Transcript: PODCAST INTERVIEW: Shoal Bass Shenanigans and Fly Tying Philosophies with Georgia's Fletcher Sams
S6, Ep 34: Fly Tyer and Riverkeeper Fletcher Sams
| Artist: | Marvin S. Cash |
| Album: | The Articulate Fly |
| Year: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://www.thearticulatefly.com |
Introduction
Intro:[0:03] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly.
On this episode, I'm joined by fly tire and river keeper, Fletcher Sams.
We take a deep dive into shoal bass, Fletcher's fly designs, and his work protecting central Georgia waters.
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 and review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.
And we're excited to partner with our friends at Jesse Brown's Outdoors to bring the Chocolate Factory to Charlotte on May 4th.
Blaine will be teaching private tying classes, discussing predator and prey, and sharing his favorite rod, reel, and line combos.
Check out the link in the show notes for more details.
Now, on to our interview.
[0:53] You well fletcher welcome to the articulate fly.
[0:56] Thanks for having me very excited yeah.
[1:00] I'm looking forward to it and it was kind of it's kind of ironic that two southerners have to go all the way to ypsilanti michigan to meet each other in person.
[1:06] Yeah that was uh that was quite the show yeah and.
[1:12] It's kind of funny too i was explaining to people i was like there was this whole like southern predator angler scoff posse up there.
[1:18] Yeah yeah it's uh we we carpooled up uh believe it or not at least half of us so um you know it's it's been uh a really cool show lots of relationships you know that you can meet on social media but then you know now you have like real in contact stuff with them and so um yeah that's that's been super cool uh especially Officially meeting folks like Chase Smith in person.
[1:46] Yeah, absolutely. You know, so Fletcher, we have a tradition.
I know you're a listener, so you know the tradition is we like to have all of our guests share their earliest fishing memory.
[1:55] So, my earliest fishing memory that's really super burned into my brain is at a young age, my family was super close, and I grew up a mile down the road from my cousin, Jimbo.
And Jimbo and I fished his dad's bass pond, and maybe the biggest fish in there was half pound, pound.
[2:25] Um, and we would go out there with jitterbugs and beetle spins and just have a blast.
And, uh, you know, that's kind of what I thought fishing was and it was a great time. But then my dad took me to this farm pond down the road.
Um, and, uh, you kind of have this fish that haunt you. And this was the first fish that really haunted me.
And I, you know, just kind of went down there and no one knowing what I knew and tied on a jitterbug, threw it out and started reeling it back in.
And, uh, it got kind of underneath the branch and I thought that I was going to get snagged.
So I went a little bit faster and it just looked like a toilet flushed right there in the stick.
And, uh, this, she was probably five or six pounds, but, you know, as a kid, I was, you know, 20 pounds and, and it jumped out of the air straight in the hook and blew off and, you know, just totally distraught.
And my dad had to, you know, calm me down and everything like that.
But that, that's my earliest burned in fishing memory.
[3:29] Yeah, that's pretty neat. So when did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?
[3:33] So, um, on a, a trip, my, my grandparents took, uh, Jimbo and I, um, out on this, I mean, trip of a lifetime when I think that I was.
[3:49] Say 10 and Jimbo is probably 12 or 13.
And, um, they took us out to the middle fork of the salmon, um, out now, Idaho.
Um, and we did a float for, I think it was seven days.
And, uh, you know, Jimbo was getting ready to go and, you know, getting all the stuff that he wanted to take.
And he was gonna try fly fishing. And, of course, you know, I have to do what my big cousin is doing.
And so I begged for a fly rod to take from my mom and dad, and they got me one.
Went out there, and, you know, it was just dry flies for a really big cutthroat.
And this was back in the early 90s.
[4:36] And it was just awesome. It was the coolest thing. And, you know, I was terrible angler, but, uh, was able to catch fish.
And, uh, that was the first foray into fly fishing.
And, uh, when I got back home was kind of, you know, in this trout snob mode.
And then I kind of started trying to trout fish up in the North Georgia mountains and it was crowded creeks, nymph fishing. And I just, it, it, it wasn't for me.
Um, and so I kind of dropped it for a long time.
It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I picked it back up.
[5:21] Yeah. Very, very neat. And the rest of course is history. You got a little bit of water under the bridge since then.
And, you know, who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly fishing journey? And what have they taught you?
[5:33] Um, you know, I, I, I lived in.
In, you know, middle Georgia, there's no fly shops around or anything like that.
The closest one we have is an excellent fly shop called the Fish Hawk.
And, you know, the one mentor, I guess, that's been kind of constant in my life is this guy named Rob Smith.
Everyone knows him down here as Mustache.
And if you don't know Mustache, you need to know Mustache.
And he has no social media presence whatsoever, but everyone knows him.
And I remember when I went in and decided that I was going to, I was doing a lot of duck hunting at the time.
[6:29] And wanted to bring a fly rod with me for, you know, after the morning was kind of done.
And we were out in the boat and redfish were around and wanted to kind of get into it and went in with the intention of buying a redfish rod. Um...
[6:46] Rob kind of, you know, gave me a little refresher and got me all set up.
