901 | Montana Spring Creek Fly Fishing with Chase Glowacki from Montana Fly Fishing Lodge

WFS 901B Transcript 00:00:00 Dave: Why do some anglers keep getting better year after year, while others fish just as often and feel like they’re standing still? It’s not about chasing harder water or switching flies every drift, and it’s rarely about talent. This episode moves through Spring Creek’s big freestone rivers, tailwaters and fall transitions all through the lands of someone who spent real time guiding anglers through those moments when things finally start to click. 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. Chase Glowacki from Montana Fly Fishing Lodge is here, and he is going to break down everything we know about Montana and this part of the state. We’re going to find out how reading water with your eyes changes everything. We’re going to focus on that and talk about that today. We’re going to get into why relying on nymphing dry droppers or streamers can make the difference in how to fish all of these differently in different water types. We’re also going to find out how different rivers in Montana demand completely different approaches. We’re going to get into this style with Chase today, and what actually helps anglers move into the next level in fly fishing. All right, here we go. Chase Glowacka. You can find him at Montana fly fishing dot com. Here he is. How are you doing, Chase? 00:01:17 Chase: I’m doing good, man. How are you doing? 00:01:19 Dave: Oh, pretty good, pretty good. Always good to get started with the podcast, you know, like we’re doing today. Um, how are things going out there? You guys getting a winner yet? I heard things were pretty, uh, pretty mild in some parts of the West. 00:01:29 Chase: Yeah. So this winter, I, uh, Montana’s winter for sure is not doing too good for snow wise. I think it got a little cooler. Um, this winter. I actually am down in targhee, um, living in Victor, Idaho skiing. But even here, it’s not the best. They get a good amount of snow, but it’s not, um, what we usually see. 00:01:47 Dave: Yeah, it’s not quite there. Well, hopefully we still have time. It’s, uh, as we’re talking, we’re just into February, so it’s, uh, fishing is right around the corner. When do you start getting fired up? When do you switch from the the skiing snowboarding stuff over to to fishing? 00:02:01 Chase: For guiding I switch over probably about, you know, March. I start getting into guiding headspace. But right now I, uh, recently kind of, you know, the other week said, I’m done with this trying to chase the snow because I’m living right by the South Fork and I’ve never really fished it too much. And so I, uh, just traded my drift boat in for a brand new one from Hide in Idaho Falls because I realized there’s the factory right there. And so yesterday was I went out and fished the South Fork floating wise for the first time. And that was awesome. Um, I’ve been wade fishing it, so I’ve already kind of switched over my mindset to fishing. 00:02:36 Dave: Right, right. That’s cool. Yeah. So we’re already and is the, the hide boat. What did you go with? Did you switch up the style boat or what do you have there? 00:02:43 Chase: Yeah, so I had originally I wanted to switch was it was just real heavy to row kind of hurting my back. So I traded it in. They gave me a good trade in value for twenty twenty six Lowepro not the XL, so it’s just two foot shorter and a little smaller interior. And yesterday, taken out for the first time. I can already notice a difference with how it rose, and I’m real excited to use it for this next season. 00:03:08 Dave: Nice and two foot shorter. Is it shorter in the in the length or where is it two foot shorter? 00:03:12 Chase: Yeah, shorter in the length. So that XL is a sixteen two I believe. And then this one’s a fourteen two. So not too much shorter. But you can notice it a lot actually. 00:03:22 Dave: Yeah. You notice a lot. Yeah. So and this is a lo pro. So is it a does it have a pointy barrel or is it more like the skiff style? 00:03:29 Chase: So I was going back and forth. I with, you know, floating the Yellowstone a lot. I’m kind of hesitant on a skiff. You know, I do the Missouri a lot, which would be great for skiff, but this is kind of a combination. It has a upturned rockered nose like you’re describing, and you can take some whitewater on it, but low sides for easy entry into the boat. 00:03:47 Dave: Yeah. That’s awesome. So, so probably yeah. And we’re going to be heading out there this summer and we’re going to have some people coming out. I think that I’m excited because last time I actually I think I was in a hide was we were fishing the South Fork and I, I rented one from. There was a company that rents boats there. I can’t remember, I’m drawing a blank on the name, but it was the first time I rode a height or really even a skiff. The low, the low pro skiff style. It was amazing. 00:04:10 Chase: It was the skiff. Uh, hide model. 00:04:13 Dave: Yeah, I can’t remember. I don’t know if they have multiple, but they just gave me a skiff and it was, it was super awesome. I mean, just getting. 00:04:18 Chase: You liked it, enjoyed. 00:04:19 Dave: It. Oh yeah. Yeah. I wrote, I wrote back here, you know, I’m out in Oregon. So a lot of the times I’m running, you know, some whitewater and stuff. So we’ve got like, you know, I have a Koffler aluminum boat, which is great. 00:04:29 Chase: Yeah, those are sweet. 00:04:30 Dave: Yeah, it’s great, but it’s not it’s, you know, that skiff style is just so much easier to fish out of get in and out, right? All that stuff. Low sides. 00:04:37 Chase: I agree. Takes the wind really good. 00:04:39 Dave: Yeah. And the wind. Nice. Well good. So we’re going to be looking at we’re going to be in this boat hopefully this summer as we get down there. But let’s let’s talk about that a little bit. We’ll probably jump around and talk, uh, you know, South Fork, Missouri, all that stuff. But let’s focus first on, you know, this trip. We’re talking about Spring Creek. I know there’s some Spring Creek fishing where we’re like walking, waiting and all that, but what’s it look like with you when we get out there? Do you have specific areas you really love to fish? Talk about those areas around when you’re fishing out of the Montana fly fishing lodge. 00:05:06 Chase: Definitely. So I guess I’ll just start with the Spring Creeks. Yeah. So this year we have, uh, the Deer Creek and, uh, it’s a natural spring fed creek and it just has great dry fly fishing. Um, a lot of little fish, but potential for bigger fish as well. And it’s just, it’s some people, you know, just like how I grew up fishing. I started with, you know, fish and dry flies only on little creeks like that. And that’s what got me super excited. And I think that’s a cool option for people because some people don’t want to, uh, be in a boat for three days, you know, and they want to mix it up. And I think the, the Spring Creek stuff is awesome. I really enjoy that. But then we, we also have a variety of boat fishing. And that’s kind of what we mainly do at the, at Montana fly fishing lodge. 00:05:49 Dave: Yeah. You do. So it’s a lot of boat fishing, but there are the spring creeks to target some species. And what are the species there? Just for the Spring creek. Is it rainbows, browns? What are the species there? 00:05:58 Chase: So in the Spring Creek, you know, I’ve only noticed brown trout really in this one. Um, but the we also have other creeks that feed off these, you know, main rivers or feed into them and those are holding, you know, rainbows, browns and potential cutthroat hybrids here and there too. 00:06:14 Dave: Okay. Yeah. So there’s the, there’s going to be some of the private water, but then there’s also going to be some of just other tributaries, spring fed trips that are running into the Yellowstone or the other bigger rivers. 00:06:23 Chase: Exactly. And some, you know, with with the lodge access, all that stuff’s public, but some of the stuff we fish is actually private access. So it’s a little less pressured and way a lot, you know, it’s just real fun. It’s fun. 00:06:36 Dave: That’s right. That’s gonna be good. Well, talk about let’s go on the river. So we’re getting set up in the morning. We’ve talked a little bit about this already. We’re going to the lodge is amazing. I think it sounds like it’s epic Lodge the food. There’s even maybe some live music. Is that true? Has there been? Is there. Oh, yeah. There’s live music, right? 