How to buy a trout stream, with Josh Kling
Podcast Transcript:
Tom: Hi and welcome to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast." This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer, and this week we're going to be talking about buying trout streams. Now it's not about buying trout streams to lock them up in a private club where the fish are fed pellets and people easily catch big, fat, ugly fish. We're talking about buying a trout stream to improve the habitat to undo some of the damage that man has done to the streams, and then keeping those streams open to the public as a public resource. We're gonna be talking to Josh Kling from the Western Rivers Conservancy about projects that they have on both the Yakima River and the Big Hole River. Both of these are trout rivers that are near and dear to many of us and fantastic resources. And with the work of Western Rivers Conservancy, they're going to be even better. So it's a great story, it's great work that they do. It's an organization that I really, really admire and there's some very, very interesting stuff on what they're doing on these two rivers. So hope you enjoy this podcast.
And before we start the Fly Box, just a couple announcements. One is that when COVID started, we had to close our rod shop tours in the Orvis Rod Shop in Manchester, Vermont. And I'm happy to say that Rod Shop tours are now open. It's a fantastic tour. It's really amazing to see both the incredible machines that make fly rods and also all the hand labor. I think that there are about 32 different pairs of hands that touch an Orvis rod before it goes to you. So it's a great tour and all you need to do is show up at the Orvis Retail Store or the Rod Shop, which is right behind the retail store at 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday only. And you can take a Rod Shop Tour. So it's great that the Rod Shop is now open and we can share this wonderful resource with you.
One of the things you're gonna see in the Rod Shop is a pretty cool process. We call it parts interchangeability, which is kind of a boring description for something that makes it really easy for you to replace a section of an Orvis rod. So this is something that can only be done with Orvis rods. And here's how the process goes. You buy a rod and as soon as you get it, you should register it. It's fairly simple. Takes just a couple minutes. You go into your account on the Orvis website. And if you don't have an account, you establish one. And you register the rod in there. You put in the serial number and you put in when you bought it and then you're done. You save it to your custom profile.
Now let's say a year from now, you break the tip of that rod. You hit in a ceiling fan or you slam it in a car door or whatever. You go online. You go into your account. You pull up that rod. It'll be listed in the rods that you've registered. And you just order a replacement tip. And for a handling fee, they will then send a replacement tip or butt section or mid section or whatever broke out to you. And you can have it in as little as three days, you know. At the most, probably a week to 10 days. So, you know, the old way of having to pack up your rod, find a way to ship it and ship it to Orvis, and then have Orvis look the rod over and tell you how much it's gonna cost. And then, they have to repair it and send it back to you. Could take weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. With Orvis rods, you don't have to worry about that. It's a really, really quick part replacement thing.
And it's only because of the precision that our rods are made with, the tolerances are extremely tight and we're confident that we can send you a part that's gonna fit on your rod. In the old days, ferrules were hand-fitted, and this is what most rod makers do. They're hand-fitted and we could never guarantee that if we sent you out a replacement tip, it would fit your rod. So that's why you have to send the rod in, they have to try a couple of tips and maybe modify the tips a little bit to make sure that the ferrules fit. We've got such precision in our rod making now that we don't have to do that. So you're gonna be without your fly rod for less than a week. It's an incredible service, lowers the carbon footprint of the rod because you don't have to ship it back and forth and saves both of us time. So hope you appreciate that value that you're gonna get in an Orvis rod.
All right. Enough for the commercials. Let's do the Fly Box. And the Fly Box is where you ask me questions or you give me tips that you want to share with people. And sometimes I read 'em on the air. Sometimes I can't answer them and then I have to do a little research with some of my buddies. But it's fun to try to answer these questions. I know some of you try to listen to the question and then try to answer it. You pause the podcast and you try to answer the question and then see if your answer agrees with mine. That's a game that I know a lot of you play and it must be fun. And I have fun answering these as well. So I thank you all for the great questions that you send in every week. I really appreciate the help in keeping this podcast lively and vital.
Anyway, the first question is from Jeremy from Rochester, New York. This spring, I've been experimenting with my setup on the river to try to lighten my load, while taking advantage of different conditions and types of water. Last week, I left my 9-foot-5-weight in the car and took my 10-foot-3-weight that I had previously used only for euro nymphing. I also put a second reel in my pack with my weight-forward line that I'd normally use on my 5-weight in case I ran into a hatch. Fortunately, a hatch did start coming off, so I switched over to fishing dries with my weight-forward 5-weight line on the 10-foot rod. I was really impressed with how well it casted dry. I felt my accuracy was better than usual and I had better control over my mends and the rod protected the light tippet really well. There are a couple obvious downsides. It would be more difficult to use in a tight stream with a lot of overhang and it was a bit more difficult to net fish. Overall, I don't think these downsides outweigh the positives.
So my question is, is there some other reason I'm not thinking that I shouldn't just use this setup for all my dry fly fishing? I assume there's some tradeoff in the action of the rod, since it's primarily designed for euro nymphing and for a 3-weight line. But it feels like overweighting the rod with a 5-weight line helps balance that out. Thanks for your input.
So Jeremy, that's interesting. I've often overweighted, not often, but I occasionally overweight a fly rod one size if I know I'm gonna be mostly casting short and I want to bring out the action of the rod a little bit to making casting easier, make the rod bend a little bit. But going two line sizes like that, it's gonna slow down the rod. That's already a slow rod. So it's gonna slow down the rod and obviously you like that casting tempo. And the only disadvantage you're gonna have is if you do have to make a longer cast, I'd say longer than 30 or 40 feet, that 5-weight line might push that 3-weight a little bit too much and might overload it. It's not gonna hurt the rod at all, but you may just have trouble casting it distance. Other than that, if it works for you, then keep using it.
Nate: Hey, Tom. This is Nate in Denver, Colorado. I had a question as far as relating to fly sizes and weights of fly line. What I mean by that is more specifically to my 8-weight that I'm gonna be using next month back home in South Dakota. I'm gonna be using it mostly for chasing after largemouth and the occasional northern in the shallows. So I'm just gonna be bringing my [inaudible 00:09:35] 8-weight line, which is oversized for the first, I believe, 15 or 20 feet, if I remember right, to really turn over some of the bigger flies that I'm planning on throwing. My question is whether or not I'm gonna have any issues throwing flies that are from a size 6 all the way up to 1-aught, 2-aught or even 5-aught. I'm guessing this won't be an issue especially considering the couple of 2-aught and 5-aught flies that I have are unweighted. But I do have some 2-aught weighted flies as well as some 1-aught. And I just want to make sure that I'm not gonna have any issue throwing these with my 8-weight line. And so, as it pertains to that 8-weight line, is there a specific range that you would recommend I stay in? Like, for example, are the size 6 poppers that I have [inaudible 00:10:29] a little bit too small for something that large as the 8-weight? Any suggestions would be helpful [inaudible 00:10:36].
