Transcript: PODCAST INTERVIEW: Being a Complete Angler with Davy Wotton (Pt II)

S6, Ep 14: Being a Complete Angler with Davy Wotton (Pt II)

Fly fishing legend Davy Wotton discusses challenges faced by anglers, emphasizes time on the water, covers techniques, fly selections, and upcoming events.

2024, Marvin S. Cash
The Articulate Fly
http://www.thearticulatefly.com

In this episode of The Articulate Fly podcast, Marvin Cash continues his conversation with fly fishing legend Davy Wotton. They delve into the challenges faced by anglers who don't have easy access to fishing waters or can only fish a few days a year. They stress the importance of spending time on the water to improve skills and gain a deeper understanding of fish behavior and insect activity. Davy shares insightful anecdotes about observing inexperienced anglers and emphasizes the value of seeking guidance from experienced anglers and fly shops. They discuss various fishing techniques, from fishing soft hackle flies to nymphing without using an indicator. The discussion also touches on the significance of maintaining and cleaning fly lines, as well as greasing them for optimal performance. Observation and understanding of trout behavior are highlighted as crucial elements to achieve success as an angler. They emphasize that becoming a skilled angler is an ongoing process that requires continuous learning, practice, and a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of fly fishing. The conversation further explores the selectivity of fish and stresses the importance of presentation and timing when it comes to deceiving them with the right flies. The impact of environmental factors on fish behavior and feeding patterns is also acknowledged, emphasizing the necessity to adapt tactics accordingly. Versatility in fly fishing is highly regarded, as fish can suddenly change their preferences. They emphasize the value of having a selection of flies that cover different zones in the water column, including nymphs, dries, emergers, and streamers like the woolly bugger. When pursuing wary fish, the hosts emphasize the importance of observing their behavior and approaching them with caution. They discuss the effectiveness of simple flies like hare's ear or pheasant tail if presented in a manner that does not alert the fish to human presence. Challenges arise when targeting fish that feed near or on the water surface, as any disturbance or unnatural movement can cause them to ignore the fly. The hosts also touch upon the technological advancements that have impacted the fly fishing and tying industry, both in terms of customer connectivity and materials demand. They discuss the changes in fly tying materials availability, with a rise in synthetic materials and the need for retailers to cater to their local community's needs. Davy shares his personal experience of tying flies commercially during the closed trout season in the UK. He reflects on the changes brought by technology, specifically the expectation of immediate responses. Despite the rise of synthetic materials, he maintains a preference for traditional flies with a touch of synthetic elements. The conversation shifts to a discussion about the growth of the fly tying industry and the benefits it brings to both manufacturers and fly tiers. Davy shares his expertise in developing synthetic and natural material blends for tying flies and even selling his business to Wapsi. Looking ahead, Davey expresses his plans to offer classes focused on wet fly techniques in 2024 and to be a guest of honor at the Sowbug in Mountain Home. He aims to educate and enhance people's skills in fly fishing, and he regularly writes articles for magazines, with some focusing on the historical aspects of fly fishing and flies. Listeners are encouraged to explore Davy's articles on the North Arkansas Fly Fishers website. Marvin suggests the possibility of discussing the historical aspects of fly tying in a future episode. The hosts express their gratitude for the support of their listeners and invite them to join their Patreon community. They also promote a fly tying website, Nor-vise.com.

Generated Shownotes

Chapters

0:00:04 Introduction
0:03:32 Being Aware of River Conditions and Fly Selection
0:12:56 Understanding the Varied Food Sources in the Water Column
0:28:05 The Importance of Developing Multiple Fly Fishing Skills
0:38:05 Fish Behavior and Feeding Patterns
0:46:46 Adaptation: Changing Tactics When Fishing Isn't Successful
0:48:45 Universal Flies for Catching Trout Worldwide
0:56:54 Presenting Flies to Wary Fish for Successful Fishing
1:05:54 The Skill and Versatility of Fly Tiers
1:13:30 Sowbug Event in Mountain Home, March 2024

Long Summary

In this episode of the Articulate Fly podcast, Marvin Cash continues his conversation with fly fishing legend Davey Watton. They delve into the challenges faced by anglers who don't have easy access to fishing waters or can only fish a few days a year. They stress the importance of spending time on the water to improve skills and gain a deeper understanding of fish behavior and insect activity.

Davey shares insightful anecdotes about observing inexperienced anglers and emphasizes the value of seeking guidance from experienced anglers and fly shops. They discuss various fishing techniques, from fishing soft tackle flies to nymphing without using a large indicator. The discussion also touches on the significance of maintaining and cleaning fishing lines, as well as greasing them for optimal performance.

Observation and understanding of trout behavior are highlighted as crucial elements to achieve success as an angler. They emphasize that becoming a skilled angler is an ongoing process that requires continuous learning, practice, and a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of fly fishing.

The conversation further explores the selectivity of fish and stresses the importance of presentation and timing when it comes to deceiving them with the right flies. The impact of environmental factors on fish behavior and feeding patterns is also acknowledged, emphasizing the necessity to adapt tactics accordingly.

Versatility in fly fishing is highly regarded, as fish can suddenly change their preferences. They emphasize the value of having a selection of flies that cover different zones in the water column, including nymphs, dries, emergers, and streamers like the woolly bugger.

When pursuing wary fish, the hosts emphasize the importance of observing their behavior and approaching them with caution. They discuss the effectiveness of simple flies like hare's ear or pheasant tail if presented in a manner that does not alert the fish to human presence. Challenges arise when targeting fish that feed near or on the water surface, as any disturbance or unnatural movement can cause them to ignore the fly.

The hosts also touch upon the technological advancements that have impacted the fly fishing and tying industry, both in terms of customer connectivity and materials demand. They discuss the changes in fly tying materials availability, with a rise in synthetic materials and the need for retailers to cater to their local community's needs.

Davey shares his personal experience of tying flies commercially during the closed trout fly fishing season in the UK. He reflects on the changes brought by technology, specifically the expectation of immediate responses. Despite the rise of synthetic materials, he maintains a preference for traditional flies with a touch of synthetic elements.

The conversation shifts to a discussion about the growth of the fly tying industry and the benefits it brings to both manufacturers and fly tiers. Davey shares his expertise in developing synthetic and natural material blends for tying flies and even selling his business to Wapsie Black Company.

Looking ahead, Davey expresses his plans to offer classes focused on wet fly techniques in 2024 and to be a guest of honor at the Starbucks event in Mountain Home. He aims to educate and enhance people's skills in fly fishing, and he regularly writes articles for magazines, with some focusing on the historical aspects of fly fishing and flies.

Listeners are encouraged to explore Davey's articles on the North Arkansas Fly Fishers website, where they can also find his contact information. Marvin suggests the possibility of discussing the historical aspects of fly tying in a future episode.

The hosts express their gratitude for the support of their listeners and invite them to join their Patreon community. They also promote a fishing products website, Norvice.com.

Brief Summary

In this episode of The Articulate Fly podcast, we continue our conversation with fly fishing legend Davey Watton. We discuss the challenges faced by anglers with limited access to fishing waters and stress the importance of spending time on the water to improve skills and understand fish behavior. We cover various fishing techniques, emphasize the need for versatile fly selections, and delve into the growth of the fly tying industry. Davey shares his plans for offering wet fly technique classes and being a guest of honor at the Starbucks event in Mountain Home. Join our Patreon community and visit Norvice.com for fishing products.

Tags

The Articulate Fly podcast, fly fishing, Davey Watton, challenges, limited access, fishing waters, time on the water, skills, fish behavior, fishing techniques, versatile fly selections, fly tying industry, wet fly technique classes, guest of honor, Starbucks event, Mountain Home, Patreon community, Norvice.com, fishing products

Edit Transcript Remove Highlighting Add Audio File Stop Play-on-click

Save Editor Export HTML Export PDF Export WebVTT Export... ?

