Foraging along trout streams, with Sam Thayer
Podcast Transcript:
Tom: Hi, and welcome to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast." This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer. And this week's episode was pretty special to me in that I think it'll be special to anyone who is either a forager or who has walked along a trout stream, or a smallmouth bass river, or a spotted bass or Guadalupe bass river and wondered, "I wonder if there's stuff I can pick along here to take home for dinner." Sam Thayer, my guest today, is, I don't know, I think you'd call him the Lefty Kreh of foragers. He's written a number of books, he's a wonderful writer, and he's a real authority on edible plants. In fact, in our household where my wife and 18-year-old and I are all serious foragers. And, you know, the first place we go when we are looking for a new plant or when we want to check the identification is to one of Sam Thayer's books, not only to make the identification but to read more about the plant and actually read some anecdotes about the plant.
He's a wonderful writer. He has a new book out called "Sam Thayer's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: of Eastern and Central North America," which is an exhaustive, huge, thick, exhaustive guide to edible plants. And so, anyway, I really enjoyed talking to him, and it was an honor to speak to him. And if you are curious about stuff like that, and I know a lot of you are, I think you'll enjoy today's podcast.
Now, before we go to the Fly Box, I got a tip for you. You know, I usually talk about products or books or whatever. Now, I got a tip for you, something that I tried recently that's worked really well for me. When you're on a trout stream and you're trying to find out what's in the surface film or what's floating below the surface of the water, it's really difficult to find a net that will properly sample what's in there because of all the nets that I've ever used, little pocket nets, the water tends to flow around them. It gets this cushion of water in front of it, and the water flows around it, and it kind of pushes the bugs off to the side. Unless you kind of make an ark out of the thing, it's really tough to capture bugs. And so I discovered something recently, and this is not my idea, I've heard of it before, certainly not something that I was the first to do, but I've heard about using paint strainers to sample bugs, putting it around your landing net.
Well, I discovered that a five-gallon elastic-mouthed paint strainer that you can buy a couple of them for a few bucks at Home Depot or Lowe's or a hardware store is perfectly matched to the Orvis wide mouth nets. And, boy, this has been a game changer for me for capturing drifting insects. You put the net in the water, especially with a long-handled net, because you can get deeper in the water column, and you just put it down there. And that flat wide shape of that net somehow prevents this cushion from forming in front of it, and the water flows right through the paint strainer. The paint strainer is white, so when you lift the net from the water, you can really, really see the bugs that have been drifting in the water column. And it's great because you're probably going to have a net with you anyways, and this little paint strainer folds up. And you can stick it in your wader pocket, takes up no space at all and no weight, and they're inexpensive. As I said, it's a few bucks for two of these at a local hardware store. So I would highly recommend it if you're interested in that kind of thing, and you're sometimes flustered as to what the fish are feeding on during a hatch. It's a good thing to have in your pocket.
Let's go on to the Fly Box. And by the way, I didn't have any phone calls on the Fly Box this week. I'm not going to play any because I didn't get any. I didn't get any that I could use anyway. So if you have a hankering to leave a voicemail or a voice file, please do because I like to read a couple each week on the air, and I just didn't have any over the past couple of weeks to put in the podcast. They're all in emails this week. And if you want to send me a voice file or you want to send me just one in text form in an email, you can send your Fly Box questions to
"Hello, Tom. I just had a quick question on small streams. I recently spent a week camping at Brewster River Campground in Vermont over the week. When I arrived, the stream was moving faster, and the water was full of silt, and the bite was incredible. Over the days, the water cleared, and the current slowed, and the bite also slowed down. Now, my question is, with these small streams flowing faster with more silt, does it send more fish into a feeding frenzy, going after everything that has been stirred up, or is it they just don't have as much time to notice the food and they have to act quickly before it's gone? Great podcast. Keeps me thinking of fish while at work."
Well, Tom, that's a question I wonder myself, and I think you got a couple of things. I think that when the water goes up and gets a little bit dirty or when it's clearing, you know, when the water is really the color of coffee with cream or chocolate milk, fly fishing is tough unless you're fishing a big stream or something. It's pretty difficult. But as the water starts to clear or when it's first going up, I think stuff does get washed down and the fish go on to feed. Anytime food is more abundant in the water column, they're going to feed more actively, obviously. And I also think that they don't inspect your fly as well. Of course, fish don't really have time to inspect your flies anyway for that much time because the water is generally flowing relatively fast, even in slow water. If there's any current at all, it goes by them pretty fast, and they had to make a quick decision.
But one of the things...one other thing I think that makes these small streams especially easier in high water is that you can get closer to the fish, because, you know, small streams are generally shallow and clear, and the fish can spot you. And I think that in high water, it's a little bit easier to get closer to the fish. They can't see you as well, and they probably feel a little bit more secure with a little bit more water over their heads. So I think that's part of the story too, but I think you got two-thirds of it. And I think maybe add the fact that you can approach them a little quicker, and those are probably the reasons you had such good fishing.
Here's an email from Wan.
"Greetings from Wenzhou, a city on the east coast of China. I wanted to express my gratitude to you and Orvis for the continuous inspiration and support you provide to those of us who love our sport. As a Midwestern boy who grew up spin fishing for largemouth bass and sandfish in our family pond, I've always aspired to become a fly angler. A couple of years before relocating to China for work and to be with my wife's family, I finally had the opportunity to begin pursuing this passion. It has exceeded all my expectations and has brought me immense joy. Unfortunately, since moving to China a year ago, I haven't been able to fully indulge in this pursuit. Today, I have two questions for you, and I would greatly appreciate your guidance.
First, I would like to know if there is a responsible way for me to pursue trout in the Northeast region of the U.S. in mid-summer. I'll be in New Jersey for a couple of weeks at the end of July, and by a stroke of luck, I'll have a long weekend at my disposal. I would absolutely love to rent a car and drive to a location where trout will be biting. I understand that angling for trout in mid-summer is less than ideal, but I'm hoping to hear that there is a reasonably responsible way for me to do so. Secondly, assuming there are viable options for fly fishing for trout in late July, do you have any destination recommendations? Given that I'll be lucky to undertake this type of trip once or twice a year for the foreseeable future, I want to make it truly memorable. I'm willing to drive several hours from my base in New Jersey, and I'm not afraid to spend three days hiking or venturing in the backcountry to make the most of this experience. In fact, for a homesick country boy seeking solitude and adventure, there's nothing more enjoyable to imagine."
Well, Wan, yeah, and I can actually answer both questions in one answer. What I would recommend is that you fish some mountain streams. You know, the lowland rivers, the bigger rivers and the lowland rivers can get kind of warm during the summer, although we've had a very wet summer, with a lot of water. So we haven't had as big of a problem with water temperature so far this summer. But you know, the mountain trout stream fishing is always good. And July is actually one of the best months to fish these small streams. It's generally the most productive for me in the small streams here in Vermont. And you want to get up into a little elevation where the slope of the land starts to get pretty steep and you get these plunge pools, big rocky plunge pools. And you can find these kind of places in the mountains of Pennsylvania, New York, in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. So you know, I think any place in...or even in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts.
