A common interest among the human powered outdoor crowd: Fly Fishing!
Getting into a new activity can be intimidating especially when you want to try fly fishing but you've been watching A River Runs Through It for your entire life and you think you need go full Brad Pitt in order to make it happen.
Today on Gear & Beer we're here to help!
Justin was the stereotypical fly fishing newbie back in the day: a generally outdoorsy person who wanted to give fly fishing a try. So today he recounts his fly fishing journey to Colin and highlights the gear you'll want to get in order to get going.
And because fall is a great time to go fly fishing in Justin's native northern California, he and Colin crack open a couple Sierra Nevada Oktoberfests. Because what pairs better with fishing than an ice cold beer? Absolutely nothing.
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Episode Transcript
Colin (00:01):
Welcome to Gear and Beer, the podcast for Gearheads beer buffs and adventurers with discerning tastes in the latest edition to the Rock Fight Podcast Network. I'm Colin True. I work for brands and makers in the outdoor industry for over 20 years.
Justin (00:14):
I'm Justin Housman, senior editor Adventure Journal, a professional gear reviewer, certified cone, which basically means a beer nerd. But I want to point something out in here that you don't have to have discerning taste. You can have terrible taste and you still enjoy the show, right, Colin?
Colin (00:29):
Yeah, I'm here.
Justin (00:29):
Exactly. Yeah, so don't be fooled by the discerning taste label. Feel free to listen even if you have just the world's of worst, just garbage taste in everything. Even still, I'm sure you'll find something you'll like here.
Colin (00:44):
I guess what is having poured if you do not have discerning taste when it comes to gear? What does that mean? Or is it just like, ah, Walmart only?
Justin (00:51):
I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, I guess probably because if you truthfully don't give a shit, you would just get the cheapest stuff possible, right? I guess. Yeah, I guess so. Or you'd get the most expensive stuff possible then maybe you are not discerning anything. So you go to REI and they're like, well, you got to get all the Arteric stuff. You're like, okay, sure.
Colin (01:10):
So it's basically both ends of the spectrum. It could be. There's nothing in the
Justin (01:13):
Middle. It could be.
Colin (01:13):
It's just I either like it shitty or I like it expensive.
Justin (01:17):
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, sorry to interrupt
Colin (01:19):
You. Well, that's all right. So today on gear and Beer, Justin is going to run through what it takes to be an angler, especially if you've never been one before. Today it's the Gear and Beer Dummies Guide to Fly Fishing. But before we get to that, we got a couple of housekeeping items for the gear and beer audience. Did I say beer and gear? It's really easy to mix up. Either way. Beer, say beer and think it's fine. It's kind of interchangeable.
Justin (01:39):
Yeah, it's not like a palindrome, but it's kind of like a palant. Either word is fine.
Colin (01:42):
It's an alliterative palindrome. Yeah. Be sure to follow and rate gear and beer wherever you're listening. Clicking follow on your favorite podcast app and leaving that five star rating really helps us out. Please do that. Also be sure to check out our other show, the Rock Flight. It's over on the Rock Flight Podcast Network. We talk about outdoor industry and community topics, and if you want to reach out to the show, if you want to reach out to us and give us some suggestions, maybe Justin, where can our listeners follow along, reach out?
Justin (02:08):
Well, they can also write a huge check and send that to us as well. Oh
Colin (02:12):
Man. That's the best way to,
Justin (02:14):
That helps even the show. Well, maybe not just once. Well, you got to put follow two if you do that all the time. Yeah, I was going to say, if you could do that every month, that would be great. Also, following is nice, but yeah, just write us the biggest giant checks are better check and then just mail one to us every month.
Colin (02:29):
Like winner, a clearinghouse, sweet stake style. No,
Justin (02:32):
I mean
Colin (02:32):
Physically large. I mean monetarily
Justin (02:34):
Large. Yeah, I mean if you need to get a bigger check because it's hard to fill in all the numbers on em. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, you can email us if you'd like to send your emails to My rock fight@gmail.com and if they're good, they're funny, we'll read 'em on the air maybe. Well, we respond to pretty much everybody, right? Colin, I'm assuming we have about a hundred percent respond rate. Reply
Colin (02:56):
Rate. I always say hi. I always say
Justin (02:58):
Hi. You can follow along on Instagram. Our handle there is Rock Fight Co. I always struggle with that. It feels like there needs to be a dot there. And then please sign up for our newsletter, which comes out every Sunday and it's a barrel of laughs. You're going to love it. Also, rock fight.co. Just click on join the mailing list. You can't miss it.
