I'm Travis Bader and this is The
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Fishing, spey fishing, tips, tricks,
etiquette, and gear.
Buckle up cause that's this week's podcast.
Tonight with Brian Niska at the Skeena Spey
Riverside Wilderness Lodge in Terrace, BC.
Brian is a fishing guide, certified
fishing instructor and designated master
castor and designer of the Metal Detector
series of Pieroway Rod.
I've had the pleasure of spending the last few
days, fishing the Skeena River with Brian and his
guides here in Terrace, and I'm excited to be
sitting down to record a podcast with you now.
Brian, thank you very much for taIking the
time to do this podcast.
Right on Travis, thanks very much for
coming up to visit us.
So in the short period of time that I've gotten
to know you, I can tell you are extremely
passionate about fishing.
Yeah.
You know, it's something that's always captivated
me ever since I was a kid, I remember being
quite young, probably three, four years old,
if that, and just, you know, sneaking
into my grandfather and my father's tackle
boxes and checking out all the lures.
So, so I think that's probably
where it started.
Really, that soon?
Yeah.
Just maybe it was the bright colors or some
of those salmon plugs were pretty neat, I
still remember them, so.
Yeah.
Yeah and then fly fishing got into that
when I was about 12, my parents bought me
in inexpensive fly setup and away I went.
So where were you fly fishing at 12 years old.
Well the first fish I ever caught on the
fly was in a slough it's called the
DeBoville Slough.
It's in, Northeast Port Coquitlam alongside
the Pitt River there.
Okay.
And it was a Christmas present, so it was out,
you know, literally Christmas morning with
a little silver fly and caught a cutthroat.
That was the first fish I ever caught on the fly.
Wow.
Oh, that's not too bad.
Yeah.
So tell me about this Master Castor.
That's, not exactly an easy thing for a
person to get is it
Well that that's part of the FFF Fly Casting
Instructor Certification.
There's three levels, there's a basic,
the master's in the spey instructor.
Okay.
So the master's would be the second level of the
single hand instruction.
And currently there's just the one level
of spey casting.
You just fish so much that you decided, I
know what I want to do, I want to open
up my own business.
You started in Whistler didn't you?
Yeah.
You know, previous to that, I was a
ski instructor.
I grew up working at Grouse Mountain.
My aunt worked there and so I was lucky enough to
get jobs at a young age, started out selling ice
cream, did a variety of jobs there, but teaching
skiing was one of them.
And so teaching fly fishing was just same,
like an obvious extension of that, you know.
The casting instructor certification was
something that was available locally
through a gentleman named Pete Caverhill
and Pete Morrison.
These were both master instructors.
So with the FFF, the basic exams, are handled
by, by two masters.
Okay.
To be honest with you, I failed the first
time because I was like, I can cast a long
way, I'll pass this, it's a piece of cake.
But it's really, like a lot of instructors
exams, it's more about being able to demonstrate
correctly, being able to identify and explain
casting faults and, you know, basically being
able to show beginners proper technique.
Well, how old were you in when you did that?
Great question.
Let's see, that would have been
probably about 18.
18 years old?
Yeah.
Maybe 18, 19 something.
Is that common for an 18, 19 year old person
to be a designated master castor?
Well, that was a master's, that
was the basic.
Oh okay.
So I got that.
Okay.
So the story is, I got the basic and I got
it prior to going to Chile to guide down
there because I felt that, you know, this was
going to be something to be useful down there.
And when I came back from Chile, then I
did the masters test.
Which was, I believe it, I want to say the
kingdome it's the, it was the stadium in
Washington that they, ended up, I think it.
Yeah it's the kingdome.
It was the kingdome?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Perfect.
Here's what I remember about it, I'm not a
drinker, this is true.
Yeah.
I'm not a boozer at all.
When I was in Chile, I met the owner of
a company called Hexagraph Fly Rods.
Okay.
Now Hexagraph was kind of a neat thing.
So bamboo is a material that a lot
of people know about.
Sure.
And bamboo has an exceptional feel for
casting and bamboo has power fibers on
the outside and a bit of a pithy core.
And there's a material called hexagraph,
which was from Bruce and Walker.
They're making these big, heavy spey
roads out of it.
Okay.
And Walt Powell used his taper, taper bars with
the hexagraph material and sold that company
to a gentleman named Harry Briscoe and Harry
had the Hexagraph Rod company, and he was one
of my clients in Chile.
And you know, Harry caught a really
exceptional fish with me and I think that
sort of solidified our relationship.
And you know, I helped them out at
some trade shows and one of the trade
shows was in Seattle.
And so I went down there and the test is going to
be there and as it turns out his rod builder liked
tequila and, you know, we were down there at some.
This was like, I think if I remember correctly,
this was like, when grunge was really
popular in Seattle.
Sure, sure.
And we ended up at some dive bar, drinking
tequila, hanging out with people and you
know, the next morning I was like, Oh shoot,
I got this test.
So what I remember distinctly and Mike
Maxwell and Denise Maxwell were there and
Mike was an old veteran with this, so he knew
what my issue was.
But there I was in the basement of the kingdome
and they have these concrete pillars, I've
got my head pressed against the concrete
pillars, just to get rid of this throbbing
stinking headache to pass this test.
And like I said, I'm not a drinker,
this is totally not something that would
normally happen.
Yeah.
But yeah, stupid day to choose to be hung over.
But I did pass the masters test,
probably barely.
And I feel like I've put it to good use
since then so, so yeah.