So any place where you have, you know, some mountains, I mean, we call them mountains here in the east, they'd call them hills in the Rockies, but you know, we do call them mountains, and they get some elevation. And there's a lot of springs up there, and they stay a little bit cooler. And you know, the fishing should be great in the small streams, provided they're not flooded out when you get here. And generally, just a big dry fly and some sort of nymph hung below that, a couple of feet below it, is going to do quite well for you. The pattern isn't really that important. So I think you have some good trout fishing till quarter two, but just make sure you get up a little bit in elevation and hike a little bit, and you'll find some great fishing for wild trout.
Here's an email from George from Pittsburgh.
"Wondering if you've ever pre-tied a hopper-dropper rig before leaving home to expedite your time on the water. Of course, this is premised on predicting the bugs in their familiar stream."
So, George, I don't because it's not that hard to tie on a dry dropper, actually. And you know, when I'm fishing dry dropper, usually fishing small streams, and I don't want to carry some kind of rig that I have to wind a dropper rig around, you know. I mean, basically, for dry dropper, what I do is I tie a dry fly in the end of my tippet and then I take another piece of tippet and tie the nymph on there and not really saving me. None really is going to save you that much time. So I haven't done it. I guess you could if you wanted to. And, yeah, you have to predict what kind of flies you're going to be using, and you may get to the river and find out that it's either higher or lower than you thought. And you might have to go to either a larger or a smaller dry fly than you pre-tied. But you can try it out. You're going to have to find some sort of rig to attach that dropper arrangement to. But you're really only tying two more knots on the water, and they're just clinch knots so it isn't that bad. But try it if you want.
Here's an email from Jim from St. Louis.
"I love your show and enjoy listening while I'm exercising or tying. Your calming experienced voice instills confidence. A few episodes ago, a caller had a question for the Fly Box regarding leaders getting stuck in his tiptop, an age-old problem. My good buddy Danny taught me this. Put a small bit of UV resin on the leader loop knot, work it into a football shape, and cure it. The leader then slips right through. It's easy to do and saves aggravation and time on the stream.
I have another tip for the Fly Box. Put your ego aside and don't be afraid to speaking with others who are having success. I was recently fishing the Henry's Fork and noticed a gentleman fishing on the other side, having great success. What caught my eye was his perfect casting stroke, that and how he was catching a lot of fish. So I walked around over the bridge to the other side. I then respectfully approached him and politely inquired as to his secret. He was generous in sharing of knowledge and even gave me a few of the flies he was using, the Iris Caddis emerger among them. Couldn't have been more of a gentleman. Long story short, when I got back to the other side, I was told that the man was John Jurasek, a.k.a. the originator of the Iris Caddis emerger and one of the most respected fly fishers in North America. I'm so glad I put my ego aside and asked another fly fisher about his success. A little serendipity on the stream made my day."
Well, Jim, you were very, very lucky. John is a friend of mine, and I share the same respect for John that other people too. He's one of the very best, and I'm so glad you had that nice encounter on the river. And thanks for the tip about the UV resin on the leader loop knot.
Here's an email from Chris. Well, they're all emails this week.
"Tom, thanks for keeping me company all those long nights of tying. Just a tip or hack I've used all my life. To keep my fly rods organized while in the car, I put two clothespins on my rods to keep the halves together and the line contained, one on top and one on the bottom. The clothespins have two grooves in them to accommodate both the butt end and the tip. They have very light bite and have never damaged a rod. I know other fly fishers see me take clothespins off and on my rods, but this little system has always served me well. Thank you, and best of luck on the streams."
Well, Chris, that's an interesting idea, and I never heard of that one. There's another trick that you can do that you can use to keep rods separated and keep them from tangling and keep the tip and the butt section together but still keep them strung up without using clothespins. And those of you who haven't seen this, if you go to the Orvis Learning Center and go under Video Lessons, and then go under the tab for Tom's basic tips and then how to carry a fly rod, I'll show you a tip there that you can use that won't even require a clothespin. So check that out.
Here's an email from Mervin.
"Your recent podcast episodes with Pat Dorsey and Steve Culton were very inspiring for me. I intently listened to both episodes twice, took notes, and went to my favorite fly shop to pick new flies the next day. I've forgotten about RS2s, and I have never used wet flies before other than emergers. So here's the story. Fishing the blue with the Steve and Pat-inspired podcast episodes, I set up my 9-foot 5-weight rod with a 3-combo meal. Per Steve's suggestion, I added a wet fly to my arsenal, and Pat convinced me to finally try Wooly Buggers. I had my Wooly on a 4X, the wet fly on a 5X, and the midge on a 6X. I was fishing my favorite tailwater in Colorado, secret location. I could not believe how much more action and the amount of large fish that went into my net. Ha ha, three. I would be lying if I told you I netted them all. I'm still working on the setting technique with this new method of swinging flies.
So I was having fun catching all sizes of fish. I just hooked a 4-inch gorgeous wild rainbow, which I didn't net. He was a feisty little bugger. I re-casted upstream, and as it dead drifted into the seam downstream, just before it was going to enter the swing, I felt a strong subtle tug. I gently set the hook just in case it was just a fly hitting the bottom. I didn't want to have the fly swing out of the lane. I hooked the fish, I saw a flash, and the fish behaved like a small fish, swimming erratically. So I tried to muscle the fish in, and that's when I realized I had a large fish on the line because he felt like a log. My heart started pounding. I haven't landed anything over 18 inches in a year.
As I exerted more force, the wild bow reacted and took me downstream, then into fast waters. I knew I was doomed. The tailwater is raging because the reservoir is at 100% capacity and has been releasing water into the tailwaters. In panic, I pulled hard trying to get the bow out of the fast waters. He flew up into the air just like in the movies, and that's when I saw how big the fish is. He looked about 22 inches. When he landed, he ripped my line down another 20 feet. I knew my line may break so I started to run down a bit. I chased him as far as I could, but I wasn't willing to jump into the next deep pool like Brad Pitt did.
So I stopped, and miraculously, the big bow decided to anchor down under the fast current just 10 feet before the next pool below. I had good pressure on him, and I was able to get the lunker to swim toward me into slower water while the wild rainbow swam calmly underwater toward me. This wild bow was within 5 feet from me, so I grabbed my net, and as I reached to scoop up the monster, my heart pounding, the fish spooked and ripped my line 40 feet into fast water. I wrangled him, trying to prevent him to go swim downstream into the pool below. He jumped 2 feet in the air, wiggling around. He landed back, and on the next pool, he ripped the line from the blood knot-tied tippet. The fast current and the large bow was too much for my line. While I didn't land the wild bow, it was an exhilarating experience.
