dave: Oh, really? You did thirteen years, thirteen years. 00:51:15 Will: And I was out of northern Lakes and not with not with license, but with as a host, with my guys coming in under Einar. And then he sold the Pierce. 00:51:26 Dave: Gosh, you guys must have had some good fishing over the years. 00:51:29 Will: Oh my gosh, it was a you know, just as a side note here, um, the best year I ever had was fifty three fish. 00:51:37 Dave: fifty three fifty three. 00:51:39 Will: And I guess that was a two week. Time been the worst year I had was three fish in a four year time, four month. 00:51:47 Dave: Yeah. Well, you didn’t get skunked. 00:51:49 Will: Yeah, well, we had some bad years there, you know, with an Indian minister. Just great fish. 00:51:54 Dave: Did you get into pretty heavy on the steelhead conservation and issues up throughout. Not only like all around. 00:52:00 Will: Now with the NRA so much. It was too new there and I was taking my sports. But with Clegg, you know, we fought really pretty hard. They were going to build a road along the Bamiyan from the. We’re all the way downstream to haul logs out of there. 00:52:15 Dave: Oh God. 00:52:17 Will: And they served they surveyed this thing every year because we would remove the stakes. 00:52:24 Dave: Yeah. Right. That’s awesome. 00:52:26 Will: Throw them in the river. We were fighting every which. 00:52:28 Dave: Way you were. You were a monkey. I mean, kind of monkey wrench. There’s a there’s a famous book called The Monkey Wrench Gang, and it was about these environmentalists that really got out there. And they, you know, people were coming in to log and they would go out and literally like, wreck their machinery and stuff. 00:52:42 Will: I wasn’t into that. 00:52:43 Dave: But I know that’s the extreme. 00:52:45 Will: Of them anyway. So but holy mackerel, that that is such a great, great river. The only river that even matches, as far as I’m concerned, is the Kispiox. And I spent a lot of time on that one too. 00:52:57 Dave: Yeah. The kispiox. That’s right. That’s the one I got skunked on. We hit that one one time and I know that’s a great actually, I think one of the world records or one of the biggest fish came out of the Kispiox. I mean. 00:53:06 Will: It came out of the cottonwood hole. Yeah, I have, uh, I have on my desk, uh, you know, my twenty pound wall and I’ve got, uh, two fish, two, twenty seven pounders out of the kispiox. 00:53:19 Dave: No kidding. You got a couple of twenty seven pounders? Yeah. What was your setup? What did you use? 00:53:24 Will: Well, I was the guest of, uh, of one of Terry Ring’s clients. I was a guest, uh, to go with them fish on the kispiox in the Lee camp. And that was, uh, you know, Bob Clay was a guide. 00:53:40 Dave: Oh, yeah. This was the, the what was the Lee camp? That was just a camp on the, uh, kispiox. 00:53:45 Will: First and longest guy on on the river, what we call the Lee the Lee family. His fishing rights now have gone to his cousin up at, uh, Bear Claw. I think that’s called Bear Claw way up there on the upper river. But I was, uh, fishing with, um, a guy named Bill Williamson. He was a guy out of California at that time. He was eighty eight years old. 00:54:10 Dave: Oh, wow. And how old were you? 00:54:12 Will: Uh, probably in my sixties. And, um, I was the guest at the camp, and when I went in, uh, we had eight rods. And Bob Clay was my guide along with this Williamson guy. And so we were on the kispiox and coming down, we got to the. Maybe you remember some of these names. The potato patch. 00:54:33 Dave: Mhm. No. 00:54:34 Will: Anyway, we started out and I was a guest, so I got the leftovers. Okay. 00:54:40 Dave: Okay. You were following behind. You were getting whatever the secondary water. 00:54:44 Will: Money guys were getting the really good runs, you know, in the buckets. It’s okay, I understand that. 00:54:50 Dave: Oh, yeah. 00:54:51 Will: So we’re we were in the home pool that’s just below Bob Clay’s cabin up on the river. Terry Ring was working down through the left side river, left through the ledges. And, uh, because he, he was an old veteran up in there. And I got the outside and I hooked this fish and I was. Spade was a spade. I can’t remember if I was. Yeah. Or expanded. I was pretty much a single handed guy then. Yeah. In fact, I think I was single handed. 00:55:23 Dave: It probably was back then. Yeah. Because the Spey was just getting going. 00:55:27 Will: I was headed in. Uh, I hope this fish had landed it. And it was, um. Well, it was thirty nine inches long. I remember that I couldn’t get forty out of it. I tried, but you wouldn’t give me forty. So it was thirty five inches long. But it had such big shoulders on it and all that. It weighed twenty seven pounds. 