Transcript

Introduction

Intro:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly.
On this episode, fly fishing legend Davey Watton returns for part two of our conversation.

[0:14] Davey generously spent almost three hours with me at the end of 2023 discussing what it means to be a complete angler and how to get there. This is part two of our conversation.
There's a link to part one in the show notes. I think you're really going to enjoy this one. But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.
If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.
And check out our Patreon community. It's a great way to support the show and our many partners.
We have everything from discounts on tying materials and guide trips to small group classes.
And thanks to everyone who spent time with us on the show circuit in Denver, Edison, and an Ypsilanti. It's always great to spend time with our listeners and friends.
And a shout out to this episode's sponsor.
This episode's sponsored by our friends at Norvice. Their motto is, tie better flies faster.
And they produce the only vice that truly spends.
The Norvice team continues to rack up the miles. Next stops are the fly fishing shows in Bellevue and Pleasanton.
You owe it to yourself to drop by the Norvice booth to see the only vice that truly spends for yourself.
Not going to be in Washington or California? No worries.
Norvice's entire 2024 show schedule is up on their website.
Head over to www.nor-vice.com today to see if the Norvice team will be coming to a town near you.
Now, on to our interview.

Davy:
[1:42] You know, a lot of my customers don't fish that much during the year, and the reason being they don't live close to a water that allows them that access to drive down the road a couple of hours, go fishing and come back home.
They have to travel fairly significant different distances to do so, or their work routine doesn't allow that.
So that also is a restriction. How much time can you actually put on the water in a given year?
Do you live local? Are you retired? Can you go there every down day if you want?
Or not the case. So you may only end up going, whatever, four or five days a year.
Or I've got customers like that. You know, they can only fish three or four days a year, but they come and fish with me for those three or four days.
And then pretty much they don't fish for the rest of the year.
Does that limit their ability to become well-rounded, more skillful anglers?
Yes, of course it does, because they don't spend the time on the water.
And that's something you have to do. So going back to what we've been discussing.

[2:47] Regardless of whether you live by the river, you can go there every day.
Does that necessarily relate to the fact that you become a much more skillful angler?
Not necessarily so. It depends on you. You know, are you once again an observant angler?
Do you understand what's going on on that river?
Every day you go there, every day could be different. Okay, so you're going at a time when there's a period of emergencies, be they caddis, mayflies, or stoneflies, or what?
Well, you should be aware of that. You know, even somebody that is not, shall we say, a skillful angler should have some awareness of that, you would assume.

Being Aware of River Conditions and Fly Selection

[3:32] Okay, I saw these pikes, you know, this, that, and the other.
They should also develop you would assume an awareness of what fires to use and how to present those fires to catch those fish, but you know what they may well have terrible casting skills and they don't catch those fish because they don't have the ability to, present those fires in an acceptable manner to the fish and I know that is a common issue with a lot of people that fly fish I know that for a fact I watch them. I don't say anything to them.
I don't believe it's my place to do that. But when I'm there myself, I just watch people and see what they're doing and stuff like that.

[4:15] I'll give you another example. A little while ago, and this is something I see on a frequent basis, I might add.
I was weight fishing myself. myself, and there was a couple of guys there fishing downstream for me.
I'm not joking. They must have been using an indicator that would stun a 10-pound trout if it hit them on the head. They had a huge indicator.

Marvin:
[4:43] No.

Davy:
[4:43] I'm not joking, right? And they're fishing in skinny water, about 18 inches deep, where the fish there in that particular area of the river, which I know well, ultimately, all they're eating is little little cloning coronomies, and probably little scuds, which are roughly about a size 16 or 18.
But here they are, banging this out in the water. And they must have been doing that at least for an hour.
You could see that indicator 100 yards away. I can't tell you. It's a huge thing.
I could have gone down there and given them a lesson and said, yeah, you know, you're wasting your time doing this, that, and the other.
I don't, you know, I just don't always do that.
You know, sometimes I'm like, you know, but generally...

[5:32] Ultimately, it amounted to this, that those two guys had never had any, what I call significant instruction about how to approach what they were doing.
They probably just went into a fly shop or some store and bought these big bubble indicators.

[5:50] I've no doubt they acquired some flies from some source or whatever.
And went out there and started doing their own thing without no chance of success whatsoever. Did they make a fatal mistake?
Of course they did. They should have gone and got at least some instruction.
Most of the fly shops that I know of are only too prepared to give somebody free instruction.
You can become a member of your local fly fishing club like we have here we have a huge fly fishing club here in mountain home or tu i guarantee you there'll be guys there that will help you and it won't cost you nothing or you can come attend the um the classes and some of which you would have to pay for obviously you know if you want to come and be a participant in some of the the classes that I do, you're going to pay for it because why? That's my profession.
I spent my life learning what I know.
I didn't get paid for everything I learned. I can assure you, I spent thousands and thousands of hours fishing and doing what I know today, to learn what I know today. Nobody...
I'm not saying I didn't learn from other people, of course I did.

[7:04] And everybody that fishes has. You can't say otherwise, but you develop, obviously, over and above those levels of skills that other people have taught you, and you benefit from that.
Everybody else has, and you can pass that on to another person, which is what it's all about.
So I would just make in that case as an example of what I saw there, a few weeks ago, and it's not something that I don't see on a frequent basis because I do.
And the other one, I said earlier on, is the herring stance.
I was fishing a zone on our river here. It was a catch and release trophy zone a little while ago.
And there was two guys fishing on the shoal at the top end of that particular section of the river.

[7:58] They were there for at least two hours. I was boat fishing, drift fishing incidentally.
So, you know, I ran upstream and I drift downstream in good ways and I'd come back up and we'd do that. But they never moved.
They stayed there for about two hours.
I saw one of those guys catch a fish. And all the time I was, you know, close enough to see what the hell they were up to.
But they never moved. And I'm thinking, once again, you need to go and get somebody to teach you more about what you need to know, which is you don't stand there more or less for two hours repeatedly doing the same thing within a relative distance of your casting zone over and over and over again. care. Fish ain't stupid.
They're just not going to react to what you're doing half an hour later from when you started. It's not going to happen.
So, there are so many things like that.
I think well, I know that most fly fishermen do want to learn better skill levels.
There's no no argument about that. And most certainly, as you well know, they come to me, they want to learn the arts and methods, science and skills of fishing, wildlife.

[9:20] And there's a lot more to that than people realize. It's far more than just casting the flies across stream and stripping them back.
That's probably 10 or 15% of the knowledge and skills of fishing those styles of flies.
But again, I have to say that that unless you have good, developed casting skills, you're going to have a problem.
Because where you're legally allowed to do it, in some places you can.
You may be restricted to one fly, or say, like in Montana, legally only two.
You may be able to fish three or four or more flies than you want.
Here you can. You can fish six flies on a leader system if you wanted to.
But nevertheless, in order to do that, you have to develop casting skills to be able to do that.
Because I know, believe me, I know, if I set somebody up with a three fly dropper rig where you've got in the region of somewhere between 12 to 14 feet of overall leader length off that fly line with dropper flies that are spaced approximately 30 inches apart, they don't take five minutes and then tangle them up.
Why? Because of their casting skill.
That's it. You have to understand how to cast in such a manner as you do not cause those flies to tangle up.
More to the point, you've got to be able to present those flies in a manner whereby you can thereafter control how those flies are fished.

[10:47] And control that drift, and more to the point, know exactly at what point of time a fish has took your flies and you raised one fish.
And it takes a lot of practice to do that. You know, contrary to what you might think, granted, if you're going to chuck flies across stream, the fish does the work for you.
It's going to grab the fly and you're going to feel it pull on it, boom, and you may or may not get it.
The most common error, of course, when people fish like that downstream, is they react instantly to the feel of the fish take the fly. And guess what?
They pull it out of its mouth or it's on there momentarily and it gets out.
There's a lot more to that skill when you are fishing downstream that doesn't cause that situation to happen.
Let's put it like that. So regardless, you know, and I'm going back to something I talked about a little earlier on here, you know, when you're fishing this concern.

