875 | Phil Monahan on Simplifying Fly Fishing for Beginners  

00:00:00 Dave: Fly fishing doesn’t start with mastering everything all at once. It starts by knowing just enough to get going. For most people, the problem isn’t motivation. It’s overload. Too many rods, too many flies, too many options, and no clear sense of what actually matters on day one. Today’s episode is all about cutting through the noise. Today I’m sitting down with Phil Monahan, longtime editor at Orvis, a voice at Mid Current and the author of The Orvis Quickstart Guide to Fly Fishing. And today Phil’s going to get back to the basics. So today you know what’s most important when getting started in fly fishing. 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. Phil Monahan has spent decades teaching, writing, guiding and answering the same questions throughout his career, and one of them is fly fishing hard. And today’s conversation. He explains why it doesn’t have to be and how most beginners fall not because they lack skill, but because. They’ve got too many choices. We’re going to fine tune things today, and by the end of this episode, you’ll find out what a brand new fly angler actually needs to know and what can wait. Today we’re going to find out why removing options helps people learn faster how to think about success before you even catch your first fish, and what separates frustration from progress in those early days on the water. This episode is for new anglers and those just getting started. And for anyone who’s ever felt like they were missing that twenty five percent. I’m excited to jump into this one. Here he is, Phil Monahan. You can find him at Phil Monahan dot com. How you doing, Phil? 00:01:38 Phil: I’m doing well. Thanks for having me, Dave. 00:01:40 Dave: Yeah. Thanks for coming back on here and we’re going to chat. Get caught up with you. It’s been about over four years now since you were on the podcast. We talked about your experience and really your life at Orvis. And I know that’s changed in recent years, so we can get an update from you on all that. But this book is really interesting too, because I think that, you know, there’s always this people I know people in our community, a lot of them are already fly anglers, but there’s a lot of people out there that are new to it. So your book is Orvis The Quickstart Guide to Fly Fishing. And we’re going to talk about that today and maybe how to get some more people into the sport we love. But give us an update. What’s been happening in the last I know you’ve had some big changes. 00:02:14 Phil: Well, yeah, lots of big changes. About a year ago, in October twenty twenty four, I got laid off from Orvis along with one hundred and eleven of my fellow colleagues. And, uh, I made the switch at that point to Current.com. For those of you who don’t know, was a is a website started by my friend Marshall Cutchin all the way back in two thousand and three, and I had actually worked for Marshall at Mid Current before I joined Orvis. So after fourteen years at Orvis I went back to Mid current. And uh, so I’ve spent the last year at mid current, but that contract ends at the end of twenty twenty five. So I’m a free agent again. 00:02:59 Dave: Love it. Free agent. So you’re probably going to be picked up quick off the market because it’s yeah I mean the skills you bring to this, we I think the last time we talked about the blog post blogging. Right. And that’s changed a lot, you know, since then. But blogs still are still out there. You know, they still get SEO. It’s just changed a lot. Especially now you have AI in there and and the whole search thing has changed. What do you think? I guess back to Orvis. You probably don’t know since you’re out of there, but I mean, it seems like it would be hard to fill a top. You were the editor of the blog, right? That was your main role back then? 00:03:27 Phil: Yeah. And, you know, obviously changes were made by the by the people at the top. I would not speak to any of their, um, I guess, reasons for doing stuff that’s, that wasn’t in my, in my wheelhouse, but it was a great place to work, uh, for fourteen years. And there are still a lot of people there who are my great friends, especially Tom Tom. 00:03:55 Dave: Exactly. And and we love it too, because. Orvis I’ve always had a connection for me back since my entire life. You know, a little kid, it was kind of the first brand that I knew, knew of, you know, the first big brands. So that’s good there. Um, and the guy too. So talk about this. Let’s just jump into the book here a little bit and we’ll bounce around a little bit. But talk about how this idea kind of came to be and maybe who the focus is for, you know, who it’s targeted for. 00:04:20 Phil: Well, this book is really targeted on the person who is just starting fly fishing. I remember thirty something years ago, I was a self-taught fly fisherman. I learned mostly from reading articles in magazines, and one of the memories I have is being out on the water and knowing that I had about seventy five percent of the information I needed to catch a fish, but that last twenty five percent was what was killing me and keeping me from from catching fish. And so the idea of this book was to strip away anything extraneous that a brand new angler doesn’t need to know yet, and to only focus on those things that you need to know to catch your first trout. So the way I initially pitched it to the publisher was, this is the book you buy on Monday if you’re going fly fishing for the first time on Saturday. And and the other pitch was since since the both books are published by the same publisher. But I said, you know, the idea is you buy this book, you hopefully catch your first few fish, you realize you want to be a fly fisher, and then you will buy Tom Rosenbauer Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing, which has all information about all the various kinds of of equipment and casts and knots and all that stuff. But I think that to to someone just starting out a book like Tom’s might even be a little intimidating just because it makes it seem like there’s so much to know. 00:05:56 Dave: That’s that’s a good point. It is always the the overwhelming thing for new fly anglers is, you know, the casting, the etymology. You know, when you start putting all this, you just you overload yourself. So how would you break that down? What were the I don’t know if you want to break down the chapters or how you what are the most important things to start with? Like what’s number one? When somebody comes in, they’re brand new. What do they need to look at first? 00:06:19 Phil: Well, I mean, the book starts off with a question, which is the question that is probably the most common question that any fly Fisher gets from other people, which is, is fly fishing hard? And my answer is no and yes, in that no, fly fishing is not hard to learn. But if you want to become an expert fly fisher, then it is hard and you do have to put in a lot of work, just like you know, you’re not going to go out to the golf course for the first time and start driving the ball straight down the range and putting in from three feet. But I do think a lot of people have this impression that the sport itself is difficult, and therefore it’s a big impediment to starting, because you need to know so much and you have to be able to do so much. And I don’t think that’s really true. I think that with some very basic equipment. So a basic box of flies and some basic knowledge of casting and presentation, you can go out and have success on a trout stream. Will you catch as many fish as the expert angler? Of course not. But it’s it’s about getting people through that initial hurdle. 