On my drive home, I stopped by The Blue Quill Angler fly shop to pick up more wet flies. I am hooked. I love using wet flies now. Thank you, Tom. With that story, here's my question. I was gifted a 9-foot 7-weight rod. Could you please recommend your best streamer reel sinking line and leader? I mainly fish tailwaters year round."
So, Mervin, I'm reluctant to mention a good streamer reel because nearly any reel is going to be good for streamers. I mean, with streamers, you might catch a bigger fish, so the reel should have a decent drag. So I wouldn't go with the least expensive reel, and probably, you want a disc drag instead of a click-and-pawl drag for streamers. Although you could certainly get away with click-and-pawl reel. I do. But I'm not going to recommend a specific reel. As long as the reel will hold 50 to 100 yards of backing and a 7-weight line, then nearly any reel is going to work.
For a sinking line, there's two ways you can go. If the water is really fast and deep, I would go with a depth charge line, which is a long sinking section with an intermediate running line. That's going to get you down really quick in heavy fast water. However, if you're not fishing too deep, let's say you're fishing 4 feet of water or less, maybe even 5 or 6 feet of water or less, what you can do is just take a fast sinking polyleader, put it on the end of your floating line, and that will get you down and give you a nice little sink tip operation.
As far as leaders are concerned, with a sinking line, I wouldn't use a standard tapered leader. I would use just 3 to 5 feet of, say, 2X or 1X tippet material. Tie a loop on the end of the tippet material, loop it to your line or your sinking polyleader, or attach it with a tippet ring to a permanently attached piece of monofilament that's on your leader, and go for that. You don't need a tapered leader for fishing streamers unless you're fishing strictly a floating line. If you are fishing just a floating line with a sinking fly, with a heavier weighted fly, then I would go with, say, a 9-foot 2X leader. You want a longer leader when you're fishing a streamer with a floating line. So, hope those are helpful.
Here's an email from Austin from Alberta.
"I began fly fishing last August, and the podcast has been a wonderful educational resource, especially as so many of your guests come from my neck of the woods. I have a question about fishing during a particularly heavy hatch. It was just after and around sunset and a massive caddis hatch began on one of our large rivers during the peak. The caddis were so thick in the air, it almost appeared to be snowing. It wasn't. It was a warm June evening. As the sun fell, many fish started to sip emergers in shallow water, 2 feet to 6 inches. I tied down an elk hair and an emerger pattern behind it. It was able to hook one small 12-inch rainbow. However, I couldn't help but feel disappointed not being able to catch more fish. So my question is, when there's a heavy hatch, how can you or can you differentiate your fly from the abundant naturals on the water? And at that time, it almost seemed harder to get the bite than usual due to the abundance of other targets."
Well, Austin, that is true. That is definitely a problem when you have that many naturals on the water. You're competing with a lot of other bugs, a lot of other flies. And my suggestion for something like that is don't flock shoot, pick out one individual fish, try to gauge the rhythm of that fish, and try to get as many casts, as many super accurate casts as possible over that fish. Don't false cast a lot. A couple of false casts, put it right back over the fish, let it drift a couple of feet, pick it up, put it over the fish again, let it drift, pick it up, put it over the fish again, don't spend a lot of time with your fly in the air, and just try to get that fly over the fish as much as possible. Sometimes you can go with a little bit larger fly than the natural, although that doesn't always work. Sometimes you can twitch your fly to catch the fish's attention. That doesn't always work. My strategy is usually just get that fly over the fish as many times as I can. But it's tough. It's not easy. And you know, we're always wishing for a really heavy hatch, and then when we get a really heavy hatch, we're wishing for a little bit lighter hatch. But, yeah, it's a great opportunity and it's a great spectacle of nature to see something like that.
Here's an email from Jerry from California.
"I have an opportunity to fish for stripers from a boat in New England this fall, and I have a rod and line question. The rod I eventually want is the 9-foot 10-weight Recon, but I'm wondering if I can buy it with my current money as money is a little tight right now. I own a stiff 9-foot 8-weight rod and a high-end reel with an excellent drag. I know I might be under-gunned if I hook a big one, but do you think I can get by with it? I have a deep sinking fly line, but I'm wondering what you would recommend if the fish are busting or close to the top. Is the Hydros saltwater intermediate a good choice, or do you prefer a floating line? I realize owning both would be ideal, but if you had to pick one to complement a fast sinking line, which would you choose?"
So, Jerry, if that 8-weight is relatively stiff, I guess you could get away with it. The problem is fishing from a boat for striped bass...stripers are bigger than usual this year. There's a lot of 30-inch+ fish, and when you get a fish that size underneath the boat or close to the boat, you know, they can put a lot of pressure on the rod. And if you forget and high stick the rod, there's a chance to break an 8-weight, or it just takes a lot longer to play the fish. So, yeah, it'll probably work, but it's not ideal. I would never take an 8-weight boat fishing for striped bass. I would definitely use a 10 or a 9 at the lightest.
As far as the fly line is concerned, personally, I would use a floating line because, with a floating line, I can always use a weighted fly, like a Clouser, and get down a little bit deeper. But there's oftentimes when stripers will eat poppers and gurglers. And to catch a striped bass on the surface, they really pound a popper. When they're in the mood, they really pound a popper pretty hard. And it's pretty exciting stuff. And, yeah, with an intermediate line, you can fish a popper. You have to start stripping right away. And often, when your popper gets halfway to the boat or your gurgler gets halfway to the boat, the intermediate line starts to pull it under. And it's harder to pick up an intermediate line than a floater. So I would get a floater. If you got a fast sinking line, then I think a floater would be the next line that you should have for stripers.
Here's an email from Forrest in Alberton, Montana.
"I was listening to the latest episode this morning, and your question about park or golf club board members pushing for change spurred a thought. As Michael Miller pointed out, many turf gear companies apply neonics. I have read that lawn care uses more pesticides and herbicides per acre than agricultural crops. If people are interested, Beyond Pesticides is a good resource. Many urban and suburban areas' storm water goes directly into these streams and rivers. If we, as individuals, limit the amount of contaminants that enter these run-off streams by adopting chemical-free lawn care, that is one step in the positive direction. Going a step further is adopting landscaping designs that provide habitat for beneficial insects, and it's a visual way to increase awareness about insect populations as it may start a conversation with neighbors. It's a very big issue that will require pressure on politicians and chemical producers, but starting in our own backyards is one way to take action. Thanks for covering issues that aren't fun but need to be addressed."
Well, you're very welcome, Forrest, and thanks for the great ideas. Here's an email from Josh.
"First off, many thanks to you and the Orvis Company for all your fishing evangelism and environmental activism. I, and I'm sure many others, have learned so much about the sport and the issues its environment is facing. And you help me to become a more thoughtful steward of the sport. Keep up the good work.
