00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, this is Tyler Jones and you're listening to the Element podcast. So you're cripper a book around here. As you know, it's our logo is red and blue. We support both sides. Here you go bringing people together. This is two thousand six, two thousand seven. You're close our leve at. The anniversary is coming up and about another two months. It's right, we're gonna have a part of that a little bit. We are Cinco de mayo Margarita. Isn't crawfish, sweet dude, crawfish crows. You're speaking my language. And we had crawfish a couple of weeks ago, and it was one of those things where, um, we had like six people that we're gonna eat crawfish, maybe five or six people, six people, Yeah, and uh so we ordered like thirty pounds. Well I'm like a five pound guy anyway herself usually, you know, so like and there's like women in this bunch, you know, and um, one of the six was my mom and she like all of a sudden decided she didn't like crawlfish all of a sudden for some reason. And then my and then my my best friends, uh fiance was another one, and she tried one, and like, you know, if you're not pretty, if you haven't dealt with crawlfish much, it can be a tedious prod process to get it done, you know. And so she like picked through it forever and uh she I don't even know if she even ate it. And then so it was like, okay, now we're down to four people with thirty pounds of crawfish. And I just went off, dude. And there was one there was one section. We had them on this ice chest and I ate like probably like five plates and I get down to the six plate and uh, and then like there was a lot of juice in there, and I don't know, like I guess they cookies in a different batcher something. Oh my goodness, lit me. I was sweating so hard. It's one of those things where I try to be pretty tough overall that I almost cried. It's bad. I've got a good friend of mine that's from Marshall and his dad's Cajun. So he fancies himself a Cajun. So he went out and had crawfish. Of course, she orders the extra hot crawfish. Of course. He has a little bit of a drinking problem. Drinks a lot of beer with his crawfish, so he gets through the hot crawfish no problem. The next warning, on the other hand, the crawfish spice was stuck underneath his nails. He's just driving to work with the A C full blast with his hands stuck in the A C events because his fingers were on fire. Dude, I had the same experience with this with this crawfish are similar experience where the next morning, when I got up and got in the shower, um for I mean, I took a shower my and my when I started rubbing my face, I started burning. And then after I give this like five minute shower and wash every you know all. I'd wash my hands several times at this point. I'm still like later on that that day, when I would touch my face, I could feel it burning from my hands. It's not like it's crazy. It's crazy, man. I don't ever seem that hot when I eat them. You know, if you keep eating on them, that's the thing that's key. Like you've got to eat them fast. So if you can't eat them fast, you're you probably don't like crawfish. But well, are we gonna have to do like a demonstration. Sometime we will do a crawfish demonstration when we sink. Sinking. To my think it's perfect, yeah, how to how to eat a crawlfish, because like I feel like, uh, from here east and we grew up east to here about seventy miles, you start getting into this little like section where you're not really like Southwestern, like a lot of Texas people are Um and you're not really Cajun. So you're like, we get the best of both world because we get that steak, yeah, text mixed stuff going on and cage and all the same time, there's a distinct dividing line. And it's forty five. Yeah, it's true. You go east of forty five, you can find pork barbecue, you can't find it west of forty five. But then you also get into your crawfish and and that the party Woods is much more Southern than it is Texan. Yeah, I agree, I agree. It's it's uh, we talked about this a lot on the podcast, but like it's it's kind of weird how um Texas gets lumped into certain yeah cultures and stuff sometimes and it's so regional. Yeah, people can't grasp how big Texas is it's not. And I was thinking about this actually on the way here, because we were driving through different parts of the state. Really over seventy miles, you can see different rain features and stuff. And I'm thinking, as I've grown older and experience more things and travel more, which is kind of what we're gonna talk about today, the more I realized that I don't look at things as state lines. When was the a kid is really cool across the state linees like I'm in Louisiana, you know, but like nothing looks just like home. Yeah, exactly. But like now as I'm older, like every time that like the region changes, you know, you go from Ponty Woods to black Land Prairie to you know, cross Timbers to where we are now we're in the Trinity River bottom. You know, like you start noticing that That's kind of what really matters as far as like and now doorsman goes, you know, because you have different opportunities in all these different places. It's not really crossing state lines or distig that is something as Texan or Louisiana in or Arkansari in there. However, you're gonna say that one, you know, it's it's more about like knowing that specific niche or let area and being able to recognize it. Like things change on a more micro scale than just state lines, because those are human creations. Yeah, for sure. I mean except for Oklahoma, that's completely different. You feel a little different when you cross that state line across the Red River and like a shower. I have a saw that will be on my next album about that. Actually it's a it's a it's a positive note though it's not a negative. Sorry, Oklahoma listeners. So if you're listening right now, this is our Gone in sixty Minutes podcast, and we've got our good buddy and manager, Yeah, sales manager, sales manager of the Tailwaters fly Fishing Company here in Dallas, Texas. And so we're in the fly shop. We are the company. We're in the lounge area of the fly shop, surrounded by our beautiful bar. Yes, and uh so you're listening to Sean Polk And we have a different side to tail Waters in this shop right here. So what's that. So we have the retail side which you guys are sitting in right now, but we also have a full on travel service. So we are basically travel agents for approximately forty lodges um. Primarily on the international side, we do you have a trip to Louisiana for redfish, and about eight places in Alaska, but we also represent Mexico, Belize, Bahamas, Honduras, Olivia, Brazil, Padded, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela when things are good down there, along with Russia and the Seychelle Islands in the Indian Ocean. Those are all places talking about the list, yeah, those are all places. And yeah, I forgot Brazil too. I might have said that one, Okay, yeah, yeah, it's We're definitely not the biggest one out there as far as fly fish and travel, but we do represent the same spots as all the other companies do. So of all those places you just listen, how many of you visited personally? I think my total is only up to maybe six or seven, So that's awesome, ye know. Um though, I I like to say there's there's a couple of bucket list trips. I have been on one of the bucket list trips. So we'll talk about that one here down the road. So our plan today is this is our sixtie episode, and sixties a weird number. It's not like fifty it's not like a hundred. Those are round numbers, but sixty splits three ways pretty evenly. And Casey and I, being very poor and not working at fly shops and fly comphanies, have not maybe done a ton of traveling and so we needed some help. So we brought Sean on to do this for us. And he's gonna have some incredible destinations and and tips or ideas why he wants he he likes that spot, and we got the same thing going on, So we're gonna split it twenty for each guy here. Um. And the first thing that I'd like to do, though, is for us to kind of go around the horn and talk about what our favorite thing about traveling is or um why it's important or maybe it's not important, but we just like to do it, whatever that might be. So we'll start with you, Casey. Uh. For me, you know, traveling does a lot of things. Of course, Um, I'm not one of those uh basic white girls. Is like I love to travel, you know, Like I don't love it for the travel itself, but traveling has so many benefits. Like I'm it's just like I've talked to you before too, Like I don't camp to camp, I camp to hunt, I camp to fish. I do all these things, and travel is like a means to get there right And when you go to these places, you can learn so much that you can take back with you and apply to everyday stuff, whether that's your outdoor lifestyle or your life or just people you and can owner or whatever. You have, all these experiences that help you build who you are, and that's kind of what I really see as a benefit to travel, and then kind of more on a outdoor scale. It's crazy how you can go to places and learn about like a quarry, so like whether you're fishing or hunting or whatever you're doing, how that can teach you so much about the thing that you get to do back home all the time. So like, for instance, I go to Colorado and fish, I can learn a lot about what it's like to come back here in bass fish in East Texas and apply things that I learned there to what I get to do often. So that's kind of my thing. And I like to eat a lot, so traveling eating or kind of you know, they go hand in hand about well, I think part of the whole travel thing is, like Casey said, it's a it's a means to an end as far as going out and find a new species. For me, most of my travel has been centered around trying to catch a new type of fish. Yeah, and go on some place I've never fished before. So there's there's that cool thing. You know, you're checking off the list of species that I've never done this before. And that's kind of how it started off at But now it's gotten around more to the experience of just leaving, leaving Texas and go and see what's out there. You know, I get a kick out of not only catching a new species, but talking to the locals. You know, meet the local culture, you know, eat their food, see how they live, you know, find out you know, what these guys do day in and day out. So you know, I love talking to my guides and like, so when you're not guiding, what do you do? You know, what hobbies and stuff, And it's it'll blow your mind what you know? This this guide and back back backwater third world country and you talk to him and the dude like knows like pop culture and knows more about US politics than you did, and it's like what, um so, yeah, I mean that's that's that's a that's a lot of it. Now. It's it's not to sound cliche and total white girl, but oh my god, it's all about the journey. Hey, that's true, man, But yeah, that's it. That's that's part of it, dude. It's see some cool stuff out there and you leave your your comfort zone. Yeah, I agree. I mean for me, there's uh, I mean, I'm in agreeance with what you guys say. And there's a lot um a lot to it. Man, there's more to it than even we've had the chance to to kind of lay out for the listener so far. But I one thing I've talked to you about this before. Um My, a lot of my friends or guys that aren't even like great friends with but like you know, we hung out in school or whatever, you know, in high school. A lot of these these buddies of mine from high school. Um, you know, I'll see him. I moved back to moved back now to like more towards where I grew up now, um, and I'll see these guys around around town or something, you know, maybe