00:07:35 Dave: And we’re going to dig more into these intro stuff. But what’s the step once they’re out there going and maybe they’ve caught a few fish to get them to the next level? Is that just a slow progression of, you know, there’s a lot to dig into. Where do you take them? I guess once they get into Tom’s book. You know, how do you. 00:07:52 Phil: One of the ways that I chose to make things as easy as possible in my book was to remove as many choices as possible. So my book is is purposely reductive. The idea is, you know, I’ve been in the how to writing game since nineteen ninety six, so I’ve got a ton of experience at what is the best way that people learn how to do something. And, you know, I’m sure I mentioned this four years ago when we talked about this, but over the years I’ve I’ve developed this notion that no matter what people tell you, what they want more than anything else is to be told exactly what to do. And so, you know, when you way, when you wade into a book like Tom’s book, which, by the way, is the definitive book on the subject, this is in no way trying to, say my book is better than Tom’s book because that’s a ridiculous notion. But what Tom’s book gives you is a ton of options. And for a lot of people, options are paralyzing. So my the goal of my book was to strip away as many options as possible. And, and so the person can just say, if I follow the steps in this book, I will catch a fish. So then once you’ve done that, though, now the entire world of fly fishing is open to you. You know, do you do you live someplace where warm water or salt water fly fishing are popular? Do you live in a place where you’re fishing high mountain streams or big lowland rivers? You suddenly have all of these different opportunities to explore. And so I think the second step, after you’ve read my book and you’ve caught your first fish, is that you? You now start to think of what is the kind of fly fisher that you want to become? 00:09:46 Dave: No, I totally agree. I think that I find that’s what’s great about just all the content out there, you know, podcasts, videos, whatever, because you can listen to it, then rewind it and listen again. And I and I do think the exact steps I find myself learning the same way, you know, if I’m taking some class in business or something like that, you know, having those exact steps that you can follow are helpful, you know, and then over time you tweak it, you know, you’re like, okay, I’ve got it now, and now I’m going to tweak it to my own thing after you learn the basics. So I think that’s totally right on. What are the if you were to break it, let’s say somebody listening now, they just picked up this episode. It got shared to them and they’re brand new. They’ve never fished before and they’re listening to this. What are those few top seven, whatever the number is, things that they need to understand to catch that first fish. 00:10:28 Phil: Well, I mean, the first thing you have to understand is what kind of fish you can catch, you know? So a lot of people think fly fishing is just trout fishing, but it’s not. And in fact, probably the first fish that a large percentage of people catch isn’t a trout, it’s a panfish. But the very basic things you need to know are. What equipment do you really need? Not equipment. Do you want? Not what equipment is available, but what equipment do you actually need to go catch a fish? And in some respects, that depends on where you live. If you live somewhere warm, of course you don’t even need waders. So, you know, there’s the discussion about how you choose a a rod and reel and then how you put all the pieces together. You know, even something as simple as stringing a rod, as I’m sure you know, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. One of the goals of this book is to see how much of the frustration that comes with learning a new sport I could remove from the process. So even something as simple as explaining how you string your fly rod so that the line doesn’t fall back through the guides when you when you lose your handle on the line, just removes that little bit of frustration. Because I am I don’t have any data on this, of course, but I’m sure that there’s an inverse relationship between how frustrated someone is and how likely they are to continue to pursue a sport. So, you know, once you’ve once you’ve figured out what the gear is that you need and how to put it all together, then really, before you can do anything, you need to learn to cast, but you don’t need to learn to cast sixty feet. Uh, even expert trout fishers will tell you they catch the vast majority of trout much closer than a lot of people think. And in fact, the better you get at becoming an angler and reading water and knowing how to position yourself, the closer you’re going to get to those fish. A really good angler is always as close to the fish as they can possibly be. So learn your basic casts. We’re talking very basic. The regular overhead cast and the roll cast is pretty much what you need to go out there that first time. Then what do you put on the end of your line? So again, one of the most paralyzing things for an angler is to stand in front of the fly band at a fly shot and be presented with hundreds of fly patterns. And, you know, fly shops really probably make most of their, their money indirectly through their fly recommendations. Right? That’s what that’s what really gets the angler to trust the fly shop. If the fly shop says use that line, catch that fish. So again the idea was to simplify, simplify, simplify to really that super basic trout box. It’s not going to allow you to catch fish on a spring creek with super selective trout on a day when they’re only choosing one size. But for most places where you’re going to catch trout, you’ll catch trout with one of these flies. 00:13:55 Dave: And these are the and I don’t know, are these I’m guessing these are kind of the twelve flies, the Woolly Bugger Elk caddis sort of. 00:14:02 Phil: Yeah a lot of them that that you would assume that those flies are popular for a reason. And that’s because they catch fish everywhere. And so then really the two things that are left are finding the fish, which a lot of people, they look at a river and they’re well I don’t know where to go. 00:14:21 Dave: And that one’s hard for not just beginners but people that are fishing for five, ten years or more. That’s still a challenge that can be right depending on where you’re at. 00:14:30 Speaker 3: Right. 00:14:31 Phil: And then so once you once you have found the fish, how do you present your flies to the fish. And again, we’re not we’re not focused on the, the the expert really hard presentations that we’re focused on. The most basic way to get that get that fly to the fish. 00:14:51 Dave: So in the nutshell that that’s it. Those are the top I mean for somebody beginner that’s breaking it down to the essence right there. 00:14:57 Speaker 3: Right. And you know. 00:14:58 Phil: Obviously I’m leaving out a lot the books one hundred and eighty something pages. But there’s a lot of step by step photography. Uh, there’s really a wonderful my friend Ted phacelia, probably the the greatest aquatic insect photographer of our time, was incredibly generous and kind and lent his amazing insect images to the book. So for someone who’s never been involved in the sport and has never seen what these flies, the actual live insects look like, uh, it’s a it’s a great opportunity. 00:15:34 Dave: So just going back to this again and this is high level. But you know what fish are out there. The gear you need the rod reel and on the gear you need is it the for the new person. Is it just getting the the package. Is that usually the best thing the rod reel line all in a package. 