Traveled #23 | Fly Fishing World Championships with Glade Gunther: Inside the Idaho Fly Fishing Event

0 (3s): The World Championships for fly fishing make its way to the US about every 10 to 20 years. And this year we are in luck because they will be held in eastern Idaho within the golden triangle of fly fishing. And today you’re gonna find out all the great resources you need to know to check out this event and up your game this year. Hey, this is Dave host of the Travel podcast. I’ve been fly fishing since I was a little kid, grew up around a little fly shop and now we’re traveling all around the country, checking out new destinations. Gla Gunther team, USA member and events coordinator for Team USA. And the US Angling is going to walk us through the events this summer that they have going on in July with some of the famous waters out in Eastern Idaho. 0 (48s): We’re gonna find out where they’re traveling, how all these events are coming together, and what you can do to get involved and check ’em out this year. Plus we’re gonna get a few tips outta Glade in the process as we jump into this and talk about fly fishing, competitive fishing, and what you can do to improve your on the water experience today. This episode of travel is presented by Yellowstone Teton territory, where you can explore great fishing, hunting, hot springs, and much, much more. Alright, let’s get into this one here. We gola Gunther from fly fishing team usa.com. How you doing? Glad 1 (1m 26s): I’m doing well, thanks. Yeah, 0 (1m 27s): Thanks for setting some time aside today to talk about team USA competitive fly fishing. I think this is a always an awesome topic because we’ve had a number of episodes out there and they’ve been some of our biggest, I was just looking back at the past year and Gilbert Rowley, who I know isn’t necessarily, I don’t think on Team USA, but he has a connection to some of the guys. And his episode is one of our largest episodes of the of the year. And, and so we always find that, I think that euro ing I think comp you, sometimes you hear stuff about it, like people are like, oh, what’s competition fly fishing? But I think it’s really important because there’s a lot of fly fishing advances that come through, I think, what’s going on there. So we’re gonna talk about that today. We’re gonna talk about who, who you are and what your connection is to all this. 0 (2m 8s): ’cause I think you’re a big person behind the scenes there. But before we get into that and maybe some tips on, you know, fishing and all that, maybe talk about first how’d you get into fly fishing and, and what’s your first memory? 1 (2m 19s): Oh boy. Wow. First memory. You know, my first memory of fishing broadly was on the little bear up near Higher Utah. My dad took me fishing up there when I was, I don’t know, I want to say, yeah, 10 or 11 years old. I’m pretty sure I was just throwing a spinner or something, you know, just rod and reel, not fly fishing, but hooked into, you know, again, memories are distorted, of course, but what seemed like a monster brown trout. And I, I suspect it was only like a 16 or 18 inch fish, but frankly, that really got me hooked. So it was just, and my, my dad’s not even a, a fly fisher at all, like, or a fisherman at all, for any intents and purposes. 1 (3m 3s): He just, he had me out in the woods in the wilderness and on a river, and we were just standing there, not in waders, just went waiting. And it was a great time. We, we caught fish and it was fun. So that, that really got me hooked in fishing and then fly fishing. I had a scout master of either, I can’t remember, it was when I was 12, 14 years old that really just kind of got me introduced into fly fishing, frankly. We started fishing the bear really kind of like tight line worm fishing. Yeah, right. I mean, almost no weight, really just lobbing worms into holes, you know, getting, letting ’em get down, really trying to play the sensitivity game when you feel that bite. 1 (3m 43s): And we used to wreck rainbow trout doing that. It was a blast. I haven’t fish worms in a long time, but if I was to go try to, to re replicate that, I think I’d have probably have great success. But anyway, that kind of got me going down that kind of, that, those techniques in terms of how to fish with very little weight, you know, how to really use the rod to catch fish, not just, not just bait. And then, and then that really just transitioned, actually a, a future scout leader really got me into fly fishing because that was probably when I was, so I was 16 years old, give or take. And then really just took off from there. 0 (4m 14s): Nice, nice. And where did the, I guess we could probably fast forward a little bit here, but where did the team, USA, where did all that connection start for you? 1 (4m 22s): Oh boy. I actually was the president of a fly fishing club at a, a place that I worked, and this would’ve been back in the mid two thousands range. And I had that during that time period I had invited, or I, I’d gotten to know Lance Egan and Devin Olson in that, in that time period. So of course kind of anchor people within the, the US comm fly fishing community generally. And, and specifically in, in the competition fly fishing. But I’d gotten to know them and they had a event where they held a competition here in northern Utah and they were looking for volunteers, people to come and watch, you know, measure them catching fish. 1 (5m 3s): And I, again, I’d been introduced to Lance, I’d gotten to know them and I volunteered to recruit from amongst the populace of the club that I led. And that was really my first exposure with competitive fly fishing. There you 0 (5m 14s): Go. What was that event they were doing? 1 (5m 16s): They hosted, there was a, I think they called ’em at the time, regionals, but basically eng English from all over over the country came to Utah. They, we set up on the Provo River on the upper and victory ranch section, if you recall, if you know where that is. We had a couple sectors there. And then we fished a lake as well, I think Smith, Morehouse Lake. I had some grayling and rainbow trout in there. Again, I remember meeting just people from all over the country and thinking, well this is great. This is fun. Watching them fish, talking to them while they were fishing, you know, getting a little different insight. I thought at the time that I was a pretty good fly angler. And then being able to watch them and learn from them as I kind of experienced that was really kind of eye-opening. 1 (5m 56s): Seeing different techniques, different flies, things that I’d never really experienced previously. I think really just opened my eyes to a world of possibilities beyond what, what probably the average fly fisher who will go out and spend. I don’t know. I mean, your average fly fisher probably fishes six to eight times a year, you know, really. And it really just broadened my vision of what fly fishing could be in terms of how many fish I catch, what expectations are for what a good day of fishing looks like. Of course, all the days fishing are good days fishing, but, you know. Yeah, 0 (6m 26s): I hear you. No, I, I I imagine two of the best, you know, two guys that you know, are kind of top of the game. And we have obviously have a lot of these episodes where we have people that are, you know, professional fly anglers essentially. Right. We had Mark Razr on recently and he was talking about, you know, he’s on the Missouri and he was talking about how every day, still to this day, he’s been guiding for 25 plus years. He still spends 10 minutes and casts the yarn rod, you know the echo yarn rod? Yeah, 1 (6m 52s): Yeah, yeah. I have one in my basement. I, I was moving some stuff around the other day and I’m like, holy cow, here’s my old school. I mean, I don’t know how long ago I got that thing right. 0 (7m 1s): Yeah. The yarn rock 1 (7m 2s): Ages ago. Yeah. 0 (7m 3s): Yeah. And so, and I think that’s the what separates, I think people like Devon, Lance, everybody else’s that. Yeah. I mean, they’re doing it full-time. They’re kind of top of the game. So now you had, so you had that connection. When did talk about, now what are you doing for team USA? What, what are your, what’s your current role? 1 (7m 17s): Maybe just a really quick rundown. I think that was probably back in 2006. I probably competed in an event the first time. I don’t know if it was 2007, 2008. I went to my first national championships in 2009. I didn’t make the team at that time, but I went, I felt really happy winning a session. Like I, you know, you basically, y’all line up in a river or a lake, whatever it might be. And you know, you get assigned a piece of water and I, I happen to catch the most fish in my little sector in that moment. And of course, again, every little win gives you a little more confidence to take the next step and maybe participate a little bit more. And then another couple years of competing. And I recall, I think I made fly fishing team, USA in, I wanna say it was 2012, been to Oregon, my recollection. 1 (8m 5s): And then really it’s kind of just been a cut and paste since then, every two years minus covid Yeah. Issues. We basically host another national championship. We select another national team that’s based on the accumulation of points over basically a two year cycle where we compete, you know, in different regions. And then we’ve, we’ve kind of restructured it in recent years to kind of try to be a little more sensitive to the amount of, of time and travel required for people who were interested in the sport. But that kind of brings us up to today, right? Where we have a team fly fishing team, USA has a team of 15 anglers that are, again, based on the way that we calculate points and rankings across the country are the best, right? 