990 | Bitterroot River Fly Fishing with Robert Prince: From Quigley Cripples to the Drag-and-Drop Cast

00:00:00 Dave: On the Bitterroot River. A dry fly landing several inches from a log can already be too far away. Today’s guest explains how he uses the reach cast and his drag-and-drop technique to place a fly within centimeters of wood without sacrificing the drift. Today, we’re heading into western Montana to explore the Bitterroots dry fly fishing, its long list of hatches, and the techniques you can use to find more trout this season. Robert Prince, a Montana fly fishing guide, fly tyer, and lifelong angler who spends about ninety percent of his fly fishing days guiding the Bitterroot, is here, and today, you’re gonna find out why swallows can bring some of the river’s largest brown trout to the surface. How Robert uses the drag-and-drop presentation, and how a trout’s rise form can reveal whether it’s eating mayflies, stoneflies, or other aquatic insects. We’re also going to talk about how he adjusts his indicator buoyancy to detect subtle strikes, and why you need to get involved right now to protect the Bitterroot headwaters from a proposed rare earth mine. This is a big thing right now. You got to get involved. You can find Robert at Boom Trout on Instagram, and you can go to https://dontpollutetheroot.com/ to check in and support protecting the Bitterroots headwaters. All right, let’s get into it. Here he is, Robert Prince. How are you doing, Robert? 00:01:14 Robert: Hey. I’m good. 00:01:15 Dave: Great, great, great. This is going to be a fun one. Today we are diving into the Bitterroot. Uh, we’re going to talk about that area. We’re going to talk about some dry fly fishing. Um, we’re going to get into a little bit of everything. We were recently on with Skip Morris on the podcast, and we’re just planning our boot camp, which is coming up too. We’re doing this really cool event in a couple of months. And so we’re kind of getting speakers and stuff lined up. So I always love hearing you take a deep dive into an area, and we’re going to do that today. But before we get there, talk about that. How did you get into becoming an outfitter in Montana? It sounds like you work for a few different outfitters out there. 00:01:52 Robert: Yeah, well, I became a guide. Gosh, it’s probably been twelve, thirteen years now. And I grew up fly fishing like, you know, like it’s the typical guide story. I think I grew up fishing, you know, like, what am I going to do for a job in the summertime? You know, it started out in college, like, hey, what am I going to do in the summers? And, and like, just like every other trout bum in my town, I’m going to be a fishing guide. Right? 00:02:17 Dave: So you’re in Montana when you were in college. 00:02:20 Robert: Yeah. So I went to school in Missoula. Yeah, at the University of Montana. Mhm. And, uh, yeah, I started guiding like towards the end of college and right out of college. And, uh, um, I’m also a school teacher, so guiding was just a kind of perfect fit for June, July, and August. I guide pretty much full time and then, and then do some spring and fall trips as well. So. But yeah, it creates a nice kind of flow to the year, I would say. 00:02:48 Dave: Yeah, yeah. We just had, uh, Tim Camisa on and he’s been on a few times. He’s on the other side of the country, but he’s the same thing. He’s got his school, but then he goes hard in the summer and it makes it it’s a it’s a nice fit because you’ve got time off to do that. Um, yeah. And then the Bitterroot that seems like that’s the river you’re spending a lot of time on. Is that one that you’re on more than others in Montana? 00:03:10 Robert: Yes. I live here in the Bitterroot Valley. Um, I’d say ninety percent of my work and fishing days are here in the Bitterroot. 00:03:19 Dave: Yeah. Where is the Bitterroot Valley? For those people that don’t know, how would you describe it? 00:03:24 Robert: Yeah. Missoula. You know, Western Montana here. Um, if you head straight south of Missoula, the Bitterroot River basically skirts the eastern Idaho border and it flows for eighty five miles, um, due north. Uh, meets up with the Clark Fork River in Missoula. 00:03:43 Dave: So that’s it. So that’s one of the big rivers that I always think of. Missoula. You’ve got the Clark Fork, the well, the Bitterroot. And what’s the other one? There’s a couple of big ones, right? 00:03:52 Robert: Yeah. You got the Blackfoot. Blackfoot, of course. And then. And then Rock Creek. 00:03:56 Dave: And Rock Creek is the other one. Yeah. And that’s the one we’ve spent more. I’ve spent more time on Rock Creek than any of them. It’s kind of a a smaller stream, right. Is the Bitterroot quite a bit bigger than rock or is it similar? 00:04:07 Robert: It is on the main stem. Yeah. But the Bitterroot is such a diverse system for a Freestone River. Uh, you know, you can go up in the headwaters and have mountain stream fishing and, uh, small tributary, uh, you know, pocket water and, and then you get down towards Missoula and it really becomes like a spring Creek, uh, technical dry fly flats and, uh, long leaders and, and for being a freestone, it has just about every kind of fishing you could imagine, which is really unique, I think, among rivers. 00:04:39 Dave: Why does it change into like, more like a spring creek down in that lower section? 00:04:43 Robert: Yeah. The gradient becomes very low towards Missoula. It’s, uh, it really spreads out, becomes a very wide, Mostly shallow river and, you know, a lot of bug life, a lot of mayflies and the fish pot up and, uh, you know, fishing some flats on the Bitterroot, you’d swear you’re on like the Missouri River. You know, it’s like that kind of glassy technical, you know, you got to have your a game, right? Especially this time of year. Trichos. Those fish are as hard as any fish anywhere. 00:05:15 Dave: Yeah. That’s perfect. I love that you mentioned Trichos because that we just fished the Missouri for Trichos earlier this year. And yeah, it was not easy. You know, it’s, uh, and we got some nice fish, but it was not easy. What are the big hatches that get you fired up on the Bitterroot? 00:05:29 Robert: Oh, man, that’s a big question because we have so many. That’s another thing that makes the Bitterroot kind of cool is like, we get almost every kind of bug you can imagine. 00:05:40 Dave: No kidding. Because you have that mix, you have that higher gradient stuff, and then you get the lower grade. 00:05:45 Robert: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So depending on which section you’re on, you know, you can have multitudes of different insects. And so it starts early in the spring. Most people know about our famous squash hatch. It’s that size ten. All of Stonefly hatches March twentieth to April twentieth is that window. Um, so that’s some of the best fishing of the year. You know, if the weather if the weather cooperates and and then you get runoff like a typical freestone. And then gosh, we got salmon flies up on the, the forks and upper river. And then that rolls right into Golden Stone’s, uh, pmd’s green drakes. We have a little, um, golden that we call the Bitterroot Stone. That can be insane fishing. When that hatch comes off, that’s actually probably my favorite hatch. And then, gosh, trichos, I’ve seen Calabasas. I’ve seen, you know, we have caddis, we have crane flies. We have. I mean, there’s just kind of everything, honestly. 00:06:51 Dave: That’s crazy. Wow. That’s really cool. And are you are you floating or walking weight or doing a little bit of everything? 00:06:59 Robert: Like most of our guided trips are floating to cover water and, you know, the bitter, it’s big enough that it’s usually tough to wade. 00:07:07 Dave: Yeah it is. Right. So you’re floating. Do you do a lot of the fishing? Most of it out of the boat. If you’re on a dry fly hatch or you hopping out and covering things. 