I'm rediscovering fly fishing after a decade away. As a child and young adult, I fished primarily for trout, but since I've located in New England, I'm now focused on striped bass and other saltwater species. One thing I'm struggling with is the strip set. I'm fishing mostly Clousers and other baitfish imitations. I've found that I get the best retrieve by jamming the grip of my rod up into my armpit, which enables a hand-over-hand retrieve of quick 4-inch jerks into a stripping basket. However, I'm losing a lot of fish after the initial hook set when I'm trying to transition the rod out of my armpit up into my right hand to fight the fish. I'm using barbless hooks to minimize the impact to the bass, knowing that the stock is in trouble. Any tips on how to properly make the armpit-to-hand transition more effectively?
A quick second question regarding night fishing for striped bass. Are dark fly patterns preferred? At what light level do you usually want to transition from a light pattern, that is, a chartreuse and white Clouser, to a dark one? Any other tips on fly selection for night fishing? Thank you in advance, and keep up the good work."
Josh, I don't think it's so much the transition between under your arm to the fish fighting is that you may not be strip setting enough. So when you get that rod under your arm and you're doing a hand-over-hand retrieve and you feel that striper hit, just keep stripping. Don't immediately transition the rod from your armpit to a fighting position. Just keep stripping until you feel real firm pressure. And you're using a heavy enough tippet, you probably won't break that fish off. Just keep stripping until the fish starts fighting and the fish starts running, and then try to just smoothly transition, you know. Hold the line, keep it tight, don't try to get down the reel right away, and smoothly transition to that rod over head or rod in your right hand. But I think that you probably need to spend a little bit more time strip setting with the rod under your arm, and I think you'll get a better purchase on the fish doing that.
Regarding night fishing, I'm not sure how important the color is. Black is supposedly more visible at night, and most people prefer black at night. Although I've had really good luck with yellow and white flies well after dark. So it's more the silhouette. But what you want to remember, I think, is that when you're night fishing, you probably don't want to use a sinking fly, like a Clouser Minnow. The only way those fish can see your fly is silhouetted against the sky. And the deeper your fly is in the water column, the less chance there is that a fish is going to notice it. So you may not want your fly riding right on the surface, but you want your fly somewhere above where the fish are. Otherwise, it can't see it. So I would go to something, you know, that's unweighted like a Deceiver or, you know, any of the unweighted baitfish patterns. Lefty's Deceiver is a great fly. But you know, more so than the color, I think it's the weight of your fly and where it rides in the water column. So you want a floating or an intermediate line at night and a fly without weight. Easier to cast at night too, you know. It's kind of dangerous throwing a weighted fly at night when you really can't see where your cast is going.
Here's an email from Tom.
"Hi, Tom. I wade in the salt in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and I've been trying to improve my double haul with practice. I think I understand the mechanics of the double haul, but when should I start hauling in the cast? Once I've stripped in my line and I'm starting to cast again, should I haul on each false cast or just when I have most of the line out, or does it matter? Thanks so much for the podcast. I think that you're achieving the perfect balance with the Fly Box and great interviews about various types of fishing and conservation as a fly fishing resource."
Tom, you know, a lot of the problems from double hauling is, unfortunately, you need to improve your standard overhead cast before you can introduce the double haul. If your cast isn't great...if your casting form isn't great, all the double haul is going to do is make a bad cast worse. The first thing to do is make sure that you're comfortable with your casting and that your casting form is good. Double haul is not a panacea. It's just a way to increase line speed. And it's a little bit difficult here to explain exactly when, but it's at the peak of the power stroke, in other words, it's at the peak of the time when you're speeding up to a stop and then you drift back. And then, again, you haul at the peak of the power stroke on the forward cast.
I think the best thing for you to do is to go to the Orvis Learning Center and watch Pete Kutzer's fine tuning your double haul video, because he shows some good drills and methods of practicing the double haul on the ground before you start to aerialize it. So I'd recommend you do that because it's really difficult to give you help without seeing you cast and without visuals. Pretty tough here on the podcast. So keep practicing. You know, it's a lifetime of learning. The double haul is tricky, and you'll get it eventually. And, yeah, I would double haul on each false cast, generally, I think, because each one of those double hauls is going to increase your line speed and allow you to get a little bit more line out.
And finally, here's an email from Walton.
"Thanks for all you and Orvis do for fly fishing. I'm a pretty new angler with less than a year of experience in Colorado. Most of my fishing started in October of last year, so a majority of what I've been running is nymphing rigs. With that being said, the first few hatches of summer season are upon us, and I'm realizing my dry fly game needs massive work. I've studied some of your videos and tutorials, but oftentimes, I find myself struggling on the water. Either I get dragged trying to get across water currents or try to mend the line and send my tiny dry fly flying through the air, or I just can't get a good drift and have to watch my fly skate by rising fish as they pay it no mind.
I know it's a lot to unpack to ask you for how can I be a good dry fly fisherman. So I was curious of maybe asking you to narrow it down to three basic things to master as someone new to throwing dries that will help me enjoy my time out on the water. I'm eager to catch some good-sized trout on a dry fly this summer."
Hi, Walton. Well, if I had to boil it down to three, here are three things that I think, for someone that's starting out, are pretty essential for dry fly fishing. Number one is that the angle is important. Every fish, every different rising fish in the river might require a different angle. If the fish is in the same current as you are or the fish is out in the middle of the river and you're fairly close to it, then, you know, it's straight upstream presentation or upstream and across presentation, or if the fish is on the far bank in slow water and you're standing in faster water, it's often better to get upstream of the fish away. So you need to treat each fish individually, depending on the currents between you and the fish. So you need to look at each fish, you need to look at the currents on the water and figure out, "Where am I going to put my line where I'm going to get the least amount of drag?" That's the first thing.
The second thing is to absolutely learn to reach cast instead of using mends. The reach cast, again, is on the Orvis Learning Center. Pete Kutzer does a great job of showing the reach cast and showing some variations of the reach cast. But in my opinion, if you don't know the reach cast, you're not in the game for dry fly fishing. For any kind of trout fishing, really. So learn that. It's not that hard. It's just a variation of the standard overhead cast.
And my third tip is to use a longer tippet. The longer your tippet, the easier it's going to be to avoid drag because the mass of the fly line and the leader are what's dragging your fly. And if your tippet is thinner, thus, less mass and longer, it's going to land in a little bit looser coils, and that tippet is going to have to straighten out before your line and your leader can pull the fly out of the fish's lane. So I would use, you know, I mean, standard tippet is, like, 20 inches to 24 inches. You know, when you buy an Atlas tapered leader, tippet is usually 20 inches or so. I would use a 3 to 5-foot tippet when you're dry fly fishing. I know that sounds long, and it might be a little bit more difficult to cast, but a longer, finer tippet is going to really help you avoid drag. So I think if you pay attention to those three things, they'll at least get you a little bit more success fishing dry flies, and I hope it works for you.
That is the Fly Box for this week. Let's go talk to Sam Thayer about foraging along trout streams.