Colin (03:15):
Alright, so we're talking fly fishing today and fly fishing is a really unique activity in the cannon of human powered sports. I think it's maybe because it's mostly catch and release the way most people tend to go about
Justin (03:25):
It, or should be
Colin (03:27):
Or should be anyway, right? But there's a huge percentage of folks that hike, mountain bike, backpack, climb, ski, all this stuff that we talk about over on the rock fight and typically on this podcast who also fly fish. Now, I don't currently fly fish. It's something I've always actually wanted to try. But Justin, you do, and you were, I mean, I want to say you're a stereotypical case, but I mean you were basically a general outdoorsy guy, a surfer, a backpacker who came to fly fishing later in life. So
Justin (03:51):
Yeah, that's right.
Colin (03:52):
Walk us through how did that come to pass and why do you think our community is attracted to fly fishing?
Justin (03:56):
I almost wonder if it's the other way around where you get into fly fishing, a lot of people probably are into fly fishing for one reason or another. Then you just realize you love being outside and maybe you take on some of these other activities. It's interesting to think about how that works. So I guess I'll get into, before I get into why I became a fly fisherman, God, I mean, people write so many books about fly fishing and they all say the same thing, and I don't feel like anybody ever really gets it right. But there just is something very unique about the experience of fly fishing. There's a connection with where you are that's deeper than anything I've experienced besides surfing. I mean surfing and fly fishing have a weirdly lot in common. That is interesting. If you approach them both with a thoughtful, I mean, I guess you could say this about a lot of things, but I mean if you approach them both as thoughtfully as you possibly can and you're a thinking man, surfer thinking person, surfer, and you have to be that way to be a successful fly fisher.
(04:59):
So by the way, I hate saying like fishermen, I don't like fly fisher angler doesn't work, right? I think it's acceptable. I think it is. I think it's okay, but just please, this isn't like a gender thing. It's just easier to say fly fishermen. I'm sorry. But anyway, in the sense that especially if you're, well, when you show up at a surf break, even if you surf there a million times, you're immediately taking into account a whole bunch of natural things are going on. The wind, the color of the water, obviously the size of the waves, you know what the sand is doing, what the tide is doing that spot intimately and you're so deeply connected with it. You have to be, to have a good session to enjoy yourself as a surfer. And fly fishing is extremely similar in that you can't just show up and just start throwing flies out, but you're not going to catch anything and it's not nearly as fun.
(05:46):
But you need to read the water. You need to understand where the fish are. You need to have approached the water the right way. You need to know what the wind is doing. You need to know what the current is doing. You need to know the water temperature. You need to know what time of day it. There's just so many things that you have to pay a deep attention to that it really immerses you in the natural environment closer than anything else I've ever done. I mean mountain biking for example, right? Yeah. There's stuff to know, and you're obviously out there in the natural environment, but you can ignore a lot of stuff and a lot of things are whizzing past. You're not really paying attention. I mean, if you're doing it right, surfing, fly fishing. Either way, man, you are never more connected with the natural environment than you are in that moment.
(06:22):
So I don't think I knew that. I just think I just thought it looked like fun. But I've been fishing most of my life with regular spinning gear, which is what we call a standard fishing pole where you crank the reel and it spins the lineback on it. So spin casting is what most fly fishermen would call that. And so I grew up fishing that way. I fished the lakes up here that way, the lakes where I live. But I never lived anywhere where you could fly fish. I mean, you can fly fish these lakes, but it's, that's not really what, that's not really fly fishing. Fly fishing is for trout or something like trout of salmon it of some kind, usually in moving water. And we don't have any of that around here where you can legally fly fish. So it took me a long time to get into it.
(07:05):
But oddly enough, San Francisco in Golden Gate Park has a fishing club and they have casting pools and it's the coolest thing. It's this beautiful part of Golden Gate Park. There's an old log cabin and it's this big cement pond with targets in it and stuff like that. And it's pretty good size. And it's for flight. It's four practicing fly fishing, and it's for people that live in San Francisco. And like I said, you can't really fly fish around here. And so guys will go there and tie flies and talk shop and then go out and cast. And they've actually been world champion, what's called casting. It's when you use two hands, it's for casting huge fly rods on big rivers. Some world champion spay casters have come from that club, the fly fishing club in San Francisco. But I lived just a couple blocks away. And so I finally just one day was like, you know what? I'm just going to take a lesson. I've wanted to fly fish for a long time. I would use flies sometimes on my regular spin casting gear. There are techniques where you can do that.