00:07:15 Robert: A little bit of both. I, um, certainly a lot from a boat. And, uh, part of what makes the Bitterroot fun for at least for me, is it just has so many braids and side channels and little sneaky spots. And, and I’m a person who loves all that and loves to explore it. So if I have people that are a little adventurous, like we’re going to poke in some side channels and we might hop out of the boat and, you know, go find some fish that maybe don’t see, you know, a hundred flies a day. 00:07:43 Dave: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Looking at the map, the Bitterroot, kind of like you said, it flows from south to north. It goes under the highway and then keeps heading north, kind of past Missoula. But then the Clark Fork comes in there, or I guess, I guess the opposite. The Bitterroot flows in the Clark Fork and the Clark Fork just spread out. Looks like there’s a maze of side channels. And like, what is that lower Clark Fork or that where the Bitterroot comes in, that confluence is that kind of a unique area? 00:08:09 Robert: Yeah, that is a unique area. So that’s around the Kelly Island fishing access. And there’s a, there’s a big chunk of public land there. And it is really, um, an interesting part of the system hydraulically. Um, so when the Clark Fork enters the Missoula Valley, it actually loses a lot of its flow. It goes underground. And then Kelly Island is kind of where that water starts to come back to the surface. And so like that maze you’re talking about, it’s just tons of groundwater like springs. Wow. So it’s, there’s a ton of like cool little almost pseudo spring creeks through there and, um, yeah, below Kelley Island, you know, the river really picks up volume. A lot of that is just groundwater returning, you know, to the surface. 00:08:57 Dave: Wow. That’s cool. So are you. So are people fishing that maze of that area in the Kelley Island area? 00:09:03 Robert: People do. Yeah, absolutely. And I would go there in college a lot too and, and poke around and yeah, there’s there’s some nice fish through all of that. They’re, they’re not always easy. Yeah. 00:09:13 Dave: They’re not easy. 00:09:14 Robert: You know, because it is kind of pseudo spring creek. It like it’s tough. 00:09:18 Dave: Yeah. Right. And then so and you fish the from the Bitterroot once it flows into the Clark fork, do you fish that downstream or how far do you cover the water? 00:09:27 Robert: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the Clark, I mean, all the way down to, you know, Superior and Saint Regis even way down there. Um, guiding wise, I don’t do a ton of that anymore. Uh, just from where my house is. It’s two, you know, it’s like a two hour drive just to almost get to the river, right. You if you go way down the Clark Fork. 00:09:51 Dave: So yeah, but. 00:09:54 Robert: Yeah, but it’s a great river and big fish and you know, those, those rainbows are hot. They’re legendary for. 00:10:00 Dave: Are they, is that the species? Is it mainly rainbows in their. 00:10:03 Robert: Rainbows, big browns and a lot of pike too, if you. 00:10:06 Dave: Oh, Pike. 00:10:07 Robert: Yeah. If you like pike fishing, the Clark Fork is I mean, there’s forty inch fish in there and. 00:10:12 Dave: No kidding. 00:10:13 Robert: Oh, yeah. Yeah. 00:10:14 Dave: Dang. So what are they? So are they out there? Uh, how are they working with the other species? Are they, uh, having an impact on the trout? 00:10:22 Robert: Oh, they have to. 00:10:24 Dave: Yeah, yeah. How long have they been in there? Have they been in there a while? Because I don’t remember. I don’t remember like in Rock Creek ever hearing about Pike in Rock Creek. 00:10:32 Robert: Mhm. Yeah. Because they wouldn’t probably. That water’s too fast and cold, right. Yeah. But you know, the Clark Fork has had them for a long time. I mean, gosh, probably since the seventies or 80s. No kidding. I would guess. Yeah. And it and it’s got enough slow, you know, sloughs back channels, you know, places where those fish can sit even during runoff, you know, places they can hold. And then in when in the summer, when the river drops and warms, they, they just move into the main channel. And we, we catch pike, you know, in surprisingly fast water in the summer, like water, water that you’d almost think of as trout water and. 00:11:10 Dave: Oh, wow. 00:11:11 Robert: Yeah. Because they’re, they’re, they’re feeding, you know. 00:11:13 Dave: They’re feeding. Yeah. What’s the on the pike? Is that, are they pretty easy to catch out there? Or is it easier to catch a pike or a trout? 00:11:20 Robert: Uh, probably a trout, honestly. Yeah. I’d say like twenty years ago, the pike were easier. And but a lot of guys are targeting them now and more guys are guiding for them, especially on fly rods, you know, especially like hoot owl, low water, you know, when it gets hot. Right. And, And quite a few trout guys will switch over to Pike to, you know, to take it easy on the trout. 00:11:44 Dave: Oh that’s crazy. Are you fishing? Uh, are you guiding for Pike? 00:11:48 Robert: No, I am, I haven’t done any pike trips. I. Yeah. Um, it’s just not my it’s not in my wheelhouse. 00:11:54 Dave: It’s not your wheelhouse. Yeah. It’s interesting because we’re coming off a really big pike trip up to we went up to northern Saskatchewan. I mean, just to show you how cool it is that they’re in Montana because we went all the way up. I mean, multiple plane trips, you know, flew up to, you know, through Canada, to the Northwest Territory. And, you know, that’s what’s cool about fishing is it’s not just about the fish. You know, the experience of getting up to that lodge was amazing. Just that. And but the funny thing was, is, I mean, we were catching pike, forty inch pike, some, even the thirty eight thirty seven inch pike were amazing. Yeah, right. But the crazy thing is, is you’re talking right here in Montana, right down here where people are at. You can go catch those fish on the Bitterroot on the Clark Fork. 00:12:33 Robert: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And not just one or two. You can. On a good day, you can catch a dozen. You know and I know a popular thing to do, and I. I’ve done it for fun. And. Is that the track? We call it Tricho Piko in the morning you fish the spinner fall and you fish trout and then. And then the rest of the day, once you know the fish stop rising, you just target pike and. 00:12:56 Dave: Yeah, there. 00:12:57 Robert: You go. 00:12:57 Dave: Get the best of both worlds. 00:12:59 Robert: Yeah, that’s a pretty fun day. 00:13:00 Dave: Chico. Paco. There you go. That’s really cool. Nice. Well, as we’re speaking, I mean, we could. I think right now it’s September, you know, September, you know, October is going to be coming quick. What does it look like right now? Are you like, if you were going to go out today or this in September, what would be happening with dry flies right now? 00:13:18 Robert: Yeah. So well, we and fortunately, we’ve been getting a lot of rain the last few days, which is that’s good. Just beautiful. You know, putting the fires out. Um, but on a typical early September you’d, you’d be expecting tricos to spin mid morning, uh, that ten to noon kind of time sometimes later in the day, depending on how cold the morning is, of course. Um, and then you’d switch over to terrestrial ants, beetles, uh, hoppers, that sort of thing. Up higher on the system. So, um, south of Hamilton, the river has more gradient. And we get these um bigger fall drakes. Green drakes. So they’re called hecuba’s just a little shade lighter than a than your summer green Drake. And sometimes those hatch in quite large numbers large enough to get the fish really excited. And that’s like a size ten. So um, usually you only see like you might see a handful of them, but the fish certainly know they’re out there. So rolling a big like Quigley cripple can be really exciting. So but yeah, that’s kind of what we’re doing right now. Um, later on in the month, we’ll get our mahogany duns and that can be spectacular. It’s like a size fourteen brown mayfly, and that rolls right into bluing olives. And I mean, heck, I’ve, I’ve seen mayflies hatching as late as the first week of November here, which for Montana freestone is pretty, pretty incredible, you know? 00:14:52 Dave: Yeah. That is incredible. Wow. So yeah, you got a lot going then and then back to the other side. You mentioned the all the stoneflies and it’s that’s the first one. Is that the first stonefly that comes out in the. I guess you’ve got other little smaller, like probably black Stone stuff like that too. 00:15:08 Robert: Yeah. Yeah. We have the Capnia and the Nomura’s and Nomura’s can be a big player as well. Um, I’ve. 00:15:16 Dave: Are those the little black stones? 