981 | Exploring New Trout Water with Tim Cammisa: Access, Flows, and TroutRoutes

00:00:00 Dave: Today’s guest kept a fishing journal for years and started to notice a trend. Every spring, he was retured to the same sections of river fishing, the same flies and probably catching the same fish. That realization pushed him to start exploring new water, and today we’re breaking down the system he uses to do it. From researching access points and checking stream flow’s to reading a river when you finally get there. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast, where I show you the best places to travel to for 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. Tim Cammisa is back on the podcast. He is the guy behind Trout and Feather and author, fly fishing educator, and an angler who has spent more than three decades figuring things out. Today, you’re going to find out what Tim does during the first few minutes after arriving to the stream, including why he uses binoculars, what water temperature he’s thinking about insects, he’s figuring things out, and we’re going to discuss it all today. we’re also going to talk about why your dry dropper may actually be too buoyant. And the lesson Tim picked up from top competition anglers and is in his new book. We’re going to get into this one. This is a great tip. Tim also is going to share how he uses trout routes, Google maps, USGS gauges, fly shops and Facebook groups to build a better picture of unfamiliar water. We’re also going to break down how he looks at fishing seams, riffle edges, soft pockets, depth changes, current breaks, runs and tail outs. This is going to be a good one. We’re going to get into the pre-trip planning the on the water planning when you get there. Can’t wait to jump into this one. Here he is. You can find Tim at Trout and feather dot com. Here’s Tim Camisa. How you doing Tim? 00:01:47 Tim: Dave, it is a pleasure to be back here talking with you and helping people get better at fly fishing man. 00:01:52 Dave: Nice nice. Love it man. Always good to have a chat. Always. I think last time it’s been a little bit But, you know, I think we got our little annual check in which I think we should keep this going, you know, have a little podcast every year, I think. Does that sound about the right cadence? 00:02:05 Tim: That’s about the right cadence. I mean, I’m very fortunate to, um, to talk with a lot of people on a bunch of different podcasts, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m very partial to yours, man. We’ve had so much fun over the years, so let’s keep this going. 00:02:16 Dave: Let’s keep it going. Good. Well, today we’ve got another great topic. I mean, I think that you’re known for a lot out there, fly tying YouTube. You know, you’re a prolific presenter, show speaker. You know, you’ve got all the trips you’ve got going, which is amazing. We want to get caught up on that as well. But yeah, so we’re going to get an update on all that. And then trout routes I wanted to say. So trout routes an amazing brand out there. We’re going to get an update on how you’re using that and some of the things you’re doing. But before we get there, give us an update. It’s kind of mid-summer. We’re September is right around the corner right now. Have you, uh, what have you got going? Have you been doing some hosted trips, things like that? 00:02:50 Tim: Yeah. I mean, listen, I’m very lucky. I mean, I think, you know, for your listeners who have not, you know, I’ve not been introduced to yet. My name is Tim Camisa. You know, I grew up, I learned to fish in Pennsylvania. I’ve been involved in fly fishing and fly tying for. I’ve been kind of embarrassed to say. I’ll just say over three decades. How about that? Um, so, you know, and I have my website, Trout and Feather. I have all my YouTube videos and I’ve written some books. The one thing I want to say, and because you mentioned summer, is that a lot of people don’t understand that my day job is as a school teacher. I’m actually an elementary school teacher and I teach sixth grade social studies and science. I love it. So I think that’s part of the, you know, why I really enjoy the teaching aspect of this. And somewhere along the line of all this fly fishing education, I got involved in, in doing a lot of trips. And this summer, it kind of was no exception. We had a ton of trips. I don’t like to brag about them because it’s not a bragging thing, and it’s kind of tough being a teacher, because I get back to that first in-service day. I see all my colleagues and you know, everyone Dave is asking like, hey, how’s your summer? And they’re talking about the beach. And they ask me and it’s like, I’m embarrassed to tell them like, what I do over the summer, like, you know, we’re talking. This is the end of summer twenty twenty six. Like I spent June in Montana. Then I went to the Outer Banks to chase redfish. Then I went to Alaska with my family. I brought my family there. This wasn’t a trip, a hosted trip per se, but I brought my family up there and, um, you know, chased salmon and rainbow trout and went to Brooks Falls to see the bears. And then I got back from that in like four days later, my I was hosting a trip to Iceland for trophy brown trout and Atlantic salmon. So it was whenever I say I had an exceptional summer, it was awesome. And, you know, I got to spend a lot of time with family, friends, some a lot of new clients, some returning clients. And then I made a lot of content in between all those trips. So it was a crazy summer, but it was a great one. Dave. 00:04:38 Dave: Nice. That’s awesome. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I think on the surface, it’s like, well, you know, Tim’s out there just travel and living the dream. But I mean, like you said, three decades, you’ve put some time and effort into right to get to this point. 00:04:50 Tim: Yeah. I mean, I’m really lucky with, with a lot of these trips and everything that I’ve built up a pretty decent client list over the years. So whenever I announce trips, like for instance, in summer twenty twenty seven, I have a couple trips going to Iceland. I have trips in twenty twenty eight that are already planned out. I have new steelhead trips to the Great Lakes tributaries, and the majority of my trips sell out within about a week or two. And it’s you can look at it from a couple different angles, like, oh, he’s really lucky. But it’s like, I’ve really been working my butt off to make these trips like the best possible turnkey experiences. And just, you know, I really, I’m a very big believer in getting reflections afterwards and talking to everyone who’s been on the trips to make sure like what went right and what didn’t go right, and how can it be better next time. And probably the same as you with your podcast. It’s like, I am just a big believer in if I can make something better the next time, it’s like, don’t apologize. Just, you know, learn from whatever mistakes or just learn how to make it better. And, and that’s how these trips have gone. So I, I don’t know, we had just a fantastic summer. I could spend probably two hours talking about each of the trips because they were that good this summer. But, you know, fishing was good. It was it was a good summer for me. 00:05:55 Dave: That’s great. Well, we’ll follow up with that as we go here a little bit today. But um, you know, we want to talk. You got a great topic we’re going to cover, which is kind of researching and planning and mapping out a trip. I think that especially to new waters, that’s always a struggle for people. You know, there’s the whole thing of kind of where to go, where to fish and all that. So where do you start that if you’re going to start this conversation today, you know, how do you help somebody maybe have a better chance if they’re going to a new water this year? 00:06:21 Tim: That’s great. And Dave, I’m really excited to talk about this one because this is kind of outside of my typical talks that I would give it like the fly fishing show, because I think whenever you and I were coming up with this, we said, let’s, let’s go to this angle, like from the map to the first cast, like how do you explore new trout waters? So we’ll really focus on trout. You can apply some of these concepts to other fish. But you know, whenever I think about my own background, again, growing up in Pennsylvania, I think to myself, like whenever I was sixteen, I got the most important license at that time and it wasn’t my fishing license. It was my driver’s license. And my cousin and I, we just started exploring because we were both anglers. We wanted to catch fish, especially trout. And I had grown up, you know, my teenage years learning to fly fish. And we had fished a lot of what I call delayed harvest and like fly fishing, only water. And it was almost like if there was a sign there that said you could fly fish. That’s where we went. But then as I started driving around, I realized there’s a lot of there’s a lot of public water in Pennsylvania and a lot of it held trout. So here I am. I just I can picture myself, Dave, like driving around. We’re sixteen, seventeen years old. We have a topographic map and my pencil, we’re marking like access points, water temperatures, like places we caught fish, the patterns we used and like all that. And now, like, I don’t know, fast forward three decades and it has changed so much. The landscape of technology, especially when we have tools, some of them that are free, like Google Maps, we have trout routes and they really opened the door to this trip planning. So I don’t know, even even when I think to myself, like the past two summers, I’ve spent time in Montana fishing some of the most popular rivers, yet there was no