(08:03):
And it was really productive and I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to do it. It looks complicated, it looks expensive, it looks finicky, and it can be all those things, but I'm going to try it. And it turns out it's actually, and this is what we'll talk about today, it's actually pretty damn simple. It can be just as simple as regular fishing and it doesn't have to be expensive. And I learned all that from basically starting out at this club, casting these little circles. I learned how to cast. I went and bought the cheapest fly gear I could find, and lo and behold, it worked. And I wasn't chasing expensive gear. I wasn't chasing prestige gear. I was just like, I dunno, here's a fly rod. Here's a reel. Let's hope it works. And it did. I caught fish right away.
Colin (08:42):
Well, I think you kind of answered the question because it's like why the community is even drawn to it because, and you never think of it before of the idea of what you have, what goes into the sport in order to accomplish the sport and the comp to surfing is really interesting, right? Because we've talked about it, right? Mountain biking, you mentioned skiing, these things, it's all static and you have to surfing, it's all about reading the waves, knowing what to do, how to do it, it's why it's so hard, all of those kinds of things. And seeing that kind of then transfer over into fishing. And if we're talking about a group of people who are sort of into, if you're a climber, if you're a skier, you're a surfer, whatever, kind of understanding the nuance of it and being out in nature, being the primary driver of why you go and the sort of accomplishment of it and learning a skill and then executing it, it actually makes a lot of sense. Before we get any deeper into the gear of fly fishing or the method of fly fishing. I think it's time to crack a beer though.
Justin (09:35):
Yeah. I'm surprised I haven't started already. Just talking about fishing and beer go hand in hand as everybody knows.
Colin (09:41):
So as our cone, what are we pairing
Justin (09:43):
Today? So today we have the Sierra Nevada October Fest. Now I picked, I'm worried about, I picked that for a couple reasons. One, it's October fest time. So I kind of think I probably would've ended up picking this for anything we were going to talk about. But two, this isn't the case everywhere, but where I live in northern California, October is actually a really great time to fly fish. Fall can be a huge pain in the ass for fly fishing or fishing in general. Rivers are low, the water is usually moving less. It's usually really clear at this point if you live in a place where that happens. So it's really hard to fish like crystal clear water. The fish can see everything. So that becomes an issue. It's more of a flow issue than anything else when the water gets cold. Some people think that trout kind of stopped biting as much, but I don't think that happens yet.
(10:26):
I think that's more of a winter thing. So I don't know. But anyway, where I live though, October is a huge, September, October huge when the Cas hatch happens and casses are like a bug. And so the big cas hatches around here are in October. And so Northern California becomes fly fishing paradise in October, especially around the Shasta zone. There's still a ton of water everywhere. And these cas hatches are incredible. And that's when you want to, if you don't fly fish, this is what you're picturing. You're out there and there's bugs around flying in the air and your fly matches those bugs and you are casting dry flies, like river runs through it. These big beautiful looping casts and fish are coming out of the water to get what happens in October around here, often fly fishing looks nothing like that at all. Almost never does. But anyway, so it felt like a good beer for that. And then Sierra Nevada has been doingto fest for a really long time. I hadn't even realized until I bought this six pack that I don't know if they're always a CoLab. I think they are. Actually. This one was with Gutman. I don't know. I don't know where that is. It's probably in Germany
Colin (11:27):
Or Dave Gutman just
Justin (11:28):
Could be
Colin (11:29):
His garage.
Justin (11:30):
Knowing Sierra Nevada, it probably is like an actual German brewery. October Fest is a fest. Beer fest means like party in German basically. Every October fest is going to be similar. They their pilsners, I'm sorry, they're loggers usually A lot of times they'll have pilsner malts, so it gets confusing. All pilsners are loggers. Not all loggers or pilsners. That's just how it works.
Colin (11:51):
Anyway,
Justin (11:52):
They're loggers usually pretty bready. They're a little bit strong. They're brewed to be a little bit stronger than a regular logger. So 6% is usually about right. And that's what this is. You'll see some that are higher, sometimes like six, six and a half. But yeah, that's the idea. And the idea is it's party time. It's harvest time. Obviously if you go to Munich in October, you're going to get hammered on 6% beer, which is stronger than that. We normally drink there, but that's kind of what you need to know. The Sierra Nevadas almost always have cascade hops in them, which is what if Sierra Nevada, that really tiny ine hop that they kind of made famous, that's cascade. And so this will have that. It'll be hop than a normal German one would be, but they're probably a little different every year. I've never really paid attention. You only have it for a few weeks and then it's gone. So I don't always remember it, but I always love this beer.
Colin (12:40):
Alright, let's crack it open, man. 3, 2, 1. Oh, that was good.
Justin (12:45):
It's a good can. Cheers. Cheers. Oh yeah, that's great. God, that's a good beer.