0 (8m 45s): They’re the best in the last two years of, and there’s a big separation because you know, we had some of the people that were on before, you know, when you go back to and fly fishing team, USA wasn’t quite as organized and they weren’t winning. They were actually losing a lot. Right. And we’ve talked about everybody there and we know we’re, so I think this regional two year thing where you get points basically gives us the team USA, a better chance to win, right? Is that kind of the 1 (9m 8s): I think so, yeah. I think so. I think that, I think that’s true. And we tend to make small tweaks every year. We have made a couple times we’ve made big changes, but we, I mean, consistency is good. I don’t know, within the competitive fly fishing community, I think there’s kind of three groups of anglers. Maybe just generically, maybe the first group is, it’s fun, it’s actually a community. Most of the anglers that participate do it because it’s a good time and they get to learn how to fish better. And really that, I think back, that’s kind of where I started. And I think most people who are in this sport kind of start there where they’re just like, Hey, you know, this fly fishing is fun for me. You know, again, they’re looking for a community and maybe not to equate it to a bar, beer pong, yeah. 1 (9m 53s): League. But, you know, something like that. It’s more of a social endeavor. And I think that that’s fantastic and it brings a, a source of community to the sport and, and I think it’s really useful. And then there’s the kind of the, I don’t know what I would call middlings, but there’s the people who are kind of in that transition. Like they wanna really get better and they’re really working on developing their skill sets. ’cause they actually see a path to advancing their own, you know, personal accomplishments, maybe the chance of making the team. And then there’s the ones that are really super dedicated to the sport that the people who really set aside the time and resources necessary to make themselves the best, have an opportunity to do so. 1 (10m 33s): And the framework that, one of the frameworks I should say that exists is fly fishing team, USA, particularly in the sense that I think about the people on the team who are the best. That’s what they do. Like they set aside two, three, sometimes four days a week. And they are not just prac, they’re not just going fishing. They’re literally working to be the best at the situation. You know, they’re, they don’t just go and say, Hey, I’m gonna go throw NIMS today, or I’m gonna go just throw the streamers today. They walk up to the river and go, oh situationally, what’s the best way for me to catch that fish? And I, I think that’s probably what separates them from the, I’ll say the average or even the better than average angler, 0 (11m 9s): Right? They’re more analyzing it on the stream. Yeah. I’m trying to like, what does that look like? You know, the Devon Dolson, the Lances, those, those, or even the guides like outfitters, right? People that are doing it every day. 1 (11m 20s): I mean they, their career depends upon it to a certain extent. You know, if you’re a guide, right, you need to be able to put your clients on the fish that you know are in the river. It’s incumbent upon you to know your river particularly well. I think maybe one thing that differentiates and, and not to throw shade at anybody in any situation, but differentiate, maybe the average guide from a fly fishing team, USA exceptional angler is that they’re in a, just because of the ty, the different types of rivers they fish all the time. Like I look at Lance or Devin and I feel like, and maybe those two persons with some exceptions, oh, some others as well, of course, but they’re, they’re the closest friends to me, so I’ll use them as examples. You know, I feel like I could drop them on any river in the world and they would figure out how to catch fish. 1 (12m 3s): It’s just, I think that sets ’em apart. And a lot of people have this misconception that competition fly fishing is Euro Ming. And that’s the farthest thing from the truth. I mean literally the farthest thing from the truth. And to be fair, nymphing is one of the most effective ways to put numbers of fish in the net. I will not deny that because I employ that technique myself as often as I can. ’cause I like catching fish. However, the best anglers can do it all. If I wanted to go have lessons on how to throw dries or streamers, I’d go talk to Lance’s only 15 minutes from my house, but I’d go fish with Lance. Right. If I wanted to learn that. But again, people have this broad misconception that at Euro Ming is competition fly fishing. And that’s just the farthest thing from the truth. 0 (12m 44s): Yeah, no, that’s true. And our closest connection, as Pete Erickson has been doing some schools and stuff for us and he, I’ve been on the water with him and he reinforced that, you know, it’s like, hey, we did kind of a, a Euro nipping school, but you know, hey we, we left it open to do whatever the situation brought us. Right. And the, so you mentioned 2012, so you kind of start, you got going there and talk about the every two years. So is it every two years on the even year that you talk about how the selection process works? 1 (13m 10s): We just rehashed the selection process post covid just because it made us reset. Like we literally didn’t compete for a year plus, right? So it was like, hey look, if we were gonna reimagine how we would do this, what would that look like? And this came really from a lot of anglers competitors, close friends. I mean, I’m not sure, there’s a gentleman in New York that had a lot of influence on this named Ken Crane. He’s great, he’s a great competitor, really interested in advancing the sport. And so he was really essential to some of these things. But I got a lot of feedback from a lot of different people. But we, at that point, we basically broke the country into regions prior to that time. We more or less expected anybody at any time to really be able to pick up their gear and fly to Pennsylvania or North Carolina or you know, or Oregon or you know, Utah, Idaho, Montana, whatever, right? 1 (14m 0s): And just go and do these competitions. And we kinda limited it to 24 persons at a time for two purposes. One was at that time we were still basically playing the, you gotta get volunteers to measure all the fish game, which was very hard, right? Getting people to give away two days on a weekend to come watch you fish is a really big lift to ask people to do. And early days we had a lot of success getting people to volunteer to do that. But to be fair, we kind of wore out our volunteer base. Yeah, you know, it, that’s just natural, you know, you use ’em too much and they’re like, I got better things I didn’t on a Saturday. I, I have watched Devon fish enough times, I’m good, you know. Anyway, so we shifted. 1 (14m 41s): So again we did two things. We went to a regional based organization where we divided the country up into forged kind of sections northeast to southeast. We call it the Midwest, but it’s basically the east side of the Rockies and then the west side of the Rockies for all intents and purposes. And of course some of the lines are a little wavy based on where populations of anglers are interested in the sport. So that was the first thing we did. And then what we did is within each of those regions, we hold basically create an a regional scoring system. So you’re only really fishing, quote unquote against the anglers in your region. I don’t have to fish against Pat Weiss in Utah. I fish against, you know, Devon Wyoming’s in the west region. So I have to fish against Devon, you know, others, again, very good anglers in the west. 1 (15m 24s): And of course you live in the Midwest, you’re fishing against anglers in the Midwest. That’s like Cody Bergdorf and Jack Arna and a bunch of other really good anglers in that area. Chris Smith. Anyway, some great anglers there. If you fish in the northeast, yeah, you gotta fish against Pat Weiss. You fish in the southeast. Yeah, you’re fishing against Michael Bradley. And those guys are dominant in their regions generally speaking. But again, we segregate it all out. So we can do that now. So there’s a two year cycle that we call the regional cycle. So over the course of that two years, we in each region will hold, I don’t know, something like 15 different events over the course of two years. Okay. So most of those events are one day, like, so you basically show up in the morning, you fish for the day, you go home that night. 