1014 | Pennsylvania Fly Fishing with Michael Heck: Spring Creeks, Wild Trout, and Classic Hatches

00:00:00 Dave: From the limestone waters of the Cumberland Valley to the famous hatches of Pennsylvania. Spring creek’s Mike Heck takes us through one of America’s richest trout fishing regions. Today, we’ll learn how to approach these clear waters and understand the hatches that make this part of Pennsylvania such a remarkable place to fish. 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. My kick is here, and he is going to share his Spring Creek strategies and show us how to fish some of the toughest and most famous trout waters in the country. We’re going to talk about falling springs, big springs, the Letort, and a bunch of other great streams that are part of American fly fishing history. We’ll learn how to read rise forms and recognize when trout are feeding on emergers, caddis, adult mayflies, and other insects. We’re also going to find out about the Spring Creek Dry dropper system Mike uses and adjusts his dropper length to match the water depth. We’re going to get into this today, and a simple liter setup that Mike relies on and why he’s become a believer in tippet rings and how he builds these leaders all the way up. This one’s loaded, and it includes a conversation about Edge Shank and the connection to the famous Edge Shank and his contribution and connection to this part of the world. All right, let’s get into it. You can find Mike at Falling Springs dot com. Here he is. Mike. Heck, how you doing, Mike? 00:01:33 Mike: I’m good. Glad to be here. And I look forward to spending about an hour with you. 00:01:37 Dave: Yeah. We’re going to have a good conversation. Uh, you’re in a part of the world that, uh, we love. We’ve been to. I don’t think I’ve fished. We’re going to dig into it. I don’t think specifically your area, but, uh, Pennsylvania, and specifically south-central Pennsylvania. We’re going to talk trout fishing today, maybe get an update on what’s going on in your neck of the woods and all that. You guys down there at Falling Springs dot com. But start us off just on the top. How did you come into guiding, you know, as Falling Springs? Is that something you’ve been doing a little while? 00:02:05 Mike: I’ve been fly fishing since I was eight and probably in my twenties. I published my first articles in Fly Fisherman and had already designed patterns and all that. It was med ed one day on the Yellow Breeches, and I was trying this new midge pupa pattern, and that looked at me, and I was probably about twenty-two. And he goes, Mike, you gotta start teaching people what you know. He goes, ” You got the wealth of knowledge of a fifty-year-old, a twenty-year-old. You know, that sinks one pretty much; start guiding. So yeah, a couple years later, I started guiding, and it kept going further and further and further. And I would say about fifteen years into it, maybe less. Not sure. Uh, I got a call to publish my first book, Spring Creek Strategies, and Bert. That book took me about a year, and then things went for sale after that. 00:03:01 Dave: So you wrote your first book now? Were you writing when you wrote Spring Creek Strategies? 00:03:06 Mike: Yes. Yep. 00:03:07 Dave: Oh. You were? 00:03:07 Mike: Yeah, yeah. I was probably, I think I was in my late thirties when I wrote Spring Creeks. 00:03:12 Dave: Gotcha. Wow. And now that book is that. Have you written some stuff since then, or is that, uh, what’s the book you recommend to people pick up if they’re interested in learning about kind of that part of the, the world? 00:03:23 Mike: Uh, truthfully, people call it the Bible. It was last book. It was a collaboration with a bunch of us. Uh, people call it the Bible of Pennsylvania, the Keystone fly fishing book. It’s literally Jane Nichols put the best guides and the best writers who knew the areas throughout the state of PA. And we came together to publish this book. And as I said, you know, people who buy it and read it, they call it the Bible of PA. 00:03:48 Dave: Oh, awesome. So this is a good resource. Good. So people can pick that up. So that’ll be our Companion book that we’ll have along with us today as we get into this. So Keystone fly fishing. Yeah, the ultimate guide to Pennsylvania’s best water. Awesome. And did you focus on what area, what did you focus on in that book? How was the maybe describe that a little bit. How was the book broken up? 00:04:07 Mike: Uh, I focused on the south central PA area. So all the South central PA streams I pretty much wrote about. And then like I said, the other geographic regions, we had other writers write on them. You had the Susquehanna River, which is a great smallmouth fishery. We had one person, Brian Schumacher, work on it. And then like the Erie Tribs, there was a person. So it was really broke up into different geographic regions where the best people we had on those areas. 00:04:36 Dave: Okay, great. And how do you describe, you know, South Central PA? What delineates that? 00:04:41 Mike: Well, it’s basically what we call. 00:04:43 Mike: The Cumberland Valley. We’re literally based right in the middle of the state of PA, basically from the Maryland border up into, uh, The Carlisle Harrisburg area. It’s literally, like I said, it’s the home of some of the fly fishing techniques, books, fly patterns. You know, back in the day, we had people that would fish the New York area. I mean, we’re talking fifties and all that. They came down to fish these area waters. 00:05:13 Dave: Right, exactly. Harrisburg. Does it include does it go up to, uh, State College in that area? 00:05:18 Mike: Yes. Yep. Basically what we call the limestone. 00:05:21 Mike: Belt, that, uh, that impermeable rock and goes up into the State College area and then just kind of trickles out as you get up into the northern part of the state. 00:05:32 Dave: Gotcha. So yeah, so basically it’s all the famous, uh, spring creeks is kind of a big part of that. That’s what people would know of or have heard of. 00:05:40 Mike: True. 00:05:40 Mike: We got the famous spring creeks like falling springs, big springs. Of course, everyone knows yellow breeches. Letort. You have so many lesser known spring creeks, But one of the unique things like my water in Waynesboro. Although it’s a freestone stream, we have so much limestone influence. Dumping into East Antietam, it literally turns that into a spring creek. And that’s what we call the limestone influence spring creeks. 00:06:06 Dave: Gotcha. Limestone. And what is that? What is the limestone do to a stream? How does it turn it into more of a spring creek? 00:06:12 Mike: Basically. 00:06:13 Mike: Limestone has a mineral called calcium carbonate, and that completely changes the pH level to these perfect pH levels. And the water comes out of fifty two degrees. So it creates nutrients. But a really healthy limestone stream is just so abundant with aquatic insects. 00:06:34 Dave: Wow. Yeah. That’s it. So you have an abundance of not only spring creeks, but also these creeks that are have a lot of limestone. They’re like essentially spring creeks. Very similar. 00:06:43 Mike: Correct. 00:06:44 Dave: Yeah. Okay. And what is the keystone fly fishing? What is the keystone part of that mean? Is that something more that name, where does that come from? 00:06:52 Mike: It’s basically a nickname for Pennsylvania. 00:06:54 Dave: Is it the Keystone State? 00:06:55 Mike: Yes. 00:06:56 Dave: Yeah. It is. Okay. Keystone state, that’s right. Amazing. Okay, so that gets us in perspective where we’re talking about. So yeah, you’re right. They’re kind of not far from New York. People are crossing the border and dropping down south there. And then what about now you’re guiding what are the do you have a specific some areas, some secret waters. You’re. It sounds like you do have some private waters. Talk about that. If we were calling you and we were going to get a trip with you next year, where would we be heading? 