Colin (12:52):
Oh, I like that. I was really worried I wasn't going to like this. I don't know why. I just was either. I'm not sure I like this better than the typical Sierra Pale ale though.
Justin (13:00):
Oh, this is way better. I mean it's a whole different kind of beer. I mean it's a much lighter beer because it's a lager, not an ale. It just, these are drinkable in a way that Palle, I love Palle. Palle is my favorite kind of beer, but you have one, maybe two, you're like, oh, I'm good. You could have six of these and well, you'd be hammered, but you'd be wasted. You wouldn't be like, Ugh, I can't have anymore.
Colin (13:19):
Alright, well let's get into it man. So let's go through the fly fishing kit. Let's do it in a way though that isn't I boring to anyone who fly fishes though? How are you going to make it interesting for everybody?
Justin (13:27):
Yeah. Alright, sure, I got that. Here's what you need. Okay. And there's a few different schools of thought, but if you're listening to this and you're, you're calling, you're fly fishing curious, right? There is no reason whatsoever to go out and spend $500 on a reel and $500 on a rod. And you can spend a lot more than that if you want to. Absolutely none. All of the benefits that will come with anything like that is going to be lost on you anyway. Any kind of super high
Colin (13:57):
End, unless you have discerning taste, unless you have in case,
Justin (14:00):
And I'm not, there are definitely probably going to be someone listening to this goes like, well, who's not even that hardcore? I don't. This pod isn't for you. I was kidding about, you can go listen to something else. Yeah, I love fly fishing. I fly fish a lot, but I don't fly fish every day. I can't live anywhere near where it's possible. So I'm not like world, I'm not like a cone to fly fishing like I am beer. But anyway,
Colin (14:25):
Well, that should be a thing.
Justin (14:26):
You will do just fine with really cheap stuff. That's the first thing that you need to know. But I mean, the most basic thing is all you need is a rod and a reel. That's it. And flies, of course. You don't necessarily need waiters. You don't necessarily need a net. You don't necessarily need all the a coutre mall that you'll see somebody. You don't need a vest with 8,000 flies on it. You don't need 900 fly boxes that are brimming with different flies for everything. You really don't. What you need is a rod and a reel, an understanding of how to tie some knots. They're all pretty easy. But what's more important than any of that is an understanding of what the river is doing and what the fish would do in the river and where the fish is going to go. So the most rod reel and knowledge, that's what you need.
(15:06):
If you regularly fish but you don't fly fish and you've seen fly fishing, you're aware that the line looks different. So fly fishing is different than regular fishing because there's no weight to a fly for the most part. So the line is what you're casting. If you go fishing with your grandpa and you're using bait allure and you're using a normal spin caster, the weight of the bait or the weight of the lure is what you're throwing out there with fly fishing. And the reason that you do all these big, I'm doing it with my as if you could see these big elegant cast with these big elegant loops is because you're trying to get momentum into that fly line. That's what you're casting. You don't cast the fly, you cast the line. And so that takes some practice, but it's not that hard. I mean, you could go in a day and have a guide or even like me show you, and within a day you'd be okay, I can get a fly relatively where want on a piece of water that's not that hard.
(16:04):
It looks like it, and it is at first if you've never done it, but it comes pretty quick. But that's kind of the important thing to think about is that you're not casting a lure, you're casting the line. So really that's all you need. So the the reel is just a line holder effectively until you're fishing for really big fish and you need to worry about drag, which is how much the line, the reel will let line go out kind of against with the fish will just pull it. But you don't even really need that for the most part when you're starting out because you're going to be catching small fish. And so you don't even necessarily need a reel. There's a big technique that I love called tank carra fishing, which just a rod, that's all it is. A rod with a little bit of fly line tied to the very end of it, and you don't even have a reel. And so you just have your 15 feet of line and you just cast that.
Colin (16:49):
So what did you get when you started out
Justin (16:50):
Before seller? I started out with, I bought, I've heard both ways, Ana or Una reel.
Colin (16:56):
It
Justin (16:56):
Was $15 on Amazon. What $15 it was on sale.
Colin (17:01):
Is this still available?
Justin (17:02):
I believe it is. Last time. I mean it was a couple years ago, I think it's called The Sierra was the brand, and it was like a three to five. So that's like a three to five pound. That's like they'll weight or it was it a four or five? I can't remember. So one of the smallest reels you can get for small fish, but it was dirt cheap and a friend of mine gave me some rod, some random rod, and it was fine.
Colin (17:23):
But if you wanted to get one that would be comparable to the $15 reel or would you know what we're talking about? Even from a price point of view?
Justin (17:29):
What do for a beginner?