And.
I don't know if I really drank tequila
like that in my life.
You gotta learn to condition yourself
a bit better.
Yeah.
But yeah, that was a long time ago.
So growing up, my family had a part share in a
fishing lodge up in the Bonaparte Lake area.
Cool.
Lake fishing, beautiful area, you hike in or
helicopter into it.
And as a kid growing up, my idea of fly
fishing was, you tie a fly on the end of the
single hand casting rod, and you troll
that behind a rowboat until you catch a fish.
And that's how I fly fished for
many, many years.
And just recently I'm being turned on to
this spey fishing.
What would draw a person to take up
space fishing over top of, I don't know,
just casting a spoon.
Sure.
Well, hey you had me at the trolling cause I
grew up trolling a fly.
We used to do family vacations
on Pennask Lake.
Right.
And there's something really exciting about
a fast troll and the fish just slamming
that rod and that rod just goes like that.
Sure.
Boom.
And you know what, with the spey, it's kind of
the same in the sense that you're always
waiting for that take.
And it's all about the anticipation of that take
and what you you'll often hear people say is, Oh,
I really felt like I was going to get one there.
And perhaps they felt that because, you
know, the way the fly was moving, the way
the water was nice and smooth, whatever it was,
it's that anticipation, that's the thing right.
And if you can go out and fish all day, and
you spend a decent amount of that day feeling
like you're going to get one, you like the
water, you like the way you're fishing it, you
know, that's the thing.
And you know, so far as throwing a spoon, a
spoon is a great way to cover a lot of water.
Out of all the different techniques to fish for
steelhead spoon fishing will allow you to
fish all of the water.
And you know, there's something about the
wobble of that spoon that you just can't
replicate with the fly.
Right.
And trust me, we tried that with the flies.
Today's flies are, you know, they're
like lures, right?
But I think the big thing was spey casting is,
is in-between swings.
We call it a swing while you're fishing, in
between swings, you have the cast and some people
really get into the cast.
And if you're casting well and you like the
water you're fishing, I mean that's the
whole deal, right?
Right.
Unfortunately, there are times when you
catch fish on casts that you're not very proud of.
Sure.
I don't know if it diminished the whole
experience, but it, you know, it's nice
when you're casting well and you're not
catching anything.
And you're like, yeah, that was alright,
that was a good day.
It seems completely foreign thing to most
people, who've spent some time fishing, to
now learn about the brand new way to cast
and all the different accessories that go
along with spey fishing.
It's kind of intimidating, honestly.
I mean, there's whole brand new lingo and
there's all this extra gear that you
have to get into.
What's the easiest way for someone to
kind of dabble in and get into this?
Well, the truth of the matter is, there's
really no such thing as bad equipment right
now, and lines have come a long ways.
So you can't go wrong, any, pretty much any
sprey rod can work as long as you have an
appropriate line on it.
And by appropriate, I mean, the line should
be a length that relates properly to
both your height and style of casting and
the length of the rod.
So in short, If you're fishing a 12 foot
rod, a shorter head, like a Skagit head is
going to pair better than a long belly
line and vice versa.
If you're fishing a 15 foot rod, you're going
to want something with a longer head because
the, you know, the longer rod will move
more line in the sweep.
Sure.
The sweep is by the way, the portion of
the spey cast where load is created.
So for those listeners that don't know spey
casting, all spey casts start the same.
They all start with a lift of the rod tip that
clears the line off the water and then you have
a move, a set move and what the set move does is
it positions the anchor and the anchor is a fancy
way of saying, where the line's going to be in
contact with the water.
And from there we sweep the rod, which
is basically your back cast, and this is
where load is created.
And load is a fancy way of saying bend.
So we're basically trying to put a bend in
the rod and then as we complete the back cast,
there's not a hard stop.
Like we're single handing, that's more
of a transition into the forward cast.
And what we're always trying to do is
maintain as much of that load as much of
that bend, by keeping tension on everything
as we transitioned from the back cast
into the forward cast.
And the really cool thing about it you know, and
it, to me, it has more in common with a golf
swing within a single hand cast, but it's all
about getting the rod to carry the load and then
releasing that load.
So if you apply your power too quickly, the
load isn't there for the full length of the
forward stroke, you know, you're not going to get
the best possible result.
So the equipment will do the work for you when
you're casting well, and I think we learned,
I think you've learned that now that applying
power, I mean, you're a big guy, hitting it
hard doesn't necessarily give you line speed.
Totally.
Line speed is what gives you distance.
Right.
You know, so it's all about loop shape, which
means, what we want is the line to go out in a
very tight pointed arrow.
And what's going to cause the line to
take that shape is the path of the rod tip
when it accelerates.
So if the rod tip accelerates in a
straight line path, then you're going to get
that nice tight loop.
If you use too much of your top hand, chopping
wood, we might say.
Okay.
The loops going to open up cause the rod tip now
is traveling in a convex path, rounded like the
top of a basketball.
So it's all about not applying the
power too quickly.
Saying something like no power before midnight
or explaining to someone about trying to use their
bottom hand, as opposed to their top hand.
Right, just operate on the fulcrum a bit better.
Yeah.
You know, at the end of the day, just like
golf, you know, you're going to have some of
them that don't work out exactly the way you want.
Sure.
Right.
But it's consistency and consistency is something
that comes with mileage and understanding
when things aren't working out, how to
break down the cast.
So in the case of spey casting, the
foundation of the house is your anchor.