00:15:17 Robert: They’re kind of a brownish size fourteen, a little bigger than the, the little black capnia stones. Um, and a lot of people overlook those Nomura’s and just focus on that scoala. But some days like you’ll see thousands of those Nomura’s and. And they almost won’t touch a squall sometimes. And, you know, it’s really like I tell people, if you’re coming here, don’t just throw a squall. Like if you’re not getting bit put on a Nomura. It can be a game changer. So but numerous squall is. That’s our big spring hatch and and then that in April we get we call them March Browns. But they almost always hatch in April. Yeah. 00:15:54 Dave: March Browns. Right. 00:15:55 Robert: Yeah. And we get our spring blue wings and oh okay. So spring fishing here again. As long as the water and weather cooperates can be really incredible. 00:16:05 Dave: Yeah. Right. Because you got the whole thing that since it’s a freestone, if you get a big, uh, well, eventually the snow is going to melt and the river’s going to blow out for a period of time sometime in the spring. Right? 00:16:16 Robert: Yeah, exactly. 00:16:17 Dave: And then once it clears up or once that clears up, then you’re into summer and then you’ve got the heat issue, right? That potentially, if it’s too hot that you’ll have hoot owl conditions potentially. 00:16:28 Robert: Yeah. And that’s as probably every trout fisherman in America can attest to. That’s becoming more and more common with climate change. And, you know, our our runoff happens earlier and our snowpack, you know, our snow season starts later. So huddle is a is a thing like in later July. That’s kind of our peak water temps. Um, it’s been pretty common to get huddled anymore, you know, but the cool thing about the Bitterroot is we have a reservoir up on the West Fork, um, which is kind of the main branch of the river. And throughout August when they’re releasing water for irrigation, uh, that West fork is incredibly cold because it’s a bottom release dam. So even when most other rivers are, are hot and not fishing, well, you know, you can go up the West Fork and have great fishing. 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You can learn more right now and start planning your trip at Blue Bonefish, Belize dot com. That’s blue Bonefish Belize dot com. Check them out right now. Where does the West Fork flow meet the main. Is there a town nearby there? 00:18:38 Robert: Yeah, it’s a little town called Connor. 00:18:41 Dave: Connor, Montana. And then in there. So you’re saying. I mean, it is essentially it’s a it’s a small tail out, I guess is what you’d call it. Yeah. 00:18:49 Robert: It’s yeah, yeah. The West Fork flows twenty six miles from painted Rock dam to the confluence, where it meets up with the East Fork and makes the main stem. And we float the West Fork. It’s floatable most of the summer. 00:19:03 Dave: Oh it is. Okay. So you do have that. So that’s pretty awesome. 00:19:06 Robert: Yeah. So all told, we have, if you count that we have about one hundred and ten miles of floatable water just on the border, it. 00:19:14 Dave: That’s amazing. Yeah. So you got so you can sounds like you can pick and choose depending on, you know, because as you said, it’s pretty diverse. You’ve got the higher gradient and the lower stuff. So depending on what you want to fish or what’s happening. You can hit different hatches. What is the. The squall. The hatch on that one. Describe that a little bit. These are bigger bugs. They’re not quite as big as the the big Goldens. Is that true? Maybe describe the squall hatch, how you’re fishing that. 00:19:38 Robert: Yeah. So a squall is about, uh, a standard like size ten to eight hook. Um, it’s a, it has a dark olive body, dark gray wing. You’re never going to see hundreds in the air like you would on a salmon fly hatch. You’ll see one or two here and there some, some days you see a bunch, but usually it’s like there’s one here, there’s one there, there’s one there. You’ll see one on the water once in a while. But being that first big hatchet, it doesn’t take many to get those fish really locked in. They like warm afternoons in that spring. I almost don’t like starting fish until noon or one in the afternoon. Let it warm up. Uh, they love woody structures. So, you know, the bitter yet we have lots of like log piles and woody banks and downed trees and. And we fish those flies tight to any wood you can find. They really love, uh, log piles. And, uh, it’s that time of the year where you want, you want the rubber legs of your dry fly scrape in the wood. 00:20:43 Dave: Okay. Is that because the, the bugs are just kind of crawling out onto the wood or are they falling in or why is the wood or just because that’s where the fish are. 00:20:52 Robert: Both. Yeah. Uh, both. Um, yeah. The females, you know, when they’re going to lay their eggs, they’re coming off those log piles and they’re not good fliers. So, you know, they’re very clumsy. So they’ll fly a little ways or they’ll sometimes just kind of walk off the log into the water and, uh, you’ll see them kind of like skittering, like running across the surface of the water. And those fish, you know, they just, they know, they know that’s where the bugs are. And they’ll sit under those logs and just wait for squalls to, to come by. So, um, you know, the old adage would is good is really, really, really true. And, uh, I tell people like, you can’t be close enough to the bank. You can’t be close enough to a log pile. Like, yeah, you know. 00:21:33 Dave: Like if you could hit the log pile and knock it off, drag it off into the water. That’s good. 00:21:38 Robert: Exactly. 00:21:38 Dave: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That’s so and then, and like I said, it’s pretty, it’s open. I mean, it’s going for a month. It sounds like a pretty decent period there. And then, and then what’s the then after that you blend into what are you doing after the squalls are starting to calm down a little bit. 00:21:54 Robert: Then we get our spring mayflies, like, uh, you know, April, start of April, uh, you get your March browns and some blue wings, uh, spring blue wings. So like, you’ll have days where you can, you’ll start out with a squall and then you’ll get that those March browns will start popping. You’ll switch over fish and mayfly for a couple hours and then go back to the scoala. And you’re just, you know, just cycle kind of between patterns, depending on which bank you’re on and where you’re seeing bugs and. And those are really fun days when you can just, you know, it’s April and you can fish a dry from boat ramp to boat ramp. It’s pretty awesome. 00:22:31 Dave: Yeah, that is awesome. Are you doing multi, are you fishing ever like the squall with a smaller dry on there. Yeah yeah. 00:22:39 Robert: Yeah. When you’re trying to figure out yeah. Are they eating smaller today. Are they eating in the Nomura today. Are they are they eating the march brown. You know. Yeah. Just to kind of. 00:22:47 Dave: Right. How do you figure that out. If you see you know how do you figure out what they’re eating? Is that is that something where if you just showed up on a day, you know, how would you know? 00:22:57 Robert: Yeah. Good question. Yeah. Ideally, you know, you see, you see a bug float down the river and you see a fish eat it, right? Yeah. 00:23:03 Dave: You see a little. Yeah. It’s the eat between a squall, I guess. Yeah. If you saw him eat, that’d be really obvious because it’s a bigger bug. But some of these smaller ones, like, uh, you know, you mentioned the March Brown or BWO, those are a little bit smaller, so it might be harder to tell if they’re eating that right. BW oh, versus blowing it off or versus a march. 