00:15:48 Phil: I think it is. But you know depending on where you’re fishing what’s the proper rod weight. What’s the proper rod length? I mean, you know, the most popular fly rod in the world for every company is a nine foot five weight. So at the very beginning of the chapter, it says, you know, if you don’t want to read the rest of this chapter, go buy a nine foot five weight. 00:16:07 Dave: Grab a nine foot five weight and that get a package. So it’s good to go. Yep. And then that takes care of it. You don’t even have to. But you do have the the putting the fly on the leader and stuff like that. Do you do you cover that? 00:16:19 Phil: Yeah. We cover out, you know, the basic knots that you need to get anything done. 00:16:23 Dave: Yeah. It’s interesting because we’re putting together in our wet fly swing pro community. You know, I’m putting together kind of a year ahead, you know, like our plan to set up some challenges and just kind of get better at the craft. You know, fly fishing and we’re breaking it up. I found that what I’m hearing and ours is a little bit you know, we’ve got a lot of people that are in it for swing and flies and spey and stuff, but it’s a diversity of people. But casting, you know, is, is the first thing. It’s like everybody because they’re a little more experienced. But we got so we’re going to spend time on casting and then we’re going to get into more on the techniques. You know, nymphing, swinging flies, dry fly fishing, kind of all the different stuff. Do you focus on that a little bit? Do you cover that a little bit in the book like the types of or is that more on the next level of, you know. 00:17:03 Phil: I think that’s that’s on the next level. You know, like I said, I am trying to to do something very specific and get that person that first taste of success that then makes them crave that next step more. 00:17:18 Dave: So yeah, we were talking about basically the the gear, right. You went through everything. So you talked about what fish the gear you need, learning how to cast, choosing the fly, finding the fish, presenting your fly. I mean, that’s essentially that’s that’s the basics of fly fishing. 00:17:34 Phil: Yeah. And then we have a chapter at the end on warm water fly fishing. And then, and then the book ends with sort of what do you do now. So now you’ve done this. Now what’s the best way to really become involved in fly fishing as a sport? 00:17:48 Dave: And what is the answer on that one. What is the best way? 00:17:50 Phil: Well, I mean, there’s a lot obviously by Tom’s book, but also it talks about conservation. It talks about joining your local organizations. Uh, some of the books that I recommend. Um, and, and really, you know, there’s a, a whole world of fly fishing out there for people. And no matter what you want to do, there’s a group of people who are already doing it. You know, I have a good friend, Drew Price, who’s a fishing guide on Lake Champlain here in Vermont, and he’s catching bowfin and gar drum and all sorts of crazy things. And so there really is no limit. You know, people always say, people are always surprised when you mention a species of fish and they say, oh, you can catch that on a fly. And I have to tell them, actually, you, you can catch any fish on a fly. 00:18:41 Dave: Yeah. Any fish. Yeah. Mako sharks, you name it. 00:18:44 Phil: Yeah, exactly. You know, huge six hundred pound marlin or, you know, little tiny dace. 00:18:50 Dave: And you’ve really been there for the whole time. And not only have you been there, but you’ve been documenting it in this educational through Orvis and everything else. What has that been like for you as you look back over your career since, like you said, ninety six and the changes? 00:19:04 Phil: Um, you know, it’s been I feel like I’ve been here through some remarkable changes in just the way people consume information about a sport like fly fishing. You know, I started at Outdoor Life magazine, which was pretty much already a dinosaur. By nineteen ninety six, the desktop publishing revolution of the eighties had created all of these vertical, much more specific magazines. You know, before then, sportsmen really, you got outdoor life field and stream or sports a field, and that gave you everything that gave you your deer hunting, your bird hunting, your fly fishing, your bass fishing. And then when desktop publishing took off, suddenly you could have a magazine specifically aimed at you for the thing that you like to do, whether that was saltwater fly fishing or warm water fly fishing. You know, when I got to. So I then made the switch to take over as the editor of American Angler, which was one of the vertical publications. And then at the time, Abenaki Publishers, the company that published American Angler, also had a warm water fly fishing magazine, a saltwater fly fishing magazine. And the only one that still exists today. Fly Tyer magazine. 00:20:30 Dave: Experience the waters of Bristol Bay at Togiak River Lodge, where fly fishing meets Alaska’s rugged beauty. This is the place to complete the Alaska Grand Slam with all five salmon species, rainbow trout, Arctic char and more where each day offers a new Alaskan adventure. You can visit Togiak Lodge. Com right now to start planning your Bristol Bay experience with Togiak River Lodge. Let on to Mark Lodge give you the Montana fly fishing experience you deserve. The gin clear waters of the Missouri River offer a world class experience with one of the finest rainbow trout and brown trout fisheries in the world. Whether you’re a seasoned angler or new to the sport, their family of guides will tailor a trip just for you. You can head over to On the Lodge to fish one of the great trout streams in the country. Is that the only fly tying magazine left? 00:21:25 Phil: Oh, yeah. Uh, no. My. That was pretty much the only one ever, I think. Has there ever been another, like, real fly tying magazine? 00:21:34 Dave: Yeah, maybe there hasn’t. Yeah. Maybe that is the only one. Yeah. Fly tyer. 00:21:37 Phil: Yeah. And you know, for those who don’t know, uh, Dave Klausmeyer, who was the longtime editor almost thirty years, uh, just passed away in November, uh, which is I mean, he’s for my money, he’s an unsung hero of the fly tying community because he wasn’t a big self-promoter, but he was really at the center of American fly tying for decades. 00:22:00 Dave: We just had, uh. Well, it’s it’s out now. David McPhail was is on the podcast. And it was interesting because, you know, I love ninety percent of our episodes are, you know, North America based, you know, people here. But I always love hearing people from across the pond because you get a different take on the same evolution that was going on. Changes were happening there and sometimes even sooner, you know, and the history of over in Scotland and stuff. But yeah, but it’s changed. I mean, like you said, you know, YouTube. I mean look at YouTube now for fly tying, I mean YouTube, Dave Engvall’s got a ton of followers and people probably there’s probably a whole host of a generation that’s watched him and learn from him. You know, it’s kind of crazy. 00:22:37 Phil: Absolutely. You gotta have the subtitles on, though when you’re watching Davies. Oh, right. 00:22:41 Dave: Yeah, he is tough. That was tough on the podcast. You definitely gotta listen up. Um, so yeah, your career. And like we said, we’ll put a link in the show notes to that episode we did with you, um, back, you know, four years ago. But part of it. Yeah. You have an interesting career. Really. It’s pretty diverse. I mean, it’s outdoors, but you worked with some huge magazines and throughout. And then Orvis, of course. What was that like? Talk about that. I know we talked blogs, you know, before, but what was it like running the Orvis blog? Because I feel like they’ve always been one of the biggest out there. And I remember that because it was a, you know, I mean, that’s how I first learned about a lot of this stuff was through that blog. 00:23:17 Phil: Yeah. I mean, it was it was a remarkable, A remarkable decision by Orvis to launch the blog, and they had already had success with Tom’s podcast. 