one around me. And that didn’t just happen by luck. So whenever I kind of say to myself, all right, what can Dave and I do to, to get this rolling? Let’s start with, you know, why do people struggle on unfamiliar water? And before you get to that unfamiliar water, what I really want to point out to, you know, all the listeners get out of the rut. And what I mean by that is kind of something that I had to do a number of years ago, and it was I kept a fly fishing journal. Now, my first trip to Montana, I remember my mom bought me this like, leather bound journal. I would write about my experience every day and like, it was great. It just felt like it was very natural for me to do as a writer. But then I never went back and looked at that journal because it just wasn’t. It wasn’t utilitarian enough for me. So at some point during all this time fly fishing, I thought to myself, why don’t I make a fishing journal that I can refer to on a regular basis. And I did. I created an Excel spreadsheet, and I’ve talked about this a number of times, and I’m happy to share this with any of your listeners. They’re more than welcome to reach out on my website and on this journal. I would put the date, the water, I fished, the section, what the conditions were like if I could find the USGS, you know, stream data flies that worked just, you know, a bunch of data. And I did this for a year and it was cool to kind of start to see like the dates fill in and the waters fill in. And then I did it for a second year. And then the third year was when it really started to hit home that I felt like I was in that Bill Murray movie, Groundhog’s Day. I started looking back, Dave, and realized like on April fifteenth, every year or about that day, I was fishing the same river in the same section, using the same flies and probably catching the same fish right now. And that really forced me to get out of that rut to start figuring out new water. But there’s issues with that because I think whenever I, I don’t know, when I think about what I did and what, you know, some people that I’ve talked to over the years have done, like number one, like you just automatically maybe you choose the most famous river or you pick one access point and you don’t have a backup and you get there and you realize you can’t fish. And maybe you’re only looking at fishing reports from a fly shop website or from Facebook, or maybe you just completely ignore the stream flow or the regulations or the parking. And maybe you don’t even understand if there is a private versus public spot there. Um, some other things that, you know, I’ve talked to that people struggle is, you know, assuming every mile of a named river fishes the same. And when I say a named river, I mean pick any ex famous river and say to yourself, I’m on this river, but just because you’re on mile two versus mile twelve, that river can fish dramatically different. I mean, there’s one in Pennsylvania that I know of that I could be catching trout in three or four miles downriver. We’re catching smallmouth. So you, you have to kind of pick that apart as well. And then, you know, something I probably did as a sixteen year old, I spent way too much time driving between locations or, you know, something that happened a couple of years ago. I, I arrived somewhere I hadn’t downloaded maps to my phone. I didn’t have any service and I was out of luck. So whenever, you know, I look at all this, I kind of say to myself, a lot of these bad fishing days, it was probably bad planning on my part. So whenever I say, all right, how do we start? It would would be with something like a pre-trip scouting system or a plan. So for me, if I’m saying like, hey, I’m going to plan a day on unfamiliar water instead of picking like a famous river or a, you know, river that surrounds that famous river. I’m just going to look at first of all, like the general region and say to myself, what, what is this area like? Are there a lot of houses? Is it very rural? What are the rivers like? What are the streams like in there? And without a doubt, the whole notion of public land. And I also say to myself, like, if I get to this river that I’ve never fished before and I have to punt, what’s the driving distance somewhere else? Like, is there a nearby alternative or is it one of those deals where you drive, you get there and if it’s bad or if something’s wrong, like you’re stuck. So I know like, whenever I think of these things like stream classifications, you know, ratings, they’re a great starting point, but they are definitely not a promise because I don’t know, highly rated streams, they could be crowded, they could get blown out, they could fish poor. And sometimes whenever I think about like those less celebrated streams, I don’t know, they tend to fish better when there’s fewer people on it. I mean, I used to guide on and I fished some of the country’s most popular rivers. I mean, I guided on the West branch of the Delaware, and they’re great. Like rivers like that, like the Missouri River out west. I mean, I could name a handful. I’m not here to spot burn, but they’re wonderful rivers. There’s a reason they’re so popular. They’re great. But I can also tell you that within forty five minutes of every one of those rivers I’m thinking of is one that probably fishes just as good, and it gets easily half the pressure and notoriety, right? So that’s something that, you know, I think I want to really point out to people, if you want to fish X River, name it. I mean, yeah, I don’t know, Dave. The one that just, I want to just keep saying is the Madison. 00:12:58 Dave: Yeah, there’s all sorts of them out there, right? Yeah. The Madison, the Madison, Madison. 00:13:02 Tim: I mean, I hate to that’s like the river. It’s like everyone wants to fish the Madison and that’s great. Like fish it like you definitely should. I don’t think anyone should. You know, I don’t want to remove that opportunity. But no, like you don’t have to go to that bridge that everyone else fishes at. There’s lots of spots there that also can get you in the game. So that’s, that’s kind of what I would call my, I don’t know, we’ll just get into that first notion would just be this pre trip. 00:13:24 Dave: Right. 00:13:25 Tim: And he thought so far that’s perfect. 00:13:27 Dave: Yeah. So basically instead of narrowing down which I do the same thing, I haven’t been doing the journal right. I need to start doing, I talk about that right. Because I’m sure I do the same thing. I go to the same spot over and over again. and instead we need to be expanding out. So I think that’s good. Get a perspective of the region of the bigger area and say, okay, I’m going to this part of whatever the Madison, but it’s there’s a lot more trips to that places to explore. So what do you do once you’re like, you know, you want to go to this area? Let’s just say it’s the, the Madison area. Then what is the next step to finding those little secret gems that maybe not perfect? Yeah. 00:14:00 Tim: I guess the next step would be I got to study the access. That’s really a big deal. I mean, whenever I think about access, I think about somebody like Beau Beasley. He’s written so many articles, he’s spoken at length about this topic because I mean, some states in some states, like the landowner, you know, has to the high water mark. In some states, you could be drifting in a in a boat or in a tube, and you’re not even allowed to put your foot down. 00:14:22 Dave: What is it in your state? What is it in Pennsylvania? 00:14:26 Tim: There’s a couple different things because, you know, there’s some rivers that I fish where you can only be on one bank in Pennsylvania. There’s some rivers that, you know, it’s fully public because the river was deemed navigable. 00:14:35 Dave: Navigable, right. 00:14:36 Tim: You know, and then there’s some rivers that it’s completely private because it’s owned on both sides. Technically, the water belongs to the Commonwealth. But how are you going to access it? So that’s that’s one of the tricky parts. I mean, and you know, I fish internationally as well. Like whenever I go to places like Iceland, every single river in Iceland is private. The only access you have is through an outfitter. So you really have to study access, which is why, you know, we’ll bring up, I know we’re going to mention trout routes, you know, occasionally, but what’s nice about an app like that is they include public and private land information and thousands of access points, which is why that’s one of my preferred apps to use. I mean, I love Google Maps. It’s free. You can put it on your phone. It’s simple. But to know that you have like the ability on a free app, like trout routes to just get this information, that’s huge to say, all right, here’s six different like parking spots that are all within, you know, an easy walk of the river. This is where I want to go and other things that I look for depending on what state I’m in, you know. Is it a public parcel? Is there a fishing easement? Is there a bridge or a trailhead? I have access to. Is there a boat launch? Because that could be somewhere that’s, you know, easy for me, especially if I’m going to be bringing one of my tubes or one of my rafts. And most importantly, it’s not just where the public access begins, but it’s also where it ends. Because I am like notorious for saying, you know, I’m going to work upriver for a couple miles, then get out and walk the road back or something along those lines. And you might spend, you know, walk two miles up river and go to get out and realize you’re on private property. So, you know, knowing where you can legally fish is almost as important as knowing where the trout might be. So that’s the first thing I do, I study access. Once I’ve decided, all right, I’m going to this spot. Then you got to check your conditions. And this is a tricky one. I mean, the story that I like to tell is, you know, years ago I was going out to central Pennsylvania to fish. You know, my buddy Jason and I, we we were just super excited and we didn’t check the conditions. We were just hanging out the night before we stayed up late. Yeah, it rained all night, but we didn’t really think too much about it. And we show up at the river and it’s just complete brown and it’s mud. We didn’t have a backup plan like we had nothing. So here we are, like, what are we going to do? There’s a local fly shop. We go in this fly shop. I run into this guy who I later became very good friends with. His name’s Eric Stroup, and he saved our day. He’s like, hey, listen, there’s a little stream that I know of that’s, you know, about an hour away. It’s, you know, on top of a mountain. It never blows out. Go up there. Jason and I went up there. We caught wild brook trout for hours. It was like just us and the fish. The water was perfect. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go if you don’t have an alternative. Because, you know, that’s just that’s not the way it works. I can look at like another story that I could tell is, you know how one, one day it was like the last day of the summer, I was going back to school the very next day and it had rained all night. And I’m on my computer. I’m looking at the USGS website. And as I’m looking at it, I’m realizing like my river’s probably blown out. It just it has skyrocketed. And it’s like four in the morning. I’m standing at the window holding my cup of coffee, just like I don’t know what to do. And I’ll never forget this. I was like, saved by my wife Heather, who also is a very prolific angler. And she came down, she’s like, what are you doing? Why are you still here? I’m like, I don’t know if I’m going to go fishing. She’s like, you’re literally going to be in school tomorrow, you know, at an in-service day wishing you were fishing. And here you are, like, you have a day you can go like, get out there. Like she motivated me. Yeah. And thankfully she did. Dave, I got there, the water was starting to come down. It had peaked and it was now on its way down. And it was one of those days where it’s like every streamer that I threw, it felt like a fish ate. Oh, wow. So sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. But you got to know your conditions. And what do I mean by that? I mean, my favorite for that is USGS, which is integrated on a lot of apps as well. I mean, what’s nice about it, that website tells you things like the current flow and it compares it with a typical flow. You can kind of see if it’s rising water versus falling water. You know, it’s not up to date by the second, but it will at least get you in the game. Um, you can check for recent weather, you know, water temps, seasonal runoff, you know, a tail water versus, you know, a freestone, that type of stuff. If you know the type of river that can give you some clues as well. The tip that I kind of, I really like to share, and I really hope your listeners can take this one to heart. I’m saying like, you don’t always have to fish that famous river, but sometimes if it’s not a famous river or if it’s not a popular river, there may not be a USGS gauge on it. And that’s not a good or a bad thing. That’s just just a thing. So my tip is see if you can find a nearby river or one in the same watershed, and look at that gauge. And if you can find that gauge, that can give you some clues as to how your river probably is going to be that day. Other places that I think of for resources, I mean, we talked about going to fly shops. But many fly shops also have a daily blog or they give you stream updates on them. You can find, you know, a fly shop in the area. That’s great. And then for people out there who are saying, Tim, there’s no shops in my area, then I’m going to tell you, get involved in social media. And you know, for me, I look at social media, you know, I use it pretty frequently, but I think people are inherently good on social media. And the one that I steer people to is Facebook, but not just Facebook in general, but this thing called Facebook groups. And if people haven’t used them before, imagine a group where I can type in the name of a river. I can type in a name of a state and fly fishing. So I can put in something like, you know, Wyoming fly fishing, you know, Vermont fly fishing. And there’s a group of people that are just focused on that area and you can join the group. Sometimes you have to answer a couple questions, but once you’re in the group, you can do stuff like just make a little post and say, hey, I’m thinking about fishing this river next week. Does anyone have any tips? And you would be shocked by how many people will either comment on your post or reach out privately because you know they they don’t want to give up too much information to the public. But again, I think people are inherently good and Facebook groups is just, you know, one of those ways that you can easily check conditions and help you get into the game. 00:20:47 Dave: Yeah, I agree. I agree. It feels like it’s socials getting. Yeah. You could find the you know, there’s some it’s used for bad, you know, and sometimes right. It’s used for some stuff that’s negative. But I think for like us in fly fishing, there’s just a lot of good. Right. Like you’re saying, there’s a lot of great people out there just wanting to share and you don’t have to spot burn. You know, you don’t have to share your photo of the, you know, the spot and then throw a thousand people. But you could ask questions like you’re saying in groups and all that is great. 00:21:11 Tim: Yeah, you got it. Yeah. All right. So we got two conditions now. A couple other little thoughts that I’ll just throw out here is, you know, thinking about like the elevation, the stream character, you know, I think about like, does this water have a steep gradient, which means there could be more pocket water, some plunge pools. Probably faster, maybe good for nymphing. Is there a lower gradient which would mean longer pools? You know, some softer seams, maybe even warmer water. Are there meadow sections with undercut banks? Is it a headwater that could have some more wild or native populations? Is it a tail water which I love tail waters. They’re very stable when I think about temperatures and insect activity. But sometimes they have more fishing pressure. So, you know the nice thing about using maps, they may not show you the exact holding lie, but they can at least help me anticipate the kind of water I’m going to encounter. And then as I, you know, start to get everything there, I’m like, all right, I’m getting ready to go. Then I’m building my, you know, my plan A, my plan B, my plan C, like, what’s my primary stream? Do I have a backup stream or spot if that’s not going to work, do I have a high water alternative? Do I have a low water alternative? Which is another interesting, you know, spot of that? Like right now we’re at the end of August in Pennsylvania. The rivers. There. We’ve had a little bit of rain off and on, but if I get to a spot, it’s just too low or it’s too warm to fish. Like I might say to myself, do I have a warm water pond or lake as a backup? 00:22:36 Dave: Right. Well, and I’m looking at I just typed in the lower Madison or the Madison just to see on trout routes. And I’m looking at it. It’s cool. There was a pop up right there on the first page. It said, hey, there’s certain restrictions on this river. And I opened it and it says, hoot owl restriction prohibits angling from two to p m to midnight. So there you go. So we’ve got I mean, that’s the other cool thing is having knowing that would be good to know, right? You don’t want to get out there at three p m after two because you’re not fishing. No. 00:23:00 Tim: No, I know, I don’t know. I still think back to myself like sixteen year old me or twelve year old me, like I would be blown away by the technology we have now that just I don’t want to say it makes it easy, but it just it we, we have so much information, which I think probably your listeners out there right now are saying there’s almost too much information, which I believe there’s too much in fly fishing. Now. You really have to sift and sort and find those resources that tend to be the cream of the crop, the ones that rise to the top. So for sure, and, you know, I guess finishing up my plan, I like to have a couple access points. You know, just say I’m going to try these spots. If I am using an app like, like trout routes, I’m, I do use the pro version. So I’m going to download some offline maps because that could, you know, make or break the day depending on my cell access. And I don’t know, I just when I think to myself, like, what am I trying to get out of these plans? I don’t want my entire fishing day dependent on one parking lot or one access point or just one river. I want to give myself options. So this this is the stuff that kind of all goes on behind the scenes before I arrive. 00:24:04 Dave: Gotcha. So that’s it. So you’ve done all this before. You’ve even hopped on the road. This is just getting you. So you’ve got a plan of attack and now you know kind of where you’re going. You know what flies. You’ve got all the the Intel. How much time does this take you? Do you think everything you’ve just covered these first four pieces. 