the communicetore. I saw one today when we stopped to get guests, and uh, you know, I'll I'll say, well, um, say hey, you know what's going on, man, what you've been up to? And most of them and this is just part of growing up small town blue collar. Um, and I'm the same way, still blue collar, you know. But they just kind of go, oh, just been working, you know, and I don't even know where they work really, So like that's I guess usually my next question, I'm like, hey, I hate to say this, but I don't know where you're like what are you doing? You know? But um, you know, it's it's kind of hard to carry a conversation on sometimes. And I feel like that, Um, you know, I've got like I've got a list here of twenty, like we said, places, destinations that I think everybody should either go or not go. But through the band, I traveled all over the place, you know, I mean, um, because they had to pay for it, you know, so not at least not often. And uh and so that you know, that's I have like a ton of experiences. Um. And so like I feel like anywhere I go, whether it's talking to one of my high school buddies or uh, hanging out with you Sean, or if i'm you know, when we come to the shop in a couple of months and meet people that are here, you know, just being a part of this you know, grand opening celebration anniversary. Um, like I'll have something that I might can relate to a lot of different people. Oh one time I saw something like that too, you know, it was really cool, you know, um or yeah, I've been up there in Minneapolis. You know, we went this last summer. You know, just things like that. It kind of helps you be relatable and carry on a conversation with people that normally like even like I said, even though even these guys that I grew up with, like I can't even carry a conversation on them sometimes because there's there's nothing going on in their life really other than just work. And that seems to be the most important thing because they always tell me that, you know, so it's kind of it's that's that's one thing that I like, um about traveling, and I you know, I still relate to to my buddies there, I guess because I'm still broke, but I choose I choose to. They actually have more money than me, like no doubt, because they're hard workers. You know. It's all you ever do is work and you don't speak, you you're gonna have something. That's the way I think of it. You know. It's like I mean, I could, I can. I can sit here and work a lot and I have some money and have like that financial peace, you know, and but I uh, I won't have the experiences. So you know, one way or another, what are you gonna have. You're gonna have money or you're gonna you know, and some people have both. So these are the people that look with tails company, well it helps, Oh yeah, for sure. So that's when I get to go travel. It's not because I making it rich at the flush off. I've been giving a lot of really really cool opportunities and very fortunate that the place where I am that I got to go out and do a out of the stuff. But for sure there's a lot of it though that I did outside of the fly shop, So you can you can do it on the cheap and dirt bag it. There's no doubt. For several years. I mean, it all it all boils down to it doesn't all boil onto this. And this is why most of our most of our talking points today we'll be fishing. Because when like Casey was saying, you go hunt, Uh would you say something about rats? Okay, so the example used in the way here it was like, you can, you know, hop on a flight somewhere for you know, hundred round trip and buy a thirty dollar fishing license fish for five days sometimes you know as a as an out of state resident or no, I mean out of state non resident. And then if you want to go hunt and have a similar experience, it's gonna cost you three or fourner bucks for out of state license to go do this thing. And then you're gonna have limited access and limited opportunity because it's so much harder to hunt. You gotta get your weapon there, and then you only get to shoot one thing. Usually when you go do stuff as opposed to fishing, you can show up, hop off the plane for the creek next door. You know, it's like that. Your actual statement was you're gonna spend a hundred twenty bucks to kill rats. You can buy small game losses for run twenty bucks you rats. You know, so like it's it's definitely cheaper to do the fishing thing overall. I mean, I'm sure you've been to some pretty exquisite lodges or you guys probably books some you know, Um that you get a you know, you might have had a chance to go with some guys that have done that thing and or you've at least seen it, uh pretty you know somewhat firsthand. Um. I mean it just it does it kind it kind of does come down to like, you know, do you want to spend uh fifty bucks or more a night on a hotel and on a three or four or five day trips been you know, a hundred fifty two U fifty bucks extra? Or do you want to camp and sometimes do that for free you know, or or cheap and so like those things. That's one thing and you do that like over the course of like maybe three or four different things, and you start saving you know, five hundred bucks on a trip and you go and do something for what you could make in a day or two at working, you know, And so it did you gotta you gotta choose how you do it. But um, you know, I think I think, uh, from this point, man, I think it's a it's a good time for us to step in and start telling the listener what we came to tell, and that is we've got destinations. Um in mind that we either can say that's a great place to go or a great time to go, do this at that place or that area, or don't go do this, And we've got a few of those. We actually had one that we all three shows. We were like, this is, uh, this is a bad situation right now. Funny because that's like the one place you expect to be on the list of your Yeah, I didn't want to offend you when you tell me. You're like, do y'all have this one on there? And I was like, yeah, did you pick it good or bad? The same thing as like you should say good or bad? We all agree is I don't want to go and roast this place when here they get school. That's the only one. Well, there's another one I had rushed, but not as bad as that one. Yeah, I try not to put too many of the bad. I'm going to let those guys say that one. Y'all can figure it out. Yeah, every place, all this nations are great. They really, I mean you really are you got. I think you gotta have the experience of like a bad situation sometimes to to kind of grow and to learn, you know, and I mean you gotta remember that sometimes like what we think as adults, like at this point in our outdoor journey, uh as being like kind of rough and not really a great place. As a ten or twelve year old, you might think it's awesome, you know, and like because that's how small your world is. But then as you travel and you do all these things, things change. We talked about that recently. I think something like that. How oh the ram Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a cool thing back then. I looked at that picture last night actually. Yeah. So anyway, uh, one thing before we get going here, I want to say this place is awesome. Yeah, if you haven't been here, it's in Dallas, Texas. It's on the west side, but the east side of the train we're we're in easy We're in West Dallas, on the east side of the Trinity. That's right. Basically we're in the design district in between downtown and the Trinity. Makes it continental, right, you can do that. That will take you, uh, just north of the jail. But uh, if you could think of Irving Boulevard and Oaklawn, we're on the a little bit rougher side of Oaklawan though. Hey it's it's it's exquisite in here. I mean, there's just like they got all kinds of gear. It's huge. I was shocked when we first came in here. The first time I had been here into this location was at the Full Draw filmter last year, and I like the photography in here. It just makes you like when you come in here, you're automatically like, take my money, you know, like that's what we're here for. If nothing else. I've got free cold beer every day of the week. They're they're just lucky people here that get to work here, but they got cool swag, cool hats, cool, everything's I mean, even the sales managers are pretty cool most of the time. So anyway, UM, we'll get to going here. You know, the first, uh, the first person that I want to go is me and uh, and so I'll start us out and I'm gonna start with my big my big dog here. Uh. This is uh. We're gonna go through, like said, uh, destinations that are worth going to and destinations that you probably should stay away from. So I don't know exactly how that's gonna work out, but we're gonna just go and so uh, Sean will be right after me, and we'll just keep a little round robin going here. So my first place is Akee Williston, British Columbia, and that's pretty um it's pretty specific, but generically or overarching would be British Columbia. Uh, in general, Like, I feel like that place is awesome. Um. I got to go film a sheep hunt the last two years up there. Um. And the lake is the seventh largest in the world by volume. Um and man, we saw stone sheet grizzly bears. We had like kind of an in grizzly grizzly encounter like yards you know, he took off luckily. The black bears are like coyotes to them. I mean they're literally they're just all the residents are like the GUIDs are just like, yeah, we just sure every chance we'll get, you know, and it's all the time, you know. So uh we got to see I saw wolf both years. The Black Wolf's awesome. Yeah, it was, I mean it was incredible just the experience. They're beautiful country and it's close enough to society that you don't feel super uh like uh like locked out of you. I mean, if you don't want to get lost, but you can't get lost pretty quick, like you definitely don't want to miss your flight. In Fort St. John, we did that. Go back and listen, and the lake trout fishing is top notch. So Sean, what about you? Well, I was going to start off with my my first one, but I think I want to save that for a bit later. A little teaser. So the bat and Kill River in Vermont, So there's a certain like Mega fly fishing company that has bat and killed this and bat and killed that bat and killed everything. So I used to work for that company many moons ago. I got to go up there for some meetings and I got to go fish that fame bat and Kill River. Super beautiful river, horrible fishing. Oh my goodness. The locals are like, yeah, if you catch something out of here, you're gonna be doing pretty good. Oh yeah, it's a beautiful river though, but yeah, we I got to fish up the owners stretch as they called it. So you thought, oh man, this is'na be pretty good. But yeah, really, not that many fish in that river, so bummer bummer on that. So yeah, I'm gonna put that one as beautiful to visit, not so much on the fishing, you know. Yeah that was I know, so, yeah, that was kind of cool. That's like, uh, when they talk about classic storied rivers in America and especially up in the Northeast, is one of them. Yeah, I got to fish it and catch anything but cool. Yeah, well I'm gonna bring it a little closer to home, at least in our state. Okay, tarling with Texas. If you ever been tailing with Texas that you want to there. This is fishing, That's the key. But neat thing is I was on top of a mesa and tailoring with Texas. There's a pila up there, like a water tank. There were a little catfish one around that pila. And this is way up on top of a desert mounta, so I don't know how they got there. I didn't have a rod, but it would be cool to catch when't just say you did it. But I was out there, uh uh with work actually, and got to hunt some havelina's, and