00:23:30 Dave: The podcast was before. Did the podcast come before the blog? 00:23:34 Phil: Podcast? And it’s funny that the same person, uh, my friend, uh, Jamie Hathaway, who’s no longer at Orvis, was the sort of brain. Those were his brainchild. He pushed them to start a podcast, and they did. And then he pushed them to start a blog, which they did. 00:23:50 Dave: And where is Jamie now? 00:23:52 Phil: Jamie is now the executive director of the Make a Wish foundation for Vermont and upstate New York. 00:23:59 Dave: Oh, cool. 00:24:00 Phil: But blog was that it was not going to be about Orvis. It was going to be about fly fishing. And that was that was a revolutionary idea that we’re going to start this blog, but it’s not going to be selling Orvis. So I had a remarkable amount of freedom. Um, and, you know, it’s funny, we were talking about the transitions before, so I went from a a dinosaur of a huge national magazine to one of those vertical print magazines and then made the leap to online, which was the next, of course, big revolution in, in delivering content. And, um, you know, there was sort of a golden age of blogs which has now passed. You may remember in the, I don’t know, say twenty twelve to sixteen, there were many, many fly fishing blogs, like a lot of them, and only a few have really come out the other side. A lot of them just went away for various reasons, and the ones that had really strong readership and really strong point of view, uh, have remained. So something like the Fiberglass Manifesto or Southern Culture on the fly and gasoline, but there used to be dozens more. I think a lot of people realized just how grueling it is to produce content at the rate required to keep your audience really interested, right. 00:25:29 Dave: Which is that daily, more than daily. What is that rate now? 00:25:33 Phil: Well, I mean, in my fourteen years at Orvis, we published eleven thousand blog posts. 00:25:39 Dave: Yeah, that’s right, eleven thousand. 00:25:40 Phil: Yeah. There were there were times when we would publish, you know, three or four a day. And then the next big shift was social media and social. 00:25:49 Dave: Right. 00:25:49 Phil: I think in a lot of ways, social media sort of meant the death of the blog as the major form, because you could get things in much smaller chunks, much faster on social media. So by the time I was done at Orvis News, the majority of the traffic to the news came via social media. So a blog post would go up on Orvis news and then we would post it to social media and that’s how people would come to the blog post. Whereas, you know, seven, eight years earlier, people would just go to the blog because they knew there was stuff there to read. 00:26:27 Dave: Yeah. And it’s all changing now as we speak, because social has gone from it used to be about your followers, and now because of TikTok, it’s all about just the algorithm and how well, how well the stuff’s doing. If the stuff’s doing well, it’ll get shared to new people that don’t even know about you. And then it could go viral, right? It’s this interesting, crazy world, right? 00:26:47 Phil: I mean, that gets harder and harder as as the algorithm becomes more and more pay for play. 00:26:52 Dave: Yeah, it’s interesting that that world is and it’s all about getting good information out there, which like you said, you did eleven thousand blog posts. I’m sure most of those were great blogs, but maybe some of them didn’t get the views they deserved just because of the algorithm or whatever was going on. 00:27:06 Phil: Yeah. I mean, um, it’s interesting because each new platform sort of creates the same problem. And that problem is how do you tell the good information from the not so good information, right. 00:27:21 Dave: Yeah. Like the AI. Think of that. All this AI stuff right now it’s going on and there’s some really bad stuff out there. 00:27:27 Phil: Yeah. And so, you know, the the issue becomes how do you make yourself a trusted source. You know, how do you make your point of view, your information, something that people know they can rely on? And as the pieces of information get more and more fragmented by social media, I think that problem becomes highlighted even more. 00:27:54 Dave: I always love that. That’s where the podcast is a little bit, um, for me, I’ve always enjoyed it, but it’s cool because, you know, it’s hard to be in an hour long conversation to be, um, to make stuff up, you know? I mean, you can you can get a real, you know, a good perspective on who the people are. So I think that’s why the podcast works because they listen to, you, know, you or anybody else for an hour, you know, and it’s clear, you know, okay, that person knows what’s going on with that subject, right. And so, I mean, obviously, you’ve got your whole career, you know, with, you know, backed with what you do. But I think that’s a big part of podcasting. Do you find I mean, I think Tom’s still going strong. I always talk, it’s always been one of the biggest fly fishing podcasts. Right. He’s still going strong out there. 00:28:35 Phil: Oh yeah. No. Yeah. He’s he’s been the king of the hill for quite a long time for sure. 00:28:40 Dave: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. So. Well, let’s get back. I just want to highlight circle back around to the book, because I think this is going to be a resource that we’re going to use for people that are, that are new out there and will direct them, you know, if they want to hear the podcast, get to know a little bit of you and then then go get your book. Um, but tell us again. So if we walk back through that again, we’re looking at somebody that’s kind of new to it. And they and let’s just go back to the steps. It’s pretty simple I love this. It’s like seven basically seven steps. You know what fish when you go to the what fish do you talk about okay. Other than trout, panfish. Do you go through all the fish or do you go through just a few? What species? What areas? 00:29:17 Phil: Most likely fish that a first time fly fisher is going to be is going to be fishing for. So it’s really, you know, it’s identifying trout. How do you know brown trout from a brook. Trout from a rainbow trout from a cutthroat trout. Um, panfish bass, smallmouth and largemouth and pretty much that’s it. Yeah. I mean, there aren’t a lot of people going fly fishing for the first time to catch a gar or sailfish or a carp. So again, the goal is to really draw a line between what a first time fly Fisher really needs to know versus what might just be interesting. So I mean, there was a lot of things I wrote. And then I as I went through in the editing process, I thought, how vital is this to the new fly fisher. And so a lot of stuff got tossed, you know, because as you know, especially as a podcast host, we can talk about this stuff forever because once you’re in fly fishing, it’s endlessly interesting. There, there. You know, we could we could start talking right now about, you know, catching redfish in Louisiana marsh and and not be done till the end of the day. 00:30:33 Dave: You know, or mayflies or or specific genus of mayflies or. 00:30:37 Phil: Exactly or or why you don’t need to know that. So yeah, the goal was really to make sure that every single piece of information that’s in the book is something that that first time fly Fisher is going to need to know. And again, it goes back to my early experiences of feeling like, gosh, this something’s something’s quite not right here, but I don’t know what it is. 00:31:03 Dave: Yeah. Do you remember that pretty well when you first got started? 