So my guest today is Sam Thayer, and if you are a forager, Sam Thayer probably is a household name. I know, in our household, it is, where my family is all amateur foragers, but we're pretty serious about it. And we have, I don't know, 20 or 30 different field guides in the house. But the ones we refer to, we keep going back to, and we enjoy reading are your books, Sam. So you are our guide to foraging.
Sam: Well, good. I'm glad I've been useful to you.
Tom: You have. And I should mention that you have a new book out, Sam Thayer's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, and it is an amazingly complete and exhaustive work. Having done a few how-to books in my lifetime, the work that must have gone into this book is just mind-boggling.
Sam: Yes.
Tom: Go ahead.
Sam: It was a long time. And, you know, I just kept telling myself, "Well, I have to," you know. Like, it's a compulsion. I have no other choice. I had to write it.
Tom: Yeah.
Sam: And so I just kept at it, as long as it took.
Tom: Well, you should be very proud of it because it's an amazing book. And if anyone is interested in foraging, it is the book that I would recommend that people get. Today, we're going to talk about foraging along trout streams. You're a trout angler, and you spent some time on trout streams. Tell us why trout streams are great places to forage.
Sam: Well, you know, I often tell people that when you're looking for a place to gather wild food, two things to keep in mind are looking for disturbance and fertility. And trout streams have both. So by fertility, you know, I mean all the factors that allow for plant growth, right? So in valleys, you tend to have soil and organic matter accumulating from the uplands that's moving slowly over time in the rain, and that's concentrated in stream valleys. And then, of course, you have water. So you have additional water over what's generally available on a landscape in the stream valley, often, spring-fed wetlands along trout streams. So you have a concentration of fertility.
And then disturbance. Well, disturbance is any event that kills plants, and if it kills plants, that means new plants will grow back. And periodic flooding in floodplains kills plants in three different ways. One is there's erosion, so new soil gets exposed. But there's also deposition, piles of soil or organic material laid down, and that kills the plants that it lands on and new plants get to grow on top of that. And then, finally, there's flooding that drowns plants and kills them or breaks them. So you have all these three kinds of disturbance that are very prevalent in and along trout streams, and therefore, you have a whole bunch of edible plants that tend to be more common in those stream valleys. Some plants that we think of as weedy plants, like cow parsnip and stinging nettle, are naturally adapted to floodplains, or milkweed and chokecherry, two more examples. They're adapted to floodplains and that constant disturbance, so they've done really good at coming out of the floodplains and living in human-disturbed landscapes. But the best place to find them is still these small floodplain areas.
Tom: Yeah. And you've mentioned a couple of my very favorite vegetables. One is nettles. People think, "Oh, my God, you eat nettles?" But they're delicious, and they're apparently very nutritious. And milkweed, which a lot of people think is poisonous. So I think Euell Gibbons mistakenly...you know, the forager of a previous generation, I think he said that milkweed was poisonous. And if it's poisonous, I've been dead many times over because I eat a lot of milkweed. Milkweed buds are perhaps my favorite vegetable. And I think we learned it from you that milkweed buds, when the flowers first start to...not the flowers come up, but I don't know what you call it, the flower buds, I guess.
Sam: Yeah, it'd be the flower buds. It would be the equivalent to a broccoli head.
Tom: Yeah. And it's delicious. It's absolutely delicious.
Sam: Yeah.
Tom: Let's talk about some of your favorite edibles. We're not talking about mushrooms here. We're talking about, you know, green plants. I mean, mushroom, a lot of people, mushroom, when they're trout fishing, they look for chanterelles or morels along trout streams or henback [SP] polypores. But we're talking about green plants here and tubers and things like that. So tell us what some of your favorites are that you're finding along trout streams.
Sam: Well, I mean, going through the seasons, in the spring, we get ramps, which are often prevalent along trout streams. Ostrich fern fiddleheads, again, very, very common in trout stream areas. Not as well known, but hops is very widespread in North America and is more of a northern plant, mostly in the northern tier of U.S. states and in the southern third of Canada, but that's a plant that also likes the disturbance of floodplains and is normally found along trout streams. And the young shoots of hops are excellent, taste sort of like green beans. And cow parsnip is very much an underappreciated vegetable. The young flower stalks, when they're, say, a foot and a half to...well, maybe a foot to 2 feet high, when they're, you know, still very tender, you can snap them off and peel the outer skin, which is a little bit stringy. And then you have this very tender, sweet, sort of lemony...it's like a cross between lemon and celery, the interior of the stalk, which is delicious raw or cooked. It could be used in stir-fries, put in soups like celery. There are so many things you can do with cow parsnip, and it's a really big vegetable. So it's easy to collect in large quantities.
Tom: Now, that's different from the invasive parsnip that I have a lot of in my yard, right? Cow parsnip is a native species.
Sam: Yeah. So there is cow parsnip, there is parsnip, and there is giant hogweeds, always get confused. So the parsnip or wild parsnip, that's just the escaped descendants of domestic parsnip, and it has a sharply angled stem and yellow flowers.
Tom: Right.
Sam: And so the roots of that are totally edible, just like domestic parsnips. Cow parsnip is a native plant, with a very large, you know...the leaf has three leaflets, but each leaflet is very large. They can be as much as 2 feet long, a single leaflet. And it has a hollow stalk that is round and a very large cluster of white flowers. Then there is the invasive nonnative giant hogweed, which is very similar to cow parsnip and very often confused with it. In fact, in many states that have giant hogweed problems, the authorities are also eliminating cow parsnip because that are charged with, you know, spraying invasive plants can't tell them apart. So they spray all hogweed and the cow parsnip. And so, in essence, it's somewhat of it could be a dangerous plant to collect because they're sometimes sprayed with herbicide, you know, depending on where you are. So those three plants are often mixed up.
Tom: Is the giant hogweed edible as well?
Sam: Yes, all three are edible, and all three will cause a rash if you get the juice on your skin and it's exposed to sunlight, it'll result in chemical burn. It can kill your skin cells. That's true of domestic parsnips. It's true of celery. It's true of cilantro. But not a lot of people go around with cilantro juice on their skin.
Tom: No. But I had some unfortunate weed-whacking experiences with parsnip. And I know what you're...
Sam: Yeah, I've got a lot of parsnips in my orchard, and every year, I get...in fact, I got a little parsnip rash bubble on my knee right now.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, that's nasty stuff. Nasty stuff. Okay, let's talk about some more. And you know, one of the things that people should know is people worry about getting poisoned or sick, or whatever. But something my 18-year-old has taught me, because they're a serious, serious forager, is that there are very few things that you can't eat out there. I mean, some we wouldn't want to, but...
Sam: There's not a lot of extremely poisonous plants where a small amount would be dangerous. However, the most poisonous plant in the temperate world, being water hemlock, is something you would find along almost every trout stream. And in some areas, certainly, where I live, it's extremely common, I mean. But again, you don't eat something unless you're absolutely certain of what it is and, you know, that it's edible and how it's used. So when you hear about poisonings that happen to people, they are almost always poisonings where people eat something having no idea what it is. And your listeners, I think, are probably intelligent people, pretty good common sense, and they're not going to do that.