00:55:47 Dave: Twenty seven. Wow. 00:55:48 Will: Yeah. And it was just I was swinging a single handed. 00:55:51 Dave: Like a eight. 00:55:51 Will: Wait, wait, wait. It was a rod made by Jimmy Green for me, ten and a half foot tweener. It would be a tweener this year, what I call a tweener. 00:56:00 Dave: What’s a tweener? 00:56:01 Will: That’s, uh, not quite a spey, but. And not quite single handed. 00:56:06 Dave: Oh, right. How many feet was it? Long. 00:56:08 Will: It was, uh, ten and a half. 00:56:10 Dave: Yeah, ten and a half. And it was a ten and a half foot eight weight. And what was the rod? What was the name? The brand. 00:56:15 Will: Fenwick. 00:56:16 Dave: Oh, it was Fenwick. Yeah. This is the first like graphite Fenwick. 00:56:19 Will: It was, uh, older because he made it when it was almost pure glass. 00:56:24 Dave: Oh, so this is a glass. This is a glass rod. 00:56:26 Will: It was a Composite had some composite in it. 00:56:28 Dave: Dang. Do you still have that rod? 00:56:30 Will: I have that rod. Uh, I broke that rod on the kispiox, and it just made me sick. 00:56:38 Dave: Yeah. You had one of the. Yeah. Fenwick was the best back then. 00:56:41 Will: I stepped up on a slippery log there on the upper kispiox and slipped off. I’m laying there in the logs and in the tundra, looking up and there’s my my rod and a piece of my rod hanging from a tree. 00:56:57 Dave: Oh, jeez. Did you continue fishing steelhead for many years after that, or when did you did you stop or did you get out of steelhead? 00:57:04 Will: Oh no, I fished steelhead. That’s my river now. 00:57:07 Dave: Yeah. That is. So you still fish steelhead today? Yeah. With the spey rod. 00:57:11 Will: Oh, with the Spey, though. I’m a spear guy now. 00:57:14 Dave: I think that’s the cool thing about steelhead. I mean it’s amazing. You know, it’s like it’s one of those things, you know, there’s not a lot of sports you can do into your eighties and still, you know. Is there any is it still pretty pretty easy for. I guess the waiting gets harder, right? Like for all of us. 00:57:27 Will: When I get older, I have to be really careful now that balance is an issue. You know, I’ll be eighty nine. I’m still in fit, you know. I still work out every day. I’m still a senior athlete in track and field. So I’m not messing around. 00:57:40 Dave: Yeah. What is this? I was going to ask you. What’s the secret? Because you’re almost ninety. Right around the corner. You’ve got it. Sounds like you got everything going still. 00:57:46 Will: Yeah. Everything’s kind of going. It’s slowed down a lot. I’m careful where I wait and who I wade with. Uh, it’s, uh. I just have to be more careful. But I still got the fever. 00:57:57 Dave: Yeah. You do? That’s cool. Well, tell us, you mentioned you got some shows. What’s coming up? Where can people maybe run into you in person? It sounds like you’re going to be at Albany. The Albany show in Oregon. 00:58:06 Will: I think that next year. They’ve hired me to be their auctioneer again. 00:58:11 Dave: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Talk. I want to hear about that auctioneer. How did you get into that? And is that something you’ve been doing a while? 00:58:16 Will: George. Right. I mentioned to you earlier was my business partner and the international was having their conclave I with Steamboat Springs. So my partner was a beach. He had a twin beach and we. We flew in to go to that conclave and just to go. I’d been an officer in the organization for a little while, but nonetheless, I was just going to enjoy the show and meet the people and see all the stars and all that sort of thing. So we flew in, um, and we couldn’t find the dadgum airport at Steamboat Springs. So we’d seen a, uh, a rancher’s windsock out in his field, his grain field. So we flew back around over that and then landed in his field. 00:59:04 Dave: No kidding. 00:59:05 Will: And then staked the plane down. Wow. And walked through a walk, through a alfalfa patch over to the highway and thumbed into Steamboat Springs. 00:59:15 Dave: Oh my gosh. 00:59:16 Will: And, uh, when we got there, we went through all the festivities and everything. And the dinner that night, the auctioneer didn’t show up, so they asked if somebody in the audience knew how to auctioneer and I raised my hand. I said, I can do that. 00:59:29 Dave: No kidding. Had you ever done that before? Uh, so this is the one where you got to be kind of fast with your words and stuff, right? 