So if the cast isn't working, is your anchor
in the right spot?
So, this is just a very simple thing.
And I bring that up because today, when
we were on the river, there was a where your
anchor was too far back.
Right.
And then as soon as you made the adjustment
to put it where it was supposed to be,
boom, the cast started to work for you.
Totally.
Now I've noticed a trend in the fishing
lodge up in the Bonaparte Lake area.
One of the owners was a lawyer, another one was,
had his own accounting firm, another guy was
a securities trader.
And it seems that fly fishing tends to attract
a certain type of person or a couple of different
types of people anyways.
It seems to me from my, sort of casual
observation, and not in it as deep as you
are, that'll attract people who are very
particular about the way that they like to
have things done right.
That may be very methodical in
their approach.
And it also seems to attract the type
of people that just absolutely love
being in the outdoors and experiencing it
in as, I guess, as rustic as possible.
Is that a fair observation?
Yeah.
You know what I think within fly
fishing itself, I think that there's a
lot of differences.
Hey, I can say the same thing within spey and
you know, if we were to come up with some
stereotypes, let's break it down this way.
Let's say that, you know, when I first started fly
fishing, I really wanted to have a fishing vest.
And when I got a fishing vest, I wanted to fill
that vest with as many boxes of flies and
knickknacks and this, that, and the next thing.
I'm not sure what my motivation was, I think
I just wanted to be prepared, but you know,
what I learned over a very short period of
time is that it's not comfortable to wear a
vest full of a bunch of crap, no matter how
important that stuff is.
And if you're trying to spey cast that's stuff is
going to be in your way.
Now, if you're trout fishing and someone
who, and there's different types of
trout fishing, okay.
So if you're the type of trout fishermen who has
a vest full of stuff, and you know, you're,
let's say you're really technical kind of guy.
Sure.
And very organized and all your boxes have
little labels, and these are your nymphs
and these are your dry flies and, you know,
you've got everything you might possibly need.
You know, spey casting is going to give you
a bit of a relief from that, because the truth
of the matter is you don't need a vest, you
need three or four flies.
Like really well, you don't need
a lot of flies.
Right.
You need maybe a couple of sink tips
to cover the water.
If you have sort of a plan already where you're
going to be fishing, you might not even need that.
Just the one that's on there, a spool
of 15 or 20 pound maximum Altra green
and you're good to go.
So it's very minimalist and it's very free
in that sense.
And once you move away from having this
vest rain down on your shoulders and you're
trying to fly cast, and you're just, you
know, you don't have to worry about that
and where it's, yeah, it's very liberating.
So I think that within fly fishing, you've
got, you know, the people who pursue big
game in the warm water, saltwater environment,
like your tarp and fishermen, your permit.
Sure.
Fishermen, these are very dedicated bunch.
These are like the trophy hunters.
Then you've got the technical trout guys,
and these are the type of guys who, you know,
they understand why the fish is feeding,
when it's feeding.
And they're very, very good at observing what's
going on in the river all the way around and, you
know, they're essentially trying to give the
fish exactly what the fish wants to eat.
Then you've got the trollers at the
Lake like you were.
Totally.
You know, they're, you know, they got a fly
which they believe in and they put it on there
and they drag it around.
If it doesn't work, they change it up.
Maybe not quite as in tune with what's going
on, hatch wise, you know, maybe they're,
you know, socializing.
It's a fun, it's a fun day out.
Sure.
You know, then you've got the steelhead crowd
and the steelhead crowd is like, some of them
come across as kind of the spiritual thing,
because steelhead fishing is hard.
Most of the time we don't catch anything.
If you're a numbers guy and, I'm not going
to pass judgment about what it means to be
a numbers guy, but steelhead fishing isn't
for numbers people.
Numbers people are happier fishing for
pink salmon or bass or coho in Alaska.
Right.
If you're a steelhead person, you know, you're
an optimist and you probably enjoy crappy
weather cause a lot of times steelhead
fishing takes place in, you know, challenging
weather conditions.
And I suppose it's almost like a communal
suffering thing when you have a lodge full of
people who are soaking wet and cold and.
Yep.
Maybe two of them have had a bite, but
everyone's really happy.
And isn't it nice to come back to a warm lodge at
the end of the day, that there's maybe something
to that, but the longer you go without a bite,
you know, you go three, four days with a tug,
and then all of a sudden you, a fish rips your
arm off and away it goes, you don't forget that.
Versus some guy who caught 32
bass today, right.
That's a good point.
So it's a different kind of deal, it's it's
more about the hunt.
And I say it's about the hunt because you
really have to believe that what you're doing
is going to work.
So this is, it's really a mental thing, right?
So it's, you know, you don't necessarily change
your approach too much.
You have a plan, you believe where the fish
are, you have a fly on there that you think
is gonna work and, you know, you just
execute that plan versus running through your
fly box with a bunch of different flies and
hoping someone will bite.
Most of the time out here on the Skeena there's not
a fish in front of us, but we're always doing
what we believe to be the right thing, meaning
we're fishing the right fly that we believe in,
in a spot that looks great to us and we're
doing it with confidence.
But you never want to feel like, okay
the river owes me something, I need to get
a bite, I need a fish.
Right, right.
You just have to be kind of open
to that happening.
And, you know, keeping that fly in the water.
However many years of guiding this is been,
I don't know, I think it's probably 28 or
something like that.