00:07:22 Mike: Uh, I pretty much been focused on my private water. We have other guides that do the other waters as well. Some of the famous waters, like I said, tour breaches. But then, uh, a lot of these guys will trickle out into the Carnegie jig or the West Carnegie jig. One even goes up to Yellow Creek. Uh, so there’s just these hosts of all these waters around. But then on top of that, I mean, we didn’t even talk about it yet. We’re talking about these spring creeks. We’re blessed with so many little mountain brook trout streams in this area as well. But people don’t realize we have brook trout this far south in Pennsylvania. 00:07:59 Dave: Oh, right. Right. So just higher up in the kind of in the mountains you have the brookies. 00:08:04 Mike: Correct? Yep. 00:08:06 Dave: Wow. Okay. And, and what are the what’s a typical spring creek? What species does it hold and describe? You know, that are they similar in size? A lot of them or is there a lot of variation? 00:08:15 Mike: We have the smaller spring creeks that can be eight to ten feet wide. And then we can get into what most people are used to, the twenty foot wide waters. Again, with all the streams, there’s a host of fish on any of these. We have wild browns, we have wild rainbows. And then some of them have, uh, stock fish as well. 00:08:35 Dave: Oh they do. Yeah. Stocks fish. What is it that makes, you know Pennsylvania? It’s known as this kind of Mecca of trout. Is it the spring creeks. Is that what it’s, you know, kind of best known for. Are there other parts of Pennsylvania that people are also fishing? 00:08:48 Mike: No, I mean, the great part about Pennsylvania is all the water we have, there’s just streams one after another, and people can target whatever they feel like in this state. You got little Juniata that has trout in it. And then, you know, you look out, uh, further east, you got the Delaware, which is primarily a float fishery. 00:09:12 Dave: Yeah, you got a lot, right? So you got all that on top of all the Spring Creek areas that you’re talking about here. 00:09:17 Mike: It’s literally a state if you don’t care what your target, if you’re just targeting trout, you literally, as you drive, you’re going over one great stream to another. 00:09:26 Dave: Yeah, it’s all good. Good water. This is cool. Well, let’s focus a little bit on the spring creeks for a little bit. I think that’s something interesting for, you know, spring creeks are spread around, you know, the country. Obviously you guys have this hot spot there. What is it about spring creeks, you know, their stable temperatures or flow. How does how does that change kind of trout behavior versus, say, some of these freestones in your area. 00:09:51 Mike: A spring Creek, to sum it up generally like it’s it’s a hard topic to talk about because there’s so much involvement with a Spring Creek. But first off, their year round fisheries in the wintertime, the water remains warm. Summertime, particularly a lot of your smaller spring creeks that remain cool enough to fish in the summertime. It’s a patient fishery. Some people have the patience for it, I’ll admit. Sometimes. Some days I don’t have the patience for it. They’re very patient fishery because the majority of the time these waters are crystal clear. The biggest complication with very healthy spring creeks is learning how to fish around these weed beds. This is where trout will hide feed. So weed beds is what really throws a lot of people off. Because a lot of people, you know, we know used to boulder pocket water. It’s tough like that. Allow your spring creeks or low gradient fisheries. Some of them have very little fall to them, so you may not find some easier riffles and stuff like that. So you got to really learn what I say in my presentations. With the shows I do. You gotta learn how to fish glass. 00:10:58 Dave: Yeah. Which means part of that is just being stealthy. Is that a big part of it? How how do you fish glass? What’s your bullet points on that? 00:11:06 Mike: Stealthy is a big thing. Blend into the environment, whether you’re fishing nymphs or dries. A nice, soft, delicate cast. Dry droppers are one thing. If I’m going to the indicator fishing, I don’t want an indicator that’s going to hit the water hard. So a lot of us are using wool or yarn indicators. So you have an indicator falls to the water soft, right? 00:11:30 Dave: Right. That’s it. 00:11:30 Mike: Which in turn with the yarn indicators these fish feed particularly wild. The wild fish. They feed with zero energy. They just literally sit there open, shut their mouths. So your yarn indicators really pick up that delicate strike they do. 00:11:45 Dave: Right? And do you guys and how do you do is the dry dropper. When would you go with a, a dry dropper versus a yarn indicator on a spring creek? 00:11:53 Mike: Well, it goes back to observation where like I tell everybody, fish how you want to fish. Uh, we know we have the dry fly purist out there. I myself get into those days where I like fishing dries only. But as I’m going up through the stream, I’m very observant. I’m looking here, I’m looking there. Twenty feet can change my fishing techniques. So if I get into some shallow riffles or some water, that’s, I can see the bottom, stuff like that. That’s a perfect time to set up dry droppers if I see a few fish rising. May not have many, but I know fish are looking at the surface. And that’s where I was like, okay, a dry dropper may work very well here. And then by the end of the day on my chest pack, I may have different dropper lengths set up. They may have one at twelve inches. Fourteen sixteen the other day I had a gentleman I was guiding. He was good enough. I told him, I go, we’re not going to see any rise in fish today because I like fishing dries like mine, a dropper. He goes, no, I go. How long have you dropper? Can you fish? He goes, I can throw a thirty two inch dropper and he could. And so I set him up in the pools and riffles. I knew that was right around twenty eight thirty inches of depth. 00:13:06 Dave: Yep. So you had the right depth. Describe that on your your leader. So you have you vary that depending on are you kind of where you see the fish for the most part holding and then you’re trying to match it to that, or how do you just decide what length to put on the dropper? 00:13:20 Mike: Uh, if I can tell walking up through the water, if I know the depth of this pool, I may I’ll switch up. Or if I get to the point I tell people it’s like stalking deer. If there’s any deer hunters listening, I take two steps and look, two steps and look. And then sometimes you may spot a fish. 00:13:38 Dave: Oh, right. 00:13:40 Mike: And then you take your time. You take your patience like, okay, it looks about this depth. It may be, you know, foot deep. I’ll take the time to drop, adjust that dropper as needed. 00:13:51 Dave: Yeah. Is it typically like, where are the fish? Like? Talk about that. When you see these fish, do they typically, uh, they’re in a range. They’re not on the bottom right. They’re kind of off a little bit and describe that. And where are you putting trying to put that dropper fly near how far from the fish? 00:14:07 Mike: I try to get as close as possible. I mean, take big springs for example. Uh, you can walk up through the flat water if you’re very cautious and stealthy, you may see some nice fish right on the bottom. But be observant and watch. You’ll sometimes just watch them turn their head and go to the bottom and just pick insects right off the the substrate. 