00:59:34 Will: Oh, yeah. You got to know what you’re doing in auction. But I used to sing the auctioneer song. Guitar play, you know? 00:59:42 Dave: Oh, really? 00:59:42 Will: Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. 00:59:45 Dave: Oh, wow. 00:59:46 Will: And then. So I thought, geez, I could do this. So thirty five thousand dollars later, we raised that kind of money that night, and I became their auctioneer. You did for the Federation all over the world. 00:59:59 Dave: And what’s an auctioneer? Can you give us a little snippet of what that sounds like? 01:00:02 Will: Yeah. You call a call now. Here we go. Now give me a five dollar bill. Now. I’ll take a five. It’ll give me five now. Abilify. Abilify. Who’ll be a buyer? And I will give me five. 01:00:10 Dave: Nice. That’s it. Gosh. So you sit there and you basically. I mean, that’s the auctioneer. And then you do that for. How does it work at the Albany show? You’ll be auctioning off. 01:00:21 Will: Okay, so the auction, they have an auction committee they put together, um, of, say somewhere between ten and twenty items of value, equipment, trips, art, anything to do with fly fishing. We auction it off to the audience that sat at dinner and the monies go that we earn then are distributed to the various clubs for their conservation projects within the Oregon Council. 01:00:48 Dave: So that goes to all the yeah, whatever the conservation projects. 01:00:51 Will: It runs the show and then it, it helps with the conservation projects in each club. So they’re working on everything from soup to nuts, you know. And so I did auctions for the Museum of American Fly Fishing back east. I went to New York and did auctions there. I’ve been all over the Midwest. Um, I’ve done a little over four hundred auctions and I’ve raised a little more, I don’t know, we figured somewhere around four or five million dollars a time, you know. But the money’s going for conservation, primarily. I don’t ever say what it’s for. I mean, they call me to be the voice to make as much money as I possibly can. So I’ve sold everything from my hat and underwear. 01:01:38 Dave: Yeah. What’s the biggest thing? What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever sold? 01:01:42 Will: Villa in, uh, Italy. 01:01:44 Dave: Really? You actually sold an actual, uh, structure? 01:01:47 Will: Well, it was to use the villa for a period of time. The value of the trip to go and stay at the villa was about fifty grand. 01:01:57 Dave: Oh. Fifty grand? Yeah, right. Wow, that is a lot. 01:01:59 Will: You stayed there for Christmas vacation or something like that. But but the trips to South America and all over the world still were pretty well, too. I’ve everything I’ve sold. I told you about the underwear. Yeah, my kind of auctions are fun auctions, but they have a serious tone because they’re trying to raise money. But I’m having fun with the audience. So over time, the audience gets carried away and they want to buy your hat. 01:02:24 Dave: Oh, right. 01:02:25 Will: I go in looking like the Lone Ranger, you know? And so, uh, they want to buy your hat and, and they have a lot of items. So one night, I think we were in the state of Washington and there were two auctioneers. There were so many items. These are like fifty items. And so we’d trade off. And that night we got a little carried away and somebody wanted to buy my hat. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll sell your shirt. So I sold his shirt. And then somebody wants to sell your underwear and it raises a lot of money, does it? 01:02:55 Dave: So somebody out there might still have your your hat in underwear out there. 01:02:59 Will: Yeah. So but you stand on the stage halfway naked, you know, and making money for these guys, which is all ad lib. 01:03:06 Dave: Yeah, exactly. Well, now, and you’re a Hall of Famer, right? You’re in the Hall of Fame. 01:03:09 Will: I am. 01:03:10 Dave: Yeah. So I mean that’s that’s still worth some money I’m sure Hall of Fame you know hat. 01:03:14 Will: Well The Hall of Fame thing is that, you know, it’s the Li Li and Joan Wolf operation back there on the East Coast. I was in the class of twenty twenty three. There were five of us in the class. Everyone was dead but me. But the guys like Arnold Gingrich, I don’t know. Arnold Gingrich was the was a member of the Federation. He was the editor of of Esquire magazine. So he he was in my class. And, um, John Atherton, a famous, really famous, great author of fly fishing books and stuff like the Atherton Nymph, has always been a favorite of mine. He was there, but he’s passed on and Sam, Sam, um, Philippi old guy. This goes back into the eighteen hundreds and he was a rod builder. And then Will Godfrey, for crying out loud. And I, I never thought anything about it. I didn’t know much about the Hall of Fame or anything, but somebody did the nomination and I was chosen to be in the Hall of Fame. 01:04:17 Dave: It makes sense. It makes sense. I mean, we’ve heard some of the stories today. I think you’re well deserved. And we didn’t even get into, I think a lot a lot of stuff on probably some of the other stuff you did in protections and over the years. Right? 