1 (16m 6s): It’s a very limited time commitment and, and frankly resource commitment in terms of having to fly across the country. And that was really part of the purpose is to mi mitigate the resource requirements in order to participate. We also wanted to make it as easy for people to kind of experiment with the sport as possible. So you want to give it a try on a weekend? You can, 0 (16m 26s): Oh you can. So on the regional means, like anybody can do, they have to qualify, how’s that 1 (16m 30s): Work? Nah, regional’s wide open. And we, and in fact we don’t even measure the fish, you know, we, we try to make it, we try to remove as many barriers to participation as possible, frankly. So we used to measure every fish, we kind of just say, Hey look, you know what, we don’t have to measure all the fish, right? Let’s just count the fish that we catch at that level. Also, we do what we call competitor controlled at that level, right? Which means that we basically divide two groups. One group is fishing, another group is watching. And so you’re watching someone fish. I think there’s two really important things to that. First of all, we don’t have to get volunteers, which is fantastic. It makes it much easier to organize an event. And second you get a chance to watch someone else fish, right? 0 (17m 9s): You can learn. 1 (17m 10s): How often do you just sit back on the side of the, I mean now guides get to do this all the time, right? But you know, the average angler doesn’t sit on the side of the river and watch another angler fish for two or three hours and really try to see what’s actually going on. Where were they catching fish? You know, what techniques were they using? And so one of the overarching concepts there is if you can observe and you have the ability to, to glean knowledge there that it’ll actually increase your skills faster, right? So you can really get something from it. Whereas if you were only fishing, you don’t get that opportunity. And actually if you fished first you watch the beat, we call it a beat to stretch a river or the lake, you get watch that same beat that you just fished. 1 (17m 52s): So you can go, oh, I caught a fish there, there, there and there. And you watch that other Engler come by and maybe they’re better than you and maybe they’re not quite as good as you one way or the other. You may watch them go to that same piece of water that you just fish and catch five or six more fish and you’re like, oh, okay, wow, I missed something. Like there’s something I didn’t get. Or they go, they walk up and go, you know what? I bet Glade pounded that piece of water right there. I’m gonna go fish some of the bee water over here first, see if I can catch ’em fishing some of the bee water and then watch them go, oh my gosh, I didn’t even realize that there might’ve been a fish there. You know? So I think there’s a lot of good that comes from just observing other people fishing. Oh, 0 (18m 24s): That’s amazing. Yeah. So, and you, what you’re saying is, so events, you mentioned the four different regions. So if somebody was in, out there in the northeast, how would they get involved if they wanted to like join in like comp? 1 (18m 34s): Yeah, first of all, we have a basic membership process. So it’s, I think it’s like 75 bucks. It covers your membership for a year. For all intents and purposes. It covers operational costs and insurance policies and allows us to function. Now we don’t deliberately don’t charge for events. The organizer might have some kind of a minimal fee. So you know, they may say, Hey look, 20 bucks I’m organizing, send me 20 bucks. So we’ll make it happen. But fly fishing team USA actually doesn’t take any additional funds for the regionals. Again, we wanna make it accessible in the west, I don’t think we ever charge because we’re trying to grow our population here in some of the more established areas that have better a deeper fly fishing competition, fly fishing crowd, they, they, they’re a little more, again, mature in that sense. 1 (19m 18s): They, they charge 20 bucks a person or 10 bucks a person. So, 0 (19m 21s): So is it everything west of the Rocky Mountains is the west region? Yeah, 1 (19m 25s): It’s, it’s gonna be Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Montana West. 0 (19m 28s): And then you rotate the states. Do you kind of rotate during the events different like the regionals, different states? 1 (19m 34s): You know, we don’t really prescribe where they are. A lot of it is just based on where there’s interest. So we tend to have, we kind of have a hub of interested parties in Utah, Idaho, and Oregon. Of course there was Wyoming as well. But there’s just, I mean it’s really just Devin, some of his friends in that area, they’ll host one or two events a year. And I don’t even like to call ’em competitions by the way, I guess for various reasons. First of all, it has a bad connotation. Are we comparing people? Well, yes, of course, but there’s no prizes, right? It’s not like everyone’s, anyone’s winning any money. And for purposes of definition for forest service and state permitting requirements, it’s a nuanced conversation, but calling it a competition, when it doesn’t meet the definition of a competition, it creates a stigma or it’s not clear. 1 (20m 20s): So I just call ’em events. They’re just like at the Boy scouts got together and went out fly fishing for a merit badge. 0 (20m 26s): Okay, so basically you put these events together and you might have one in Idaho, or let’s just say, you know, Oregon, Utah, whatever. But you, you get together and do you do a call out? Like, I mean is there a limit to the number of people who can join the event? 1 (20m 39s): I mean, technically no. We have a minimum eight eight’s the minimum. So again, we can kind of get a bunch of buddies together and go fishing and have 80 together and make it all happen. And on the Mac side, we don’t really have a constraint, but we do have a maximum number of points that we award, if that’s the right way to say it for an event. We do that just so that we have a level playing field across within the region. You know, you don’t want to have one event be worth way more points, another event. ’cause it, it diminishes interest in the one and accentuates interest in another. Right? So we just try to keep it even Steven, you know, 12 points. So 12 is the average, that means six anglers are fishing, six anglers are watching. Yeah, I see. And there’s another reason for that. It’s low impact, right? 1 (21m 18s): We don’t want to go and stretch out over six miles of a river and then have it be where there’s a maximum amount of conflict between we, we call ’em record recreational anglers or guides for that matter. You know, we don’t wanna be in people’s way any more than they want us in their way. So we try to have as small of a footprint as possible, frankly, just so that we’re minimizing any potential, I don’t wanna call it conflict, but we, you know, we, we’re not looking for a fight. We’re looking to stay low profile. 0 (21m 44s): Yeah, you, you wanna keep it low key for sure. So that makes sense. So basically you have these regionals and every two years, so two years, you go back and look at the points of whoever were the people involved and then you decide, okay, here’s the people that were the best, the best 15. Yeah. 1 (21m 56s): In each region. Well, so we picked the best in each region and then we actually, and then we go into what we call the interregional session or season for intent purposes. And that’s gonna be, again, the time period isn’t specifically defined to two years or something like that. But it’s, we’re gonna try to squeeze ’em all within like a eight to nine month period. And what that means is that each region will host a inter-regional, so the west will do one the Midwest, one northeast, southeast, everybody does one. And then what we do is we take the top X anglers from each region and we invite them to those inter-regional. So that’s an, that’s like an invitation only. And so now what we’re doing is we’re pitting the best anglers in each region against each other to try to suss out who’s the best amongst them 0 (22m 41s): At one spot. Are you doing that per, are you doing like four inner region and four, all these people are at the same four re inner region? 1 (22m 47s): What we do is we allow them to go to three of the four and we allow them to count two. Okay, 0 (22m 52s): Gotcha. 1 (22m 52s): Right. Just because hey, sometimes you don’t always get the best stretch of river. Okay, the draw matters. There’s some luck in this. This is not a hundred percent pure skill-based activity. Of course you gotta be really good angler, but you also, if you don’t get the best beat, hey the best you could do is maybe third place or fourth place on that particular stretch of water. You know. So we want to give people an opportunity to maybe toss one of their poor scores out. Now they don’t have to go to all three, but they can count up to two. Could be to be very basic about it. So what we basically have a amount of the, based on how you did in your region, you get a ranking and you get a score based on that ranking. And then depending on how you do within the inter regionals, you have a, a accumulation of points at the inter-regional level. 1 (23m 35s): And then what we do at the end of that, those two kind of pieces of the process, then we have a national championship. A national championship will be, we, we do at that point, we go down the list, we, we say who’s the best or you just start counting down, boom, boom, boom. We’re gonna take the top 40 in the, in the nation. Okay. And so whoever the top 40 are, we invite those. And of course some of ’em can’t make it, so maybe we stretch it down to 46 or 48 or whatever. So we’re just gonna take the top anglers top again, competitive anglers in the nation, invite them all to a national championship. And then from there we will take the sum of all their scores and get nationals, inter regionals and regional and then the best of the best make the team. And then the rest we thank for coming. 