00:14:27 Dave: Oh wow. 00:14:28 Mike: So you’re wanting. And it could be cress bugs, freshwater shrimp, even freshwater snails that they’re grubbing at, and I want that depth to try to drag that bottom and keep it off to the side of them. Sometimes they’re feeding to the right or left. I’ll try to set my angle up, so I’m putting the cast above them, so my dropper has enough time just to get to that bottom and trickle down to the fish itself, down to the trout itself. 00:14:52 Dave: Man, this is great. So you have the dry dropper. You’re fishing that. And now as far as hatches, what does that look like throughout the year? Is that is there a lot of variation throughout your area or what are the big hatches people are coming for? 00:15:04 Mike: Yeah, we have we have a lot of hatches. It’ll start midges can be year round, of course. Uh, start off the spring with blue bluing olives, some stoneflies. But then once we get into the later part of spring, we get into a lot of different, uh, caddis. Some of the streams have some prolific, uh, granum hatches, black caddis, tan caddis. Then we start getting into the late May time frame and a lot of these streams, whether they’re spring creeks or the Free Staters have these phenomenal sulfur hatches. That’s a big target hatch. Followed by that. Some of them have a lot of yellow drakes right after the sulfurs. Then at that season, now we get into, uh, what made the Cumberland Valley famous was the terrestrial fishing. Your ants, beetles, crickets, hoppers that always enticed fish up to the surface. And then come July, the daring people fish the tiny trico hatch. That’s a big one. We’re still into the, uh, July, August, September. We’re now in the big, uh, hoppers and crickets. And then it gets followed up. I’d say about fifty percent of the streams have an October caddis hatch, and then it starts tailing back off into, uh, some olives and some midges again. 00:16:21 Dave: All those images. So right now, as we’re speaking, we’re kind of November is right around the corner. What’s going to be happening in November? 00:16:28 Mike: Uh, November, uh, you’re going to see warmer days, you’ll definitely see some midges. Some of them like big springs, my red run water that dumps into, uh, East Antietam. And there may be days you’ll see. You’ll see bluing olives throughout the winter as well. The bluing all is popping off. 00:16:48 Dave: Right? Yeah. So you could be in December anytime in the winter. And all of a sudden there’s a bluing olive hatch that happens with the right temperature and conditions. 00:16:56 Mike: Oh yeah. Correct. Anytime I would say thirty eight degrees and above. You never know when I pull in. If I’m winter fishing, I keep it to like a ten to two. That’s your prime prime time to be out there fishing. But when I pull into the parking lot, I’m very observant. The first thing I’m going to do is look at the hood of my truck, because the heat of the truck, it’s already going to bring, uh, midges right to your vehicle. 00:17:23 Dave: Today’s show is brought to you by Visit Idaho and Yellowstone Teton Territory, a place that should be on every anglers list, from the Henry’s Fork to the South Fork of the snake and all the hidden creeks and alpine lakes in between. This region is built for fly fishers who like a little room to roam. You can head over to wet fly dot com right now for guides, lodges and trip ideas to plan your next adventure. 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The next in the sulfur, the sulfur is another big one I think you hear a lot about. It’s not a hatch that I don’t think you find all over the country. Um, but it’s pretty unique. Describe that hatch a little bit. What does the sulfur hatch look like? Are those small, big bugs? 00:18:57 Mike: There’s different species of them. There’s we have basically three different species of sulfurs here. I’m not getting into the scientific details. 00:19:05 Dave: Yeah, sure. 00:19:06 Mike: Entomology. Like I tell people, it’s a mayfly of cello. Size. Color. Good fish. I mean, we start out with, uh, some fourteen, some sixteens, and then the sulfurs dwindled down to the size eighteen. And then that’s when you start getting into these huge yellow drakes that look like monster butterflies floating down the surface or. Size twelve. Sometimes size tens and. They are very clumsy. Trying to get off the water till those wings dry and all that. So it can be. It can be interesting when you see them on the water as well. But the sulphurs is a is an evening hatch. Cloudy days can spark an afternoon hatch. But the unique thing on the sulfurs like Antietam, East Antietam, the clonic jig, which is a free dinner here in Chambersburg. It’s really came back leaps and bounds. After all, the dam removals have prolific sulphur hatches and, of course, yellow breeches. But the neat thing about them is once these fish really get tuned on that evening hatch, it’s hard pressed to really catch a bunch of fish after three o’clock because they already know five, six, seven o’clock. There’s a smorgasbord about ready to hit the street. And these fish, these fish will just shut off waiting for those sulphurs to get on the water. 00:20:24 Dave: Amazing. Yeah, that’s really cool. What’s your throughout the year? Yeah, it’s probably hard, but do you have a favorite time? You like fishing? If you ever get out on your, your own or any of that. 00:20:34 Mike: Well, some sometimes it’s funny, I get out whenever I can. I like the mornings. I do like the evenings. But any of our waters, especially this year, I mean, I talk to people from I keep in touch with people from Virginia all the way up to New York. And we really had a tough year. I had great water, cold water, but it was so clear this year. And a lot of us talked about how tough it was from eleven o’clock on, and it’s literally the sun. Once that sun gets on these wild fish, you’re really hard pressed. You got to go hunt shade, uh, keeping the moving fish because once the sun gets on the water and that water’s crystal clear, it really shuts them down, especially when you’re focusing on the wild brown fisheries. 00:21:20 Dave: All right. Which is right now as we’re talking, I think we’re going to talk about that a little bit. The spawning. So so there’s browns and rainbows. And are you fishing areas where you have both species, you know, kind of mostly in the same streams? 00:21:33 Mike: Yeah. We can, uh, some of the majority of the streams will have your wild browns and wild rainbows in them. I tend, like I said, uh, we were talking about earlier, I tend not to target the brown trout fisheries right now because they’re summer spawning. Some are starting spawn, so you’re not going to be as successful hitting like a yellow breeches or a mountain creek or like I said, our private water, which we shut down for fishing completely. So they spawn. I’ll tend to now try to migrate to streams that are mostly rainbows, like falling springs or big springs, where they’re going to, they’re going to remain feeding while the browns are doing their thing and spawning, and then you get back on them sometime in December if you feel like it for the Post-spawn feed. 00:22:23 Dave: Yeah. Post-spawn. Which is. So that’s the no fish. You guys have the, uh, no fish? November, right? This is this a kind of a region wide thing or how did that no fish November thing start up? 00:22:34 Mike: It’s basically our private water we have on Red run Antietam. We got it. But it’s also a conservation effort. We watch over these fish. If they look like summertime, if they gets low and clear. Uh, it’s always a rest. Say I’m guiding it