01:04:29 Will: Well, yeah, I was governor Andrew, state of Idaho put me on the Fish and Game Commission. 01:04:36 Dave: That’s right. On the commission. What was that like? So you’re actually there basically making laws. 01:04:42 Will: Regulation in laws. And we had a five man commission. All of us were hunters or fishermen and or fishermen. And, um, the thing that caught everybody’s attention, we were really solid on what we wanted to do with Idaho fisheries. And of course, Idaho fisheries is based on government fish being raised in hatcheries. And we’re wild fish guys, and we don’t want government fish put in on top of wild fish anytime, anywhere. I just don’t want that. So we inventoried the state, our commission. We ordered an inventory of the state’s free flowing streams, and we come up with a tremendous amount of river, have free flowing streams and fish and game. We’re trying to keep them stocked and all that crap. That’s what I say is crap. 01:05:32 Dave: Yeah. 01:05:33 Will: So we got blue ribbon stuff, and Montana is another one of those places that has this great streams. Mother nature does a hell of a lot better job. 01:05:42 Dave: Yeah. You don’t need hatchery fish there. 01:05:44 Will: We don’t need government fish on top of Mother nature. So we selected a few streams. Selway Lochsa, a part of Henrys Fork, Silver Creek, Moyer up north, the Saint Joe. And we said, don’t be putting any government fish on top of any fish in those rivers. Mother nature will take care of them, and she’ll do. I have a heck of a lot better job than you guys ever will, right? 01:06:09 Dave: And is that did that have a designation? Now to this day it’s still. 01:06:13 Will: Fight was on, man. 01:06:15 Dave: Oh really? That was it. So what was the hardest part of being in that commission role? 01:06:20 Will: Trying to convince the Fish and Game that it wasn’t about their jobs and any of that sort of thing was about the longevity of fisheries in the state of Idaho. But they’re they’re about they’re a business. You know, that’s a money deal. That’s, uh, these guys, uh, their life earnings, their studies, all their research, everything is based on, on hatchery fish. That’s jaw. And so when you got a government agency saying to the public, we have a lot of jobs here and it’s really great. And but it’s killing the fisheries. 01:06:53 Dave: Yeah. Well, it was kind of a I mean, what they, I think like a paradigm shift, you know, kind of like, um, like Lee Wolfe, the same thing him doing that, right. That was a paradigm shift that really resonated. 01:07:03 Speaker 8: This was all going on. 01:07:04 Will: By the way, at the same time. 01:07:05 Dave: Oh, it was at the same time. 01:07:06 Will: Same time I was with with Lee and all those guys. 01:07:09 Dave: Go, oh yeah. So Lee was doing a lot of his stuff on the East Coast, and you were doing a lot of the stuff on the West. 01:07:13 Will: Yeah, and I put it to the commission. We did the job because we set aside those dreams. We set very special regulations on catch and release, on what kind of tackle you could use in certain places. No government fish dumped in the river. We got some help on the Henry’s Fork from the Harriman family because they owned the railroad ranch. And the good part of the railroad ranch ran through the through the big railroad ranch. 01:07:38 Dave: That was, uh, Harriman. That reach? 01:07:41 Will: Yeah, that was Harriman. Harriman. And the governors of Idaho were working on a deal to donate their ranch in perpetuity to the state of Idaho. 01:07:52 Dave: Oh, wow. As a protected stream. 01:07:55 Will: As a protected stream, and as a protected area, it was going to be a state park. 01:07:59 Dave: And who was Harriman? 01:08:00 Will: Roland Harriman and Averell Harriman are the Mongols that organized Union Pacific Railroad. 01:08:06 Dave: Oh no kidding. They’re the railroad Standard Oil. And they were. They also fly anglers. 