00:06:52 Chase: Yeah, they do live music. And yeah, you’re right on the money with that. Uh, I work, I work for a few different people and this is my main, main gig here. Oh, I love it. 00:07:01 Dave: Yeah. Good. So the live music is going to be epic and. 00:07:03 Chase: Great food, like you. 00:07:05 Dave: Said, great food. Right? Legendary food. Judy and Lincoln running the show there. They have a I think they have a background in that field. Right. So they’re really into the good food and the cuisine and all that. So we’re excited about it. I feel like on the trips when you do these things, it’s like the X factor, you know, getting the really good high quality like meals and stuff, right? Because fishing is fishing, it’s out there, you know, and all that stuff. But you know, it’s all the other stuff that makes the trip, right. 00:07:28 Chase: You know, that’s funny you say that because I’ll be on the boat and we’ll be having a, you know, awesome day. And I’ll tell people, hey, this is just a perk. Just wait till you get dinner tonight, you know? 00:07:37 Dave: Nice. So we’re going to be there and, um, and we’re going to be, I think we’re going to get there in one of the, you know, evenings, probably have dinner there, get ready for the next morning. Where are you thinking that night before when you’re thinking where you’re going, how do you plan that day? Because you guys have maybe talk about that a little bit. What are the rivers that potentially we could be fishing here out of the boat? 00:07:55 Chase: You know, the night before I kind of gauged the day by, uh, you know, what I’ve had in the past week or even that day, how it went. Um, we got with the lodge, we got the Yellowstone River, the Stillwater River, and then we do the Shoshone and Cody and here and there we’ll do the Bighorn. So we got four good options for drift boat or raft floating. And, you know, uh, like the Yellowstone and the Bighorn are, you know, big river fishing, but they are very different. And the style and then same with the, uh, Stillwater, like the Stillwater is a very fast river despite its name, and it’s a lot of pocket water fishing. It has some potential for good dry fly, chubby fishing like that. And then the Shoshone is a newer river to me, but it blows my mind. And how many fish you can catch. And the, you know, the color of the water’s a little tinted. It’s like a lagoon goonie color. You know, a lot of Scuds worms. That’s, you know, and that’s just cool to have the variety, uh, with those rivers. And that’s about how I’ll go, um, plan a out for people. 00:08:56 Dave: Yeah. Do you ask, uh, are you talking to the clients in the morning? Maybe you have a plan that something was fishing good the day before, but if the clients say, hey, I want to maybe fish all dries or I want to try streamers or nymphing, do you focus that on a different river or do all these rivers, could you do all that. 00:09:13 Speaker 4: You know you can? 00:09:13 Chase: Do you know anything on any river? But you’re right with, uh, it’s better to switch it up. I agree there’s different styles with the fishing. And what I try to do is it’s the client’s trip. It’s not my trip. So if I think a river’s fishing kind of poor, I’ll let them know. But if they want to go and try it, you know, we still go and do it and we try our hardest and we, you know, a lot of times more than none. We end up having a good day. Like one of the key things I say that changes your fly fishing is fishing with confidence. Really, you know, if you’re confident what you’re doing, you’re going to catch fish? 00:09:46 Dave: Yeah. What do you think is the most common? You know, we hear a lot about dry drop or stuff like that. What do you think is the most common method or technique that you love fishing out there that you do. 00:09:55 Speaker 4: Recently. 00:09:56 Chase: With these hot summers? It’s been a lot of double nymphing in Montana, we can only run two hooks, so we do two flies under an indicator. And that’s just because we have this run off time on the Stillwater and the Yellowstone, so there’s not much going on in the surface. Everything’s underwater. Fish are pushed on the banks. But then, you know, once it gets, uh, like June, July, we can start fishing dry drop. You know, that’s fun. I like doing that a lot. It’s a little easier to cast sometimes than a super heavy nymph rig, but, uh, with beginners, you know, um, that just want to catch fish. I’ll be, I’ll be nymphing kind of mainly and then streamer fishing as well here and there for, uh, certain weather patterns. 00:10:36 Dave: Talk about that double nymphing, uh, that rig set up. What is the sounds like you use an indicator to describe that, how you set up the rig. 00:10:43 Chase: In the past, I’d say this season I’ve kind of perfected almost this nymphing rig that I like to use. It’s a, I use a but section of like thirty pound or twenty five pound mono. And then I was at first tying a loop, not trying to create that ninety degree hinge there, but I’ve recently switched to a swivel. It does the same thing and allows it to spin. So then I’ll go swivel from there. Bobber above the swivel, you got like three to two foot of adjustment from that swivel down run, eight pound or whatever, you know, you could go ten to another swivel. That swivel is your stopper for your weight. If you’re using weight from that swivel, you can run your two flies. And I tie the first fly on the I and the second fly go comes out of the I two. I don’t run it off the shank of the hook. 00:11:29 Dave: Okay. Yeah, off the I. 00:11:30 Chase: Yep. I to I’ve had better luck with that. Uh, I think it looks a little more natural. And then with the swivels, it allows that stuff to spin around and like eddies and stuff. I’ve noticed. And I think it’s just a good natural looking rig. You can use weight without it or you could use weight. You know those swivel axes? A little bit of weight for you too, but that’s kind of the nymph rig I’ll be using. And then for a bobber, I usually just use an Oros because they’re super easy to use. 00:11:56 Dave: Yeah. How are you choosing? You know, we’ve talked a lot about flies. You know, are there certain flies during the different seasons you like to use? Are there certain, you know, Euro nymphs or whatever you’re using that just work all year round, you know? 00:12:06 Chase: In the past couple of years, the Euro nymphs have been real popular and I’ve been using them a lot. I do use a lot of Euro style nymphs as point flies getting down. You know, sometimes not using weight. But the how I decide to use different flies is rivers. So like the Yellowstone, I might run the same two flies for a couple of weeks because they’re working real good and maybe dinking around with the bottom fly like the Yellowstone. You can use those old patterns, the pheasant tails, but you switch it up to a river like the Missouri with a lot of people on it. And it gets technical. Uh, you might be switching flies. You know, every fifteen minutes until you find one that they’re eating different patterns. You know, it could be the same pattern, but a little twist on it. I’ve noticed that has work, but that’s how I’ll go about switching flies is kind of what river I’m on. 00:12:52 Dave: So back to that rig. Just let’s make sure I have this right. So you were saying you were saying you’re going to do, um, you know, basically thirty pound or twenty five big. So and that’s about three feet down to a swivel. And then you have eight pound mono down to another swivel. And then from there you’re going to have whatever your tip it is, which might be what typically five x six x or something like that, or depending on the size. 00:13:13 Speaker 4: Exactly. Yeah. I’ll use, uh. 00:13:15 Chase: six pound and what I’m using, um, actually after the main mono strip is fluoro red label cigar, just normal fishing line because I’ve noticed it’s real abrasion resistant, resistant and, uh, sinks quick. 00:13:28 Dave: Yeah. So you’re doing floral and then, and then when you tie your fly on, you’re tying your, your tippet onto tying one fly on and then off of that same, how do you tie that second fly? Where is it tying off from? 00:13:38 Chase: So I’ll kind of like have the fly straight up and down and that first knots on the left side, and then the second knot would be on the right side of the eye. And usually there’s enough space you can leave a gap between there. 00:13:52 Dave: Oh, gotcha. So you do it right off off the bigger hook. Your your main hook. You’ve got that tie. And then right off of that eye of the hook, you’re going to have a smaller fly. That’s kind of your dropper. 