I can tell you two things, first thing is
that the best casters, the people that can
throw out the farthest do not catch the most
fish, this is true.
And it's very important because
you know, the fish are not that far out.
The second thing is, okay sure, you can go
fishing for an hour and catch something.
But the folks that spend the most time with
their fly in the water encounter the most fish.
Sure.
And you know, this has been proven
time and time again.
It's okay to take a break, but from a client
standpoint, the more time you keep that fly
in the water, the better your chances of success
because you fish eight, 10 hours, you have fish
in front of you, maybe for a quarter of that
time if you're lucky, that would be huge.
And if that happens to be when you're sitting
in the boat having lunch, might not be the
best use of your time unless of course the
lunch was fantastic.
Let's talk about gear a little bit.
Sure.
So these Pieroway Rods, you're a
designer for one.
Yeah.
So Jeff's a good buddy of mine.
That's Jeff Pieroway, Pieroway Rod
company, he's got an interesting story.
He was a rod builder, actually he was a
stockbroker, to be fair.
He was a stockbroker from Newfoundland who was
working in Calgary and rod building was a hobby.
And he had a friend who lived in South
Korea where a lot of rods are built.
And so he was over there on a fishing
trip and also sourcing some hard to find rod
material, like rod building material.
And he ended up becoming friends with
a gentleman who had a rod factory, who was
building rods for a lot of big name companies.
And, you know, probably, knowing Jeff, maybe
it was maybe over a few beers or what have
you, he, you know, he carved out a little
niche in this guy's production schedule and
he was off to the races.
Nice.
And the development of his business is pretty
cool because if you've been to Calgary, you
know, that the Bow River runs right through it.
And a lot of folks who fish the Bow, float
and drift boats right.
Okay.
But a lot of the younger people don't
have drift boats.
Right.
So a lot of the younger crowd is, you know, there
are these dog parks, like dog-walking parks
where you can access the river, footbridges,
that type of thing.
And they're fishing from the bank and so Jeff
would kind of patrol these sort of areas.
And, you know, he was basically selling his
rods out of the trunk of his car and picking
up garbage as he went and helping people
with their casting.
It was really a grassroots kind of deal.
Wow.
But a lot of those folks were the early
adapters of spey casting in Alberta because,
and it's a little different than here.
What a lot of those folks are doing are fishing
like, you know, San Juan worms or whatever,
and they can fish more than one fly underneath
the bobber and the spey rod fishing from
the bank made it easy to cover the water.
Right.
So, you know, Jeff was in on the, for Alberta, Jeff
was in on the spey really early and I met him at
the Canadian Fly Fishing Show and, you know,
struck up a conversation with Jeff's rep and
he said, Hey, what do you think of the rods?
And I said, Oh, they're all right, but have
you ever considered maybe making the butt
of the rod a little bit softer in relation
to the middle section of the rod and making
that a bit stiffer.
Now, most rods, most spey rods, and actually
most, fly rods are progressive in flex,
meaning the tip is softer than the button.
Okay.
When we spey cast, as we've talked about
earlier, we're creating load in the sweep and
we're not stopping the rod to release the
load on the back cast.
What we're trying to do is keep the load
within the rod on the back cast and load comes
into the rod from the tip, goes to the butt
and when it leaves, it goes out the opposite.
And the problem with a conventional progressive
action rod that stiffen the butt and soften the
tip, is it doesn't want to keep the load in the
butt, and that's where most of the power is.
So, you know, the concept was to build
the flex pattern so at 12 o'clock, meaning at
the part of the forward cast where the rod would
essentially be straight up and down, and this
is where the rod has to be the most bent, has
to carry the most load.
Okay.
So if you look at a flat roof line, a horizontal
line and you think, okay, if my rod tip is
going to accelerate in a straight line, this
is essentially the path that it's going to take.
So, you know, look at this beam and you
think, you know that rod tip is on that.
At what point is the rod going to be most bent?
Is it going to be most spent at 12?
Let's call it 11 and 1, or 10 and
2, three options.
And if you think about it, it's gotta
be when it's straight up and down for.
Sure.
The rod tip to be on that line.
So, what we did is we work backwards
from there.
So we wanted our flex patterns to be nice
and balanced end to have the rod carry
of the deepest bend.
And by softening the butt of the rod, basically
underneath the cork, we came up with a rod
that would very easily keep its load through
the transition, at the end of the sweep
into the forward cast.
And so you get a ton of line speed
without having to you know, work very hard.
The rod does all the work for you and that's the
Metal Detector series.
Yeah.
We started out with, well we were going to
start out with a couple of different rods in
it and we ended up starting out with three.
So we did a 12 foot 510.
510 grain rod, which is kind of
like a seven eight.
Okay.
So this is kind of your all around trout,
light salmon rod.
Then we did a heavier rod, which I think you
were fishing today.
That's the seven 20,13 foot 5 inches.
This was purpose-built for Chinook and
large steelhead.
Then we also had a switch rod, now switch rods,
a rod that can be cast single hand or a spey.
Right.
It's a compromise rod.
Sure.
So generally speaking a switch rod doesn't spey
cast as well as a two hander and it doesn't
single hand as nice as a single hand, cause it's
a little bit bigger.
Right.
And the failure of a lot of switch rod designs
are that they're too long to single hand without,
you know, getting tired.
Right.
So 10 and a half feet is sort of the magic number
and that's pretty much where we were with that.
And that's a 400 grain, so that's a
six seven, perfect rod for fishing the Bow.
