Ep 8: Secrecy in the Fishing World and Ascent Fly Fishing, with Peter Stitcher
Peter Stitcher is the owner and “Chief Fly Geek” at Ascent Fly Fishing, a company that focuses on helping anglers get prepared for the exact time and place they want to fish by creating personalized fly selections. In addition to discussing Ascent’s goals to help anglers, Peter also shares his PAUSE and MATCH methods for learning the insects in your area and finding the right flies to match. Then, we get into the topic of secrecy in fly fishing, and how we can all be a little nicer to each other online and on the water.
Website: www.ascentflyfishing.com
Instagram: @ascentflyfishing
Facebook: /ascentflyfishing
Twitter: @AscentFishing
Youtube: /ascentflyfishing
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Intro
You're listening to the Wild Initiative podcast network. Learn more and check out all the shows at thewildinitiative.com.
Katie
listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast where we talk all things fishing, conservation, and the outdoors. Today on the show I'm joined by Peter Stitcher founder of Ascent Fly Fishing. Alright welcome to episode number eight of the Fish Untamed Podcast. Today I'm joined by Peter Stitcher founder of Ascent Fly Fishing which many of you are probably already familiar with. In a past life Peter was an aquatic biologist but ended up taking his knowledge of entomology and fisheries over to start his own company which focuses on building customized fly boxes for a particular time and place. So you can place an order as a customer and he will go through the trouble of taking into account where you're going to be fishing, when you're going to be fishing, and then designing the perfect fly box for you so you can kind of take all the guesswork out of it. So this would be great for if you're going to a new place for the first time or you're just getting started in fly fishing and don't really know how to choose the right fly yet. So a scent can basically just build the perfect fly box for your specific situation. Peter also talks about his PAUSE and MATCH methods, which are acronyms that describe ways to identify which insects you should be imitating when you get to the water and then also which flies you should choose to match those insects. And then toward the end we get into a little bit about secrecy in fly fishing these days. Just kind of Peter's thoughts about it. It's a topic that matters a lot to him as someone who actively tries to get more people into the fly fishing world. So he really wanted to talk about kind of the ways that we need to be a little bit nicer to each other as anglers and stop being so tight-lipped about some things. So, without further ado, here is my chat with Peter Stitcher. Okay, so do you just want to start by telling me a little bit about your background growing up fishing and kind of how you got into aquatic biology for the first time?
Peter
Yeah, so it was actually my mom who introduced me to fishing. So young kid, gosh, I mean, probably three or four with a cane pulling my hands. We still have some gritty family videos of me standing over a little trout pond outside of Knoxville, Tennessee. And I mean, that excitement when I was catching that first trout, I feel like I still feel it almost to that degree and intensity today. So yeah, the river, the lake has always just been a place of joy and release and anticipation for me and so segueing and moving into aquatic biology was just a natural natural move for me a natural progression.
Katie
So did you grow up primarily fishing for trout and where did you grow up?
Peter
So yeah we bounced around a little bit but I spent most of my time growing up in the Midwest so it was a lot of you know bass and bluegill and some seasonal trout stocking but my grandpa when he retired he became a ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park and so we would Spend a lot of time in the summer going up to Estes Park Visiting him at the trailhead and I would get to explore, you know the St. Vrain the Big Thompson Fern Lake a lot of these these lakes that I now get a you know Equip my clients to go on fish as we're really where I cut my teeth and and develop my my passion and love for fly-fishing
Katie
It's funny you say that because I caught my very first trout on the fly in Sprague Lake up in Rocky Mountain National Park, so we probably have a lot of the same haunts up there.
Peter
Absolutely. Was it a little brook trout?
Katie
It was. Yep. I was so excited to catch it. I caught a couple that day. Um, before that I had only caught a trout on spin gear, just some rainbows. So that was my first brook trout and first trout on the fly. So definitely have a special place in my heart.
Peter
I mean, even a six, six inch brook trout today still gets me excited.
Katie
Absolutely.
Peter
Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, aquatic biology wasn't where I started. I was actually studying, you know, getting my master's in counseling and found myself, you know, looking at the clock and hoping either that my clients wouldn't show up so I could go fly fishing or, or ready for them to leave so I could, I could head back out to the river. And I realized that, you know, I should be, I should be fly fishing for a living and not, sitting in an office counseling people. So yeah, I find healing on the water and I think it's a great place for people to connect with each other and themselves and just find some, find release, find hope, find some silence. So it's an awesome sport.
Katie
So did you kind of switch tracks at that point and start taking classes more related to biology?
Peter
I did. So actually I went back and I got my third bachelor's, so I should have just, you know, looked at kind of where I spent all my time. I mean, all along I was skipping class for my first several degrees to go fly-fishing, and every time something good would happen, I'd celebrate on the river, or something stressful would happen, I'd skip class and go fly-fishing. So I should have just seen it back then, but I went back and went to Oregon State, studied aquatic biology, and then, you know, my first job as a biologist was surveying salmon water across the Pacific Northwest, living out of a tent and hiking up to these headwater streams in the middle of nowhere and just living with the fish, watching them, seeing where they live, what makes a healthy trout habitat, a healthy salmon habitat, just really immersing myself in their world. And I think, yeah, that's one of the times I was happiest, you know, way more, you know, in my own, in my element than when I was counseling people.
Katie
Now at this point were you already focusing on the entomology side of the fisheries or were you kind of you know a generalist or into the fish?
Peter
Right so as an aquatic biologist you know there are people like you know engineers and fluvial geomorphologists I mean all these you know these specialists that focus on river flow or river habitat and as an aquatic biologist, I'm more of a general practitioner as it were. So I'm looking at the types of sediment and you know what makes up the bottom of this stream. Is it conducive for fish to reproduce? I'm looking at you know fish passage and you know even going down to looking at culverts. Can fish bypass this or by this bridge or by this structure to get upstream and reproduce and entomology was certainly a big piece of what I looked at. So from healthy uplands and healthy forests to what's happening in that riparian zone like right along the edge of the river to what's happening under the water, the water chemistry, I looked at all of it. So but bugs, I mean from my youngest days, you know, catching the insects was something I loved and just yeah I really connected with just a core of who I am as an angler. I loved it.
Katie
Yeah and I feel like you know as anglers we do really we're really fascinated by the fish themselves because that's obviously what we spend most of our time chasing but you know it's hard to deny that that that's kind of built around a foundation of all the all the insects in a river that you you often don't think about apart from just you know what's hatching right now I'm gonna put it on an end of line.