[11:47] Is it absolutely always necessary to fish nymphs on or near the bed of the river? Absolutely not.
I can tell you now that fishing soft-ackles by that means or method can be exceptionally deadly.
In other words, what you're doing, you're fishing them in the same manner as you would present, shall we say, upstream to in front and or downstream a nymph.
The only thing is you've got to get those flies not all the time near or close to the bed of the river that's far from the truth to be honest about it but because when you're fishing two or three flies like that it enables you to fish them at different levels within that water column, and it's not always the case that flies have to be within six inches of the bed of the river before for the fish will react to them. That's absolutely not true.

[12:40] Obviously, some prevailing conditions may be related to that, you know, exceptionally cold water or something like that.
But certainly when water temperature is warm, food can be seen by those fish in many different levels within that water column.

Understanding the Varied Food Sources in the Water Column

[12:56] It may not necessarily be the fact that it's related to a hatch.
It may be what we define as biological stream drift, you know where whatever it be carousel or cottage box you know they drift downstream they move to a different zone or whatever i've seen times when i've seen loads of snails like that drifting down you know nobody quite understands i guess why they do it but obviously they move it and that's their natural means to do it they drift downstream so there's always things there that you know.

[13:29] Fish are aware of you know you get like a little fast riffle for example you know and all of a sudden it turns up a bit at the bottom and guess what you know the bugs get shifted off and they get turned around in those water columns and they get moved around don't think for one moment they all track close to the riverbed because that's far from the truth they don't anyway the point of the matter is that you can fish soft tackle flies that cover different levels of depth in the water column as a dead drift mode as you would like for a nymph in other words but you of course you generally wouldn't use an indicator i know some people might do that but i would tell you if that's how you're going to fish you don't do that let's put it that way you know why.

[14:15] Because you're adding something that can detract the fish from looking at your flies and you all know that when you fish with an indicator how many times that a fish come up and grab your indicator indicator right well there's a reason for it they see it and they want to go up and investigate what it is but if they did that they weren't looking at your flies right because you change their perception of vision to looking at your indicator instead of your flies if you didn't get that indicator on there's a very good chance they'd have tipped your fly not the indicator but my My point of the matter is that you may be fishing in 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 feet of water, and I see that frequently when we drift the shingles out here with indicators, a fish will come from the bed of the river and take that indicator or grab it on the surface. Why? Because they see it.

[15:12] What I'm trying to say is that if you adopt the upstream approach, so far as fishing soft-ackles is concerned, avoid using an indicator.
Your fly line is your indicator.
Obviously, if you're in what we call contact, in other words, close contact fishing, in other words, you're only recasting leader, kind of like EU nymph fishing for that matter.
You're watching that for your indicator take of a fish.
If you're fishing further across stream, you watch the fly line.
And another thing I might add here, big mistake by many anglers. their dry lines sink.
If your dry line sinks, and I don't care how much you pay for a line, ultimately, the impactor finish of that line will start to wear off, and your line will start to sink within the meniscus, i.e. the circus.
If it does that, it ultimately will result in issues as far as effectively mending the line, because as you start to try to move the line, you drag everything else. because it's in the water.
The most efficient way to be able to mend a fly.

[16:30] Line is that you mend it off the surface of the water and the only efficient way to do that is to grease that line up so it does that and there are a number of different products that you you can use personally i use mucin i've used it all my life and it requires obviously you know you must maintain your line to be kept clean and this uh the other and there's one other thing incidentally i might add here it will.

[17:00] Pay you at times to stretch your line uh what ultimately will happen is that they kind of shrink somewhat and they don't lay straight and and not only that inhibits the line moving through your guides on your rod efficiently too so you know if there's a friend of you go fishing you know just pull out 30 40 field line and very very gently just stretch that line you'd be surprised how much it will actually stretch maybe three or four foot and then of course keep it clean that's more the issue with guys are fishing the warm water situations as opposed to you know good clean water like we have here on the white river spring fish but nevertheless grease that line up so it floats on the surface in fact in the dvd i did on midge fishing midge magic fishing i show clearly the difference between a line that's floating on the surface and one it is not that if you try to move that fly line without moving that fly if the line is in the water the odds are you will not do it you will drag that fly instantly raise that rod if that line is on the surface of the water you can just kick and fit that rod tip and that line will just lift straight off the surface with little or no disturbance without.

[18:18] Causing disturbance to your fly so that's something you guys that are listening here should bear that in mind make sure that your fly line dry line it of course always is visible on the surface and not in it okay so going back there to um what i was talking about you know it's the fishing with the the soft type of place and you may fish one maybe two maybe three it's a means and methods of skill and presentation that requires time to become skillful at it as with anything else now as far as um the use of what we call the traditional wet flies and let me just say this too.

[19:05] Here in America, a wet fly, for the majority, is a fly that sinks. Yeah, of course it is.
If you relate that over there in the UK where I'm from, what a wet fly is, they will know exactly what you're talking about.
It is a traditional winged wet fly, whatever it be.
Whether it be an Alexander, a Wickham Span, a Victor, a Silverwing, a Victor, a Butcher, a Dunkeld, you name it.
They will understand, yeah, I was fishing wets today. They know what you're meaning.
If you're dealing with, shall we say, the shelf-lacquers and spriders, well, that's, of course, more related to the North Country style of fishing, which almost always is pursued by fishing in a mode upstream, largely because you're fishing fast to shallow water streams, and those fish intercept that food base as it comes down toward them, Whereas, of course, in the slower-moving water systems like in your short streams, that's a different ballgame.
You know, there you can cast a nymph upstream of a trout.

[20:12] It'll drift past that trout two or three feet or more downstream, and all of a sudden that trout turn around, go downstream, and take it.
That's a different scenario. So, once again, observation is an issue.
You know, under the prevailing conditions and the nature of the water you are fishing, what are those fish likely to do and how are they likely to respond to what it is you choose to want to do as far as catching them.

[20:38] So the answer really, you know, is there's more than one way to catch the same fish.
But there's probably one way that's going to be more likely to do it than others.
Because at any point of time, that trout, whilst it's in its watery world, is looking for something to eat.
It may not matter that it's on or near the bed of the river, it's in the mid-water column, it's on or near the surface, or on the surface.
That fish is looking for something to eat.
Bear in mind, we also have terrestrials that get blown onto the surface of the water.
Doesn't matter whether they're beetles, whether they're hoppers, or whether they're cicadas, or whatever, there's always something in the environment of that fish's world, that's going to instigate that fish to react to something that you are likely to do to catch it.
If your approach is, shall we say, acceptable to the fish at that point in time.
So ultimately, I would say an all-around angler, if that's the way to say that, is a person ultimately Ultimately, that's an extremely observant person based on his own personal observations.

[22:03] Obviously, he's going to learn some of that from what he's told or what he's read, this and the other.
But ultimately, I will tell you from my experience that the people that ultimately are the best at it, their personal observations exceeding what others have said or told to them. In other words, they see it beyond that.
Let's put it to you like that. In other words, put that into perspective.
So I say to you, Marvin, yeah, go down the river today.
You're going to see a hatch of whatever it is, PMDs. Well, all I told you is when you go to the river, you're going to see some PMDs on the water, right?
What does that tell you? Well, oh yeah, I'm going to see some PMDs on the river.
Does that help you in any other way as far as observation, as far as what you need to do to catch those fish that are feeding on PMDs?
What flies are you going to use? What mode of presentation are you going to use? Are you going to fish a dry?
Are you going to fish in a merger? Are you going to fish a nip or what?
So there's a limitation insofar as what somebody has told you, what you have read.
Which is not so much what the advanced angler has got.
He's got greater observations when he gets there and knows what's going on.
And that's based on, obviously, experience, a lot of it. There's no question about that.
But anyway, you know, as far as I'm concerned.