1 (24m 15s): We have a banquet at the end and we do some drawings and you know, give away some rods and prizes and thanks everybody for coming. It’s, you know, and basically just a celebration. 0 (24m 24s): Yeah, you have a good time. So that’s the, and then you also have, within this, you’ve got the different levels, right? You’ve got the youth. Talk about that. Who are the different groups? 1 (24m 32s): Yeah, so layered on top of, or maybe adjacent to on top of, depending on how you wanna say it, the fly fishing team, USA, there’s actually what’s called the u sling confederation, which host, which has the organization that facilitates the world fly fishing championships. So as you note, there are four categories within the fly fishing championship world. At the international level, it’s called FIPs Moosh. I could drop you a link on there for your listeners to check that out. But basically it’s called Fifth Moosh. They’re organized worldwide, they’re organized for a year as you know, it’s youth, they call it the ladies, the seniors, which we would call like adults. And then they call then the masters, which we would call like over 50 range, which I now fit in that category. 1 (25m 16s): Yeah, 0 (25m 16s): Yeah, right, right. Seniors and masters. 1 (25m 18s): So I actually did my first personal fishing in the World Fly fishing championship this year in the Czech Republic. So that was fun. That was a good experience. But yeah, so there’s four disciplines within fly fishing. Again, youth, women, masters and seniors that are selected. Now those teams, again, they’re not a direct connection between fly fishing team, USA and us angling confederation, though we have a nice happy working relationship for nonsense purposes. The best of the best within the US within fly fishing team, USA national championship team for monks. That team, the US confederation selects the best anglers to go represent the United States at the world fly fishing championships. 1 (26m 1s): And the same thing would be true of, you know, the ladies and the youth and the masters as well. 0 (26m 5s): And how are the, and maybe talk about that because we’ve got a couple events now as we’re talking. It’s kind of January, 2025. We’ve got, you know, I think some events come up here. So talk about where the next events are potentially gonna be held. 1 (26m 18s): Yeah, so last 2024, the United States submitted a bid to host the world fly fishing championships for the youth and the, and again, they call it the Ladies for 2024. And the seniors, again the adults in 2026. And they asked me to be what they call the international organizer. So I’ve got my fingerprints all over this, for better or for worse. 0 (26m 43s): Oh yeah, you’re the, you’re the head, you’re one of the head guys behind this whole thing. 1 (26m 46s): Yeah. And again, not to go backwards in this conversation, but I am the captain of fly fishing team, USA, so I kind of do all the organizational aspects. We have a board of directors, I’m on the board, but I, I kind of do all the day-to-day maintenance of fly fishing team USA, I guess if that’s the right way to say it. And I’m also the fly director for the US angling confederation. So I kind of wear two hats there. So I’m involved with it, fly fishing team USA organization at a leadership level. And then I’m also heavily involved in the US angling confederation. 0 (27m 17s): And and what is it, it reminds again, what’s the difference between the US England confederation, the TE and the other, the team USA or the 1 (27m 23s): Fly fishing team? USA was established back in like 1980 something as the, there was a time where it gets pretty complicated not to go into the nuanced details. Okay. So it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t, we don’t need to go there. But the differences primarily the US based competitive fly fishing organization is fly fishing team, USA US angling confederation has the entry point or they provide the access point for all of the fishing world championship events. So it’s not just fly fishing, it’s ice fishing, it’s kayak fishing, it’s predator fishing, you know, offshore it’s carp, it’s, they have a new event called street fishing. 0 (28m 3s): Oh. Oh, okay. So there’s a US angling confederation that, so when we talk, I always think team USA fly because it’s fly fishing, right? But there’s also team USA and like all these other things. Well 1 (28m 12s): Again, they’re not technical called team USA, I think it’s USA fly fishing. So it’s a little different connotate, you know, different syntax around the words, right? But in terms of the world representation of the United States, they are the organization without question. Right? So, but again, they do bass, so you know, can competition bass fishing is normal. 0 (28m 30s): Oh, oh. So now is competition bass fishing, everything we think of all with all the sponsored and all that stuff with the big bass events is that under us angling confederation. 1 (28m 38s): So a lot, many of the anglers who are the best in the country that are involved in the bass master championship or I can’t remember all the different names of them fl, but those anglers that participate in those competitive tournaments, money tournaments, they, many of them, or some of them I should say, are also interested in representing United States in the world Bass championships. Same thing with ice fishing, same thing with, you know, all sorts of different types of fishing. I think there’s like 16, 17, 18 different teams. I probably should know that. Yeah. 0 (29m 11s): Right. So there’s a lot going on. That’s amazing thing. There’s a ton. I mean this is what you realize is there’s, it’s not just fly fishing, TUSA, I mean there is all sorts of stuff and it’s all, it sounds like it’s all wind intertwined. So there’s a bass master champion that’s out there who made whatever millions of dollars on the bass circuit. He’s also maybe fishing for team USA and the bass. 1 (29m 29s): That’s exactly, and and so this, the relationship between us angling confederation, fly fishing discipline and fly fishing team, USA is similar fly fishing team, again, not-for-profit, just out there competitive fly fishing, developing anglers. Okay. US England confederation, again, they are the access to the world fly fishing, world fly fishing championships. So we have a structure nonprofit organization where they are advocating for the sports and again, providing the access to the world fly fishing championships for us. I 0 (29m 59s): See, I see. That makes sense. Okay, so then back to 2024, you guys submitted. So you’re trying to get, what is the potential that the, the events are gonna, where are they gonna be in 2020 5, 26? 1 (30m 9s): We won the bids for both. So yay to us. Of course that’s all, that’s like a yay. Oh crap. That means we gotta get ready. And that means I had a lot of work to do. But of course, because if I was gonna organize it, I knew where I really wanted to have it. I’ve got a cabin up in the Island park, Idaho area and, and if you think they called the golden triangle of fly fishing, right? It’s that kind of corner of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, right? That’s the golden triangle of fly fishing. And and I was like, wow, I wonder if there’s a way that we can make that work. I got to it. I started calling around to the forest service and the different state institutions that regulate fishing in the different states. And I have been at least thus far successful in securing, I don’t have all the permits in hand, but I basically have a affirmation from the organizations that I will have them submitted all the paperwork for such P permits. 1 (30m 60s): So it looks like things will be right on task. But we’ve got a stretch. I guess maybe just to be clear, backing up just a tad, there’s actually five different venues that are used for each fly fishing world championship. So then you basically a piece of water, right? Just very basic terminology there. We’ve selected the five different venues. We got Hebgen Lake in Montana, we have a private lake, which you may be familiar with. I know Pete loves this piece of water. It’s called Sheridan Lake in north, well in Idaho, in eastern Idaho up there. It’s just in Island Park area. And that’s fantastic. I love that place. But I tell you what, I never knew how good Heman Lake was until I really started fishing at this last couple of years. And then we are gonna fish a stretch along the warm river, which is a tributary to the Henry’s Fork. 1 (31m 40s): We’ll fish the Grays River, which is a tributary to the snake, the South fork of the snake I should say, to be clear. And then we have a defined stretch all on the Henry’s fork that the Forest Service is looking to give us equip permit to. So, so that was interesting. Again, go back to the kinda the, some of the principles that we had previously, which is we don’t want to be in anyone’s way. A lot of other countries, they will close the water to everybody else so that no one else can fish it. And for the world championships it’s not, that’s not the case for us. You know, the forest service ain’t gonna be like, or the states aren’t gonna be like, no, yeah, we’re not gonna close the Henry’s fork. Nope, not gonna happen. So we had to be really deliberate about which stretch of the river we gonna be able to use. Yeah, we’re just really careful about that. Again, we don’t wanna be in anybody’s