Episode 20: Interview with a Fly Fishing Sage

A River Runs Through It

Back in the day, Bob Granger was the fly fishing guide to the stars. He has owned a fly shop, tied a zillion flies, and guided celebrities, politicians, and America’s business leaders. In this interview, Bob regales us with his stories from the river and gives advice to aspiring fly fishers. Listen to the podcast here.

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At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.

Who was your mentor in learning how to fly fishing? What makes a good mentor? Are you becoming a fly fishing sage?

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The Fly Fishing Classic on My Nightstand

In episode 19, Steve and Dave talked about some of their favorite outdoor authors. Here are Steve’s reflections on a classic that is charming and full of wisdom:

A slender volume with a faded dust-jacket sits in my nightstand. It is slightly thicker than my cell phone. My wife wonders how I can read its small print. A friend who loves old books picked it up in England. He recently gave it to me with a note that read: “When I acquired this, I knew it wasn’t for me. I just wasn’t sure who it was for. Now I know.” I’m guessing he realized it was for me after hearing me talk for the umpteenth time about my love of fly fishing.

A fly fishing classic, my nightstand edition was published in England in 1950. But it’s a reprint of a book that was originally published in 1653 and brought to its current form in the fifth edition in 1676. It’s a classic by Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler. This book expresses one man’s love for fly fishing. I suspect that like the Bible, it gets talked about more than it gets read. I have to admit that I have never read The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton until now.

Wisdom from the Fly Fishing Classic
One passage that particularly struck me was the first stanza of “The Angler’s Song.” So allow me to reflect briefly on that stanza. If you’ve not used to reading literature, let alone poetry, here is your chance to taste it.

    As inward love breeds outward talk,
    The hound some praise, and some the hawk:
    Some better pleas’d with private sport,
    Use tennis, some a mistress court:
    But these delights I neither wish,
    Nor envy, while I freely fish.

Pure wisdom. It’s an insight into people like me who would rather fly fish than do almost anything else. Even when I’m in Wrigley Field watching the Cubs take on my Cardinals, I find my mind wandering to fishing a high mountain lake in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. When I play with my grandsons and pretend to be Captain America (or whatever Super Hero they assign me to be), I love every minute of it. But in that moment there are wistful thoughts of helping my grandsons drift a fly down a favorite run on Montana’s Madison River.

The odd thing is that I never experience this sensation in reverse. When I’m fly fishing, I don’t wish I was at Wrigley Field or some other major league park watching baseball. If I’m fly fishing a mountain stream with my boys, I don’t wish we were playing football in the back yard. No, the one time I avoid any struggle with envy is when I’m fly fishing. There’s no other form of recreation in which I would rather engage. Alright, there is bow-hunting for elk. But I remember times when I was elk hunting and I’d cross a stream and wish I had my fly rod in hand.

I don’t envy my cousin who spends weeks in Florida alternating between sky diving and sitting on a beach with a drink in hand. I don’t envy the friend who spends a week at a posh resort and plays eighteen holes of golf every day. In fact, I feel a bit sorry for these folks. They probably feel that way about me. To each his own.

You can have Cancun or Hilton Head. I’ll take the Firehole in Yellowstone National Park. Enjoy that week on a cruise ship somewhere in the Caribbean. I’ll gladly spend my week in a drift boat on one of the great western rivers. You can have your 9-iron. I’ll take my 9-foot fly rod any day. Run that marathon, polish that ’68 Corvette. Head to a tailgate party before the big football game.

    But these delights I neither wish,
    Nor envy, while I freely fish.

Episode 18: The Basics of Safe Wading

A River Runs Through It

You haven’t fly fished if you haven’t slipped while waist high in a swift current. Who hasn’t felt the adrenaline surge as the icy water poured over the top of your waders? In this episode Steve and Dave discuss The Basics of Safe Wading, offering several principles for making sure you make it to your favorite restaurant after a day on the river.

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Episode 16: Weathering the Weather on the River

A River Runs Through It

Weather on the river can be unpredictable. Now that’s a patently obvious statement. But it needs to be said. Some of the best days fly fishing are miserable (in terms of weather) for fly fishers. Listen to Episode 16: Weathering the Weather on the River.

Listen to our episode “Weathering the Weather on the River” now

At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.

What unpredictable weather have you encounter through the years? Tell us about your worst weather on the river but best fishing day ever?

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View some of our most recent podcast episodes on iTunes or on Stitcher, if you have an Android.

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That helps fellow fly fishers decide whether the podcast is a good fit for them.