And so those were the three initial ones.
And then we wanted to kind of like a
heavier steelhead rod to fill the gaps.
So we came up with a 600, which is 12
foot, 10 inches.
Right.
And I think you actually own one of those.
I do have one of those, yes.
Actually you have a couple of
those pardon me.
And that's my favorite rod for fishing the
Skeena, that's just the perfect all-around-er.
And now we have a couple rods in the
six piece series.
We have a 675 grain, which is basically, you
know, a total middle of the road, salmon
steelhead rod, just a little bit beefier
than the 600 and a bit of a de-tuned version
of the Chinook od.
And, you know, that's a real popular one with
Atlantic salmon guys.
Totally.
Because.
You fly with that, throw them in your backpack.
Yeah so, it's so easy.
I think that's the way of the future, because
it's not that people don't trust the airlines,
but they just don't want to give them extra
money for another bag.
So being able to stuff it in their suitcase,
makes it a lot harder for me when I'm at the
airport, by the way and I'm trying to pick
out who our guests are.
Usually you're looking for the rod tubes
and these guys just have like briefcases
with rods in 'em.
But, and now we have a new one coming out, which
is a different material, I'm not probably supposed
to talk about it yet because it's not out,
but it's definitely something to watch for
this year, hopefully.
And that's going to be a lighter stiffer
steelhead rod.
And, I forgot, we also have a competition
rod, a 15 foot, 1200.
Geez.
Grain thing that, so this is a bunch of them.
There's a bunch.
No kidding.
Of metal detectors.
Started out for three and you got like
what, like six, seven.
Yeah.
It's added up and then we've also
done the X-Series.
Which by the way, Pieroway had before Sage
copied him on that name.
Yeah, yeah, true story.
And they sent him a letter saying you can't,
he didn't, he never did trademark or anything,
but they said, Hey, well it's a letter, you
can't copy right it.
No.
You can't trademark it.
Totally.
I thought it was cheesy to be honest with
you, but copycats and.
Yeah, you just can't get away from that.
It doesn't matter what business you're in.
Yeah, it's, so we took it as a compliment
gesture though.
He's also done a shorter space series called
the Renegade series.
And this is with Jerry French, who's one of the
originals Skagit guides, one of the originators
of the Intruder fly and just an all around a
magician on the water.
So yeah, Pieroway coming on strong and he's got
a different business model because he doesn't
really sell to dealers.
Okay.
If you want to buy a Pieroway Rod.
You gotta be on the Bow River.
You got to go see Jeff at his shop, which is
basically his workshop in a little retail
store in Calgary.
Okay.
And then, you know, a few lodges and
stuff, sell them where people use them.
So yeah, happy to be involved with Jeff.
Jeff's just a really good dude, but you're
hard pressed to find a bad Newfie, that's true.
So on the side of that rod, there's a picture of
a fish sort of flames on the fish or what is that?
That was the logo for Whistler fly fishing,
so that was a design my brother came up with
many years ago and we sell lots of hats and
t-shirts, and that type of thing with i.
See I was told that people who weren't into
fishing at all, would come by and purchase this
gear just for that logo.
You know, Whistler's funny, people
are always buying souvenir type things.
So yeah, we sold a lot of stuff with that
fish on it for sure.
Fly fishing, spey casting, this has
typically been in days of old, associated
with more stodgy old men on the river,
but you're definitely seeing a transition
over the years.
You're seeing a much younger crowd getting
into it, a much wider demographic.
I'm wondering how much you had to play
in all of that with Whistler spey casting.
I mean, locally anways.
Yeah okay.
So I think the first thing to understand
is that the best swung fly fisheries in the
world are places like Argentina, Russia,
Iceland, Norway.
Sure BC, right?
Sure.
And the big difference between BC and a
lot of these other places are the access.
So I'll give you an example, so might
as well start here.
Spey, Scotland, right?
Sure.
To fish in Scotland on a really good stretch
of river, typically, perhaps not always, but
typically requires a fair amount of money okay.
Sure.
This is not something you can just like
buy rod and go.
Yeah.
You know, you need to have the rights
to fish there.
Some land access.
Yeah.
And you know, I think Norway is even
more complicated.
Iceland's become less complicated, but
there's a common theme here and that usually
you're going to have some money to do this.
And BC is totally different because in BC
you're not restricted where you can go fishing.
And so the average age of a swung fly
salmon angler here is much lower then say
England as an example.
Which is a tremendous investment in our future.
It's just the way it worked out.
I mean the whole public access thing here is
just superb, right?
It's phenominal.
Yeah, as a BC resident, you buy your license
once, you can go wherever you want.
Sure, we do restrict the non-residents a bit.
You know, there's certain rivers where
can't fish on a weekend or, or one day of the
week or whatever it is, at the Copper it's
three days they can't fish, but they still got
lots of other options.
So in Eastern Canada, we have, you know, Quebec's
got some of the best Atlantic salmon fishing
in the world and the way that they control
access there is for something called the ZEC.
And essentially what they're doing is
limiting the amount of anglers on a particular
section of river.
So it's almost like you have to make an
appointment to be able to go fish a piece of water.
Whereas in BC, we can travel around and fish
at our whim provided we have our license.
Right.
So I guess where I'm going with all this
is, you don't have barriers for people
to access the water.
So they have to buy the gear and they'll probably
get some waders, but then they're good to go.
And, you know, for myself, skiing
and fishing always been my passion.