man, havelinas are a vicious creature, like, by far the meanest thing I've ever hunted or messed around with. I really don't don't want to jack around with him. But it was really cool place and the havelina is like are just kind of like the way to get you there. But the scenery and the beauty of that far far far west Texas stuff, it's just unreal. Man, it's unreal how cool it is out there. And now that the big ones are kind of making a come back and that's actually kind of where we're out there. Was a big one restoration stuff, and uh, it's just so cool to get out there and being a place that, uh, it feels so empty, but it's a good empty. It's it's a really good deal. Cool man, well awesome. Um from there, I'm gonna take you to northern New Mexico place called valved Door. Yeah. Um, it's fake. Is like it's like val Kilmer's place. I don't know this was. This was originally I believe, um, an oil company maybe who was it? An oil company like owner, uh, like a big one of the big ones like Chevron Shell something like that. I can't remember, own this and own a ton of taxes. And I think they it ended up coming into um, the New Mexico Fishing Game or whatever in the National Force system or whatever. I don't I don't know exactly the story there, but man, this place it's um, everything's green, everything, all the grass, there's clear, flowing, beautiful rivers that are just kind of amber colored. Uh, and creeks rainbows every afternoon. I mean you will see a rainbow. It's gonna rain and you're going to see one. I mean, uh yeah, real grand cutthroats, real grand rainbows. And the skies, real grand cutthroats underneath the skies, and uh, they would rise to Kadison hoppers. Uh. Pretty well, we had a kind of rough go at it. I've heard, I mean I've heard it's like a hundred fish days could happen there, but we didn't really have that happen so at all public or yeah it's all public. Right. It was thirty five miles from from pavement where we were at. I mean either way, it was unreal. Dude. We I mean like big elk. We saw elk everywhere. I mean, you all got me stuff. I gotta ask stuff to miless of stuff to do. Yeah, it's gonna happen. The listener has their pin and pad out hopefully. Tell my wife our bank accounts about to get a little bit smaller. Mine can't go much smaller, so I can cut it in half and I'll have sixteen dollars. You know. That's That's about all I had to say about that. We do see Miriam's turkeys, and uh, we actually have a video called Valley of Life that's on the internet from that trip and you can see some of the time lapses, some stars and just daytime lapses and stuff. They were. Man, it was just beautiful. Well cool, I'm going to continue the New Mexico theme. So outside of Pacas, New Mexico, which if you go to Santa Fe, Pacas is about twenty minutes east of there, and then you go to Pacas, then you go about forty five minutes off the pavement, up and down four service roads, get to a police place called Cow Creek Ranch. Um set up in a valley about acres. Now, this is one of the very few places I've been to that's actually private water. But if there's Disneyland for trout fishing, it's Cow Creek. Really. Um, it's not fishing as much as it's catching. Um. Okay, So I've been to Cow's New Mexico. So this is Cow Creek. This is north of Pacas. Believe well, this is you go to Pacas and you spent about forty five minutes. It's it's set up in a valley. Its sounded on National Force Land on all three sides. Um, it's a it's a guy here in Dallas, the real estate developers his place. He bought this place from the original family. He was in the bidding war Don Johnson for this place. I bought it, fixed it up a little bit, and then I told the guy, said, hey, start stoking trout and it's got all four species. He said, I'm gonna fly up here every two weeks and fish it when I am. So when I when I say it's done, that's when you stopped stalking. Eighteen months later, at pounds of trout, nothing less than sixteen inches, he said, all right, this will do. He's got Brown's brooks, rainbows and cuts. Yes, the bottom seven miles this is all manicure. He built like forty holes, structure, built six six ponds. He calls them legs. But their their tanks. Um, which that was a whole other story about how he got his tanks and permitted. Didn't have permission but a little political donation to the governor. He got permission to build these tanks. But the upper section of it's all wild native cuts. So rios, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And so are the but the ones in the lower section are those rios as well? Or they could be. I don't I don't know, but I do know that do you go and catch a six inch rainbow or brown? Was not unheard of. It was like how got six? Guys like, well, I did too, and I did too. I did too. It was like, oh, I guess that's probably one of only there's another place that that's on here that I went trout fishing that was along those same lines. It's it's open to the public first fee or whatever. For some little guide shops or fly shops in Santa Fe. You can get day access, you can pay a rod fee, or you can writ the whole place out by the week. It's cool. It's cool. Well, I'm gonna take this across the National vide and uh go on up into the square state of Colorado, and I'm gonna go a little more urban though. So in Montro's, Colorado, the Uncle Pagary River runs right through town, and I fished the Uncle Pagre I never saw another soul fishing and had one of the best days I've ever had. I was catching just slaw rainbows. I mean, nothing long, but you know that fifteen sixteen inch fish, you know, good good fish. A couple of browns along in a like afternoon I caught, you know, in fish something like that. Not on the soul in side. There's people jogging by. Uh there's a junkyard or like a what do you call it, like iron reclamation place, Like you can see the fence of it right here next to the river. And I'm out of here wet waiting because I'm actually elk hunting. I'm up there and I'm just there to fish and I'm just slaying fish and it's the funniest day. They aren't giants, but they're eager. The place is awesome. And if you don't get a chance to get to tailwaters because you're in Colorado, there's a really cool little fly shop there in town with a really old guy who will give you a free patch that he makes that has like a rainbow on it and stuff like. So I think that like back in the day when people wore vests all the time, they'd sell these patches on their vests, like it's like a little membership thing or whatever. Yeah, he's still the best guy, but man, it was just like a cool experience you know, and it's just like one of these little overlooked fisheries that nobody ever hits. And then if you get the chance and you have a little more time, you venture out of Montrose and go up the river a little bit to the back of the tail water of Ridgeway Dam back there Ridgewad Reservoir. I think they call it Paka Pea Chuck or something like that. It's like stopped just with the giant snake river cuts and giant rainbows. And if you ever see like a twenty rainbow coming out of Colorado, it's probably from that little beatty stretch right there, and they're hitting like twenty eight ass twenty eight little bitty you know, mid Larva and stuff. It's crazy, but it's cool. The river Man, you probably had like an incredible like mental state also on the very one of those U fok moments when it just gets even better. Zin was mine that day. We'll talk more. We'll talk more about why I later. Yeah, sure, so I'm gonna I kind of like this thing we're doing. We're like like have this geographic route that we're running kind of not that it's in any particular direction, but like I don't want to just take it right now, at least from Colorado, like somewhere you know, way off. For some reason, I just feel like that. But we could keep following the road map bomb when I like it, if you, if you guys can stay with it. I know you've got some stuff that's out there, but um, yeah, but I can keep following this road map for a west Okay, So I'm gonna come this may not fit into your road map. Sorry, I'm gonna come back kind of towards home a bit. And I'm gonna this is in northern Oklahoma, and uh, we had a place up there several years ago that we hunted deer um and the place was um. The area was like intermittent with crp um and creek bottom stuff and then a lot of wheat was the agg in the area. Um and for those of you that don't know, pheasants like to eat wheat. And there was birds everywhere up there, like we had. For one, if you look at a map of the US with the like, uh quail distribution, Oklahoma is like a stronghold for quail. And so we had a ton of quail over there, and we also, um, I guess because it's just a great CRP and the wheat in the area. Man, we had pheasants like crazy up there. I mean like it was all you could do to not just hop out every time you saw one on the side of the road. There were some ditches, and man, we had the CRP field that was like I guess they get pretty good rain up there in that area. Um, we had the CRP field that was like over my head most of it. And we walked through that thing and we were just jumping pheasants. We couldn't even see them most of the time. They're just you know, and go off or whatever. But man, like I think we shot a limit just walking that field right next to wheat. And you don't you don't have two dogs or nothing, you know a chance that public up there. There's not a lot of public unfortunately. I actually haven't looked to see if there's much public in that area. Um, but I do know that we there was a lot of that stuff is either I know, a lot of it's private in that particular area. And then uh, there's some a couple of little outfits out there, and and like this place was um or one of the guys in town there. Uh that was in association with the landowner that we hunted on. He had like I'm pretty sure he like had deer hunters and uh, they didn't know, but he had bird hunters and turkey hunters, and it was kind of like call, call before you come, even though you're leasing this year around you know, so, but it was. Yeah, the bird hunting in the the north, like north central Oklahoma was pretty pretty amazing, at least back several years ago. Alright, I can put on my list of places to take my dog next year. You got a bird dog? Yeah, I got a Brittany man, I gotta that's what I want. French Brittany. I don't know about all that French. They're they're smaller and they're like mine's tricolor. Oh that's cool. He's speckled red and black and white. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool. Told Ben is his name? Told Ben, that's my that's my bird dog. All right. See, if we can have a whole of the conversations, we could. All right, So I'm gonna bring us back on the roadmap we were going earlier. So Steamboat Springs, Colorado on shoot, man, I forgot the name of the river the Yampa, so that you got the Yampa, but on the Yampa is the only private tail water in Colorado, Catamount Damp, which is just below Stage Court Coach Reservoir. So, um, like I said, I can do some really cool stuff in my job, and this is one of the cooler things I've done. So we've got to go up there checking out this ranch one time. And the guys like, hey, so if you guys really wanna do some good fishing, we can go to this other place. It's a it's a it's you have to use a pair of rod fee. But we got you guys taking care of everyone. Put you out here. This was in February, because I remember it was over Valentine's Day and um not at the time all friend then so perfect. Um, but there was like three ft of snow. We were wearing snow shoes to get down to the river. But when we got there, um, you had about a yard stretch from the damn to a fence and that was your section to fish. And there was the next section was like a mile long, and there were guys that had the next section below us. We're fishing at our fence, casting upstream. They're like would be something about this, and the guy's like, oh, yeah, they want to fish this water, but that's the closest they can get alright. Cool. So in the course of the day fishing rainbows, cut bows and browns, nymphs, midges, streamers, drys. My biggest fish was a cut bow. Um. I didn't move more than fifty yards all day um because there was snow other ground. I had a bottle of whiskey that I just snuck. I stuck it in the snow bank behind me. So, yeah, we'd go catch a couple of fish, walk over there, take a shot, and get back to fishing. Truly, like holy crowd. And I told the guy, so what do I catch? Him always like just pick something through in the water, started telling people what to throw. Yeah, So usually I listened to the guy. They're like, all right, well, you set my rig up for me. He set me up a big old thing of a bomber with an egg and a send one room. And I just looked at him and said, you gotta be kidding me. He's like, no, seriously. So after about five fish doing that, that's when I started going through my fly box just seeing what I could catch. Him all. And that's when I was like, oh, you can use drys in February. Yeah, I put that on your list of places to go and experience. If I've actually just want to go catch stupid trout that doesn't take any effort. I've I don't know if I fished the Emperor River, but uh, there's a music fest up there in Steamboat that I went to, and I think two thousand and eight. Good a cool deal, you know, like the town's just there's a couple of Texans that show up for that one. Yeah, there's a few. So I went up there and and uh we skied. Was the first time I the only time I've ever skied, uh, because you get this package. It's like a music skiter in the day, music and not kind of deal, you know. And that's what we did. And I wanted to work some fishing in but I don't think we did. But yeah, cool area up there. Yeah, I was stick in Colorado and talk about why I was on the level of ZN when it rose kitchen was fish last time, It's because I had just arrowed a over the counter archery bull elk in Colorado. And if you've never been elk hunting, and you want to do it, you want to try it out. There's no reason to go and try to do it outfitted or try to wait until you accumulate all these points drug attack, like the availability in Colorado. If you're willing to put a little bit of work into it and walk a lot, there are plenty of elk. You went with it with me last year, Yeah, we should have killed some elk a couple of times, right like, you will have an experience. You will learn how to elk hunt, and it is so cool to get up there and do it. And then that year I actually took a bull. And the cool part about it was is that, um, I gotta do with my family, got do Mom and dad, they help me pack the elk out. And then I got married that year and me and my wife ate elk meat for pretty much eleven months in twenty days until I left the next year and didn't kill one. But anyways, it's just a great experience. If if you've never done that and you always dream about elk hunting and you're able enough, able bodied enough, go and do it because there's no reason to wait. It's not expensive. I did that whole ship for listening thousand dollars as long as you split gas with two other people and it can be done. So our roadmapa keep it in Colorado. Actually about that? Yeah, yeah, I wanna do that. Colorado is a great state. Um, but our roadmap has caused us to probably get off of schedule. And I don't care because this is a good combo. So we're Yeah, I thought your schedule was a little facetious, like whenever you first saw it, it was gonna be way more sixty minutes. It's going to be. So that's awesome because there's a lot of good stuff going on here. Yeah. I was worried about a good synergy in the group. Right now there is this man, we've got some conglomerate see, let's see. Okay, so Colorado, my head back up to the north a bit, and I'm gonna say the Rocky Mountain National Park it's one of my favorite places in the world. It's not a place you're gonna catch huge trout, but it's beautiful. I mean, the vistas are unreal, just huge mountain. So I think they've got I don't know, I don't know what the biggest peak there is. But um, like in the park, actually is, but it's worth talking about apparently because people go and try to crest it, you know, but they're just and it's it's unreal, Like there's a reason it's it's one of it was one of the first national parks, you know. It's just it's unbelievable. Um. And because because it's so high, Like the weather in July and August is like, you know, mid seventies or whatever, and it's just like it's the place for me to go when it's a hundred and five here, you know, and humid, and it's like when I go up there in July, it's like it's just a huge, you know, breath of fresh air figuratively and literally. Um. But the one thing that I love to go up there and do is catch the almost native or almost pure native green back uh cutthroats up there, and that's like one of the most beautiful natives I've seen. Um. And you get to catch them in like legitimate postcard setting high mountain lakes, you know. Um. And most of the most of the park is like it's within uh pretty close range of like decent amenities and lodging and stuff like that. So if you're not like the camping kind. Um. I mean you've got Estes Park right there, and and it's one of those things like you take your wife in or a girlfriend or whatever, and she's gonna have something to do as well, because it's like shop central there. I mean, just all kind of niche things you know that that women like. So um, I like doing that. There's a ton of elk in the park. I took a picture of one last year. Uh, you could probably scroll back on our Instagram and find it. Giant giant elk in velvet. Um, a bunch of mule deer. I got a pretty actually my background here is from Rocky Um, and there's a pretty good mule deer right there. Pretty big. Yeah. So um. Anyway, that's uh the the it's you can also fly in the dinner for cheap, usually like via Spirit or Frontier or something like that. If you look and then it's like ninety minutes to the park if you're in a car and the Big Thompson you can come in down the Big Thompson. There's a road that follows it pretty fine, like solid solid rainbows and browns in there, and like really cool pocket water and stuff in there. It's it's fun. Alright, Well, I'm going to continue on. We're gonna detour to the northwest a little bit, but the Rogue River in Oregon. So Buddies and I we flew up to Sacramento and then drove about four hours north of Bedford. It's been about four days fishing this river in the wintertime looking for winter steel heads, which if you get in steel head fishing, you've got the winter runs and the summer runs, and the summer runs or it's a beautiful weather, it's nice outside, and you get a lot of fish, but they're on the small side. But the winter runs you're swinging for the fences. Not a lot of fish, but they're gonna be the biggest fish of the year. So he said, you know, we're gonna swing for the fences and went up there and my one and only wild steelhead was caught up there on the very last drift of the first day, which was awesome because the next three days would have sucked if I hadn't caught a fish. Because there is a certain point in your mind you start going, are there really fish here? I'm not sure there's fish here. Maybe let me go back fidget spot. No, I gotta keep fishing. Um. So, yeah, that was an awesome trip with a couple of buddies of mine. And this is a trip that you can do on the cheap. Now, I'm sure there's probably campgrounds and hotels, but we went up there and we were couch surfing. UM made some friends with some dudes up there and they're like, dude, come up here and stay with us. One of them had a trailer in his backyard because I gotta travel. Trailer can sleep like four dudes, so cost to air fare split the cost of a car. And then you know, we ate at his house. I think we might have eaten out like two or three times. Um. One of the coolest little dive bars I've ever been to in the middle of the day and where we were, you know, playing ping pong and eating basically bowling alley hot dogs, drinking really good beer, you know, and we met a dominatrix that was spanking one of the guys. It was a lot of stuff going on that trip. Yeah. So but yeah, I mean the Rug River. If you haven't been in the Northwest and experienced those coastal rivers, they're absolutely gorgeous. I mean, it's Uh, everything's lush and green and the water is clear, and you've got mountains in the background. And winter steel heading is cold and miserable. But do you connect, You're like, yeah, this is it's all worth it. Yeah, that's a I'm going to be heading up there this summer. Actually, so where of flying? Uh, we're flying I think to San Francisco. And then I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have a chance to catch the McCloud red man on my way up through in California. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna have a chance. I think if I can talk like the other three non fishermen on this trip and like just giving me a few minutes. Uh, And then we're gonna head up through Oregon, and I don't know, that's a good you know, that's something I'm interested in seeing, you know, inside of the Texas. I think the Northwest would be like my next spot to live. It's just yeah, there's so much water up there if you want to fish. It's just you know, I went, you can't dry without crossing the bridge, going, Oh, that's a that's a spot to fish one up there? How was it February? I think one of their February to uh alleviate my brother in law and his wife so they could go um on a vacation for a couple of days when we were taking care of kids. And uh but I got to fish a little bit and I went to the fly shop and like, I just I wanted to catch fish, you know. And now they started to set me up and still hit stuff, and like I was like, I just want to catch something while I'm here, you know. But I went ahead and went and did the steelhead thing, and uh, I need, let's say, steel heading and a nine year old and a two year old don't go together very well. So I had about thirty minutes worth of fishing time, which he was a nine year old. Yeah, I cried a lot, it was it was worth it either way. I could said. The view is just beautiful, and they just to see like those you know, like just the rivers, they are just different, you know. It's just like and it's if you're not prepared for it. It's almost a little bit of frantic because the water is fast sometimes and stuff, you know, but it's cool. I would like to make it back up there. I don't know if I will. I don't know wind, but it's it's neat. But so since we talked about really really cold things, I want to take us down and warm up a little bit. Um, We're gonna hop on a plane from Sacramento and come on down to well where we're gonna fly too. I guess you could fly into Corpus. We're gonna go. And I've talked about this Padrea Allen National Seashore right here in Texas, all right, this place really taught me. Um. I had a very basic understanding the outdoors growing up. I understood that I like to hunt and fish and just do the redneck thing. And then PENS is what we call it, Padre Allen National Seashore. Pens taught me to appreciate more than just the fish or the animal. Pins taught me appreciate the place I was in and appreciate the moment. And it's hard to explain. You just need to go experience things like this in your own place. It's special to you. But when you're driving down a beach going five to ten miles an hour searching for you know, the splash of a fish, or you know