[6:52] And as that kind of progressed into bass fishing, Rob was always there to kind of steer me in the right direction.
Not necessarily like spending time with me on the water as a mentor or anything like that.
But he is always somebody that I really look to to help me problem solve problems with my casting, my, you know, understanding how to fight fish, that kind of thing.
Um but you know by and large um the the fun thing to me about fly fishing um as far as how i got into it and how i learned was really trying to figure it out for myself and you know kind of surrounding myself with fishing buddies that liked figuring things out themselves and you met some of of those guys that came up to michigan uh adam smith and his brother travis smith and uh seth clark and we all just kind of nerd out about fly fishing and you know trying to solve different problems and really just kind of feeding off of uh the problem solving aspect of fly fishing and figuring it out for yourself
Chasing Edge Species
Fletcher:[8:12] makes it a lot more rewarding experience in in my opinion Yeah.
[8:18] Which is interesting because I know we were talking up in Michigan, too. That's probably how you've kind of, you know, not to you, but to a lot of people have started chasing kind of edge species on the fly.
And, you know, everybody that I talk to that fly fishes in Georgia, they're absolutely nuts about shoal bass.
And, you know, for folks that aren't familiar, you want to kind of give folks kind of an overview of like, you know, what a shoal bass is?
[8:40] Is sure you know i i think most of your listeners uh women outside of uh the southeast you know kind of tend to think of bass as largemouth smallmouth maybe spotted bass and there's 19 species um that that have been delineated of black bass that you can go catch today um and georgia has 12 of those And out of the 12, the shoal bass is very unique in a lot of different ways.
It's a habitat specialist first of all and foremost um there's a reason it's called a shoal bass and that's because they live in this what we call uh fall on habitat uh heavy current rock um rapids for lack of a better description and um.
[9:40] These fish require that for spawning habitat. And if you impound the stream that they're in, they're not going to survive.
They do not do well with impoundments at all versus, you know, say a smallmouth or a spotted bass, which is kind of more of a habitat generalist.
They'll kind of be all over the place.
They'll make huge movements up and down, 100 mile plus movements, migrating every year between where they spend most of the year and then when they come up to spawn. on.
To look at one, it's apparent that they're very different if you had both of them in your hand, but I'd say that the coloration most resembles a smallmouth bass.
They have vertical barring going down the body, kind of an olive back and a yellowish light olive side flank and a pretty white belly and they have this big black spot typically on their tail and their fins are almost like a mauve color.
[11:01] And the other distinguishing thing from small mouth would be that their mouth is almost as big as a large mouth.
Very, very large mouth. um and proportionately their tail is not as big as a smallmouth bass um, And where they live for a good part of the year is in tiny little current breaks inside the heaviest current that they can find.
And that's how they largely ambush food, is in and out of tiny current breaks when stuff washes down.
[11:44] They can get fairly large. The Georgia record, I believe, is eight pounds, four ounces, and it was tied two years ago.
[12:00] And they only live, only native to one specific drainage, the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint drainage.
That the Chattahoochee forms part of the border from Alabama and Georgia and kind of flows out the Appalachian Column to the Gulf of Mexico.
And then the Flint forms around the Atlanta airport and comes down through Albany and meets the Chattahoochee and Lake Seminole.
And that is their native range. In the 70s, they were stocked in the river that I work in, the Otmogi River in the Altamaha system.
And the native bass at that time in the 70s.
Old mogi were um a strain of red eye called the altamaha bass and largemouth and these days in the shoal habitat um they're the largemouth are incredibly rare and there are no pure.
[13:12] Altamaha red eye these fish immediately took over everything um so that's kind of what they look like and kind of where they
Understanding Shoal Bass
Fletcher:[13:21] live um but they are habitat specialists and they have to have that shoal habitat in order to survive gotcha.
[13:33] So it sounds like you know maybe unlike smallmouth bass you kind of have to target them like your fish in pocket water right.
[13:40] Yeah yes and no i mean I mean, they will be kind of in more open water.
They will hang out in pools.
And, you know, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are listening to this and say, oh, you know, smallmouth bass hang out in that kind of habitat in my neck of the woods.
And sure, they can be in that kind of gentle area.
Area but um i think the the thing that's really bizarre when when people experience anglers uh come down and try for the shoal bass is how much current they will be in um you know people try to make them analogous to trout and all this other stuff and it's it's it's really just its own thing and because a lot of this habitat is pocket water troughs ledges high current wood rock all this stuff it's challenging to get your bait where you need it to go.
[14:49] Yeah. And so I guess, does that mean that you generally are fishing, you know, opting for like a streamer presentation over like poppers and sliders and things like that?
[14:59] There, there are, um, you know, in the summer, um, poppers can be, um, uh, a really good, fun way to do it.
Um, you can fish, you know, big nips for them that, that can be fairly effective if you can get heavy enough.
But for me, the streamer fishing thing is the river that I'm in, unfortunately, from a fishing standpoint, runs exceptionally clear almost all year.
And we just have super high visibility. ability.
And from a fishing standpoint, I don't really have a lot of patience for nymphing or dry flies or even poppers.
I love animating a fly and I love seeing them eat.
And this fish is almost 100% pesimorous after they're 12 inches long.