We talked about, you know, how I started out
as a ski instructor, so obviously I'm in Whistler
and what am I going to do for the summer?
Okay, well, I know I'll be a golf pro okay.
I'm not a bad golfer, but I'm not a good golfer.
And so I got a job on the golf course, right.
Nicklaus North, and I was golfing all the time.
I was like, I'll figure this out.
Like a couple of rounds a day, I'll be pro
before you know it.
And meanwhile I had done some fish guiding
previous and you know, I ended up starting
to work fish guiding.
And so I was volunteering at the golf course,
trying to bang out, or, you know, let's say 10
rounds a week because I wanted to be a golf pro.
Yeah.
Cause it would supplement my skiing in the winter.
And then meanwhile, I was sort of spending
a little bit of time fish guiding, which
had already been doing.
And I realized, Hey, there's a lot
of potential here.
And the golf course, I was also figuring out
that unless you're a really great golfer,
a golf pro is going to stand next to someone at
the driving range right.
Whereas when you're teaching skiing,
you're out on the hill, when you're guiding
fly fishing, you're out on the river.
It wasn't quite as exciting as I sort
of pictured it.
I mean, I wasn't.
That's a good point.
Like imagining I'd be like out on the
tour or anything, but, you know, I just
decided that, okay.
I was going, golf was going to be a
recreational thing for me, besides it's really
hard, I'm not that good.
So, you know, Whistler at that time, we had a
ton of tourist traffic that was looking for an
activity in the summer.
And, you know, you could pick a thing, I mean,
ATV tours, horseback tours, mountain bikes,
it's all there okay.
Right.
But float tubing, so sitting in the floating
tube on the local lakes and there's some good
lakes there, but that was kind of your standard
guided trip, but there was some river fishing.
It wasn't right in Whistler, but there
was some river fishing and it was pretty good
at the right time.
But here's the thing the right time wasn't really
in the summer, the right time was actually in
the spring, the winter and the fall okay.
So the float tubes in the summer, a lot of those
people, you know, they'd never done it before.
So we put them in the float tube and they
kicked around and they were trolling like, like
you, like, you were only there in a float tube.
Yeah.
But they all wanted to learn how to cast.
But learning how to cast in a float tube is not
the ideal situation.
Right.
Because you're sitting down right.
Yeah.
So it was like, you know, nevermind being
a fishing guide, I'm going to start a fly
fishing school and I will teach these people on
the grass, how to cast.
And then if they want to go in the
float too, we'll sell them a guided trip.
But this is, this is kind of the
whole thing started.
Very smart.
Yeah.
And, and then we did our real fishing in
the other three months, especially in the
winter, that's when the good trout fishing was.
And so over the course of a decade or more,
you know, we built up a pretty good winter
steelhead clientele, and a lot of those folks
are still with us today here at Skeena spey.
But, you know, certainly the local
Whistler residents.
And, you know, I want to say your average Whistler
resident is probably in their thirties.
I don't know if that's true or not,
you know, there's.
Seems that way.
Yeah.
You know, it's a young town, even old folks
seem young there, it's a young town.
It's a great place, tremendous sense
of community, but everyone is really
outdoors orientated, looking for something
new to do outside.
And I can't count the number of ski
and snowboard pros that came through my
shop and wanted to get into fly fishing.
And some of them now are really accomplished,
fly fishers.
A lot of times it would be because
they had an injury.
They, you know, they couldn't ride up on
the glacier in the summer so they were
going to fly fish and learn how to fly fish.
But, you know, I think I did sel; a lot of people
their first fly rods.
I definitely sold a lot of people at first
spey rods and you know, overall our clientele
at, out of that shop was much younger than say,
you know, your typical hardy's crowd right.
Right, right.
And I think for the lodge too, I should mention
this, your typical steelhead lodge in BC.
Sure, old, rich white guys are there.
Right.
This is what you would expect.
Yeah.
And I think our clientele here is much
more diverse than that.
We do get a lot of couples, we get a lot of
families, we get a lot of kids, lots of females.
Yeah.
You know, we've had female guides, still
have female guides and, you know, I think it's
just good business if nothing else, because if
you limit your clientele to one type of client
and they're older, how many more years are you
going to get out of them?
Totally.
Right.
If you have a client who's in their
twenties, right?
Yeah.
And if it's some.
You've got the rest of your life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
And you know when you have couples as
clients, they tend to be well-behaved, they
don't keep the rest of the guests up seeing who
can get the drunkest.
If the wife's into fly fishing and she's trying
to get her husband into fishing, and he's
doing it, she's happy.
Regardless of whether the river's full
of fish or not.
Right.
If people are trying to get their kids into
it and the kids aren't bored, they're stoked.
And I think the crew of the team that we
have here, what would they do exceptionally
well is, is teach.
You know, there's some lazy fishing guides in
this world and everyone can have an off day and
some fishing guides think their job description
is to sit in a boat and drink coffee and if you
hook something, they'll come with the net.
Other fishing guides, they're going to stand
at your shoulder and do their best to, you
know, if nothing else, improve your casting or
make you understand why they have you fishing
in particular spot at a particular time.
So if you don't catch something today, at least
there's some value that down the road, maybe
this knowledge will still be there for you.
So I think, one thing we've done well as
a business is get new people into it.
Right.
And of course that's creating new clients.
So that's way better than, you know, trying
to steal clients from another lodge or
something like that.
Totally.