on, say, today, for example, it’s rested on the day before we fish, and then it’s rested the day after the rest of these fish. But once these once our wild brown show signs of spawning the pairing up the swimming upstream, we just we just shut it down. You don’t want to target over any spawning fish, especially when they’re on the reds and stuff like that. So we just we just shut it down and then pre-spawn. It’s good fishing. Throwing bigger flies. They’re not really targeting tiny nymphs and all that. They want to get their bellies full because they’re not going to be feeding for a month. Get back on them, crane fly larvas, some smaller streamers, stuff like that to hit the spawners. And then the post-spawn pretty much against bigger flies and swing some streamers at them too, because again, they’re hungry. Again they want to want a big meal before the wintertime shutdown comes. Because once I’m noticing, it seems like rainbows will feed on any water temp. It seems like when water temps drop into the low forties, it’s really hard pressed to get these browns to feed because they actually like a warmer water temperature. My thermometer is a big thing. I, I tell everybody your best thing, and that vest of yours is a stream thermometer. It’ll dictate where you want to fish if you’re down, you know, mid current surface or, you know, stay off the water. 00:24:19 Dave: So that’s, that’s a great tip. So the thermometer, you have it in, you throw it in when you get there. How does that dictate kind of how you’re fishing throughout the day? Let’s say you get to a stream and you see the temperature. You’ll know what does it tell you whether remind us again on that above forty. Do you have certain temperature thresholds you’re thinking about? 00:24:36 Mike: Yeah. I don’t have a digital thermometer. I have still an old one. I basically have a tied to a string. And I’m always make sure it’s four to plus inches below the surface. I don’t want surface temp. I want I want true water temp. So I get it down, let it sit for a minute or two, but low forties 50s I know I’m going to have to drag some slower stuff by and keep it as tight to the bottom as possible. At this point, I’m catching a lot of rocks, stuff like that. Maybe some darker streamers to entice that strike, that lower water temperatures. Now, as the water warms the fish’s metabolism. The trout’s metabolism starts to speed up a little bit. Now we can work on maybe swinging flies, jigging some streamers, stuff like that. If I see hatches, I’m going to go mid-stream. We’re looking fifty fifty two’s. Some of the true spring creeks. If you get in the upper ends, it’s pretty much always going to be fifty two degrees. So you can mix options there. You can pretty much, I tell people fish how you want it. But now summer comes. You get into the high fifties, into the sixties. Their metabolism is really racing. Then it’s all about observation. You’re looking to see how aggressive the fish are. If they’re rising. And that’s where you can throw an arsenal of tactics at them. Whether you’re fishing nymphs off indicators or dry droppers, jigging small streamers at them, throwing drifting streamers, swinging streamers. That’s where it’s basically a fly fishing playground out there at that point. I know everyone says a trout shut off seventy. I look at about sixty eight and then I probably I’m getting off the water. Like we were talking spring creeks. You pretty much fish them year round. You get into these limestone influence streams. You can get an early morning hoot owl start fish, be off the water eleven when it hits about sixty seven, sixty eight and you’ve had a good you’ve had a good half day fishing. 00:26:40 Dave: That’s cool. That’s a good little temperature breakdown. We’ll have a note on that. Um, we’ll talk about this. So we’re talking a little bit about fishing some of these maybe some of the emergers or not even mergers, maybe nymphs. But let’s talk about your, you know, fishing to a fish. You get a refusal. Um, maybe with a dry fly. You know, what is the, how do you know whether that’s due to the pattern, you know, presentation or the leader or something else? 00:27:05 Mike: It can be tricky. I mean, if I have a refusal, I come up, fish looks at it. You’re right. Is was it the fly versus the tippet? I first looked at the rise form. Is it just a push of water? The classic head to tail rise or a big splash that’s going to dictate first off what pattern I have on. If it’s a low push the water. We know it’s in a merger. Don’t try to fish a traditional dry fly. Take that time. Change the fly to how that trout’s rising. A big splash ninety percent of the times the fish is jumping out of the water like that. It’s usually caddis because we know that caddis emerges, hits the surface, takes off in the flight. That’s usually a caddis. So I’ll throw the caddis out there, whatever it may be black, tan, but maybe twitch it also as well because we know they’re chasing these flies. And then if I have say we have that classic head to tail rise, I’m going to, you know, fish my parachute or baradun stuff like that, but get a refusal. It’s like, okay, tippet size, maybe a little too much. Then I’ll start changing that tippet size down, getting into that with the leaders. A lot has changed. I was very skeptical. I’ve built my leaders tweaking the George Harvey formula, skeptical for years about them. The arthritis isn’t getting any better. Uh, love. Tippet rings. 00:28:31 Dave: Oh, okay. 00:28:32 Mike: I love tippet rings because they won. It’s like a multi purpose tool. I can be fishing nymphs all forex. All of a sudden I get a hatch event. Fish are rising. I can pull that forex off, throw them a five or six x one. I’m back to fishing again instead and have rebuilt a leader. 00:28:49 Dave: Yeah, tippet rings are great. Describe that a little bit. If you’re fishing a hatch like we’re talking about here with forex, how is your leader Bill? Is it similarly built for a fish and mergers and dries? 00:29:01 Mike: It is. Again, I build my own leaders. I know a lot of people don’t out there and kind of tip I tell people to go to the fly shop and you buy a seven and a half foot two x tippet. If you cut about three inches of two x off, tire tippet ring on, and then I’m running anywhere from twenty eight to thirty two inches of tippet. Time of dry fly on, you know, just the dropper length. And then I’m doing the same thing with the nymphs, whatever I’m doing. Uh, the only difference is if I switched off the streamers, I like a shorter leader for streamers, I’ll put maybe eighteen inches of three x one and then fish streamers. So I have a, I have that shorter leader. 00:29:45 Dave: Yeah. Off your tip ring. So you could just go buy a seven and a half foot two X leader out of the package, take that out and just cut off a few inches off the end of that and then tie a tippet ring on. And then you could tie whatever you need for tippet. 00:29:59 Mike: Yep, yep. Correct. And that puts you right there at that nine and a half, ten foot, uh, length of leader. 00:30:05 Dave: Yeah. That’s great man. Love that. That’s always a lot of confusion there on and the ECS system is a little confusion too, right. Because you I mean we think of it now as ECS is, but you probably remember when, you know, it used to be poundage, right? You used to talk more. What is the difference there? Why is there a little bit of confusion on that poundage pounds versus ECS and all that? 00:30:22 Mike: I know I yeah, it was poundage at one point it was diameter. Things really changed with tippetts or later wise. You think about dracos or midgets, you’re stuck with seven X. I haven’t fished seven X for years. I love these half size tidbits at Scientific Anglers come out with. I don’t go any smaller than six point five these days. But yeah, I mean, it depends how whatever you’ve been taught to do. Do you go by the ECS or do you go by the diameter or. I was just down with Brock Miller Goddard last week and he he goes by poundage. And I was like, well, it’s the same. You’re poundage. You’re talking about it’s four x, you know, but it’s. However, I guess you were taught throughout the years. 