[23:31] An angler that is, shall we say, a skillful angler has somewhat got commanded, or got the ability to fish pretty much all means and methods.
He may not be, by any stretch of the imagination, the most brilliant dry fly fisherman, but he may be a really good nymph fisherman.
He may not be a good streamer fisherman, but yeah, he may be a good dry fly fisherman.
And you almost always will find that one of those categories of flight fishing will be the one that he's really, really good at.
Let's put it that way. That's not to say he's not bad in any sense of the word or other means or methods of fishing.
It's just the one that really has a greater fundamental understanding and has probably applied more of his knowledge and skills to become that good.
You know, and that's, that's a fact I can assure you, you know, um, I know guys, you know, that are exceptionally good casters and all fly tires, but they're really not that good anglers, uh, which is interesting, you know, because.

[24:52] And you would think, well, you know, the guy's a great caster.
He also should be a good fisherman. Well, that's not true, you know.
Or he's a really good fly-tire. You know, well, he should be able to tie every damn fly in the boat that catches fish.

[25:06] That's not necessarily true. Why? Because the act of physically fishing and catching fish is a totally different dimension to being a really good caster or a really good fly-tire.
However, a well-seasoned fly fisherman, or what I would consider to be a real high-end class fly fisherman, is good at those two things also.
He's pretty good at fly tying, and he's pretty good at casting.
Maybe not the world's expert, but nevertheless, he's got a greater fundamental understanding of that than, shall we say, overall the majority.
And I'll go back to telling you, where Dave was concerned, he unquestionably had got those skills to masterful levels, all of them, whether innovation of flies, his ability to present those flies.
He had a really, really good fundamental understanding in everything he did.
Why? Why? Because he'd spent a lot of time on that water fishing.

[26:12] I mean, thousands of hours. And I'll tell you the same thing.
Unless you spend thousands of hours on water, you're going to be somewhat limited.
And I understand that, you know, but not for the majority of anglers.
If the truth be known, they can still acquire skill levels that they don't have If they're prepared to put the time, the effort, and develop the knowledge and skills to do so, whether they choose to want to do it, that's another matter, as I think.

[26:46] In many cases, you know, they like to go fishing. That's fine. They enjoy themselves.
And they catch and fish with the, you know, limitation of skills they've got.
And that's okay. But I also have a mind to tell them, hey, you know what?
There's a whole bunch more that you could do that will really change your insight into what it is you can do in the wonderful world of fly fishing.
You follow what I'm trying to say?

Marvin:
[27:15] Yeah, I do. It's kind of interesting, too, because it's almost like we've come full circle because I think, you know, you have to have the skills, right?
So you kind of put that off to the side. But really, you know, it's kind of like you have to understand the trout behavior and the food behavior to then inform how you need to present your flies to have the highest likelihood of catching the fish, right?

Davy:
[27:40] Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Marvin:
[27:42] And so, yeah, so I mean, even a kind of an intermediate skilled person or a person who can't fish a lot, if they think about the puzzle and saying, well, you know, it's April, I'm on this piece of water, this is what the trout should be doing, this is what the food should be doing.
And then the question is, do they have the skills to present the fly in the best possible way?

The Importance of Developing Multiple Fly Fishing Skills

Davy:
[28:05] That's largely true.
Once again, I have to go back to saying what I've said a good bit here, is that in order to improve your level of skill, you've got to do something other than what you still do.
In other words, granted, you accept the fact that I will catch you some fish, but you've got to develop other skills which relate to everything related to the physical act of of fly fishing, be it casting, understanding fish behavior, the food that fish feed on, the best means of presentation, supplies of choice used, da-da-da-da-da.
You're right, because there's a whole big part of that equation that comes together to make it happen, i.e. the fish opens its mouth and takes your fly.
And then, you know, you asked me about selectivity of fish, which is a good question.
And how does that affect your decision or my decision or whatever, what it is that you do?

[29:12] Most of the time, what we're dealing with as far as the word selectivity is that the fish at that particular point of time are somewhat zoned in on a specific species at a given stage of the life of that specific species, mostly related to emergency.
Emergency, because that is when you see the fish on or near the surface.

[29:45] The fact of the matter is, you don't really know what's going on subsurface unless you're in a situation where you're in a jinklier water like an English chalk stream and you can watch them do it.
For the most part, the waterways that we fish, we don't or cannot see that. that.
So that's beside the point insofar as selectivity is concerned, because as far as I'm concerned, the fish can be as selective on any of the bed of the river as they can on any of the surface.
The difference is you don't see them on any of the bed of the river or less likely to, but you do see that visual on the surface. That's the difference.
Either Either way, those fish can be difficult either way.

[30:31] And so, hey, when you get the guys in the pub at night, it's like, oh, shit, you know, I didn't catch none of those fish. They were selective.
And I ask them, I say, well, what do you mean by that? Well, you know, they were selectively feeding. I said, yeah, well, you know what?
The answer to the issue where you are concerned is you hadn't figured out how to catch them.
It wasn't that the fish was doing something different.
In that respect, it was just doing what it would naturally do.
You just hadn't figured out what it would you need to do to deceive them, which is what you're doing.
You know, for the best will in the world, it doesn't matter what you tie on a piece of metal.
And I can tie flies that are really, you know, anatomically correct and they look really good.
Hey, you know, why would the fish refuse that? The fact of the matter is they do.

[31:24] Strangely enough, some of the simplest flyers are the ones that work more effectively than those that are glorious creations that took you off and out of time, which in my opinion, if you're spending that much time tying a fly in a vise.

Marvin:
[31:38] Forget it, right? Yeah, I was going to say, you need to find another hobby.
You got too much time on your hands.

Davy:
[31:45] That's right. That's right. If I was going to spend that much time in a vise with a fly, I'm telling you now, I'm I'm going to be tying somewhat, not all, but part of a classic Atlantic salmon fly that would take me probably a few hours to tie anyway.
It's not going to be an average trout fly that I can tie in two or three minutes.
You know what I'm saying?

Marvin:
[32:05] Yeah.

Davy:
[32:05] Anyway, the answer to selectivity, once again, I say...
It matters not whether the fish are only near the bed of the river, midway on the water column, or at varying degrees before the surface.
It is the visual on the surface for most people that they see what they determine as selectivity.
Well, define that word. Well, pretty much, you know, from a fly fisher's point of view, it means that at any given time, there's a certain stage of that insect's life cycle that the fish are more tuned into.

[32:43] And obviously, in many cases, it's at the stage of transition from the nymphal pubra to the winged insect. That's it.
And in my experience, I would say that for 80% of the time, that is the most vulnerable area where your fly needs to fish to take that fish.
Obviously there are times when you visually see them taking duns on the surface and that's usually in slower water and it's usually small insects too in most cases not all but in a lot of cases it is and therefore you have to adopt your approach to that which is ultimately I will tell you assuming you've got the right, skills of presentation the fly that can be absolutely critical the fly it people will tell you why it's so it's all related to presentation i'm not arguing that for one moment but i will tell you that there are times if you don't have that right fly and the fish don't see it the way they want to see you ain't going to catch them it's i mean that's a fact.

[34:03] And no one's arguing about that the presentation value is important.
Of course it is. You can present, ultimately, in perfection, 20 different flies to that fish and it won't take them. Why?
Because it sees them and it don't like what it sees in the story, its zone of vision, particularly when they're feeding on small insects, is very small.
It's not wide. You know, when they feed on caddis, it significantly is because they're moving around under the water, left to right, up or down, whatever.
When they're feeding on small insects, generally they're in slower, slack seams of water where they have more time to see them.
And they're very, very, shall we say, persistent in the manner in which they actually take their insect. say.