So yeah, I think, you know if your client,
if you're looking at your clientele and
your lodge owner, and it's all a bunch of
old, rich, white guys, you should be really
freaked out right now.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Especially if they're not Canadians, cause quite
frankly, I think we're going to be dealing with
domestic clientele for another year at least.
I think you're right on that one.
For somebody wanting to get into spey fishing.
What does a season look like if they're
willing to travel around BC a bit?
Oh man.
It's year round, for sure.
Really?
So let's pretend that they live in
the Lower Mainland cause most people do.
Totally.
Right.
Sometimes you get a real winter, but let's
say January, so January you, you can be up the
Squamish system and spey fishing for trout
and then steel head tend to start showing
up in February, March.
So you've got steelhead fishing up there.
You've also got steelhead fishing out in the
Fraser Valley, out in the tributaries of the
Fraser as well as the Vedder itself, obviously
Fraser tributary too.
Yeah.
Once we get into the first bit of summer late
spring, say like May, your usually dealing
with high water okay.
Yeah.
So this is, this would be the time when
you know, your spey fishing options do get
a little bit limited.
Now there's certain systems that are Lake
fed and I don't want to add pressure to them,
so I'm not going to put them to name right now,
but there's certain systems that are Lake
fed that fresh it's not quite as abrupt.
And you can often fish through May.
June is going to be the tough one, but then
you have other rivers that are quicker to
recover and the Kitimat is a good example.
The Kitimat is a great river in June
for Chinook right.
Okay.
That's a prime time to fish it.
Then we get into July, now you can fish the
Skeena for chinook salmon and steelhead
.Lots of, pretty much any Chinook river is,
that's open is good in late June, early July,
August is prime time for steelhead migration
through the Skeena so that's happening.
Once we get into September and
October, the tributary start fishing good.
You know, the Bulkley has almost half of the Skeena
steelhead returned in the summer and it probably
has at least half the steelhead anglers.
So, you know, with almost a hundred fishable
miles, the Bulkley is really easy access and a
great choice, especially for a first, you know,
do it yourself type steelhead trip, just
because the access is so good around Smithers.
Yeah.
And you know, the latter part of the fall, you
could be back down on the Fraser system, or
you could be down on the Squamish fishing for
coho and chums, or you could still be up here,
fishing for steelhead in the big Northern coho.
Wow.
So yeah, I mean, it really, it
goes on and on.
You don't have to have an off season
because our, typically our climate so mild.
So here's a question for you, so every odd year
in the Lower Mainland, the pink salmon will
run up the Fraser and it's always fun.
We live in Delta area, it's real close, easy
access and people in Richmond and Delta and
up the river will just spin cast and catch
some pink salmons, put them in the smoker.
Would you spey cast for something like that?
I've never seen somebody do that.
Sure.
You know, you can swing flies for pinks.
In the Squamish it's very popular.
So Squamish gets pink at the same time you
would get them down there generally.
Right, okay.
And so this would be typically fishing the
lower reaches of the Squamish, the popular
area would be around the most of the Mamquam.
Right, okay.
And yeah, just swinging little pink flies, like
a six, seven weight spey rod works beautifully.
But on the Fraser?
You know, I've done it.
I've never actually seen it.
I've absolutely done it on the Fraser a
long time ago, but it was near Chilliwack.
I've never fished down your way on
the lower river.
Right.
I don't know, you know, what the depth would
be like, or if there's gravel bars there or, you
know, if you'd be trying to cast from a boat, but
I imagine it's possible.
Yeah, I guess so.
I'm going to try it.
Yeah, you should.
You absolutely should.
Absolutely I will.
I'll take a picture of it and I'll put
it up on the website.
How about etiquette?
Like a little bit about basic etiquette.
Cause that's one of the things that as, a getting
new into any sport can be intimidating for people.
Like where do I, where do I step in?
Like, what's the right thing to do and I mean,
everyone talks about these fights breaking
over, out on rivers that are crowded over
improper etiquette.
That's a superb question.
And it's a complicated issue because different
rivers have different systems, but generally
speaking, most people are fishing down the run.
And what I mean by that is, if you approach a run
and there's a big run, but there's already one
person fishing it, but it's a big run there's
room for more than one.
The appropriate thing to do would be to go
in behind that person.
Right.
Now, the actual appropriate thing to do
would be to go up and have a brief conversation
and say, Hey.
Right.
Do you mind if I hop in behind you?
And that person would say, no, go ahead.
And what's great about doing that is,
often there'll be an exchange of information
that's going to be beneficial for you.
So that that person might say, Oh, by the way, I
caught a fish earlier, I had a bite or I've seen a
few, you know, at least.
Right.
You'll have a better understanding of
what's taking place.
You know at that point you've identified
yourself as a decent human being, and you're
not trying to wreck this person's day and you're
saying, Hey, do you mind if I fished behind you?
And they're going to say, sure, go ahead.
The wrong move would be to walk in
below that person, meaning downstream.
Right.
And if they're trying to work their way through
the run, cause a lot of times when people
are spey casting, they'll cast swing,
take a step, you know, they'll work their
way, cover the water.
And you've just like made this roadblock
in front of them.
And if you're just gonna stand there,
man, that's even worse.
It's bad enough if you jump in in front of them
and you're moving, right.
But if you're going to stand there then it's,
but I think a lot of times when this sort of
situation happens, not all, but I think a lot of
times it's not that the person's a real jackass
or that they're doing it on purpose, I think it's
just, they don't know.
And some fisheries, like I use the
Vedder in salmon season as an example.