Peter
Right and I think you know spending those first two years as a biologist living in the field with I mean just one eccentric partner you know but when the clock was done when we're at the camp at the end of the day I just stayed on the water with the fish and just kind of watching how they feed and and being out there you know year-round into Cascades and across the Northwest I got to see this cycle this life cycle and go back to these same rivers year after year and see, you know, I've seen this hatch, you know, three months from now or four months from now, but this is what that bug looks like now under the water and this is what size it is. And so I started to see these patterns and really bring that into my fly box and start tying according to what I was seeing on the water and how that shifted from season to season, from watershed to watershed, from region to region, and really put those pieces together. And, you know, what I thought was just a fun way for me, but as I've kind of taken this into the fly fishing world, I see that it's kind of a unique approach to the way that people fly fish as well.
Katie
So did you find that, obviously being an aquatic biologist definitely gives you kind of an upper hand when you go fishing, but did you ever find that your experience fishing kind of gave you a headstart on becoming a biologist?
Peter
You know, that's interesting. I haven't kind of, you know, reversed it like that before. You know, I think there's a lot of biologists, I mean, most of the biologists I work with, I mean, most of them do fish, but a large number of them didn't. I mean, that is -- that has always been my driver, the desire to catch fish, to catch bigger fish, to catch more fish. And then ultimately, that passion has shifted to helping other people experience that. But you know, I think it's made me a better biologist, because there's, there's a drive other than just the sustainability of these fisheries and the future generations of these fisheries. I want people, I feel like there's, it makes it personal, it makes people passionate about it when when they can catch it when they can touch it in a way that just observing it, you know, as a scientist, I don't know if that makes sense but I think it makes me a better biologist and I wouldn't be a biologist without fishing so it's it's just tied together in the fabric of who I am and yeah I can't see it separated.
Katie
Right you kind of have a little bit more skin in the game and kind of something more you know personal to to fight for when you're out there I'm sure.
Peter
I don't know I it's uh you know I I think that an understanding of the science and kind of the the interaction of a healthy neighborhood and what we're putting down the drains and how we manage the forest and what we do on the trail and how that affects our waters. I think that is going to create anglers that are become greater advocates for the river that are more responsible in their life around the water and in society. I think the science is going to make a
Katie
So at what point did you start to transition from just you know a straight up science role to to kind of more a helping other fishermen using the knowledge that you gained as a scientist and your start at Ascent?
Peter
Right so it's kind of a trial by fire just born out of necessity. My daughter, after we moved from the northwest Colorado to manage a lot of private water in the Aspen Valley and as a biologist you don't make a lot of money you have poor insurance and my daughter was like one and a half and we thought she needed a new kidney so it was you know we were hustling I'm picking mushrooms and selling them to restaurants in Denver I'm doing everything I can to make this extra money to pay for this and I had some friends that were going to fish a specific water and I'm like I did the entomological studies there Or, you know, on this river, I did the restoration work on that ranch just downstream. I know exactly, you know, what bugs are living there. And so, I started tying up some flies for these friends. And they go out fishing, and they come back and report that, you know, they're with X number of other anglers and these guys. And they outfished all of them. And like, hey, you know, I'm going here next. What should I use? And so, you know, hearkening back to what I did is that, you know, young biologist in the woods in Oregon, I started looking at those cycles, looking at how those trout feed throughout the seasons. I started applying that to a couple local rivers, started tying more and more flies. Ultimately, on a weekend doing that, I started making more money than I did in a month as a biologist. I thought, "There's something here. This is where my passion lies." We went all in in 2014.
Katie
And so at this point did you have a kind of a vision for what it was going to be and is it the same as how it's turned out or is it kind of evolved?
Peter
You know initially I mean we started with you know the focus that we wanted to you know take all this data put it into a mobile app that would empower anglers on the water real-time and ultimately that's where we want to go but Ascent Fly Fishing, you know, our kind of our biologist owned and operated fly shop has grown to just so much more than we ever could have imagined. In 2014, we had one manager, two fly tires, and you know, we're scratching it together. And now we have 40 full time fly tires and two factories and so much going on both here and around the world. Yeah, it's so much better and bigger than we could have thought. And we have an awesome community that has grown up around what we're doing.
Katie
Do you just want to describe quickly kind of what Ascent Fly Fishing is? You know, what the services you provide are?
Peter
Right, yeah. So I think, you know, we're a unique fly shop in that we are science forward, science first, and we are about empowering anglers with the education. How do we take the geeky things that I do as a biologist to study and build and manage and transform a fishery and break that down into little tidbits of knowledge and tips and rigs and the right flies that you can tie on the end of your line and have the best day ever, you know, every time you go out to the water. So we tie about 40 to 50,000 flies a week and we have about 600,000 flies in the shop. And what we specialize in is a client from New York or California or Texas can say, "I'm gonna fish, you know, the Beavers Bend River in Oklahoma, or I'm going to the Deschutes in Oregon, and I'm going to third week of July. I have $50. What should I fish?" And I'll, we've created this database of invertebrates, of the bugs that live in our waters, by region, by river, by watershed, by elevation. How does water temperature and snow pack and flows affect the life of these bugs? I mean, we do all this geeky stuff on the back end, but what we send our clients is a fly box that's loaded with the flies that match the families, the life cycles and the sizes of the bugs on the waters they're fishing, when they are fishing them. So when it comes to, what should I fish? they receive a box that has all of the aquatic life cycles, all the underwater bugs on one page of that box. And there's a midge row, a mayfly row, a caddisfly row, a stonefly row. And as soon as those bugs start to hatch, they come through the surface of the water, our client can flip that box to the next page. And on that same row are the dry flies of the midges, the mayflies, the caddis, each on their own row. So we simplify and we get them the right fly for their waters every time they fish them.
Katie
So this is a great time for me to ask about one of the topics I wanted to bring up because I've heard you mentioned it before and that's the flybox organization style that you use.