00:14:01 Chase: Exactly. You got it. 00:14:02 Dave: That’s sweet. And what does that do? What does that just um how does that play better than say, because I don’t even know if people still do. I used to do a lot of the droppers where you’d have a dropper kind of off your lead or maybe off the, the surgeon’s knot or something. How do you think this fish differently than that? 00:14:15 Chase: I don’t know if it’s presentation, but I’ve noticed hookups are a little better. I think that hook is exposed in a different way to where it kind of even if you, you know, the, the client gets a poor stab on the fish, it somehow gets kind of straight up in its mouth. 00:14:29 Dave: Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. Okay. So that’s the, that’s the two dropper rig. And then that one, it sounds like that one’s pretty popular now if you’re getting started here in March, is that typically when you’re. When do you roll out back to the to the lodge. Get rolling there. 00:14:42 Speaker 5: So I’ll be going. 00:14:43 Chase: Back, you know, home to Helena and see my family and do some personal fishing there, and then I’ll be rolling out to the lodge around April May. You know, mid-April. I have trips already in May, so I’ll probably be there a month before, you know, dialing in all the rivers again. 00:14:56 Dave: Gotcha. Yeah. April. May. So May’s going. So you get started going strong May and then June. July. What does it look like as you you know, you’re pretty much fishing throughout the summer through the fall. Or when do you when do you wrap up the season? 00:15:08 Speaker 5: Yeah. So this last. 00:15:09 Chase: Season, me and Alex Fishtail, uh, October thirty first was our last day. Oh, nice. And we were only supposed to fish till I think the end of or the first of September. So we had a very good season and I expect it to be the same this year. 00:15:24 Dave: Yeah. So weather and all that was uh, yeah. October right all the way through. It was good. Good fishing weather. Things probably got a little colder as you as you went into October. 00:15:34 Chase: Yeah, I got a little colder. And, you know, I kind of hung my hat up maybe too early this season because back home on the Missouri, the weather stayed real nice. So the fishing people were fishing and I should have been getting a little more instead of trying to chase the snow. 00:15:48 Dave: Oh, right. Right, right. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting. There’s some changes going on. So it is changing things up a little bit. And then when we’re going to be there, I think we’re going to be there kind of end of September maybe mid end of September. So what can we expect in that time? Is that a time where we might have opportunities to do a lot of these different techniques? 00:16:05 Chase: Definitely. Um, I like September a lot. I like because it’s the fall fishing season. So the Browns are starting to run, you know, getting to spawn mode, maybe that pre-spawn bite. And that’s where stuff actually kind of changes you a lot more. Uh, chubby dropper fishing fish might be looking up a little more lower water and then streamer fishing, you know, might start to get rainy and overcast, pressure changes, different weather patterns. And last season we had really good, uh, time in September and beginning of October. Fishing streamers. 00:16:37 Dave: You did okay, cool. So streamers is good. That’s what’s awesome about this, is that Nymphing is going to be their dry droppers, but we also will have the opportunity to do some streamer fishing. 00:16:45 Chase: Yeah, exactly. You have something new, but all the old stuff will still be there. You could still throw a bobber and catch a bunch of fish, but you could go after the bigger ones that time of year. 00:16:54 Dave: That’s great to hear. Well, talk about that because I think streamer fishing is always a, you know, a hot topic. And I think it’s mainly because you get a chance to, you know, do something different, right? Toss some bigger flies, maybe find some bigger fish. What does the streamer game look like for you? Describe that a little bit. How you how you get set up there. 00:17:10 Chase: I really enjoy personally fishing streamers in March and kind of swinging them on the Missouri River. There’s a section above the dam called land of the Giants, and it’s in the canyon and it’s pretty true to its name. They’re like, every fish you’re catching is kind of like a smaller one is like twenty inches, but that’s still a big fish to me. So you’re going there and you’re swinging streamers. And I’m not swinging with a two handed rod. I’m swinging with just a six weight or seven weight with a heavy sink tip line. And, uh, I’ve taken this technique because I really dialed it in there and used it with my clients from the boat here and there. You know, I’ll say kind of swing it out just kind of exactly how, uh, you’d be swinging your nymphs at the end of a drift. You know, sometimes you might hook a fish when it looks like it’s emerging. These fish might be getting lethargic because of the water starting to cool down. They don’t want to chase it. So it’s kind of slowly right in front of their face. And then you know a lot on the Yellowstone that time of year we will be stripping fast off the banks or in the middle of the river. The river is so low that you kind of just target the deep pockets almost. And that’s how I go about streamer fishing. And we mess with flies. Big little. I’ve had success, you know, on the Yellowstone with real big flies articulated and then on them. Um, it’s so it’s cool for good variety in the streamer Fishing. 00:18:31 Dave: Yeah, yeah. And so deep pockets when you talk. About those is that kind of, I guess the waters a little bit lower. These are kind of almost things that are kind of backwater, just slow almost. Would you call them almost froggy type water? 00:18:42 Chase: Definitely. Sometimes will be catching fish in that froggy stuff. But a lot of times on the Yellowstone, it’s like still very slow, but it’s got some good riffle current coming down and then all of a sudden it might just drop. It might just be a huge ledge drop. And I haven’t seen different or like structure like this in a, in another river like the Yellowstone. It’s very, very cool how it is, but the fish, they could be hiding anywhere. And when the water’s low, you can really see the structure in there and you can target them pretty well. 00:19:10 Dave: Okay. Yeah. So you have basically you’ve got these shallow water and the Yellowstone is a big is the Yellowstone the biggest? I mean, kind of all those rivers are kind of flowing or describe the Yellowstone versus the Missouri. Which one is on average bigger, do you think? 00:19:23 Chase: I would say probably the Yellowstone. You know, it’s the longest river, Undammed River in the United States, I believe Freestone River. So it is very, very different, like compared to the Missouri. You know, being a tailwater. But it’s like the same thing. You know, you look at it in your mind, it’s the same thing. But you if you were to fish the Yellowstone like you fished the Missouri, you would probably have no no luck. Yeah. It’s crazy to me. You know, you look at a big river and then looking at the South Fork yesterday, just floating it. It really reminds me of the Yellowstone, but it fishes like the Missouri almost. 00:19:56 Dave: Oh, there you go. Yeah. So the South Fork. So the South Fork reminds you of the Yellowstone, but it fishes like the Missouri. 00:20:02 Chase: Yeah. And it has bugs like the Yellowstone, you know, have stoneflies in them already. Doesn’t have stoneflies. You know, it’s very weird. 00:20:08 Dave: Yeah. It is. It’s cool where you’re at because you have these. It’s almost like you’re describing this triangle, right? This area, you know, the South Fork is down there a little south. You got the Missouri, which is a little bit west, right? And then the Yellowstone is flowing kind of east, right, heading out of the park and this giant river. It’s pretty amazing. I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge for us, I think, is that I think we’re going to be there for three days, four nights. So you know what I mean? We’re going to fish. I think the Yellowstone, I could see that a Spring Creek day. But then it’s like, man, what is the third day? I guess if it’s good enough on the Yellowstone, maybe we go back there. But I would love to check out the, um, you know, the Stillwater or the Shoshone, right? I mean, those would be probably equally as fun. As much fun, right? 