a certain terrain change in the beach. Which have you ever been to beaches. There are a lot of terrain change, you know, but you can see, you know when when the submerged sandbars are changing, and when there's breaks and stuff, and when you really get on and you examine details like that, man, it just appreciates. It increases your appreciation for a place so wild and it's almost and this is gonna be pretty cliche, but it's it's almost poetic because you can see so much more depth to what is actually there and what most people get to see. Most people read a book, some people understand books. It's kind of what it's like at the beach and it's pretty cool. And then to add as a bonus, if you can walk around up in the sand dunes, you can find white tail sheds. I found like five white tail sheds in one day out in the in the in the sand. It's crazy cool. And then if you make it all the way down to the jettis, there are like fifteen twenty pound jacks going nuts so on month that are making there suddenly migration and you can hammer those things. And then every once while a school of men Hayden will make its way out the jettis and it's just the kingfish and bonita explode. I mean, it's just the craziest amount of what you would think is like tropical style fishing. It's in our state. Man, It's like accessible something I've never really had the chance to do. I would love to do that kind of fishing. Yeah, I haven't done a lot of inshore type stuff. Yeah, and it's it's it's really good for the fly rotter, you know, like, yeah, you can go down the surfcast and I've done it and wet. The whole reason we started going down there were big sharks. We'd go out, you know, go down and run a big hunk array or a benita or something out and drop it off and wait on a big shark. But while you're sitting there waiting, you gotta find something to do. And I fell in love with catching this stuff, you know, in the weight gut and stuff out of the kayak. You know. Let me tell you something. You chase some benita down in your kayak, you feel like you've done something. All right, suckers can move. But yeah, it's a blast, man, especially if you have a fly rod in hand. Yeah, it's cool. It's funny. Well, I was waiting for you guys to come up here. I got a text for my buddy who has done that trip quite a bit because I told about you guys. Said, hey, you know, I got some guys maybe want to go do down there, maybe do a film or something. He's like, who those guys? I wouldn't do the sp trip. So because I kind of picked his brain a little bit. When you're fishing last week and he's like, dude, you gotta go when there's a northern front comes in. Yeah, when a northern pushes down because now the winds coming from from the shore, it lays that surf down. He's like, So he's like, you know, September October, look for that. Yeah, make your run. So it's like that's correct, Yeah, instead of sweating your tail off trying to find exactly like October sounds really good. Yeah, most season, so maybe like the little bit of September, yeah, or first week of Lael. Honestly, it's so hot. It's so hot, I mean it does kind of stink. Yeah, that's the first cold front. That's what he's talking about, going, Yeah, it's early October, you're gonna be wanting to be there. We've had a good time in like mid July, because it seems like that's one of the most harpener there. I don't know if that's the case or not. You probably know better than I do. You talk to a guy that he a customer today that I fished with down on Padre. He's got a condo and he goes down there and he probably spent six months out of the year, and he said that he's seen he's seen tarpin as late as November. He said, the water is showny five degrees right now, so they're already there, because that's what the We'll talk a little bit about Florida here down the road. But um, the tarp and migration follows water that's about seventy eight degrees roughly. So if the water is already showning five and Padre, yeah it was, tarpin are starting to filter through early. But yeah, that's happening. That's on the list for me. I've jumped six down there, no on a fly rod, but I've jumped six at Landing one year, and believe me, it is an addicting thing. I can imagine I had so like my most epic experience. I might have told this in the podcast before but I was trolling big rapple is off the back of the kayak, you know, on some on some decent size, you know, lot tackle rods, and jumped to tarpet. I actually was reeling in with those rapples and jumped to tarping from me to Sean, which is like seven or eight feet, and Sucker smokes it, and you know, he explodes as soon as he because there's tensing right away, you know, explodes comes up by the way. It's like a ninety pounder comes up out of the water, wham right on the front of my kayak, throws my rapple at the same moment, but there's tarp and slime on the front of my kayak, and like as the salt clears out of my eyes, it's just one of those moments when you just like like you literally scream out loud because it was just that cool, such a cool experience. I've talked about tarpen all day long. Let's go do it. I want to do it. Man, so landed tarpet in three countries. I have not got a Texas tarpen yet though. Man, the one I'm looking for on my list of Texas tarpan it's cool man. I'm jealous. So I'm gonna keep us on the road map in the area. Are you on my head? Head to up? I guess to port O'Connor. Okay, okay, Um, this is a bad one. This is a bad one. This is a place not to go. But this is because I probably don't know what the heck I'm doing. And Sean is probably gonna be like, oh, if you just did this, you can catch them all, you know whatever. But I I had my dad had a friend, um that's been a friend of our family for a long time. Uh, we call him Coach, and he had a boat down there in Port O'Connor and gave my dad the key and was like, y'all go down there and catching redfish and trout and stuff. You know. We're like, okay, let's let's go do it. So we took off. Me I've never done anything like this, you know, um. And so we get down there, we get the boat, we hook it up, we take it, we launch it, and we go out and we don't know what we were doing. We know where we should go, so we just started like we're like, okay, let's not get too lost here. And this like marsh grass stuff whatever that is called h and so we we kind of stayed in the open. We found this a little like cut where there was like a pretty good current coming or um these two little points or whatever, you know, And so we docked the boat up walk down the beach. Somebody I can't remember who it was caught a like a puffer fish. I don't know if I'll ever done that. Yeah, right, we're all on surfside now. I don't know where we were. Dude, you said beach, but you're talking about marsh grass sandy. I mean there's where they're big ways coming in. Really, did you go through a jetty? Yeah, you know if you went through the we didn't get there jetty. Well, it just it would be weird to catch a puffer in the I mean I would say that that's like pretty good fishing. I don't know. They called a dolphin down a luguna madre. Serious, it's fly dude. Yeah. It was like a little chicken dolphin. Yeah still mahi mahi, yeah, laguna madre. They caught like a little baby baby toato. It's cool. So anyway, somebody caught a puffer fish. Caught a few of these little weird looking fish, you know, didn't catch any trout and didn't catch red fish, and so we get ready to head back in that evening and uh, we don't get far in the boat before we're like, why are we not going anywhere? And the tide had gone down such a lake fisherman learning about telling you, dude, that's what you see the prop shooting sand, but no, it wasn't at the time of it was just really stuck. And uh so we we had to get out and walk this boat for like four hundred yards and finally got back into like a channel or whatever, you know, ginia oysters along the way now and it's good. You're lucky, we mean, and then uh we uh it's probably won't be funny fish, I guess, but uh and then we took off. We fished the next day and we man, we went looking for like reds, you know all you hear about tailing reds, you know whatever backs hollar water. I didn't find any of that. I never saw red whole trip. Didn't catch the red um and so we were like, man, let's go kind of late afternoon, We're like, let's go find some birds, get under them and see if we can catch some stuff, maybe we'll catch some trout. We had I had read about that on the internet. So we did that and we caught a ton of sand trout that we're all like a quarter inch too small. They're all like loving and three quarters into dude, I'm telling you, man. And uh, we ended up keeping three. I guarantee you we caught over a hundred and we end up keeping three. We did see a like a actual dolphin, uh you know, the gray porpoise or whatever. Um, and he was like hammering sand trout and we throw them back in the water, you know, like he was he was there. He was there, so I mean he would like be nowhere to be seen and all of a sudden you throw a sand trout back and he was like and like you're like shark, you know whatever. But it was it was. It was one of those places like don't if you don't know what you're doing. And we didn't. Don't go to Port O'Connor or probably anywhere the insure man. I would I would say that's most salt water fishing, dude. It's it's like anything else. It's it's a learning curve and you gotta spend time on the water, so I wouldn't discount Porto just based on that. Yeah, there's a there's a reason why there's a lot of people have houses in port O'Connor. But it's just like anything else. Man, you guys spend time like yeah, for sure, you probably go out to the the Lake four to be pretty good, right, That depends, man. Well, yeah, yeah, I'm usually fishing for big fish, so I can definitely go out there and not catch one a lot of times. So yeah, yeah, so definitely. Yeah. I mean I talk to a lot of people there at the lodge that I can tell when I get down with the conversation, they're probably not gonna catch one, you know. They just they don't know that. They don't they don't know, they don't know, you know. So anyway, that's all I can say about that one. Alright, Well, I'm gonna continue my trek up north two Forks, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula. That was very very close to there. Yeah yeah, so yeah, so we we stayed right there. There's there's a lodge right there on that river which is just downstream of the Queats and the soul Duck Converge and the Queenal It's about six miles before Empties in um So. Some of you might be familiar with the little movie called Twilight which corrupted the town of Forks. It was a sleepy little village before that stupid movie came out. Now it's probably not so much anymore. But for a while there it was a lot of goth kids running around trying to find that. Um but back before the movie when we were there, um No, the cool little place. So once again it's those uh once again. There so much water on the peninsula to fish. You've got the salt duck to queet, the hoe, the quinnyolt Um. That's where uh, what's his name, Nick Dodge lives. Y'all know mcdodge, the legend of mc dodge. That dude is cool, man. I don't care what anyone got a funny story about the whole river. Um So, buddy of mine, my buddy of mine that grew up in uh south of Seattle, He's like, hey, you gotta come up here. We're gonna fish the peninsula. He goes it's like two and a half hours from Seattle. I was like, well, let's get pressure. He's like, nah, people out there won't drive, won't drive that far to fish. I'm like, we do it all the time down here in Texas. It's like, yeah, it's different up there. It's like all right, So we went up there um Stating Forks, rented a car um so but so we he's