way. 1 (32m 20s): We’re try to be as low conflict as possible. We’re out there for the same purposes as everybody else. We are interested in conservation, we’re interested in having a good time fishing, we’re interested in catching a lot of fish. We do our best to catch fish quickly and safely. Get ’em in the net as quick as possible, measure ’em. ’cause that’s what we do as quick as we can and get ’em back in the water as fast as possible so we can go catch more fish. I think everybody has the same basic guiding principles in fly fishing, right? We care for the water, we care for the fish, and we wanna catch lots of them. 0 (32m 48s): Perfect. That’s perfect. Okay, so that’s the venues. And then when potentially could this the event start? Yeah, 1 (32m 53s): So the actual opening ceremony, so the youth, the Ladies World Fly Fishing championship, so it’ll be the fourth women’s or ladies world Fly fishing championship and the 22nd youth world fly fishing championship that will, we’ll have our opening ceremonies on July 12th and the last day of the event will be on the 19th of July. There you go. Now someone will ask, why in the world would you do it in July? Well, it’s because of the kids really, when it comes right down to it, yeah, they’re in school. It’s very difficult to get, I mean they’re traveling from all over the world. We’re not just a catering to a a few anglers that are local here. We gotta ask people from all over the world to travel to Idaho to go to go represent their countries at the world Fly fishing championships. 1 (33m 34s): And so we had to pick a time that worked for everybody, right? And in just looking at some of the, I worked with the local travel bureaus that are in the area and said, when’s the best time, you know, for you guys? And we kind of picked that week between in Idaho there of course after the 4th of July, but there’s another big holiday on the, on the 24th of July weekend called Pioneer Days. And it gets a lot of traffic at those two weekends of course. So we just say, Hey, let’s plop this time right in the middle. And that was, that seemed like the best time to pick. So we did 0 (34m 2s): So. And then will the youth and women’s be concurrent kind of during the same time? Kinda, 1 (34m 7s): They’re not fishing against each other, but they are fishing basically at the same time. Probably what we will do is divide up the women. So the women may fish in the morning and the, the youth will fish in the afternoon. They’ll be fishing at least on the rivers, they’ll be fishing different stretches of the river. So that one piece of water doesn’t get beat up continually. And frankly for the people who have concerns about events of this type, they’re only on the water for like three hours. So it’s not like we’re out there all day long beating up the river, right? We’re literally there. We’ll start fishing around nine for the ladies in the morning and around noon. And then the youth will come by in the afternoon, probably between two and five and fish for another three hours. Again, a different stretch of river. So not even on the same water. 1 (34m 48s): So again, our preference is to not, we’re not looking for negative impact on the fishery, right? We’re looking for, you know, we’re just, we’re out there just catching fish. 0 (34m 55s): That makes sense. Okay, so that’s 12 through the 19. So if somebody wanted to get involved, maybe volunteer or just check out the events, what would you recommend there? There’s 1 (35m 3s): One message that I wanted to get across for today’s podcast is that, hey, we, we love, we we need help. We need volunteers to help at this event. We need something between 50 and 70 people every day, you know, to come help. And what does help look like? Well, I mean for the most part it looks like, you know, watch observing the anglers fish right now. So again, there’s a three hour stretch where you’re gonna be sitting there on the bank, they’re gonna be catching fish, they’re gonna bring the fish over to you in the net. They have to keep the fish wet, we have to fish with barbless flies, right? So we all those good things. 0 (35m 36s): So a big chunk of these 50 70 are people that are, that are watching. The cool thing about this is like you said, is that you could literally be a person to watch the greatest anglers right in the country fishing. And I’m sure you would learn a lot just watching. 1 (35m 47s): Right? And in particular this summer, again, that’ll be the ladies and the youth. So I’d love to get women to volunteer to come and, and walk. Right? I wouldn’t turn around any man to come and help either. But some of these women anglers are just, I mean, I don’t think they get enough credit. They’re some of the absolutely fantastic lady anglers both on our national team, but particularly from some of the other world teams as well. Right? The last three world championships were all won by the Czech women. I put these Czech women, they live and die by this sport. They love it. And I put them up against most of the guys that I know. No kidding. They probably whi their pants off of ’em. 0 (36m 24s): Right, right, right. Well it’s cool, we, I’m just doing a little kind of a video summary of, we’re kind of doing our end of the year thing right now. It’s gonna end of 2024. And I did a summary of the most, I mentioned the most listened to podcast episodes. Well one of ’em, which was really interesting was Maxine McCormick, who I had Chris Kch who’s her coach, right. And she’s the 12-year-old 13-year-old that won all the cha casting championships. 1 (36m 46s): Yeah, yeah. Casting, 0 (36m 47s): Right. And so it doesn’t matter, you know, male, female, small, little, what a big whatever. It’s like literally if you have the skills you can win, you can beat anybody. 1 (36m 56s): Absolutely. I mean it’s, and again, the la some ladies in our national, our world team in the USA are again absolutely bonkers. Good. You know, we held a joint event between, with fly fishing team, USA and the Women’s national Team selection back in September. And you know, some of these ladies were in the top 10. Exactly. So I mean, they’re really skilled anglers, so don’t discount them. Of course. Right. ’cause women can do, I mean, come to fly fishing except for maybe some overall general height advantages. Women are just as many skills and capabilities as the guys do. Right. Everywhere it comes right down to it. 0 (37m 30s): That’s totally true. And, and then the youth is a thing that’s been going on for quite a while too. What is, I know the youth, they’ve been doing pretty well talk, talk about that 1 (37m 37s): This year in the, in the Czech Republic. So the youth team was in the Czech Republic this year, fishing in the world championships, and they dominated, they swept the podium first, second, and third place individually. And of course you would expect that means they also took the home, the team gold. I mean they’ve, again, I I would say in that particular case as well, consistency is key. They’ve got a coach and Josh Miller who has kind of set up a, a system with them to kind of nurture to develop their skill sets. They’ve got a manager, Jess Westbrook, who’s great, you know, so those two guys have got basically created the system and may be calling back to boy, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago when there was a couple other guys running the, the youth team that really just set up a system that really developed the skills of some of these really good impressionable youth anglers. 1 (38m 23s): You know, the nice thing about youth compared to adults, I mean we, we, it’s like teaching old dog new tricks is tough. The but these youth man, they are just some of the best. They’re some of the best anglers out there. They’re so good. Yeah. 0 (38m 33s): Yeah. And what is the youth, when do you become, when do you leave the youth? Well, 1 (38m 38s): You can no longer fish in the world fly fishing championships if your 19th birthday happened in the year of the championship. So if you turned 18 in the year of championship, you can still compete. But if you turn 19, you, I, I think that’s the role. But basically I think if you’re 19, maybe if you’re 18 during the year, maybe that’s what it is. So if your birthday’s January 2nd, you turn 19, you can still compete in that year rolled fly fishing championship as a youth, but otherwise you’d not be eligible. 0 (39m 5s): Okay. That makes sense. Okay. So it’s basically adults. So 1 (39m 7s): They’re in it for a very discreet set amount of time. 0 (39m 10s): Do they start what, what, what’s the youngest youth? 1 (39m 13s): Boy, I wanna say you have to be 12. I don’t know that that’s even, I think that’s true, but I mean, again, there’s pretty, there’s some pretty significant disadvantages. You know, if you’re too small, you know, it’s like, it’s hard to weigh deep if you’re really short. And not all 12 year olds are short because there’s some super tall 12 year olds. But there’s some principles that tend to hold true in terms of waiting and being able to get the angles on the fish that you want to get. 0 (39m 34s): So that’s July. So if people wanted to learn more, where, where should we send them? 1 (39m 38s): Yeah, so there is, there’s a couple different places to go. First is the Phipps website. 0 (39m 43s): How do you spell that? The Phipps? 