Peter
Right, yeah, so you know, gosh, initially you know clients bring in, still all the time, they bring in their boxes. I always encourage them, you know, bring your boxes to the shop so we can see what you have and if you have the flies you need I'm gonna send you out without selling you a single fly. I'm gonna point out this is what you need to fish today. I'm gonna drop a pin on Google Maps. You're gonna go here and fish it and you're gonna have an awesome day. So I like people to bring their boxes over. We see what they have. But most of these boxes are often just disorganized jumble of you know flies that they bought on the Bighorn and then some they bought on the Gray's Reef in Wyoming and a couple that that they got on this trip to California. So it's this niche match of hatches and life cycles all jammed into a box. And so we've created an organization method and some tools to do that. And so the hatch organization method is what we apply to every single fly box that leaves our shop. Clients order flies, we pack 'em in this order. So essentially, we load one page, a double-sided fly box, one page would consist of all the aquatic life cycles, what the bugs look like underwater. And this accounts for about 90% of the life of the bug and about 80% of fish feeding, you know, averaged over the year. And so just like a book on the left-hand side of this page that contains all of our wet flies, the left-hand side of that row is the beginning of the life of each of these different food groups. The beginning of our midges, we have our midge larvae, and as you move across that row, you go from midge larvae to our midge emergers. So you go from left to right across that page, you follow each of these food groups from the bottom of the river up towards the surface of the water. Next rows are our mayfly nymphs to our emergers, caddis larvae, case caddis and emergers, stone flies, and then on the bottom rows we have our eggs, our scuds, our worms, our streamers, kind of those other important aquatic species. Yeah this is where so clients can go to the water, they sand the water, they sample the water, they can pull a bug off of a rock and they can go right to the roe and the life cycle very quickly and throughout that day these bugs start to move. The water heats up some of them start to hatch, they swim towards the surface of the water and then we see the fish start giving us feedback. They're moving from maybe feeding on some of these wet flies to some dry flies. They're starting to fin through the surface of the water, they're starting to splash, we see bugs getting picked off the surface of the water, and that's our cue as anglers. It's time to change courses in the meal and we flip the box over. So just like on the wet side of the box, each row kind of represented a different family and food group on the water, you go back to the top row on this second page and there are our adult midges, our dry midges, and then our dry mayflies and our dry caddisflies and our dry stoneflies as we move down through that box. So again it's just a book. You know one page is is the breakfast menu, the second page is the lunch menu, and the intent of this is not to be OCD but it's to empower anglers to quickly get to the water, match what the fish are feeding on, and then just by running across drill in their fly box, they're staying in front of those fish as they're progressing through the day, through the courses in the meal. They're having a great time, they're catching more fish, and yeah, they're not buying flies that they already have in their box. They know what they have.
Katie
Yeah, I think that's a very important thing to address if you do have a box that's kind of disorganized, is that you may be looking for a fly that you have and not be able to find it or vice versa you might keep thinking you're out of a fly and keep buying more when when it's there the whole time and there's obviously many ways to organize a fly box but this is just a very logical you can get to what you need right when you need it.
Peter
And if you know the listeners have a method that makes sense to them and they've been doing it by all means keep doing it you know it's not about my ways not the right way but this is just what I observed you know years in the field just watching these fish feed and watching these bugs grow. So it made sense to set up my boxes like this. We've created a movie it's called Creating Order in Your Flybox and that's available on DVD or they can stream it online as well.
Katie
Perfect we can we can link to that in the show notes as well so people can just click that there and follow it. I did have one question about that this flybox organization style. I'm just going to use the example of Mayflies for example. So you're reading left to right and you're going from your smallest nymphs up to like a mayfly spinner let's say. But you've got a lot of different mayflies. So you might have some generic ones like some parachute atoms, then you might have BWOs and PMDs and drakes and all kinds of mayflies. So do these take up multiple rows? Do you organize them by, okay, the top row is going to be the entire life cycle of a BWO and then below that's a PMD or how do you handle that?
Peter
Great question. So I would say probably 60 to 70 percent of the anglers that come into our shop, they're probably like a single box angler. It might be a large box or they might have some of these little the little fly pucks that they get at the shop but most of their bugs are jammed into one box. So I encourage people you know be real estate poor and just really pack those rows with the flies you have as opposed to having six boxes you have to shuffle through on the water to try to find the right flies. If you do have more flies, like it sounds like you do, and I mean I certainly carry too many bugs with me on the water, you can dedicate this method and really you know flesh out one box that's dedicated to May flies. And so yeah, I will you know group together flies of a specific pattern. My pheasant tails are together, my jujube betas are together, my hare's ears are together. So some of those generalists, those flies like the parachute Adams and the pheasant tail. You can use that fly in a couple of sizes, maybe match 20 different mayflies on the water. It's just the Renaissance man of the river. And so, you know, I'm going to clump those together when we get to what I would consider a true fly pattern, some patterns that are tied to match a specific hatch. So like a PMD, I'm going to clump those those patterns together. But yeah, so within my boxes I'll have my green drakes clump together, my bluing olives, my PMDs, and then we have maybe a block of those generalists, like the parachute Adams and whatnot. And then there might be a block of kind of flashier, sexier attractor patterns, the royal wolves, the purple hazes, the humpies. They have that mayfly profile, wing and tail, but again, they're not actually matching a specific bug. They're just meant to stand out of the crowd and really snag the attention of the trout.
Katie
So the boxes you send out from Ascent, basically people can custom order a box to fit their exact fishing needs on an exact location and time. This isn't like a subscription fly box. This is a specific order tailored to the customer, right?
Peter
It is. It is. Right. You know, there's a lot of really cool subscription services out there, but potentially, I mean, could be getting flies for a hatch that's a thousand miles away from you and those flies aren't going to pertain to where you're fishing. So we can get we can get detailed. We can go down to you know this specific lake or region or or river for you know within these two weeks and we have enough data for some of these waters that I can even line out the flies by the half an hour of a day. It's so predictable and measurable based on the water temperature at that elevation on that water, I can tell you where in the hatch these flies are going to be. You can just change your flies by your watch. Most of us, though, are like, "God, I hope I get to go fishing this summer," or "Maybe I get to go out fishing this fall." For clients like that, they can say, "Here's my budget. I'm a beginning angler, and I just want to fish in Colorado and Wyoming, and I'm going to fish spring, summer, and fall. I'm not going to fish in the winter. So we'll take more of a 10,000 foot view and based on their budget and their preferences, we can get them the flies for that as well.
Katie
Yeah, and this sounds very, I mean, even like you said for the beginner angler who just kind of wants a head start on their fly selection, but also I think this is, it just sounds really useful if you're going on a trip somewhere that you haven't been before. And it's like, I know my fly selection, you know, on the money for Colorado basically year round, but if I were to head down to the southeast or on a saltwater trip or something like that. I don't know if you guys do saltwater flies, but I would feel completely lost in that situation and I'd love to have someone basically custom tailor a selection for me so I didn't have to worry about it.
Peter
>>TODD Absolutely. And yeah, there's no hard sells. We just actually bought out another shop. I'm in my office right now as we do this podcast and I have 1500 dozen saltwater flies right next to me. We are getting into that. But right now I have another client I'm working on. I'll wrap it up this evening. He ordered a $200 box for the South Island of New Zealand. So we have data for New Zealand, Patagonia, the entirety of Canada and the U.S. And then we're starting to get a lot of good data and bugs tied up for mainland Europe as well. So we're really trying to take the guesswork out and just help people get to the river with confidence. what they have, help them match it quickly, and catch more fish.