Tom: So Nate, you can throw any fly on that 8-weight, even up to a 5/0. But is it gonna be easy? Probably not. You know, a lot of it depends on, it's not so much the hook size as it is the weight of the fly. You know, if it has lead eyes or cone head or something on it And also, how air resistant is the fly. So what I would advise you is if you're gonna use a big fly, like a 1/0 or a 5/0 on that 8-weight, you want to make sure that you just try to make short casts. Don't do a lot of false casting and use a short, stiff leader. You're fishing for bass and pike, so you really don't need a long leader and you don't need a light leader. So make sure that that leader is short and stout. I would say, you know, even as heavy as 25-pound test or, you know, something around, I don't know what the diameter of that would be, but somewhere around 25-pound test would be best.
And, you know, if you want to know how easily you can cast those big flies on that rod, I would take a bunch of flies to a local pond and practice with 'em and see how easy it is. And then, you'll know ahead of time what the limitations on that rod are. But can you do it? Yes. Is it gonna be easy? With bigger flies, it's gonna be a little tougher. You might be better off with a 10-weight. But you can get the job done if that's the only rod you have.
Okay. Let's do another email. This one's from Jimmy. I'm a relatively new fly fisher with about one year of experience and had something interested happen to me this weekend. I was fishing a dry dropper on small streams pretty much all weekend, specifically a size 16 Parachute Adams with a size 20 Zebra Midge dropper, about 1 to 5 feet of tippet between the flies. On Saturday, I had a small brown rise almost as soon as my dry fly hit the water. Once I got him into the net, I realized I didn't even have him hooked on my Adams. He was hooked by my Midge dropper in his tail. Similarly, on Sunday, the same thing happened on a different stream with a slightly larger brown. He rose on my Adams and when I went to set the hook, I must have snagged him with my Midge. To be clear, I don't want this to happen and felt bad seeing how the fish were hooked as I pulled them in. Do you think these two snags were just a fluke? It's never happened to me before, but having it happen twice in one weekend has me wondering if there's something I could do differently. Thanks for all you do. I appreciate very episode.
So Jimmy, yeah, it happens and it happens to me fair amount, particularly with small brook trout in mountain streams, and I fish a dry dropper a lot. And yeah, I do occasionally foul hook a fish. So here are a couple of tips. One is that those fish were probably rising to the Adams, but not taking it. It was either maybe a little bit too big or maybe it was dragging a little bit, and they were coming up and refusing it. But it looks like a rise and when you set the hook, the trailing nymph hooked them in the tail or wherever. And it does happen. So couple things you can do. One is to examine the dry fly you're using and think, "Maybe I should try a little bit different pattern that the fish will take a little better." So maybe the fly wasn't quite right.
The other thing is make sure that the Midge or the nymph that you use under the dry fly has a barbless hook so you can get it out of their tail or their pectoral fin or wherever you foul hook 'em easier. And then, you know, usually don't fish a long dropper on, a dry dropper on small streams, but you might want to put a longer dropper on there. The longer dropper will, you know, the more distance there is between your dry fly and your nymph, the less chance that you will foul hook the fish. So it's gonna happen. Try those things and hopefully it won't happen too often.
Jason: Hey, Tom. Just a few questions. One is what is, like, the life of a nylon spool tippet? The only UV it sees is just hanging off of my pack while I'm out fishing, but otherwise I keep it stored away from any light. Two is I use a method where I break my rod into two sections and reel up the fly line and just kind of, like, lightly wrap the fly line around the two sections of the rod. And I just keep that in a rod sock in the back of my truck so it's easily accessible during the week when I'm fishing on my lunch break. It saves me about an hour of rigging each week. Just wanna know if that's something that's okay to do, safe, doesn't seem like it's hurting anything. My fly line's not kinked up or anything.
And then, the third is a situation I ran into today. I started fishing to, I was kinda behind a bank, whatever, I thought it was bass crashing on fry, but it turned out to be carp spawning. And I realized they didn't want to have anything they do. They were pretty busy doing what they were doing. But there were some that were kinda resting or just kinda lightly cruising on the outskirts, and I was wondering if those are targetable fish, both practically and ethically. And if so, what flies and kind of presentation would you use for those fish?
And then, the other part of that question is trying to tell the difference between bass feeding and guarding on fry. I've noticed, it's a small urban lake and kind of this one little corner, there seem to be, I thought they were feeding on them, but I can't tell if maybe they were just kind of aggressively kind of corralling them up against the wall to try and keep them safe. But yeah, so my question is how do you tell the difference between those two behaviors and if they're not guarding the fry, which I'm assuming that's not really a good thing, to fish to fry guarding bass, but if they're not, would you use like a really big, intrusive, obnoxious fly to kinda get their attention or are you trying to mimic, you know, the really, really small bait fish at that point? Thanks a lot and love the podcast. It's been such a huge help. All right. Bye.
Tom: So Jason, nylon tippet does break down over time. I can't give you an exact time, but it can break down. It's gonna break down quicker if it's been near an electric motor that may give off a little bit of ozone that'll oxidize the tippet. And also, if it's been in bright sunlight or fluorescent light near UV light. If it's kept in the dark, some people keep their tippet in the freezer or the refrigerator over the winter. I don't know if that helps at all.
Here's what I do. For my lighter tippet, say, 4x through 7x, I replace 'em every year. I just don't trust 'em. But, you know, the heavier stuff, 2x, 3x, 0x, 1x, I don't replace as often because they're heavier and I don't worry that much about it. And you can test that tippet, put it in your hands and try to break it and see if it seems like it breaks a little bit too early. But yeah, nylon tippet will eventually break down. And yes, it's okay to keep that rod broken down in the car as long as you don't have anything heavy that's gonna fall on it. I do it personally all the time. And as long as you don't have any dogs jumping around in your car, yeah, it should be fine. There's no problem with heat or cold or anything else, as long as the rod doesn't get banged, you're gonna be fine.