00:31:04 Dave: Yeah, exactly. That’s yeah. That’s true. So. So for and then if you were tying, if you’re using that six point five x tip, it would you still tie that on to a that seven and a half foot two x liter. 00:31:14 Mike: Yeah, yeah. 00:31:15 Dave: So you got a thick. So it’s okay to have a thicker. 00:31:18 Mike: No, I’ve like I said, I was skeptical about tipping rings for years, but I tried it. It rolls over just as well. I still get the S curves and the leader when it falls and hits the water if I’m fishing, dries. So it’s a real quick way to just keep fishing throughout the day. Just using tippet rings. 00:31:35 Dave: Yeah, that’s the big reminder. Big tip today. I think tippet rings are good. That’s makes a lot easier so you don’t have to mess around. 00:31:42 Mike: Yeah. It’s a lot easier time. Blood knots. 00:31:44 Dave: Yeah. Is that what you’re tying. Yeah. What are you tying on to your. What’s the knot used to tie the tippet on to the tippet ring. 00:31:50 Mike: Well that’s a simple clinch knot. 00:31:51 Dave: Yeah. Just clinch. Yep. 00:31:53 Mike: But yeah but I learned how to tie blood knots. And I tell people it’s what your fingers like. I taught my son who’s an excellent fisherman. In fact, he helps guide to a little bit. I taught him how to tie a blood knot. People are learning how to tie these knots. Don’t use your expensive tippet. Just go. Here we go. Back to the four pound stuff. Go buy some strand four pound. Practice on that. His fingers didn’t like blood. Not mine. Like the blood knot. He does. The surgeon’s the tie. Tippet to tippet. He found that was easier. 00:32:24 Dave: Yeah. Try it all. And. Yeah. I’m a blood knot, too. I’ve always tied blood knots. It feels like that’s just easier for me. Although a surgeon’s knot is pretty easy, too. It might be one of the easier knots to tie. Right. 00:32:35 Dave: I don’t know. 00:32:36 Mike: The funny thing is, I’ll have people laughing. I can’t tie. 00:32:38 Dave: one. 00:32:38 Dave: Right, right. Yeah. 00:32:40 Dave: I don’t know. I don’t know. 00:32:40 Mike: Tie was blood knots for me. 00:32:42 Dave: I know, I’m trying to think of how the surgeon’s is tied. You. I can’t even think of it either. Right now it’s kind of funny. But okay, so we got that. So we talked a little about rise forms. That’s obviously a really important part. What about when you know you’re fishing again, that glassy slow you said it. That water that they can kind of see. How do you position yourself? You know, there without alerting the fish. Are you typically fishing from below or does it depend? Are you fishing down to them? What does that look like? 00:33:07 Mike: No, uh, you’re pretty much fishing, uh, below them and casting upstream. I’ll try to get my angle so I’m not. I’m not talking about. Okay. Lining the trout. People think lining the trout is the fly line. It can actually be the heavier part of your, uh, leader. So I try to get my. I’m just at a slight angle trying to keep myself behind that trout, but at an angle where I’m casting. So my tippet leader just is not going directly over the trout itself. I’m keeping that angle where I can make a cast. So the flies coming to him and not the leader itself. 00:33:44 Dave: Right. That’s another good reminder. So they’re yeah, they’re able to see that leader. If they see a shadow or something like that, that would be enough to spook these fish. 00:33:51 Dave: Yes. 00:33:51 Mike: I mean, I mean, you look at falling springs or big springs. I’ve actually I’ve actually watched it myself. You get in your butt sections of your leader. I’ve actually cast out there just to do it. You get in your butt sections, and if you’re in shallow water, you can look down. And even though the monofilaments clear, it’s still is putting a small shadow in the stream. 00:34:14 Dave: Yeah. That’s it. How often do you are you out there where you’re fishing these and you know, you’ve obviously been doing this for many years, written all this material about it. Do the fish surprise you out there? Does that still happen to you? 00:34:26 Mike: Hey, it’s every day’s a different day out there. I mean, sometimes with these, you know, stock trouts one thing, wild trout, you just some days you just they’re just not going to feed. And people learning how to fly fish and beginners just have to realize that’s wild fish. There’s days out there that they just say, guys, I’m shut off. I’m done. Just like with the I said about the sun this year and past years, uh, that sun gets on the water. Change your you’re going to have to change your tactics and go to places where there’s shade. But yeah, there’s some days you don’t know what happens. You have this beautiful day. You think you’re going to not fight to get them. It happened to me this year. I thought we had this perfect day. We had insects, we had stuff, you know, insects moving. I always say you have a better chance out there when you have bug activity because the fish are seeing the bug activity, they’re going to feed probably a little bit more. We had one of those days and we we fought to get one, one fish and then vice versa. You have a day where, yeah, it looks like you’re going to fight the fight to get some of these wild browns and rainbows. And it was like a cakewalk. So yeah, you can be out there just scratching your head wondering, you know, what’s going on. We gotta remember we’re invading their homes. They know every little bird of prey, mink, you name it out there, big boy, Bubba John wanting a big meal. And next thing you know, you know, he’s eating a eight inch creek chub or something. 00:35:59 Dave: Yeah. Wow. 00:36:01 Mike: So if you fish long enough on these streams, you’ll see just about everything. 00:36:06 Dave: Today’s episode is brought to you by Noseeum Lodge in Alaska, one of the most remote, most incredible rainbow trout fisheries on the planet. With over fifty years of experience hosting fly anglers in the Alaskan wilderness. These folks know how to deliver an unforgettable trip. You can check them out right now at noseeum dot com. That’s N o s e u m. Noseeum lodge dot com. Check em out right now. So we mentioned kind of trying to match the hatch a little bit. Is that, um, you know, if you’re fishing that again, mergers, I guess it depends that you kind of you’re looking at rice forms. But take us back there a little bit. How do you get that exact. How do you figure out what part of the stage you know, the insects are feeding in? Is that you’ve already kind of discussed that, right? Part of that’s the rise form. Is that the biggest part? 00:36:55 Mike: Yeah. A lot of it’s the rise form. One of the other problems is, like I said about the big splashy rise, you may have different insects hatching the same time out here. I describe it in my book, Spring Creek Strategies. You have the sulfur event, right? That hatch can go in the dark, especially with the spinner fall. You see these fish rising. It’s dark out, but then people forget that same part of the night. You got black caddis egg land and you can’t see that. So as it goes into dark daylight, the trout are more sensitive to the color and the size as their eyes change and you get into the darker twilight hours, it’s more silhouette. So I don’t know. But, you know, in the dark, I don’t know if they’re taking a sulfur that may be, you know, a spinner or still an emerging gun versus is there egg laying caddis which the black caddis follow the water like a mayfly and lay their eggs. So I’m now thinking silhouette. So ninety percent of the times when that stage sets up, I’m going to be fishing parachutes down, down on the water low. And now I’m facing, I want the silhouette to match up versus, uh, size and color, right? 