Katie
Now there's one more topic kind of related to Ascent that, well it's not really directly related to Ascent, but kind of the work you do in catering these fly boxes to people before we get into the main subject of the conversation, and that's your pause and your match methods.
Peter
Right, right. So yeah, it's about simplifying. So we found that it's easy, it's easier for anglers to have a couple kind of phrases or acronyms that as they approach the water, they can kind of recite this little acronym to themselves so they can quickly go through and look at the water and around the river and start collecting the data that's going to help them match the hatch. Where are they going to match the hatch and how can they do that quickly? And we've fleshed this out. our website we have blogs and videos and and a lot of good stuff that really goes into a lot of depth on this but our method is we encourage people to pause PAUSE before they match M A T C H and pause stands for the five points where the menu is written these are the five places that we're going to look as we're leaving our truck at the parking lot walking to the river as we move up and down the water throughout the day and that's where we're going to get this definitive menu and then based on that information that we collect in those five points how we're going to prioritize that is going to be matched. So let's work through PAWS first and yeah I'll you know stop me if you got questions but I'll delve into it. P stands for parking lot to the river and so matching the hatch starts on the walk we're not tying flies on at the truck we haven't even gotten to the restaurant yet so we have no idea what the in the parking lot. But what we're looking for are grasshoppers kind of evacuating the trail or ants and beetles crossing over the trail. We're listening to the chirp of cicadas and crickets and all of this is going to help to inform you know maybe these different terrestrials are going to be on the menu when we get to the river. What's stuck on the grill of our truck? Are there a bunch of grasshoppers on there? Well we were driving along this river maybe we'll be fishing grasshoppers. So we're listening, we're watching. As we get to the edge of the river, we're looking for the shucks or skins of those stoneflies that have hatched out of the water and they cling on to the outside of a rock or a boulder on the edge of the river and they leave that little crunchy exoskeleton there. That's a clue to us, maybe stoneflies are present. We're pushing our way through the bushes, we're shaking the trees to see what gets kicked loose. So that's P in our PAUSE method, parking lot to the river. A stands for above the water and from 200 yards away what I'm looking for are swallows, those small darting birds that are ducking and diving low over the surface of the water. And swallows at the surface of the water means a hatch is just starting or insects are returning to the water to lay eggs. So trout will rise after a fly to feed on it as it hatches, swallows will meet that hatch at the water and feed on these insects as they come off the river. That's a great visual cue dry fly actions in progress. Also our different families of insects mayflies have this very even wave-like dance upstream and then reverse course in this wave-like motion downstream. Caddis flies from a distance they swarm in this chaotic kind of cluster. No dancing, no synchronicity, just chaos. If you see chaotic swarms, you think caddis. And then our stoneflies are like a Black Hawk helicopter on a mission. Very straightforward, coming down hard and hot. I mean, you'll feel stoneflies crash land into you before you see them sometimes. So based on how those swallows are flying, based on how the bugs are flying, that's going to inform also what dry flies might be working. Parking lot to that inform dry flies as does what's above the water. How these bugs are flying and how the birds are interacting with the water. A, and then now we go to U, under the water. And sampling under the water, I can't like, you know, say enough how important it is to just stop for one minute, two minutes, and sample under the water. This is where 80% of fish feeding is happening. Right now, as we enter the winter it's going to be 95 % of fish feeding. So entire pages of a menu are like literally at your feet. You just need to bend over and pick it up. And so we use the River Oracle like SciFly Seine. A seine is just a fine mesh screen that wraps around your landing net. Push that down against the bottom of the river with your basket and this fine mesh net facing up into the current. And then you take your wading boot and you just crush it into the bottom of the river upstream. and you're kicking over boulders, you're really stirring up the bottom of the river. And in doing so, you're washing all the aquatic insects off the bottom of the river, up into the current, and they drift down to get trapped in the mess of this thing. So when you pull that from the water, you have this detailed menu. This is the most abundant. These are the sizes. These are the colors of the bugs. This is what is on the menu. It was just sitting there and it's super easy to pick up. So that's what we're really spending most of our time looking at and all of those bugs that we sample under the water are going to be translating to what's on the wet pages of the wet flies, the nymphs, the larvae, the pupa patterns in our fly box. PAUS stands for spider webs. Spiders know exactly what's hatching on the river. They've been sampling all night, all day, and if you have a spider are still hanging out in a web and insects that are still stuck in that web that's a very fresh sample of what's flying and hatching and hopping around the river. So we can hold up a fly box, our dry page next to that spider web. I did this with my daughter when she was four and she's like, "Dad there's 14 midges and one caddis fly in there." And I asked like, "Emily what should we fish?" She's like, "Well duh dad we should fish a Griffith’s gnat because she ties her own flies and she's four and she's no she she gets it. So what do the spiders have? That's what's hatching right now. That's fresh. That's on the menu. Let's let's tie that on. And then E stands for edges and eddies. So as a river wraps its way through a landscape we're going to have root wads and log jams and islands and boulders and just the curve of the river we're going to see these swirling eddies of foam and current. And what happens is they get, you know, this current gets trapped in there and within that current, all of the bugs that have tried to hatch or that have returned to the river to lay their eggs or have fallen in the river as they've gotten kicked off the shore, they get trapped in that swirling foam. So if we break that seine back out, sweep it through the foam, there's a great sample of the dry flies that might be working and that current and that eddy reaches all the way down to the bottom of the river kind of like a tornado. So we break our sand back out scrape it through the bottom of that current we get an extra wet sample of what's happening under the water. So that is the pause method that's where we we grab the data that's going to help us match the hatch and be effective.
Katie
That's just super important too because you know as much as I know that I should be looking at what's hatching and what's in the river I'm fishing, you know, it's so easy to drive up somewhere and just be so excited to get out and you're like, "I know what I fished here last time, I'll just throw something on," you know, at the trunk of the car and head down and, you know, it could be completely different than it was last time you were there.
Peter
Right. I mean, it is going to be completely different. I mean, you know, what I'm picking in my garden in the spring is going to be different than when I'm picking in my garden in the summer and in the fall and the menu changes in the river just as regularly. And I mean it's awesome to be enthusiastic and want to get out there and fish but I want people to have the best experience possible. And I mean local fly shops they're a great resource for getting some of that information but I want to build independent anglers. You know you when you give a what they say you give a man a fish you feed him for a day you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime well we're all catch and release anglers I hope but I mean it applies we want to teach people to fish so this can be a passion and a pursuit for a lifetime.