Regarding spawning carp, you know, they're not all spawning at the same time. The ones that are jumping and spawning and chasing each other, you're not gonna catch them. Very, very rarely, you're gonna catch them. But there will often be some that are either pre-spawn or post-spawn that are gonna be hanging around, and the fish that I would look for are the ones that are actually tailing or mudding, you know. When a fish has got his head down at the bottom and is rooting around for his tail is sticking out of the water, those are feeders and those will eat. The ones that are cruising around are gonna be a lot more difficult to catch. As far as flies to use, you know, carp are different in every body of water and I would just get yourself some standard carp flies, you know, fly shops and Orvis sell carp flies, get three or four different types and try 'em out, because I can't tell you what fly to use. Depends on the food supply they have there.
And then, as far as bass on the beds, if a bass is sitting in one place and you can see a, usually can see the nest or the redd as a kind of a cleared away area on the bottom, that's usually pretty apparent, then you want to stay away from because they're actively spawning. But there will be other bass that will be outside of those spawning beds that are either done spawning or haven't spawned yet and they will be eating. And if a bass is chasing something around, that's sounds to me like a bass herding bait. And that sounds to me like a feeding bass that's not in the act of spawning. So I wouldn't hesitate to fish for fish that are maybe close to spawning beds. I wouldn't hesitate to fish for fish that are maybe close to spawning beds but are obviously actively feeding. And that sounds to me like bass herding bait the way you described it.
And the question of using a big, intrusive fly or a bait fish imitation is really gonna be up to you. The bass might take a bigger fly or they might be a little bit picky and want something that imitates the bait fish. I would try both. I would try one and then try the other. I'd probably start with the bait fish imitation that imitates what you see jumping out of the water. And if that doesn't work, then try a big, obnoxious fly and see if that works.
All right. Another email. This one is from John from Neenah, Wisconsin. Love the podcast. I'm writing in response to a listener question about getting the fly line connection out of the guides when not fighting a fish. One thing I like to do is to let the fly drift downstream and let the current gently pull the loop-to-loop connection out of the guides with the rod pointing downstream. You occasionally have to play around a little bit the rod angle, but it usually gets the job done. Hope this helps.
Well, thank you, John. That's something I should have thought of when I mentioned that before, because I often do that myself. And there are a couple people that mentioned this trick. So yeah, it's just letting the fly line get pulled downstream with the current and then pointing the rod downstream right at the fly line and you should be able to wiggle that knot out of the guide. So thank you for that tip, John.
Here's an email from Kevin. My son and I plan to use our kayaks to access some areas of local rivers too far or too difficult to access by wading. There are a few smaller rivers here where you can kayak but not legally fish from the boat. So we would exit the kayak to fish the areas of the river that look good. In the kayak and canoe podcasts, there seem to be conflicting recommendations about if you should float through the hole and then fish bottom up, or if you should stop before and fish down or try to walk down. What would you recommend in this method of accessing areas to fish?
Well, Kevin, I would stop before, I would stop and pull over before you float through a pool and look at the water and decide do I want to fish that downstream with a streamer or a swing a wet fly, or do I want to fish it upstream with a dry fly or a nymph? You know, it's gonna vary, really it's gonna vary depending on the water and how you think you can best fish it. And if you want to fish a pool or a stretch of water upstream and it's fairly wide, what I would do is quietly try to glide through the shallows or the places where you don't think there are any fish, and then park your boat and wade upstream. However, if the stream is pretty small and narrow, I wouldn't float through a pool before I fished it upstream. What I would do is I would pull your kayak or your canoe off to the side on the bank upstream of where you're gonna fish. Then I would walk the bank down, if it's legal, you know, if it's not private land, I would walk the bank down and then fish up. In a small stream, you don't have that much leeway and you might spook the fish by floating down through it. So, you know, it's best not to float or walk down through a pool obviously, before you fish it. So those are my suggestions but it's really gonna depend on the water. It's really gonna depend on what type of water and how you want to fish the water.
Here's an email from Pierce. Hi, Tom. I'm from the Driftless Area in Minnesota and regularly fish small tributaries of the Root River. I'm curious what your approach is when fishing the deep, slow-moving, mud-bottom pools that are often right before a section of rapids. Heavy streamer? Double rig nymphs? Curious what you have to say.
Well, Pierce, that's always situational. I would tend to, you know, if it's really deep, I would tend to fish a streamer. You know, in those slow-moving, mud-bottom pools, if the fish aren't rising, they're probably just sitting there because it's not really a good area. Those kinds of waters don't have a lot of insect life and the fish are gonna be able to get at drifting food much easier in faster water in riffles or runs or heads of pools or the tails of pools. But in the middle of those deep, slow-moving pools, they may just be sitting there. And if the conditions are right, a streamer might be something that will attract their attention and get a reaction strike. If a pool is really big and wide and you want to fish it with a nymph, you can do it but it's tough because often you don't know exactly where to fish that nymph. You know, in a riffle or a run, you have current seams that you can target. But in a deep, slow pool, it's tough because you don't really know exactly where the fish are. So I would tend to use a streamer or maybe even swing a wet fly through water like that as opposed to trying to fish it with a nymph.
Dan: Hey, Tom. This is Dan in Maine. I'm a novice fly fisherman and I want to apologize for sending in the ChatGPT AI questions as I fear I may genuinely have replaced some people. But that's neither here nor there. I have a question about an experience I've had in the last couple of days in the water. I've caught a few trout. I found a nice place where they like to congregate where I can be pretty stealthy and wade in the water, and they'll even swim right up over my toes and not even notice I'm there. And the last couple of days, I've caught a nice sized brook trout and a very nice, about 16-inch brown trout, both on a beadheaded Prince nymph. And the reason I'm calling is I'm really confused about their behavior. So I drifted these nymphs in a water, you know, just like usual, and it swung and I had nothing. And I started to strip the line back in and on about the second or third strip, I saw yesterday a brook trout come from the shadows and just smash it. And that was really confusing because I was bringing it back up current and it wasn't a natural movement for a nymph. And the same thing happened this morning. So I caught a really nice brown trout. I just was also using a beadheaded Prince nymph and floated it back, and it swung and I was on my third strip and it just came out of nowhere and crushed it, which was great. I mean, it was wonderful, great catch, he fought hard. But I'm wondering if you can tell me if this has ever happened to you or try to explain to me why they have this behavior. Because as far as I know, this is kind of unusual for them to go after a nymph that's swimming pretty fast upstream, which obviously is probably not possible. Anyway, thanks. I love the podcast. Have a good day.