00:31:06 Phil: Oh, yeah, I mean, I, I was taught to fly fish in the January of nineteen ninety. I think in. 00:31:15 Dave: Oh, ninety. 00:31:16 Phil: Yeah. In, in the, the backyard of my brother’s girlfriend. He taught me how to cast. And then we we went out new Hampshire, um, has what’s called open water season. So it’s, uh, after January first when if creeks don’t have ice on them, you can fish. So we went fishing. Neither of us caught anything, but I was immediately hooked. But, you know, my brother had a job. I was in graduate school so I could go fishing whenever I wanted. So I, I fished almost exclusively by myself for that first year and tons of trial and error, tons of frustration. And so when I was writing this book, I was really thinking, what is all of the stuff that I wish I had known in those first few months when I was learning to fly fish. 00:32:04 Dave: And so, yeah, so the species is that’s I like that trout. Panfish. Bass. Pretty simple. The gear we talked about. The rod, the reel, the package. Putting the gear together. What is that? What do you cover in the book? So talk about that line deal you mentioned. 00:32:17 Phil: I mean, if you go on on Reddit, on the fly fishing subreddit subreddit, every week, you’ll see people asking questions like, did I put this line on my real wrong? Or why do my knots keep failing? Or, you know, can I put a six weight line on my three weight rod type of thing? So, you know, the idea is we think because we are longtime anglers that these things are easy. But to someone who’s never seen a fishing rod, never mind a fly rod, simply putting the reel on the rod is not obvious to them. How do I know how to attach the reel to the fly rod? How do I make sure the line is coming out of the reel the right way. How do I know if I put it on backwards? And you know that as an experienced angler, you know that you don’t grab the end of the tippet and feed that through the guides as you string your fly rod. Because if you accidentally lose your grip, the weight of the fly line will cause everything to fall back to the ground. 00:33:26 Dave: Yeah, and that’s not good. That’s annoying. 00:33:28 Phil: That’s not good. So you grab the fly line, you pinch it into a loop, and you feed the loop through the guides. So even if you drop the line, the loop will expand and usually catch the line at the next guy down. And you haven’t lost all the work. 00:33:41 Dave: What about on the knots? What are the knots you cover there? Do you cover just a couple or the main knots? 00:33:46 Phil: Again, I don’t want to. I don’t want to confuse anybody. There’s no discussion of which knot is better than another knot. And focus is really on. And this is something that I believe overall is that the best knot is the one that you can tie well every time. So even if under strict testing in the laboratory, one knot outperforms another knot. If that first knot is poorly tied, it’s not outperforming anything. So, you know, we do the very basics. We do the clinch knot, we do the perfection loop. We do the, um, surgeon’s surgeon’s knot for cutting pieces of tippet. And then we leave it. People can always have the option once they’ve decided that fly fishing is for them to learn all of those other knots. I mean, there are many. You know, I’ve been in this game now for all this time, and there are lots of knots that I’ve never even tried. 00:34:46 Dave: No. You find the knots that you like. Like, for me, I’ve always been a blood not sort of person. I’ve loved the blood knot. 00:34:52 Phil: I’m a blood guy. You mostly for aesthetic reasons. 00:34:54 Dave: Yeah, but there are other knots that, you know, like you mentioned, the surgeon’s knot is a great one. That’s even easier to tie. Probably. 00:35:00 Phil: Absolutely. And, you know, as as part of my job on the Orvis blog, I posted about tons of knots. You know, because the posts were always really popular, because anglers always looking for the better knot than the one that I’ve got. You know, the vast majority of time when a knot fails, it’s because it was poorly tied. It’s not because that’s not a good knot. 00:35:23 Dave: Yep. That’s right. So yeah the knots I think I love that discussion. It’s always a good one. We’re going to have a whole month segment in our community with knots. We’re going to have some, you know people talking about that. We’ll have some discussion. But um, and then you get into the, you know, so that’s the gear that’s getting the gear together. You got your fly do all that stuff, and then you kind of get to the cast. How do you cover the casting? Because some of this stuff is not easy to just read, right? How does what are the steps you cover there? 00:35:48 Phil: Well, you know, luckily I had access. You know, I wrote this book when I still worked for Orvis. So luckily I had access to Pete Kutzer, who is Orvis main casting guy. Um, and it was taught literally thousands of people how to cast. But, you know, during my time as a guide back in the nineties, I also taught a lot of people how to cast. And, you know, I take the same approach to it is I don’t want to use a I don’t want to describe the same thing a bunch of different ways. So I really just use the most basic casting method that they use at the Orvis Fly Fishing schools, which teaches you to pick up and lay down, cast, then teach you how to bring that up into the air, and then really how to present the fly, how to how to make the presentation cast. And that’s it. In terms of, um, in terms of we talk a little bit about opening up the loop if you have a heavy nymph rig or a streamer, but we don’t spend a lot of time talking about different kinds of casts and different kinds of situations, because again, then you’re giving someone a whole bunch of choices to make when they get out on the water. So we teach the basic overhead cast and then the role cast and little variations of when you might need to change those, but really not very much. And we’ve got step by step photos with Pete casting. 00:37:24 Dave: Oh you. 00:37:24 Phil: Do. Yeah. I really feel like there are lots of things in fly fishing that words alone can’t get across. And that’s why video has become, I think, really the main way that people learn both fly tying and casting. I mean, think of trying to explain in words alone, just the plane that your fly tip needs to describe as you’re throwing a cast. It’s very difficult. So you know, the, the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words is very clearly true when you’re talking about casting. 00:38:03 Dave: Well, actually quite a bit is. Yeah. You have the casting, the fly tying the knots. It’s nice to watch somebody the um, some of that stuff, but you can and like before video, right there was, it was all books for the most part. 00:38:15 Speaker 4: Oh yeah. 00:38:16 Dave: Going away. That’s one thing we’ve learned about the revolution in content is that books are definitely not going away. Right. There’s always going to be room for fly fishing books and other books. Right. 00:38:25 Phil: Absolutely. 00:38:26 Dave: Okay. So that’s so that’s the cast basics again. And then choosing the fly is more again simplify. You’ve got a few patterns and you just grab. How do you talk about that. For a for somebody brand new. Do you talk about the dry fly. Because you do have the thing? Well, if they grab a dry fly and they’re not on the surface, how do you describe that simplified. 