00:24:19 Tim: Gosh, I’ve gotten pretty quick, you know pretty good at it over the years. So it’s a lot faster for me because I kind of know, you know, where to look, what to look at. If I’m looking at a website like the USGS, I can figure it out pretty quick, though. I will say, I’m sure your listeners will agree with me. They’ve changed the interface over the last few years, one or two times, and every time they change it, I’m like, ah, this is now new for me. I can’t figure out how to use this. Where’s this one screen? So the one thing I’ve not liked with USGS is how it’s kind of changed a couple times. You know, whenever we use some of these, these, uh, these apps, they’re a little bit nicer because you can open an app, click on a river and it just tells you the USGS immediately for stream report. So I like that aspect to be able to look at the number, even though there may be more data on the USGS website. But I don’t want to say it takes me X amount of minutes because there’s not that. But and maybe this is going to sound weird, but I’m also the person I love preparing for trips. I love the anticipation. I love tying flies. I love getting my leaders ready. Like thinking about the rods. Like I love the pre-trip planning. It doesn’t matter if it’s a, you know, a week long trip, you know, a day trip, like just a couple hours. I love getting ready for trips. So I am weird in that aspect. Dave. 00:25:32 Dave: Yeah. Nice, nice, cool. So where do we take this next? So you’ve got a plan of attack. What’s your are you now heading out getting on the water. Talk about that. 00:25:41 Tim: Yeah. You got it. So now let’s let’s get there. Let’s say we’re arriving. What happens when you arrive. And and you know, whenever I think about my arrival routine first, I’m going to confirm that the access looks legitimate. Um, I love to tell this story. I fished in Michigan, you know, pretty frequently. And one of the first times there I was on a river that many people probably would know. And I parked and I went down to the river and I’m fishing. And I was actually with I met a friend at this access point and after about like ten minutes, we hadn’t gotten too far away. Someone yells like, hey, someone’s parked at the boat launch. And I’m like, oh man. Like, I didn’t even know there was a boat launch here. And, you know, we keep fishing and they yell again. Hey, who has, you know, this vehicle? I’m like, that’s my vehicle. And I yell back, hey, that’s mine. I’m not parked there. And I’m like, you’re parked in front of the boat launch. And I’m like, no, I’m parked in front of these steps. And you’re like, that’s the boat launch in Michigan. These steps, because they have these real long, skinny boats and canoes. And I’m like, oh, I had to run out and like, move it. So here I am, like, I’m at the boat launch blocking everybody. They’re all mad at me. Oh, here I am. I got Pennsylvania plates in Michigan. I’m like, they’re gonna. 00:26:45 Dave: You. 00:26:45 Tim: Know. 00:26:45 Dave: Just nice. 00:26:46 Tim: Deflate my tires. So again, make sure you understand that. Something else I like to do that just takes a few minutes. I don’t know. I like to observe the river. And the first thing is bring a pair of binoculars. Could just be a real cheapie pair, just something that you can scope quickly and just take a look at what’s going on. Can you see roughly water? Most importantly, can you see fish rising? I mean, I love to Euro nymph. I love to throw streamers. I love to swing wet flies, but man, I love dry flies. And if I find fish rising like I’m going to go after those ones. So take some binoculars and see what you can kind of dig up. I don’t know, check the water temperature. There’s a few different thermometers that I use. I use this one digital one. I can just click and get a surface temp. I have this fish pond one that I put on my boots so I can just walk in the water and it’ll tell me the temps, or you can just use an old school one and throw it in, but find the temperature, make sure kind of like what you’re saying now it’s not too warm or the other side of things. It’s not too cold. A story that I love to tell. I was fishing this river in western Pennsylvania. It had been freezing, and it was finally a day where everything warmed up. And I’m like, this is the day. And I showed up and I wasn’t catching anything, but I was freezing in my waders and I’m like, I don’t know why I’m so cold. It was gorgeous. It was gorgeous. And it was so warm that it was melting all the snow and the snow was breaking off. Ice chunks were actually going into the river, and it was lowering the temperature of the river. That day, whenever I finally took the temp, it was like two degrees or three degrees above freezing, like the temperature of the river actually went down even though the day warmed up. So, you know, I got to take my own advice sometimes. Like just don’t assume, just take that that temperature. Look for insects, look for feeding activity. I mean, go into the water, turn over a rock or two. My other little tip that I have, if there’s a bridge or somewhere where you can find a cobweb, look in that cobweb. See if there’s any insects that are left over from the night before. Maybe some mayflies, maybe some caddis flies. I’m going to identify the dominant water type and just say, are there a lot of riffles? Are there a lot of pools? Are there a lot of whatevers? I mean, find out what that dominant water type is, which will help me figure out which technique I’m going to use. Because, you know, one of the things I’m guilty of, and I’m thinking many people might be as well. I get there already thinking I know which technique I’m going to use. And sometimes Dave, I even know what fly I’m going to use. I know that’s not right. You know, like you and I know that’s, that’s not the right way to approach it. But it’s like, yeah, I’m going to get there. I’m going to put on a pheasant tail or I’m going to put on my ex caddis or this, you know, black jig bugger. And it’s like, don’t do that. Like, but it’s tough not to. You just want to go to that water type you’re comfortable with and, you know, use that fly you’re comfortable with, but you really have to think about reading stuff. I mean, we can get into different water types next if you like, but just don’t show up, you know, saying, I’m going to do this. Just really see what the water has to offer you. 00:29:43 Dave: Trout routes by Onix is built for fly anglers who want better Intel without spending hours digging for the information. You’ll get access to public land maps, stream access points, regulations, and even road and trail maps all in one place. It’s become my go to app for scouting new trips. You can check them out right now. Go to webflow dot com slash routes and download the app today. And you know what is the next step? How do you know when to put on the dry fly versus the the wet fly. You wait until you’re seeing heads popping out. You know, what’s your describe that for somebody who maybe struggles with that a little bit. 00:30:21 Tim: In terms of when to do, which technique is that what you’re saying? 00:30:25 Dave: Yeah. Like if you went up and you’re looking well, first, you mentioned water types, you’ve got riffles, you got pools, like what do you fish first? You know, do you have a system on that where you come to it and you’re like, well, I’m going to start with, well, you said you start with dry flies. If you’re seeing. Is that kind of what you’re saying is you wait to see if you’re seeing some action. 00:30:38 Tim: Well, I guess it comes down to your comfort level as well, because you have to fall back on what your comfort level. And whenever I think about fly fishing, I think we all have our comfort level in terms of a technique. I mean, I know anglers who will throw nothing but a dry fly that’s it’s their dry fly or die. I know other anglers that are just I’m going to Euro nymph. It doesn’t matter if there’s fish rising. I’m going to nymph right through them. And then there’s this one angler that I’m thinking of that is going to throw streamers all day. Doesn’t care if he lands a fish. He wants to see that bright yellow streamer coming through the water and maybe see an occasional chase. So I think you have to say to yourself something, you know, I am notorious for saying it’s good to have a lot of arrows in your quiver and to have a lot of techniques. 00:31:18 Dave: Yeah. What if you’re a dry fly? What if you’re just sitting there and you really want to get some dry fly action today? 