01:08:12 Will: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so they the ones that developed Sun Valley, they owned Sun Valley and they owned the railroad ranch. 01:08:20 Dave: They did Sun Valley and Eagle Silver and all that stuff. Silver Creek. 01:08:23 Will: Oh, they wanted to donate it on their, on their demise when they passed on. 01:08:27 Dave: So they were conservationists too, even though they had lots of impacts with the railroad. They were. 01:08:30 Will: So when they donated to the state governor and just appointed me as one of the members of the committee to accept the railroad ranch as a state park in the state of Idaho. And I was the Fish and Game representative commissioner, not paid employee. I’m a commissioner. I’m a rural lawmaker kind of guy. 01:08:51 Dave: You’re putting you’re giving your time up, right? For free. 01:08:54 Will: Uh, I got twenty five bucks a day. 01:08:56 Dave: Oh, you did okay. I got a little money. Yeah. 01:08:58 Will: I worked for. So what we did in that transfer, in working with the Harrimans, they said the only reason we’re going to do this is if we have these special regulations on bird hunting and on, uh, elk hunting and on fisheries. And so there’s no government fish in Henry’s Fork anymore. Period. We don’t put them in. We don’t put any fish in there. We have special regulations. So we use fly only barbless, all that kind of stuff that protects wild fish. And so we really worked hard. But man, the public, uh. 01:09:32 Dave: Was there a lot of backlash? 01:09:34 Will: Yeah. I had to address the legislature because our regulation dumped one of the legislature’s farther off the river using his angleworms and all that sort of thing. So he was pissed. 01:09:46 Dave: So people were impacted, right? That had to change. 01:09:49 Will: Yeah. So we had fights, we had the battles, but we won and we were criticized. But today we’re still criticized, really criticized hard for not going far enough. 01:10:00 Dave: That’s interesting. Wow. You were you were criticized when you got going and got it. And then you were criticized later for not doing enough. 01:10:06 Will: Yeah. And it probably, you know, the fishing game is about hatcheries and they’re about jobs and they’re about putting fish in and telling people there’s a lot of fish there, and the public can go out there and do it anything they want. That’s their style. Our style is, let’s have a great fishery. Let’s have a blue ribbon type fishery. Let’s bring people here. This would be a money maker well beyond anything. You’ve got one with Garcia or anybody else. 01:10:31 Dave: Exactly. Which it still is, right? I mean, still that Henry, that whole area. I mean, we’re going there. We’re gonna go there with Phil Roy. We’re fishing the lake. You know, Henry’s Lake. We’re going to hit that this next year. 01:10:41 Will: Yeah. Henry’s Lake is not part of the ranch, but Henry’s lake is was a brook trout and and a big cutthroat cross fishery. Henry’s lakes. A nice place to fish, but it’s built all around it now. I mean, it’s access is difficult. Access is a little bit difficult. If you get with a lodge, you’ll be okay. 01:10:59 Dave: Yeah. That’s what we’re doing. Yeah. We’re going with the lodge there. 01:11:01 Will: So it should be on right now. 01:11:04 Dave: Yeah. That’s right. I just talked to actually, we’re gonna this week, I think tomorrow I’m talking to the Henrys Lake Foundation president and we’re going to talk. And he’s actually an outfitter too, I believe. So we’re gonna hear a little some stories. And he just sent me a text and he said, man, the fishing was amazing yesterday. 01:11:18 Will: Should be good. The whole Henrys fork system. See, this is that whole system is a early spring. 01:11:24 Dave: Oh it is. That’s when it really shines. 01:11:26 Will: Because there’s a lot of stakeholders on the water. Potato farmers, you know, they need their stakeholders and we need to protect them too, so that we raise spuds. But we got them working. The foundation’s got them working all together so that, uh, we have stream flows where we don’t don’t depredate the wild stocks. That’s what the foundation’s about. And that’s my work with them is their auctioneer was to raise money for their programs to protect the fisheries. 01:11:55 Dave: Well, well, I think we could probably leave it there. This has been a solid, uh, a solid day. You know, we’ll like we said, we’ll have some links out to the the shows you’re going to be at and do you do other than the Albany show, are you doing any other shows? Do you do the fly fishing shows or is that the main thing you got going? 01:12:08 Will: Well, quite honestly, I’m right at the end of my career. 