[34:52] Another interesting thing about that, if you ever watch fish rise, and I spent hours and hours doing that because they fascinate me to watch them, you know, they'll come up, gently open their mouth, engulf that fly, and they sink back down again.
They don't often just stay at the surface gulping bugs as they come down.
They usually go up, they go down, they come up, and they go down.
And of course there's obviously different reasons why they do that.
You know, They may well go down a few inches or more, which is in vision to the surface in front of them of what's coming toward them.
And then they know instinctively at what point of time to rise, open their mouth on that fly.

[35:38] You must likewise figure that out. You must likewise present your fly based by visual on that timing.
In other words, you may be using the right fly, but every time you essentially cast in front of that fish, the fish don't see it because it's going past the fish.
In other words, the fish has just risen, it's taken a natural, and as soon as it does and it's sinking down a little bit into the water column, your fly passes overhead, gone behind the fish, you didn't see it.
There are different things by skill of technique that you can deploy.
One is observation. Again, observation. Watch that fish.
Don't worry about just rushing out there, chucking a fly at that fish.
If that fish is consistently feeding on a natural insect, it's probably going to do so for a good period of time, so long as that hatch takes place.
If you go out there and instantly start chucking chants in it, the odds are you'll probably put that fish down.
And you may be lucky. You may just catch your first cast out there, possibly.

[36:54] I will tell you that don't do that. I watch that fish, what he's doing.
I want to see exactly the track that that fish is in. I also want to read that water.
I want to see how that current is likely to influence my drift.
You know, have I got to cast across the fast cross stream to get my fly into that soft water zone on the opposite side?
If so, I'm going to consider where my approach is going to be to eliminate, for the best part of it, adverse drag.
Things like that you take in consideration.
It's not just a question of what we call barging out there and start chucking twice at that.
And so going back to what I was saying about the behavior of the fish, you watch them and they delicately take down this little size 20 blue-winged olive or a spinner, for example, typically spinners, when they float dead on the surface.
You may not actually see the fly because they are so low in the water surface, you don't see dead spinners unless they're right under your feet or something.

Fish Behavior and Feeding Patterns

[38:05] And a lot of people I know, Oh, they say, look at them fish arising.
You know, what are they eating? We can't see no bugs on the water.
Why? Well, you know what? They're eating spinners. They're dead flies.
That's what they are. You may see that here on the White River.
It's deadly early in the morning.
There ain't no natural flies flying around.
They're eating dead spinners. Hell, you've got 100 miles of trout water on the White River.
You know, that's a lot of water. And so you pay attention to the fish spinner of a PMD or whatever it is, but watch the fish.

[38:42] Don't assume always that you're fishing the wrong fly. That may be the case.
It's just that what you're doing doesn't allow the fish to see your fly at the time that is appropriate for that fish to rise to the surface and take it as it would a natural.
So you can do things to try and put things more in your favor.
For example, and this is assuming you're not spooked to fish by its genie or leader or whatever the case may be.
You present that fly further upstream so instead of and which is also a common mistake incidentally they cast the fly too close to where they see the rise and incidentally you know often where you actually physically see the rise it's not where it actually happened.

[39:27] The fish's movement is actually upstream of where you see that disturbance of the water and it may be dependent on the speed of water it could be six inches it could be a foot it could be two foot but present your fly much, much further upstream.
That gives a longer time delay.
In other words, that fish may rise and sink down six inches and come back in, and it may be, whatever, a second or two seconds.
So if you try and figure out, if you like, the delay time from the time that fish was last seen to the time that it comes up again, in and you present your fly upstream at the same appropriate, shall we say, time that by the time your fly comes close to or near the fish, it sees it and it comes up and takes it.
It's hard to explain it once you bet. Your observance of what's going on will teach you those things.
I know I had the right drive, but the fish are not seeing it.
And once again, you know, we already talked about when you become really familiar with the water that you fish on a regular basis, the odds are you know what size should catch those fish under most prevailing conditions.

[40:46] Maybe not. You may find one day you go out there full of good intentions.
Yeah, we're going to have a good day. And all of a sudden, what the hell's going on here? I ain't catching nothing.
They usually take my this, that, or the other. But I'm not catching no fish today. Why?
There's got to be a reason why. And it's not necessarily that you're doing something wrong because you did that a hundred times and it's worked.
It just may be on that particular day, the fish have no interest in accepting the flies that you're fishing at that time.
So you've got to change for one reason or the other.
So once again, observation.
And that's why I said earlier on that I consider dry fly fishing, or shall we say fishing to fish on or near the surface that you can visually see most times, probably requires overall more relative skills of understanding and based on all the necessary skills of the attractor, fishing and presentation of those rays, and powers of observation.
That said, as I already said, likewise, the same thing can apply to fish that you can't see.

[42:01] Why is it that certain nymphs work exceptionally well on one day, but they don't the next? You think, what the hell is going on here?
The last four or five times I've been out fishing there, I fished whatever, a Frenchie or a pheasant tail or whatever else you want to think about and done real, real well.
And I come out here today and I made 30, 40 casts. No interest. Why?
You know the odds of the fish being there are there.
Unless something dramatically, seriously happened and the fish weren't there, the odds are they're still going to be there.
Why is it that I can't get those fish to take my place?
I would accept that there are certain.

[42:51] Issues that may cause that to be the case, particularly here on the tailwater like mine.
You know, at certain times of the year when our lakes turn over and the water's discharged from the lake to the river, the DO levels, the dissolved oxygen levels, get exceptionally low.

[43:10] And that being the case, I can assure you that fish are less likely to want to eat for for obvious reasons, because the parameters of oxygen levels in the water are so low.
And you may have to go nine, 10 or 12 miles downstream before the DO levels in the water increase to a sufficient level that the fisherman will reach it to take.
But that's typically usually a case related to tailwater, sort of subject to lakes above where the water turns over.
In other words, you know, the warm water starts sinking to the lower.
And don't forget Paul Schoen's lake is over 200 foot deep which is an exceptionally deep lake and that's not always the case with others but no that may be the reason then water temperature may be another reason you know seven, dramatic changes in water temperature affect fish i know that to be the case here we may have an average say whatever 55 degrees they release generation out of the dam and water comes down there at say 48 degrees or that sudden change in water temperature will often shut the fish down.

[44:21] Water excessive levels of temperature in water can do the same thing you know when you get low levels of water in the summer months you know you get uh temperatures in the river increase dramatically you know everything that's on the bank you know whether it be the whatever the The rocks and the gravel, you know, they absorb heat.
And, you know, that fundamentally causes issues in the edges of the water to rise.
I have seen times here where I've checked water temperatures in the margins, 75 degrees.
You know, because you've got 90, 100 degree days, those rocks and gravels that are right on the edge of the water are hot, really hot.
Water tracks over that stuff.
That temperature is absorbed into the water. And when you have low flows on the river, the further you go downstream, the closer and warmer the water gets.
That may be another reason why they.

[45:21] They're generally exceptions to the rule, to be honest about it.
The fact of the matter is that you may well get there that one day and do what you've always done and get no positive results.
Well, other than the things I've just explained, there may well be an issue with the flies you're using.
And you would assume, well, if they take these on a regular basis, why don't they take them today? And I tell you, it's a weird thing, and I tell you that from my own experience many, many, many times.
You go there with, obviously, that initial approach and nothing's happening, then you got to start chopping and changing, and all of a sudden, you find the answer.
So instead of taking, shall we say, a pheasant tail or a black-necked pteranomid or whatever whatever else you want to think of, you put a different fly on and they attack it.
You can't go wrong. You start pulling them out one after the other.
Very strange. Why should that be?
Why should those fish all of a sudden change from something that they've always reacted to to something that, well, you've never fished that before?
I can't give you the answer to that.
The fish can, but I can't. I just know from years of fishing in.