like, hey, let's go fish the hoe and we were there in October and we're trying to do was time in between the silvers and the kings. The kings run earlier than the silvers. We're trying to find them when they're both crossing. And there's also some late steel uh summer run steelheads. So you're up to the whole river and we and it's a reservation, the whole reservation. So we go to the reservation. We go to the tribal office and there's a guy in there. We're like, hey, we're trying to get permits so we can fish. He's like, did you talk to Wally? Like who's Wally? Because my cousin. Who's your cousin? Wally? He's a game warden. You gotta talk to Wally. Well, we haven't talked to Wally. He's like, well, I'm going to Wally's house. You want to go I'm sure. So he starts walking down the street and we're like, do you want to ride? Yeah? Sure, So he jumps on our car and he takes us to Wally's house. Wally was like, sorry, no, it's closed to non tribe members. He goes, but you can go across the river and you can fish over there. Alright, Fine, So we drive an hour to get to the other side of the river and we get over there and the river is only like sixty ft across. Well, there's a cast net going about where they're a gill net going about the river. This is at low tide, so like the mouth of the Pacific is right there casting there's gill net and then us and we're sitting there fishing and trying to find some fish. And the guys are in the guilders. Oh the salmon are in yet. Okay. Well, we walked up the river a little bit, ran across this Indian kid he's probably about fourteen, and like, hey, you seen any fish. He's like, I caught like one silver. Oh really cool man. And I had a flask with me, so I take out my flask to take a chug. He's like, do you mind if I get it hit. I'm like huh. He's like yeah, yeah, yeah, just come over here so my uncles don't see me. I was like, uh, what are you gonna do with that silver? He's like, oh, no, give me some whiskey. It's yours. Okay, So we had silk. So we had salmon that night. It was like very stereotype. You could think of barning with a teenage Indian whisked firewater for fish. That's a good song right there. But anyway, so I will say that we hit it. The fish really weren't in. They hadn't had enough frame. So I'm gonna give this one. Can be good, can be really grind try to find fish. So we ended up actually driving back to Seattle, going to a place called Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which is a state park shout of Seattle, and we got into fish there. Um, it was like the last minute deal where I caught a really big king, jumped in the car, pulled up and caught my flight home with like five minutes to spare. It's cool, it's kind of how we were. Yeah. Yeah, it was my buddy that he was staying for a couple of days, so he had the rent car, so he was in his waiters. I was changing out of my waiters on the ride to the airport. So yeah, that's cool. Me and Tyler have talked about actually just for the novelty of it, wearing your waiters to the airport and just like getting getting off and fishing, you know, just like not even about changing. Yeah, it'd be cool. So just don't carry your boot foot so you know when you go through t s A, you gotta take everything. Yeah, that would be seeking. Yeah. Yeah, Dallas. Last I went to British Columbia. I went through Dallas and they didn't make us stick our shoes off. That didn't do that, and Seattle thought that was awesome. Yeah, so I'm talking about so we could witch of the West right there. So uh, speaking of forks, we're gonna come back and just talk about Fork, like Lake Fort, Texas. All right right here to hometown, So Lake Fork, Texas. Tyler and I, um both grew up on this lake. And I've both caught some big, big fish on this thing. And it's not saying that we're good, it's just I mean, it's great lake. It's a great lake, and you gotta put in the time to gets the big fish. It's just all there is to it. I mean, you can come down and be lucky and come on down if you want to, you know, you, you and the yeah exactly you and the other two thousand boats on the lake that we can can try, you know. But Chester in the McDonald's tournament or the rest of the dude just a tournament every weekend. It was one this weekend. Yeah, it was unreal. I mean it's crazy. And actually it's like the Champion or the Skeeter Bass Champs, those are the ones that get real real busy, it seems like to me. But yeah, it's all kind of crazy. But in my opinion, I like to fish the lake on the hottest days there is. And Tyler is different on this, and I'll let him tell you about it maybe later. Why but those bass in the summertime go out and they're super super anable whenever it's super super hot, and they are on a blue gill pattern and that is what they do. They smoke bluegill between fourteen and twenty one ft of water all day, every day. And I love it. And it's so much fun when you go out there and actually catch a few fish. You know, because Fork. I mean, if you can get into fish, you're gonna catch some pretty good fish. I mean you gonna catch some five six pounders, you know, which is a good fish. You know, everybody goes to Fork to catch the tin plus is of course, but it's just a good time. You see the guys on TV, the pros, like if they catch a four other freaking out. Yeah, it's just for sure, like we throw five pounders back and don't even look out sometimes and we kind of take for granted the fact that like across the nation, a five pound is a giant. Yeah, it's a good fish and it's fun to catch them. And okay, so the thing that makes it for me about summertime, though, the hot, hot summer, is the little pet fishing in the evening it too. It is killer and you might only catch one or two fish, but the takes are aggressive and you're like on fishing for fish on a world class fishery that has you know, I've caught multiple eight pound fish on top waters in the Lippet Cove in the middle of summer. You know, you talk about eight pound fishing your topwater, it is on like that is what you live for bass fishing. You know that's cool. For the first like several years of my fishing career, I fished a tiny torpedo only dude, I was a jitterbug guy, even when it didn't matter what the conditions with you on the hidden brand lures. But I was a jitterbug guy, jitterbugs. And now it's gone to you know, Dalberg divers and throwing the old fly rod and that kind of thing. But it's all it's all good. Um, I'm gonna stay right there like Fork. Then my my h go to my favorite time of year, the time that I think you should go fork is there's not a whole lot of times when it's not you know, a good time to go, unless it's the McDonald's tournament. Um. But my favorite time of year is early early March. And it depends on the weather sometimes, but you can even late February. The best, probably the best overall day that I've ever had on Fork was February. We had like a week hot spill. And when we're talking hot spell, you're looking for like really like fifties to sixties at night. Really, like the nights are what makes the difference. A lot of times on Fork, because you know, you can get seventy five in the day, but if you get down to the upper thirties at night, the lakes temperature is still gonna stay pretty cold kind of like right now, kind of like right now. And there have been some big fish caught at Fork this year. Um, but um, we had like said, in the late February, we had a day where we we were just hopping along bank fishing in the evening and in about hour and a half or two, we'll probably about two hours, we had like thirteen Between my dad and I. It's pretty good, you know. I mean, if we're catching five or more, we're happy. Uh, in the evening and so we had like thirteen and we get back to the back and the it's like right it starts to get that like goal now like close to sunset, and we look over like right across the cove and I'm like, uh, they're schooling over there. And so this is back in the back, you know, close to a creek band and uh, but up on the flat and they they're schooling. So we like take off over there and we start chunking, and in the next thirty minutes we ended up with forty eight total up to eight pounds it was. And this is like February, man, and apparently like with that warm spell, I guess a group of chad had just come in and back, you know, migrated back, and bass just followed them, probably from that deep water. And it was nuts. But in March, early March, March tenth was when I caught the biggest fish i've caught um and the same area um, but that time of year, the fish does big females are moving up and like staging on like secondary points at the water's right, um in close to creek bends, close to big stumps and stuff like that. We don't have the grass we used to have, UM, And man, it can be like if you're fishing, like three three ft is gonna be like the shallow side of what you want to fish, really, but I mean out to like eight ten ft. Sometimes they'll be staging on those big big stumps, you know, and man throwing a jerk bait and let it sit right next to one of those things for a second. You cash them fished it. Like every time I set the hook that time of year, it's like I'm scared to be on there. It's scary. All right, Well I'm gonna change things up a little bit and go back to some river fishing. So this is gonna be the White River and Norfolk River in Northern Arkansas. So oh, we get people come in the shop all the time. They're like, I want to do some trout fishing. Oh yeah, there's a trout fishery about three hours away. But if I really want to trout fish and get some really good quality water without like two thousand other people looking over my shoulder, Northern Arkansas is where to go. Um about seven half hour drive from here. And the awesome thing about the White North Fork not only are the world class trout fisheries, but you've got probably about forty eight to sixty miles of water that you can fish between the two rivers, and so you've got to tail waters. Um. My favorite time thing to do is I've only and I've done this like once, and it makes you want to go back there every time I think about it is night fishing with mice dirty. It was. It was freaking fantastic. So somebodies and I went up there. There's a big thing called streamer fished. At the end of January when the flash ups and we'd gone up there for streamer Fest. We had a house on one of the shoals, and so we've been fishing all day and kind of fishing the shoals and enough drifting the normal indicator with some salve bugs or something below it, and one of my buddies down a drift trip. But the water was low that week and there were not a lot of big fish moving around. So we'd had dinner and had a cocktail or two, and I'm like, man, I always heard about this night fishing. I'm on suit up. So I put on my waiters and grab my eight weight and grab some mice, walked out in front of the house and just started throwing as far as I could across the bank and stripping it back. A lot like bass fishing, So talking about throwing top waters for bass and bond fishing just like that, but with mice at night, and about every five minutes you here's every fish was well ever twenty inches that I landed, and it was it was about every five to ten minutes you had a strike. And we spent about Buddy and I spent about two hours and it was only about a hundred yards stretch. We would cast, take a couple of steps, cast a couple of steps, and we just kind of did like a race track through this like hundred yard stretch. But I think about Arkansas and I'm like, I want to go back just to night fish because that was one of the most coolest things I've ever done. So, yeah, you got the same thing you're talking about earlier, like I'm only spending some money and that one. So the cool thing about