00:38:42 Phil: Well, yeah. I mean we describe the basic four kinds of flies dry flies, nymphs, wet flies and streamers. And we touch a little bit on the variations, things like mergers, but really. It’s about understanding where trout eat and where the things that they eat live, and trying to match that with what you’ve got in your fly box. We don’t delve at all into, you know, the proper number of hackle wraps on a Catskill dry. But we do talk about, you know, how to make sure your fly will float. We do talk about how to use nymphs that will get deep. You know, I’m a big believer that for a brand new angler, stay away from split shot. Expert anglers know. I mean, people say, you know, the difference between catching a fish and not catching a fish is often one split shot. I totally agree with that. But for a new angler, split shot seems to me to be a recipe for disaster. So we focus on perhaps using a bead head fly instead of a split shot, and really just trying to get the angler to understand the concept behind a dry fly and a wet fly and a streamer. Because a lot. Having taught a lot of people to fly fish, I find that a lot of people will do what you tell them to do, even if they don’t understand why they’re doing it. And the problem with that is when they’re no longer with you, they don’t know what to do, and they’re perfect. The perfect example of this is the mend. So having been a guy, you know, one of the most common things a guide says is mend. And and what I found as a guide was that once some people got mend into their brain, they would just do it in every situation, even when they didn’t need it. So what that meant to me is they didn’t Understand why you make the mend in the first place. They were just mending. Because that’s the thing you did after you cast, you cast, and then you mend. But there, as as you know, there are lots of situations where you don’t want to mend or you might want to downstream mend. Even so, the one place where we did delve a little bit into, um, getting beyond the absolute basics is trying to understand some of the concepts of why you mend, why you cast upstream, to allow your fly to sink before it gets to the fish, so that the person can visualize what’s happening with their line and their fly in the water. 00:41:31 Dave: Right? Is that in the presenting the fly section more? 00:41:34 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:41:35 Phil: Because yeah, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen anglers who show up and and they just cast mend, cast men. Cast men. Well, considering what the water in front of them is doing, and to be fair. And, yeah, I had this, uh, I had this experience. The person who took most of the photos in this book is my friend, uh, Charlie Hildick-smith, who lives right down the river from me here in Vermont. And over the last couple years, I’ve been teaching him how to fish. And when you start with someone who has absolutely never done it before, you realize how many things you just do automatically. And for that person, they’re not automatic. And you have to actually explain to them. And for me, the toughest thing about fly fishing from the very beginning is that the angler has to do several things at the same time. So once you make the cast and your fly lands on the water, now you have to control the drift. Take up slack, deal with the line in your in your line hand. Watch the fly. Be aware of the fly line that you’re stripping onto the water. That’s a lot of stuff holding your head at the same time. And what you find is that often one or two of those things gets lost. And that’s where the problem lies. You know, someone will cast out a fly and then notice that their line on the water is messed up, and they begin to focus on that. And they don’t realize that their fly in their line is still in the water and is maybe drifting over a waterfall or into a log or whatever. So the one part of fly fishing that I think is most difficult to deal with, even in a book like mine, which is super simple, is how many balls in the air a fly fisher has at the same time. And how do you make sure that you’re paying attention to all of those balls at the same time? 00:43:37 Dave: Golden Fly Shop isn’t your average fly shop. They have a twelve foot shark painted like a cutthroat, hovering over a huge selection of the best rods in the business. A massive assortment of tying materials and their famous steakhouse streamer display. And it’s the hub for a community of anglers who never stop tinkering with new ways to catch fish. Sometimes the conversation behind the counter includes what hatches are going off and what techniques are working best. Then tales of destination fishing, adventures sought after species, or a good old congratulations. When a customer brings stories of finally connecting with that fish they’ve searched for forever. With a growing online store and a budding YouTube channel, you’ll be able to follow along with their fun antics, international adventures, and helpful fly fishing tips. Golden Fly Shop where the community is hanging out even if they’re supposed to be working. That’s Golden fly shop.com check them out right now. Definitely. That’s not, uh, not easy for the beginner. What is it like for now? Is this book we talked about it for somebody brand new. Pick up this book. What if the person is out there, has a little bit, has done a little bit of fly fishing? Is it for them to or, you know, is there some cutoff there? What are your thoughts there? 00:44:47 Speaker 4: Well, I think it’s. 00:44:48 Phil: Definitely for them because, you know, if you are the person who was like me with only seventy five percent of the knowledge, this would be a way to help you fill in those gaps and maybe catch up on what you missed in your initial fly fishing experience. The vast majority of anglers in the world are somewhere between beginner and intermediate. You know, we like to we like to talk a lot and and lionize those expert anglers. And most of them are way better than I am. But that represents a pretty small percentage of the fly fishing community. You know, I’m a much worse angler now than I was when I was a fly fishing guy, even though thirty years have gone by because there’s really no substitute for being on the water sixty days in a row. 00:45:43 Dave: That’s the thing, you realize? Yeah, those are the guides. And that’s why, you know, again, the podcast works so well because most of the time I’m interviewing those experts. And that might be for some species technique, river system. And so if you want to learn from the best right. That’s a good place to go is to hear it directly from them. And I find that all the time I guided to and I found that it was not, you know, it was a hard job, but also that I wasn’t that good at it. And I love actually being guided because you learn all this stuff. These guys are so it’s pretty amazing. 00:46:12 Speaker 4: Absolutely. 00:46:13 Phil: And I think, you know, you you hinted at it there. But not every expert angler is a good guide. 