So all they eat is fish pretty much and so my favorite way to target them is totally with a streamer and if you see me out on the water with a bobber on i am having a really awful bad day.
[16:23] And and we'll and we'll talk about this when we get to to fly design because i know from talking to you in michigan um at bob in the hood that you've got some really kind of unique you know approaches to the way you like to design and fish streamers that are kind of unconventional for kind of what I think of as kind of traditional predator streamer folks.
But, you know, on the tackle side, are you fishing those with like, you know, six and seven weights on like floating and intermediate lines?
I mean, kind of what's your tackle setup? Yeah.
[16:53] So, um, you know, shameless plug for Schultz.
Um, that, that swim fly rod that he developed, I've got four or five of them and, um, all eight weights and the, the eight weight thing really kind of evolved, not, not necessarily because of the fish, but because of the flies, um, because they have such a big mouth, we're throwing fairly large flies, um, you know, up to 12 inches long.
And so having the ability to quickly switch to a fly that's that size, it helps to have the extra beep.
The other thing is, you know, these fish can live in really small, really, you know, crowded canopy creeks and being able to roll cast a decent size streamer, it helps to have the weight. weight.
And, and most people, at least most people that I fish with fish with eight weights.
[17:57] Got it. And so that for folks that don't know, that's a Loomis stick.
Um, and I'll try to drop a link to it in the show notes. And are you then fishing a floating line or intermediate? I mean, what do you like to do?
[18:07] So, you know, um, when I first started to really get, um.
[18:14] Serious about, you know, tying and doing all this stuff for Shoal Bass, I was essentially trying to copy Mike Schultz's program of kind of breaking down the water column and having it situational to water temps and, you know, kind of through the whole thing.
I've got, you know, full sink, sink tips, all this stuff.
And when we're fishing out of a boat, we'll, we'll have seven rods in the raft.
And, you know, we're, it's almost like we're the glitter boat guys, you know, just picking up a different setup and, and growing it.
Um, but you know, it's kind of evolved over time.
At least my program, what I run is really kind of simplified and specialized into a floating line program primarily.
And a large reason that I'm doing a floating line kind of base program these days is I really like targeting these fish on foot.
Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm weight fishing most of the time and really the only time that I'm bringing any kind of sinking line is when I'm in a boat.
[19:41] And, you know, we, we fish a lot with conventional guys, uh, trying to learn what they're doing and, you know, how the fish are reacting to the different baits.
And, you know, one thing that I feel like you can replicate a lot of the stuff that, that's been fishing guys and conventional tackle guys are doing.
And, but the one thing that you're really able to do that they're not able to do so well is like the floating line presentation.
Um, it's just really hard for conventional guy to do like a grease line swing, for instance.
And so, you know, I feel like because of the clear water, I've kind of developed my flies to all be fished on a floating line.
[20:33] Got it. And I would imagine you probably given if they're fishing in structure, you're probably almost all fluorocarbon, right?
[20:40] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It takes a lot for me to go under like 20 pounds.
[20:46] Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I know from looking at your Instagram feed that there's some other species you like to chase on the fly, too.
You want to share those with our listener?
[20:55] Yeah. So, you know, in Georgia, we do have 12 different species of black bass.
And my other favorites to fish are what we call the red-eye clade.
That's seven different species. species.
Some are only found in Alabama, some are only found in Georgia and South Carolina.
And because we're so geologically old down here in the Southeast, we have all these isolated drainages.
And so you have all the speciation down here.
And if you're not familiar with the red-eye species, they don't get very big.
Like let's say a 12-inch fish is like equivalent to to a 19, 20-inch smallmouth, right, as far as trophy size.
But they are incredibly colorful.
Some of the species have really bright red fins or orange fins or yellow fins and have.
[22:02] They look like smurfs part of the year just totally
Other Species of Interest
Fletcher:[22:05] blue um bright blue coloration on the face and the bellies and um they live in a lot of places that you would think are like brook trout streams um and those are fun for me to kind of target and and you know really i like doing that because it's kind of a solo thing or maybe you and one other person and you will definitely not see anyone else out in most of the places that you're going to go target those fish so really rugged really remote and you know if it was a trout stream it would be packed but you got the whole thing to yourself and so um those species in general have a special place in my heart because you know the the the fly that you know the first fly that i named uh was really originally to target that specific uh clade of species um and and it was really kind of a technique specific thing that that kind of led me to them and um outside of.
[23:14] The red eye bass um um i am really really into uh fishing for bowfin and striped bass and those fish are also kind of special to me because the bowfin have really shown me a lot about fly durability material selection um those kind of things and and you know same thing with a striper i mean um a lot of the.
[23:43] Striper fishing we do is kind of targeting them when they're acting like shoal bass um or or sometimes while we're fishing for shoal bass they'll be by catch but um they're they're not small fish and uh the lessons learned on fly durability from them um you know kind of changed the way that i've kind of gone about building flies too so um we we kind of tend to do a little little bit of everything except for trout fishing um so it's it's kind of come full circle back to you know what interested me as a little kid which is fast stuff yeah.