00:31:23 Tim: What I think you got to say to yourself, you know, what water do I look for? Because this is probably the toughest part of fishing for most new anglers, for many intermediate anglers as well. And it’s it’s learning how to read water because, you know, whenever I get to unfamiliar water, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s one thing when you say, I know I’m going to go to this spot, I know there’s going to be fish there. But when you get to unfamiliar water, the first thing you have to say to yourself is, you know, where should the fish be today? And if you can make connections to not just the river where you catch fish, but the river where you catch fish that time of year, or that water temperature, or that water depth or that water clarity. If you can build that connection and say, when the water’s like this, at this temperature, this is the type of spot I go to. And I’ll give you an example of that, where I failed once and it was in the middle of winter. I was fishing this super fast, water wide fish, like really fast water all fall. And I had nymph that water I had fished a bunch of like really nice just transition points. That was just, it was real fast current along a slow current, just a nice little, you know, little, little seam basically. And I really just fell in love with that style, bringing flies like pathogens through there. And I show up in the winter and I get to that spot that I had just so much familiarity, so much comfort with. And I’m fishing these nymphs, and I picked up a fish or two, but nowhere near what I should have. And finally I was able to say to myself, Tim, like, it’s the middle of winter. You know, fish aren’t going to be in this style water. They’re going to be, you know, in holes. They’re going to be in pools, they’re in slow moving water. They’re conserving energy because there’s no bugs hatching right now. And if there’s no bugs, there’s no protein for them to get. Like they’re not going to be wasting their energy swimming back and forth in those seams. So then I move to a slower, slower water, change my approach, change my style. caught a bunch of fish. And so I think you have to first say to yourself, what are you comfortable with? What connections can you make? But what do you see in front of you? I mean, the stuff that I tell people to look for, it really comes down to transitions. I mean, I’ll say these things and as I say them, let me first just say them. And I want your listeners to say to yourself, can I picture this? Then let me go through like how I would fish this and what I would think about in these spots. I mean, I don’t know, Dave. I think of themes. I think of riffle edges. I think of soft pockets. I love undercut banks. I really think depth changes are really critical for anglers. I like a riffle to run transition. And I also look for obstructions, current breaks, trees down boulders. I mean, those are areas that even if I’ve never been on that water, you should be able to go to those. However many I said six, seven, eight places and say there’s going to be fish here. If the temperature is good, if this is a stream that’s known to hold trout. They’re going to be in those spots. And the first one is a seam. I mean, think to yourself, if there is slow water immediately beside a faster current, that fast current is going to deliver food. And those trout are going to be sitting in the slow water. So you got to work that boundary between those two speeds. Don’t cast into the fast current, but hit that boundary water right where that fast water meets the slower. And now you’re saying, what technique do you use? That’s nymphs. That’s nymph water. Dry dropper can also be really well if that seam is shallow enough for fish to, to decide to go the whole way up. And especially if you’ve seen some heads popping up. And I think that’s kind of that. Do I go dry or nymph? If I see an occasional head that might be a dry dropper, which means I’m going to be fishing a dry fly with a nymph as a dropper, either off the bend through the eye of the hook, or just off a dropper tag, which is kind of my preferred way. If I’m not seeing any fish rising, I’m probably going to fish one nymph, maybe two nymphs if I’m legally allowed to do so there. But whenever I see seams, that’s what I want. My I want my fly in that feeding lane that just that really that boundary water, we’ll call it as long as I can keep them there. 00:35:21 Dave: Yeah. And the seams are great. So that’s a good tip that it’s not necessarily you see a seam off of a pool. It doesn’t mean necessarily you’re throwing a dry fly. A nymph might work better in this situation. Do you? What about in the dry dropper. What’s your size. Let’s say you had a nice dropper. You want to fish at Paragon or some nymph? How small could you go on that dry dropper? Like, do you go, you know, or do you need a big fly, typically bigger fly? 00:35:42 Tim: Wow, Dave, this is a great question. I probably would have answered this different maybe five years ago. I recently wrote a book called Tying Your Nymphs, and in that book, I interviewed like thirty of the top competition anglers today. And it was all about nymphs originally. But at the end of every interview, I asked them a little bit about just their other favorite flies and styles. And these people, these are these are anglers that have lots of arrows in their quivers. I think most people assume, oh, it’s a competition angler. They’re good at nymphing like, no, like these guys, these anglers are excellent at every spot. There’s a reason they’re they’re the best in the world. And a lot of them, most of them fish dry dropper because in competitions they can’t use an indicator and indicators. I don’t care what people say. Like there’s a reason indicators are effective. You can cast them at distance. They help to carry a light line, especially Euro nymphing rigs or mono rigs. They’re great for just long pulls. I mean, indicators are a great way to fish, but dry dropper can be equally if not better depending on the situation. The tricky part is, I think too many anglers say to themselves, I need a really buoyant fly. I’m going to put something on like a chubby Chernobyl and then a size eighteen waltz worm or Pentagon. And I will say, that doesn’t mean that’s a bad setup. I’m not telling you it’s a bad setup. But the tip that I learned, the hot take that I’ll tell you that that all these. Every one of these competition anglers said. They want to dry fly. That will just barely suspend that nymph, so if anything touches it, that dry fly will go down. 00:37:09 Dave: Oh that’s right. 00:37:10 Tim: And that’s what they want. So and it’s they use a lot of CDC. They definitely use foam but not as much foam as you would think. Like in my mind, it was like, I want something that’s going to float. It can suspend a heavy fly. 00:37:23 Dave: Yeah. Super buoyant. They can go through the rapids and stay dry. Right. Yeah. 00:37:26 Tim: I think it was Josh Miller. Don’t quote me on the exact but I think it was Josh Miller. He was like, he’s like Tim like picture like an overweight guy in like a kid’s life preserver. That’s how I want my dry fly acting as a dry dropper. And if you think of it like that, like just the slightest. 00:37:41 Dave: Oh, he’s going down. That guy’s going down. 00:37:43 Tim: Exactly. Does that make sense? 00:37:45 Dave: Oh, yeah. That’s perfect. I love that analogy. The big guy, the kid’s life jacket. 00:37:48 Tim: I need to come up with a more appropriate analogy, but that’s the one I got for now. 00:37:51 Dave: No that’s good, that’s good, I love that. Yeah. And that’s a good reminder because that makes you start to think like, yeah, you don’t need the biggest fly. You need just the fly big enough that any little subtle touch will indicate that you’ve got a fish. Maybe on the inside. And then it could still take the dry fly. You can still take that dry. 00:38:08 Tim: I mean, yes, I was fishing Yellowstone drainage this summer and we were doing dry dropper off of rafts. And I mean, that was that’s the style. I mean, it just cast and blast as many casts as you can make within inches of the bank. And sometimes they’re going to nail that dry fly. Sometimes they’re going to take the nymph. But that was the issue was it was really dialing in that correct weight, where at one point I said to, you know, I said to the guide, I’m like, hey, I got to put on a heavier nymph. I think fish are eating my nymph. But it’s just, it’s not showing like it’s not enough. Like they’re just not balanced correctly. And sure enough, we put it on and that heavier nymph actually slowed my dry fly as well. And it was just immediate, like just we just started catching so many more fish. So there is a balancing act between those flies. 00:38:49 Dave: Awesome. Well, that was awesome, it seems. Maybe give us another one of you mentioned some of these soft pockets undercuts. What’s another good one? You really, when you see it in the river, you’re like, man, I’m fishing that spot. 00:38:57 Tim: Yeah. I don’t think we have time for every single one, but I don’t know. I love these these are all transitions. Let’s let’s first say that these are really just all transitions. I think something big is depth changes. Anytime you have like a sudden transition, think of it that way from shallow to deep water that deserves attention. I mean, trout will position themselves near near the drop where they can still remain protected, but they can feed on food that comes in from the shallows. Because a lot of people forget like things like riffles, those are food factories. There are so many insects that just they hatch in the riffles and there are so many fish, especially in, you know, late spring in the summertime that just live in the riffles and they never have to leave the riffles. I mean, I think I mentioned the riffle edge, one of the biggest no nos that I see is so many people get to a riffle and they walk in looking for like juicy water within that riffle or looking for an obstruction within the riffle. And it’s like, before you go anywhere, fish the edge of the riffle. That’s where trout holds, you know, it’s real soft water. It provides everything they need oxygen, food. It’s not too much current. So you want to fish that soft edge first with nymphs, especially like concentrate on that transition between that fast and moderate current. And it’s the same thing with that depth change. Like I say to myself, I want to work that lip first and then move progressively deeper because those fish more than likely aren’t going to be at the top. They’re going to be positioned somewhere in that depth change where they can still be protected, where if they do sense danger, they can swim into the depth and they swim into the deep. They see an overhead bird or some type of predator, and they’re out. So I’m going to work that lip. Go deeper, especially with nymphs, I mean, and whenever I say I’m going to fish nymphs, I’m going to try to possibly adjust my weight or my depth. So I’m reaching that transition point because if you’re coming from a riffle and you’re working your way into that, that deeper water, you may have to add weight progressively as you get there. It could be a larger bead on your fly, it could be a split shot or two, or even some of that soft putty. But make sure you’re doing that. And let’s not forget those people who like streamers. I mean, retrieve across or along the edge of that drop. Don’t just blindly cover the entire pool. Like say to yourself, like, I’m not just going to cast and retrieve it and see what happens. Like say to yourself, like, where’s the drop? I want to fish my streamer right along the edge of that drop. So, you know, that’s one. And I guess you said a couple. Um, how about like a riffle to run? 00:41:16 Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Riffle run. That’s a good one. So a riffle to run. And that’s a little confusion too with the, the riffle. I think everybody gets the riffle water but the run, I think there’s some confusion on what a run is right. Because doesn’t that turn into kind of a pool or is there overlap. How do you describe a run. 00:41:31 Tim: Yeah. I mean, whenever I think to myself like what’s a run? I mean, this is a run is a spot that’s just kind of a long glide of faster moving water. That’s where one in my mind. And, you know, whenever you go from that riffle to run, which you nailed it, by the way, it’s riffle run pool, riffle run pool. That’s it doesn’t matter where I’m fishing in the world. You have those. That’s the characteristic. 