Tom: Yeah.
Sam: And also, it's important to understand that serious poisonings are extraordinarily rare.
Tom: Yeah. Are there any edibles that look like water hemlock?
Sam: There actually are. There's several or there's a few that looks quite a bit like water hemlock. So that's this whole confusing group of plants that's more, you know, for advanced foragers. But there's something called Cherokee swamp potato which looks a lot like water hemlock. The root part doesn't, the part you would eat. But the flowers and stems do. There's also water parsnip, which is found along trout streams, looks quite a bit like water hemlock. It's sort of the perfect storm of a very toxic plant with several very similar-looking edible plants. And the roots of water hemlock, they look like a vegetable. I mean, they really do look like they should be something you can eat, but they aren't.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. It's like Amanita mushrooms. I mean, I know there are some edible Amanitas, but I'm not going there. I just stay away from it.
Sam: So along trout streams, you know, there's often pretty good berry picking along trout streams also, red raspberries, chokecherries, and currants. You know, we have black currants, and depending on where you are, in real rocky places, you get northern currants, which are just delicious. They ripen to kind of a medium purple. So in some of the steep rocky valleys in Northern Minnesota, for example, there's a lot of these currants...I'm sorry, I said currants, I meant gooseberries, northern gooseberries. Just delicious, and there'll be just loads of them along some of the streams. Was thinking of red currants. Also, red currants along the trout streams pretty much universally in eastern North America. They're very good, but they're a little bit hard to pick in quantity.
Tom: Gooseberries, I know I usually only find, like, one or two. You don't get a lot of them, do you?
Sam: Well, on. If you find a spot where it's rocky and full sun, you can get bushes that are just absolutely loaded.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: And, of course, this is the case with all fruit, you know. You can find a really lame, bad blueberry patch where you're not going to find many blueberries, and you can find the right conditions where you can just load up big gallons and gallons. So every one of these wild fruits tend to have a location where, under the right conditions, they might really be loaded. So I see the great gooseberry picking on steep rocky hillsides, often near water.
Tom: Okay. I'm going to look for that. What about some more lesser well-known plants that you might find along trout streams that are edible and delicious?
Sam: Oh, well, in spring, there's a plant called false mermaid weed. A lot of us who love it tend to call it hot mermaid. It's a slightly spicy plant, and this is a little, tiny plant that only has a growing season of about six weeks in the spring. It comes up in very early spring, and then it dies by the time the leaves come out of the canopy trees. And it is found in moist, mucky soil. In the Midwest, it's found along most trout streams. But it's packed. Where there's a little bit of accumulation of rich organic matter or a seep area along springs, it'll form a green carpet covering the ground. And this is like the most delicate, best tasting, leafy, green thing I have ever had. Like, it is the best thing you could ever put on a taco instead of lettuce.
Tom: Wow. I don't think we've eaten that. I'll have to look for that next spring.
Sam: Yeah, you'll have to check out in the book. It's listed under hot mermaid, and it is...you know. And there's places where it'll just carpet the grounds. You know, I'll just take scissors, and I'll just snip little patches here and there, because it'll grow, like, six plants to a square inch, you know, and they'll grow like dog hair. Very light green. Once you find it once, you'll start seeing it all over.
Tom: Okay. I'll look for that. Oh, you know, another thing I wanted to ask you is, you know, monarch butterflies are becoming threatened in a lot of areas and probably because of overuse of herbicides, I imagine, and pesticides that are insidious these days. But I feel guilty because I know monarchs eat milkweed, and I feel guilty about harvesting milkweed. Can you reassure me that that's going to harm the monarch population?
Sam: Yeah. Well, I'll give you three reasons you shouldn't feel guilty about that.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: One is the Northeastern United States and the upper Great Lakes, for example, where you and I respectively live, these are not the problems for monarchs. The problem for monarchs is there's a habitat bottleneck in their migration route. So basically, the Corn Belt is so intensively cultivated, and now, as you suggested, herbicide use is so prevalent. I mean, the proliferation of herbicide use in the last 30 years is the prime problem for monarchs. That's the main problem for monarch butterflies and many other insects we're not talking about. So that's where the problem lies. There's plenty of milkweed in most of the Northeast and the Great Lakes regions.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: Second of all, the monarch actually likes the young new growth of the milkweed. And so if you are harvesting milkweed shoots and then later on harvesting the flower buds, as you do, what you're doing is you're setting back the growth and creating new growth, you know, tender, young growth later in the season, which actually provides the monarchs with ideal egg-laying habitat such that the organizations that are promoting monarch conservation are actually recommending that people managing milkweed patches actually mow them in a staggered sense so that, you know, maybe mow a quarter of it in very early summer, and then three weeks later, mow another quarter of it. And that way, you're having rejuvenated growth that's ideal for monarch reproduction. As a forager, you're doing that already without being told to do it, and you're doing it in a haphazard manner throughout your milkweed patch, which is probably much more optimum for the monarch habitat than actually using a mower would be. So don't worry about that.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: And the next thing and probably the most important is when people eat milkweed, they start to plant and protect milkweed, you know. So I have several milkweed patches on my property that I kind of curate because we eat milkweed on a regular basis, and by doing that, we're guaranteeing that there's monarch habitat. And we do. We get a lot of monarchs in and around our house and in our orchard because I have several milkweed patches that I maintain. And so it is one of these things that you can have monarchs and eat your milkweed too. It's just like, you know, dog hunters maintain dog habitat, and they shoot some dogs, and there's more dogs because the habitat is maintained. It's a plus-plus.
Tom: Well, that's good to hear. I feel better about it.
Sam: All right. How about some more plants, some more favorites of yours?
Tom: Well, you know, there's the water plants, the plants that are growing right in the stream. You know, watercress is not native, but it's in a lot of trout streams. Anywhere you have a trout stream where the springs are coming out of limestone or high calcium soils, people long ago figured out that watercress would thrive in those waters, and they planted watercress in most such spring waters. And so here's a great vegetable. And one of the things about watercress that I really like is that it has a very long season of tender growth. And because it's not native, you don't have to worry about overharvesting it. Some people, there is a worry about watercress having liver fluke larva on the surface.
And so this depends on a couple of factors. If your spring water is colder than 50 degrees Fahrenheit, you don't have to worry about liver flukes on the watercress. It does not live in water that cold. If you're in a slightly warmer area where your spring water is coming out at, you know, 55 or 60 degrees, you know, and you're in an area with a lot of livestock, it's a hypothetical fear, but it rarely ever happens in North America in the trout fishing region. It's virtually unheard of. So it's mostly confined to the Gulf Coast in California where liver flukes would actually be on watercress. But if you're really worried, you can just make sure you cook the watercress or just take parts that are sticking out of the water. It wouldn't have the liver fluke larva encysted on them.