that is there at the on the on the White there's a state park at Bullsholes, so now you can camp. You can camp at the shoals and there's a lot of people there. But we went to a place called Wildcash Sholes, which is about eight miles down river river miles and there's a public ramp right there. Well, just like everything else, you got x s to the shoals at the ramp, so you just gotta walk in the river and long as your feet stay wet, you're still legal. And you walk just a little ways down and you get to that one spot where you're at I'd say, pick a full mood when it's clear and just they're big old black streamers and mice and you're gonna find fish. They're hanging out there. Have you fished the shad kill there ever? Man, I never haven't done that day. I've so I fished that winter time, and I've done a couple of trips in the summertime, never hit the shad kill. And then there's also two there's a really good like terrestrial hatch, like big foam hoppers. You can hit that, man. I've I've heard it's as early as like March and April, and I've also heard it like in the fall, right before they start um the spawn. I can because the spawn there's usually November. And then I've heard of a mythical squirrel hatch. Squirrel hatch huh yes, So well, the guides up there that we kind of work with, he's like, dude, there's a squirrel hatch like what he looked seriously, So if you ever like look into taman fishing in Mongolia, they throw these big limbing patterns. He goes, it's like that you're throwing like squirrel patterns for big trout. You kidding me? I know, it's this mythical thing I've I've heard about it. I've never seen anything on it though, I never heard anything about it because you know, there's there's stuff out there that the people you know don't talk about. Did I know about tight lip stuff? I think this might be one of those tight lip things. Because we're talking baby squirrel patterns. Baby squirrel patterns for big trout because they're they're falling out of the trees. I'm about to go home patterns. It sounds pretty epic, it really does. I'm like, dude, that sounds awesome. I might have to try it. But I will say the big mice patterns at night northern Arkansas. Legit done that I think about all the time when it's cold and like, oh, I need to go back to Arkansas go night fishing for my Yeah. Man, well, I'm gonna say in Arkansas, but we're not going to catch fish that big and that's okay. Uh. We are gonna use squirrel patterns, but it's a game changer in just a little squirrel strips. But so I as well, I wanted to have a waid a certain place, uh that you mentioned last fourth of July. I mean the wife wanted to go do something cool. We love being on the river. We both like to fish. What are we gonna do? You know, Like the Hill Country in Texas is much further away than you know, some of the lower Washed Toll those arc stuff. So we decided, you know what, I'm gonna pick a random river in central Arkansas and we're gonna go there and I'm gonna try to catch some small mouth. And that's what I did, went to the Kosta Tot River in central Arkansas. I didn't want to guess that, but I was like, dude, he want to fish the Costa Top. Yeah, I did. Man, it was my mind. I was like, that's what he did. Well, that's cool. I've been had to somebody else, and of course I figured you probably wouldn't know, but like I had never heard of it. Looked it up a little bit. They're like, yeah, there's a small mouth there there. And I go and catch smallmouth, you know, And it was cool there was It was the fourth of July, beautiful weather, all right, nobody around, and I'm catching smallmouth on a five weight on a fly right there. That's what it's all about. And we're down some gravel road in the middle of central Arkansas. You know, there's bangos playing in the background. It's just sweet, you know, That's what it's all sparklers and bud light and Hamburgers beaters, but god bless America. We saw eight foot timber rattler while we're there. It's a cool trip that Just give me there. They don't go on the water, He'll be fine. It's pretty dirty. Yeah, but yeah, dude, the cost River, Central Arkansas. Go there, just not while I'm there. Yeah, the same thing, uh you know, trying to avoid uh said river that hasn't been said. Um. And we did this uh to not less or maybe it was last spring break. No, maybe two spring breaks. You go. Um, my wife had spring break. I'm not a spring breaker anymore, you know, so like my wife anyway, Uh yeah, So we went to the Washingtall National Forest there in western Arkansas. And I cannot remember what river it is. I could look and figure this out, but I have it so far and I'm not gonna do it right now. But like, the water is like glacial blue water where we were at, I don't know if it was that way for you guys. It was unbelievable. The mountains were legitimate mountains. I was completely thrown back. I mean it was just like huge mountains and complete wilderness, remote, nobody around. We drove for an hour down National Forest Roads and we saw two vehicles passes the whole for an hour of driving. Um. Like I said, the water was like the prettiest blue I can imagine, super clear. I caught it like a i'll say sixteen inch trout, probably a fifteen inch shrout rainbow trout, and was catching a small mouth in the same rivers. Yeah, I mean, it's just what I don't remember. I had to I had to do some checking on that. While you are talking about these think trout at small mouth, I mean like a little Missouri maybe I think it was, yeah, little miss Yeah, all right, Um and man, it's awesome, Like nobody around at all. It was that beat that mid early mid march. It was cool, all right. So going through my list right here, what can I keep the fresh water? I'm saving one for the river that hasn't been mentioned yet, the alternative, but I'm gonna bring it back to Texas. So the Hill Country. I mean, if you're going to fly fish in Texas, the Hill Country is probably one of the best place to do it. The Frio River in Leakey, Texas. So the Frio, beautiful, beautiful river. There's reasons why it's called the frio. It's cold. Trying to catch bass when it's cold, it's a little on the difficult side, especially when the water is as clear as the ice and my whiskey right now, you know. So went down there with my dad. We went in November about two years ago. I was like, pops, So my dad taught me to fly fish. He loves to do it. So let's go down to the oasis. We're in a cabin. So he found us a cabin outside Leaky on the river, beautiful appstion, know, big old cypress trees line in the bank, waters nine ft deep and you can count pebbles on the bottom. And it's cold. I have never been so frustrated with bass in my life, really generally speaking. And you put me on a river with bass, I can catch them. I mean, you got the point where I was drifting a twelve ft leader with six x floor carbon and a shad pattern underneath it from like fifty ft up in front of a fish and they would like look at the fly and move aside and then move back in. I was like, what is going on? So, like, we spent four days down there. When I fished there, I think I caught one little blue gill on the Frio, but we end up like going fish the upper quad we fished. I think we went fish the per Anais, were fishing the oasis um and there's another where we fished four rivers like in four days. But we were based on the Frio and that's where I had like the most frustrating experience ever. So I will say the Frio beautiful scenery, great place to go tubing, fishing not so much. So I hadn't a bachelor party at the Frio and had similar experience. So I just went to Catchen along your son Asian had a blast. So I'm gonna take this um a couple of rivers north and go to Lanto and this is Yeah, this is one of those people may get mad at me for talking about it because there's no secrets on the last dude. But comparatively to like the other rivers, you know, like it doesn't get the pressure. You don't see the folks. You don't get the tubers, that's the big thing. You don't get those water sports folks and the parties. Yeah, so me and my buddies from college usually take a late summer kayak trip down the Lano and we'll do you know, some fishing camp out on the river, you know, and and uh make use of our very awesome stream access laws here in Texas, where you know, if you're below the bank or whatever, look those up. Don't trust that. Yeah, that's right, that's right. But man, the Lano River, whenever you've taken the the account that it's usually clear. You can catch guadaloupe's, you can catch realganize sicklids. You can catch a large mouse, you can get small mouse even though they're kind of problematic. You can catch yellow cats, you can catch channel cats, you can catch every sun fish imaginable it is. And not to mention the carp that are giants in there if you can get the hit. And then in the winter, oh boys, stocks trout up there right now. I'm not a big fan of stalkers, but hey, they're there. That's another species, the kitch. It's kind of fun. You add that with some delicious turkey sausage and barbecue from Lano, Texas, where the barbecue is across the street up the hills Inmon's kitchen. That's where the turkey sausage used. Not saying one's better than the other. You should go to both. That's what I think. So yeah, another thing of things I need to do Inman's kitchen turkey sausage, the beans are terrific, the poses and Cooper is in Atlantos Atlanto proper. Yeah, so yeah, go there and then just y'all can see this. I'm right this. I'm I'm a Texas barbecue connoisseur and so have I. We're gonna sidetracker real quick. Yeah. I've often thought like, one of the best books you could write is A Guy to Fly Fishing Texas with Barbecue. Dude. That would be like, Dude, we need to make a road map, seriously, buddy. We started this for a little while, we got like, you know, about six cities in and then we you know, side tracks what we're like to do. We're gonna like write the definitive Texas Fly Fishing Barbie Barbecue guide book. That's a good idea, man, cool, Hey, I encourage you to finish that off. Someday I would buy it, man, so I would expect you to give it to me for free too, so I might be able to do so. Mine is the Lano River from Mason to Lanto, Texas. Sure, I'm gonna stay kind of, I guess real closely hill country. Um. And we're gonna move up north to the Pilexi River. Um. And I had this idea and forgot to write it down, and then Sean reminded me before we started this thing that that river existed, and I have fished it several times. My wife went to school at Tarlton State and so it was kind of one of those like I can make a double date out of this thing, you know, and I go see my wife at school, you know, and and then we can go up to the Dinosaur Valley State Park and fish the Pleuxi there. And I fished outside the park a little bit. Um. In the park, it's really skinny water. Um. At least every time I fished it. There's a couple of little holes. Um. There are dinosaur tracks in the river bed, legitimate like looking like t rex I don't know what kind they are, but they try sterotops. They're awesome looking. And they actually identified a new species of dinosaur in the river. Really. Yeah, there's there's a there's a there's its own species. Now I'll say not recently, like back in the twenties they excavated because they sent some of the racks to the nineteen twenties World's Fair. And there's actually there's a dinosaur that that's like the Plexi slurs or something. Oh yeah, that's right, yep. I didn't know that. Um. But you see a lot of tri sterratop strikes. Yeah. So it's it's cool the thing. You can go see those while you're fishing and then you can turn around. And recently I did this. This was actually what we did last year for spring break. Um. So I don't remember when the