You can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Stitcher for Android.

Episode 14: Fly Fishing Personalities You’ll Meet

fly fishing guides

Fly fishing personalities – they are everywhere. On the river. At fly fishing trade shows. In fly shops. And on the trail as you’ve hiking to your favorite stretch of river. We guess that you’ve met every one of the six in this podcast. Maybe you’re one of them. In this episode, we create a taxonomy of the wonderful, funny, and sometimes crazy personalities we’ve met through the years. And then we label each other. Steve is a bit ADD, and Dave is a Drama King. Listen to Episode 14: Fly Fishing Personalities You’ll Meet.

Any Fly Fishing Personalities that We Missed?

We bet that you’ve come across a few characters along the way. We’d love to hear about them. Come up with a label for the personality.

Please post your stories below! At some point, we’ll do another episode on the topic and roll out our next six.

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Stupid Is As a Stupid Fly Fisher Does

Forrest Gump gets credit for the line “stupid is as stupid does.” But I suspect this aphorism originated with a fly fisher. After all, fly fishing brings out the best and the worst in a person’s behavior. I can imagine one fly fisher laughing at another who has just fallen face first into a stream while trying to move too rapidly over the slick boulders beneath its surface and then saying, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

In this post I offer a few of my more stupid fly fisher moments:

Stupid Fly Fisher Hiking

One of my “stupid” moments happened a few years ago at 10,000 feet above sea level in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was fishing with my brother, Dave, and my Uncle Ivan. Dave I and were in our teens. Our Uncle Ivan was old enough to know better. The plan was to take a short-cut to the upper reaches of a mountain stream which had a healthy supply of brook trout.

You can guess what happened. We got lost.

A half hour after realizing we were lost, my Uncle Ivan feared that our quest would not lead us to the little stream. I simply feared for my life. We had been following a faint game trail. This trail must have been made by Bighorn sheep because it took us over a ridge line onto a steep hillside. Before we knew it, we were hanging onto small Aspen trees to keep from sliding into the canyon below us.

A snowfield loomed ahead. How did we end up here? Stupid is as stupid does.

We finally found a flat spot where we could sit without the fear of sliding down the steep hillside. My Uncle Ivan decided to eat his lunch. I was too scared to eat. Just then, we heard a helicopter and saw it flying up the drainage in between our hillside and the opposite one. We all started waving and shouting, “We need help.” But it never changed direction or speed, and soon it was gone. What were we thinking? Was the helicopter pilot really going to see or hear us? If so, would the pilot really assume we were in trouble and begin some sort of rescue mission? Stupid is as stupid does.

Although my Uncle Ivan resembles a character right out of a Patrick McManus tale, he is an astute woodsman. He scanned the steep hillside and noticed another trail on a bench above us that would take us on a much gentler grade. It took some work to scramble safely up the hillside to that bench. But we did it. We hiked for another thirty minutes until we found the object of our pursuit.

For the next two hours, we caught so many brookies that we forgot about our peril. We fished far enough downstream to find a more substantial game trail, which led us to one of the trails maintained by the National Park Service.

The fishing success seemed to repress the memory of those scary moments on the side of the mountain.

I didn’t think much about it until a year later when I tried to take my younger brother, Kevin, around Upper Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park to get to the “better water” on the other side of lake. Before we knew it, the bank had ended and we were on a steep stone cliff with intermittent seeps of water. We ended up hanging onto scrub brush so that we would not slide down into the glacially cooled lake. I wondered what I had done. With one slip, my parents would lose two sons. Since I’m writing this, you know that I made it around the lake safely.

So did my brother. What else can I say, but … stupid is as stupid does.

Episode 12: The Stupid Things Fly Fishers Do

A River Runs Through It

Fly fishers can do stupid things when zeroed in on trout, steelhead, salmon, or whatever the fish. Some of it is hilarious, some of it (almost) deadly serious. In this episode, we recall some of our more stupid moments in the outdoors. Click now to listen to “The Stupid Things Fly Fishers Do”.

Listen to our episode “The Stupid Things Fly Fishers Do”

Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.

Any plans for the new year? Do you hope to get more days on the water? Any plans for a bigger fly fishing trip? Any books you plan to read or skills you hope to acquire? Please post your comments below!

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View some of our most recent podcast episodes on iTunes or on Stitcher, if you have an Android.