Yeah. So that's a great edible. And watercress is hot and spicy, you know, when it's fresh and raw. When you cook it, it loses about 90% of that spiciness, and then you can eat a lot more of it, and people usually like it a lot better. So if you like a little bit of that hot, spicy, radish-y leaf to put on a sandwich or something, it's great. But we will make watercress fire with onions and then mix it with eggs, for example, and that's very good. There's a lot of things you can do with watercress if you cook it, and it's something you can gather from early spring, very early spring, to early winter. So great, wild edible to learn.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: There's a native plant called brooklime, which is in almost all trout streams in North America, which is often being actually displaced by watercress. And the brooklime is traditionally a salad green used in Europe. And we have a native brooklime here, and the European one has been brought over. It's almost identical. And you can gather those greens as a salad green. They're not as good as watercress, but they're good enough that I still will gather them, you know. I see them several times a year. And there's also a plant called...well, I call it spring water parsnip. It's a little bit confusing, goes by a number of names. Some books will call it water parsnip, which a couple of plants go by that name, or call it erect water parsnip. In New Zealand and Australia, they call it water celery. But this is a plant that's found very widespread in the world. It's found in Asia. It's found in Europe. It's found in Australia, New Zealand, I believe, North Africa, and North America. And some of your listeners are fishing on trout streams that have it in there.
Now, this is one of these plants that theoretically you could confuse with water hemlock if you didn't look carefully at all. It's a carrot family plant, celery-like. But its unique growth format...the growth format is like watercress. So it forms mats in the water. It doesn't have a basal rosette of leaves. It doesn't have a normal root structure. It just kind of has these loose stems with small roots, you know, kind of forming a mat in the water. So it's very different than water hemlock. But this is like a very mild celery-like vegetable that is just in thick mats in many trout streams. For example, in the Black Hills or in Western Nebraska, a lot of places in the Rocky Mountains, you know, I don't think you have it as far east as where you live, but that's another great trout stream edible.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: I'm supposed to be going on and on. Did you have any other plants that you had questions about?
Tom: No, just keep mentioning. You're giving me some more ideas here.
Sam: Okay. Well, you know, I mentioned ramps earlier, which, you know, are somewhat of a controversial edible. There's people saying, you know, "You can't harvest ramp bulbs. It's not sustainable." And I would encourage people to disregard that, and most people's sense of what would be sustainable harvest is reasonably sustainable with ramps. They are slow reproducers, but they're very effective reproducers. And this supposed research that says you can't harvest ramps, what they did is they just monitored the growth rates of ramps in very dense swamps and were like, "Hey, in dense swamps, they don't increase in density," which makes sense because, you know, you get to, you know, full clump and it doesn't get any fuller than full. But ramp harvesters all over the Northeast and the Midwest and Canada have been discovering for, known for hundreds of years that if you take a small portion of the ramps, then you can come back in five or six years to the same site, and they will fully recover under normal circumstances.
So these are onion-like plants, but they have a broad leaf. They're the largest of our North American wild onions, and they have, by far, the broadest leaf. And you can use the leafy greens as an onion-like flavoring, or the bulbs, or both, use them as you wish, as you see fit. But do not harvest the whole clump. That's a rule of thumb. I say, always leave a minimum of four good-sized bulbs. If there's only four bulbs in a clump, then you got no business harvesting them. But if there's 24, you can harvest, you know, 16 and leave 8. You know, a few years later, you're going to have 12 really big bulbs.
Tom: Yeah, it's one thing we don't have to worry about here where I live in Vermont because our clumps would be hundreds and hundreds. It's so weird. We just pick through them.
Sam: It's the same. It's the same here too. I mean, you know, it's the same in most places where people are harvesting ramps. There's just a lot of, I don't know, online ramp shaming going on, people saying, "It's not sustainable. You can't do that." Let's see. And so, you know, trout streams will often have very similar vegetation to what you find upstream, just a little more sunlight coming through along the stream. So you tend to get a lot of wintercress, which is another mustard, which is good in the spring. Somewhat bitter, but people that eat it develop a liking for it. And something that's really abundant along trout streams and not very well known is called sochan, that's the Cherokee name for it, or cutleaf coneflower. This is a plant that is very easy to identify when it's blooming. It has these head-high large yellow flowers with long drooping petals. You know, it's a sunflower relative. And you'd see it blooming in July or August along most trout streams in North America.
Tom: Is that the same as Jerusalem artichoke?
Sam: No. No.
Tom: No, okay.
Sam: So you know, it will sometimes grow with Jerusalem artichoke, but the big difference is that on the cutleaf coneflower, the petals droop. On the Jerusalem artichoke, they don't.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: I mean, they very distinctly have...they hang down at, like, a 45-degree angle. And then the center, the disc part of the flower on the cutleaf coneflower is...it's not quite cone-like, but it's definitely like a tall almost like football shaped to, you know, maybe compressed football shaped. So it's a bit out from where their petals are raised, droop off.
Tom: Okay.
Sam: And it's yellow. On the Jerusalem artichoke, you have a dark center that's flat. And then the petals spread out. They don't droop. And then that's just with the flower. Now, with the leaves, on this cutleaf coneflower, the leaves are deeply cut into three main sections, where on the Jerusalem artichoke, the leaves are shaped, you know, they're kind of triangular or ovate shaped, a narrower version of a cultivated sunflower leaf on the Jerusalem artichoke. So they are related, but they're pretty easy to tell apart.
So the cutleaf coneflower, this plant will have three different kind of types of leaves or sets of leaves in a year. So it has an early spring leaf and then the shoot, which grows up and produces this tall blooming stalk, and then that blooming stalk will die in late summer, and in the fall, it will produce...well, in the late summer when the stalk dies, it'll produce another leaf that's kind of very broad, and in the fall, it will produce these winter leaves. And you can eat any of those leaves when they're young. They have an interesting flavor. It almost has a slight, I don't know, aromatic pine-like flavor to it. Those folks that forage that would say it has an aster-like flavor, but that doesn't mean anything to a lot of listeners. So it's aromatic flavor but slightly reminiscent of pine but not piney, not like pitchy at all. And so you can eat any of the young tender leaves from sochan, the cutleaf coneflower, and the young stalk. When the stalk is a foot high, you can snap that off in late spring and peel it. The skin is a little bitter, but the inside is tender and sweet. So that's a really nice vegetable that, again, is available for multiple times throughout the year. And once you notice it, you'll start seeing it in many places. And that's found from Northern Florida all the way up to Southern Canada, from the East Coast all the way to the Rocky Mountains.
Tom: Now, does it have an edible tuber like the Jerusalem artichoke?
Sam: It does not. It just has kind of a tough knobby rhizome. But then you bring Jerusalem artichoke.
Tom: Yeah.