00:23:21 Robert: Brown yeah, and yeah, good. Good question. And I was I was leading into that is if you if you can’t really see them actually eating right, the insect, you can often tell by rise form how efficient, you know, eats and its behavior. So a mayfly eats is going to be generally pretty quiet. Uh, right. You’ll just see that sometimes you’ll see the nose tip up, or maybe you won’t even see the nose. You’ll just see some rings, generally like a when a trout eats a stonefly, it’s a little more explosive, right? Because that generally that bug is moving. It’s, uh, they tend to just like hammer them. Right? So like a lot of times, you know, swallows or goldens or salmon flies, you’ll, you’ll hear a splash, you’ll see water. I mean, sometimes it’s like a rock hits the water, like they eat them very aggressively. Not always. I’ve seen fish eat swallows just the same as they would a mayfly. Just tip up, sip them, you know. But but in general, you can kind of tell like, oh, that fish just ate escolar because it’s a much more aggressive take than they would eat a mayfly. 00:24:24 Dave: Definitely. What is your, when you’re fishing your set up like your leader? Is it. What does that look like for the squall to set up? 00:24:31 Robert: Really simple. Yeah. And here on the Bitterroot, like you don’t have to get fancy and we can fish pretty heavy stuff. Like a nine foot three X leader is perfect. Three to four X is our bread and butter. You rarely have to get smaller than that. 00:24:46 Dave: Yep. Yeah. And then if you go to the the blue, I guess, what are the PMD or the PMD or the March brown sizes typically. 00:24:53 Robert: Yeah. March. They’re they’re in that fourteen sixteen inch range. Yeah. 00:24:58 Dave: Yeah. So you dropped down a little bit on those. 00:25:01 Robert: Yeah. Yeah. Like four x. It’s fine. 00:25:04 Dave: Okay. Yeah. This is it. I mean that’s the thing like you said at the start, there’s just so many different things you could cover. I mean, are you out there pretty much trying to cover a lot of these hatches? Are you fishing throughout the year. Um, you know, if you had to pick, you know, a couple that you could hit during the year, what would those be? 00:25:20 Robert: Oh, oh gosh, that’s a hard one. 00:25:22 Dave: Um, a tough one. 00:25:23 Robert: Yeah. I would say. 00:25:26 Dave: Yeah. 00:25:27 Robert: And that’s when like our really big brown trout eat dry flies. Like there’s a, there’s a two week period in the spring when those big fish just get kind of stupid. 00:25:38 Dave: No kidding. 00:25:38 Robert: Yeah. And uh, so more I’d say more twenty inch browns are caught on dries on the Bitterroot in that in the last two weeks of March. Then probably the rest of the year combined, like they’re just out eating. So if you are lucky enough to hit that window. Yeah. Then you can find some really wonderful fish on dries, which is cool. I also I love Pmd’s, I would say that’s boy, that’s right up there. That might almost be my favorite hatch. 00:26:08 Dave: What is it about Pmd’s pale morning Duns. And there’s also are there also pale Evening Duns. 00:26:13 Robert: Or we do get those as well. 00:26:15 Dave: Yeah, yeah. What is it about the pale morning dun that that hatch and that’s and that’ll be in that time. When is that. When is that happening. 00:26:22 Robert: So that’s usually mid to late June. Well we got a lot of them. And uh there’s days where you swear every single fish in the river is eating them. And, uh, you know, you can roll into a good pool on a good day during pmd’s and you’ll see fifty trout rising and you can catch everyone. It feels like that. And, uh, it’s just for consistent quality fishing all day long, ramp to ramp. It’s hard to beat a PMD. Like there’s a week or two in the summer where I can fish a Quigley cripple and nothing else for literally two weeks. So as a guy, that makes my life easy. But, uh, I mean, just the big fish are eating them. Small fish are eating them, all the fish are eating them. And, uh, you know, it’s, it’s rewarding because you see a fish rise, you make a good cast, you catch them, you know, and it’s just, it’s just, um, I just love fishing mayflies. I love how fish eat them. And it’s yeah, on the bitter, it’s just one of my favorite hatches. 00:27:24 Dave: How does the, uh, and I’ve heard a lot about the Quigley cripple. What is it about, you know, the maybe that pattern or just choosing the right mayfly, you know, in general, how do you go about that? Are there different styles that you use throughout the summer? 00:27:36 Robert: Yeah. Well, I, I come back to that Quigley over and over and over again. It’s either like a twig or a parachute. Um, if people have a hard time seeing, I tie my own twigs and the, I make the wing like three times the size of like a shop tie because I really think the fish don’t care about the wing. And just the way that thing sits, you know, half in the water, like sticking down like to the fish, that’s a dead bug. That thing’s not going anywhere. And they just they eat that thing so confidently. 00:28:10 Dave: Right? What’s. I don’t know what that style. I guess it’s the cripple style. I mean, are there other patterns out there other than the Quigley, that there are a lot that are tied like that. And what is that style? Is that the style? What is it called? 00:28:21 Robert: Yeah. Just a as far as I know, that’s a cripple. Yeah. Bob Quigley in California. 00:28:27 Dave: Yeah. Do you know that history there a little bit on the on who he was and all that stuff. 00:28:31 Robert: A little bit, yeah. 00:28:32 Dave: Bob. So and I think there was he had a few patterns that he fished, but the Quigley cripple seems to be the one you hear a lot about. 00:28:38 Robert: Mhm. Yeah. And you look at so many flies, like I think of a lot of Renee Harrop’s flies that are very much in that same like stylistically construction wise, you look at it, it’s like, oh, that’s a, that looks kind of like a quig like, like there’s something about that, you know, having the wing coming out like that, getting that fly to sit down in, you know, below the surface film. 00:29:04 Dave: Yeah. 00:29:04 Robert: It’s like magic. 00:29:06 Dave: How do you tie that when you describe. it, it looks like it’s got a normal body, a tail. Body. And then the front is where it gets a little bit different, you know? How do you describe that front part? 00:29:16 Robert: Yeah. So elk I use elk and not all elk is created equal. I’m pretty like I if you go into a fly shop, see if you can open the bags up and really dig through you want like kind of shorter tips on those. And I tie that, I tie that wing long. So probably a one and a half times the length of the hook. 00:29:40 Dave: Oh yeah. So the, the deer or the elk hair that’s sticking out. You want one and a half times the hook length. Yeah. So it’s sticking way out. It’s not just a little tuft. 00:29:49 Robert: Yeah. Exactly. 00:29:50 Dave: Right. And do you want it sticking parallel to the water or more like ninety degree. Like what’s your angle you want on that? 00:29:56 Robert: Yeah. Straight up like ninety degrees. 00:29:58 Dave: Straight up. Okay. 00:29:59 Robert: Yeah, yeah. And then I tie it down. If you kind of put your thumbnail like as you’re cinching, you kind of push with your thumb, nail down into the air and pull straight toward you. It’ll flare that wing almost one hundred and eighty degrees, so it’ll fan that wing out more, which also helps your flotation a lot, right? 00:30:17 Dave: Yeah. So you want it fanned out? That’s good. The bigger, the better. 00:30:20 Robert: Mhm. And also I like a for body. I’ll use, uh, just a couple strands of marabou, spin it on the thread and wrap it. And that those little micro marabou fibers, you know, when they get wet, they just have that little bit of undulation to them. It looks alive. I think it’s much better than a thread body or a. 00:30:40 Dave: Oh yeah. So that’s your body. That’s your basically your abdomen, the back part of the body. 00:30:44 Robert: Mhm. Yeah. No tail. 00:30:46 Dave: Oh no tail. You don’t do no tail. 00:30:48 Robert: No. Just a couple strands of marabou. Wrap it. And then, uh, that little dubbing ball, then tying your wing and you hackle and, and that’s it. 00:30:58 Dave: Yeah. Does the hackle go and then does the, the elk hair go on top of the hackle. 