00:41:50 Dave: Pool. And then down to then after pool, it drops down into tail out and then back to a riffle and then same thing. 00:41:54 Tim: Exactly. Tails out back to a rifle and starts that transition again to, you know, rifle run. So whenever we have that, that type of setting, you say to yourself, like, food’s coming from the rifle and it’s going to get concentrated right there as it moves into the upper end of that run. So instead of immediately, which it’s so easy for us to go to that deep water, it’s so easy. I mean, I grew up in Western Pennsylvania. Like, I feel like people just live in pools in western Pennsylvania. And pools can be great spots to fish, but go to the upper end because that’s where those fish tend to be target like that, that deepest water as it just starts that transition into that run. I mean, that’s where I like to go. It could be a nymph. You could also hit a mergers there and hit dry flies, especially during a hatch. I mean, it’s too convenient to say, I’m going to go to a pool. I’m going to sit at the back end of the pool and just wait for those, you know, dry flies to work their way there. The rear of a pool is so tough during a hatch, but the head of a pool or the head of a run, especially. Those could be great because fish just have, you know, just a minute amount of time to say I have to say yes or no. And if there’s a dry fly in or a merger, you know, those fish are expecting it. They, they come up, they say yes, a lot easier than they will in that slower moving water. 00:43:08 Dave: That’s good. So the rear. So during a hatch you’re saying the rear of the pool towards the deeper or I guess the deeper spot in the big bucket. That’s the harder spot because why. Because it’s kind of calmer. There’s not as much cover or why is that? 00:43:20 Tim: No, I think it’s because fish have a lot more time back there. I really believe they have a lot more time because, I mean, we think about like a riffle. Why do I think riffles are so effective? They’re shallow, they’re rocky. They have surface disturbance, which means you can get closer to the fish. There’s a lot of obstructions, there’s a lot of bugs. Their fish just tend to be eating when they’re in the riffles and they’re not there all year long. I mean, we can get into that as well. Then when you get to the run, it’s, you know, deeper water. You know, as we said, kind of faster current. It’s almost smooth and uniform kind of look at it that way versus that pole is just like deep calm water. And once it’s calm, I don’t know, I feel like fish have a lot more time to kind of inspect things. And especially those near the tail out, you know, they have more time to kind of look around and see what’s going on and sometimes see you. And that’s not a good thing. The tail out of a pool can be effective at times because the tail out’s a little shallower. So as those fish are closer to the surface, you know, I don’t think they can see you as well. And there’s a little bit more disturbance on the water, especially if it’s breaking into a riffle again. So whenever I, you know, whenever I even think about riffles, runs, pools, tail outs, like don’t just look at it like that. Say to yourself, where’s the transition from the riffle to the run, from the run to the pool, from the pool to the tail out? Like if you can find even those transition points, that will help you even more to break it apart. And I think that’s one of the mysteries to Reading Water. Whenever I say, oh, riffles are great, people are like, all right, Tim said, riffles, I’m going to go to a riffle. But where do you fish? 00:44:50 Dave: Where do you start? Yeah. Like start. 00:44:52 Tim: Start on the edge. Look for obstructions. Look for soft pockets behind structure. Look for a raw log. Look for a current break. Like those are the types of spots that I really want to point people to. 00:45:03 Dave: So yeah, we’ll take us to whatever you got next here to keep this going here. I don’t know if we want to transition over to the next thing or start to take it out of here. You tell me. 00:45:13 Tim: Well, let me look over some notes. Let me see if there’s anything that I’m missing that I wanted to kind of kind of really reinforce because I do have a couple other things. I mean, we’ve gone into this idea of like, you know, what happens once we arrive? We get there. We’re talking about the water types. I think we’ve given some examples to everybody about, you know, what’s a practical trip planning. I mean, we talked kind of about if we’re doing like a local morning in Pennsylvania, what would that look like versus something like a weekend or, you know, in a new state or even a Montana trip. So I think we kind of hit all that we did. 00:45:43 Dave: And one thing I was thinking about too, I think would be good. You mentioned, I think in there, the tech versus the knowledge that might be a good thing to talk about to maybe, you know, the fact that we do have this tech, but there’s also the knowledge when maybe, you know, I don’t know, what were your thoughts there? 00:45:57 Tim: Yeah, let’s get into that. I don’t know, let’s get into the idea of technology ethics and what’s the word spot burning. Let’s get into. 00:46:04 Dave: Burning. Yeah. Right. 00:46:05 Tim: This this could get a little interesting because I think there’s some questions we have to ask ourselves. And the first one is, does a mapping technology like this place too much pressure on small streams or on famous streams? And to me, that’s a legitimate question that whenever I go on these apps or whenever I go on websites that say fish X River, like now, it’s not only I’m not, I’m not only saying like, you can fish X River, these apps, this technology is telling you where to go, where to fish. There’s some apps that I’ve seen, Dave, that even show you anglers that have caught fish. And you can find the exact rock where they caught that fish. So that’s a question. I mean, I think that’s something we have to keep in mind. I mean, there are some people out there that take that extreme like, hey, if you catch a fish somewhere, you catch that one, you should go somewhere else. And there’s other people I know that could hole up and they want to catch every single fish out of that one spot. So is there too much pressure on rivers today? And I think the answer is yes and no. I think it really depends on where you live, what the population’s like. I mean, I feel like there are areas of the country where I go and it’s, I don’t want to say an aging population, but just not as many anglers anymore. And you go to these rivers that you think like, wow, there are so many fish. These rivers should just be there should be, you know, twenty cars at every excess spot and there’s nobody. And then you go to places that have a really young population. I’m not going to say the states, but I think people can figure out a few. And you get there and it’s like you get to a spot on the river that you think should only have one or two anglers, and there’s like seven lined up just fishing next to each other. And man, is that frustrating? But that’s the spot. That’s the area that’s fly fishing has gotten very popular in some spots. And this mapping technology, I’m not blaming that, but it definitely it can put pressure on on places. And I don’t know, I think it’s also in my mind, it’s a little bit fundamentally different from using guidebooks or state maps, I mean, or my topographic map, because whenever I use my topographic map, I had to do so much more of the homework myself. It was me with my like Ticonderoga number two pencil driving, like marking spots off like Xingu out rivers that weren’t good. I mean, I could think about all the rivers that I fished that were no good, that I got there looking for, like wild brook trout in Pennsylvania. And we’d fish for hours and we didn’t catch a thing, and we’d go on to another one. And there’s two sides of that. It’s like, you know, I’m at a point in my life where I have a couple small children, you know, you know, I’m a, I’m a full time teacher and I do all this content and I host these trips where I don’t know if I, you know, truly have hours that I want to go and spend and spend all that time looking for a trout. So I see that side of it where people just are so busy. But then there’s the other side of it. Like, I wouldn’t give up those, those days of my life, that time for anything like those. I learned so much. Like it’s really different to now, say like, now I have an app that, that I know it’s going to say, oh, this is a, a blue ribbon trout stream or it’s designated as class one or class A or, you know, and it tells me like there will be trout in this river. It’s not going to tell me necessarily where, but I don’t know. What’s that? What are the ethics there? What’s what’s the technology? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And even something like chat GPT Dave. I mean, you know, whenever we start getting into AI, I remember a couple of years ago, I was using it before it got super, super popular. And I would ask it questions like, if I was going to this river, what do you think I should use? And now I’ve asked some of those same questions again. And it’s scary how accurate it is it? 00:49:41 Dave: Is it pretty. 00:49:42 Tim: Good? It is. I’ll ask it about rivers that I think no one knows about in my in my home state. And it will tell me like and I’ll say, say to it like, give me some access spots. Tell me where you think I should go in. Tell me what flies I should use. Tell me about you know, what techniques. And it will really dial it in to the point where I’m like, oh, that’s a good idea. 00:49:59 Dave: Like, no, there’s one spot. 00:50:01 Tim: Yeah. You know, there was one spot. It was like, Tim, you’re probably going to get there and there’s going to be lots of dry flies, but it’s going to be dark. If you have trouble seeing it, instead of doing dry dropper, do a dry dropper, but have two dry flies with a large dry fly and a small dry fly. And I’m like, that’s my idea. Like, how did it read my website? 00:50:17 Dave: You know, it’s like, it’s getting good. 00:50:20 Tim: Like, I mean, it’s not just making this stuff up. It’s pulling the information from somewhere. 00:50:24 Dave: But now, well, sometimes, sometimes it doesn’t make stuff up and you catch it and you’re like, wait a minute, are you making this up? And then it apologizes. It’s kind of funny. Yeah. Oh my God, that’s crazy. 00:50:34 Tim: Yeah. So so that’s another question. And I think probably the bigger one. And this is Now this is looking at the. The negative side of the internet is, you know, should anglers share exact locations or images that have too much information in them on social media? And it’s like, man, is that spot burning? Because I, I’ve seen people that say, I was on this river in this section and they’re holding up a beautiful fish. And there’s two sides of it. I mean, there’s one side of it where you don’t know their story. That could be someone who has that’s their first time out fishing. Yeah. They caught this beautiful brown trout. They are so excited to share it with whomever, you know. I mean, I remember being like, whenever I caught my first brown, I can remember some of my first trout. I was, I had this little click Kodak camera and I was trying to hold it up and click a picture so I can show my grandma. Like, I was so excited to share that. And I think of like old, you know, fly shops or old bait shops. And they used to have all these pictures, right? 00:51:31 Dave: All the pictures. Yeah. 00:51:33 Tim: And now it’s like these people, you know, someone will post that image, not telling their backstory, just posting that image and in the comments, people will just blow them up. 00:51:42 Dave: I know that that is the tough. That was a tough one. Yeah. 00:51:45 Tim: So it’s it’s really tricky because they’re not intentionally trying to spot burn. Some people might be it’s a dilemma where, you know, I know, like, you know, whenever we talk about like people who I look up to as like ambassadors of the sport, those people can’t like message them and say, hey, you shouldn’t do this like that. That doesn’t play well either. It’s, it’s almost. 00:52:03 Dave: Like, right. 00:52:04 Tim: We need more like fly fishing mentors. 00:52:07 Dave: Well, and that would happen on the river, you know, I mean, and that’s happened to me in the past on the river where you’re out there and you see somebody doing something kind of weird and, you know, you just, you could go up to them and just say, hey, I don’t know if you knew this, but you’re doing something that’s kind of weird. You know, you might want to try to this, you know, you might want to try this. So you have that conversation. But then also on the river, I’ve been in situations where there’s been fights that have happened because, you know, somebody was mad and. Right. So I feel like that’s always gone on. It’s just now we’re on this social media thing, which makes everything worse because you’re not in front of anybody anymore, right? I think that’s part of the problem. 00:52:39 Tim: Yes, exactly. No, that’s exactly it. So, you know, whenever I think about this stuff, it’s like there is a responsibility that comes with easier access to information because that’s the gist of this. Whenever I go back to the beginning, like, what did we call this? This is, you know, this idea of, you know, from map to first cast, like how to explore new trout water. And we have this ability now to, I’ve given you all these resources and all this stuff. And now, you know, I’ve just given all your listeners like, this is stuff that’s taken me over thirty years to figure out. And now I just gave it to everybody and it’s like, well, wait, before you go out there and use it, like say to yourself, how can I be a responsible angler with this access, with these resources, with these apps, with this AI? Like, what can I do to make sure, you know, I, I don’t want to say you protect your spot because, you know, at least for me growing up, Dave, like I didn’t share my spots with anybody and I still don’t, just because I’m afraid sometimes by me saying the name of a spot, it could dramatically change a spot that doesn’t get pressure. I mean, there was one time I’ll tell two stories. There was one time I was fishing a little brook trout stream in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. I was the only one that I’ve ever seen fishing this river or this stream. It’s not a river. It’s just a tiny little stream. And I’m fishing and. And as I’m getting to this one spot, there’s another angler. I’ve never seen anyone even on this river, let alone an angler. And sure enough, he’s got a fly rod. And he looks at me and without hesitating, he goes, You’re Tim Camisa. And I’m like, oh, I’ve been spotted. He’s like, is this a good stream? Do you like to fish here? And I was like, oh my God, this is like my favorite brook trout stream of my life. Like, what do I say in that? Right? 00:54:17 Dave: Yeah. 00:54:18 Tim: I’ve never been here before. 00:54:20 Dave: Oh yeah. But you’re Tim so you don’t want to. Yeah. 00:54:23 Tim: I’m just exploring. So, you know, that’s there’s a dilemma that comes in there. And now now I’ll go to another podcast host, Tom Rosenbauer, this fly fishing podcast. And, you know, after, you know, I fished with Tom up in Vermont and we were Tom and I were fishing this one little brook trout stream and we’re fishing and we’re, you know, we’re catching these beautiful brook trout in Vermont. Just what you’d want to do on a with a bamboo fly rod and dry flies. And as we’re fishing, there’s a couple that’s walking along the stream and they stop and they’re admiring us fishing. And, and I’m like, oh, what do I do here? And they yell down, how’s the fishing? And I turned to say, hey, we’re having a wonderful day. You know, just something like that. And without hesitating, Tom looks at them and yells up, the fishing sucks here. We haven’t caught a thing. 00:55:06 Dave: Oh, nice. 00:55:07 Tim: And I’m like, all right, well, there’s my answer in Vermont. I do not. And Tom was very quick to tell me, hey, we do not give up our spots. So and I kind of I grew up with that mentality, Dave. And yeah, it’s to the point now where, you know, if you’re smart, you would never ask me where we were fishing. You would ask like my wife or my son, but I’ve trained them. Like in Pennsylvania, we have a very famous river called Spring Creek, and And there’s actually a number of rivers in Pennsylvania called Spring Creek. So anytime, you know, somebody asks any one of my family members where we’re fishing. My son Angelo knows to always say, we’re fishing Spring Creek. That’s just that’s the line. And and it’s now just funny because he’s ten years old and we were just talking about fishing yesterday as we were driving somewhere and, and my son said to me, dad, you know how we always tell people we’re fishing Spring Creek? And I’m like, yeah. And he’s like, but what if we’re actually fishing Spring Creek? What do we say then? Yeah, I don’t know, buddy. Just keep saying. 00:56:01 Dave: But it’s so common of a name that it’s like, it probably doesn’t matter because there’s multiple. 00:56:05 Tim: Springs. So I don’t know. So whenever I to kind of reflect on this session, this, this section of technology and ethics and the notion of spot burning, I mean, I don’t know, I look at this, this information, it definitely can help someone locate water. It doesn’t, you know, necessarily remove the responsibility to respect landowners, the regs, other anglers and the resource. And I don’t know, I guess I’m comfortable helping someone understand how to find water, but that doesn’t mean I have to post the exact pool where I caught a fish. So I’ll tell people, you know, be cognizant of that. Like I’m kind of known whenever I give these presentations to, to clubs around the country, I’ll tell them like spot on, like, here’s a picture of me on, you know, this river. I’ll tell them the name of the river and I’ll say, I posted this picture on my Instagram four months after I caught that fish, because I didn’t want somebody to, to recognize that river and say to themselves, oh, Tim was on that river yesterday catching that fish. So I am very cognizant of when I make my own posts to social media of fish, especially those that I catch in rivers that I believe are popular. And I guess that last part is, you know, I don’t know, I got to be honest, that technology, it can increase pressure. So let’s not pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s just teach people how to use it responsibly. 