[24:24] And then you know i'll drop this in the show notes but uh you know folks should check out your instagram feed because there's some absolute hogs for stripers uh in your instagram feeds just it's kind of crazy really.
[24:37] Yeah and you know going back to uh mustache at the fishhawk i i've kind of gotten to the point now where um i don't i don't post fish pictures anymore because it's just it's hard not to burn spots and stuff with with those pictures so um kind of cool cooling it on uh posting any
Interest in Tying Flies
Fletcher:[24:58] more of those for at least a little bit yeah.
[25:00] Well there you go and so you know we've kind of danced around the fact that you, uh, that you tie flies, you know, how did you get interested in tying flies?
[25:09] Um, you know, probably 10 or 12 years ago, um, my parents, um, took a fly tying class and they really got into it and, you know, for a little bit and they thought that it would be something that I was interested in cause I was kind of starting to fly fish and everything like that and of course i was like that that like arts and crafts i don't need to do that i i just want to buy the flies and go out there and fish and and so you know after um, a couple years of it you know the the vice and the little you know combo pack of materials sitting in the closet i had a pretty frustrating day shoal bass fishing where i could not get a fly deep enough to hit where i wanted to hit in the hole and so i i dragged that thing out of the closet And, you know, pulled up somebody's YouTube tutorial on how to tie a clouser and bought the heaviest tungsten eyes that I could and, you know, a bucktail and started spinning them up.
And it's kind of been an obsession ever since.
[26:22] Yeah. So, you know, what do you tie on today? day?
[26:26] Um, you know, I, I, I think I, I, I started with a peak, um, and, you know, kind of wore it, wore it completely out.
And, uh, these days I primarily tie on a Renzetti.
[26:39] Gotcha. And, uh, what's your favorite flavor there?
[26:44] Um, it's, uh, just a saltwater traveler.
Um, I've, um, you know, worn out a couple of jaws and, And, you know, the thing about the Saltwater Traveler is I really don't need, for the flies that I tied, like, you know, true rotary function or anything fancy like that.
I just, the arm design on the Renzetti allows me to get a little bit more purchase on shanks.
And so that's primarily the reason that I really like that vice.
[27:25] Got it. Yeah, I've got two of them. I've got I'm left handed.
So I had one for the back in the old days where we didn't work from home.
I had one for the office and one for the house. And now they're both in the office at home.
[27:37] Yeah. And now my, my daughter, um, is showing interest.
So she's, she's using an old peak, um, time with me. So.
[27:48] Yeah, that's pretty cool. And so, you know, who are some of the, um, the tires that have kind of influenced your development over the years?
Influential Fly Tiers
Fletcher:[27:57] That's that's a really long that's really long list um you know i i think if you if you look at my pages it's it's very obvious that the blank chocolate's a huge influence but um you know i didn't start tying um changer style flies for a few years um and you know kind of started out out with classics, you know, Bob Clouser, you know, some Popovic's flies, like hollow flies.
[28:33] And then, you know, lefty deceiver, double deceivers, that kind of thing.
And really, it was kind of around the double deceiver that I started looking at, you know, the stuff that Madden was doing with a peanut or, you know, articulated flies and really started looking at what Gallup was doing with the extended body articulated fly and all the variation that, that he was doing with, you know, that kind of body design to, to get the length with these natural materials that he wanted to get.
And, you know, same, same thing with the extended body concept on the B-Squad with Papa Vic and the way that I really started looking at these articulated extended body kind of flaws was in my brain, it's...
[29:35] All different styles to kind of accomplish the same basic idea which is you know a single hook streamer i was only able to get so long and um by adding the extended body tail articulation whatever you want to call it you're able to get a much bigger bait but on top of that you're able to get the movement in it and so you know i would say that um pop of x madden um blaine um are all huge influences but then there's also like conceptual stuff that i like to take you know in other words i don't tie their patterns but i really like the ideas behind their patterns and And like Mark Sedati with the weight balance principle, I really try to build my flies in a way that they are weight balanced.
That's not always possible, but I like to have weight balance flies in my box so that I can hunt all day on a new river.
And so, you know, I'm not, I'm not all out there tying Sadati Slammers, but you know, that, that concept that he brought, um, I really, really adhere to that. at Andy Sabota with the Swimmy Jimmy.
[31:02] It's one of my favorite flies of all time. But again, you know, it's going back to the extended body thing.
My favorite way of tying any kind of extended body fly is doing it with a Game Changer platform.
And I think that it allows me to use materials in a way that the fly looks more realistic, in my opinion, and less suggestive.
And because I fish a lot of really clear flows, trying to take flies from a suggestive standpoint to a more realistic standpoint, but not really...
Losing action, gaining action, that kind of thing.
I think that the shank-based bugs are really kind of where I'm totally adherent to the Game Changer platform, pretty much.
Fly Tying Techniques
Fletcher:[32:08] I do tie some single articulation flies, but even those, it's not using a wire and a bead.
It's connecting them with shanks and really kind of going back to some durability stuff from the bow fin, the pickerel, and the big striper is, you know, a lot of the wire connection, a lot of this stuff, you know, it'll put your tackle to the test.
And so, you know, even on the single articulation flies, I'm articulating it with shanks just from a durability standpoint.