Tom: So Dan, just because we call a Prince nymph a nymph, doesn't really make it a nymph. The fish decide what they think it is. And I'm thinking that, there's a couple scenarios. One is that the fish were just aggressive and they were looking for something to chase and they chased a nymph and ate it. Other thing is that there are some swimming mayfly nymphs that swim quite rapidly. Isonychia is one genus that's fairly common throughout the country. And those nymphs dart through the water. And the fish may have been feeding on those, so they're used to seeing them and they'll chase a stripped nymph.
And the other thing is that Prince nymph could be imitating a little tiny bait fish. You know, bait fish, when they're first hatched, are really, really tiny. They're about the size of a Prince nymph or even smaller. And so, stripping something like that, you know, we think it's a mayfly or a stonefly imitation, but the fish might think it's a little bait fish. So I don't know exactly why those fish took your stripped Prince nymph, but obviously it's working. And the other thing it could have been is a damselfly. If there's damselflies in that stream you fished, they can swim fairly rapidly. They have jet propulsion where they squirt a little bit of water out. So they could have thought it was a damselfly. Just because you're fishing a type of fly that you think is imitating something, the fish may think something totally different.
Okay. Here is an email from [inaudible 00:31:00]. Hi, Tom. For my 40th birthday, my wife agreed to let me splurge on a week-long fishing trip with my 70-year-old dad. Where in the U.S. or even world should we go? I live in Central PA and we have fished a lot of the streams in this area. We would like to try something different. We are in reasonably good shape and enjoy fishing for trout on small streams in very remote places. We do not need to catch lots of fish or even very large fish to have a great day. I would say we are intermediate level fly fishers. I feel overwhelmed by the options. Where would you go? Thanks for your thoughts. Love the podcast.
So what I would do is I would call the people at Orvis Adventures or Orvis Travel and ask them where you should go. Because you didn't tell me what time of year you're going, and that's gonna really affect where you go. And I hesitate to tell people where to go fishing, especially when I don't know when they're going. But these people, you know, I am not a world traveler. I mean, I've fished all my life and I've had the opportunity to fish some really nice places, but I haven't fished everywhere. And so, you know, there's people that have vastly more experience than me in all the fishing conditions across the country. And what I would do is have a conversation, either with the people at Orvis Travel or with someone in your local fly shop. And have a conversation about that and I think that that's gonna be much better than me trying to give you an answer here on the podcast.
Here's a question from Zach, email. I have a question about fly rod grips. I've noticed a big difference in the grip style and length that different rod companies use. On an 8-foot-4-weight rod, one company might use a 7-inch full wells style grip while another might use a very slim 6-inch cigar style. What are the pros and cons of larger and smaller grips, and what impact might this have on rod action? Is this just personal preference or does it have a big impact on action and rod performance?
Well, Zach, I think, you know, the grip size and the grip length and style on rods is something where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. It basically comes down to hand size. If you have a big hand, you're gonna want a bigger, wider diameter rod grip that's just gonna be easier to hold it and control it. If you have a slim, narrow hand, you know, something like a super fine or a cigar grip is gonna be better. But rod makers try to split the difference and get a grip that they think is gonna fit most people. Now lot of rod companies will do custom grip, so if you don't like the particular style grip they have on the rod, you may be able to reach out to them and ask them if they'll put a different style grip on it. It's usually a custom charge, but you know, it's often done, at least in rods that are made in USA where they have control over the production. I don't think the grip style has much to do with how the rod casts. You'll get people that'll tell you that this grip style or that grip style gives you more control or better casting or whatever. Personally, I don't pay any attention to it. I just use whatever grip's on the rod and adjust to it. But some people are very fussy about that, if they have really small or really large hands. It's mainly a personal preference and doesn't have much to do, I don't think, with the way the rod casts.
Here's an email from Taylor from Missouri. I had a question for you regarding rod inspection. Recently I was fishing my 9-foot-5-weight Recon on the bank for crappie near my home. It was a windy day and two times my San Juan worm with a 3.8-millimeter bead made contact with my rod. I know rods are strong and I have a warranty through Orvis, but I was wondering how you would go about inspecting your rod and what are some things to look for?
Well, that's a tough one, Taylor. You know, I've been in the same situation myself and what I will do is I'll, you know, put the rod together, string it up and then bend the rod, you know, into a fairly extreme bend. You know, the bend that you might use with a really powerful cast or playing a big fish close to you. You don't want to bring the tip all the way down to the butt or anything like that. But bend the rod, pull on it a little bit and see if it's okay. The other thing is you can visually inspect it and you might see an impact mark on the rod where there's a little crack or something, but that's often really not visible. So my advice to you is just fish it and hope for the best. And you know, wiggle it a little bit and bend it a little bit, but just go ahead and fish it. And if it breaks later on, then it's an Orvis rod so they're gonna make good on it. And as you heard previously, you can just order a new tip or tip middle or butt or butt middle section from Orvis, as long as it's registered.
Here's an email from Peter in Boston. I'm tying a bunch of nymphs for an upcoming trip. I need to tie the nymphs in various weights and sizes so I will be using brass and tungsten beads. I realize that's gonna be hard to tell the difference between gold brass and gold tungsten beaded nymphs after they are tied. Do you have a method or a strategy from telling the difference after the flies are tied?
Well, Peter, I don't personally because I only use tungsten beads. If I want a nymph that doesn't sink that fast, if I'm fishing shallow water, then I'll use a smaller tungsten bead. And if I want a heavier nymph, then I'll use a bigger tungsten bead on the same pattern. So I'll tie 'em with different sized beads. But, you know, in the old days, what people would do is they'd use a different color tying thread when they had weighted or unweighted flies when we wrapped lead wire on the shank, which some people still do. But when you wrap lead wire on the shank and you want to tell which one is weighted and which is not, people would often use red thread to tie that fly, so the flies with the red heads would be weighted. So you could use a different color tying thread for the brass and the tungsten, or you could put a little dot of, like, red nail polish or something on the brass ones or the tungsten ones to be able to tell the difference. But I think the tying red thread tip is probably the best one to use.