00:20:47 Chase: I think you guys would have a blast on either one. But the Shoshone, I think you got a counter in at least one day. 00:20:53 Dave: There we go. We’ll count on the Shoshone. Okay, cool. So on the streamer fishing, you’re doing this. Back to that. What is the sinking line? Does it? I mean, because there’s a lot of confusion on sinking lines, right? The type like type three, type six like heavy, full sink. What is it you’re using there? What would be a good one? 00:21:08 Chase: I’m using more heavy kind of in the middle. You know, I have the type seven, the super quick syncs, but you got to be on that thing and I can really get you tired. So I use like a, I think a three, five, seven. So the last little bits of seven, but most of your line is, uh, intermediate kind of. And then you have a floating section so you can look where your fly’s at and you can mend it a little easier that way. Um, and I really like the, I think it’s called the Trout Express. It’s from scientific anglers. I really like their lines. And, uh, that’s the one I’ve been using a lot. 00:21:41 Dave: Oh, cool. Yeah. The Trout Express. So you’re using kind of a more like an integrated type of line. 00:21:45 Chase: Exactly. Yeah. I think they advertise it actually as more of a, like a single handed rod swinging live streamer line, but it works great for stripping too. 00:21:55 Dave: Okay. I’m looking at it now. Yeah. The sonar. The sonar trout express, sometimes the biggest trout live. I love reading the line, the line marketing stuff on it. This is cool. So this is on scientific anglers and and like you said, the cool thing about these lines is they’re not just a full sink where it just sinks down to the bottom. It’s actually got an integrated kind of slowly from dry line down to your sink tip, it’s sinking down. 00:22:16 Chase: Exactly. Yeah. And what I like about that one too, is it’s got a little blue section between the sink and the float that tells you where to pick it up. And if you pick it up there, it’s already loaded perfectly. 00:22:27 Dave: Oh, really? Okay, so the blue section knows. Let’s try that again. How does that tell you where to pick it up? 00:22:33 Chase: I think how they built the line. So it’s like a little blue section. The main sync lines like a gray to a black. And then the floating is a yellow. So if you’re stripping that in and you see that blue slider. If you, you can pick that up with your finger holding the line tight, you know, and start your cast with one arm. It’s, I think how they built it is it’s if you have the right rod, it’s weighted perfectly at that spot to start another cast with the heavy streamer. And that line’s not when they sell it. It’s not advertised by weight, it’s advertised by grain. So like that’s I’m throwing a two ten grain. So it’s a little heavier. 00:23:09 Dave: Yeah. Because your rod now the rod you’re using, does it do the rods now the single hand rods because with the, the two handed rods, they all have grain weight. But now do the single hands tell you the grain weight on them? 00:23:19 Chase: Um, no, it’s still the, uh, it’s. 00:23:21 Dave: Like six. 00:23:21 Chase: Weight, you know. Exactly. So when I saw this line, I was like kind of confused and I did a little research because I’m not totally, um, like into the swinging yet, like the two hand. 00:23:32 Dave: Yeah, it’s kind of confusing. 00:23:33 Chase: Yeah, exactly. 00:23:34 Dave: Yeah. It’s totally, I mean, once you get into it, you start to realize, yeah, it’s all about balancing and figuring it out on the grain weight right window. 00:23:42 Chase: Well, a lot of details that I’ve tried to understand it, but you, you know, you got to actually do the two hand stuff, I think to understand it. 00:23:50 Dave: Well, yeah, yeah. Well, the advantage of doing single hand is especially you guys, because you’re out of a boat, right? You’re in the boat. So exactly. The two hand is is okay would work, but it’s probably much easier, right? Having a single hand rod with these sinking lines because you’re not casting, are you having to cast far? Like if you’re in the boat fishing streamers, describe how that would go down. Like you’ve got a client. How does that look? Are they just casting out and stripping in or what are they doing? 00:24:13 Chase: Most of the time I’ll start them casting out, stripping in to get a feel for that heavy line, especially if they haven’t thrown heavy lines. A lot of people fish streamers with floating floating lines and a long leader, which is how I started. Um, but that heavy line just eliminates you having to wait. It gets down instantly. So I kind of get them started with the feel for it. And then what I’ll do with the swinging is we’ll anchor the bow on a run, and then I’ll kind of explain how the two handed works and how we’re kind of doing a version of that with the single handed rod I see. 00:24:45 Dave: So you’re kind of covering water, you’re swinging like casting across and swinging it down and stripping. 00:24:50 Chase: Exactly a piece of water that I pick out that has not too fast a flow, but good flow to where they can swing that whole thing. And then later, while we’re floating, you know, at the end of your strip, you can put a little swing in there and it all kind of comes into one with floating and streamer fishing and then anchored streamer fishing and then adding a swing aspect I see. 00:25:13 Dave: Okay. And where do you think you’re getting a majority of the hits? Is it while you’re stripping? Is it are you, Is it on the pause? When are you. How are you getting more, more hits out there? 00:25:24 Chase: So I’ve noticed this time of year. So time of year, colder months. Um it’s going to be more on the slow swing, warmer water. I’ve noticed more aggressive strips. And then when it pauses on the bed, they’ll hit it. 00:25:38 Dave: So if we’re looking at when we’re going to be there, let’s just take it to, well, let’s just start March, March, April, May. It’s going to be a little cooler, right? The higher waters and things like that. So that’s going to be more aggressive. And then as you get into the summer, it’s going to change. Is that kind of how it looks later September. 00:25:52 Chase: Yeah you got it. It’ll start slowing down again maybe. Um and but still have those bigger fish that are, that are going to smack it though. 00:25:59 Dave: Okay, perfect. And what is your, uh, on that we talked some flies with the nymphing with the streamers. Do you have some go to streamer patterns and color wise, what are you working out there? 00:26:08 Chase: Yeah. Over the past seasons, I’ve really come to like, you know, streamers like the skittish molt. It comes in three different colors, I believe. White, brown and olive. I fished the brown one. It’s a good medium sized streamer. Not too big. Felix, I think everyone knows that Cree likes all different colors. I like purple a lot. 00:26:27 Dave: Yeah. Creole. Okay I see. Oh yeah. Right. The Creole, it’s kind of a it’s a minnow type pattern. 00:26:32 Chase: Yeah. It’s got dumbbell head so it’s got some weight to it. 00:26:35 Dave: Is it flashy? Do you have a lot of flash in this thing? 00:26:37 Chase: Yeah, a lot of the ones I see or you know, my buddy Alex ties a lot. I works at the lodge. We tie him flashy, pretty flashy. 00:26:45 Dave: Pretty flash because you’re just imitating some sort of a whatever it is, a tiny. I mean, are you imitating. Do you think. What are they eating? Do you think they’re eating? You know, just other, you know, brown trout, little whatever. What do you think the species is? They’re trying to eat? 00:26:58 Chase: I think a lot of the time, um these fish are eating white fish, little baby white fish. So we’ll, we’ll tie up a lot of, you know, dungeons even, and we’ll put flash on them because in the summertime, those white fish get real flashy looking. Uh, they got a little hint of blue on their belly, kind of on the tips of their fins. And then at the same time, one hundred percent. I think big brown trout are eating baby brown trout. So we’ll tie a lot of yellow brown patterns, you know, more natural without flash. So what kind of fish? Uh, best of both worlds, but more than not will be fishing. Flashier looking streamers. 