01:12:12 Dave: Yeah. You put your time in, you put eighty eight years is a pretty solid career. 01:12:15 Will: So the options that I’ve been doing were for the Henry Ford Foundation. They were in Boise, Salt Lake, San Francisco, Jackson Hole, you know, places like that. Then with the the international, they’ve changed their format. They don’t do auctions much anymore. But I, I was all over the country. I’ve been all over the country with those guys. And then there’s, uh, the big show down in Idaho Falls. 01:12:41 Dave: Oh yeah. Yeah. Do you do that show? The East Idaho show? 01:12:43 Will: Yeah, but I’m done there too. You know, they bring in a younger auctioneer now, and, uh, it’s sad to leave that part of my world. 01:12:51 Dave: Yeah, that was a good show. Or that is a good show. That’s a great show. 01:12:55 Will: And I can still do the job, but I think they’re worried about maybe the old auctioneer keeling over on stage. 01:13:01 Dave: Right. They don’t want anybody to. 01:13:04 Will: They’re bringing in the new guys and everything. So I’m at the end of my career. 01:13:08 Dave: But you’re still fishing. You’re still fishing, which is pretty amazing. 01:13:11 Will: Oh, yeah, all the time. In fact, my wife and I have already been up on the North Fork this year, and we just scoped it out to see what the river’s running. You know, I was looking at the flows this morning, five thousand three hundred. That’s a little high for this time of year. 01:13:26 Dave: Oh it’s high. So there’s plenty. Did you get a decent snowpack out there? 01:13:29 Will: No, no. We’re drought bait. We run out of water in August. Probably so. 01:13:33 Dave: Yeah, I know, I know, we’re changing. Yeah. We had a trip in Colorado that we had to cancel or move. 01:13:38 Will: Yeah. That Colorado system. I followed that pretty closely. Just. 01:13:41 Dave: Oh. Have you. Yeah. We were going to be fishing with Landin up there at the, um, uh, the South Platte. And it sounds like the lakes, they’re going to be draining. 01:13:48 Will: That’s good stuff, but I, I used to live in Colorado and, uh, I’m happy to be an Idaho guy. We’ve seen some great fish in here. 01:13:56 Dave: Yeah, Idaho is cool. What is it about? Maybe leave us with that. What is it about Idaho that is different and unique in the West as far as the States, right? What do you love about Idaho out there? 01:14:05 Will: Well, I think it starts with the government and the way they’ve been, but sometimes they’re really hard to work with. We have a big agricultural complex in the state of Idaho, and they require water, especially for the crops in the south of Idaho. So water is really important in that snake River water, which comes out of the Yellowstone country. You know, the water comes out of the. But in the process, we’ve been able to maintain some really quality fisheries. You know, the brown Drake catches are on right now down on the Silver Creek. And the Silver Creek area is under the direction of not only somewhat fishing game, but under the conservation organizations. Uh, and, and they’ve been, we’ve been able to maintain what’s going on on the Henrys fork primarily because of we wrote the contracts that said that if Idaho decides not to follow the rules of the Harriman family, it reverts back to the Harriman family. And so we’ve had a governor, we had Butch Otter. He wanted to sell it. 01:15:11 Dave: Sell it back to the family. 01:15:13 Will: No, he just wanted to sell it for big bucks and get out from under the maintenance costs. 01:15:17 Dave: Oh, gosh. 01:15:18 Will: So to do that, that if he did that, the law automatically goes back to the Harriman family. One of the really big battles in this state now is that the anadromous programs, you know, we’ve got these salmon and steelhead. 01:15:32 Dave: Yeah, they’re traveling thousands of miles up the Columbia to get back there. 01:15:35 Will: And the dams in Washington, the snake River dams in Washington, totally annihilating these runs because the pools, the pools behind the dams get so warm that the fish can’t migrate. They die. Jeez, they just die. I mean, you ever heard of Lonesome Larry? 01:15:51 Dave: Lonesome? No. 01:15:52 Will: Lonesome Larry is the only sockeye salmon that made it all the way to to the middle of Idaho on one year. 01:16:00 Dave: I do know Lonesome Larry. I remember that story. Yeah. So used to sockeye. Used to, you know, I’m not sure how many millions of fish, but it used to be huge. 01:16:08 Will: They usually die. Now they don’t make it because the water gets too warm and they can’t drink the warm water. 