Adaptation: Changing Tactics When Fishing Isn't Successful

[46:46] That never accept what you do is always the answer. You've got to be versatile.
If you fish in a zone of water for a relatively short period of time and have no positive results, one of two things should happen.
One is you better move or you change the method of fishing that you're doing.
In other words, you've got to show something different to those fish because you persistently keep showing them the same thing over and over and over again.
I can pretty much guarantee you they're going to get wised up and they won't take it. And big browns are like that.
You know, the best chance you're catching a really good big trophy brown trout.

[47:34] Is the first time it ever sees the fry that you're putting in front of it.
The more you do that, the less likely you are to catch it. And that's largely true with big rainbow trout.
In fact, I would say this, and as you know, the White River here in Arkansas, you know, a 20-inch brown trout here, we don't consider it to be a trophy.
It's got to be a 24-inch or more. And there's a lot of them in this river.
But you try and catch a big rainbow.
Big rainbows, in my opinion, can be more difficult to catch than big brown trout, for lots of different reasons. ones.
One primary one being that the big browns are much more aggressive than big rainbows.
They, I'm not saying they don't eat larger food forms, but they're different.
They really are different.
So for me, it's a pleasure to see the days when we catch these bigger rainbows, you know, 24 to 25-inch rainbows, because you don't see them that often.
You know they're there, but you don't catch them too much.
So fly selection was something else that you would ask me about?
Oh, that's a big, big question.

Universal Flies for Catching Trout Worldwide

[48:45] I'll go back to what I was saying. You can probably take 10 flies and fish any trout water in, the same flies, by the way, and fish any trout water in the world, and one or more of those flies will guarantee to catch you fish.

[49:04] I'm not suggesting for a moment that those flies may be the ones that will catch you a boatload, but they will catch you some fish.
Because what you're going to do or use are 10 flies that cover a lot of zones within the water column.
You're going to fish nymphs, you're going to fish some dryers, and you're going to fish some emergers, and you're going to fish a streamer, which definitely would be a woolly bugger.
Because overall, internationally, worldwide, you cannot beat that as a single fly of that nature to catch fish.
Then you're going to use basic, simple pheasant tails.
There's a nymphs. There's standard flies that trout almost anywhere in the world will eat. I guarantee you that.

[50:03] Then you're going to use a couple of dry flies. Number one I'd probably put on my list would be an elk hair caddis, universally. It is a great fly.
Next one I'd probably put on the list would be an Adams, which is again, consistently a good fly.
It just generally attracts fish.
In as far as soft tackle is concerned, yeah, almost always there would have to be a partridge in here's here.
I can pretty much guarantee you that if fish are looking for something only near the surface and you twitch that fly in the right way, they'll come up and eat it.

[50:43] Within a relatively small selection of flies you can catch fish in any waterway that they live, but as fly fishermen ain't like that right we carry boxes of flies if you saw what i had in my boat you wouldn't believe it and there is a reason why it's not because i need them to be honest it's because when i tie flies for customers i always tie three or four more than what the the customer wants, and I'm always, obviously, building up more and more flies.
So I put them in a fly box, and I put that, obviously, in a box in my boat.
When I go fish myself, I take one fly box with me.

[51:26] I don't need hundreds and hundreds of flies in a box.
I know what I need, and pretty much there are a number of flies that cover the categories I just said, which would be some nymphs, some dry flies, some wet flies, and possibly a woolly bug.
I don't use that fly that often because I prefer to use adult stuff.
But that said, I know it's a very efficient, effective fish-catching fly.
And probably, you know, when I'm fishing newbies, newcomers, that's the first fly I'm going to put on their rig for them so they can cast it across stream and let it swing around and come back.
And obviously, the chances of them catching a fish are pretty good.
I'm certainly not going to take them out there and expect them to present a dry fly with a dry free drift because that ain't going to happen.

Marvin:
[52:20] Right? Yes. Size 24 on 7X.

Davy:
[52:25] Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. you've got to start to be getting up in there too the levels of a little more skill to do stuff like that right I fish waters.

[52:41] In my lifetime, that one could argue that those fish are nearly impossible to catch.

[52:49] And it's not so much because they've been pressurized by anglers.
One has to accept that fish are possessively fished for by whatever means they are.
It doesn't mean be fly fish, fish, you know, whether spin or bait or whatever the case may be, there's no doubt that, you know, they do wise up.
I mean, they do. There's no argument about it. They do.
And that's due to, obviously, the presence of anglers and the means and method that they deploy to try to catch them.
But that said, I fish places that those fish have never been subjected to anything like that kind of pressure from a human being.
But they are exceptionally difficult fish to deceive and catch.
And obviously we're talking about wild stream-born fish.
They're so tuned in to their environment of the natural food sources that are abundant to them that if you do something that doesn't really come close to what they expect to see, you'll probably spoke them and they'll take off.
I mean, good luck, you know, we ain't going to catch them.
They're extremely wary of anything that they see or feel that is different.

[54:16] And when I say feel, I mean this.

[54:20] If you do not wade in a manner that basically reduces any water disturbance whatsoever, they're gone.
When you wade in a river, you create pressure waves. that go upstream as well as downstream.
In other words, the water can't pass you, but it forces pressure waves upstream of you. And those fish are sensitive to that.
They may not know you're there, but they sense something is wrong.
For example, in nature, it could be otters swimming upstream toward them.
You follow what I'm trying to tell you?
There's something that changes water pressure that they sense or they hear or something different. With that, they're gone.
I mean, like a shot, they're gone.
And they probably won't come back to that particular lie that they were in for quite some time.
Because I've often watched Wild Browns, which used to grow in one of my local rivers over there in the UK, run off and have gone back an hour later or more and they still not return back to that life.

[55:31] And they may not. Oftentimes, after a time, they will.
And once again, you know, your approach has got to be extremely careful and cautious. Once again, observation.
You're observing what that fish is doing.
You're not making an assumption by any stretch of the imagination.
You're making an observation of that fish. fish, what do I need to do to get an approach to that fish?
That's the first thing. Not necessarily how I'm going to cast my fly to it, how am I going to get an approach to that fish before I make my presentations?
If you make the wrong approach, then the odds are you're not going to be able to control and make a good casting presentation, right? Right?
That's the first thing. And then, you know, the flies you fish to those fish, they can be really, really... But they're not fancy flies.
Don't get me wrong. I mean, a lot of those fish you can deceive with fairly simple flies, like a hare's ear or, once again, a pheasant tail.
Simplistic flies. They're not, by any stretch of imagination, pieces of artwork.
But what you have to do is to...

Presenting Flies to Wary Fish for Successful Fishing

[56:54] Present that fly to that fish so there's absolutely zero awareness of the fish, that you as a human being or whatever the hell you're doing is not wary to that fish, and you'll catch them.
I don't think the guys listening have been fishing in New Zealand and the South Island, where they know exactly what I'm talking about with those big old brands down there.
You know, you make a bad pass or you screw something up, gone. gone.
All you've got to do is cast a fairly simple fly to that trout and if he's not aware of your presence in any way, shape or form you'll take it. That's it.
But it's from the difficulty arises with some of these fish, which are in gene clear water incidentally and extremely wary animals, is when they feed on or near the circus surface, if there's anything, anything that they see as unnatural, by disturbance or movement on that water surface, they will never take your fly.
You may run them off, in fact, but they won't take your fly.
Even though your fly is absolutely the perfect fly for them to take if they see it the right right way but if you do something that is not what they expect to see they're gone once again.

[58:23] Observation based on the fact that you've got skill levels anyway you know as i said fly fishing.