Sam: So you know, they're often planted, you know, in various places. So you see them on roadsides, but their natural habitat is river floodplains. So the Jerusalem artichoke is a sunflower, very closely related to the domestic sunflower. And it has an edible tuber. There's a lot of confusion around Jerusalem artichoke because there's a wild form and there is a domesticated form. And most people are familiar with the domesticated form, and the domesticated form sometimes goes feral, and you'll find it, you know, growing wild. But the domesticated form has a larger, plumper, and often a knobby tuber. The wild form has a longer, narrow, kind of finger-like tuber. They taste very good. The wild form, you know, has a thicker skin, and it makes you fart more. And many people do not want to eat Jerusalem artichokes because they just cause so much gas that it's uncomfortable.
So it's important if you're going to eat the wild form, you want to cook them very thoroughly, even the cultivated Jerusalem artichokes are often gas-inducing. But if you collect them in very late fall or early spring, they are less gas-inducing. And if you cook them very thoroughly, less so. I think they're a great-tasting vegetable, you know. So you'd find these mostly in sandy washouts, kind of open, sunny, sandy areas along small, mid-sized rivers. And they're very widespread but not often in huge patches on the smaller streams.
Tom: Yeah. We have a patch in our backyard, and it seems like the more we harvest, the better they grow the next year. I mean, they just expand.
Sam: Yeah. And that's actually quite true. I have experimented and found that to be the case. On most soils, if they're not harvested, they will actually die out. So they benefit from, you know, the disturbance of the deposited material and erosion in the floodplains, and they also benefit from animals digging up the tubers. And especially if there's any clay in the soil, if you stop digging the tubers up, eventually, the plants just disappear. And they seem to not be able to tolerate competition from Canada goldenrod, you know, the large common goldenrod in much of the country. And so they just die out and the goldenrod takes over if they're not dug up.
Tom: Well, we could go on and on, couldn't we? You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, the nutritional value of these wild plants as opposed to what we buy in the stores are being much researched on are they healthy or do they have more nutrients than what, you know, broccoli or cauliflower or zucchinis you buy in a store.
Sam: Sure. Well, you know, there are a lot of wild vegetables, and most have not been analyzed, particularly in North America.
Tom: Yeah.
Sam: However, the sample of those that have been analyzed is large enough that I think we can safely say that, as a class of foods, wild plans tend to have two to four times the nutritional density of similar cultivated foods. And so the USDA, if you look on the National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, they call the NNDSR, you can find, for example, domestic Asian persimmons compared to the American wild persimmons, and the nutritional density is, like, outrageously different. I mean, there's so much more of a concentration of vitamins and minerals in the wild persimmons, it's astounding. If you compare, say, lamb's quarters or nettles, which are two of the leafy greens that are analyzed by the USDA, it's just absolutely remarkable how nutritionally dense they are. And if you look at enough of these, you may start to conclude that maybe modern people living off modern produce are perpetually undernourished with vitamins and minerals because our ancestors would have been eating these wild foods exclusively, which are extraordinarily dense in vitamins and minerals.
And also interestingly, if you get outside of North America, there's a lot more research that's been done. So for example, in South Africa and in Botswana, the Sand People, there's been a lot of anthropological research over the decades on hunter-gatherers and their diets. And so most of their traditional foods have been analyzed, and you see the same pattern. Like, really, really high nutritional density in the wild foods. So I think it's a safe general assumption that if you're eating a lot of wild food, you're getting a very significant nutritional boost from that.
Tom: Yeah. And one of the points you make in a lot of your books is that we've lost so much knowledge from indigenous people in North America about what's edible and what's not. We just never paid attention to that, and we're suffering for it now because, you know, we didn't have that kind of cultural, I don't know what you'd call it, cultural acclimatization to wild foods.
Sam: Yeah. Well, you know, that's really important, Tom. In Europe, you know, the economic changes of the last 300 years were kind of internally generated. And looking back today, you know, a lot of European cultures, they're proud of their wild food heritage. And they've tried very hard to preserve it. In North America, it was completely different, and we had Europeans coming here and, you know, taking the land from native people and really kind of, like, an attitude that everything Native American sucked and this isn't worth preserving, you know. And so European settlers, unless the plant was very, very practical and really fit into or was very similar to a European plant that they already used, the foods were largely ignored and the ways of using the foods were largely ignored. And just as languages were lost, there also was a loss of a lot of food knowledge.
And what we see is that if you go further west in North America where settling by Europeans was later and later, there's more traditional knowledge preserved. There's a little bit more robust food traditions on most of the Indian reservations in western North America than in eastern. In eastern North America, there was a lot of displacement of people and a lot of eradication of native people from certain areas such that the food traditions of all the areas were totally lost and never recorded. And so that's what we're looking at in many parts of eastern North America. And it's unfortunate. So I've been trying to, you know, pick up the pieces left and see how much...and try things out myself to see what works and what makes sense.
Tom: Yeah. Well, glad you're experimenting and not me. Have you ever gotten really sick by trying a new plant?
Sam: I have once, and this is actually one plant that an old source from the 1800s mentioned settlers in New York and Pennsylvania eating a particular plant. And it wasn't a source I necessarily trusted, but I thought, "Well, I'll try that," and I had not a good experience. But it wasn't like I was eating a random plant and not knowing what it was, you know. And you know, there's inherently going to be mistakes in the old literature because it's easy for us to forget the English language has only been spoken in many areas in this continent for 150 to 300 years. So 150 years ago, we still don't have names for a lot of these plants. I mean, 150 years ago, we were just figuring out what we were going to call these things. And so the old literature has got a lot of screw-ups in it as far as plant names.
Tom: Yeah. Even, well...
Sam: But I've never had a bad experience from general foraging where I poisoned myself or got sick. That never happened to me. One time I ate way too many bearberries, and I got sick to my stomach. But you know, that happened to me with green peppers once too when I was a kid.
Tom: Yeah, too much of anything. Too much of anything. Too many ramps will upset your digestive system too, as I've found out.
Sam: Yeah. You can poison yourself on garlic, and you can poison yourself on horse radish.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. All right, Sam. Well, that's been a great introduction to, you know, hopefully, encourage people to spend more time looking around on trout streams or wherever they're fishing. You know, fishing isn't always great, and you have slow days. And I think the more you can enjoy out there while you're there, you know, you can bring something home to eat, you don't have to bring fish home to eat, you can bring some vegetables home to eat.
Sam: Or both.
Tom: Or both, yeah. Yeah, or both. Well, anyway, we have been talking to Sam Thayer, and Sam's latest book, which I highly recommend, is The Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: of Eastern and Central North America. Actually, any of Sam's books are great. He's a great writer. He's a fun writer to read, you know. It's not dry writing. It's very, very enjoyable, and you really make these things come alive. So thank you for all you do for the world of foraging.
Sam: Well, you're most welcome. That was my hope, to make it come alive for people.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. And you really have accomplished that. Thank you, Sam.
Sam: Well, thanks for having me.
Tom: Okay. Bye-bye.
Sam: Bye.
Tom: 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