00:31:02 Robert: Uh l care first. 00:31:04 Dave: Car first, and then the hackle spins over over that. 00:31:07 Robert: Mhm. Exactly. Yeah. 00:31:09 Dave: Right. Yeah. It’s really interesting. It’s like a I don’t even know. Yeah. It’s a unique fly. I mean, it doesn’t look, it looks totally different than any other dry fly. 00:31:16 Robert: Mhm. 00:31:16 Dave: So okay, so that’s squiggly. And so that one is definitely in your box. Was there another couple of go to styles that you like in other than that one for Pmdis or any other mayflies. 00:31:27 Robert: Yeah. For us, you know, parachute is hard. There’s a, there’s a local fly tied by a guy named Chuck Stranahan here. He had a fly shop for a long time, an amazing fly tyer. Uh, there’s a pattern called the Brindle chute and you can find it commercially through Montana Fly Company now. And it’s the body is hard to describe. It’s kind of almost orangey color. Like, uh, in the dubbing. There’s olive orange and brown like hairs here, but that color combo just works for almost every mayfly hatch. 00:32:01 Dave: Oh no kidding. 00:32:02 Robert: It’s it’s almost like a, you know, like an Addams kind of works for everything. The brindle shoot works. The brindle shoot is like Adams two point zero. I think it works better. 00:32:11 Dave: Oh it is okay. Yeah. Because the Adams kind of has the a lot of times you know the standard the gray right. It’s just got that gray body. But it’s got the the alternating hackles right. That make it look. But this one has the body. That color combination is just looks like it’s got every color, every natural color mixed in. 00:32:28 Robert: Yeah. And according to Chuck it like it reflects all these different, you know, he’s very scientific about his flies, but I just, I know if you talk to any local guides, local fly shops in the Bitterroot and say, give me a dozen flies, somebody’s going to hand you a brindle shoot. Oh, I guarantee almost any time of year in every river I’ve ever fished it on for a mayfly. It’s worked. It’s a good bug. 00:32:54 Dave: So Brindle shoot. And is that all you need? Pretty much now. Quigley Brindle shoot and a parachute. Adams. Or would you add any more to that? 00:33:01 Robert: I mean, really like that’s. 00:33:03 Dave: That covers it. 00:33:04 Robert: That pretty much if you want to get, if you want to get really technical, like I’d say, you know, lower bitrate where it’s more of those like flats and the fish can be snootier like swinging a small soft tackle like pheasant tail or running that back off a back of a parachute can be a game changer too, when those fish are just, you know, eating emergers, which they will, they will key on emergers sometimes. So having a small soft tackle, having a yeah, a captive done. Or usually you don’t have to get that fancy. 00:33:38 Dave: No, you don’t, you know, but that would be a good way if, if you are, if they are getting picky, you could run. If you want to throw a nymph on and then you still have it off the dry, which we’ve heard that before, that it’s nice to have a little. Not a giant dry fly, but the little subtle one, because that way any little take you’re going to see that dry fly drop down. Is that kind of what you see out there when you’re fishing the dry dropper? 00:33:58 Robert: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah. And like when you got fish potted up eating mayflies, the a small parachute will float, you know, like a soft tackle, for example, that soft tackle is only a half inch below the surface, but that’s all it takes when those fish are keyed on emergers, you know, and you’re just seeing their backs, you know, you’re not seeing their heads come up like that magic inch below the water is all you need. Or a, you know, another one is that split back nymph. Oh, split back. That’s money everywhere. 00:34:29 Dave: I yeah it is split back. What is that. Is that just what it’s called. The split back nymph. 00:34:33 Robert: Yeah. Split back or split case two. Yeah. The unweighted. You don’t need any weight on those. Just again like just an inch or two below the surface is all you need. 00:34:44 Dave: And what is this split black back. Does that have a is that on the case or what does it makes it split back. 00:34:50 Robert: Yeah. Yeah. So and if you Google search, you’ll see lots of pictures of them. But it’s basically think of like kind of like a pheasant tail, Um, where? The wing case. There’s a little piece of, like, yellow razor foam that shows through that the middle of that wing case, hence the split case, uh, title. And in that is supposed to imitate like the adult insect just starting to break out of the nymphal shuck, right? 00:35:17 Dave: Oh, right. Sure. Yes. Just starting to peel out. 00:35:20 Robert: Mhm. Yeah. All I know is that that fly works. 00:35:23 Dave: The yellow. Yeah. The yellow. It’s kind of almost like a hot spot sort of thing. 00:35:27 Robert: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. We could talk nymphs too. 00:35:30 Dave: Uh, yeah. Let’s go on. We got, we got our good. We got a good, uh, dry fly selection, I think for mayflies. What is the what’s your nymph? You talked about the split back. What would be a few other ones. 00:35:39 Robert: Yeah. Uh. Oh, a Frenchie. 00:35:41 Dave: Oh, Frenchie. Yeah. 00:35:42 Robert: Like size fourteen sixteen. That is my go to bug. I tie hundreds of them a year. I lose hundreds of them. 00:35:51 Dave: Right. 00:35:52 Robert: But that that fly is just tried and true. I tend to I put really big beads on mine. Um, bigger than what you find in a shop I, I find from fishing from a boat, you know, where you have shorter drifts, like having bigger beads, having heavier flies that sink quicker is really valuable. 00:36:12 Dave: Right. Getting down right away, even though. Well, and it’s probably tungsten beads too, right. So it’s going to get down even quicker. 00:36:18 Robert: Yeah for sure. So like on a size fourteen Frenchie, I’ll run like a three point three millimeter bead because I want, I want it, I want it to get down quick. And but that that one, you know, the old Pat’s rubber legs is works wonders here. Uh, size ten coffee in black is a good, uh, and also golden stone pattern. Later in the summer, we run like a smaller, like a twelve or fourteen. Pat’s is great as well, but we, we have lots of stoneflies all the time. We also have lots of nocturnal stones. 00:36:54 Dave: Stones are in the system throughout the whole the whole year, but especially spring. This summer, the stoneflies are out there. There’s some stonefly going. 00:37:01 Robert: Yeah, for sure. So you could run a Pat’s rubber legs and a Frenchie twelve months out of the year and probably catch fish. 00:37:09 Dave: Right? 00:37:10 Robert: Yeah. 00:37:12 Dave: Gallatin River Lodge sits right in the middle of Montana’s fly fishing triangle, the Gallatin River out the door, the Madison and Yellowstone. Close enough that you’re fishing when conditions line up. The lodge is perfectly remote, yet close to everything. Private access nearby, solid guides, unreal food, and a lodge that understands the rhythm of a full day on the water. If Montana is on your list this year, don’t guess where to stay. You can call Gallatin River Lodge or head over to GR lodge dot com right now and plan your next Montana adventure. That’s g r lodge dot com. Check them out now. This episode is brought to you by AVC Rig Adventure Vehicle Concepts out of Colorado. These guys build next level adventure vans designed to help you explore farther and stay out longer. Are you dreaming of a full van build? Or maybe you just need the best aluminum cabinets and storage for your DIY rig? AVC rig makes it easy to turn your vehicle into the ultimate mobile base camp. You can check them out right now at avc dot com, that’s a v c rig dot com. Yeah. How are you typically fishing the the nymph setup? What’s your. And I think you had, I think you might have written an article. I don’t know if this is something about dropping the the indicator or something like that. Have you done some writing, writing of articles out there? 