Colin (17:30):
Oh, for a
Justin (17:30):
Rod? Yeah. Honestly, I would probably just go on Craigslist or something. You can almost, if you live in a place where you can fly fish, you'll see rods on Craigslist. There's no reason to buy a new one. So that's what I would do. Or you can also rent them often from fly shops. But that's what I would do. Just get the cheap used one. And then what my setup is now is I use that for a while, caught fish on. It was like, oh, okay, I love this. So then I leveled up, but then I just stayed at the next level, which is the one I want to talk about, which is the Orvis Clearwater setup. Orvis is, you probably heard of Orvis, even if fly fishing, it's a huge fly fishing brand and closed brand and stuff. And they make really high end stuff, but they also make, for what I can tell the best low end stuff.
(18:16):
So the Clearwater setup is fantastic. I have the Clearwater reel. It's the only one I use. I don't have any need to buy a higher end one. It's 120 to 150 bucks depending on sales and stuff like that. And a Clearwater rod, which is about the same price I want to say. So you can actually get, I was looking this morning, you can go to Orvis and get a full setup, the Clearwater setup, where the reel comes with line on it, all the line that you'll need to get started anyway. And the rod and I think a case for three 50, I mean, that's great. That's not nothing, but I mean
Colin (18:48):
That's no, but entry points in most sports, you're going to be spending way more than that.
Justin (18:52):
That's way less than a surfboard, right? That's
Colin (18:56):
Triangle skiing for three
Justin (18:56):
50. I mean that's three 50 is nothing for a reel. If you start getting into the world of good reels, especially salt,
Colin (19:02):
I was saltwater, how high does it go?
Justin (19:04):
I mean, thousands easily.
Colin (19:05):
Yeah,
Justin (19:06):
Right. But that's the thing is I've fished with some, early on I borrowed a really expensive Ross reel set up and Ross and they make gorgeous reels. And I think it was like a $600 reel. I don't remember what the rod was. It was pretty, yeah, the drag was cool. You could tell there were moments where you could sort of tell I guess that it was expensive. But I mean, they don't do anything. That's the thing. Reels don't do anything. They just hold the line. So
Colin (19:36):
This sounds pretty typical to most stuff that we talk about. I mean I, I've had a tie like cross country mountain bike, and it's super fast and light and everything like that. Now I have an aluminum one that was probably a third of the cost of that other one. My mountain bike experience is pretty much the same as it was on the other bike for sure. And I get it. There is the person that reel that you're describing, I'm sure that it is, that's actually what that person should be
Justin (20:01):
Using.
Colin (20:02):
But for the vast majority of folks, it makes sense of like, hey man, go from the $15 one to the three, whatever it was, the $300 one, and then you're probably going to be good forever.
Justin (20:10):
Yeah, honestly, there's never been a moment, and I don't think there ever will be where I'll be like, oh, I mean, I guess the real could break. I mean, that could happen. But other than that, that's the other thing too. Like a spinning cast, a spinning reel, things are happening, little parts are winding, they'll line around whatever kind you have. There's things that you have to click open the bale. There's different things you have to do. Nothing to do with a fly reel. It just holds the line.
Colin (20:38):
So you got your rod, you got your reel, is it flies? Is that the kind, complete the trifecta of absolute necessities.
Justin (20:44):
So then that's the whole different world. That's where you make your bones as a fly fisherman, right? Is once you get into the actual what you're presenting. And so the reason that I said fly fishing almost never looks like it does in the movies or whatever, is because nine times out of 10, you're probably going to be fishing with nips. And so the whole point of fly fishing obviously, is you're using bugs that mimic what is in the water. And trout have discerning taste. Lemme tell you, at least wild ones do hatchery ones not so much, but wild ones absolutely do. They're not going to eat something they don't recognize. Why would they? And they can see really, really well. And so you can throw the most beautiful flight on the planet, but if it looks like something this fly's never seen before, it's not going to bite it.
(21:31):
But what you're also doing is you're mimicking lifestyles of these bugs. And so if you don't know anything about fishing in a river, next time you're at a river, like a standard cobblestone river, pick up a rock and look at the bottom of it. You'll see all these horrific looking tiny bugs crawling around. Little things that look like scorpions. They're flat and they look mean, and they're on the bottom of rocks. Those are the larva of the bugs that you see flying in the air. And so what you'll do is you'll go and often you look at the bottom of the rocks and if you've spent some time researching bugs, you kind of know which one is which. And you're like, okay, so the fish here are expecting this bug to look like this part of its lifecycle. So you'll see a nymph and you'll think, okay, I'll use whatever.