Here's an email from Bob. Hi, Tom. I've been fishing a mono rig leader on a 10-foot-3-weight since last fall and I've got a tip that could help anglers who like to switch between tight line nymphing and casting a floating line, which I keep spooled on the reel under the 25-foot, 20-pound or 8-pound Maxima Chameleon level leaders. Like Mr. Swentosky, I use an empty tippet spool or loon rigging foam to store my mono rig leader. The tip, instead of tying a perfection loop and using a loop-to-loop connection with my fly line, which would require the angler to unspool the entire leader before looping it onto the fly line's welded loop, causing a mess I've experienced a few times on the water, I tie a non-slip loop that travels around the welded fly line loop in a normal loop-to-loop fashion following the initial step of creating the overhand loop in the knot. The remaining steps of the knot occur after the mono exits the welded loop. It should be pretty straightforward to anyone that knows the non-slip mono loop knot and save mono rig euro nymphing anglers substantial time changing out the long leader with the minor downside of losing a couple inches with each change. I have seen recommendations out there that suggest using a clinch knot at the welded loop, but I dislike pinching my welded loop this way.
The question. From week to week, I've noticed that water levels of my local limestone creek tend to fluctuate outside the influence of rainfall. Any insight as to what affects how much water flows through a limestoner?
Well, Bob, first your tip. That's a great tip and I'm gonna try that myself. For those of you who don't know the non-slip mono loop, you can go to the Orvis Learning Center. It's quite an easy knot to use and it's good knot also for tying a streamer or something on with a loop knot. So it's on the Orvis Learning Center in the Animated Knots. You can see how to tie it. Regarding that fluctuation, I don't have any idea. Couple things I can think of. One is that, you know, the water table is gonna fluctuate, I mean, it all happens underground and we don't know exactly what's happening. Maybe there's snow melt happening somewhere higher in the hills. Or the other thing is there's a lot of communities use deep wells for obtaining their drinking water, or sometimes quarries will also take water out of the ground water to fill the quarry up, or pump water out of the quarry. But, you know, there could be there's some deep wells in the area that are affecting the fluctuating water table. But I am absolutely not sure what could be the case. So it's interesting though, interesting and I would take a look and see if there's any deep wells in the area and that may be what's causing the fluctuation.
Here's an email from AJ. I have a question about the history of backing in fly fishing. Last summer, my wife found an old Shakespeare fly rod with a Horrocks-Ibbotson Vernley Bakelite reel on Facebook Marketplace. We paid $25 for the rod and reel. The reel had a black line on it that is nothing like what we use today. After doing some research and talking to a local fly shop, I have determined that the rod was built in 1953 and I'm sure that the reel is from the same time period. I also found somebody else selling this reel as a 4-weight. There was no backing on the reel. When I put our weight-forward floating 5-weight line on the reel, there was only room for about 10 yards of backing. My question is when did people start putting backing on fly reels? This reel will probably be used for bluegill, so I'm not worried about putting a lot of backing on it and I'm just curious about when did we start using backing.
So that's a great question and I have no idea when we started using backing. And when I have a historical question like this, I go to my good friend, Paul Schullery who is, in my opinion, a premier fly fishing historian and he's my go-to guy for historical questions. And he now lives in the Manchester area, used to live in the West Yellowstone area but moved back to Vermont. And so, I will read you Paul's response because it's pretty interesting.
And here is Paul's response. As I'm sure you can imagine, like so much else in fly fishing history, the arrival of backing was a process rather than an event. You pretty much know the story. During the middle decade of the 1800s, there was a gradual transition from the old, long established horse hair lines to steadily improving silk lines. Horse hair had some advantages, but of course, was doomed to slowly fade out. For one thing, you couldn't really shoot a horse hair line and the rise of split bamboo rods and more appropriate snake guides empowered fishermen to cast a lot easier and make much longer casts. It was during the same mid-1800 period that anglers began to actually differentiate between the line you cast and the running line behind it. Anyway, on reels of sufficient size, backing lines became popular enough that by the 1800s, a 30 to 40-yard long silk line was typically backed by 100 plus yards of some thinner line of backing. And that was probably silk or cotton, I would imagine. Of course, these developments were concurrently reinforcing. Through the second half of the 1800s, better and better rods and lines required correspondingly better reels. It was a dynamic time of fly fishing technology evolution, no coincidence fly theory was undergoing a similarly dramatic revolution.
As for trout fishers, I don't know this for certain, but the larger trout reels of the late 1800s and early 1900s could accommodate some backing, which also may have served to provide a larger spool on which a fly line could be wound in looser coils. So any trout fishing situation that might require such tackle could easily have had it. And considering the great proliferation of sophisticated and essentially modern fly reels that came along starting in the 1870s, like with the 1874 Orvis upright reel, a blessed memory, especially the more commodious and now rarer wide-spool model, I assume some trout fishers had some backing at their disposal early on. Why not? There were so many sizes of reels available. I guess it mostly depended on how big the fish they sought were and what sort of water they were going to fish. So essentially, sounds like we've been using backing for a long time and we don't know exactly when but it was probably sometime in the 1800s.
John: Hey, Tom. This is John from Toronto, Canada. Got a question for you about fly rods and line weights. Seems like in the past 10 years, there's been this push from producers to produce faster and faster rods. We see a lot of marketing fast action, ultra fast action, promises of finally being able to cast 90 feet into a headwind. And with that, we've also seen a lot of line producers making lines that are, you know, a full line weight heavy or even a line weight and a half heavy. And I imagine these two things are correlated. I'm wondering if 5-weight rods are gonna slowly become 6-weight rods and if we're gonna have to adjust our benchmarks in the way that we think about matching line weights to fly fishing conditions. Is the determining factor for a line weight primarily stiffness in the rod or is it more complicated than that? Curious on your thoughts on this. Thank you very much.
Tom: So John, you're absolutely right. Some fly rods have gotten quite a bit stiffer and it's so funny. So the fly lines have gotten heavier to make the fly rods flex better, because a rod has to flex in order to build up some energy to make a decent fly cast. And rods that are too stiff are not gonna flex well enough and, you know, people, there are a lot of rod manufacturers that call a rod a 5-weight that I would call a 7-weight. And so, to think that you're fishing a 5-weight, you have to put an extra heavy 5-weight line on there, which is really not a 5, it's a 5.5 or a 6 or even a 6.5. So we're kinda playing games, I think. It's like how waistlines on pants have become a lot more generous than they used to be, you know. My waist is, I think my waist is 33 inches but I buy 32-inch waist pants and they fit just fine and sometimes they're a little loose. And this didn't used to be the case.