00:57:18 Dave: I think that’s the key. I think that’s a good takeaway is just you’ve got all these tools, just be responsible. That’s the reason, you know, why things like trout routes or onyx or any of these things that have land ownership is great. That’s being responsible. You know where private property is and you have no excuses anymore, right? You shouldn’t be trespassing, right? 00:57:35 Tim: Yeah, exactly. So I don’t know, I guess wrapping it up, I mean, these are some, some of my thoughts regarding finding new water. I love to do it, even though I complain and say I don’t have time, like I still love to do it as much as you know, Pennsylvania is probably like many other states out there. It feels like there’s a lot of pressure on a lot of rivers. And, um, you know, I fish with my wife and my daughter who’s, you know, she’s six, my son is ten years old. And when I go fly fishing, I want it to just be the four of us. And, you know, we don’t fish too much private water like we fish public water. So know that we are out on the river most weekends and, you know, as many days as we can in the summertime and very few people see us. So I’m willing to use apps like trout routes and find spots that aren’t necessarily on the popular river or are on the popular river, but just somewhere else. Because I do want to fish and just the four of us be out there and have a good time and catch fish and, you know, enjoy the experience because that’s, that’s what it’s about for me. You know, it’s, it truly is about that experience of just getting out there and spending time. So, you know, I’m going to tell people, you know, get out there. If you’re in a rut, you’ve been fishing the same waters. Say to yourself, like, how can I, first of all, get out of that rut and then, you know, use some of this advice and, and try to fish a new river, a new county, a new state, even a new country man. Like just say to yourself, like, get out of there. Get out of your comfort level. You might get your butt kicked. I can tell you very bluntly, I have like, I’ve traveled and said like, oh, I can’t wait to get to this spot because it’s like, oh, if you travel so far, you pay so much money. Of course the fishing is going to be easier. Like, no, it’s not. It’s still going to have bad weather, but you’re going to learn from that. And then you’re going to say like, kind of like my current thing, I love Atlantic salmon fishing right now on the fly. And man, have I been humbled with that? And, you know, when things come together like this summer, they came together in so many ways. And oh, I had just one epic morning that I could talk about. And it just like everything worked and it finally came together. And that moment for me was like, like, yes, that last three years that has really just made the difference for me. So get out there and, you know, grow a little bit as an angler. 00:59:48 Dave: That’s perfect. Yeah, I think we both have that in common on the, uh, the Atlantic salmon. Now. I think we’ll have to talk about that maybe on the next one. We could trade notes in here because you got the Iceland thing going, but, um, but cool. Well, tell me this, Tim, before we get out of here, you mentioned Tom. I’d love to hear, like you fished with the big guy. What’s he like on the water? What’s it like fishing with Tom? Is he, uh. How would you describe him? Is he doesn’t seem like he’s that intense, but he sounds like he is a little bit. 01:00:12 Tim: Yes and no. It was a really interesting day. We were fishing new water for me. And I will say this. Let me go back. Tom is awesome. He is the most generous person as an angler. Whenever I pulled up, we. actually met at the Orvis, the Maine Orvis store in Vermont. So we, you know, I pulled up there. He was outside in his SUV, gave me the nicest handshake, was like so excited. He’s like, I’m so excited to meet you. Tim just made me feel like so comfortable. So. However, if your listeners also listen to his podcast, however you imagine him from that podcast, he’s exactly the same, right? Exactly the same. And I’ve, I’ve had dinner with him, you know, many times now. I’ve texted we email, I’ve been on his podcast multiple times. He is just wonderful. He’s, you know, just top notch, no question about it. But he gave me a hard time because when we were fishing, a couple things. We had a prototype Orvis bamboo fly rod that he had told nobody about. The manager of the Orvis Rod shop didn’t even know this rod existed. He had the bamboo guy built it for him. So we bring it out. He wanted. I think he was kind of using me to see what it was like, so we could go to the manager the next day and say, it was a great rod and he wanted it built, which was very awkward just in itself. 01:01:20 Dave: So and this is a bamboo. 01:01:21 Tim: Rod fishing with. Yeah. Tom Rosenbauer, a prototype Orvis bamboo rod that no one’s ever seen before. We’re fishing spot to spot. And after he would catch a fish and I’d be up, he’d throw the rod in the air to me and I’d have to catch it. It was like just fishing with Tom is, you know, nerve wracking enough. But him throwing this special bamboo rod in the air, it was just crazy. And here I am, like making the connection back to Pennsylvania. Kind of like digging into these spots and making casts near the tail. And Tom’s like, no, no, no. You make three casts, put them right up by the, you know, by the drop. If they don’t eat, we move to the next drop. And we put on so many miles. Tom was climbing boulders like he was eighteen years old. I just developed so much respect for him. One of my other takeaways was, here’s the guy that’s like the ambassador for fly fishing. He has access to every single fly fishing item, gadget, tool, rod, reel that, that Orvis and probably anybody else sells. And I look at him compared to me, I have like this vest on all these gadgets. He’s got this little sack, he’s got like a bottle of water and that’s it. I mean, he carried so little with him, and he really inspired me to start carrying less and less on the river. So I don’t know, it’s just one of those days that, you know, that day especially. I’ll never forget with him. 01:02:33 Dave: That’s great, I love it. I love that we’re leaving away with the Tom Rosenbauer story. Uh, the guy. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to connect with him and I’ll do the water as well. Well, I got you. We still got to connect up here where we’ve connected plenty on the podcast, but I think we’re gonna maybe do that in the next couple of years, but, um, but cool. Tim. Well, thanks again for all this. This has been great. I think we can leave it there for today until the next one. And, uh, definitely appreciate all your knowledge and we’ll keep in touch with you, trout and weather dot com of course, and connect with you there. And, uh, yeah, until we meet again. Thanks again. 01:03:02 Tim: That sounds great. Dave. Thanks so much for everything you’re doing for fly fishing. I love to say at the end of your podcast, I don’t think anyone has any idea how much time you put into this and how many resources you’re giving. For all of us. I’m a listener. I’m a fan of your podcast, as you know, and I don’t know, man, you are running some great shows, so please keep doing it for all of us. 01:03:22 Dave: Your plan is before your next trip to try out Tim’s plan. And and look at this a, b, c approach. Pick your primary water. Find at least one backup, check access and flows. Then give yourself permission to change it as you go. Remember that fly fishing and fishing in general is always changing, and Tim paints a good picture of how you can be better prepared for the next trip. If you’re interested, we would love to have you in the boot camp. Fly fishing boot camp we do throughout the year. We have a few of these going on and this one is going to be our biggest yet. We’ve got twenty amazing speakers, um, many you’ve likely heard of before who have been on this podcast and who have all been on this podcast before. We’re going to go deep in the fly fishing boot camp. We’re going to break down presentations by speakers, and they’re going to take you to that next level. You can go to wet fly swing dot com slash bootcamp to get more information, and I hope to see you there. If you’re interested in checking in with us, you can do that at the boot camp or Fly swing pro anytime. And and I’m gonna leave it there. We got a bunch of great stuff coming up here, including, uh, more episodes, of course, or almost there every day for you. So if you get a chance, please check in with me, Dave at web dot com. Always love to hear from new listeners or if you haven’t checked in in a while and, and I’m going to sign off here today and, uh, and wishing you a good morning. Uh, even if it’s early, maybe it’s four a m in the morning, you got up early to get going and you’re listening to this on your way out. If that’s you, I appreciate you for stopping in and listening today. And, uh, and I hope you’re having a good, uh, good morning. If it’s afternoon or evening, no matter where you are in the world. Thanks again. We’ll talk to you soon. 01:04:59 Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly dot com.