00:38:33 Robert: Oh, a couple for like Montana Fly Fishing magazine when that was gone. 00:38:38 Dave: Okay, that might have been it. Yeah. I thought I saw something out there about rethinking the, uh, beyond the bobber or something like that. But are you doing. Because that’s kind of what, you know, as a as guides, you know, Montana, it’s kind of that it seems like everybody’s using the bobber right indicator to get especially new clients. Are you doing that or are you doing more non indicator stuff? 00:38:57 Robert: You know, it depends like certainly from a boat like you you want something most of the time. So the old chubby dropper chubby Chernobyl to a to your nymph is a standard that works. I’ve been using more balsa tabs recently. I like that setup because you can really fine tune, but just add another balsa tab to get your flotation just right where you know it’s not too buoyant that you’re missing strikes, right? You want, you want your indicator. I feel you want your indicator just buoyant enough to float well. And you know, so you’re it’s not going under and you’re when you mend, it’s not going under. But you want to be able to pick up all those little, um, strikes. So, you know, like, like a big thing in a bobber. 00:39:43 Dave: It’s too much. 00:39:44 Robert: It’s too much flotation. Like you’re, you’re, I believe you’re going to miss a lot. 00:39:49 Dave: Yeah, yeah. And these pulsa floats are just a little like, um, foam, essentially a little sticky, a tiny. Yeah. It’s. Yeah. And it’s kind of, it’s. Yeah, it’s hard to get. I mean, is there any bobber that’s smaller than that? Or is that kind of the smallest thing out there? 00:40:04 Robert: Unless you’re doing yarn, you know, like, oh yeah. 00:40:07 Dave: Yarn. Right. Because that sits in. Right. 00:40:10 Robert: Yeah. Or like you’re doing the old balloon. 00:40:12 Dave: Yeah. And I have heard some guys do like old school like that yarn is definitely, and I’ve used yarn, I’ve used all these things I and then, but you know, you do hear, like you said, that it’s really critical some places to have that. Like I think what you’re explaining, not the giant thing that floats through rapids, but the thing that’s so, so light, it’s just light enough to hold up. You know, actually, I think this came from Josh Miller. Tim was talking about this. Josh said, you want, you want your indicator like that big giant guy out there, that kind of overweight guy wearing a kid’s life jacket floating down the river like anything you touch, you touch that guy, he’s going down. Is that kind of what you’re doing with these pulsa? 00:40:48 Robert: I absolutely agree with that statement. Yeah. Just enough to to float because boy, because those pulses like you will, you will see everything, you know, if it twitches in the slightest, like set and usually it’s a fish. 00:41:03 Dave: The only problem with the pulsa is that you pull them off and you get sticky residue on your, on your. 00:41:07 Robert: Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of a pain. 00:41:10 Dave: Um, how do you choose where to put your like depth on that? You know, how do you know how deep to go? What does that look like? If you see something and you, we’ve talked about some of these flies, how do you get your, um, your jig fly down to the right depth? 00:41:23 Robert: Well, it’s a lot of just kind of trial and error and experience and knowing, um, here we don’t have to nymph very deep most of the time. Um, it seems like our fish will move up to eat things. So like in general, I’m running, you know, my droppers eighteen twenty four inches, you know, sometimes a little deeper, but below. So. So if you’re like, let’s say you got your bobber in your hand and you know, you pull your tippet off the spool, it comes to kind of your armpit right of on the opposite shoulder, right. So you know about that long a couple feet. Um, I’m not not running four to five feet. We just have so much wood and debris that if you’re trying that deep nymphing, you’re gonna lose. 00:42:10 Dave: So you put so you straight pull off that little tip of section, then where does your your pulse pinch? Does that go right above that knot? 00:42:17 Robert: Yeah, exactly. And then we’ll do I like I’ve been kind of as of like the last couple of years, I’ve learned this from a friend of mine, uh, tying a micro tippet ring to the end of, let’s say your leader and then running your tippet off that micro ring, putting those balsa tabs just above that micro tippet ring. So you’re also getting like a nice ninety degree rig as well, right? so that you get a better straight line connection to your to where your indicator is. And then if you break off, you know, you break at the ring, you just tie on another piece of tip it. 00:42:52 Dave: So yeah, that’s it. So the yeah, those rings are awesome. So that makes it easier. Mhm. And we mentioned the leader a little bit. And then so lengthwise. So you have just a eighteen to twenty four inch tippet. And then up from there. How long is your overall full leader. Do you have to go very far. How far do you go from the tippet ring up to your fly line? 00:43:10 Robert: Fairly short. You know, if you take a standard seven and a half foot leader, cut it back a little bit, you know, six feet so you don’t want it too long, you know, just just so it casts well, you know, overall length like eight to nine feet, ten feet, like about as long as your rod. Right. You don’t want to get too, too long, right? 00:43:30 Dave: No. And like you said, you guys are fishing a lot of wood and you know, all that stuff. You got to be accurate. How do you, when somebody, you know, say you’ve got a client coming in, how are you coaching them to get ready so you know they’re ready to cast. Because the problem with casting around wood is that, man, if you make a little bit too far, you’re losing your fly. How do you get somebody ready? Do you tell them to do a lot of practicing before, or how accurate and how at what distance do you have to be on this trout game? 00:43:55 Robert: Yeah. And again, it’s pretty user friendly, like thirty feet, twenty, thirty feet, forty feet. Like you’re not making hero casts, which is awesome. And I’m a big proponent. Well, if people practice the reach cast, that’s the one cast that will result in a lot more fish for you. Like the reach cast is. 00:44:16 Dave: Just. 00:44:17 Robert: Such an incredible tool, especially when you’re fishing small dries, but I, we do a lot of the, what I call the drag and drop. So let’s say there’s a wood pile coming up or a log or some, you know, there’s some structure you want to fish close to, right? Like a lot of people, they’ll land their cast on a good spot. And then by the time they mend, they move that fly away from their objective right from. So let’s say you landed an inch from the log, but then you mend it two inches off the log. Well, now you’re kind of away from where you want to be. So what I do with folks in my boat is, is like we game plan it out ahead of time. Like here’s the, here’s the log coming up. Okay, we’re going to, we’re going to overshoot our target, we’re going to overshoot and we’re going to cast upstream of where that log starts. We’re going to pretend everything. And then if we’re too far inside, if our fly is going to go into the log, we’re just going to lift our rod tip up. We’re going to drag that fly out until it’s in the perfect spot, and then we’re going to drop the rod tip. And then I push with the oars and we just follow that fly. And so you can get really if you, if you plan it out and, and execute correctly, even with a rank beginner, someone who this is their first day holding a fly rod with that drag and drop technique, you can fish structure incredibly close. 