It's a crowded river, people aren't moving
through the run.
People just get their rock and they hang out
on their rock and they hope that the fish
are gonna come by.
And you know, if you're bar fishing on a river,
like the Fraser or the Skeena, obviously you're
set up in one spot, right, you're not moving.
So it's important to make that distinction.
Is this an angler who's staying in
one spot, is this an angler that's moving?
So back to our initial river conversation,
you walked in, there's a guy fishing, the
run, that's okay.
There's lots of space, hey, how's it going?
Are you moving through?
I'm moving through, okay perfect.
Okay.
Do you mind, I'll hop in behind you?
Or if the person's like, no, I'm just, this
is my spot, I'm just going to hang out here.
They might say, you're welcome to go below me.
They might say, you're welcome to go above.
Right.
But at least you've had the conversation right.
They're not going to say, Hey, this
is my run, beat it.
Right, right.
Right.
But you know, at least you have a
better understanding.
And if for some reason you don't want to
talk to them, at the very least, instead of
hopping in, observe them.
And if it looks like they're moving through
the run quickly, then by all means, you know
give them lots of space and go well above them.
Just jump in.
Yeah.
Angler etiquette is, it's sort of a funny
thing because once again, I think a
lot of times there's misunderstandings at play
when there are problems.
And it is somewhat localized, meaning there
are certain stretches of river where, you know,
people just kind of walk in and do their thing.
But it's a funny thing because if you and I were
fishing just any river.
How about the river right here?
A little.
Sure.
Tributary of the Skeena and we were driving
along it and we wanted to fish a spot and
there was a car parked there, we would probably
keep going because.
Right.
You don't want to be around.
We're not trying to go and make me, we're just
going fishing right.
Right.
We'll go to a different spot.
But as density increases, as every parking spot
we go by seems to have a car, now we're
like, Oh, well there's only one there, so
maybe we'll go there.
And when it gets really bad with, Oh, there's
only five, there was just so there's still
probably room for us.
So you know, when we talk about regulation
and I, this ties in nicely with what we said
before, about how they've addressed maintaining
equality, angling experience in other
places by limiting the number of participants.
And we don't want to go down that road in BC.
You know, we don't necessarily need a
law that says, okay, there's only X amount
of people allowed to fish a particular
stretch of water.
In a period of time because most people will
go, okay, well, this part is kind of crowded,
this isn't the experience I'm looking for.
I will drive 20 minutes further, or go to
a different spot or I'll get up earlier
or I'll fish later.
They will adjust their own, you know, their
own day in a way to avoid the crowds.
And some people, like I think some people like
the crowds, I think some people will seek out
places where there's lots of people fishing.
Yeah I don't get that.
Because that must be a good spot right.
Oh totally.
But you know, there we are, we're driving
along the river, okay.
There's not a car here, perfect,
we'll go in right.
So I think that certain rivers, when they have
space, when they're not over, let's say
oversubscribed, you know, you have this real
orderly way that people conduct themselves,
where they don't impede each other's access
or negatively affect each other's day.
And when we find ourselves in a situation
where, you know, the density is such that,
you know, it's not really the experience we're
looking for, it's a great excuse to go elsewhere.
And I also find that a lot of times crowds are
somewhat reactionary.
What I mean by that is if fishing has
been productive, if there's been a lot of
fish caught, following that period, days,
or week, whatever, you'll see an increase
in people fishing.
Sure.
But often the fishing will then
slow down right.
And then people say oh fishing, then they'll
stop fishing for a bit and they'll wait for
the next push of fish to come in, but they're not
out there all the time.
So the folks that are out there will reap the
rewards, so to speak, and then other people will
hear that, Oh, there's a bunch of fish around and
then they will descend on the river and by
then it's kind of over.
So there's no substitute for time on the water.
Just getting out there.
Yeah.
And you know, in this day and age where
the learning curve is pretty quick, in the
sense that you've got Google Earth, you've
got message boards.
You can hit up the tackle shop.
It's very easy to get information
about where to go.
So there's no such thing really, as a secret spot,
it's all about timing.
And what I love about the Skeena and our experience
out here is, you know, today, the river's
still kind of high for this time of year.
Okay.
But looking at our forecast, it's going
to be dropping.
It's going to drop eight, 10 inches a day probably.
So seven days from now, the river will
be, you know, five feet lower vertically
than it is today.
And there'll be new gravel bars
and new spots.
And, you know, existing spots will change.
So, you know, from one day to the next, you
know, you really have to be paying attention
to what's going on to understand where
to spend your time.
Cause a huge river, you know, you can't
fish everything.
So you have to pick the spots and the
spots within the spots that you want to
concentrate your effort.
And it's such a dynamic thing with the water
level changing so dramatically here.
And then also, you know, fluctuations
in run timing for fish, especially how
it relates to tides.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, it's not quite as simple, perhaps as a
smaller river that might have, you know, this
is the meat hole and.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, this is the spot that
everyone wants to go.
On the Skeena that, with the fish moving through,
it's really about timing.
Wow.
And you know, there's no substitute for
confidence, keeping your fly in the water.
Just fishing with intent.
Believing.
Yeah.
Just fishing, you know, making a plan and then
fishing your plan.
Well, Brian.
Thank you very much for taking the time to
talk to me and to share your passion of fishing
with The Silvercore Podcast listeners.
Cool.
Hey, it's been fun having you guys here
and look forward to doing it again.
Absolutely.