1 (39m 44s): It’s, well I, I just call it colloquially FIPs, but it’s FIPS Phipps and then it’s got a hyphen, moosh M-O-U-C-H-E. So it’s phipps moosh.com. Okay. And if you check there, you’ll find different links for the Road Fly Fishing championships. And what you’ll see is that for next year there’ll be a specific website set up for the youth and one set up for the women. So again, while they’re concurrently being held, they are technically considered two different championships. So again, there’ll be two, there’ll be two links there. And then the third one, which is, so again, I’d love people to go there, but the third one is one that I’d really like people to get to so I can, they can get some information as we can start building a volunteer base is us angling.org, us, A-N-G-L-I-N-G. 1 (40m 27s): So us angling.org. And then you can go onto the fly fishing teams link. And then underneath the Women Link and the Youth Link, there should be a section there for the World championship. So I’m just looking at the women’s one right now, and it’ll say 2025 Women’s Fly Fishing World Championship. At the bottom of that page, you’ll find a link to sign up to volunteer. 0 (40m 47s): Oh, okay. Perfect. And then that’ll be in 25 and then 26, there’s the actual seniors are gonna be, and what about, and the masters too? Or is that different? 1 (40m 54s): The masters at that event hasn’t been awarded yet, so I intend to put in a bid for the 2028 version of that. So I hope to be able to get everybody back here for the 2028. 0 (41m 4s): Yeah. And is that, does the masters go skip? Or how does that work typically, or like, ’cause I know Pete, I remember when Pete, we were talking to him, I think he won the gold medal up in British Columbia, right? A while back. Yeah, 1 (41m 13s): He did. Yeah, he crushed it up there. Yeah, he did. That was last year actually. Oh, 0 (41m 16s): That was just last year. 1 (41m 17s): Well, well, sorry, that was, that was 23. Yeah, so I, I’m still thinking 20, 23, 24, but, 0 (41m 22s): So that’s 23. So when is the next seniors world? 1 (41m 25s): So the next seniors world is in a Czech Republic at the end of May. 0 (41m 29s): Oh, so it’s 25. 1 (41m 30s): 25, yep. May 25. So we actually, the senior team was in France in 2024. We took bronze, which I think was a incredible accomplishment by our team. I was super proud of those guys. They just really came together as a team and fished super, super well. Michael Bradley took a individual fourth place and everybody was in the top 50. That’s actually a great accomplishment at the world. Fly fishing level tech. 0 (41m 51s): Yeah. And is the world is, are these worlds every year? 1 (41m 54s): Yes, every year. That’s right. 0 (41m 55s): For, for everybody. For, for youth, women, everything. It’s every year. 1 (41m 57s): Yeah. Yeah. I think this next year is the 44th World Fly Fishing championship for the seniors. Like I mentioned, it’s the 22nd for the youth and the fourth for the ladies. I think the masters is like the 16th. Gotcha. 0 (42m 9s): Okay. So this is an annual thing that somebody like these, you know, Devin, whoever else is on the team, I mean, they’re traveling a lot every year they’re getting ready for a big event. 1 (42m 16s): The burden is heavy. Right. And I guess from that perspective, right, we are all effectively self-funded. We’ve had some very generous persons in the past that have helped to fund the team. And so we’re super grateful for all the work today, all the money that they really put into helping our team develop. And we couldn’t have done it without them. And right now we’re all self-funded, so we’re not really great fundraisers. But if there are people who are interested in helping, you know, we would, whether it’s industry sponsors or, or again, generous individuals, we’re always, we’d be very grateful for any financial contributions that anyone would be willing to put our way. 0 (42m 51s): Well, we’ll, we’ll put links out to all that in the show notes. And then, and so you’re on the, you’re on the masters. So will you be fishing, are you out there? How does that look? Are you fishing with Pete and all 1 (42m 59s): That? Yeah, I fished in my first masters world championship, this in Cze Republic this last year. I, I spent a shocking one day in first place. So I had it, my first two, three days were pretty good. And then I, I had a bad experience on one of the venues that that kind of dropped me down. I finished in eighth place overall, but I still felt pretty good about that being my first World five fishing championship. This next year we’ll be in Spain. So I’m looking forward to that as well with five other teammates. So that’ll be a fantastic experience. And 0 (43m 27s): Who are the five teammates with you? 1 (43m 28s): So again, these are all guys that are over 50. So Pat Weiss, I’m super looking forward to that. I, no pressure on Pat, but I kind of expect him to get a medal. Chris Smith, who’s our team president and our team captain, his wife is actually on the women’s team, so they’re like legit, you know, world championship fly fishing family right there. And then we have Matt Sina, who’s a guide up in Vermont. We have JC or I, I call him jc, but John Cordon who’s in Texas. Let’s see, I gotta make sure I count ’em all. Me, Chris, pat, Matt, jc. Oh, I’m missing one. There’s six of us. 0 (44m 6s): Oh, either way we can put it in the, the show notes. Oh, 1 (44m 8s): Oh, Sean Crocker, Sean Crocker. I can’t believe I missed Sean. Sean is like one of my best buddies in the Pittsburgh, PA area. 0 (44m 14s): Oh yeah, Sean. Okay, so we got those in. Will there be the similar for women and youth? Will there be the five or six people there? 1 (44m 20s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, there’s five anglers fish every day. So we really should be picking the five best anglers to fish those five venues on any given day. It’s not, it’s really about team performance, not individuals. But yeah, there’s five anglers that fish and, and there’s typically one alternate that would travel with a team in the case that, that they offer some specific skill or you know, it’s a chance that someone could get hurt or injured or be sick or something. 0 (44m 40s): Yeah. Has that ever happened? Has anybody ever been injured 1 (44m 43s): Internationally? Yes. On our team, not in recent time, but we have deliberately swapped out anglers where we’ve said, Hey look, yeah, let’s, this person is gonna be able to fish that venue better than that other person. And it’s no dis right? It’s just, hey, let’s put the best angler on the water. We wanna, again, the team metal is way more important than an individual metal, so we want to put our best anglers out there. Gotcha. 0 (45m 4s): Okay, cool. So that’s all coming up here pretty much right around the corner. So like we said, I mean, this is gonna be cool and I’m excited. I think that, you know, I would definitely love to get out there and check this out. What else should we know about before we get outta here today? 1 (45m 17s): Oh boy. Let’s see. We are seeking out sponsors for the World Championship as well. So again, if you are interested in possibly helping to sponsor, or if you know either individuals or corporations that would like to help sponsor the world championship events, I’d love to talk to you. You’ll have my information provided so people can reach out to me if necessary or if they have interest. So that would be something that I’m super interested in. We can’t do it without money, you know, that’s very expensive time of year. And we actually price Phil Phipps actually places limits on the registration fees, just for the very purpose that we’re not prohibiting certain countries from being able to participate. We want, we wanna keep the barriers to entry as low as possible. 1 (45m 57s): So I have a limit to the amount of money that I can get from registration fees. And so all, any deficiencies to cover the budget, something that I’ve gotta find ways to close the 0 (46m 6s): Gap, you gotta come up. So all the, yeah, the, the hotels, the basically everything. Food, you know, you name it, 1 (46m 11s): Food, transportation, opening, closing ceremonies, hotels, you name it. All that stuff matters. And, and of course I wanna make sure I treat the volunteers well. So we’ll be putting together volunteer packages, you know, where they get shirts and hats and things like that. So again, they’re the most important people at the event. We can’t host these events without volunteers and you know, I wanna make sure that we do the very best we can to make them feel that we, that we were grateful for all that they were able to contribute. 0 (46m 35s): Yeah. Perfect. Well, let’s take it out here real quick with our kind of tips and, you know, trips segment here. We, we’ve been talking about, it’s awesome because we’ve covered, we haven’t ever covered this, you know, the full events and that’s awesome. You’re out there competitively fishing, maybe let’s go to your own n and that’s always a, you know, interesting one. It’s a hot topic. Yeah, it’s a hot topic. What do you, so somebody here is listening and they’re wanting to get into it, maybe they’ve done a little bit. What are a few tips you’re telling somebody who kind of wants to improve their game? Well, 1 (47m 3s): First of all, I mean, if someone just really wants to get into it, I’d say look up Lance Egan, Devon Olson, Gilbert, I mean Gilbert, I love Gilbert. He’s one of the greatest guys out there. You know, they put that series together for Advanced Techniques and even beyond Fin. Yeah. Is 0 (47m 15s): That, it’s called Modern What? What was that? 1 (47m 17s): Modern, yeah, modern. 