[58:33] For me you know has always been a fascination in my life in all aspects and as you know i um developed many many different fly patterns that are appropriate for specific, means of fishing you know whether they'd be um traditional flies or should we say white flyers soft echoes whether emerges or whatever the case may be because my years of experience Fish has taught me what to do to make that fish react to it, to those flies. Let's put it to you like that.
That's not to say that if I gave you some flies, I know for a fact, will deceive that fish under those prevailing conditions.
They're going to do the same for you because you may not present them in the same manner that I do.
That's just how it is. You know what I'm saying? But that said, there are certain flies that are what you call pretty good standards that if you give a person a bunch of those flies, the odds are, yeah, they're going to work for them.
But they're not what are considered to be flies that require a little more, shall we say, precision insofar as how they're tied and how they're presented.

[59:48] The interesting thing, I guess, on another aspect of that, you know, where fly time is concerned, like I said, you know, when I first started commercially tying flies, that wasn't something I could do 12 months a year. Yeah, I was also a musician, incidentally.
I don't know if you knew that. I was a professional bluegrass banjo player.
So I traveled around the world in the winter months with different bands.
We worked on U.S. military bases overseas, and that was a whole bunch of fun because over in the UK, the fishing season closes. You can't go fishing.

[1:00:26] It depends on the species, but essentially the fly season finishes and in a lot of rivers that doesn't open until March and in the chalk streams that don't really open until May.
So you have a long period of time where unless you want to fish for other species, which I told you I did, I'd go fish for course fish species, I'd go fish on the saltwater species.

[1:00:50] You could fish every day of the week if you want, but you'd have to fish for different different species based on the seasons and where you could or you couldn't, let's put it like that.
So for the best part where the trout fly fishing scene was concerned, yeah, you had a closed season, so you had 11 months where you had time to do other stuff.
And obviously, time flies was one of those.
So I tied nets and lots of flies, I tied flies for London fly shops back in those times too. and they would obviously sell them to mail order and this, that, and the other.
And that's another thing, you know, I developed my own mail order business back there in the late 60s and the 70s and produced a catalogue.
And don't forget, back in them times, hard for the younger generation to imagine that, but we didn't have cell phones or internet or none of that, you know.
The only way you got media knowledge was you advertised in the fly fishing magazine with your phone number and somebody would call you up or write you a letter and order some flies from you. That kind of thing, right?

[1:01:59] And so, yeah, I know. Everything today happens so damn fast.
You know, somebody expects you to answer the phone every time they call you.
Like, what? Well, they're doing something else, you know?

[1:02:10] Anyway, so you get that. And so I'd tie a lot of flies in the winter period.
And more to the point things enabled me to do things that.

[1:02:26] Obviously, in the early years, I couldn't. And most of that was related to materials, synthetic materials.
You know, I had it pretty much by the time, oh, I'd have to say somewhere, you know, probably the late 70s or something like that.
There was probably nothing I didn't need. I could get anything I wanted back then, even the exotic materials for an Atlantic salmon flies, whether it were contingents, Indian crows, and God knows what else.
I could still get that easier. Today, good luck, or if you find it, it's going to cost you a damn bloody fortune.
Now I could go to the Vineyard Warehouse there in London because I got to know them there pretty good. and I'd just go in there and Jean was the manageress and she'd say, hey, hey, hey, you know, what are you looking for?
I'd tell her, I want this, I want that, this, that and the other.
Yeah, yeah, she'd say, and we'd go out the back and all these big, huge cardboard boxes, you know, made out all of this fantastic stuff in there, whatever it was.
So, it wasn't so much an issue then, you know, you could get all the snipe schemes you wanted, the woodcock, all of that stuff. Like, no problem.

[1:03:43] That's not, Not so today, obviously, because the demand exceeds the availability, particularly of stuff like that, most of which is legally harvested for a limited period of time within the hunting season and sold to the likes of the venue to obviously process it with their own package and sell it, but they still have today limitations of what they can get, let's put it to you like that.
But anyway, really what I was saying to you was that for me.

[1:04:15] When synthetic materials became more available, that opened up a whole new era as far as what you could do and as far as innovation of flies.
I think to some extent today, if I was to be honest personally myself, I think in some respect the use of synthetics has gone a little too far as far as creating artificial flies.
Don't get me wrong by what I'm saying. And the reason I say that, bearing in mind my history, is that I'm still very much a traditionalist in that sense of the word.
You know, I still have a love of flies that existed 150 years ago or more, you know, because I still think there's some, there's a great intrinsic value in a lot of those flies that don't exist with, shall we say, more modern flies.
That's the way to explain it to you. And that's not by any stretch of imagination to disregard the relevant skills of what some of those tyres now produce, because they're exceptionally good.
I don't dispute that for one moment.
And most certainly, obviously, myself. I can do the same if I want to do it.
But I still have a natural instinct to favour the flyers of the past.
If that's the way to explain that one. with, of course, some introduction of the use of synthetic material.

[1:05:44] And I would always argue this, too, that if you wanted to discuss the aspects of fly tying more, you.

The Skill and Versatility of Fly Tiers

[1:05:54] A skilled fly tire in other words the guys that i would hold on a pedestal as far as skillful fry tires that i know personally otherwise overall that are capable of trying everything in other words they can tie a size 24 midge and they can tie, a large classic atlantic salmon fly there are very few tires in the world that can do that, and they may choose not to want to tie salmon flies that's okay I don't have a problem with that whereas a salmon fly tie might not be interested in tying little midges fine I understand that, either way they've acquired very high levels of skills with what they do do but on the other hand are they accomplished across the board at everything probably not, but that's okay I'm just going to make a statement there that to me the most accomplished road ties in the world that I know that can really do everything are few and far between.

[1:07:00] And you could also say the same thing about fly fishermen too.
That's the same thing to some extent. It's just how you, or I personally view that. Let's just say that.
So, you know, fly time has changed dramatically too, you know, today. today, and I'd say almost certainly due to social media.

[1:07:26] I'm going to use that to be the case. All of a sudden, they could just go on there to YouTube, oh yeah, well, how do I tie this?
Type it in. There come up 10 different variations where you tie the same flight, good, bad, or indifferent, whatever the case may be.
You know what I'm saying? that the availability of fly time material today is not what it used to be.
It's what I mean by that, as far as the availability of given natural material, and that's brought about by lots of different reasons.
The one is the demand, obviously, but also the now legal restrictions of import of fur and feather from overseas sources, particularly feather because of Asian oil flow and various things like that, or the badminton license and certifications of importation.
And the same thing vice versa, export of materials from this country to overseas sources, the same thing, they come under restriction.
So the availability of a lot of.

[1:08:32] Imported natural material, so to speak, it's less today than at one time it used to be.
Fortunately for us here, there are a number of people that commercially raise.

[1:08:46] Feather, primarily poultry, obviously, with capes and stuff like that and this, that, and the other.
And of course, we have natural resources of fur from animals which are legally harvested during in the hunting season, this, that, and the other.
So, you know, there's still an abundance of, fortunately, natural material, and the synthetic material market is unbelievable anymore.
I would hate to be, I own fly shops in the UK.
I would hate to have to be a fly shop owner today and having to decide, what the hell do I carry in fly time material?
It's unbelievable. Most people wouldn't be aware of that because they don't have the trade catalogs to know what's there.
But that said, it is unbelievable the amount of material that is available today as far as, shall we say, synthetics for fly tires.

[1:09:44] You have to have one hell of a lot of money tied up in fly time product in your store to even come close to carrying all of that. It's not going to happen.
So I guess what a retail fly shop really has to do is cater for most of the time, you know, the local community and the nature of the type of materials they use for the flies that they generally use within their location, so to speak.
You know what I'm saying? And then you've got, of course, some of the mail order businesses, they try to carry a lot of stuff.
You know, Feathercoil is one of the better ones. They're pretty good at carrying pretty much mostly what you need, but they won't have it all, but they'll have a lot of it.
So it's a big, big business compared to what it ever used to be years and years ago.
Yeah, it's a good thing, I guess, in many ways, you know, because everybody along the line is making some income from marketing a product and the guys that buy the stuff from tying the flies up with it. Yeah, sure.
You know what I mean? Yeah.