[32:46] Uh, God, and it sounds too, like, you know, given the species that you like to chase on the fly that you didn't really kind of, you know, you didn't start tying pheasant tails and then get to predator flies.
It seems like you were kind of predator flies out of the gate, right?
[32:59] Yeah, pretty much that, that was, you know, it was like, Hey Rob, what, what, uh, what a bassy, you know, and, and, you know, showed him a little box, uh, you know, some nibs and stuff like that, that I was trying to fish with.
With and my station was like bigger, bigger, bigger, you know, and, and, you know, once, once I saw a fish eat a streamer for the first time and how aggressive it was, I, I was hooked. I didn't want to do anything else ever.
[33:28] Yeah. And, you know, so for folks that aren't, you know, familiar with your patterns, kind of let us, you know, know some of your, you know, more notable patterns and kind of, you know, kind of how they fish and kind of what they're geared towards.
Notable Fly Patterns
Fletcher:[33:41] Um you know the the like i was saying the the first pattern um that that i really named and i guess what most people know me for is is um what i call a tweaker and um the the idea for the tweaker kind of evolved out of uh red-eyed bass fishing and um another one of my favorite flies is a blind chocolate pattern the bugger changer and when I don't know the story but you know originally when when he.
[34:23] I designed that fly. It was a tailhook fly. And then, um, you know, there's some issues and there's a change to one shank back, um, on that fly, um.
[34:35] With the head just kind of float, not floating, but lead eye head with a little bit of brush and that thing will, you know, jig all the way down to the bottom.
Them and it's a gray fly it's one of my favorite flies of all time um but when i'm red-eyed bass fishing it's hard to roll cast that thing um effectively and so i really wanted to figure out a way to you know just tie essentially the same bug but have a bug with less heavy lead eyes And the way I was trying to do that was just tying them with a deer hair head and having the deer hair kind of provide buoyancy that would keel it in addition to a little bit of weight.
[35:22] And so instead of tying them with, like, say, medium eyes, I'm tying them with extra small eyes and deer hair.
And they were great red-eyed bass flies.
Um and um also changed a really light wire hook and being able to roll cast that thing in those red eye creeks was great um and you know caught a ton of fish on it but the thing that i really kind of noticed in in fishing that version of the fly a lot was um Um, and I guess talk about this in a little bit, but, um.
[36:06] I was not really great with deer here when I started tying that bug and had a lot of variations to, you know, how I was carving the head.
Um, and noticed on the heads that I was tying more like a Gallup Nancy P like really tall instead of really wide heads, that the fly was super weedless, like throw it in a weed bed, drag it out, throw it in a brush pile, drag it out, and never really getting snagged.
And what was happening was the hook point was kind of loading back behind the head. head.
When a fish would bite it, of course, had plenty of hook back there, but because the deer hair head was more buoyant than the hook point, the hook point would float ever so slightly behind the head while it was traveling through the water.
Tweaker Modification
Fletcher:[37:10] Decided that because it was so weightless man this thing is going to be a great shoal bass fly and, the shoal bass would eat the hell out of it but almost every fish would straighten these little light wire hooks out and so we started tinkering with it a little bit more um adding more weight to the head and trying to go to heavier gauge hooks but we would lose the weightlessness because the hook would just kind of flop to the side the head would keel but this heavy gauge wide gap hook would just kind of fall to the side and one of the mods that we made to it to really kind of keel it was was adding a little bit of weight to the hook to keel it.
[38:05] And the really crazy thing about the final design is, yeah, it's still weedless, got a beefy hook on it.
It's going to hold any bass species that you're going to want to hook on it.
And it's because of the weight in the back of the hook.
If you're familiar with like a yard sale supply that Matt Grudjewski ties, he weights the back of the hook.
Fishing Techniques
Fletcher:[38:36] And that's really what kind of provides the glide and the jerk showing profile on that fly.
Fly and what happens when you, you know, just kind of pop this fly is the belly will roll almost.
[38:59] Above sideways and flash like crazy.
[39:03] And it will show like t-bone.
[39:06] Kind of profile every time you're stripping it and so having that action that um the way that we fish this fly especially for for shoal bass is a pretty unconventional uh way of fishing and it's it's a boat fly you know the majority of the way that we fish that fly it's we do sometimes use it waiting but it's primarily a boat fly and um there are lots of these pockets that are up on the bank and a lot of them have wood and all kinds of other stuff and a lot of high flow and we will put on a really heavy gauge uh really long like 10 11 foot floating line leader and we'll throw this up on the dry bank and drag it down into these bank side pockets on the really clear low flow days and um try to make reaction bites happen right because otherwise it's it's um you know kind of having a tough day and so it's manufacturing uh reaction bites but um we're we're casting up onto dry land and dragging this thing into not near structure into structure um.
[40:34] And um hauling fish out over over structure fish will climb up over dry branches chasing this thing down um just a really really cool fly and a really cool way of fishing um but it's um.
[40:55] You know kind of the first named fly i guess that i did um and we have a ton of fun with that bug, but it's a really specialized bug as far as you know like any weedless fly you're gonna decrease, your hookup percentage somewhat and so for fishing open water near structure we like to fish other other bugs.