West Parkansas thing was, but the Plexia ever last year we went and I was just throwing bead heads um because I just trying to catch stuff. And man we caught. I mean I caught some decent blue gills and stuff. But I was slamming the six to eight maybe a nine or ten inch spotted bass in there on a halfway with with just like pheasant tail, you know. And it's a blast. It's good. It's a cool place to go take the you know, if you've got a family or even a wife that might we think that dinosaur tracks are cool. You can go fish it for for an hour and a half, you know, and you you're not too far. It's not the you know, some big destination trip necessarily, But I think on the on the Pileoxi. The cool thing about the Plexi is that a lot of people think about it, ask about it, but it comes down to fishing. It's just far enough away from the Metroplex that people really won't go down there. Um. I mean that's if I have a home water, it's the Pileoxi. I've spent more days fishing that river than any other place on Earth. Um. But like I have maybe seen if I counted a total, forty people like the entire like throughout the years, forty other people fishing that river. So yeah, it's a cool spot to Goea's also it's worth it, all right, So I'm gonna go back to the hill country. And so the no Oasis River in Camp Wood, Um, that river is probably one of my favorite little hole country places that in case he was taking about the Lando not get a lot of pressure. I think nosis gets even less Russure, I think. And so it's if you look on the map, it is the river due east of the Devils, so you've got like the Devils then you've got the ouasis um and so similar type of water, just more access. It's there in camp Wood. Um kind of goes from Barksdale down to youve all day super super crystal clear water full of Rio's bluegills guads. So if you want to catch a pure strain guad, it's one of the few rivers left with pure strain guads. Um, I do want to do that. Got to loppy in it and just absolutely gorgeous. And the cool thing is access on that is absolutely amazing that there are numerous stream crossing, especially south of town, that you just pull up, park, jump in the river and start fishing. Um. Buddy of mine went down there. We stayed at some cabins in town that actually had a river access across the street. They owned the property, so you can fish are in town. But then we just kind of took a road map found these road crossings. I mean we were we were walking, not a whole lot, but we were walking three or four miles a day, and we walked like two two miles upstream, two miles back. Um. The only sign of life we saw is occasionally you run across like a Mexican cell phone. Alright, backpack on the side of the river and then you see border patrol like sitting up on top of a bluff watching you. But that was that was it for human contact. Um, we saw more hogs than we saw people. But yeah, it's uh, that sounds awesome if you're trying to figure ou where it's out. So if you were going down to San Antonio, it's like an hour and a half due us to San Antonio and just absolutely gorgeous piece of water. Kind of rugged. It's on that Chihuahua desert, but zero zero pressure and great, great fishing. It's cool. That would be cool. So I'm gonna go to something that has a ton of pressure, So to Atlanta, will I go, Um, there's gonna We're gonna venture back in the hunting realm here. Uh. As a young teenager, I thought it was cool to go on dailies hunts whenever I was a kid and there was a hunt in Atlanto. I think it's still there to this day. If you look on Craigslist or something, day hunts seventy five dollars a day. Don't even think about it, all right, say, most day hunts that are seventy five dollars a day might not be. It was bad. So the point is this place was terrible. If you want to go to have the hill country experience, do it. But Man Dailies is Inlanto or anywhere for that matter, but my experience was in Atlanto. Don't cheap out on the day leaves man, get something decent. Yeah yeah, Well, um, I'm gonna take us to just a little bit north uh, to a river that has been mentioned several times in this podcast. This is a lower Mountain Fork river in Alkohola. Wait, we haven't mentioned that. I just referred to it to it we danster round. That have been illusions. Um, this river is not a river that you want to go to. I have had a thirty fish afternoon on this river and there's stalker trout, but they're fine. Um. This was several years ago. There have been many floods. Dallas is growing outrageously and the tourism in that area has bolstered. And they're they're like building cabins right now, and if you want to, if you want somebody to build your cabin out there right now. Sorry, I'm nine months out from building my next cabin, like from our building your cabin. I mean these it's unreal how fast it's growing out there and there, I mean it's shoulder to shoulder. Four years ago. There were five cabins for rent in mc current County for years ago, and it's probably doubled that by this point. It's crazy. There's restaurants, there's people everywhere, and it's a great place. Like it's beautiful, it's beautiful, it's it's it's accessible, it's kind of wild, you know, um but growing. By the day end of the day, there's only like two miles of trout water and that's being generous. That's being generous. There's two miles of water to fish and you're going up there and I have gone up to the Evening Hole and counted forty forty freaking people in a two stretch stacking there for not moving for two hours, just casting the same spot. And you're like, it's funny that, you know, when I want to started working in fly shops going on fifteen years now, that the first ten years, Broken Bow was definitely a place that people went to. People asked about it. We had regulars that would come in here and they Brian flies buying leaders. They're going to Broken Bow every weekend. I'd say in the last two year, just gotten the point where now my Broken Bow customer is I've never been up there, I want to go check it out. They buy flies and then they never go back again, and I think it's just gotten the points, just like not enough water and too many people. So I would I'm gonna vote the yeah, Broken Bow, unless you're gonna go in the middle of the week, like during the school year, in terrible weather and terrible that's the only time I go up there. I still feel like that. With the with the floods they had, it just blasted some trout out of that area. I mean, there's just not the numbers that there used to be, and the river actually changed its course, so they had such a violent flood. So I will give something a little bit anecdotal and give a little sunshine to the rain. Here. That's the Lower Mountain Fork. Have you ever been to the Upper Mountain Fork above the reservoir. I have gone up there to fish the narrows for sand bass. Okay, that's the most updone. But okay, so just down river from the narrows, I believe I found a hole down there, a little shady hole. I pulled out a three pound channel cat and about four large mouth out of this hole. Never seen a fly in their life. Were just as eager as eager as it gets. And it was so cool. And the reason I was there is because the lower was intolerable that day. Two folks, and it's cool. But I can do that here, So I'm not gonna make the chip for it. But just so you know, there is more water to go to. So that's it. Well, I'm going to add to this because we like to follow our paths. Yeah, if you take the Lower Mountain Fork through Zone three down past Highways seventy, it eventually hits another river about twenty miles called the Little River, which a little river then flows east into Arkansas. M I will advocate for the Little River. I've done that float trip several times. Um. I've got some friends that have a house um at the Little River Club outside of day It's not Daycap that's in Texas, the Queen, So outside the Queen this Little River Club. And so we actually went and put in canoes and a john boat on the Oklahoma side and floated about twelve miles back to their house. Really pretty pretty water without a lot of pressure. Um. So we uh got in a large mouth huge car um and on no small as is really for smalleyest but no smallest but large mouth sunfish and guar all on flying about a twelve mile float on the Little River. Um. Now, I will say that the hard part about Little River is access that there is a public put in in Oklahoma that if you go to that put in and stay near your car, you're okay. Don't leave your car and float down because there's a good chance of car might be burned up. Whatever the best of Murcurtain County wants to do. Um. But I will say the Little River for a good river to float and fish, is actually a good alternative to the lower Mountain Fork River. Very cool. Well, since you're on the car thing, I have a deep love for the long fish that is known as the car um and Uh. We are actually sitting right next door to the greatest car fishery in all the land. Right, I've actually never fished in this area, but we are connected to the greatest car fishery. I mean it's in the same river there. So yeah, so that's where I love and I love all gar fishing because guard aggressive man. They like to smack stuff and it's cool and they love flies. Um. I've done both fly fishing and conventional for alligator gar. I can say that it is really really tough to sink a hook and alligator gar's jaw with a fly rod. I've not had a lot of success. I've caught some small ones. I've hooked a six footer and hand him on for just a little bit, you know. But the Trinity River, they're kind of that middle stretch which is like kind of between Athens Corsicana like south down to around Riverside through there. If you can go down there with a big hunk of buffalo on a hook and float underneath the bober, there's a chance that you're gonna catch a fish that's longer than you are. And it is absolutely sick. It is the coolest thing, man. I love of it. We called right here you really was it alligator or was it long alligator? Yeah, which surprised me. Of the alligators for this far north, I didn't think they would be up here, but yeah, there was a sixty pound alligator like literally a hundred and fifty yards were Yeah. So come to tailwaters. You can go outside and catch you giant. That's right, that's right. Make sure you buy the road first, all right, So I hate to do this to you, guys, We're gonna cut that right here. This is a super long podcast. We're really getting into the stories. The next part, Part two or Part B whatever we decided to do, will be releasing within the next couple of days, so it'll be a quick turnaround. We'll get it to you guys, and y'all can listen to the rest of these destinations if you're getting into this casey. Alright, So for uh, this episode to kind of show you all what things are all about, and to kind of, I guess, celebrate the fact that we've had sixty episodes kind of cool. Um, you know, we did this whole sixty places thing. We're going to trying to showcase it least most of these sixty places on our Instagram story, So keep up with us if you don't already, subscribe to our Instagram page The Element Podcast, and throughout this week we'll be posting pictures from all of our experiences at all these cool places, and be sure to check out Part two with Sean Polk from Tailwaters Fly Fishing Company later in the week for sure. And uh, they didn't have cameras back when you were doing some of this stuff. But um, but we've got a lot of pictures from this stuff and we're gonna be releasing that throughout the week, so we'll all be in one day. Uh. But yeah, keep up with the story man, check in on us, and we'll get back with you. Say, remember this is your element living in

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