01:16:13 Dave: Yeah. I think that’s a big that’s a big issue. The four snake dams. I feel like now that Klamath dams have come out, I feel like it seems like those are the next big ones that are. I don’t know what do what do you think it’s going to take? You’ve been you’ve been involved in conservation all your life. What do you think it’s going to take to get those removed? 01:16:27 Will: Not in my lifetime. 01:16:29 Dave: No. You don’t think it’s going to happen? 01:16:30 Will: Well, Trump, President Trump, he doesn’t know which way fish swims. I mean, jeez, excuse me. I don’t mean to be rude to him, but he’s not a conservation background. He’s an eastern guy. He doesn’t know what you know. Honest to Pete, we say out here, he doesn’t know which way water flows. 01:16:45 Dave: Right? No. It’s true. Yeah. If you haven’t been on the ground. 01:16:49 Will: That’s another issue altogether. But and then he just he takes Noah away from us and he takes. 01:16:55 Dave: Right the protections the Environmental Protection Agency, all the federal, all the. Basically, when you started in nineteen sixty seven, that’s when the EPA and all these federal protection agencies were coming in federally. Right? Right. Yeah. I mean, that was a big thing back in the sixties and 70s. 01:17:08 Will: You know, which would you rather have something? Can you run your washing machine and irrigate your wheat and still have fish? You know, it almost becomes a zero sum game. Winners and losers. I’m the kind of guy that goes with the whole idea that it’s not a zero sum game. There’s a piece here for everybody, and if we just get along, we’re going to really have something. But the tribe, the tribe is ours to me, is our salvation. They’re sovereign nations. They have treaties and all kinds of things. Other than that, you know, it’s against the power of people for generating energy. There’s two things that are a real threat to me in my mind as I work on this stuff. One of the threats is AI, and AI requires a huge amount of energy. A huge amount of energy comes from hydro and hydro when not managed properly kills fish. 01:18:02 Dave: Yeah it does. Yeah, hydro is tough. 01:18:04 Will: It’s really tough. The other is just that the power people, the energy people, the that is so important in our society today that I don’t know how you really block that. It’s only the you don’t block it. You get along and try to make it work. 01:18:19 Dave: I know it’s interesting because the. And the water goes back to the, the climate change thing because like right now we’re, we’re seeing droughts partly because things are changing. Right. 01:18:27 Will: And it’s yesterday’s newspaper here, the salmon fishery closed. 01:18:32 Dave: It did it closed where? On the Clearwater. 01:18:34 Will: It’s closed. Um there’s still the South Fork of the sea. You can still fish up on the Luxor, but the Clearwater is closed. 01:18:44 Dave: So the Clearwater is closed for steelhead right now. And right now as we speak, it’s early June. Oh for salmon right. Salmon. Yeah. 01:18:51 Will: I hope that’s not a precursor for what’s going to happen with steelhead. Because where are we today? It’s June fourth. Okay. June fourth. You got to go by the dates here. July one is the opening of steelhead in the in the Clearwater. And we’re just hoping that we got some fish coming up the creek. Yeah, we just really we don’t know yet, but the Fish and Game boys Oregon, Washington and Idaho predicted a huge really a pretty satisfactory. I said maybe huge is too strong a word. But salmon run. That was going to be tremendous. And they closed it already. 01:19:29 Dave: Right. 01:19:30 Will: Fish. 01:19:30 Dave: No. Fish. I know. 01:19:32 Will: But the tribe has rights and the tribe is salvation to me, I think. But the, you know, Democratic or Republican, it doesn’t matter which party is in there. Uh, Obama had a shot at it. Clinton’s had a shot at it. And Trump has. Trump’s got a shot at it. 01:19:51 Dave: Shot at the dams. 01:19:52 Will: Yeah. Protecting the fish. They all waffled out on it. So. 01:19:56 Dave: Well that’s where it comes back to like we’re talking on the ground. I mean the small groups, that’s where it really you know, in this country, regardless of what goes on that, you know, people still have power, you know, a movement. I mean, it feels like that’s do you it feels like that’s what you’ve been a part of. Like, you know, starting back to Lee Wolf, do you feel like that it’s been this movement that’s been part of your life. You’ve seen. 01:20:16 Will: Oh yeah. No question. And it’s just because of my personal, close