Katie
Right and it feels more satisfying you know when you get to figure it out there's you know there's something fun about showing up to the water and just immediately catching fish but it's also fun to have to kind of go through a couple of patterns and and then realize like oh that's why this one's working and the last three I tried did not work, you know, because you found something in the water that kind of keyed you in on what you were supposed to be fishing the whole time.
Peter
I mean, I agree with you. I think there is a unique satisfaction in engaging the trout and engaging nature and really coming down into it, into the trenches and being one with that. But I mean, I also, you know, I have no judgment if people want to take a guided trip every time and have people tie on their flies, that's awesome too. I'm just I'm happy to see people on the water, but I think They want to try it. They will find you know a deeper joy and and you know Engaging that out spawning that fish. It's a unique pleasure
Katie
And right before we get to the kind of the rest of the talk about secret spots. Do you just want to quickly go over the match method as well?
Peter
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean with the PAUSE method we've kind of reassembled this menu that's been floating around the river and flying around the river and we put it into our fly boxes, now we're looking at these these beautifully organized rows that are organized by half and life cycle And we have to determine out of all these hundreds of flies or if you're like me all these thousands of flies I have with me. What do I fish so? match MATCH of utmost priority first thing we're looking at is what was the most abundant? if we go into a restaurant and you know they say we have a hundred burgers today and we have one steak. Well we all might like to eat that steak but most likely if you look around and you know most everyone's getting a burger today. So we want to start by throwing the burgers. What was the most abundant? So if I'm looking in my seine and I see a hundred little blueing olive mayfly nymphs and then there's two big steaks. There's two big golden stoneflies maybe you know a couple big caddis larvae. What the trout are most likely seeing the most of and having the greatest opportunity to eat throughout the day is going to be those mayflies. There's more of them than everything else. So we're going to prioritize what we're seeing the most of. A stands for approximate size and profile. Each of our flies in our box have a unique profile to match the families and the life cycles that they're imitating on the water. A mayfly nymph on the water has short antennas and really condensed legs on the thorax and three distinctive tails on a long abdomen. Our mayfly nymphs in our fly box, the patterns, all of our mayfly nymphs are gonna have legs and they're gonna have tails or they're gonna have a little thickened thorax. They're very close in size and profile. So if we're seeing a bunch of size 22 nymphs, we're not going to typically tie on a size 12. We want to get close to what's actually in the water. We're not going to throw Godzilla out there. So approximate size and profile, again we're matching the profile of the bugs with those of our of our patterns. T, T stands for trout feeding behavior. Trout are savvy investors. They're going to be focusing their energy, focusing their time and where they're going to get the most calories back. Here we are entering the winter season. Most of our bugs have hatched, flown around laying their eggs in the warmer summer and fall and spring months. And as these bugs start hatching from the eggs on the bottom of the river or the lake, they are teeny. They are size 32. They are size 28. They're size 22 hooks. I mean they are minuscule. There's calories. And so, you know, trout aren't going to be, you know, fighting on the surface of the water chasing a dry fly in this season. Not only is there no, you know, very few if any dry flies, but the calories are small, they're on the bottom of the river. So, you know, we're going to be joining the trout where they're at. Trout are following the food throughout the day. And as a hatch starts, the trout will follow that hatch. So rarely, if ever, do you get to fish the same flies throughout the day, or rarely if ever do you to go back to that same river and fish the same flies with optimal success. The menu's changing. So we need to change with it. And the trout, the way they feed tells us this is when you move from nymph to a merger. This is when you move from a merger to that done mayfly breaking through the surface of the water. This is the cue that it's time to move from the done to that spinner returning to the water to lay its eggs. For those of you listening that think I was just speaking in Greek, like what the hell is a done? What's On our website we list the family species and life cycle of every single fly pattern. So you can search what's a bluing olive, what are the duns, and that's all kind of filtered out for you. But, so trout feeding behavior. We get to a river, we sample above the water, under the water, all around the river, but we don't see any trout breaking the surface of the water. Their feeding behavior tells us we're not looking for dry flies right now. Regardless to the terrestrials you saw on your truck or flying over the water, the fish aren't rising. They're still focusing beneath the surface of the water. So we would prioritize our under the water samples, our eddy samples. Those early life cycles on the web page on the left hand side of the row. So midge larva, caddis larva, mayfly nymphs, stonefly nymphs, etc. Trout follow the food. So first cue that the menu might be changing is we have a few dimples as bugs start to leave the surface of the water. We start to see that really unique flight patterns of those different species. And our different families of bugs will hold their wings. Our mayflies hold their wings straight up off their back, like a sailboat. Caddisflies hold their wings like a little A-frame tent over their back. Stoneflies' wings are flat to their back as they're on the water. We see these profiles and then we see the fins of the trout start to rise. They kind of porpoise, almost like jaws, right? You see the fins kind of cresting through the water, their snouts rolling through the water. That dolphin-like porpoising behavior is indicative of feeding on emerger patterns. So as they're porpoising and rolling, they're feeding the top six inches of the water column. And as these flies are struggling to break through the surface of the water, they're feeding in that surface film. So we go back to the wet page of our box, we move our finger across that row to our emerger patterns. We might flip over the page of our box to our dry page and on that left-hand side we might have some of those dry midge patterns that are breaking through the surface. Those may flies that are emerging into that first dry life cycles, the duns. So we're fishing right in the film and right under it when we see that dolphin-like behavior. When fish audibly start sucking and slapping and grabbing dry flies off the surface of the water, this is when we shift to those fully emerged dry flies on the end of our dry fly rows. And so yeah, fish are leading that dance. That's T, trout feeding behavior. We're following their cues. We're moving with them as they chase the food. C stands for color. So we start out by getting close and size, color, and profile. And you know if you were just to pick a rock up off the bottom of the river, all the bugs as you look down at that rock are going to look dark. They're brown, they're black. But if you were to put those bugs in a little sample vial, a little glass vial full of water, and you hold that up to the sun, the way that a trout is looking up off the bottom of the river into a blue Montana morning, you'll be able to see that all of a sudden that black nymph is now an opaque gray, when actually it's a light olive color. So we get a really true color match. But not only do we want to match that color and profile, there's a lot of food in the water. When I do samples on the upper Arkansas River in the fall, there's about, just looking at our blueing olive mayfly nymphs, one of our multitude of mayfly species, there's about 1,200 blowing all of them per square meter on the bottom of the river. That's a small section of river and there's 1,200 of these, this one food group there. And so we need our flies to stand out from the herd. And so by incorporating a little glass bead or a little wire wrap or a little flashback, by adding those colors that's going to kind of give that fly the impression of being like a you know or a wolf or a lion is going to attack that one that's outside of the herd, it's perceived as easy prey. Trout are alpha predators. So by adding that flashback, that little bead, the little wire wrap, we create the easy prey, the vulnerable prey, and it's the nature of that trout. Yet definitely, you know, mayflies are on the menu, but this one is the easiest one to catch. So it's their And H in Hatch stands for half an hour. How long do we flog the water if we're not getting strikes, if we're not getting flashes, we're not getting slime on our hands? I say reassess your presentation first. I'm gonna move my weights, my indicators, I'm gonna adjust my presentation and my drift 10 times before I change my flies. We have good data on the flies. user errors is the most common reason why fish aren't feeding. So if I'm doing all that right, I'll go back, reassess my sample, and then maybe change up some flies after half an hour.