(22:13):
I'm not even going to bother with names of them. It'll be lost. But you'll pick out a nymph that maybe matches that, or you think might, or you'll pick out an emerge, which looks like what happens when the larva come out of the little cocoon that they might be in and go to the surface. But a lot of fly fishing takes place under the water. And the most successful fly fishing will take place under the water. And so you're not doing these big looping gorgeous casts. You're often, you just kind of cast out with a weighted nymph and you're just kind of letting it like bob in the current.
Colin (22:41):
Is there any other specific category here that needs, that's the basics, right?
Justin (22:46):
I mean, I would get a book. I would get something like, Orvis makes a phenomenal fly fishing book. I forget, it's probably just called The Guide to Fly Fishing 300 pages long. It'll teach you all the knots you need, kind of run through what different flies look like and why you would use them. It was funded by guidebook and Patagonia has a really good one called the Simple, I think it's just called Simple Fly Fishing, which is pretty tan carra oriented. That's the one that doesn't use a reel. But same deal. I mean you'll need to learn knots, but there's only a few there. It's not like you have to learn a trucker's hitch or a bunch of complicated shit. You need to learn three knots, maybe four. But that's pretty easy.
Colin (23:22):
Alright man, well guess what? It's time. It's time for the new segment that we designated last week is a new segment and now we have a sponsor for it. It's time for the second sip.
Justin (23:30):
Second sip. That's got to be the name of a bar somewhere, right?
Colin (23:32):
Yeah, it's got to be.
Justin (23:33):
Here we go.
Colin (23:34):
So today's second sip is brought to you by Pacific AdventureWorks and their hide sleeping platform as you heard about on gear and beer. So thank you to them for sponsoring this segment. Alright, did you have your second sip? I,
Justin (23:45):
This is, how was it better than the first
Colin (23:47):
For 6%? It was a little warm. We get a little warm
Justin (23:49):
So you can kind of taste it. That was my first thought. I never thought about this before, but I worked in restaurants for so long and obviously you learn a lot about wine and wine opens up, you pour it and then it takes a minute and it'll kind of, some of the strong everything will kind of soften the beer, I think does that a little bit too. This felt hoppier at first, but now it just is really smooth.
Colin (24:10):
I think there's a flavor to most octo fests that I think of that just doesn't really agree with me. And I can't describe what it is, but it's almost a syrupy kind
Justin (24:19):
Of. Yeah, well, it could literally be that. I doubt it is, but it could literally be, I mean, I don't think big breweries are going to be using malt syrup. You do a lot if you're making beer at home because it's way easier to do that than to cook grain from scratch. But it's a different malt is what you're tasting. So it's a bit sweeter, it's a little bit
Colin (24:40):
Sweeter sometimes. It's so strong that it doesn't taste like beer. It's just like, it's just too much. There's too much of this going on. I don't like it. This has a nice balance to
Justin (24:48):
It. I mean, October Fest be are pretty fucking good. And I don't know if it's just habit, but there is something about them that they're little, they're 5% weightier than a summer lag would be. So it, it's like a good entrance into fall and cooler weather, beer drinking,
Colin (25:04):
Sleeping in your car truck is all the rage with outdoorsy folks these days. But let's face it, there are decisions that have to be made. Do you want to buy a van to crash in too expensive? Do you want to build a platform in the back of your truck too big and heavy to move? Do you want to sleep on a backpacking pad in your Subaru? Come on now. What the hell are we doing? Enter the Hideaway platform from Pacific AdventureWorks, the first adjustable sleeping platform perfect for wherever you want to put it. Put it in your SUV. Yep. Better than a cot. The back of your hatchback hell. And the legs are telescoping, so you'll sleep flat every night. How about the back of your truck? Not only will it fit, but you can store your gear underneath and easily remove the platform, roll it up and stow it when you're not using it. And the best part, these things are modular and can always be fitted to accommodate whatever vehicle you drive in the future. Save yourself the headaches and sleep better at camp tonight with the Hideaway platform from Pacific AdventureWorks. Head to pacific adventureworks.com to get yours today. Alright man, well let's get back into it. Let's get to the part three of the gear. So like I said, I've not gone fly fishing yet, but let's say I take the plunge. Maybe I go hire a guide, which sounds like that's the right thing to do.
Justin (26:11):
Do holy she desire expensive though.
Colin (26:14):
Is it? Oh my
Justin (26:14):
God,
Colin (26:15):
I could just go to San Francisco and go where you went, I guess.
Justin (26:17):
Well, you could. They give free lessons, but oh smokes guys.
Colin (26:22):
But it always pays off to hire a guide no matter what you're doing. It depends
Justin (26:25):
On what you mean by pay it off. I mean, I've been fly fishing for 15 years, let's say, and fishing my whole life. I've never used a guide. Fucking crazy expensive. It's like 300. You want go fish, some cool patch of some river, even if it's not in Montana, you're looking at at least 300 bucks for a half a day minimum. Plus you got to tip 'em like a hundred bucks.