00:38:19 Dave: Yeah, that makes total sense. So silhouette. So and that’s why the parachute is so good. It provides that really amazing silhouette. They can see the legs and it’s, it’s the parachute. The best that you think that’s the better fly one of the best flies to use later in the day, in the evenings. 00:38:34 Mike: Oh, I, yes, I like it. 00:38:36 Mike: I mean compare done does a great job to silhouette. It gets down, it lays flat. Kind of hard to see a wing. I’ll fish parachutes. I tie mine with fresh and orange post. That way it gives me a chance. Or if it gets really dark, I always say, if I see a fish rise, if I see a fish take within four or five feet of my fly line, I’m going to set the hook. 00:38:57 Dave: Oh yeah. So if you see, you kind of know the general area, even if you can’t see the fly, if you see a rise, you’re setting the hook. 00:39:03 Mike: Exactly. 00:39:04 Dave: Yep. And then, and then just recast, right. If you don’t have anything there, just put it back down. 00:39:09 Mike: Yep. And getting back to one of the things you were saying, if I have multiple insects hatching, you know, my dry fly may be a blue wing olive. And then if I see I have maybe other multiple insects like midges, I may put a midge pupil one try and imitate both at the same time, since I have multiple insects hatching at the same time, or vice versa, I may have a midge one and then maybe bluing all of a merger, like a CDC merger or something behind the edge. 00:39:42 Dave: So you’re covering two, well, maybe even two different species of bugs out there. Do you? When you do that, you have your tippet ring with your tippet thirty inches of tippet. How do you tie your dropper onto that? Let’s say you’re doing what you just talked about there, that two fly setup. How would you tie your other fly on? 00:39:58 Mike: I’m pretty simple with this and it does. It’s very effective even if I’m fishing double nymph rigs because like double nymph rigs, I just tie right to the bend of the hook. 00:40:07 Dave: Yeah, just the bend. 00:40:09 Mike: Yeah. Break to the bend of the hook. Just, you know, operator error. Just make sure the, uh, when you tie the bend of the hook, it has a barb on it. You’re probably going to lose your dropper. Been there, done that. I was like, why am I losing these droppers? I’m like, oh, that’s right. You got a jig hook on dummy. 00:40:24 Dave: Right? Right. Gosh, this is good. So we’re kind of focusing on this. I love the, you know, I’m thinking hats, right? That’s always a fun part of this. Um, and we talked about refusing your fly again. Walk us through that a little bit. The sequence you would take. So you’re out there, you’ve got this fly on. You think you have the right pattern. You’re fishing over a fish that you can see. Maybe. Maybe it’s a nice fish. What’s that process look like for you? The sequence of. Okay, it didn’t take. What do you do next? 00:40:52 Mike: It’s again goes to observation. First I’m looking at his feed and behavior first. Is he feeding by the second? Is he feeding? You know, every three seconds he comes up, every five seconds he comes up or, you know, is he taking every now and then I want him to keep in his feed and pattern. I make a cast. I get a refusal. I’m not going to slap line back out there again. I’m going to wait. And then, okay, he’s back in that feeding behavior, you know, just do I switch the tippet? Did I switch the flies? But keep him in that feeding behaviors? Going back to what we said earlier, these streams are patient fisheries. It happened to me earlier this year. I had a gentleman and he didn’t want to get off this fish. 00:41:37 Dave: Because it was a big fish. 00:41:39 Mike: It was a decent brown. I mean, me, I would have just said, you know, let’s go. But he wanted a rising fish and it took him about an hour and a half to finally get this fish, because I went and checked on his wife. Come back up and I’m seeing about every fly box he had in his chest pack laying out in the back. So we’ll get this fish. And I’ve been there and done it myself. When the falling springs years ago, we came up on a decent brown and we sat on the bank behind this trout just okay, that didn’t work. That didn’t work, that didn’t work. Okay. And we finally it was one of these weird things we found switched to a little midge pupa fish took it on the first pop. We thought he was feeding on terrestrials. We thought maybe it was like sunken ants, stuff like that. No, it ended up being midges. 00:42:24 Dave: Yeah. Wow. Do you have any standbys? You know, flies. I had a while back a cool experience on Spring Creek with a royal wolf fly. But do you have any standards that you just are? You know, they’re your top six patterns that you’re, you know, for emergers or dries that you’re using there? 00:42:42 Mike: I tell you, once you get into late April, May, June time frame, any of the streams in the south central area. If you’ve got a size sixteen tan caddis trail drop or off behind it, that part is Justin Pittman at Precision just said the same thing. Waltz worms. You can always do something with that combination. 00:43:03 Dave: Oh, you can tan Kandis. Waltz worm. 00:43:05 Mike: Yep. And the reason why the waltz has worked so great around all these streams. We have. Our streams are just so loaded with cranefly larva. And that’s why everyone always said about the waltz worms. It’s an imitation of this cranefly larva. I can pretty much that time frame. There’s two flies. Go, fish! Summertime. Once the terrestrial start, I may get into. I may get into some size twelve or ten stimulators. And then again, the waltz worms. Another one is it’s one of the patterns I actually developed is my bead head bead head Beta Orchitis usually fish a lot of the green bodied ones, but I’ll also tie them in cream for the summertime and tan for this time of year. It’s a very effective fly, whether you’re fishing as a dead nymph or fishing as a dropper. 00:43:57 Dave: And describe that the Beadhead caddis. What is that? How do you tie that one? What’s that fly look like? 00:44:03 Mike: Uh, it’s curse gut hook, uh, brass bead. But my abdomen is either one of them’s a blend of six different types of dubbing. I put a lot of effort into this. It’s like people that fly fishing show say they can. They go, we can tie it, but it doesn’t fish like yours. It’s like, well, there are six different types of dubbing in that to get the color I want. But the other big thing is, and this is at my beginning years, I tied a lot of my nymph dubbing with squirrel. I love just the natural properties of squirrel, and a lot of people think of my Beadhead caddis. It’s actually in Spring Creek strategies. Or you can see a picture of it on my website. People think it’s hackable. I was like, no, it’s not hackable. It’s, uh, fox. Squirrel. I just use a dubbing loop and it gets it really spiky and it just pulsates across that body. I think that’s what makes this fly super effective, to go along with the dubbing blends of mine. 00:45:00 Dave: That’s awesome. So that’s the pattern. It’s pretty simple. What? What would it be? Um, if you had to think of some other patterns to kind of like a, um, I mean, a caddis is unique, right? A caddis because you’re imitating the, what part of the cat is that imitating because you’ve got these different, you got the pupae, right. Different styles. Which one is that. Yeah. 00:45:17 Mike: Mine’s imitating the larva itself. 