Marvin:
[1:10:53] Everybody wins, right? It sounds like we'll have to bring you back and we'll do another show and we'll call it the Complete Fly Tire.

Davy:
[1:11:02] Yeah.

Marvin:
[1:11:03] I think there's as much interesting stuff, Davey to unpack about that, kind of back to your point about, you know, when you can't get everything really easily, you have to be really resourceful and thoughtful about your materials, right? Yeah.

Davy:
[1:11:19] I've been with her, yeah.

Marvin:
[1:11:20] Yeah, and, you know, so today we've got this, like, blessing where we have substitutes for natural materials, but we have a lot more stuff.
And so, you know, it's a different interaction with the sport where you just basically go to the internet and have it shipped to your house, right? And you tie with it.

Davy:
[1:11:36] That's why, you know, when Schilfer became somewhat banned over there, in the UK. That's why I developed the SLF dubbing materials initially.
And that started off with the standard SLF.
And then I developed a lot of different other blends related to...
I did all the stuff from my friend, Oliver Edwards, all the master class blends.
I did those. I did the Dave Whitlock dubbing blends and the Paul Jorgensen dubbing blends and a whole bunch of stuff.
Up and I learned more about the processes of putting synthetic and natural material, together and the dyeing processes in those years, it's unbelievable.
I sold that business to the Wapsie Black Company here in Mountain Home quite some time ago and they don't produce all of the original blends I did, but they certainly do a lot of it.
So if people see SLF dyeing products, they may come back to me because that's how I started It's SELF standard for synthetic living fiber.
And then my friend, he said, no, no, no, no, SELF. You're going like seals live forever. I said, yeah, right. Yeah.

Marvin:
[1:12:52] I think if I look over here on my tying table, I bet you I have a storage box probably with 30 packages of like spiky squirrel and all that stuff in it.

Davy:
[1:13:01] Oh, yeah. The squirrel dabbing, yeah. The hairs, yeah, sure.

Marvin:
[1:13:05] Yeah.

Davy:
[1:13:05] Yeah.

Marvin:
[1:13:06] So, you know, we've talked about, Davey, how important education is.
And so, you know, I would say I would ask you a couple of things.
You know, I know you're getting ready to kind of shift gears and get away from being on the water and being in the field until kind of next season.
But, you know, can folks can folks expect to see you on the show circuit anywhere in 2024?

Sowbug Event in Mountain Home, March 2024

Davy:
[1:13:30] Yeah. Okay. Okay, next year, and the biggest show we have here in Mountain Home, and some of the listeners almost certainly have been here and attended that, will be the Starbucks event.
That's a big, big event here. I was invited to North Apatow by Frischers, and that will be in March of next year.
And ironically, I am the guest of honor at the event this next year, and that will be on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of March.
And we have about 100 fly tires there from different parts of the country.
And we put a lot of programs on flyers, It's a great event. And, of course, if you come here, you're within a few miles of the White River. So you can always go fishing as well.
I must say, in the water, maybe high or low, I can't tell you what generation it's going to be.
But nevertheless, you've got plenty of opportunity because you've got the spring weather, the White River, the Norfolk River, the Little Red River, and the Little Missouri.
And there are all trout water habitats in this area.

Marvin:
[1:14:40] Yeah and so do you do you have a kind of an idea of what your class offerings are going to be in 2024 as.

Davy:
[1:14:48] Far as the soundbite is concerned i will be obviously doing programs related obviously because the theme of this the um event is the uh wet fly and so i'll be obviously doing classes related to understanding means methods techniques tackling this and the other and demonstrating train fly time techniques for those particular kind of flies. So, yeah.
So that's the dates that I just give you in March for that event.

Marvin:
[1:15:17] You know, Davey, you know, folks wanted to either book you for a lesson or get a day on the water.
What's the best way for folks to kind of learn more about what you offer and how to find you and all that kind of good stuff?

Davy:
[1:15:31] Oh, yeah. Well, okay. They can go to my website, which is DaveyWattonFlyFishing.com.
And then they can get the relevant information off it about classes, the schools and whatever else or they can call me or text me, on my personal telephone number and that's on that website address so yeah anybody that has an interest to want to come here and spend some time and learn some stuff and accept shall we say Hey, justifiable criticism.
You know, if I tell you why you're doing this wrong, it's nothing personal.
I'm telling you that you're doing something wrong, you know, and ultimately I'm going to try to get that fault corrected.
I cannot guarantee you that for some of the reasons that we talked about this evening.
But, you know, I can certainly educate you more and pretty much I know what you would know. Oh, let's put it this way.
And regardless of whether it be nymph fishing, dry fry, wet fry, whatever, you know, it's, um, and we have a wonderful resource there on the White River.
Then you never know. You may well hook one of our big trophy brown trout. You never know.

Marvin:
[1:16:45] You know.

Davy:
[1:16:46] It's well there.

Marvin:
[1:16:48] Yeah. I've seen the pictures and, uh, you know, are you on social media at all or have you been lucky enough to avoid that whole mess?

Davy:
[1:16:55] Yeah, I do. I do.
I do at times post on some of the really exceptional fish.
But, you know, honest to God, I get so busy, you know, when you do a guide day, you know, you get up in the morning about 6 o'clock, 6.30, get everything ready.
You may have to drive, you know, 30, 40 miles.
Not always the way you're going to fish that day. You spend the day out in the river with your customers. is you've got to drive back home and you've got to deal with a lot of email correspondence.
I may have to tie back up flies because they lost them or something else or whatever the case may be.
Now I've got the animals here I have to take care of as well.
That's this, that, and the other.

[1:17:42] There's a limit to what you can get done in a day. And not to mention yard work and this, that, and the other.
I write articles for magazines. magazines, if any of the listeners here, if you go onto the North Arkansas Fly Fishers website, which is NAFF, N-A-F-F.

[1:18:03] Every month I write an article on there that's got, in not all cases, but sometimes it's a lot of history.
So I deal with some historical aspects of fly fishing and the flies that are related.
There's so many different things I do on there.
You know, for example, this next month And my article is related to soft tackles, but not what most people know.
It's related to the Irish style soft tackles, which are used for the Danica and Mayfly emergence.
And that ain't tied on a size 12 or 14 hook. They're big. They're tied on size 12 and 10.
And I show examples of those slides. So if the listeners have got an interest, they can go on to our website and they can pull up a lot of the stuff that I've written over the years.
And I know they'll find a lot of that pretty darn interesting.
So, yeah. But ultimately, yeah, you want to get a hold of me, go to my website or just call me directly on my number, which you've got, 870-404-5223.
And text me. I can't always get back to you right away, but I will.

Marvin:
[1:19:12] Yeah. And I will drop a link because that sounds like a great resource to, uh, to get those articles. I'll drop that in the show notes too.
And, uh, you know, Davey, I really appreciate you, uh, even though you only got it a half a day today, I really appreciate you spending so much time with me this evening.

Davy:
[1:19:27] Yeah. 93 hours.

Marvin:
[1:19:30] I haven't, I didn't quite set the Sapinski record, but I got pretty close.

Davy:
[1:19:35] Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. So by all means, if you want to delve into the, uh, Do the aspects of flight time historically to where we are now?
Yeah, but I'd love to do that. Just let me know.

Marvin:
[1:19:51] I would love to, too. Thank you so much again for making the time, Davey.

Davy:
[1:19:55] You're most welcome, Marlon. Take care of yourself.

Marvin:
[1:19:58] I'll do it.

Davy:
[1:19:59] All right, my friend.

Intro:
[1:20:01] Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.
Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating or view on the podcast of your choice.
And be sure to check out our Patreon community and head over to www.nor-vice.com to see if Norvice will be coming to a show near you and to check out all of Tim and Michelle's cool products. Tight lines, everybody.