Colin (26:50):
Okay, so no guide, but I got some stuff. I decided to give it a try, I think helpful,
Justin (26:54):
But I'm not spending that kind of cash.
Colin (26:57):
But what's the gear? So you mentioned a few brands coming. You had your intro gear, the Orvis gear. What's the gear that people should be seeking out? What is it I should be seeking out and looking to spend for the,
Justin (27:08):
So if you've gone out and you're like, I love this, right? I'm Robert Redford. Look at or wait, is he even in? Was he
Colin (27:14):
Narrates it? He narrates it. I'm
Justin (27:15):
Brad Pitt. Whatever
Colin (27:17):
He narrates a river runs through,
Justin (27:18):
Right? Yeah. Tom Kers in it. Viper's in
Colin (27:21):
It, yes. And then the guy from the program is his brother.
Justin (27:23):
There need to be other fly fishing movies. There probably are, but that's the only one anyone ever talks about, right? Can you think of another fly fishing movie you
Colin (27:29):
Think there would be? Because of the whole romance of the, when he's out there, they're over the stunt double for Brad Pitt is doing his thing and he's like, whoa, the figure eight deal. It's so cool. It's
Justin (27:38):
Pretty freaking sweet. But
(27:40):
Anyway, but say you've gone out, you've gone a couple times. If you did hire a guide, you almost certainly caught a fish. The one thing a guide will do is they will put you on fish. That's their job. Yeah, it depends on where you live. But once, if you've gone out and you've gotten your basic setup of your fly rod and your reel and your assortment of flies, and that's going to be dependent on if you live somewhere that has fly fishing, you definitely live somewhere that has a fly shop for the most part. There will be one within an hour's drive go there. They want to talk to you about it. I always really intimidated it'd be going into a surf shop where they'd be like, get the fuck out of here or whatever. And it's not like that at all. They do not care if you're new.
(28:20):
They want to sell flies and you're going to lose a lot of flies. You're going to get 'em caught. So you're going to get 'em hung up on stuff. You're going to catch 'em in trees behind you so often it's going to drive you insane. But you need to buy flies. So just go to your fly shop. But that's its own thing. If you live in the south. If you live in the northwest, you're going to be looking for whole different stuff. But anyway, I guess the next thing that you really need, if you're going to fish your rounder waiters again, no reason to buy the crazy expensive ones at all. Patagonia makes ones that are pretty cheap. A brand called Remington makes ones that are real cheap and they work fine. I mean, they're not going to last you your whole life, but there's time for you to figure that part out.
(28:58):
And so you need waiters for where you live, depending on if you live in somewhere where it's cold and you need insulated waiters. If you think you're going to fish in the winter or whatever. If you live somewhere, you even can. A lot of places in California you can, the fishery closes so the fish can spawn unmolested. So you need to know that sort of stuff. But waiters, yeah, for sure. You need to build out your little kit with your nippers, which are little things that you use to cut, to cut fly line and to poke out because you also need the eyes of a 12-year-old because you're often trying to put very fine line through a tiny, tiny hole. And man, nothing will make you feel older than doing the old guy squint where you're trying to get this.
Colin (29:38):
Maybe I won't get into the sport. I think that ship sailed for me. My eyes are terrible at this point.
Justin (29:44):
Well, I mean you'll see dudes with little glasses like outfit folks,
Colin (29:47):
Right?
Justin (29:47):
Little magnifying for that purpose and nippers helped clean out the little hole.
Colin (29:52):
Alright, so stick a flag in the sand here, run down the list. Let's go. Recommended real rod.
Justin (29:56):
Okay, so I would probably, you mean wait, the actual brands?
Colin (30:01):
Yeah, what would you buys? Let's put something to
Justin (30:03):
It. I would do the Orvis setup and I think the Orvis Clearwater, it is probably just called the Clearwater Kit or something like that. That's for sure what I would get. And then let me see what, yeah, I'd probably do that. So the Redington cross waters are, you can get those for a hundred bucks. I mean, they're not the best waiters in the world, but again, you'll get an idea of whether or not this is something that you want to do. You'll get a feel for what, because you'll still get cold. It feels weird putting waiters on because you put 'em over pants or shorts or whatever. But you can feel the river and feel pretty cold. But I think Redington makes pretty cheap, or at least inexpensive, pretty good budget stuff. As far as waiters go, it kind of depends. I mean waiting boots go, it kind of depends.