00:45:40 Dave: So that’s really that’s a great tip. 00:45:43 Robert: Yeah. And even as a as an expert angler, I like to think I’m an expert. Um, I will use that drag and drop technique all the time because, uh, one, you’re not landing a cast right on the fish’s head. Two you can really fine tune like I know exactly where that fly’s going. I can put it within a centimeter of that log every time. 00:46:04 Dave: Yeah. Wow. This is awesome. What’s cool about hearing about the log stuff is that, um, it makes it easier to find the fish. You know, just you get to the bit, you’re like, okay, where I fish, I’m going to find some wood and maybe there’s a pool, right? It sounds like if you find wood and you’re casting around structures, you’re going to be probably find some fish. 00:46:22 Robert: Yeah. For sure. Um, and the other, you know, it’s, it’s typical. It’s very, I’d say it’s very typical, uh, trout water, like, uh, riffle into a pool. Um, you know, four feet of chop the inside bands, you know, like places that look fishy, like they are fishy on our river. There’s, um, it’s a pretty easy place to read, I think from a fish standpoint. Find the chop, find the wood, find the foam lines. Right. You know. 00:46:51 Dave: Yeah. Foam is home. Foam is home. 00:46:53 Robert: Yep. Fish inside bends. 00:46:54 Dave: Inside bends right. 00:46:56 Robert: There where you think they are. Yeah. Which is nice. 00:46:59 Dave: Yeah. Right. Right. And the Browns and you mentioned Browns rainbows and and so you’re saying about the Browns. They’re really on early in the season. What happens. Can you still catch Browns throughout the whole season on dries. 00:47:10 Robert: Oh yeah. Absolutely. They’re just uh I’m pretty convinced are really big fish. Uh just start eating at night as brown trout tend to do. Right? So they’re, they’re, they’re just probably not eating when you’re fishing, right? 00:47:23 Dave: Yeah. They’re out, they’re amazing. And of course, you mentioned earlier the, the pike, which is the, the other X factor, the traco piko, which is cool. Well, let’s, you know, I think this has been great. You’ve got a ton of knowledge. We’ll have to follow up with you and get some more. Maybe a follow up episode with you. I did want to hear it sounds like there’s really, um, important conservation issue in that area. And we’ve heard about, you know, the pebble mine has come out a lot up in Alaska. And what you hear about that one is that, you know, the people from what we’ve heard, every single person matters. One person coming out and signing something or calling their legislator or something like that can make a huge difference. And but it keeps popping up, right? There’ll be a new company, a new administration or something. And all of a sudden the pebble mine is back on the table. Describe what the mine’s going on now in the Bitterroot. You know a little bit about that issue. 00:48:11 Robert: Yes. So there is a proposed rare earth mine at the headwaters of our watershed on the or sorry, on the Montana, Idaho border. So it’s in a little tributary called Sheep Creek. And it’s, it’s way up above painted rocks. It’s way up at the West Fork. It’s at the very, very top of our entire watershed. So there’s a company called us Critical Materials. And they have claimed this is the richest deposit of rare earth in the lower forty eight. That’s what they claim. Sure. There’s also evidence to show that the tailings are going to be radioactive, full of arsenic, full of really terrible stuff if it gets into the river. They are on the fast forty one track. So right now they’re, um, they’re trying to get out of a environmental impact as a full assessment. 00:49:13 Dave: Right. Which is crazy too, right? Because that’s the law. 00:49:17 Robert: Mhm. 00:49:18 Dave: That you have to go through an environmental impact statement. Right. And they’re trying to. I still don’t get that. How you can get out of that. But that’s what they’re going for. 00:49:25 Robert: Yeah. That’s what they’re going for. So they’re trying to skirt all of that, you know, process, right, of, of having a full environmental. 00:49:35 Dave: The environmental protection. Right. Yeah. 00:49:37 Robert: Yeah. So right now we’re in the public comment period. And that closes on September twelfth. So every comment is critical to get the Forest Service to do an environmental impact statement. 00:49:55 Dave: Right. Where would somebody go if they had this before September twelfth. 00:50:00 Robert: Yeah. So we have a website here um called it’s called Don’t Pollute the route dot com. 00:50:07 Dave: Oh, cool. Don’t pollute the route. 00:50:10 Robert: And we have, uh, there’s, there’s fact sheets. You can get on our mailing list. Uh, we have a template for writing a public comment. 00:50:20 Dave: Yeah, it pops up actually. There it is right there. Literally it pops up and there’s your submitted comment right there. 00:50:24 Robert: Yeah. It’ll take it takes you five minutes. And again, the more people that speak up, the greater chance we have of getting the Forest Service to, you know, go through with the full environmental impact, right? 00:50:38 Dave: Yeah. And who’s the who’s the groups involved in? Man, I see there’s a photo here of a giant room with hundreds of people in it. Who are the groups that are stepping up to support protecting the Bitterroot? And I’m guessing against this mine. 00:50:55 Robert: Yeah. Trout unlimited and we we have a local nonprofit that’s really wonderful. It’s called the Bitterroot Watershed or Bitterroot Water Partnership. And they’re really spearheading this website and this effort. They, they do a lot for our river and, and, uh, so props to them. 00:51:16 Dave: That’s awesome. Well, hopefully, hopefully there’s enough time here to, you know, get some people involved. And I mean, I think that’s what it comes down to is that, you know, the more people that speak up, you know, and talk to their constituents or I guess the other way, you know, the better. 00:51:31 Robert: Mhm. 00:51:32 Dave: Yeah. So, okay, well, we’ll have links out to that and we’ll stay on top of that. Maybe we could check back with you here. You know, as this goes, maybe do a check in call to see a status update, maybe next year, see what’s going on there. Because I’m guessing these things aren’t going to happen overnight. So hopefully even if there’s a negative turn, maybe, you know, we’ll keep keep on it and we’ll have some success here. 00:51:53 Robert: That sounds good. And just for like listeners, the for context wise, the upper Bitterroot is one of the last strongholds of, uh, westslope cutthroat and bull trout. 00:52:05 Dave: And bull trout. 00:52:06 Robert: And bull trout, uh, in the United States. And putting that in danger, it just doesn’t seem worth, you know, um, like just the cost of a, if there’s a spill, if the, if a tailings dam fails, our river is going to be decimated for generations. 00:52:24 Dave: Yeah. yeah, there’s already. And you could see the history there when we drove up to Montana or we went up to the Missouri and we fished that. I stopped by one night. We were kind of camping out on the four wheel camper on the way, and I stopped in one. I think it was in Idaho somewhere along the way. And I pulled up to this lake and there’s these giant signs that were like, you know, this is whatever the material. You know, it had some really heavy metal poison. The water said, don’t, don’t drink the water, don’t eat the fish, you know, and that’s just a basically a tribute to the history of the same thing. There was a mine that went bad and now it’s polluting an entire system. Mhm. Right. And it’s the same thing. This is what we’re talking about. It’s like, you can’t have that happening again, which is what sounds like could be a possibility if this goes through. 00:53:10 Robert: Yeah, absolutely. 