But if we're tweaker fishing, there's no better way to do it than with a tweaker.
We don't do it with other flies.
It's kind of its own little sunny, bright, summer day fishing program.
Unique Flies for Shoal Bass
Marvin:[41:37] Very, very neat. And also too, talk to our listeners a little bit.
You were showing me some game changers that you tied that kind of had a spoon face on them that It actually were fish kind of parallel to the water surface instead of perpendicular. And you were telling me that was also for a shoal bass presentation.
[41:56] Yeah, that is, you know, I kind of tend to break my flies into different categories.
And that's probably the most versatile fly in my box.
I can, if I'm fishing an area that I'm not too familiar with, I can make long reaching casts.
And, you know, swim it back like any streamer over a long distance trying to elicit a strike over terrain that I'm not sure about.
Or you can just kind of toss it in a hole in one specific zone and twitch around and work.
But it's kind of a...
[42:41] More, more wide, more flat kind of profile is what we're kind of ended up with of a Andy Sabota, swimmy Jimmy, and we're tying it on a game changer body.
And we're, we're trimming the body, um, where it has, instead of a vertical profile, it's got a horizontally wide profile.
Um, and it, looks like a dying bait fish up on the surface and um kind of swims sideways depending on the the presentation it's um if you.
[43:27] You can you know if you're a lot of people fish andy's fly on sinking lines but for me I like fishing on a full float and a long lure, and I will typically use it to fish one zone and dive down into that zone or into that pocket or into that shelf and then up over the next little shallow portion and back down into another bucket or hole in these giant shoal cones. complexes.
And it allows me to cover a lot more water than say, like a deceiver or something like that. That's a regular hook down fly.
[44:16] That's once I get it in the water, it's just going to kind of maintain depth.
This thing I can dive and then hover over obstructions and then dive down into into the next hole and that really you know we we we fish um a bunch of dams uh in the state and you know sometimes you'll have shad come through the turbines and if you've ever seen that you know those fish when they're kind of knocked out still alive they're kind of up on the surface they're They're sideways, they're flat, and when they are trying to resuscitate themselves, they'll kind of dig down and then kind of pause and just kind of shimmy, float up, back up to the surface and repeat that.
[45:10] And this fly really mimics that super-wounded baitfish kind of activity, but you don't have to swim it like that.
If you fish it on a 45 downstream out of a boat, for instance, the fly will...
[45:33] Right itself, so to speak, where it looks like it's keeled vertically, um, and it kind of, will, will jerk up current and then show profile down, jerk up current, show profile down on the pause.
Um, it is, it will do a whole lot of things, but I don't really take credit for that because I'm just, you know, trying to mash up a longer, extended, more realistic version of Andy's fly by putting Blaine's body on it.
But yes, that is one of my go-to favorite flies for any species.
If I am trout fishing, that's my number one bug.
[46:20] Got it. And so, you know, any other, you know, flies, even if they're not, uh, we'll say, uh, Fletcher originals, um, uh, or, or, uh, or techniques you want to share with our listeners?
The Quack Head
Fletcher:[46:33] Yeah. So, you know, um, there's another bug that, that we've been fishing for a couple of years now, um, that I'll call the quack head.
And, you know, it's kind of trying to be a habitat specialist for these shoal bass is where it started.
And when Blaine came out with his Jerk Changer, awesome swim and fly, and it's great. and we still use that for shoal bass.
[47:11] But there are a lot of places where I could not get that fly, more than a couple of inches under the water in some of these really fast pockets and i wanted to have something that was able to have a similar action yet get down deeper and the other thing that you know going back to the realistic uh version of the flies i really wanted to be able able to put eyes on it and have the ability to use natural materials and add colors and stuff like that that I wanted for the clear flows.
And so I took some of the things that I learned about fly design for messing with a tweaker, like the belly flip um on the um on the strip and and uh a couple of things like that um and.
[48:21] This fly is a very thin profile um it's only got a couple of articulations out of the back and it's It's tied on either a really long, I think it's a TPE 615 AirX hook, which is a 3X long streamer hook, and half of the fly is hook, and that kind of gives it that jerky kind of movement.
But the way that I weighed it and the way that the wing of the fly is kind of inverted where, the belly of the fly is the wing when you strip this thing it it'll show a whole lot of belly and kind of.
[49:17] Carve almost like a 360 while it's showing belly it's it's a pretty wild fly but you can also walk the dog and it'll punch down and get pretty deep pretty quick on the paws um so, trying to accomplish a lot of what uh grajewski was doing with the yard sale and and kind of the concepts of waiting with the wing and the belly flip with the tweaker and a lot of the action out of the jerk chambers, kind of where that fly idea came from.
And it's a super cool fly.
And now that Erex has come out with that new Beast long hook, hook, which is proportionately the same hook as that trout predator hook, it has become an awesome striper fly too.
[50:17] We could not hold the stripers with the TP hook, so had to work on that one
Swimbo Fly
Fletcher:[50:23] a little bit. But that's another cool fly.