So we're kinda fooling ourselves. Orvis rods are not made with that philosophy. Orvis rods are really designed for a particular line size and they're designed within the standards of what a 5-weight, what the grain weight of a 5-weight should be. We've never built super stiff rods like some other manufacturers have. So if you buy a 5-weight rod, it's gonna cast really well with a 5-weight. You're not gonna need to overline it. Now you can overline an Orvis rod too if you want to slow it down a little bit. And the determining factor is primarily stiffness, John. There are a number of things that affect a fly rod's action. One is the load. In other words, how much does the rod bend under any given load. And the other one is the taper of the rod. Where does that bending occur? Does it occur more up toward the tip? Does it occur in the tip and the middle, or does the bending occur from the tip all the way down into the butt section? So that can vary depending on the taper. But the load or the overall stiffness of the entire rod is going to determine what line size that rod's gonna take. It's pretty complicated and I know I've done some podcasts with Shawn Combs, the Orvis rod designer, about this topic. But yeah, it's mainly stiffness over the entire length, not just in a particular section of the rod. So hope that clears things up. Might have made it more confusing, but I did the best I could.
All right. That's the Fly Box for this week. Let's go talk about buying rivers. We'll start again. Oh, boy. I'm glad I noticed that red button wasn't on. Well, my guest today is Josh Kling. And Josh is the conservation director for the Western Rivers Conservancy. And if you are not familiar with the Western Rivers Conservancy, I have trouble saying that, they do amazing work. They do really great work. Josh, as you were saying a minute ago, you punch above your weight. You guys, your motto is...oh, tell me again what your motto is?
Josh: Sometimes to save a river, you have to buy it.
Tom: Sometimes to save a river, you have to buy it. And that's how Western Rivers Conservancy works, finding places where there's a habitat that's endangered or I guess maybe there's no public access, and then you buy 'em and often you then transfer 'em to state or another organization?
Josh: That is correct. We always work with third-party stewards for long-term ownership and management. That's how our business model works. And our mission is to protect the best rivers in the west, and that means the rivers that either have the best functioning habitat now, the best ecologically functioning habitat now or the most readily restorable to pristine or near pristine conditions.
Tom: Great. So we're gonna talk about a...
Josh: And that tagline...
Tom: Sorry, go ahead.
Josh: The tagline, "Sometimes to save a river, you have to buy it," that really gets at how we fulfill our mission of river conservation and that's through land acquisition. So of course, you can't technically buy a river. But what that means is that we're buying the adjacent land, which often includes water rights, and working to conserve that. That's our approach to river conservation.
Tom: Okay. And we're gonna give a couple examples. We're gonna talk about two rivers that are near and dear to the hearts of many fly anglers, the Yakima and the Big Hole. Just to tell people, show people how you guys operate and these are current projects, right, that are ongoing.
Josh: That's right.
Tom: So let's start with the Yakima. Tell us all about what's going on in the Yakima.
Josh: Okay. Fantastic. Well, I love talking about both these projects. They're great projects. And the Yakima River itself is a wonderful river that flows off of Washington's Eastern Cascades down through the mountains. As it leaves the mountains, it enters this beautiful desert canyon here our project is located, the Yakima River Canyon. And from there, it exits the canyon and travels through a very long reach, through a broad plane that's largely dominated by agricultural operations. It's a very important economic feature in Washington State. And then, it eventually meets the Columbia River near the town of Richland. And the Yakima, historically, was a powerhouse producer of salmon and steelhead for the entire Columbia basin. However, decades of water withdrawals, habitat impacts, habitat conversions, the construction of six mainstem dams and another eight principle tributary streams have all resulted in a very large impact to the basin salmon and steelhead runs. The summer chinook, sockeye and coho that were once present have been extirpated from the basin and both steelhead and bull trout are currently listed as threatened. So there's work to be done, but a consortium of partners that include state and federal agencies, along with the Yakima Nation, are working to restore habitat, recover the runs and reestablish runs of summer chinook, coho and sockeye. And our project fits squarely within those recovery restoration efforts.
Tom: Now doesn't the Yakima have a healthy resident trout population as well?
Josh: That's right. It does. While the salmon and steelhead have taken some real hits and are now rebounding, the basin's native resident trout populations are very strong. As a matter of fact, it is considered the finest trout fly fishing in the entire state of Washington. And the best fishing is within Yakima River canyon. And that's where we have launched our project, where we purchased a ranch called Yakima Canyon Ranch, that is composed of 647 acres along four miles of the Yakima, right in the heart of the canyon. And most of that canyon is administered by the Bureau of Land Management and is managed as an area of critical environmental concern, or ACEC. And for listeners that may not know, an ACEC is a fairly stringent conservation management designation that's kinda like wilderness life. And so, it really focuses management away from abstraction and towards conservation of natural resources and fish and wildlife species.
Tom: So this is a private inholding within that federal land?
Josh: That's exactly right. And our intent and we're well on our way, our intent is to convey this property to the BLM for inclusion in the Yakima Canyon ACEC. And we are making great progress working with our partners at the Bureau Land Management and we anticipate to complete this conveyance in summer of this year.
Tom: Awesome. Now are there any habitat threats in that immediate property or is the habitat pretty in tact?
Josh: The habitat is in tact, but the ranch itself was under threat of home site development. As you might well imagine, be given this area's phenomenal fly fishing resource and its proximity, just being a few hours from Seattle as well as the city of Yakima, there's a strong demand for home sites in the area. And this 647 acres along four miles of the river could have easily be converted into home sites, which would have had a major impact to the habitat, both the aquatic habitat and the upland habitat. And while we haven't talked about wildlife in the canyon, the Yakima River Canyon is just as notable for its wildlife resources as it is for its fishery resources.
Tom: What's in there?
Josh: Well, it's interesting. The canyon itself, with its many crevices and cliffs, make a perfect home for the densest concentration of nesting hawks, eagles and falcons in the state of Washington. So the raptor habitat is really exceptional. And we've been talking about the Yakima Canyon ACEC but immediately adjacent to it to the west is the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's Wenas State Wildlife Area. And that is over 100,000- acres in size and provides really excellent habitat for game species, like Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer and California big horn sheep.
Tom: Wow. And I would imagine if this piece of private property hadn't been developed with home sites, we probably would have lost some public access to that particular area. Am I correct?
Josh: Absolutely. That's right. The property actually controls access to one boat ramp at Big Horn, for those that know the canyon. And that was a really important upstream boating access site. And conveyance of that access site to the BLM will ensure permanent public access, boating access to that reach of the Yakima, which we think is just a terrific accomplishment, and will also be guaranteeing access to trailheads and campgrounds further downstream on the property. So it's really firing on all cylinders in terms of excellent fish habitat, excellent wildlife habitat, and then also really important public access. We're really excited about the prospects of completing this conveyance this summer.