00:53:11 Dave: Yeah. Okay. Well, we’ll get the love that don’t pollute the route and the show notes. People can do that and follow up there. And, and if nothing else, if it’s after that date, then they can also just follow on that page. I think they can sign up right there, subscribe to email updates so we can stay in tune on that. Okay, awesome. Robert. Well, this is this is good. I think, like I said, this has been an awesome episode, a ton of information. Why don’t you just leave us with a couple? Um, you’ve had a ton of tips here. We’ll get a couple of tips and then a little random segment out of you here. Maybe we’ll start with the random, the random segment first. Did I also see that you’ve done you have some history in, uh, steelhead fishing or is that, are you been mostly fishing for trout? 00:53:49 Robert: Oh, yeah. Well, I grew up in central Oregon, so, uh, the Deschutes was ten minutes from my house. 00:53:56 Dave: Okay. 00:53:56 Robert: I grew up in in Madras. 00:53:58 Dave: Oh. In Madras. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. So you’re right there by not far from Warm Springs and all that stuff. 00:54:03 Robert: Exactly. Yeah. 00:54:04 Dave: Wow. 00:54:05 Robert: So did a lot of steelhead fishing as a kid on the Deschutes. And, um, my uncle has a jet boat. He’s had one for years. 00:54:11 Dave: Oh he does. 00:54:12 Robert: Yeah. We, you know, we, I’ve been up and down that river one hundred times. 00:54:17 Dave: You have. So would you guys do the with your uncle’s boat. Yeah, yeah. Would you guys go down like the lower lower river? 00:54:24 Robert: Yeah, yeah. Like Max, you know, Max Canyon down and I’ve floated, you know, I’ve rafted from Warm Springs to Maupin dozens and dozens of times that that river is, is like, near and dear to my heart. I told my wife, it’s like when I die, I want some of my ashes put into the Deschutes. You know, I mean, it, it really is. 00:54:45 Dave: It’s a cool river. 00:54:46 Robert: It is. And it it it really shaped who I am today. You know that I have so many good memories. 00:54:53 Dave: The bugs you talk about the bugs. I mean, the stonefly. We haven’t even talked about those today, but the giant stones, right? 00:54:58 Robert: That yeah, the salmon flies like where the willows are, like bowing over because there’s so many salmon falls on them, you know. 00:55:05 Dave: Yeah, yeah. And the cool thing about that is that, yeah, you get that desert, you know, that trip. That’s the cool thing about the Deschutes is it cuts through the desert, which is a little bit different than Montana, right? Montana is more. How do you now that you’re in Montana, do you feel it’s a big difference between the two. 00:55:20 Robert: Oh, you know, it’s not as big as you think. Like. Like, weather wise, we get more rain. It, we get more rain. We have more trees. It’s not so darn hot in the summer. 00:55:30 Dave: Right? But there are a lot of similarities, too, aren’t there? There is, yeah there is. Patches and everything. Well that’s cool. So you’ve got a good Deschutes. Yeah. It was interesting because my. My dad passed away here this last year and he was a big Deschutes River kind of. He was there back in the. Oh man. Like the fifties. And so he’s got all these stories. And I was just talking actually interviewing one of his old friends who is. It’s kind of crazy. He built a wooden jet sled out using an old woolridge design back in the sixties. And he was one of the first jet boats on the Deschutes back then. Wow. Yeah. He used to talk about how he was telling these stories. Like, well, there was me and five other guys that had jet boats, and that was pretty much it. I used to he used to leave his jet boat, like tied up all summer long in Maupin, right. Or whatever, just sitting there. But yeah, I think the history is a pretty cool part of it too, right? The fact that we’re you mentioned like Quigley Cripple, right? All these people that we’re talking about here were built on, you know, on the backs of them that did all this cool stuff. So. Mhm. Yeah. I love the history. You probably have a little bit of that, I’m guessing. Montana or do you are you a big kind of into all that history. Of course the the river runs through it. You’re right in the wheelhouse of that too. Right? 00:56:37 Robert: Yeah, yeah. And as far as like, yeah, fly fishing history, I mean, there’s so much, uh, here, like between Dan Bailey and, uh, the West Yellowstone guys. 00:56:48 Dave: Oh, yeah. 00:56:49 Robert: Craig Matthews. 00:56:50 Dave: Sure. 00:56:50 Robert: And, uh, Paul Ruth up on the Blackfoot. Um, just the guys that started our, our sport and, and, um, the more I read and learn about those, for lack of better word, old timers, you know, like, uh, the more respect I have for how they did business and how they worked with people and how they respected the resource. 00:57:13 Dave: And yeah, it was a different time back there. I know. 00:57:15 Robert: It was. 00:57:16 Dave: Craig. He told this great story about how he was. I mean, when Craig Matthews went into West Yellowstone, he was the he was the chief. The police chief. Right. I mean, that was his job before he started the blue ribbon. And he said how he had the back in the day, the Hell’s Angels, they’d come in there and be starting fights and doing crazy stuff. And he just told these whole all these stories about how he basically just befriended them and said, hey, let’s go have a drink. And he kind of worked with them and the hookers. He was talking about how the hookers in town became friends. And this, this crazy story of how. But it worked. He made it work, you know, because mainly because he was able just to talk to him instead of fighting. Right. 00:57:52 Robert: Yeah. 00:57:53 Robert: Yeah. Craig’s a good dude. I, I randomly met him one day in Montana on the Stillwater River. I’m just walking through town and I see a guy walking toward me. I’m like, that looks a lot like Craig Matthews. I never met him, but I just. I’ve seen pictures and stuff and I stopped and I’m like, are you Craig Matthews? Nice. And we we talked for like an hour and a half. 00:58:17 Dave: Oh no kidding. 00:58:17 Robert: It was. 00:58:18 Robert: Awesome. 00:58:18 Robert: Yeah, just really nice guy. 00:58:20 Robert: So that’s so cool. 00:58:22 Dave: Yeah. That’s great. Awesome. Robert. Well, I think we can leave it there. We’ll definitely have to follow up with you again. Um, and, uh, hit you up again because this has been a great one. We will send everybody out. I think the easiest place to just go to at Boom Trout on Instagram, they can follow you and hit you up there if they want to check you on trips. And yeah, awesome, man. We’ll appreciate all the time. This has been great. 00:58:39 Robert: Hey, thanks. Yeah, this is a pleasure. Yeah. 00:58:42 Dave: All right, Robert, thanks again. We’ll be in touch. 00:58:44 Robert: Yeah. 00:58:44 Robert: Sounds good. Thank you. This was fun. 00:58:48 Dave: Today’s takeaway right now is to get involved. Don’t pollute the route. Please do that right now. Go check in, sign up. Uh, let your elected official know that you’re interested in protecting this area. It sounds like a really, uh, messy, uh, situation. So, uh, get involved. Now, I want to let you know we’ve got two big things going on here. We got wet fly swing pro and the boot camp. The fly fishing boot camp right now is going on wet fly swing dot com boot camp. You can sign up there right now and get more information, and we’ll let you know when we’re open this thing up here next month. This is going to be a big one on one of our biggest boot camps ever. All sorts of good stuff going on there. We also have this week the lateral zones. Phil is back. We always love when Phil rolls back with a full episode. This is a solo episode and Phil is going to take a deep dive this week. Don’t miss out on that. And and also, the dry fly school is back on to Mark Lodge Dry Fly School, the Missouri River Trichos. We got it all going this year, so check in with us. That’s wet fly dot com slash dry fly to learn more. And I want to thank you again for stopping in today. Hope you’re having a great afternoon. Great evening. Or if it’s morning, uh, hope you’re having a good day. We’ll talk to you on the next one. 00:59:54 Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit Wet Fly swing dot com.