to personal passion and love for the out of doors, flowing rivers, wild fish. And that goes all into all wildlife, all wildlife and salmon. I’m not a salmon fisherman, frankly, that’s a hard fish on a fly. But I’ve learned that what you do with salmon you do to steelhead and steelhead to me, is that’s one of the icons of this state, salmon and steelhead. The other thing is here in Lewiston, you know, we’re the furthest inland port to the Pacific Ocean. So our grain and our crops, our hummus, all the crops that we have that are going to the Far East, go by barge down the river to Portland and or to Longview or somewhere like that shipped over. It’s a big trade. Okay. So there’s all kinds of problems. I couldn’t be happier to see that the Portland people had trouble with. The unions over there. Had trouble with that with, uh, the shipping thing. So they blocked the shipping. They you can’t we don’t take our grain down there anymore to speak of. But the farmers up here, they’ve got to get sort of their livelihoods important. 01:21:31 Dave: Yeah. You don’t you don’t want to get rid of. Yeah. That you’re the livelihoods of the people. 01:21:34 Will: Agricultural side of things. So but there’s alternatives. They have alternatives. They can ship by truck. They can ship by unit, train. They can get to the ports. They don’t have to screw up the rivers. 01:21:45 Dave: No, it doesn’t have to go by barge. It’s not the only way. 01:21:48 Will: So the barge, you know, they they think the barge is the last answer. But that’s not that’s not working. 01:21:53 Dave: Well, you’re keeping up, you know, and we all should be keeping up a good fight, right, to to make sure we have this for, you know, our kids and our kids kids. Right? I mean, that’s, that’s what we’re all hopeful. 01:22:05 Will: Over on the Henry’s Fork. And in those countries over there, the population base is just increasing tremendously. Trying to teach people about, you know, the value of the fishery and not just taking them home for groceries. Why do we have to mess around? Of course, fishing games, big job thing. And then we have a governor, Governor little, you know, he’s a rancher. He stands. 01:22:29 Dave: Right, right. Yeah. He’s got some priorities. It’s an interesting conversation. Well, I think well, we could probably leave it there for today. This has been really amazing to hear. You know the history going back. Like we said, Joe Brooks. You know, it doesn’t get any bigger than that you know in your connections. And it’s been definitely a great episode. We will send everybody. We’ll let everybody know where they can go, and they can meet you maybe at Albany or just check in with you. 01:22:50 Will: I’m always open. I still answer questions when people. So my email is okay. Everything’s okay. 01:22:57 Dave: Good. Well, hopefully maybe there’ll be some other. I’m sure other folks that will be checking in with you for other podcasts and stuff like that. But this has been great. And until we see you on the next one, thanks again for all your time. 01:23:06 Will: All right man. Thanks. Appreciate it. 01:23:10 Dave: Hope you enjoyed that one. Uh, pretty amazing stories there from Will. Uh, so cool to see he is still out there going strong on the water. If you get a chance, check in with Will, uh, let him know you heard this podcast and, and check in with me as well. I want to let you know if you’re interested in any trips. We are going to be heading to that Henry’s Lake area. If you’re interested in joining us for the Stillwater School with Phil Roy, uh, you can check in with me, Dave at web dot com. We’ll also have an announcement. It’s coming pretty soon on all the details there, but if you want to get access to that, check in with me. If you’re a pro member, you get first access on all trips. So check in with Wet Fly Swing Pro as well. Tons of good trips coming here this year, upcoming events, and good stuff in the summer as we’re starting to kick it off. Uh, we’re going to be out there in about. So check in with me if you haven’t talked yet. If you’ve never sent me an email, please do that, Dave swing dot com or if it’s been a while. I always love to hear stories of anybody listening in and, and hearing that you’re getting some, uh, some benefit from the podcast here. That’s what keeps me going strong. So check in now and, uh, hope you, uh, have a great one and we’ll check in with you soon and have a great evening, morning or afternoon. See you on the next episode. Talk to you then. 01:24:19 Speaker 9: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit Wet Fly swing dot com.