00:27:34 Dave: Discover the Montana fly fishing lodge nestled along the federally designated wild and scenic East Rosebud River with one point five miles of exclusive private frontage. There, all inclusive luxury experiences combine world class fly fishing on legendary waters like the Yellowstone, the Bighorn and Stillwater rivers with rustic elegance and their spacious lodge and luxurious canvas cabins. Beyond fishing, explore the stunning Absaroka-beartooth wilderness through guided adventures, or simply relax on their outdoor fire pits surrounded by quaking aspen and cottonwoods. With capacity for up to eighteen guests, private Spring Creek stocked trout ponds and a fully equipped fly shop. Every detail is designed for the perfect Montana escape. You can book now and experience the ultimate combination of responsible fishing practices, breathtaking scenery, and unmatched hospitality at Montana’s premier fly fishing destination. You can head over to Montana fly fishing dot com right now and check in with them and see what they have available. That’s Montana fly fishing lodge dot com. The crew likes a good pattern because it, um, like, what is it? It’s got the Dumbo eyes. Does it sync quick? Is it is it kind of sparse? How is it different? Yeah. 00:28:47 Chase: So it syncs quick. Um, I think whatever it’s tied with like I’m not sure exactly what it’s called. It might be chenille or something, but it’s really a, um, like in the water. It kind of pulses good. Like if you, the way you’re stripping, it moves really good for being a non-articulated fly. And then at the same time, I think that dumbbell head gets it down quick. It’s almost like a Clouser with a little bit of, you know, chenille off of it. And the claws are minnows, a staple fly in saltwater fishing. And I’ve used it on these rivers before and it works great. 00:29:22 Dave: Oh, you have. So the Clouser work works good for browns out there too, or for streamers? 00:29:26 Chase: Definitely. And I would say on any river Montana, throw a Clouser streamer and you know, give it a shot. I don’t think it’s a bad idea. 00:29:34 Dave: Yeah. Okay. And the streamer maybe describe the strip a little bit on that. Does that really vary throughout the year? What if somebody was kind of new to it? What would be a good system of stripping to start out with? 00:29:45 Chase: Beginner, you know, streamer fishing, I would say, you know, starting with like maybe a foot strip, just kind of getting a feel for a strip set even, you know, a lot of people want to go to setting the hook like they would. 00:29:58 Dave: Trout. 00:29:59 Chase: Dry fly or. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, you know, we kind of get the strip set going. And then most of the time with streamer fishing, you’re hitting the banks a lot. So I’ll kind of, you know, start with hitting the banks and, like, hey, you can almost smack the bank with that flying dragon in. You know, and, and sometimes, especially at the brown trout, uh, adding in the smack on the water to. Get their attention. I believe in that. You know, some people say spooks fish, but I totally believe. Brown trout are real aggressive. And I just kind of show them all the, the basic things that we all. Kind of start with streamer fishing and then we’ll switch it up and maybe move to like pockets or the middle of the river or swinging. But we’ll start with just, you know, straight strips. I usually go quick, you know, with the pause in between maybe two quick ones and pause or one quick one. And that’s, that’s what I’ll tell people so long. 00:30:48 Dave: Like a foot. You could do like strip. Strip pause. 00:30:52 Chase: Exactly. 00:30:52 Dave: Strip pause. It doesn’t have to be like strip, strip pause. It could be slower. That’s that’s always a, I guess it’s just the key there is to mix it up. You never know what it’s going to be. So try fast, try slow, try different pauses. Try. Is that kind of the case? 00:31:06 Chase: Yeah. And I will tell them that exactly what you said, you know, like mix it up. And if you catch a fish, remember what you were doing and just do that for the next thirty minutes. And if that doesn’t work, switch it up or we’ll add in maybe a little mend because of anything you do with your rod tip. If your line’s tight, it’s going to affect that bug. So maybe we’ll do a little strip and a pop, you know, like a pop jig at the end of your rod tip. And that’s going to move the fly up and then drop it back down to the bottom. Switching things up like that, you know. 00:31:33 Dave: Yeah. And what is the strip and pop? Is that a different pattern or how are you doing that? The strip and pop. 00:31:38 Chase: So I picked that up actually, I think from like a red YouTube video or something. And it worked great. You know, Red’s. 00:31:44 Dave: Uh, yeah, yeah, red, uh, the fly shop there. 00:31:47 Chase: Yeah, yeah, I think I picked it up online and I used it one day and it worked great like that. Men dropped that fly. So if you give it a man, it’s sinking quicker. And then as long as your line’s tight, you can almost jig like you would be on a conventional rod, you know, fishing a marabou jig. And that’s bumping the fly up in the water column and then dropping it back down. You know, it might be looking injured or something. And that’s actually worked real good for me. 00:32:12 Dave: That has. Okay. And that’s something. And the fly you would have on there, what would be a typical pattern you might be using. 00:32:17 Chase: With that one? You know, I’ve done a lot of that with the skittish, but I do also have like jigged flies, like jig styled streamers with a jig head on it. So they’re kind of meant to even do that. And sometimes I’ll have people fish those and we’ll jig the bottom, you know, because we got crayfish in the Missouri and the Yellowstone. So that’s a good imitation there. 00:32:37 Dave: Okay, perfect. Yeah. We had, uh, Joe Rodon from Reds back in, uh, one eighty six. Yeah, quite a, quite a number of years ago we had him. 00:32:45 Chase: Oh that’s. 00:32:45 Dave: Cool. Yeah. So we’ll put a link out to that in the show notes so people can check that out. Yeah. They’re doing some good stuff out there is reds is that I guess that’s a little bit further into Washington right from where you guys are at. 00:32:55 Chase: Yeah, that’s the Yakima River. I think. 00:32:57 Dave: That’s right. Which is also, I think, a pretty big river. Maybe there’s probably some similarities to what you’re talking about, but we’re today we’re talking and the streamer, the way you talked about what we’re talking about here could apply to the Yellowstone, the bigger stuff and the smaller Shoshone and those other rivers as well. 00:33:11 Chase: Definitely. I think the fast, aggressive stripping applies great to like the Shoshone and the Stillwater, where you don’t have time to do that swinging stuff. 00:33:19 Dave: Okay, good. So that’s we’re kind of, you know, breaking this out. So again, it’s this is think September mid September. We’re in that range. We’ve got, you know, some dry flies, potentially streamers, some nymphing. And then also of course the dry dropper, right. That’s something that is that just a, a staple. Do you find the dry dropper throughout the year is the, the easiest thing to use or is nymphing the two Nymphing rig kind of easier, better, you know. 00:33:45 Chase: I’ve kind of switched, but you know, I, I believe the dry dropper is the easiest thing and it covers the most water because you can mess with how long you have your dropper and then you’re always fishing a dry. And I’ve noticed a lot of these guys in Montana might just be using a chubby as an indicator and they’re fishing maybe sometimes six feet off of that that bug. And you’re rarely getting hit on that show because you’re fishing so deep. It’s easier for people to cast. And like you said, it’s what they know. It’s a staple, I would say. Yeah, that’s kind of the. And it’s also way more fun than staring at a bar brawl. I mean, everything’s awesome. You catch fish, it gives you a good understanding. But at the same time, there’s nothing like watching a fish come up and crush a dry right. 00:34:29 Dave: And the chubby does get eats, right. I mean, if you’re fishing a dry dropper that it’s getting a maybe not an equal number eats as the nymph, but it gets some throughout the day. 00:34:38 Chase: Yeah, definitely. I like it too, because you might be catching, you know, three fish on the, uh, dropper and then all of a sudden, boom, you get a huge you’re not the client sometimes not even ready for it. So it’s just awesome. It’s awesome. It reminds you why you’re fishing and what you came there for. 00:34:53 Dave: Yeah, I see. Okay, what’s the background look like when you’re there? You’re floating the Yellowstone, I think where, where the lodge is located, right at the Absaroka. I always kind of get that on the pronunciation. But the bear to the wilderness, right area right there. I think it’s the largest mountains, Montana, in that area. Are you looking at kicking back, looking at mountains around you as you’re floating? 