00:45:20 Dave: The larva. Yeah. 00:45:21 Mike: Yeah. If I got to go with the a pupa pattern a lot of times I don’t have to. I just stick with Gary La Fontaine’s pupa. You can’t go wrong with that pattern. 00:45:30 Dave: Yeah. What’s his how is it Gary Lafontaine’s pupa different than yours? 00:45:34 Mike: He’s imitating a pupal stage. I’m imitating the larval stage, you know, on the rocks and all that or the they’re dislodged. 00:45:41 Dave: Yeah. That’s right. That’s always the that’s the, the life history. I always forget it’s you gotta remember pupae larvae. I always get confused because the caddis have the. Is it the complete metamorphosis. They have the extra stage right. Describe that again. Give us the high level etymology for the people that don’t know the etymology. Where do they where do they go from egg. 00:45:59 Mike: Okay, your mayfly pretty much goes from a nymph on the bottom, and then the nymph rises up to the surface, sheds its nymphal skin, and emerges as a pupa or sorry, emerges as a dump. Your caddis has a complete life cycle, much like a butterfly. I tell people, think like the butterfly. Think like a cocoon where that larva encloses itself. In its case, if it’s free living caddis, it builds a case, but it encloses itself. In its case, it turns into a pupa. When it’s time to emerge, it breaks through the case that pupil skin immediately fills with gas, which jettisons that caddis up to the surface. As soon as that pupil hits the surface, it takes off into flight. They don’t hang out in surface. That’s where you’ll see these big splashy rises, because that trout’s following that pupa up. It breaks through. And that fish’s that trout’s still on that caddis. So you’ll see a lot of times jumping out of water. 00:46:59 Dave: There you go. So larva pupa. So larva is the the earlier stage and larva. You could use the L to always think mnemonic devices but or whatever. But L lower larva lower pupil is higher. But. So that’s the larva. So the. So your fly your bit head caddis is imitating that larval stage lower down the earlier stage. 00:47:20 Mike: Yeah it’s imitating the lower down stage. But like I said for some reason the darn thing still works great as a dropper, right? 00:47:26 Dave: As a dropper, because you can see that because it could imitate the, the pupil, which like Gary Lafontaine’s pupa pattern, but I’m looking at one on MFC now. Is your pattern out there or is it tied by some of the big brands on the flies out there? 00:47:41 Mike: I’ve had it’s funny, I actually have MFC and hair line at one of my dubbing blend, but no, it’s my dubbing blend. 00:47:48 Dave: Okay. I’m looking at the. There’s just one that just popped up Beadhead caddis pupa by Montana Fly and it’s got, um, it’s got, you know, it looks like a cool fly. It’s got the scud hook. It’s got the mix of the color is kind of this a little bit of yellow, a little bit of gray. It’s got copper wire. Is that your, is that what your fly looks like. 00:48:05 Mike: I tie up my if it’s my green, I’ll tie with silver water or silver wire. I know the two people would have my my fly patterns, precision flying tackle, but then I’ll tie. Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you how many of these I tie for daddy’s trout stock. 00:48:20 Dave: Oh you do. Oh, so you tie for daddy’s? 00:48:22 Mike: Yes. 00:48:23 Dave: Oh, cool. That’s right. How far is daddy’s flies from you guys from where you’re at? 00:48:27 Mike: Four and a half. Five hours? 00:48:29 Dave: Yeah. They’re just up in New York, right? Just across the border. 00:48:31 Mike: Right? 00:48:32 Dave: That’s right. God, this is cool. And so your fly again, remind us on that cast. It doesn’t have any. It doesn’t have a wing. Does it have a little bit of something up behind the bead? 00:48:41 Mike: That’s what I’m saying. It’s that collar, that fox squirrel collar. And I think that’s what why it works. 00:48:47 Dave: Uh, as. 00:48:48 Mike: Yeah, as a dropper. So. Well, because it pulsates much like a pupil would, right? 00:48:54 Dave: Like a pupil. This is cool. I’m loving this. So, so the caddis is the big. So that’s the nymph. That’s the fly you’re fishing, you know. Definitely want to pick that up. Fish it below however you fish that lot. So how do you fish that like if you had it on let’s say you just had two nymphs. How do you nymph fish? Describe that a little bit. How would you fish that fly? 00:49:11 Mike: Well again, that your nymph fishing goes back to, I just went with this that the one on one event we had last weekend. It goes back to observation. What’s the water clarity. What’s my son like that’s going to dictate if I’m going to be fishing more upstream, more in angle or I can get in there, Yeah, I called. I know they call it urine. These days it’s old school mono fishing. I mean, I had to buy your rod this year because I can’t teach my way of fishing mono because it’s basically a Joe Humphries way. We eighteen, twenty feet of mono and we fished. But now I got dirty water. I got a little higher water. I now know I can sneak up a little closer and now I’m mono fishing. You’re making that direct contact, which direct contact is easier to dictate the strikes. It’s all feel of the rod, much like your your rods are today. But then also, even with your an indicator fisherman. Okay. Got the same setup. Higher water. Little murky. I can get close now. I’m just high sticking with an indicator kind of judging the depth. Okay. Say we’re, you know, the pool is two feet, three feet. I’m going to keep that indicator probably a foot higher than the depth I think it is. And then just run that indicator at that depth and then just high stick it. Keeping my indicator right on the stream and letting it float down through. Change the scenario around. We got lower water. We got clear water. Even if you’re mono fishing or you’re nymphing. I change my angle. I keep my angle at the side, just like I’d be fishing a dry dropper. And now I’m just flipping upstream and getting my drips instead of being dead on them. If I’m. Going with the indicator fishing. Yeah. We’re going to be downstream casting upstream in. In the situations like that, whether it’s flat water or, uh, some of the riffles you can find. 00:51:11 Dave: Exactly. Yeah. So you’re mono. So the mono is essentially just, you could just fish it one fly or two. But. And do you use like a tungsten bead typically on your on this pattern we’re talking about? 00:51:23 Mike: That’s a good question. I’ve changed my tactics throughout the years Unless I have to. Unless water like. This spring we had a high water event. I had to put some split shot on. I had to use split shot. Through the years I’ve changed since that time. All moon flies. I’ll tie flies, but use different beads. And I know this bead, whether it’s tungsten or brass, depending on where I put it in the box. I’m using different weights to get the fly down. I feel you get just a much better contact without the split shot these days. Another thing you can use is basically, you know, your drop shot, split shot. But, uh, that’s a different setup that gives you good contact. But I just like fishing different weighted beads to get my fly down. 00:52:10 Dave: Yeah. Different beads. That’s it. Yeah. I feel like that takes out one thing out of the equation. Makes it simplifies it makes it easier if you can get just your fly with a nymph down, you know, it feels like you’re directly, you know, you’re getting right to the fish. You can kind of see things, feel things a little bit better. And it sounds like you do that you’ll fish just a straight mono if you can. 00:52:30 Mike: Yeah, yeah, I like, I like that contact. I, I mean, I’ve been calling a contact fishing because you’re making direct contact. And then it’s a sensitivity of the rod and you can just feel, you can just feel it when it bumps. 