Katie
And I can attest to that changing the presentation over the flies, just a quick little side story that I had a couple years ago with one of my friends. We were fishing the same river probably, I don't know, 50 yards apart and she was catching fish after fish after fish and I was catching absolutely nothing, no strikes, nothing. And so I went over to her and I was like okay let me know what you're doing I'm going to match your rig exactly. So we put the same split shot on, we put the same distance between all the flies, set the indicator at the same depth and I still wasn't catching anything and I could not for the life of me figure out what it was. Then I changed my indicator color and I immediately started catching fish after fish after fish. So something as simple as that for me, which normally I don't think too much about that, I'm more focusing on things like depth or how far apart the flies are, how much weight I have on, but in that case even switching the indicator color seemed to completely change my luck. And when she tried the indicator that I had had on previously, she stopped catching fish.
Peter
Absolutely. And I mean, that's the type of stuff that in our weekly articles and videos that we do, we talk about fish vision and fish definitely see purple and red and green. So slapping down a yellow or pink indicator, unless you're on a lightly pressured, you know, freestone big river, you're gonna, you're gonna scare every fish out of the tailwater. So clear indicators, yarn indicators, that's the way to go. If you're fishing that, that style of rig.
Katie
Yeah I used to think it didn't matter too much but now I just keep a handful of the the brighter ones in case I'm fishing you know chocolate milk or yellow ones if it's if it's really choppy but I tend to just go with white and clear now because of that and you know I don't know if it actually matters most the places I go but I figure it can't hurt.
Peter
Yeah no I think you know you're gonna catch more fish.
Katie
Well that's all super super helpful I feel like I still forget to do a lot of this stuff when I get to the water especially being so eager to start fishing, but we'll link to everything you mentioned there, both the fly resources, you know, talking about the different stages of the insects, as well as the match and the pause methods. So people can check that out because it's definitely something that is really going to be helpful to keep in mind when you're out in the water.
Peter
Excellent. Yeah, and I'm happy to be a resource. I mean, the phone number on the website rings through to my business mobile and I encourage clients like you don't need to buy flies for me for Intel so give me a call give me a text text me a picture of a bug from the water text me a picture of your fly box I'll tell you what it is in your box like I want you to catch fish and if you need flies someday you know we have them but it's not not necessary for me to help you out well
Katie
And that that helpful attitude is a kind of a great segue into what we're you know going to talk about for the rest of the interview which is secret fishing spots which is something that you had suggested to me as a topic and I thought that sounds like a super interesting thing to talk about. Just kind of with the with the secrecy of people today especially with social media and people just trying to keep their spots really close at hand and it sounds like your attitude toward it is is that we need to be a little bit more open as a community.
Peter
I think so I think the future of the sport I mean not to sound dramatic but the future of our sport and our fisheries is going to be, you know, inseparably tied to getting more people on the water, getting more people passionate about this sport. And yeah, it's in the age of social media, it's kind of a tightrope to walk. What do you share? What's too much? And what do we need to do as a community to make sure that this is something that we and future generations can enjoy? You know, my kind of mentality is you can call me, you can text me, and email me, and I will tell you. You tell me what species you want to catch, if you want to disperse camp, you want to trek across the western United States, I will drop pins across the U.S., and I will tell you where to fish. Because I want you to love the sport, I want you to connect with family and friends on the water, and I want you to be a lifelong angler that's going to contribute to this sport into these fisheries and become an advocate. You know, I recently I wrote an article and I called out three, you know, specific waters here in the front range of Colorado that within an hour of Denver where you can go and have a really good, you know, day whether you're a brand new angler or a seasoned angler. I just want you to get out and have a great time and catch fish. And on On social media, I mean, all of our, we have an awesome, super engaged community of just very like-minded anglers that are passionate about sharing the sport and sharing the water. But we had mentioned, you know, Georgetown Reservoir. And for those of you out of state, Georgetown is spitting distance from Interstate 70. It's, you know, it's accessed through a condominium parking lot. It's wheelchair accessible. And you're going to be sharing the water with just as many bait fishers and spin fishers, but everyone's catching fish. And it's a great spot to go in the fall. And we had mentioned that. And for the hundred good comments, we would get a couple of those really loud voices from social media like, "You are ruining the sport. You should do this on your own. You shouldn't be sharing this. You have to work for it." And not only is that kind of ridiculous in this scenario, that's the topic that I want to share. I think those voices are doing more harm. And so let's engage that, Kate. Let's talk about that.
Katie
For sure. Yeah, and I... So my thoughts on this kind of go back and forth, because on one hand, I have some spots that are very near and dear to my heart and to see them, you know, flooded with other anglers, you know, potentially disrupting a very sensitive small fishery would be, you know, would upset me a lot. But at the same time, those spots that I have that near and dear to my heart are few and far between. And for the most part, the places I fish are pretty well known. You know, it's not rocket science to find out about a reservoir along I-70, you know. And I feel like a lot of the time on social media I see people going a little too far with it, you know, like blurring out the background or, you know, geotagging a location that doesn't exist just to remind people that they're hiding their spot versus just kind of discreetly, you know, sharing a picture of a fish and if people happen to recognize it, they can go fish there and if they don't, then, you know, that's that.