00:46:21 Dave: No, that’s for sure. True. I think there’s the good guys. You see, I think we’ve talked about this a number of times, but there’s just these people that are born to be a guide. They’ve got that something. We’ve talked to them. You know, we’ve got some that we’ve already had on this this month, this week that you just hear it the way they talk. They’re so passionate about it. You know, they’re already out there three hundred days a year. And then on their days off they’re still fishing. You know, like, it’s pretty cool, but, um, but let’s do a quick little segment here. Uh, Phil, we got our Wet Fly Swing Pro segment. Shout out. And we love doing this because we’re getting a chance to grow our community and doing some cool stuff here. So today I’m going to give a shout out to Bill who is in our fly tying challenge. We talked a little bit fly tying, but he’s been in this challenge. And and he’s going to get a chance. We’re going to be doing some cool stuff in there getting his badge. And obviously the best thing is that we’re kind of getting better at it. We’re learning from each other. So today this is presented by San Juan Rod Works, who’s another great small company out there doing great stuff. So we’re going to give a big shout out to Gary and his team over there. And but what Bill asked was he said one thing he really wants to learn more about is Trout Spey. You know, and that’s a big thing we’re going to be diving into. Do you find first off good shout out to Bill and San Juan Rod works. But was Trout Spey. What’s your take on that. Is that something that’s just next level that isn’t in your book. And then have you talked written a lot about that. 00:47:36 Phil: So Charles Spey is not something that’s in my book because it is next level. First of all, you have to buy a whole new rod. New line, uh, probably some new flies, but I do find that I have really enjoyed it. I learned from Pete Kutzer and we went out on the battenkill one morning, and he sort of walked me through how he would fish a pool. Uh, I watched him catch three fish in the process, um, which was humbling. 00:48:06 Dave: With, like, swinging, like wet flies. 00:48:08 Speaker 4: Yes. 00:48:09 Phil: And and you know, the thing, one of the first things I learned was, you know, I had done spey fishing for Atlantic salmon in Norway, which was another spectacular experience. But child Spey is a is a different animal. And the first thing I saw was how small the flies. Pete was using were. I had just tried out tied on my normal streamers and he showed me his setup, which was much smaller, but I first of all, I have a bad shoulder. So Trout Spey is a great way to go through a whole fishing without hurting my shoulder. But it’s also sort of a cool, rhythmic way to experience a river that’s a lot different from regular fly fishing, where you’re really focused on individual spots. So instead, to approach a, um, a pool looking to cover the entire thing. While you may expect to catch a fish in particular parts of that pool, you’re actually covering the whole thing. And, um, I find it to be a really cool way to fish, especially during those times when there aren’t major hatches. And perhaps the the fish are sulking a little bit. 00:49:28 Dave: Yeah. It’s part of the, the Spey, the evolution of Spey. And there’s you know, it’s always evolving. I think that’s what’s interesting about fly fishing too. There’s always you’ve probably seen we’ve all seen those changes over the last thirty years of, you know, faster rods and lines, trying to keep up with the rods. And then then there’s back to glasses back. Right. It’s pretty fun. What do you think is the new you know, as you look at this? You’ve been in this a while. I mean, there’s nothing really new, right? It’s all the same stuff. But do you see any, um. What else is left? It seems like there’s always, you know, the space here. What else is it? Are we just going to repeat what’s been done before for the new stuff in the future? 00:50:05 Phil: You know, it’s hard to say what what the next new thing is, but what seems to be happening is the old is becoming new again. It seems like people are constantly rediscovering older ways of fishing or older, uh, kinds of equipment. And, you know, I think that the other big thing is that there’s almost no bad fly rods anymore. You know, when I first got into this business, you could go to the fly tackle dealer show, and there were a lot of people hawking just sort of objectively cheap, bad fly. But the the manufacturing has gotten so good that a rod that costs two hundred dollars now is as good as a rod that costs six hundred dollars twenty years ago. And so I think that one of the one of the results of that is there are so many rod models, styles, types on the market now that you can really start to specialize. You know, we saw that with Euro nymphing the explosion of Euro Nymphing suddenly everybody wanted an eleven foot three weight. So I don’t know what the what the next frontier is, but it does seem like every time something like Euro Nymphing goes runs its course, and then someone figures out a cool new way to use that equipment to perhaps do things that people weren’t doing before. You know, I recently saw a cool video by George Daniel talking about, uh, using micro jig streamers with his gyro rod. So it just feels like there’s a constant refining of every part of the sport. And then you add to that the exploding popularities of species that aren’t trout. You know, when Abenaki publishers published warm water fly fishing, which I think launched in nineteen ninety seven, most of the companies in the fly fishing industry wouldn’t advertise in the magazine because they thought it hurt their brand, because publishers want to know about trout. Now, you know, some of the cutting edge cool guys are there carp anglers in downtown Denver? You know that some of the people that that other anglers look up to, or you see people catching gar or other weird species that you would have never thrown a fly at twenty years ago, right. 00:52:45 Dave: And it’s still, I mean, percentage wise, right? It’s still probably what what do you think, seventy percent or what percentage of people are still trout fishing? Mostly. 00:52:54 Phil: Well, I think you’re probably right, but I would say a lot of those people are also doing other things, which they weren’t doing before. So I think the number of trout only anglers has probably gone down. While trout is still far and away the the most popular. 00:53:14 Dave: Yeah. Trout it’s the it’s kind of the, for lack of a better phrase, the gateway drug right to the next species. 00:53:21 Speaker 5: Right. And, you know, it’s. 00:53:22 Phil: It’s tied to the history of the sport, which a lot of people love. Trout rivers are certainly more beautiful than, you know, the South Platte through Denver. But I just feel like people’s minds have opened up a lot in the last twenty five years about the all of the different possibilities for catching fish with a fly rod. And that’s exciting. I love that stuff. 00:53:48 Dave: Yeah. Me too. I think that’s definitely one of the cool things about fly fishing. And then also the, you know, kind of the the diversity in Orvis. Back to Orvis. We talked about that at the start. I mean, the the fifty fifty, you were probably there when that campaign first went out, right? Do you remember that when the fifty fifty thing that was what was that ten years, fifteen years ago? 00:54:04 Phil: Uh, probably ten ish. Yeah. And I mean, very it was very controversial. There were a lot of people who were very upset. Yeah. 00:54:12 Dave: And what were people upset? What was. Because what was that? Was that just a and I remember hearing that because it kind of went viral. Right. Like what was there to be upset about? Because it was just literally the idea is, is that you want more diversity of people into fishing. 00:54:25 Phil: So what it did was it made people defensive and people would say, there’s nothing about fly fishing that discriminates. And what they couldn’t do is put themselves in the shoes of a woman who walks into a fly shop and gets ignored, or a woman who out on the river and gets heckled. And we ran into the same thing when we began talking about racial diversity. Diversity in flight. So people would say, you know, who’s getting discriminated? And then, you know, Alvin Dido from, uh, all water Guides in Florida, who’s one of the most popular YouTube fly fishing person out, went online and said, you want to know what it’s like to be a black guy fishing? Let me tell you some stories. And the idea that was that people couldn’t empathize, they couldn’t put themselves in their shoes, and they immediately got defensive. You know, Joel Johnson, who at one time was the communications director for Trout Unlimited, told a story about getting shot at while trout fishing. Uh, because he he had the audacity to be a black man. Fly fishing. Um, now ninety percent of fly fishers are totally fine with it. But, you know, there’s there’s that small percentage of people and, you know, we are in a social media atmosphere, which you are certainly not immune to online, where people have their their set issues that they want to scream about, and they’re going to do it no matter what. 00:55:59 Dave: And and the louder you are, the way it works on social is in some places, right? The louder you scream at one way, whether it’s negative or positive, the more reach you get. 00:56:09 Phil: Exactly. 