0 (47m 18s): Yeah. And I think that’s super, I think it’s only like $50 for that whole course or something like 1 (47m 22s): That. Yeah, I mean, that’s the best in fly fishing. That is probably the best money you will spend, I guess to be specific, if you’re interested in some of these, you know, non, I don’t wanna call ’em non-traditional, but if you wanna get beyond throwing a dry fly, right? And you really just wanna get excited about fly fishing and being able to catch fish, I think that’s absolutely the best 50 bucks you’ll spend bar none, hands down, no questions asking my opinion. Yep. 0 (47m 45s): Okay. And, and then what about if you’re on the water? What, what’s that look like? Are you, you’re not doing so you’ve never guided, right? You’ve more 1 (47m 51s): Just No, I’m just an average Joe that just kind 0 (47m 53s): Of do, do you think that? Well, I mean, I would say average Joe. I mean, if you think about the guide versus the, I always compare it to, you know, because I kind of talked a lot with Devin and, and Pete and stuff like that, but you’re in that same, you know, that same range, you know, the difference between a guide and you guys I would think is pretty similar. In fact, you probably have skills that guides might not even have, right? 1 (48m 11s): There’s probably some truth to that, but heck, a lot of guides have a lot of skills that I don’t like patience, understanding. Right, 0 (48m 17s): Right, right. You know? Well, I mean, but if you were in that situation and kind of doing the guiding and somebody was sitting there and you were trying to help them, you know, kind of maybe hook a fit, what are you telling them before they’re getting into the water on the Euro, right? If they’re got their euro, they got their set up and they want to get out there and find some fish, how do they have more success 1 (48m 36s): Set on everything? 0 (48m 38s): Yeah. Yeah. You gotta set on everything 1 (48m 40s): And set it like you intend to catch a fish. I mean, I think that’s one of the things that people probably do the most poorly when they’re first learning how to, and again, I’ll speak specifically to, in terms of the Euro Ming styles broadly, because there’s lots of little different nuanced techniques there. But I think that the one thing that people do the most poorly, I mean, I’m talking about when I’ve worked with my kids or anything and I’m like, set it like, set it like you mean it. Like don’t just like lift the rod a little bit. Like really set that thing. Because every single, I think I’ve heard, you know, Kelly Gallop even say this as much, he has his opinions about your own ing. Right? I think one of the things I think I heard him say recently to give him total credit for this is that you don’t catch a fish unless you set on it. 1 (49m 21s): Something like that. Right. And I think, and maybe I’m attributing that quote to the wrong person, but 0 (49m 25s): Either way I think it’s true. Right. And how do you set what, what is a good set? Like how would you describe, oh 1 (49m 30s): Boy, it’s the right direction with the right amount of effort and, and the right speed. I guess it’s really just that, it’s one of those things, you almost have to be holding someone’s hand to do it, right? 0 (49m 39s): Yeah. You have to be there, right? Well, I’m thinking of it like if you’re, you’re fishing in a river, the river you’re on like river, right? You know, the river’s going from left to right, you’re maybe, you know, you’re nipping and so a fish hooks it, you know, you’re setting downstream in that situation, right? Yes. 1 (49m 54s): Yeah. Yes, yes. Well, again, down and up or down depending on the situation. Exactly. Depend. There’s a tree behind you. You probably ought to reconsider that. 0 (50m 2s): Yeah. Well, Gilbert, I was looking to these because I kind of did a little summary. I did like a, these were our, our most listened to episodes. Gilbert was in the top 10, and one of his tips, it was like, you know, it was kind of like common mistakes. I’ll put a link to the, the YouTube video I did, but it was like common mistakes to avoid. And one of ’em for Gilbert was like, people, yeah, just like we’re talking about they’re not playing the fish after you said it and you hook it, you’re not playing it right. And he was talking about how you wanna, yeah, you wanna have your rod upstream and you wanna keep it low, right? And it’s gonna help you land more fish, right? There’s all these little things. Yeah. 1 (50m 31s): Yeah. I mean, I, I think the best instructional on landing fish is probably one of Devin Olson’s videos. He has a little tips and tricks where he goes through how to land fish. And probably one of the biggest differences that I see between, again, the average fisherman and or fisher in a comp and someone who’s doing competition fishing or, or this is that how the efficiency at which they can play and land fish. I watch people that aren’t in, in my, in the sport that I participate in that can hook a fish and land a fish and let the fish go and be fishing again in, in a minute. And I watch other people who will fight that fa same fish for three or four minutes and just contextually, I, that’s not good for the fish. 1 (51m 11s): Like, get that fish in the net, get it back in the water as soon as you can, right? So I, I think that’s a big thing. The other, maybe the one biggest pointer that I’ve learned, I shouldn’t say biggest, but one big thing that I learned over the years doing different events that I’ve participated in is being aware of where you’re standing when you’re fishing. I can’t tell you how many times that, you know, you go to set the hook and you know, get, let’s just say you, you, there’s not a fish there, but you, you set it into a tree behind you. You’ve never done that, I’m sure you know, but just being aware, maybe one of my biggest lessons learned, it cost me a first place at a competition one time. Well, I was fishing, I think we were in, we were in Wyoming on, I can’t remember wherever it was, but it was not putting up any fish. They were fish, the river was blown out, it was flooded, super muddy. 1 (51m 54s): I walked up to it and I just kind of stood there and looked at it and went, I don’t know what the crap happened, but here, pe no one had been catching any fish. I had like a squirmy where I’m on, and you know what those are. I’m standing on the bank above the river and I’m just kind of, just nonchalantly like, I don’t know, I’m like six feet above the river. I’m just being stupid. I’m in an event, I’m in a competition. So if I catch a Fisht matters, my first cast, I plop that thing in there and if she eats that on my first cast and I’m standing at six feet above the bank thinking what the crap am I gonna do now? Right? I fight it for like 30 seconds trying to figure out how to get down to the river bank and then I, and he pops off and I didn’t touch another fish and no one else got a fish. That would’ve been the difference maker for me. 1 (52m 34s): But again, just be aware, like you can make your fishing life so much easier if you’re just cognizant of where the trees are, look over your shoulder, right? Sometimes the bri of your hat blocks your view, you know, cock your head a little bit to the side. Just be cognizant of your surroundings. I think your life experience can be much better if you’re just aware. 0 (52m 53s): Well, and, and I got a couple random ones to toss out at you and then we’ll, and then we’ll take it outta here. So one of ’em, and I think I, I might have asked Pete this in the past, but you know, when you look at the seniors and the masters, you know, I know there’s a lot of similarities, but who’s winning that battle team? USA seniors versus masters? Is that a tough one? 1 (53m 9s): Boy, the old guard. The old guard versus the youth and energy. It reminds me when I used to play racquetball with my uncle, like he was old and slow, but he was way more accurate. Finesse mattered, using your time wisely mattered a lot more to the old guys who don’t move quite as quick. Right. So I guess in terms of who’s best, boy that’s tough. I mean, you’re going experience versus youth. Yeah. 0 (53m 34s): Yeah. So any team either of those teams could win in any given day? 1 (53m 38s): I think so. I mean, it’s tough, right? It, it’s almost a toss up. ’cause again, I, you know, I look at Pete and Brett. So Brett won gold medal a few years back and Pete won in 23. Both those guys are, they’ve been on fly fishing team, USA, they’ve competed in World Fly Fishing Championships for years and years and years. I guess in terms of how much I look at who’s working the hardest to be the best, the senior team right now is probably working the hardest to be the best. But those guys have a wealth of knowledge and understanding they can’t be replicated, right? So it’s a collection of knowledge over decades and decades of fly fish, of world championship fly fishing experience. And I pick on, you know, Jeff Courier, Brett, Pete, Lauren Williams, I mean, you know, Mike Sexton. 