Peter
Yeah, and I agree with you on the sensitive places. I don't think I've ever sent somebody to a place where there is a sensitive native fish population. Some of those places, they are going to be available on state maps and regs for people to go to, but that's not typically the places where I'm sending a lot of these new anglers. But again, if they want to backpack, I can say in this region there are these five lakes that can hold these fish and these sizes and these species and these are the flies that are gonna get you on them. So I mean I can be a little more vague and give a region and along the seven miles there's a lot of good places where you can pull off and fish. For those that say that you need to do this alone, I just think that that's a fallacy that nobody fish is alone anymore. You know, we're not, you know, carving our way through the West on horseback and snowshoe. Like those days are done. Like you've either heard about this spot from a fishing buddy, you've seen it on social media, you've looked it up in, you know, online, you know, where should I fish? What's going on in this region? Oh, there's this, this Creek or that Creek, or you call local fly shop. I mean, we, we go to people we trust with the hope of being able to engage and feel that life and joy on the water. So, I mean, it's false to think that people find all these spots on their own. No one's actually doing that. And so, again, I want to be someone that's trustworthy, both in how I approach business and sell flies, but also, I'm going to lead my clients straight, but I'm not going to do something that's going to damage the fishery. What I think will damage the fishery, I mean, or wipe out fly fishing, is not sharing the sport. Being tight-lipped or mean-spirited, being a troll, a faceless troll on social media and discouraging people is going to scare people away from the sport. And I did a little research and I called up some friends at Colorado Parks and wildlife. And year after year, I mean year over year over year, they are selling fewer fishing and hunting permits each year. So as much as people say Denver's getting so busy and the South Platte's getting so busy, we're actually selling fewer permits year after year than we did. So there's fewer anglers. And with that, I mean my fear is that with fewer anglers, those are conservation dollars that are disappearing. Those are dollars that are going out of funds that you know the state uses to buy private land and make public and available and those are dollars and those are votes that are not going to be there to protect these resources as people want to drill that land or they want to graze that land or they want to lease it for gold mining. We're going to lose our voice as anglers we're going to lose our power as anglers unless we encourage and empower more people to engage the sport to find this community to be a part of this community and to be a responsible part of this community so we need anglers we need to embrace each other spin bait fly-fishing and engage this together
Katie
and I think there's also a tactful way to you know for example like I said I have one or two spots that I you know those are those are the one or two that I will share with people because either I've learned about them through somebody else and I don't feel like it's my place to kind of give away that information to somebody else who might then share it again, or just extremely small, fragile populations of fish that I think could be harmed by having anglers come there. You know, apart from those, you know, I'm a pretty open book in terms of where I'll send people, but even on those ones that I'm a little bit if someone asks to say, you know, this spot is something I prefer not to share, but, you know, if you're looking for something like that, then here's, you know, a spot you maybe want to try. You know, if that species is important to you, then here's two or three other lakes that have that species. Or if you really want to get out and, you know, hike into the backcountry and be alone, here's a couple spots that might interest you and will satisfy that need without necessarily giving away a specific area that could do without a ton of angler pressure?
Peter
Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better. I think that is -- that's what we're all craving. To have a community, be it online, that is respectful and empowering while protecting the resource, while respecting the secrets of your friends or dad that showed you this spot. It's all right to have some of those spots. I mean, there are tens of thousands of miles of streams and rivers in Colorado and, you know, in every state. So, there's plenty of room to fish. But yeah, it's, you know, we do this because we find life on the water. We find hope and we are able to engage with our families and our friends in a different way and we can turn off our cell phones. And I mean, it's so precious to us. I mean, the Conversation I have with my kids, you know when we when we travel when we go to our fly tying factories I mean every day after school Mike, how do you use your blessings your opportunities to bless the world? So let's you know embrace that This is something we love. Why don't you share what you love and and other people love it and protect it and share it as well
Katie
So another thing that I talked about recently on another episode that's about to come out Is the idea of secrecy in the actual flies themselves because that's something that I've never really understood You know say you're out on the water and you know Someone comes up and asks what they're biting on and I feel like today there's just a lot of you know People people are a little turned off when you walk up and just ask that and they they act like you're asking them You know very personal piece of information about themselves and my thoughts, you know with secret fishing spots for example, like maybe you have one that you don't want to get too pressured, but if you meet someone along the river and they just want to know what's working, there's really no downside to letting them know. They're not going to catch all the fish in the river just because they know what fly pattern's working now. And I've always been a little disappointed that that has become a little bit more taboo, asking and sharing which fly patterns are working while you're standing next to somebody on the river.
Peter
You know what? And I agree with you. And I think it might seem more prevalent, but I think that is the minority of people. You know, gosh, you know, I get this all the time, like we can give like 100 good comments on a post or a video or something, but it's the one negative comment that just really kind of pierces my soul and just drains the joy out of me. And it's, it's these few trolls, it's the few kind of elitist and, and somehow I think, I mean, their pride and their identity is tied into you catching more fish. And that's fine if that's where you get your value. But I mean, yeah, I think it's benign. It's again, for the good of the sport, for the life of these rivers, I mean, we need people to engage this. And what a simple way to help someone else have a memorable day with their mom on the water or their friends or to catch that one trout that's just gonna sustain them through the next six months of sitting in an office in the Midwest before they can head back to the mountains. So, open invitation. I tell everyone this, you see my truck on the river, you are welcome to fish with me. And I have about 5,000 flies on me. I will know what's working and I will be happy to give you whatever I have in my box to make sure you have an awesome day as well. So that's the mentality that I hope your listeners embrace. And they're going to catch more fish, they're going to have an awesome time, and someday they're going to be able to pass that on to someone else.
Katie
Right, and I think there's something to be said about the satisfaction, like we talked about earlier, when you get to the water and figure out what the fish you're eating based on what you've observed versus just being told. And I think there is something fun, especially for a lot of people who like to get out in the backcountry, it's fun to try to find your own spots. maybe find a map and look for a lake that doesn't have a name and say, "All right, my goal for next summer is to make it to this lake and to see what's there. I'm not going to look anything up." I think that's a fun thing for people to do, and I encourage people to learn to do that on their own because there is a satisfaction you derive from doing the work yourself. You can find 10 spots a summer doing that and still get help from your friends who say they went fishing somewhere and had a great day and they can tell you where they were. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.
Peter
Right. Well, and you and I might find a lot of joy from that, but I mean, this is my profession. I live and sleep fly fishing. So, this is what I do is I find these spots and I work on these waters, but most of us, you know, or your listeners, you know, they're an accountant or they're a realtor or they they are, you know, serving at a restaurant and they don't have the leisure to find all that. So maybe the way that, you know, they're like, I am craving just to get out and catch a fish. So how do I do that? Where can I go? And so, you know, if they need that hand, they need that point to the water or, you know, some help with the flies, you know, maybe someday they can, you know, take on that grand adventure and find that spot and find all the bugs. But again, this is something that they want to do for fun and want to learn. We've got to help them along the way and maybe they'll get there, but maybe they won't. I'm just happy they're on the water.