And then the newest fly that we're messing around with, going back to my obsession with this sideways um bay fish fly is uh what we're calling a a swimboat fly you know kind of named it after my cousin jimbo because it's you know getting on that jitterbug thing as a kid i just uh cannot get over the top water bite and you know that's kind of the closest thing that i'll get to uh using a top water fly or those swimming jimmy flies but i wanted to be able to tie a bigger bug that I could get a hen saddle to get the body the way that I wanted it to look.
And so, um, started messing around with, um, trying to make a synthetic version with bone. And, uh.
[51:17] Going back to sadati's weight balancing principle um you know that fly's got a whole lot of drag and because it's got a whole lot of foam on it and um we we're we're heavily weighting those flies, um and putting a lot of foam on them which seems kind of odd but the reason we're waiting on One, they're on a bent shank hook, like a TP650 for smaller fish.
And then we're bending SA292s with a blowtorch to do striper versions, like really, really big versions.
But the principle is more or less the same.
You're getting a dive and fly got a big rattles in them that we're tying on with heat shrink wrap and a really realistic looking painted head on this foam and does, almost everything that this swimming jimmy fly does but harder it swims up harder, it dives harder, swims more just a really really cool bug.
And because it's got rattles built into it, it is just something that fish can absolutely not ignore. It's.
[52:47] A bug that can suck a throw all day even though it is weight balanced it's you're you're hucking a whole lot um but once it's in the water uh it's really hard for a fish not to kill that thing um and those are the you know kind of the the bugs that are you know named bugs that that we tie, but we, we still finish a whole lot of brush head game changers, hybrid game changer, jerk changers.
Um, we'll, uh, finish a lot of, uh, Chuck craft flies.
[53:31] Um, we will still fish a whole lot of clousers and, um, the other flies that we fish a bunch are um fisher rats flies um and you know yes we do fish some pole dancers but he's got a fly called a spot on bait fish and it a really flat single fly with and we tie him with a ton of weight and that is really you know when we're trying to hit bottom, that's that's what we're using but you know our fly boxes are kind of getting, smaller as far as the number of patterns as we you know kind of dial in this floating line program it's my box is really looking like you know bugger changer tweeter a, swimming jimmy a a.
Simplified Fly Selection
Fletcher:[54:44] Spot on bay fish and maybe a couple other things if i'm really particular about whatever fishery that i'm in um and it's it's really kind of simplified uh the way that i fish because it's uh kind of limiting my options and so these days the patterns are kind of getting fewer and the colors are getting more.
The other mentor that I have is a UGO fisheries biologist by the name of Jay Shelton.
He's not really what I would call a fly-time mentor.
He's really more of a mentor on and baitfish and other, you know, the target species quarry and how I can get flies that look like they look like and behave like they look.
So these days I'm really just kind of fine-tuning color schemes to mimic different species and really kind of limiting the number of patterns that I'm playing with.
[56:06] Got it. And so if folks wanted to get a closer look at your handful of patterns and wanted to buy some, where should they go?
[56:14] Well, yeah.
[56:17] You might be able to go to um this year's input catalog and order tweakers um we i do not know if it's gonna make the deadline for production but i uh signed off on the samples a few weeks ago, and they're awesome um so you should be able to get um the tweakers in three different colors this year.
I do occasionally tie batches for Mike Schultz, Schultz Outfitters for promotion stuff.
There's another fisheries biologist down here that just left Auburn University.
It's named Hank Hershey and he runs this little boutique shop called Hank's Bait Shop and.
[57:16] I'll do a batch every once in a while for him but other than that, don't really sell flies but I am happy to give you pointers, give you recipes do all the stuff and I'm working, with Hank to try to get a video up about how to tie a quack head on Southern culture on the fly here soon.
[57:47] Yeah. Inside baseball says that they're actually circling up the, uh, the posse to, uh, to work on the next issue here in the next week or so.
The Altamaha Riverkeeper
Fletcher:[57:56] Awesome. Yeah.
[57:57] And so one thing I always like to ask really serious tires is to, if they have like one kind of nutty, unusual tool that they can't live without.
[58:08] Absolutely. And that's the hairline has a material stager that Druch Kohn designed.
And it's literally just a piece of foam with a bunch of slits in it that you can, you know, organize your material.
And I'm pretty sure it was originally for production tires where they could, you know, lay out like 10 flies on one of these little foam blocks.
But, you know, fly tying for me is kind of two different things.
One, it's this creative, analytical, problem-solving design process.
Process and it's also meditation and kind of therapeutic and the the way that i kind of, sides of my brain is you know i'll do all my design and all my material layout and all that stuff i need i need to use my uncreative side of my brain to to kind of organize all that and then.
[59:22] And once I kind of have everything laid out and organized and get up to the vise, um, you know, have everything laid out when I'm hunting material or anything, I'm just wrapping up on and wrapping thread on top of that.
It lets me kind of zone out and, you know, getting to a meditative stand, just tie the bug.
And so that, that tool allows me to do both instead of, you know, kind of going back and forth, kind of not getting that focus that I get when I'm actually at the bice, if that makes sense.
[1:00:02] Yeah, no, no, no, it totally makes sense. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's an amazing thing, even if you're not tying a lot of flies, I mean, it's super productive to lay stuff out, uh, and measure it.