1 (54m 21s): Those guys were kind of the core for quite a good number of years. And they’re excellent anglers. They’re just really good. And again, you can’t replicate that knowledge. It’s this knowledge versus energy and youth. I mean, I watch some of the guys on the senior team right now and I’m like, I can’t believe how fast Cody Bergdorf can make his way up and down the river. That dude’s a train. It’s unbelievable. He’s so fast in the river. It’s crazy. And, and that matters too, ’cause time, you know, efficiency on the water matters. Anyway, that’s a really terrible answer, but yes. 0 (54m 47s): No, no, I love it. I think that that’s, I think it’s a hard question to answer, which is great. And, and then as you look out, you mentioned mid-July. What does that look like, maybe talk, have you been doing, getting ready for the food restaurants? How does that look? Are you guys, are you setting that up or are people on their own out there as far as the competition? 1 (55m 3s): Okay, so during the event, we feed everybody the whole time, 0 (55m 7s): Which is two days, right? Oh 1 (55m 8s): No, it’s five days. So we actually, so it’s one venue a day. So every day, one angler on every team goes to, to, it goes to one venue. The next day they go to the next venue and then the next, so they just rotate around. So you just do this little, you know, you, you just complete the circle. So it’s a five days. 0 (55m 24s): So they got breakfast, lunch, and dinner that you are basically in charge of. 1 (55m 27s): Yeah, exactly. So that, that’s a lot of organization just for food. Yeah, 0 (55m 31s): I know. Well that’s what I, that’s what I was going with this. I was trying to pick your regular, like what does that look like? Are you going out to dinner each night or is this more like room service? 1 (55m 40s): Our host hotel is gonna be the Holiday Inn and Suites in Idaho Falls. And they just happen to have a built in restaurant. So yay for us makes it super easy. The practical reality is that, you know, the angler go out and fish, they’ll have breakfast, they’ll get fed lunch somewhere out on the road, you know, after their session or before their session starts. And then at the end of the day, they want to come back and get ready for the next day. And so we wanna make their dining experience as simple and fast and as efficient as possible so that they can spend most of their time preparing for the next day. So we, we’ll actually be eating at the hotel restaurant. So shout out to the Holiday Inn Express Sweet or Holiday Inn Sweets in Idaho Falls and Burger Theory, which is the restaurant that’s built into the, the hotel. 1 (56m 21s): Perfect. 0 (56m 22s): Good stuff. Okay. Awesome. Well that sounds perfect. And then, yeah, I mean this is a full on, yeah. So this week event, and you’ve done, have you planned and implemented, been at your current position in putting a event like this together? Well, 1 (56m 34s): This is my first one. 0 (56m 35s): And the other question is, is with that, is there somebody that was doing this before that’s in there helping with a little bit of the transition? 1 (56m 40s): So we’ve had two senior world championships in the United States. We’ve also had a couple youth world championships. I don’t believe we’ve ever hosted the masters. The first world championship that we hosted here in America was in 97. That was based outta Jackson. And then we held it in 2016 based out of, in Colorado. John Knight actually organized that one. He did a great job there. But that was 10, that was nearly 10 years ago. 0 (57m 3s): So that’s what you realize. Yeah. Even though there’s events every year with the world championships, I mean, it’s every more like every 20 years that they’re hosted. Well, every 10 or 20 years. 1 (57m 10s): Yeah. I mean for us it’s, I mean we, it was 20 year span and then then basically a 10 year span. You know, I’d like to get us in the rotation. Some countries are in the rotation ’cause they’re nationally set up. Oh, 0 (57m 22s): Like who are those? Like Czech 1 (57m 23s): Republic? The Czech Republic, just, they could host a world championship every year if they wanted to. They just have a natural set of venues that they use all the time. Of course that gets kind of old, ’cause you just get really good at fishing that water. The, the, the really hard thing about the United States is that we’re such a big country relative to many of the European nations at least. It’s really hard to, because, you know, most places we don’t have water. You know, the water rights situation in America is very different than the water rights situation in Europe. They could literally just close the water for the world championships for the most part. We can’t do that out here. So we’ve gotta be really careful. And again, I’m trying to be very deliberate about the waters we’ve selected so that we’re not stepping anybody’s toes and we wanna be respectful. I’ll be doing hopefully a series of introductions to this local trout and limited chapters and any other interested angling parties. 1 (58m 10s): I’ll be having some conversations with them. I, I’d like to get as many volunteers and as much support as we can. 0 (58m 14s): Sure, yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. No, it’s good. I’m excited. I think this is gonna be a lot of fun. And we will, like we said, maybe remind us again, where is that best place that we should send people to if they want to? Yeah, 1 (58m 24s): Yeah. It’s the, so there’s, again, there’s two places. One is the Phipps Moosh website and another one is the US angling.org. If you check on the Women’s Fly Fishing team and the Youth Fly Fishing team, you should be able to find a link there to the World Fly Fishing Championships where you can volunteer. Also, you should check out our cool logo. We just got this completed a couple weeks back. So I, I think our logo’s really sweet, lots of symbolisms in it. We’ve got like cutthroat trout, we’ve got like the gold triangle, we’ve got little pins for the little stars for the different venues, little red, white, and blue. It’s a, it’s a great looking logo, so take, take a check on that. I, as we get closer, we’ll probably have some world championship stuff that’s for sale for people if they’re interested in buying things like that. 1 (59m 6s): But really wanna create as much excitement about this event as possible. I think there’s a lot of naysayers out there in the, that don’t like competitive fly fishing. I guess maybe some of my parting thoughts would be, Hey, look, we just want to fish and most of us just want to get better. Anything you do in life that’s worth doing, whether you wanna lose weight or get better at, at riding a bicycle or shooting a basketball or playing pickleball, whatever. You go out and do it and you measure yourself. And I think that it just, in general, quote unquote competition, fly fishing is just a way to measure yourself against people. And, and also in those same ventures in life or those sports in life that you enjoy the most, again, people who ride road bikes, the reason why those road bikes are better and faster than they were 10 years ago and 20 years ago is because there are people who are willing to put forth the time, effort, and resources necessary to make the sport better, both in terms of equipment and techniques. 1 (1h 0m 1s): And I look at competition angling and fly fishing in this particular case as that same mechanism. And you know, I, there’s, I could walk into any fly shop in the country and look around at the fly selection, at the line selections, at the rods, the reels at the equipment. I can see in every situation where those anglers who have been willing to dedicate their lives to the sport, have brought that benefit to every other person in this country, in the world who’s interested in fly fishing. Again, while you may not like it and you don’t wanna do it yourself, I would encourage you to keep an open mind in terms of understanding that many, not all, but many of the advancements in the sport that we love the most comes from those people who are willing to compete and put their lives into finding ways and techniques and methods to make it better, easier, faster for them to catch fish. 0 (1h 0m 55s): Exactly. Well said, perfectly. Well, I think we’ll leave it there for this one. And thanks again for all your time and yeah, we’ll look forward to seeing you hopefully on the water there in, in 2025 and beyond, man. Yeah, 1 (1h 1m 6s): I love it. Hey, if you wanna show up and do interviews and fun stuff, we could set you up to, to chat with people while you’re there that week if you wanna show up. 0 (1h 1m 13s): All right, cool. All, all right. Glad we’ll be in touch. 1 (1h 1m 16s): Okay, thanks. Yeah, catch you later. 0 (1h 1m 19s): All right. If you have ever wondered about the events and what a world championships is all about, what it’s like now, is the time coming to near you in this country? If you are in the area or if you wanna fly in to check this out, volunteer potentially, and then watch some of the best in the world. You can do that right now. Check in with Glade, we’ll have some links in the show notes so you can do that and get information right now. And I hope you have a chance to check out some of our other events we have going this year with trips we’re gonna be heading not only to this location, but other locations out in this part of the western part of the us. So stay tuned on that. And I just wanna let you know we’re gonna get outta here right now, but I hope you have a great evening. 0 (1h 2m 1s): Hope you have a great morning or a wonderful afternoon wherever you’re in the world. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks for checking in with Travel today. I hope you can live that dream trip or just get off in your neck of the woods and explore and I hope you experience that road less travel.