Katie
Right, and I think that it's nice to have the mindset that there's such a spectrum of people out there too. People want to make fly fishing so categorized. What kind of angler Are you a tanker fisherman? Are you a Euronymphor? Are you a speycaster? And they forget that you can do all those things, and you don't necessarily have to identify as any one. And I feel like that's kind of the same case here, where there are days where I just want to go out and catch a fish after work. And it doesn't really matter if I'm along the side of a road or if I'm surrounded by other people. I just want to get out and catch a fish. And there's other days where I really value getting away from people and putting in a lot of miles and enjoying that solitude. And I have to remind myself that I don't need to identify as either one of those things. I can enjoy all of them. And I feel like there's a lot of people out there who would enjoy the service of just having someone give them information so they can enjoy their fishing and not have to spend all their time trying to fit into this category of someone who really works hard and hikes 10 miles back.
Peter
Yeah. Yeah, we're not all doing that. I mean, we supply the flies for Denver's Project Healing Waters trips. And some of these guys have severe injuries from their men and women from their time in the service. And I mean, they can't hike 10 miles back. They're lucky if they can sit in a boat all day sometimes. So yeah, it's about being out there. It's about the relationships gathered or it's about solitude. Make it what you want. But let's not throw firebombs at people doing it differently than us. We need each other. And the trout need more anglers. Otherwise, there's not going to be money to stock the trout. There's not going to be money to protect these rivers. Yeah, there's not a right way. Let's do it together and be kind.
Katie
So do you get much blowback for Ascent for giving out a lot of information?
Peter
Periodically. Again, it's people from outside of our community. we have an engaged community that cares about the people. I mean, above the spot, above the biggest fish. And so, you know, we have homeless youth that are working with us. And when one of them gets their first apartment, I'll put it out on Instagram. I'm like, "Hey, Matt and Stephanie just got a place. "They need furniture within an hour." I mean, since our community is about the people, as well as, you know, celebrating each other's successes, they're celebrating his success. And within an hour, we could have furnished five houses. So, you know, it's the people that are from out of state. And again, it's the loud trolls hiding behind anonymity that feel like they can throw stones. But, yeah, it gets me down sometimes, you know, being real. But it's, you know, I'm committed to -- I think this is what's best for the sport, and we're going to keep doing what we think is best, and we're going to keep making it about the people. I mean, their first fish, the biggest fish, the trip of a lifetime, hiking in, what their goals are is our goal to make happen.
Katie
And do you think that this is a product of social media specifically, just because I feel like before social media, you might have a spot that everyone would wanna know about, but unless someone saw a physical picture you took, they wouldn't even know you went there. And now there's just, there's so much information online that you post one picture people scouring the background trying to find out where you were and asking and sending you messages and everything. Do you think that that's solely a product of just the wide reach that people have these days?
Peter
I think so. I think that may draw people to some of these spaces that you want to keep secret. I don't know. media has cast a light on the industry. And I think a lot of the things that are pictured in social media, aren't the things that we need to be celebrating the most, like, you know, the biggest fish or something that's, it's kind of a place where people beat their chest a lot to say how great they are. I don't know, I mean, some of the people that I enjoy following the most, there's Trout Christie and Fly Messinger. Those are two local guys here. And I feel like, I mean, what they capture, they capture big fish, but they capture this interaction with nature and relationship and really capture that, that feeling of life more. I mean, it can be a positive thing. I mean, I think Landon Mayer's in Brazil right now and the videos he's posting are, you know, you know, giving props to really cool anglers and people tying flies and just really capturing that community. So I think it can be a positive thing. Again, it's a tricky balance. I don't know how to navigate it perfectly, but again, I hope we can be civil and kind. And I really like your approach where you say, "You know, this is a spot that was shared with me that I'm not allowed to share, but if you want that species or you're in this area, here's a couple other options that can be really fun." So that's empowering. It's not cutting people out. We need to break that stodgy, you know, tweed coat stigma of of trout being a 1% of sport for old white guys. Mike, let's open it up.
Katie
And like you said, it's hard to navigate and it's hard to really narrow down one rigid set of rules for this. But I think that's a lofty goal that we don't really need to strive for, honestly. I think at the end of the day, if your goal is just to treat people well and generally be helpful when you can, then that kind of guides your decisions. and you can use it specifically for each spot you're talking about, and that might be a different answer you give each time, but as long as your goal is to be as helpful as you can while also respecting the resource, then you can't really go wrong.
Peter
I agree, I agree.
Katie
Well, do you want to just kind of end with a little plug for Ascent, where people can find you, and if anyone else wants to reach out and kind of voice their opinions on this any ideas they have for kind of a productive conversation?
Peter
Absolutely, I love to see some dialogue so I don't know if there's ability to leave comments on the podcast page but you know anyone is welcome to you to find us or reach out to me at Ascent and our team. We're online at Ascentflyfishing.com A-S-C-E-N-T flyfishing.com and again all of our an article a week a new video all all the podcasts we've been on, just that stuff that's gonna empower you to learn the science and fish it, it's all on there. And flies are a buck to a buck and a quarter. So quality flies, 100% guarantee, scientifically sound and yeah, we're ready to hook you up. We're on Instagram at Ascent Fly Fishing and Twitter at Ascent Fishing. And what we're doing, it's not just trout porn. We're on the water, we're sampling the water, we're showing you what we're seeing. we're reading the way fish are feeding and we're translating that to based on this we're shifting to these flies based on this we'd be fishing these and so we're applying the science we're trying to empower you with knowledge that's what we're doing on our social pages and again now they can my emails on there my mobiles on there and we hope that we can be a resource and we'll be traveling with the fly-fishing show this winter so if people want to you know attend one of of our entomology classes in New Jersey. We're at the, oh gosh, I'm trying to think where the fly fishing show is in Jersey. But we're there and then Edison, New Jersey. And then we'll be in Pleasanton, California this year. We'll be at the Virginia Wine and Fly Fishing Show outside of Richmond. So yeah, we're excited and hopefully we get to meet a lot of you as we travel this winter.
Katie
Alright, well I really appreciate you coming on Peter. I think this was a great combination of kind of some philosophical chat as well as some really hardcore tips of how to make people more effective when they get out on the water and don't really know what's hatching. So I really appreciate you coming on and chatting.
Peter
Katie, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Katie
Alright, take care.
Peter
Bye bye.
Katie
Alright, that'll do it. As always, if you liked what you heard, go ahead and go over to the Wild Initiative podcast. You can subscribe there and get my shows every Thursday, as well as all of Sam's other shows throughout the week. You can also find my episodes on fishuntamed.com in addition to weekly backcountry fly fishing articles, and you can find me on social media @fishuntamed on Instagram or under my name Katie Burgert on Go Wild. And I will see you all same time, same place next week.
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