Healing Waters – the Story of Jessica, Wife of a Wounded Warrior

gift of fly fishing

Wounded warriors are the heroes among us. Yet so often, they suffer in silence. In Episode 10, we interviewed Dave Kumlien, Trout Unlimited’s Veterans Service Partnership Western Coordinator, about his involvement with the Warriors and Quiet Waters Project. Here is a first-hand account from Jessica B., wife of a wounded warrior, about the impact a couples’ fly fishing trip had on her husband.

    I am grateful to Trout Unlimited Veterans Service Partnership for their work, their mission, and their devotion to helping Veterans and families like us. Thank you for recognizing that there is a need, and providing a relaxing and therapeutic aid through fly fishing, to help our service members find a peaceful distraction from whatever they may be facing. I have never felt so uplifted by a single group of people as I did when my husband and I were privileged to participate in a couple’s fly fishing trip to Silvertip Ranch [just north of Yellowstone National Park] through the Veterans Service Partnership

    My husband, Damein, served in the Army nine years and endured three combat tours with the 82nd Airborne division. Being the leader that he is, he carried the burden from his deployments along with the demands of our family until it became too much to bear. I watched my husband slowly disengage from us, become distant, and wrestle with matters that left him sleepless and bothered. He was hurting.

    As a spouse, it is hard to watch the person you love the most go through something you can’t fix. The more I tried to expose the problems, the longer the lengths he went to hide and dismiss them. He was trying to protect us. Damein was trying to figure out how to live with what happened, while I was trying to figure out how to deal with our newly delicate situation.

    We moved back to our home state of South Carolina after Damein was medically discharged from the Army. I could tell that he was struggling with all of the free time that retirement had granted him. Luckily, Damein was introduced to a local Project Healing Waters program run by the Mountain Bridge Trout Unlimited Chapter in Greenville, South Carolina. These folks reintroduced him to fly fishing. As Damein got more involved, I could see that there was energy to his voice. For the first time in a long time, he was excited to talk to me about fly fishing.

    He told me one night about the opportunity to go to Montana to do some fly fishing with Trout Unlimited Veterans Services Partnership. It was a couples’ trip. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “Are you sure I can go?” The second thing I said was, “I’ve never cast a fly rod in my life!” Soon after that we left for Montana.

    I watched Damein on that trip. I watched him casting in the water. I watched him bubble with pride when he caught his first cutthroat trout. I watched stress roll off his body, and something was very different, but so very familiar. I saw my husband return to who he was—before his life had been affected by his time in combat.

    I understood the serenity, the focus, and the silent satisfaction that he found in fly fishing. He was enjoying life, he was enjoying people, and he was surrounded by the most beautiful landscape we had ever seen. It was a sight for my eyes to behold, and I witnessed there what a quiet river and a fly rod, could do for your soul. It was a time of reflecting and reconnecting for us, and I feel like we both had the opportunity to decompress, enjoy each other, and just breathe.

    We shared an amazing week with couples who had felt, in one way or another, the same connection to the river that we did. In the evenings, we sat around a fire, we laughed and we cried, sharing stories about the past, stories about the present, and I fell in love with this program. I fell in love with the compassion and the heart behind the work that Trout Unlimited and their partners are doing for our Veterans and their families. I fell in love with the guides who devoted themselves to work with each Veterans’ sensitive needs. I fell in love with the comradery and the brotherhood among the Veterans. I fell in love with the way it brought spouses together, so we could share our husbands’ enjoyment and healing.

    We left Montana with a renewed energy for our relationship and in turn, it has reflected beautifully on our family. I hope this program will continue to make a difference in the lives or our nation’s Veterans and their families.

Episode 5: Reflections on “A River Runs Through It”

A River Runs Through It

Reflections on “A River Runs Through It” are often about family – and what it means to love someone you don’t understand.The movie A River Runs Through It starring Brad Pitt, Tom Skerritt, and Craig Sheffer, and directed by Robert Redford, narrated a tragic but true story of a Presbyterian family in western Montana. Before the movie, though, came the book, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. The story A River Runs Through It is actually a novella inside the book of short stories by Norman MacClean, the older son who taught at the University of Chicago and who died right before the movie was made. In this podcast, Steve and Dave reflect on how the story impacted them, including the relationships within their families. Listen to Episode 5: Reflections on “A River Runs Through It”

Listen now to Reflections on “A River Runs Through It”

Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.

How did you make the transition to fly fishing on your own? What advice would you give someone who wants to start the learning curve to fish on his or her own?

By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.

Other Articles on the Book and Movie

    Fun Facts about the Movie “A River Runs Through It”

    Gary Borger on the Making of “A River Runs Through It”

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The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists

For this episode, we are the Sponsor!

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