(30:49):
You could almost get by with low top weighting shoes a lot. But I would probably get something like Orvis makes some pretty good ultralight waiting boots. You can get a pretty good pair of ultralights for 150 bucks that have an actual grippy sole in the bottom. The other thing with fly fishing is there's a huge debate in the, it's not really debate, but you can either have shoes that have actual grip on the bottom or shoes that just have felt. But anyway, men's ultralight waiting boots is like 150 bucks. So if you get those from Orvis plus a cheap pair of waiters for about a hundred bucks, you're looking at like two 50. So that plus a rod reel setup. If this is all brand new, you're looking at 500 bucks, that's really all you need. You can get a net for 20 bucks, which is a good idea. Yeah, I feel like if you bought all brand new stuff, you could probably be out the door for less than 600 bucks.
Colin (31:42):
Same last week. What did you say when we talked about the Hideaway platform? It's like oh six, that'll probably be about 500 bucks. So I mean now this is aside from the flies, which are effectively disposable and you have to replace, this should last you a long freaking time. The first thing we would wear out would probably be the waiters. Everything else is probably going to keep going,
Justin (32:01):
Especially if you get cheap stuff. I mean the rod and reel are never going to break rod and the reel. You're going to have that forever. But I mean for just a very basic summertime setup, we all brand new. I think you do for 600 bucks. But I also would recommend that you do it used as much used as possible.
Colin (32:16):
Absolutely. We always recommend use here on gear and
Justin (32:17):
Beer and you shouldn't have any trouble finding at least the rod and the real used, I mean there's always fly through stuff. A lot of people just don't have the patience. I mean, it's not going to go out there, buy yourself on the first day and catch a fish. There's no chance. If you've never done it before, there's no chance. Which you can do with bait. You can do that with a regular fishing setup. But fly fishing wise,
Colin (32:39):
No. Yeah, you go to a fishery and put some corn on the hook and be like, stand back everybody. Yeah, you could buy a trout at the grocery
Justin (32:43):
Store and throw it in the water and
Colin (32:45):
Yeah, that's right.
Justin (32:45):
It's weird. It was already gut it when you caught it, but yeah,
Colin (32:48):
I know that's the new type of fish.
Justin (32:51):
But yeah. And the thing is, if it hooks you at all, it's like anything else, you'll immediately be like, oh, I could buy a more expensive this. I could buy a more expensive that,
Colin (32:59):
Right? That's everything.
Justin (33:00):
That's everything. But I don't know, for whatever reason, probably because I don't get to do it every day, I've been able to sort of avoid that.
Colin (33:06):
Any final gear, impressions on fly fishing? Any final? Clearly a passionate topic here.
Justin (33:12):
Well, I mean, I guess I would just say that for me, I let the perceived expense and complication keep me from doing it for a really, really long time. And
Colin (33:25):
That's good advice.
Justin (33:25):
That's a shame. It also depends on where you live. It can be an elitist thing. It totally can. It has its own culture and it can feel intimidating to go to river you've never been before. And you're like, oh, I think I'll fish here. And you pull up and there's like four trucks, you're like, shit. But I also bring a lot of surfer baggage with me when it comes time for that sort of thing where it's like they, I've never had a bad experience with another fisherman ever, ever.
(33:54):
But I still feel weird. If I see a truck parked in a pullout, I'm not going to use that. Even though I'm sure most people would. The surfer in me is like, Nope, that's his little py of water. But anyway, it's not that complicated. It's not that expensive. It is well worth it in terms of the connection that you'll get with the environment in a way that is, again, unlike anything I've ever really experienced other than surfing. But even camping isn't quite the same. It just really puts you in there. And you are, as far as you know, are a fish. You are kind of are a fish for that day if you're doing it right.
Colin (34:29):
There you go. The Gear and Beer Dummies Guide to Fly fishing, we did it.
Justin (34:34):
Yeah. Yeah.
Colin (34:35):
Alright man, we'll wrap it up there. Thanks for listening everybody. Gear and Beer is a production of Rock Fight LLC for Justin Hausman. I'm calling True. And he's back to take us out The voice. So the Rock Fight podcast Network. Krista makes
Justin (34:47):
Big fly. Fishman Krista
Colin (34:48):
Makes, he might be, oh
Justin (34:50):
He is.
Colin (34:51):
I think he's a Tennessee guy. I don't know. I'm sure they fly fishing there. He's going to sing the Gear and beer theme song and we'll see you next time.
Chris DeMakes (35:03):
We have experienced, just like you're with your pal out on the trail. We review after Adventure Gear pair with the perfect beer. Now let the games begin. So glad that you're here at the break. Podium the trail head crack open by beverage where we losses close line.
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