00:35:14 Chase: Oh, yeah. So on the drive back from the Yellowstone, you’re looking at the bear tooths with the granite peak in there. That’s, I think pushing like twelve thousand five hundred feet, always snow on the very tippy tops until maybe the end of September. You know, there’s always snow up there. And then, uh, while you’re on the river, especially the Yellowstone, very, very scenic river. Super cool. Where the lodge is located. It’s kind of on the lower Yellowstone with very beautiful high cliffs like these cliff caps, kind of almost overgrow the top of the river like a cornice. You know, when you’re skiing and the trees grow right off the edge of that little cornice, that’s super cool to look at. Oh, wow. Then you got like the swallow nests all up in the cliffs. Even if you’re having a, you know, slower day of fishing. I’ve had people just come and, you know, the husband may be fishing and the wife’s just taking pictures all day. You can see, you know, eagles, golden eagles, falcons, all types of different birds, blue herons, things like that. A bunch of wildlife. You’ll see deer, a bunch of cattle farms. You’ll see cows. It’s very, very cool being down there. And then, you know, like being lower on the the Yellowstone there. Sometimes we’ll be catching like, uh, here and there, smallmouth bass and, and these fish called goldeye. So it’s a little bit different experience, you know, along with the trout fishing. 00:36:35 Dave: Right? Right. Wow. And the lodge is located on the, we’ve talked about this a little bit, the East Rosebud Creek. And it’s amazing because when you look at that area, I mean, it is like multi channels of water streams everywhere, right? Meandering and is that what the spring creeks are like? Or are you just going in there? There’s like these waters and waterways everywhere. How do you do you fish the East Rosebud Creek? 00:36:57 Chase: Oh yeah. Sometimes after I get off a trip, I’ll just go dink around because it’s so fun. The East Rosebud. So I believe the lodge is on the east Rosebud. And what you’re seeing when you talk about all that, you know, branching off and different, you know, runs and stuff, it’s called there’s a town there called fishtail. And I think Lincoln told me it comes from the East Rosebud and the West Rosebud kind of branching off, and I guess it creates a fishtail look on the map. 00:37:23 Dave: Oh, really? 00:37:24 Chase: And so at the same time, with all that, I think in twenty twenty two, there was a massive flood. So it kind of reshaped all that. I didn’t fish it too much before that, so I couldn’t tell you what it looked like, but I know it completely changed. You know, that creek, the East Rosebud and then the Stillwater and then the Yellowstone as well, like the Stillwater is, has like some in some spots. There’s like screen doors from houses that had, you know, the flood ripped down there. 00:37:53 Dave: Oh, wow. Oh, this is that giant flood. Yeah. Like five years ago or something like that. 00:37:56 Chase: Yeah, yeah. I went through Red Lodge, I believe, um, there’s like still a bunch of debris in some spots there. Um, it’s kind of crazy to think about, but yeah, I think a lot of that stuff kind of got reran from that flood and maybe branched off into new sections. 00:38:11 Dave: Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, I see it. And so yeah, the East Rosebud and the West Rosebud come together and then downriver at Absarokee. AM I pronouncing that right? 00:38:19 Chase: Yeah. So the, the I believe the mountains are called the Absaroka Beartooth. And then the town’s called Absarokee. 00:38:26 Dave: Oh, okay. Yeah. So so the town there. And so the rosebud, they come together, then they hit the Stillwater there, and then the Stillwater flows down towards, uh, you know, it keeps going north and then hits the Yellowstone right at Columbus. 00:38:38 Chase: Yep. You got it. And, well, that’s actually super cool. We’ll float right into the Yellowstone off the Stillwater some days. 00:38:44 Dave: Oh, you will. So you’ll do the Stillwater into Yellowstone? 00:38:47 Chase: Yeah. And you’ll get like, two or three miles of Yellowstone fishing, uh, in that same day. That’s actually a super cool float. 00:38:54 Dave: We got to do that one. That’s one for sure. The Stillwater and the Yellowstone. And then, yeah, like I said at the start, it’s going to be hard on this one because there’s going to be so many, you know, sections. But the cool thing is, I think what people are doing, I’ve already been talking to some, and this is what we do on a lot of trips, is that you’ll come in, we’ll have our, you know, our trip for whatever it is, three, four days, and then people will either come early or stay later, right. Because after they get a guide trip, now they’re learning it, you know, maybe they’re fishing some of this and they’ll stick around and do do some more of it right on their own, maybe. 00:39:21 Chase: Yeah, exactly. Some people will, you know, have the experience that, uh, they came for the guides and then they’ll have such a good time that they’ll stay on their own and just stay at the lodge and fish every day by themselves or with a friend not being guided, you know, and it’s super cool to hear their stories at the end of the day and what you may have caught them and what they have learned while they were there. 00:39:42 Dave: That’s cool. What do you think when you look at the lodge, what is the thing that really you think of when you think of the lodge? The just what makes it so cool out there? 00:39:49 Chase: Well, I think makes it super awesome. Being at the Lodge is the atmosphere the people like. It’s a very big property. So you come back and, you know, you might have people at the lodge, you got people, you know, all the guides in the guide area at the guide shack, and everyone’s having a good time at the end of the day, talking, swapping stories here and there. You might get invited to dinner with the clients. Even more fun. We got a game room with, like, Pac-Man. Oh, nice pool table, things like that. And then you got all the fishing right at the lodge, too. If you still wanted to fish, at the end of the day. 00:40:23 Dave: It’s right there. So if you’re at the lodge and looking out, I’m just looking at a couple photos. There’s a there’s a dock that goes out onto a waterway. Now is that what is that waterway that’s out the back. 00:40:32 Chase: That’s our pond there. And that’s just connected right to the east Rosebud. And so there’s fish in there and we’ll use that for casting lessons. And we’ll also fish it too. We’ll catch fish there on dry flies in the spring. It’s pretty fun. 00:40:46 Dave: Cool. All right. So this is this is good. And and I guess today we haven’t talked about I mean, the Shoshone, the Cody now. And those are two. Where do those flow in versus what we were talking about with the, uh, the Stillwater. 00:40:58 Chase: The Shoshone is pretty similar in the way the Stillwater is in like a narrow kind of pocket pocket y water river, except that it is a tail water. So it does have a dam. Like I said, it’s like a blue lagoon color. It’s very cool. You can’t see it at the bottom in some sections. Not that it’s because it’s like dirty. It’s just a blue color of the water. I think it’s silty from like limestone or sandstone, maybe bunch of minerals in there. But like what the is in there is a bunch of worms. Like if you were to pick up the, the bottom of the river, you know, like the dirt there, you’d probably get a bunch of worms or dirt or scuds. So you’re fishing there. The fish are getting pretty fat and they like to eat towards the end of the season, in September, the end of September. I had one of my best days there and we, I have no joke, probably got like Fifty to sixty fish. Like we couldn’t keep them off the line. It was awesome. And then like, we got, you know, a couple other guys from the lodge floating with us and we’re floating next to each other, you know, catching fish. 00:42:02 Dave: What were you guys fishing on those big day? What were you using there? 00:42:05 Chase: So this is actually funny. That day we I put the worm on, right? The purple squirmy worm. That’s cool. And they would not leave that alone to where I put two of them on. 00:42:14 Dave: Nice. 00:42:15 Chase: We started catching fish on on both flies underneath the popper. 00:42:20 Dave: How do you fish the squirmy. Is that like on a. Describe that a little bit. Is that like an indicator or how do you do it? 00:42:25 Chase: So that exact nymph rig I was describing earlier, I will just use, you know, the squirmy as the fly. And then I was using a small saw bug and we were catching them on that. But then I was like, hey, I’ll just put two worms on. And it worked. It worked. Fantastic. One split shot, I believe, you know, like maybe six feet. 00:42:43 Dave: Okay. Six feet. Yep. And just just drop it down and yeah, so in the substrate, it sounds like the substrate is just more, it’s not as much gravel, more fine sediment is what the Shoshone is in that area. 00:42:54 Chase: We have fine sediment and then kind of like has a bunch of like that little duckweed on there, a bunch of, uh, it’s like a marshland, kinda like on the banks. 