It, um, yeah, it makes things go a whole lot better. And, you know, folks may not know Fletcher kind of your day jam is, uh, being the, you're the executive director of, and I'm going to make sure I get this right.
The Altamaha Riverkeeper. Did I do it? Did I get it?
[1:00:26] Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Uh, the locals call it Altamaha, but, um, yeah, everyone else, Altamaha.
[1:00:32] All right.
[1:00:33] Um, and it's, uh, it's a cool day job.
[1:00:39] If you don't know what river keepers are started up in the Hudson River up in New York with a bunch of fishermen that, Couldn't catch fish because the Hudson was so polluted.
And so they decided that they were going to go catch the polluters by letting permits.
And at the time, the state of New York would kind of pay a bounty.
And so they kind of became pollution bounty hunters.
And as they saw success and as the Hudson began to be shad run and striped bass again, and you can start making their living.
Other people want to replicate the program. And now there's a few hundred river keepers all around the world.
We all are assigned a specific water body.
And mine is the Altmaha base. And Altmaha system is the third largest contributor of freshwater to the Atlantic.
Atlantic, very long river system, largely undammed from the fall line down, completely undammed.
And it has an Atlantic drainage.
[1:02:04] It covers about a quarter of the state of Georgia. And what we primarily are designed to do is enforcement through utilizing the Clean Water Act.
So we are designed to sue people that are polluting over their permit levels or implicitly polluting a permit.
But we like to use all the other tools that are at our disposal to further our advocacy of a cleaner, more fishable river system.
And so I've been on that job since 2019, and we haven't seen anybody since.
So, that's kind of a last resort, but that's more or less what we're designed to do.
So, we lobby, we advocate, we do cleanup work.
[1:03:09] Other agencies to promote swimmable drinkable fishable water in the watershed so um even when, i'm working i i've got a fishing rod either in the truck or in the boat with me,
Current Watershed Challenges
Fletcher:[1:03:26] so um i get a lot of little bits of fishing time here and there um pretty pretty cool job yeah.
[1:03:34] Very very neat and you know what are some of the challenges that are currently facing your watershed.
[1:03:39] Um we we've got a couple of fairly large projects um the um the largest coal burning facility in the western hemisphere is in our watershed and um when you burn coal you have a byproduct of waste called coal ash and it's really nasty stuff it's uh got uranium radium sodium, arsenic, lead, mercury, all kinds of awful stuff in it.
And it's stored in ponds that are more or less pits that are submerged into the aquifer.
And our EPA in 2015 created rules saying you got to dig that stuff up and stored in a line landfill or at least stored in a way that is not in contact with groundwater and this specific plan is surrounded by residents that are drinking groundwater and so it was a really bad situation we have a.
[1:04:52] Been able to successfully convince the county to put in water lines but we're still fighting the power company on proper waste disposal and that's the number one issue that we're dealing with and then uh on a more positive note um we are hoping and and i don't know what date this show may air we may have legislation by then um that we are in the final stages of of creating a national park in Georgia, Georgia's first national park on the Old Mulgee River.
[1:05:29] Right in the center of the two big shoal bass habitats.
So that's been a really cool process.
It's multi-agency, multi-municipality kind of group working together on this.
And, you know, that includes the Air Force Base and also one of the removed tribes from Georgia during the Trail of Tears, the Muscogee Creek Nation, will be a equal partner at the table with U.S.
Fish and Wildlife and the other partners with National Park Service.
So that's a really cool, fun project that's kind of hopefully in the final stages.
But we do all kinds of stuff. What I tell people is it's kind of like mowing grass with a push mower.
As soon as you get done, you've got to do it all again.
So some of it's Groundhog Day, but some of it's really fun, really moving the needle.
[1:06:34] Yeah, that's needed if someone wanted to support your work, what can they do?
[1:06:40] Best thing is donate and become a member.
[1:06:45] Got it. And I will drop a, uh, drop a link in the show notes.
It's kind of funny you say that because, uh, here in Charlotte, it's like the spring fundraiser week for public radio. So perfect time to become a member.
[1:06:57] Oh yeah. Yep.
[1:06:59] So before I let you go this evening, Fletcher, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners?
[1:07:04] You know i i think um you know get outside your comfort zone try new stuff if you're not a fly tire start and um you know if some of these species are interesting to you or you know no matter where you live there's always something else to chase something else to learn and um, no matter what your skill level is as an angler um don't let the ego get in the way of learning of new stuff.
[1:07:33] Very, very neat. And, you know, what's the best way, Fletcher, for folks to kind of get in touch with you and follow your adventures at the bison on the water?
[1:07:41] Instagram.
[1:07:43] And you want to share your handle?
[1:07:46] At Fletcher.Sams.
[1:07:47] Well, there you go. That's pretty easy. And, you know, Fletcher, I appreciate you spending some time with me this evening. It's been a lot of fun.
[1:07:55] Yeah, man. I had a blast. Thanks.
[1:07:57] Absolutely. Take care.
[1:07:59] All right.
[1:08:01] Well folks i hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you and remember if you like the podcast please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcast of your choice and don't forget to check out the show notes for more information about the chocolate factory in charlotte on may 4th tight lines everybody.