Tom: That is great news. That is really great news and congratulations on that.
Josh: Thank you.
Tom: I've never fished the Yakima, and I hope to see it someday. It's on my list.
Josh: It's a great canyon. The fishing's wonderful. I'd encourage you and all of your listeners, if you haven't been there to make the trip. I don't think you'll be disappointed. There's some great fishing resources in the canyon that you can find if you do a little searching, and if anybody would like to learn more about the project, then I would encourage you to visit our website, which is www.westernrivers.org.
Tom: Great. Yes. I would urge everyone to visit that website, to find out more about this and other projects that you guys have.
Josh: Yeah. You can find project briefings and maps and photos of all of our projects across the west.
Tom: Great. Now do you have anything else to add about the Yakima or should we move onto the Big Hole, because that's got two projects on it, right?
Josh: Yeah, that's right. I think we have done a good job covering the Yakima. Let's go to Montana.
Tom: Okay. Let's.
Josh: Yeah. Well, we have two, as you mentioned, we've purchased two properties within our larger Big Hole project. And I'm sure many of your listeners will know about the Big Hole. It's a legendary fly fishing stream. It's a stunningly beautiful location and it also has some of the best bird habitat in the west. So the Big Hole system is just a really exciting place for us to be working. And our work started there on the Wise River, when we purchased a 200-acre ranch called Eagle Rock Ranch, that controls very important water rights over 10 CFS of water rights to the Wise River. And the Wise River is one of only five tributaries to the Big Hole that provides cold water rearing habitat for the lower 48's only population of fluvial arctic grayling. It's a really, really important resource. And this ranch, with its water rights and its river frontage and associated [inaudible 01:01:55] habitat, is a really critical piece in the puzzle to keep that fluvial arctic grayling population from being listed and to help improve the population.
Tom: And I assume that water right is gonna all be kept in the river?
Josh: That water right will be dedicated in-stream. That's right, yeah. And that won't just benefit the fluvial arctic grayling. It will also benefit native westslope cutthroat trout and mountain whitefish populations. And of course, there's an incredibly popular non-native sport fishery for rainbow and brown trout and those fish will benefit from the habitat conservation and water right's dedications as well.
Tom: And the Wise River in itself is a great little stream. I've fished it and really enjoyed it.
Josh: It's such a pretty little stream. Yeah. I would encourage anyone that can get there to go check it out and bring your rod with you.
Tom: Absolutely. Absolutely. So what else is going on in the Big Hole area?
Josh: Yeah. And then, we have another property that we purchased that's on a different tributary stream to the Big Hole. This one's a little further up in the basin. We purchased a 317-acre ranch called Clemow Cow Camp. And this is a really cool property. It has two miles of stream frontage on these tributaries called Cox and Old Tim Creeks and they come together right at the downstream end of the property and they form Warm Springs Creek, which then flows down to the Big Hole and meets that river right near the town of Jackson. And while the Warm Springs tributary system provides really important cold water down into the Big Hole so it does benefit fluvial arctic grayling, but those streams themselves are not habitat for the grayling, but they do have a contributory downstream impact to helping to recover that population.
The other thing that I find so interesting about this property is that it's 317 acres, but 154 acres of that are [inaudible 01:04:12] wetland habitat. To buy a property of that size and have nearly half of it be wetlands is just really phenomenal. And that abundance of wetland habitat is actually something that you encounter as you move across the Big Hole Basin. The Big Hole, for those that have been there, they know that it has a very broad valley bottom with a wonderful meandering path, meandering geomorphology. And the amount of snowfall that accumulates in that area and that broad river valley, that topography, results in extensive leveling habitat across the whole Big Hole Valley. And that provides wonderful habitat, not just for grizzly bear and Canada lynx, but also for an incredible amount of birds. It's one of the most important bird areas in the west. So it's again, one of those projects that's really firing on both cylinders in terms of fish and wildlife.
Tom: Mm-hmm. Now the Big...
Josh: And our intent...Oh, I'm sorry.
Tom: Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll save my question.
Josh: Well, I just wanted to let your listeners know that with these two Big Holes projects, that both of these properties are inholdings within the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, excuse me. It's alluding me. And our intent is to convey both these properties to the National Forest. And we have secured funding to do so as we have for the Yakima project, we discussed earlier with the conveyance [inaudible 01:05:53]. Here, we have the funding to convey the property to the forest service and we're marching through our due diligence and queueing up the transaction for again, what we anticipate to be a summer 2023 conveyance.
Tom: Wow. Now is there any reason that the forest service would not take these properties on? Is there...
Josh: They have already indicated their strong support and we are mid stream in affecting these conveyances. So they are in lockstep with us. It's really exciting.
Tom: Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Josh: I was gonna say the forest service, on the Clemow Cow Camp Property, which also controls really important water rights, senior water rights, almost 3 CFS into these tributary streams to the Big Hole, and the forest service is gonna take a really innovative approach in how they manage that water. And instead of just dedicating it in-stream, which was kind of our knee-jerk reaction and that's always a great approach to consider, the forest service has come up with a docent idea that's related but what they're gonna do is flood irrigate the wet meadows in the early summer to recharge the aquifers and to allow cold water to gradually seep into the system. And then, they're gonna divert the flow directly in-stream by midsummer so that they can additionally add more cold water when stream flows are getting low and temps are rising and the fish need that relief, they need it at that time of year more than any time of the year. And we're really excited about this recharge at the beginning of the summer when there is a fair amount of good, cold water in the stream. And then, a switch to direct return in-stream when they start to drop and temperatures start to rise. I think it's gonna be a really exciting approach to water management.
Tom: They're using the beaver approach to recharging the water table.
Josh: That's exactly right. Yes.
Tom: Maybe they can encourage some beaver dams up there and they won't even have to worry about it. They can let Mother Nature take care of it.
Josh: Wouldn't that be swell?
Tom: Yeah. Well, I mean, anyone who's followed the Big Hole, anyone who loves the Big Hole and has fished it, knows that it's had its problems, especially recently, because of hot, dry summers and water withdrawal and a low flows and warm water. How much effect do you think these two properties will have on the Big Hole system?
Josh: Well, the combined contribution of the repurposing these water rights to benefit stream flows is over 13 CFS, from these two properties. And 13 CFS is a significant amount of water. It's a large system, much more of this work needs to be done to reach the shared targets for water quality improvement. But you can feel very good or one can feel very good about 13 CFS going back into the stream. That's gonna make a difference.