00:43:04 Dave: Where does the Shoshone flow into the system? We talked about the, does it flow into the Yellowstone or where are you guys fishing? What’s the closest town? 00:43:11 Chase: So the closest town is Cody. We drive right through Cody and we put in there at the, I believe, the Interstate bridge. 00:43:17 Dave: Oh, so you’re going. Yeah. So you’re going actually from Montana down into Wyoming. 00:43:21 Chase: Yeah. So I don’t think it it flows into the Yellowstone. I’m not sure where it goes. We only float one stretch, but I’m pretty. 00:43:29 Dave: That’s cool. 00:43:29 Chase: Interested in sufficient, you know, in different stretches and maybe make that option a little bigger. But just that stretch alone where we’re floating in Cody is fantastic. 00:43:39 Dave: So you actually that’s the other cool thing is we’re not just fishing Montana. We’re actually heading into Wyoming and hitting some of that water. 00:43:45 Chase: Yeah. And that’s and it’s only an hour, thirty minutes. Um, too, which is cool. So you’re driving through like the Badlands? Almost the deserty stuff. It’s crazy. The clients get to see the landscape completely switch. 00:43:56 Dave: Oh, right. Because you go from the mountainous where you are down south into kind of the whatever that is, the plains, the desert into Cody. 00:44:04 Chase: Yeah, I call it the Badlands because that’s what it reminds me of. But it’s, it’s like just Sandy kind of looked deserty looking with that cool structure. 00:44:14 Dave: Yeah. Cody’s a good town. We definitely we were, uh, last time we were there, we went to Cody. We saw, um, uh, a Native American hip hop artist. His name is, uh, Supaman. 00:44:23 Chase: Oh, heck. 00:44:23 Dave: Yeah. That was awesome. Yeah, he was in Cody. He’s, uh. Oh, I’m drawing a blank on the reservation. He, um, one of the Shoshone. That’s what’s interesting about this, right? The history. You know, Shoshone. I just got done. I’m not sure if you saw it, but the Ken Burns, you know, does all these great documentaries. He did just did the American Revolution. And, and, uh, yeah, I mean, the history there, right. With the Native Americans and all these names you’ve mentioned, Shoshone. That’s you’re right in the middle of what was a pretty, a lot of amazing history, right? 00:44:50 Chase: Oh yeah. Especially in the in the Beartooth. And like the we got the crazy mountains. I don’t know if you. 00:44:56 Dave: Know. 00:44:57 Chase: Or remember the Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson. 00:45:00 Dave: Oh, right. No, I don’t remember that kind of. But yeah, I’ll have to throw that to the film queue. 00:45:05 Chase: I always tell people the story from that movie because they say it’s true with what happened. But yeah, that’s that’s right there in the Crazy Mountains. 00:45:14 Dave: What happened? What’s the short story? The Jeremiah story. 00:45:16 Chase: So what I tell people is, you know, from the movie watching as a kid and then kind of getting some, you know, facts is that Jeremiah was, you know, coming in from the war off a boat and he came to Montana and he just wanted to be a mountain man. And, uh, he went up into the crazy mountains and we got the, the Crow Indians, you know, right there, he came across the crazy lady because the crow came in, you know, they killed her whole family. And, uh, he took her son in and, uh, he ended up having a family with a. I think can’t remember what other tribe it was, but he had. He had a family with a. An Indian wife and the expedition came to his house one day. The Americans asking him to lead him through this Crow Indian burial ground. And Jeremiah was really hesitant and he ended up doing it. And when he came back, his house was burnt down and his whole, you know, they killed his whole family. So he went on the rampage of killing all the crow. But at the end of the the story, he became the mayor of the town there and, uh, made peace with the Crow Indians somehow. And, uh, the name The Crazy Mountains came from the crazy woman he came across that day. 00:46:27 Dave: Oh, there you go. 00:46:29 Chase: Yep. And a lot of my clients have read the book and seen the movie when I bring it up. So it’s cool to be like, that’s where it happened. Right there. 00:46:36 Dave: That’s it. And so that was Jeremiah Johnson. Is that the name of the movie or the book? 00:46:40 Chase: Yeah, that’s the name of the movie. And I believe it’s the name of the book too. 00:46:43 Dave: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That’s a, it’s a pretty it’s a pretty obviously crazy history. 00:46:48 Chase: Very crazy history. Like real cool. Like real history, you know? 00:46:52 Dave: Yeah. I think it’s in I think it’s really awesome because now. You know, there’s been lots of all that history, but there’s still, you know, the tribes that are out there that are still, you know, going strong. And people, like I said, like Superman who’s doing really cool stuff, trying to, you know, get the kids, you know, fired up. And we’ve talked about some of the, you know, not far, I’m not sure where it’s from, Cody, but in Wyoming, there’s a big Native American reservation that’s there’s a big guy that does a bunch of fly fishing. So it’s you know what I mean? You probably know. Do you know that area? It’s a huge reservation. I can’t remember. It’s the wind River reservation. 00:47:22 Chase: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yep. 00:47:24 Dave: Yeah. The wind. So they have a series of you can go down there and just it’s all if you want to fish it, you got to fish with a Native American guide, which is super, super cool. So good. Well, yeah, we’ve got all that. I think that’s what makes these trips special, right? Is the history, you know, all the people and the places. And if you’ve never been to Montana or Wyoming, you’re getting a feel. And I remember Lincoln when we first had him on the podcast we talked about, he said, it’s not as busy out there. And it kind of surprised me because I think of those areas like, you know, the Missouri, right, is can be very busy. What is it about this area around, you know, what we’re talking about here? You know, all this area around the lodge that makes it it’s not as busy. Is that what you’re seeing there too? 00:48:01 Chase: I agree, so coming off the Missouri River, that’s where it kind of grew up fishing and learned how to fish. I’m real grateful for that because it’s a very technical river. It has like six thousand fish per mile. But with that, it has a bunch of people. So it teaches you how to fish technically, but then you come to a river like the Stillwater and the Yellowstone in this area. And there’s just, you know, not as near as many people like on some days on the Missouri, you could walk across the river by drift boat, if you know the Yellowstone in that aspect. And the stillwater’s, it kind of gives you that feel of just, you know, what fly fishing originally was, you know? You know, a lot of people do fly fishing now just because of, you know, we had Covid and stuff. It’s not a bad thing at all. But, uh, certain areas there’s fewer people and I really enjoy it out there with that. 00:48:49 Dave: Well, like we said on the history, another, another great movie. We love to throw this one out there as a River Runs Through it, which was well before your time. I think you were probably, you know, when that came out. I think it was in the, what was it, the nineties, early nineties, right? 00:49:02 Chase: Yeah, I think so. 00:49:03 Dave: Right. But the cool thing, you probably still here. Do you still hear that name popped out around? Do you think about it because you’re from Helena, which is where the actually the movie, you know, where he lived, right? He was. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever hear about that or think about that much? 00:49:15 Chase: You know, so my dad showed it to me growing up. I watched it really young. And then, uh, yeah, it gets brought up to me almost every day. 00:49:22 Dave: Does it really? Almost every day. 00:49:24 Chase: Love that movie. Oh, yeah. People love it in the car rides, at least. They’re like, hey, someone’s gotta bring up the River runs through it with Brad Pitt. 00:49:32 Dave: Yeah, with Brad Pitt. I know it is kind of one of those things. Well, because Montana, you know, I mean, that makes sense, right? Because it was filmed in Montana. In fact, I think the Yellowstone, there was multiple rivers that it was filmed on right in that neck of the woods. 