00:56:10 Dave: You know, which is not good. 00:56:12 Phil: But, you know, we had we had one one Orvis customer say, uh, you know, we were trying to create a battle of the sexes by focusing on this issue. And he took all of his gear and he brought it back and returned it. And then he then he hilariously posted, you know, to their credit, they took it all back. 00:56:33 Dave: Right? They took it all back. Ah, that’s so, so bizarre. I mean, I feel like I’ve been saying for a while, I don’t know if I’m sure somebody said this before me, but the diversity of of people in fly fishing is just like the diversity of species that we’re fishing for. The more diverse the community out there in any native species stream, the better the healthier it is. And it’s kind of the same way with right with fly fishing, really anything the more diverse. That’s why this country is great. You know, that’s why the US is great because it’s so diverse. 00:57:02 Phil: Absolutely. And the more people who are loving our natural resources, the more people we have to protect them. 00:57:11 Dave: Well, this is this is good, Phil. Um, I think let’s take it out of here with just a couple of tips. We’ve obviously been talking some quick start tips for somebody new, but what would be your two or three if you had to say somebody coming here? Let’s just focus on that person that’s new. They they’re getting your book. What are a couple of things you’re telling them before they get on the water to have success? 00:57:29 Phil: Well, the first thing that I always say is really the only reason to go fly fishing is to have fun. So keeping that in the front of your mind is important, especially when you’re just starting out. And there are a lot of things about fly fishing that are fun that don’t involve catching fish. You get to be out in nature. You get to be hopefully on a beautiful river. You get to see you, get you. You may get to travel, you get to to see. Even if you don’t catch a rising fish. Just seeing a rising fish is cool. 00:58:07 Dave: Yeah, or a hatch. Or being in the middle of a hatch. 00:58:09 Phil: Crazy hatch in the middle of a hatch is amazing. So always go into it if you can, with that attitude. because if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to continue to do this sport. But the other thing I would say is, you know, start small, start with, uh, expectations of focused on your learning rather than on your success. Because one of the beautiful things about fly fishing and for me, what separates it from conventional angling is there are many different kinds of success in fly fishing. I consider a good drift to be a success, even if it doesn’t catch a fish. If I say to myself, here’s where I want this fly to drift naturally through this part of the river. And I accomplished that. Even if I don’t catch a fish, that’s a success and that’s going. And the more I can have that kind of success, the more I’m going to have the fish catching kind of success. So fly fishing is a process rather than a simple means to an end. And the other thing I would say is go with a friend, especially if that friend is actually a an accomplished fly fisher. I think my book is great, but having someone standing next to you who knows what they’re talking about is a real added bonus and will help you learn more quickly and, uh, progress as an angler. 00:59:49 Dave: Yeah, that’s. And that goes with, like you said earlier, the groups or really anybody to connect with and you know. 00:59:55 Phil: Yeah, I mean, fly fishing is really a community. It’s a small community, but it is a community. And and, you know, fly fishers know when you see the guy walking through the airport with the rod on his backpack here. Hey, you know, we’re part of the same community. I don’t know that guy, but I bet we could hang out. 01:00:12 Dave: That’s right. Nice. And what would be, uh, you mentioned, uh, Tom’s book. Is there another book you would recommend as a resource for fly fishing for somebody that. 01:00:20 Phil: Aside from Tom’s book. Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, the Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing, Tom Tom’s book is is certainly the thing I have always loved the Curtis Creek Manifesto about Jared and Anderson. It’s very short. It’s not great on the sort of how to details as much as it is behind what I was saying before, sort of the the concepts of fly fishing, why you do certain things. 01:00:47 Dave: Who is that author? Do you remember that or who that was? 01:00:50 Phil: Sheridan Anderson. 01:00:51 Dave: Yeah. Is that a person that would wrote one book or did they write, you know, do you know the background at all? 01:00:56 Phil: Uh, I think he wrote one book. I think he died quite young. I think he was kind of like a a sort of hippie angler dude in late sixties, early seventies. But yeah, as far as I know, that’s the only certainly the only book on fly fishing he ever wrote. I could be wrong. 01:01:12 Dave: Yeah. It is. Okay. Yeah, I got that one on my shelf. I’ve had that one on my shelf since I was a kid, too. I mean, that’s amazing. I think some of these books out there. Well, this has been great, Phil, let me know. Let us know where you know what you have planned here. So you’ve got you know, you’re going to be you got some time on your hands. What’s your. Give us a heads up what you’re looking out to and where people can track you down. 01:01:32 Phil: Well, I’m going to hit some of the East Coast, uh, consumer fly fishing shows in January to hopefully sign some books and give presentations and, uh, yeah, the rest of the time I’ll be doing a lot of freelance writing and editing and, uh, looking for my next adventure. 01:01:50 Dave: Perfect. All right, well, we’ll send everybody out, uh, hopefully meet you up at, uh, some of those shows. And they can also go to Phil Monahan. Com or on social media. And, uh, we’ll be getting the word out as well about your book. And for new folks coming in or, you know, those just getting started, we’ll definitely be sending people your way. So this has been great. Phil, thanks again for catching up and all your time. 01:02:08 Phil: Thank you so much, Dave. 01:02:11 Dave: Uh, I want to hope you enjoy that one. Uh, if you want to get any more information on this and follow up you can go to. Com if you want to check out our Pro membership. That’s wet Swing and find out what we have going there with trips and goodies inside. Pro a lot of good stuff going here we are turning right around and getting, uh, getting going tomorrow. Uh, if you’re interested in hearing from CJ, check out tomorrow’s podcast and then we’re going to be keeping it moving all year long and excited to start this year with you. Hope you’re enjoying the podcast and hope you get a chance to check in with me. Uh, Dave at Swing Anytime. Hope you’re having a good one. Have a great morning, great afternoon or evening wherever you are in the world. Look forward to catching you on the next episode. Talk to you then. 01:02:53 Speaker 6: Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit Wet Fly com.