Tom: Yeah, 13 CFS of cold water is a big deal. It's a really big deal in the middle of the summer. What does the Big Hole itself, what's the CFS in the Big Hole in a low water year? Can't be, like, 80, isn't it?
Josh: Right around that. I don't have that number at my fingertips, but that's the ballpark.
Tom: Yeah, so 13 is a pretty good percentage of that summer flow. So that's incredible.
Josh: It sure is.
Tom: That's really incredible. So tell us what you might have in store. Are you looking at other areas, other properties in the Big Hole Valley to continue to help that river?
Josh: We absolutely are. I don't have anything to share at this moment. But we are actively prospecting for good, high quality projects that can really make a difference in the Big Hole system. And that goes as well for Yakima. And we actually do have a phase two project that we're not ready to start talking about. But we are actively mid swing with our phase two on Yakima. And maybe I can come back sometime in the future and we could revisit that briefly. And yes, we're prospecting in the Big Hole. And really, Tom, we are always hungry for projects, high quality projects that can really make a difference for river conservation. And we encourage any of your listeners, if they have ideas for things that we should be looking at, please, you can find my name, my phone number, my email on that website, westernrivers.org. But we have a network of resource professionals that we stay in touch with. We try to keep our ears to the ground as best we can and we're always looking for opportunities to protect the best rivers in the west.
Tom: And it sounds like you make things happen quickly. I mean, how long, like, for these two projects, the Yakima and the Big Hole, how long have you been looking at those properties? How long did it take?
Josh: You know, it's interesting, because real estate transactions take a long time. And so, for us, you know, if we start and complete a property purchasing conveyance inside of two years, that's a pretty good click. Sometimes it takes a few more years than that. But we often will be prospecting and studying and looking for opportunity in a basin for sometimes upwards of a decade before the actual opportunity comes to fruition. And Yakima Canyon Ranch is a great example, because we had actually made a run at that over 10 years ago and weren't able to make a deal at that time with that land owner. And it subsequently had changed hands and we were able to make a deal with the new land owner. But that was something that we had to stay after. Here we are, 12, 13 years in to sort of project inception. But in terms of purchasing it, we didn't purchase it until a couple years ago. And so, from actual activation of the project to completion, is sort of a two, three-year window. But this has been more than a decade's-long effort.
Tom: It's still pretty quick compared to a lot of projects that you could enact on a river, so.
Josh: Yes. Absolutely. And there's other basins where we have been looking for work, for example, on the John Day. We started looking for projects on the John Day in the '90s, and that's in large part because we try to follow the resource values. We want to protect the best or the most restorable. And the John Day has the best run of wild steelhead remaining in the entire Columbia basin and we knew that was a resource we wanted to work with. But we didn't end up finding a property and then were able to succeed in making a deal until 2006, when we started our effort to purchase what was then known as the Murtha Ranch, it is now Oregon's largest state park, Cottonwood Canyon State Park, along 16 miles of the lower John Day. That took almost 10 years to find that project and we purchased the ranch in 2006 and we didn't convey it to state parks until 2013. So that was a six-year start to close timeframe. So those are the kind of timeframes that we work in. We try to be very patient and take very long views in finding opportunity in the basins where we really want to work. And then, as soon as we sink our teeth into something, we try to move it through as quickly as we can. But that might be two years. That might be five years. Some project have taken 10 years to reach closing and to get to completion.
And we are just dogged and enthusiastic in finding these properties. And then, we try to move as quickly and as assuredly as we can to bring them into whatever the form of conservation that we realize. And what we're able to do for a project is really conditioned on what are the resource values that we're trying to conserve for the project, what is the funding source that we can succeed with in order to bring the project home, who is our stewardship partner, and those things...and a stewardship partner that shares our long-term conservation vision. And that's the kind of mix that results in the constellation for any given project. And every project tends to have its own slightly different constellation.
Tom: Yeah, I can imagine. How long has Western Rivers Conservancy been around, Josh?
Josh: Well, we started in 1988 as a program in another river conservation organization called River Network. And back then, we were known as the River Conservancy. And then in 2001, we spun that program off to become its own independent 501(c)(3) and that was the moment that Western River Conservancy was formed. And that work was done with our two co-founders, Phil Wallin, and our current president, Sue Doroff.
Tom: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's pretty young organization and you've accomplished a lot in a short amount of time.
Josh: We have been slowly and with great intent and a measured approach have been growing our programs and our staff. And we now have projects across seven western states. And we are building and growing our capacity all the time and it's a very exciting time for us here at Western Rivers Conservancy.
Tom: We need an Eastern Rivers Conservancy too. You guys need to branch out.
Josh: It's not a bad idea. We like to have focus and we chose to focus on the west, in large part because there's some really unique water use issues to the west and we all are westerners. And so, that's the right place for us to focus. But we really believe in our business model, our mission and our approach, and I think it could be well served on the east coast. We'll just have to find someone to do it.
Tom: It's a whole different scenario in that we don't have the same vast expanses of federal land or state land. I mean, we do have some, but it's not the same, not the same situation. But we could still probably benefit from an organization like yours in the east.
Josh: Well, thank you for that praise. And I would add that there are people in the east doing excellent river conservation work, there might not be an Eastern Rivers Conservancy, but there's some really exciting things happening with very dedicated river conservationists on the east.
Tom: Absolutely. I was just in a Trout Unlimited meeting last night and taking about removing some dams on the little trout stream that I...removing some culverts and some lowhead dams on a little trout stream that I live on. So, yeah, Trout Unlimited does some great work in the east.
Josh: They absolutely do and that's really exciting.
Tom: Yeah. All right, Josh. Anything else you want to share with us today?
Josh: Well, you know, Tom, it's such a pleasure and such an honor to be here speaking with you. I love your podcast. All of us here at Western Rivers Conservancy really appreciate what you do in sharing information and getting people excited and promoting conservation. So I just want to thank you for the opportunity to be here today speaking with you.
Tom: Well, you know what? It's what my listeners want to hear about and I listen to them and I give them what I think they want to learn about. So I'm just channeling their desires.
Josh: Gotcha. Well, it's all for the love of rivers and all the wonderful fish and wildlife species that are associated with them.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, those are great projects and Josh, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.
Josh: My pleasure. Thank you.
Tom: All right. I'll talk to you soon.
Josh: Okay. Sounds good.
Man: Thanks for listening to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast" with Tom Rosenbauer. You can be a part of the show. Have a question or a comment? Send it to us at