00:49:43 Chase: Yeah, I think the Blackfoot maybe, or the Yellowstone. Um, but I think why it gets brought up so much is because of the feel of the Stillwater. It kind of gives you that feel of the movie, the way the river is laid out, you know? 00:49:57 Dave: Yeah. The Stillwater feels like kind of like what you see in the river because it’s got deep canyons and stuff like that. Or. 00:50:02 Chase: Yeah, it’s got a canyon section. It’s it’s fast. It’s rocky. You know, in that scene where he’s fighting the massive fish. Yeah. It’s like that almost, you know, it’s not it’s narrow, it’s not super big. And I think that’s what makes it, uh, pop into people’s heads is just when they look at the Stillwater. 00:50:17 Dave: We recently had the, um, the son of Norman McLean who wrote the book. Right? He, his son was on the podcast and he’s a writer too. And he talked about some of the history there. It was really interesting. And we haven’t yet had Brad Pitt on, so we’re still working on that, but we might. 00:50:31 Chase: Be. 00:50:32 Dave: Sweet. Yeah, we’ll keep working on that, see if we can get him him on. And uh, yeah, because I think, I think it is really, it comes down to Montana. I mean, I think that Montana is this special place, right? And, um, and it’s just because it’s the American West. I think that’s right. You can still go there where you guys are at. I mean, you can still literally go see, uh, Buffalo, right? That’s the amazing thing. 00:50:52 Chase: Oh, yeah. Definitely. As soon as you get into the park, you can’t get away from the buffalo. And then, uh, driving actually to the lodge, there’s a dude who has buffalo on his farm, so he can even see him driving to the lodge. 00:51:02 Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Right on. Well, Chase has been great. Uh, before we get out of here, maybe just let me know. Anything else we missed? I know we’ve hit some high level stuff on this. Uh, as we get into this floating with you on the river. Any other tips? You maybe give us a couple tips. Somebody’s going to be fishing Montana, maybe this area. What are a couple of things you’re telling them to have more success this year? 00:51:22 Chase: Definitely. I’d say my first thing is, uh, fishing with confidence. I really, truly believe in that. If you’re, if you’re not having a good day and, and, uh, it’s just going to make your fishing that much worse. Fishing. Happy fishing with confidence is a great key. Even I’ve used in fly fishing. 00:51:39 Dave: Even if you’re out there and maybe you’re having a slow start of the day, don’t feel like that means it’s the end. It could change. Is that what you’re saying? So stay confident. Keep with the patterns, your confidence patterns, maybe the things that you know that work out there one hundred percent. 00:51:51 Chase: And even if you’re having a slow day just sitting there, casting is going to make you a better angler. And then I’d say for the second thing, um, making you successful, fly fishing in Montana is knowing how to read water with your eyes coming up on a spot, knowing how the depth is, you know, having good polarized sunglasses, reading water can really change your fishing if you don’t know what bugs are working, but you have the good piece of water you most of the time you’re going to catch fish and it’s going to start clicking. And then, uh, I’d say for my last, uh, little tip is, uh, with the reading water thing is then upgraded to learning what bugs you got in your system. You know, like we talked about all these different rivers and how they fish differently. Make sure you know if it’s got stoneflies or style bugs or just, you know, it doesn’t have to be super in depth or worms. 00:52:41 Dave: Right? 00:52:41 Chase: Exactly. Or the purple worm. You never know when you might want to break that out. But that’s, you know, those are my tips. I’d say you have pretty good success with in fly fishing in Montana. 00:52:51 Dave: Okay. And what are your glasses wise? Do you have, are you a certain brand that you love or lens style, or are you just kind of grab whatever. 00:52:59 Chase: Uh, I’ve been fishing Smith for the past like five years. And then for lens, I love the brown polarized lens. Brown cuts the water best for me. I’ve realized. 00:53:10 Dave: Okay. And for our random segment, you talked a little bit of snow. Are you a snowboarder or skier? Mostly. 00:53:16 Chase: I’m a skier. 00:53:17 Dave: Yeah. You’re a skier. So have you been skiing since you’re a little kid? 00:53:21 Chase: I probably started skiing when I was nine. My mom put me into ski lessons. She was a skier, so I’m thankful for that. I love skiing in the winter. It pairs well with the fishing. Gives me something to do. 00:53:32 Dave: It does? Yeah. Skiing is a little more. I guess it can be a little more intense, right? Although you get your your, you know, are you a, like high level? Like going off crazy stuff, jumps, flips, stuff like that, or are you more low key? 00:53:45 Chase: So a lot of my friends are park skiers. So I kind of grew up, uh, learning park skiing, the rails, skiing, the jumps. But I love skiing all mountain, you know, steep runs. Target’s got sweet cliff bands here and just awesome terrain. So I really like that. Nowadays, I kind of do the all mountain and, uh, keep myself from getting hurt in the park. 00:54:04 Dave: Oh, mountain. Okay. And, and if you’re listening to music on while you’re skiing down the mountain, what would you be listening to? What would be a tune we could listen to on our way out of here. 00:54:14 Chase: In the winter time? I listen to, you know, all the dad rock, I guess you could call it, you know, because I work in the repair shop there and I’ve been ski tech for a few years. So that’s what we’re listening to. The repair shop. 00:54:25 Dave: What is dad rock? We’re talking like seventies 80s rock. 00:54:28 Chase: Yeah, like Van Halen, uh, stuff like that. 00:54:31 Dave: Awesome. Van Halen, we haven’t thought about Van Halen a little while. That’s a good one. We’ll pull out a Van Halen and. 00:54:36 Chase: Play from Panama. Yeah, there you go. That’s your song to end with of Panama. 00:54:40 Dave: David Lee Roth. Yeah. Panama. Okay, we’ll throw in that. Throw some Spotify in as we take it out of here. And yeah. Chase, I think we could leave it there. This has been great. Um, we’ll send everybody out to Montana fly fishing lodge dot com for questions and connect with you. And then remind us again on Instagram. Is it just your name? 00:54:56 Chase: Yep. Just Chase Glowacki. You can find me there. 00:54:59 Dave: Okay, good. We’ll do that. And then yeah, we’re excited to put this together and see you on the water. Definitely put into place. That’s what’s great. All the stuff we talked about now on the water then for folks that you know are listening, I think a lot of this will apply to not only Montana, but areas around the West. Right? So thanks again for all your time. 00:55:15 Chase: Thank you Dave. Appreciate you having me on, man. 00:55:18 Speaker 6: All right. Before we get out of here, a quick heads up, if you haven’t already, check in with Montana fly fishing lodge dot com, follow them on social media. 00:55:25 Dave: And check in with them and let them know you’re interested in hearing more about everything they have going. We have a big trip going with Montana this year? If you’re interested in checking in with me and getting on this trip, send me an email Dave at fly dot com and you can find out about accessibility and see what we have available this year. And, and yeah, we got all sorts of good stuff going here, including the boot camp. I’m very excited about the boot camp. Um, this is going to be something we’re going to do over and over again this year. So if you’re interested in hearing and seeing presentations from some of the best out there, taking it to the next level, have an opportunity to answer and ask questions directly. Um, that’s one of the cool things about our boot camp is being able to talk directly to speakers, fly fishing boot camp dot com. Go check it out right now. All right. Thanks again. Uh, appreciate you for stopping in today. Appreciate you for, uh, being a listener and I hope you have a great morning. Great afternoon or evening, Reverend. The world you are. We’ll talk to you on that next one. 00:56:20 Speaker 7: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit Wet Fly dot com.