00:52:43 Dave: Exactly. Cool. Well, Mike, let’s take it out here real quick just with, um, you know, where you mentioned the, the time of the year, you know, it’s November, December is coming up around the corner. Uh, midges, blue winged olives are going to be kind of popping. What would you tell somebody? What’s your big tip on fishing a midge out there? Do you have a any words of advice to have more success? Is that more challenging than fishing blue winged olives or describe that a little bit. 00:53:08 Mike: It’s pretty much the same as fishing. Any other hat? It’s just a matter. Can you see the darn tiny little thing? 00:53:13 Dave: Right. 00:53:14 Mike: That’s Midge fishing. I tell people, you know, it’s like they say it’s love. Hate. It’s kind of like people fishing trekkers. It’s love hate relationship. 00:53:21 Dave: Yeah. Are those the two smallest midges and tricos? Are the smallest stuff you fish throughout the year. 00:53:26 Mike: Yes. Yeah. Midge wise. Uh, yeah. I mean, I have problems seeing them these days. If you tire flies, try to tie some with a lot of parachute on them. Like a post. You can tie Griffiths gnats. Still put a post on it. There isn’t much to say except just being able to see that. Being able to see the tiny little things. 00:53:45 Dave: That’s it. Yeah. If you’re fishing, I guess like you said, you you make your cast and you kind of know the general area. And if you see a fish rise. Yeah. Set the hook. Yeah. Is the Griffiths gnat is a killer. That’s a killer old pattern, isn’t that pattern still works well. 00:53:58 Mike: Absolutely. Absolutely. And then I go with a lot of because it’s fairly easy, I go with a lot of CDC, simple little dub body, CDC wing. You got a midge go fish. 00:54:09 Dave: Yeah. That’s it. Keep it simple. It feels like that. That’s the. Maybe we overcomplicate things a little bit. Do you think with dry fly fishing and all this. 00:54:16 Mike: At times I think we can. I mean but goes back to personal preference. You go out there and do what you want to do and just have fun. 00:54:24 Dave: Amazing. Cool. Mike. Well, uh, following springs and that’s, uh, that’s one of the, the kind of the famous rivers, right? You’re fishing. Following springs is, is a place that you’re fishing throughout the year. 00:54:34 Mike: Some things have declined through the years. And Falling Springs is one of them. It has. It’s not the stream it used to be. You can still go out there and catch small browns and all that. The Trout Unlimited chapter is starting to do some more restoration work on it. It’s just, uh, lost its water flow. It’s basically what has happened. But, um, you know, it may have lost that, but big springs has come back leaps and bounds. Yellow breach is still another fabulous one. Um, again. Connie jig the free stoner, the free stoner here with all the dam removal, it’s turned into a really great fishery again that I remember like my teenage years. I’m just so blessed to have this. Like I said, this private water that was handed over to me by the guys who started it. I’m just so blessed to have this five miles of water down there. Oh, wow. Uh. 00:55:23 Dave: Where is the. Is that on a secret area? 00:55:25 Mike: It’s down in Waynesboro, PA. We’re almost at the Maryland border at this point. We have about five miles of water on East Antietam and in the Red run. Again, it’s private. We didn’t up and take it from public. It was laying there and she basically said, hey, we want people to enjoy this, but we don’t want, you know, trash. 00:55:45 Dave: No. Yeah, we want to take care of it. 00:55:47 Mike: And yes, they wanted a conservation effort on top of, uh, the fishing. And that’s what that’s how Antietam Outfitters started is Josh Miller’s fished it and oh yeah. 00:55:57 Dave: Josh Miller yeah. 00:55:58 Mike: And it’s on back. One of the brochures, he literally considers this the best water east of the Mississippi. 00:56:03 Dave: There you go. I would take any words of advice from Josh. I’ll believe, I trust, I trust that guy. Yeah. 00:56:10 Mike: The one picture in his book is you’re an infant picture. There’s a picture in there of a guy that has his hands laid out, and you see hundreds of bugs that came from our red run. 00:56:21 Dave: Wow. It’s exciting. Yeah, I think. I think we talked to we hit the surface a little bit today. You know, you’re in this amazing place, really famous. We’ve heard a lot about the streams. But as you dive into it deeper, you realize, you know, like this. I mean, gosh, you got five miles of this stream that’s private that you could potentially fish. And if people want to do that, they can just go to falling springs dot com and connect with you there. Is that the best place? 00:56:41 Mike: Yes. Mhm. 00:56:42 Dave: Perfect. 00:56:43 Mike: And then on, on top of that, with the great thing about what we have there, we have an old renovated, uh, farmhouse that’s beautiful inside. And guests can stay right at the farmhouse, and they’re right on the street. 00:56:55 Dave: Oh. No kidding. So it’s potential. You could actually book, kind of have a lodge. You’ve got lodging there. Right on the river. 00:57:03 Mike: Yes. 00:57:03 Dave: Amazing. Well, I think I think this is definitely something we’re going to have to add to the, uh, the future trips plan book is getting out there and maybe get a get some people together and stay. How many people can the the lodge hold. 00:57:17 Mike: They comfortably sleep six people. 00:57:19 Dave: Perfect. Yeah, six is a great number. Good stuff. Mike. Well, we didn’t get into everything, obviously today. I know Orvis, your Orvis endorsed guide as well. We love Orvis and all the good stuff they got going there. But yeah, any any last words you want to leave us with before we head out of here today? 00:57:34 Mike: No, I, I appreciate it. I hope there’s a lot of information for your followers. Again, you have my contact. You can reach out to me as I tell everyone, although I wasn’t on the stream with you. Anyone listening? You made a friend with me today. Don’t be afraid to reach out and talk to me if you need anything. 00:57:51 Dave: All right, all right, Mike, we’ll do that. Thanks again for your time. 00:57:54 Mike: Hey. Thank you, I appreciate it. 00:57:57 Dave: All right. Big takeaway for you. Remember Spring Creek’s, uh, approach it with stealth. Lots of good stuff in this one. If you’re interested in joining us on a trip, you can go to fly swing pro. Uh, we actually have the doors open right now for wet fly swing Pro. Uh, we opened this up a few times throughout the year. Go to wet fly swing dot com slash pro and and we’ll follow up with you on details. We just finished the amazing boot camp. We are riding high right now and getting ready for that next big thing. Uh, and actually that next big thing right now is a trip to Alaska. So if you’re interested, go to swing dot com slash giveaway. Right now we’re giving away a trip to Alaska to a remarkable place. No c m Lodge that’s on right now. Check it out and we’re going to get after it. All right. That’s all I have for you. Stay tuned. Lots of good stuff coming here this year. Uh, we are going to be fishing still waters. We’re going to be traveling around the country. Thanks for stopping in today and hope to catch you on the next podcast. Have a great evening, morning or afternoon and we’ll see you on the next one. 00:58:57 Speaker 7: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit Wetflyswing.com