Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1092: Andrew Todd - Flyathlon Races!

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Ep. 1092: Andrew Todd - Flyathlon Races! · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:04
[SPEAKER_01]: sort of more traditional running races, but you stop and catch a fish during their run.
0:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So a good example, we have one this coming weekend down on the Romeo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico, and it's a ten mile loop essentially.
0:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And at some point you've got to stop and catch a fish, and then your time is adjusted by the size.
0:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey friends, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The episode today is on a subject that we haven't covered as much as others, but there are some old episodes if you dig way back on fly fishing, but not just fly fishing.
0:43
[SPEAKER_00]: This is fly fishing with a twist.
0:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also distance running and long distance running and fly fishing at the same time.
0:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably you've not heard of this.
0:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest is Andrew Todd, and Andrew is the founder and the executive director of a non-profit file, a five a one C three called running rivers.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyway, Andrew, welcome to the program.
1:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, thanks for having me, Kurt.
1:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you bet.
1:13
[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be a lot of fun.
1:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We were talking before I hit record here and we almost got carried away.
1:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm going to preface it this way.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think of fishing as watching a barber in the lake or in a pond, then that's probably not what this show is going to be about today.
1:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about primarily fly fishing, but doing so in a very athletic way.
1:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to say, avid fly fishermen and women
1:40
[SPEAKER_00]: are pretty incredible athletes.
1:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The ability to stand in strong currents on slippery rocks and to work to river when the water's trying to knock you over, you know, and you do that hour after hour after hour, it's actually a very athletic endeavor.
1:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And fly fishing is a totally different sport than just watching a barber.
2:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So Andrew, would you agree with that?
2:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've always maintained that becoming a good waiter involves learning how to fall gracefully.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just over time you figure out where to put your feet and where not to put your feet.
2:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, in some cases, crossing big rivers or positioning yourself where you can get at fish, your fight and current, your legs can be pretty beat at the end of a long traditional fly fishing day.
2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we don't do a whole lot of waiter fishing in what I've created with the fly Athalon through running rivers.
2:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's a fly fishing is more athletic on its face than most people think.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I want to get back to the fly Athalon.
2:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I referred to earlier.
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're going to spend some time on that because that's a lot of what running rivers is all about.
3:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would like to rewind a little bit
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are you these days?
3:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Where are we talking to you from?
3:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm that my cabin in Westcliff, Colorado, which many people probably don't know where that is.
3:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You might have driven through it.
3:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's between the son-graded crystal mountains on the west and the wet mountains on the east in South Central Colorado.
3:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Sort of
3:29
[SPEAKER_01]: south of Colorado Springs, and we've had this cabin for about seven years, and it gives me close and I'd say quick, but the song greater crystals are pretty steep and gnarly, so it's close access to some great high mountain lake fishing and great trail running, so that's what drew me to it.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I came here as a kid, and when the time came to get out of Denver or find a place out of Denver,
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I said to my wife, how about West Cliff?
4:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, what the hell is West Cliff?
4:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, we've been here for about seven years.
4:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, like I mentioned, my brother-in-law and his wife are in West Clif as well.
4:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They recently bought a place up there.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is an amazing location.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is.
4:20
[SPEAKER_00]: The longer to crystals are probably the most precipitous jagged peaks, the range of peaks in Colorado.
4:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And several, four, tenors mixed in there with some of the roughest floral drive roads that you're all other experience.
4:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's such a beautiful, beautiful location.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they're pretty narrow.
4:41
[SPEAKER_01]: If you look at them on a map, I think in parts you could get across from one valley over to the San Luis Valley in, I think it's fifteen miles in some of the narrower parts, but it gains five, six thousand feet in that narrow stretch.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you go up to these legs, it's a lot of straight up.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the right word for it.
5:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I've climbed several of the four teenagers there and some of them you get to the top and you know, I usually have climbed from the west side.
5:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Although some I've done from the east as well, but you get from the top and you're looking down to the other side of the range.
5:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like there's one mountain and in some places it's two mountains thick, but in a lot of places it's kind of like one mountain thick between between planes.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So very unique range and extraordinarily useful.
5:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, you know, the rainbow trail, which is sort of in our backyard up here to the west runs from Pontius Springs, about a hundred miles down on the east side of the songwriter, Christos, to great sand dunes.
5:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You can get to Med No Lake, which is the, the Med No Creek is the creek that goes in front of the sand dunes.
5:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's a hundred mile trail that runs the east side of the songwriter.
6:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's about
6:02
[SPEAKER_01]: The song raise continues south of that, but there's a lot of recreation on, at least on the east side of the song raise that gets up in there.
6:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a very, very unique place in the world, not just Colorado, but in the world.
6:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very unique place.
6:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a fun setting, especially for doing what you do.
6:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're talking about fly fishing and trail running.
6:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And most people think of those is completely separate sports, but you've managed to combine them.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So explain how this works.
6:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, so we've got a number of, I view it more as an ecosystem, the fly-athlon ecosystem.
6:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So the,
6:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Flathe on races themselves are sort of more traditional running races but you stop and catch a fish during the run.
6:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So a good example we have on this coming weekend down on the Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico and it's a ten mile loop essentially and at some point you got to stop and catch a fish and then your time is adjusted by the size
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: of fish and sometimes species but in this case it's all native Rio Grande cut their trout on the ranch so species doesn't factor in but you can have someone finish quickly and then another person comes across with a bigger fish and the latter person can win because of the time adjustment based on the fish and so
7:32
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of panic at the finish line of people wondering who's coming in after them like what you catch and all that.
7:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And with with those with the fly-off on races, it's a lot of fun, but the purpose is to raise money and awareness about native fish.
7:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we use a crowdfunding model to raise money.
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: with the races for need of trial conservation through partnerships with our organization running rivers and state and federal agencies as well as other nonprofits.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Over the course of the ten years we've been doing this, I know the adventure sports podcast is also eleven years old, this is our eleventh year.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We've raised just short of a million dollars with this fly-affle on model for projects benefiting cutthroat trout.
8:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Not just cutthroat trout, we have races in the east too, where it would be Brook trout, but that's the fly-affle on race.
8:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have variations on that, which I'm sure we'll talk about the longer distances.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But the races, the fly-affle on races, are usually ten to thirteen miles or under.
8:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're not super epic distances.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I'm envisioning a bunch of people running with fly rods in hand and trying to find the perfect pool to score a really quick big fish.
9:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's catching release, right?
9:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you verify the link?
9:06
[SPEAKER_01]: We've had variations on that.
9:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It started out with a piece of right in the rain paper that we printed a ruler on.
9:14
[SPEAKER_01]: We had to take a fish picture on that piece of paper.
9:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, with keep fish wet techniques, you want to keep fish in the water as long as possible and putting them on a piece of paper.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to completely point it out.
9:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the best way to maintain the health of the fish.
9:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've migrated to, we've got a ruler right now that you can put under the water.
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the finish line, we do a lot of photo interpretation to estimate how long a fish is.
9:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So we always say, you know, put it on something we can measure later, which obviously leads to many fourth grade jokes, but still,
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: we're able to estimate but invariably there's an argument over both you know the biggest fish and the smallest fish because we award prizes for both of those regardless of where you've finished in the order um you can win for either the biggest or smallest fish and then that puts you in the final competition for the overall winner so you could be a minute uh... before the final cut off with the smallest fish and still win the whole thing so we're trying to be as inclusive of all abilities and uh...
10:29
[SPEAKER_01]: interests as possible.
10:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what?
10:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting a vibe here that this is one part Tom Fulary.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: A huge part of a huge part.
10:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of fun people getting together did just have a good time and to celebrate the things that they love.
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Celebrate running and fly fishing.
10:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not?
10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh and beer.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so my perspective is conservation is something that the average person isn't thinking about all the time, but if you make it fun, they're more likely to have that message resonate with them and have that incorporated into what they believe.
11:15
[SPEAKER_01]: If they come out in the woods with us and have an awesome time and get educated about conservation native fish, then they might
11:23
[SPEAKER_01]: make that a part of who they are.
11:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, fun is a huge, huge part of everything I try to do in life, but certainly with the organization.
11:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that fun is a very amazing motivator.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you want something to succeed, it should be fun.
11:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, whatever we do in life should be rewarding enough that we want to do it, right?
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And fun is one of those rewards.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
11:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
11:52
[SPEAKER_01]: There's way too much garbage in the world to not try to find and create an every opportunity.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's how I feel.
12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's really, really cool.
12:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, tell us about the races that you have coming up this season so that people know kind of describe what they're like, what the landscape is is like, what the river is like, what you're fishing for, that sort of thing.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's kind of all over the map.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So the first race we had this year was back.
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of May, that's a relay version of the flaffle on called NASCARP.
12:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Your listeners won't be able to see it, but I've got a NASCARP hat on.
12:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
12:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is a relay.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So if I occurred a few in IRA team, we would alternate running laps and a lap consists of about a mile and a half.
12:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got twenty minutes to catch a fish or you get a fifteen minute penalty and then you have to drink a beer or non alcoholic alternative because we have unlettered and let it divisions in that's part.
13:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But as soon as you finish your beer or nono, goholic alternative, that releases me and then I do a lap and then we alternate until we've finished our six pack.
13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's called NASCAR.
13:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We do that outside of Denver at a state park called Stanton State Park.
13:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're not catching carp, we're catching stock rainbow trout.
13:25
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a lot of fun.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we raised about fifteen thousand dollars with that race.
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: This coming weekend, we have a race on the Vermejo Park Ranch in Northern New Mexico.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Ted Turner's Ranch, the biologist for Turner, heard about it through a meeting I attended every year for the Rio Grande Cutter Trial Conservation Team.
13:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And they said our ranch would be a great place to do this.
13:52
[SPEAKER_01]: This ranch has
13:54
[SPEAKER_01]: In the watershed, we'll be in it's a hundred percent native Rio Grande and cutthroat trout.
13:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a real opportunity for education and also an opportunity for our fly athletes to catch a Rio Grande cutthroat trout.
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So if they catch a fish, they've caught a Rio Grande cutthroat trout at this race.
14:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk a little bit about that because, I mean, cuttings are threatened in a lot of places, but the Rio Grande cutthroat, that's unique to that river shed, right?
14:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's the Sandley's Valley in Colorado and then much of northern New Mexico is where the Rio Grande Cutter trout is endemic too.
14:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were actually a candidate for the Endanger species list, but because of the work that all these agencies that we partner with
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: have done over the years it was recently removed as a candidate species and it rides that line right so you can't get complacent and and say oh we're off the list it's a free for all so but it was an exciting development to have it haven't taken off the list but it's still a very unique and rare fish to catch unless you you know in unless you're in the right places
15:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, catching native cutties is a kind of a special experience because there are a lot harder to find than what you're going to find in your average lake or river somewhere and they're not something that was put in here.
15:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're the fish that lived here from the beginning.
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've they've had a lot of competition from various species that have been introduced over the years.
15:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think people need to understand cuties are pretty special here in Colorado.
15:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Kurt, I'm going to have you come and come to one of my races and talk to people about the value of comfort traffic.
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the exact message we're trying to get out there is
15:55
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, most of these, at least in Colorado, the subspecies are cut through a trotter in a small percentage of their historic distribution.
16:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're not saying that, you know, cut through a trot, need to replace all trot on the landscape wherever they are, what we're saying, and how I feel, and my personal mission as well as my professional mission is to make sure that these fish are around for my kids.
16:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, they're here for my kids, but for my
16:24
[SPEAKER_01]: My grandkids and getting beyond the ten to fifteen percent of historic range and maybe up to the thirty or forty percent of historic range.
16:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd feel a lot more comfortable with things like climate change and all the other.
16:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Human caused impacts at some of these watersheds feel for it to be in that higher percentage.
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd feel much better about their chances into the future.
16:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, to good point.
16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, people worry about a lot of environmental concerns and I think that sometimes folks are surprised when they hear about fish.
17:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one that we often don't think about.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fish have certainly been heavily impacted by human activity.
17:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And even in the oceans, I mean, the natural fisheries in the oceans are one of the most tragic stories of human impact on natural ecosystems.
17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's also true for native fish all across the United States.
17:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of that had to do, of course, with water quality, you know, being changed.
17:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But then a lot of it had to do with some, in retrospect, maybe misguided ideas about introducing sport fish in areas that, you know, weren't really, I guess the native fish couldn't easily compete with the sport fish that were introduced.
17:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and both of those are a big reason why they're in the low percentage of historic
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: that they had been.
17:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think one of the newer threats is climate change, particularly for trout species, because trout operate within a very narrow temperature window.
18:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And as it warms, we're pushing parts of the watersheds above that threshold that they can
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: safely survive and reproduce in.
18:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, unlike birds or mammals, fish can't pick up and move out of the watershed that they're in.
18:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They could go downstream, but usually it gets warmer as they go downstream, so they're kind of stuck where they are on the landscape.
18:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that makes climate change a unique challenge for freshwater fish.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's where human reintroduction comes in and
18:44
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a big part of what states are doing to make sure that this fish is on the way and scape into the future are these fish, not just the Rio Grande, cut their trout.
18:53
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a number of subspecies that cut their trout that are in jeopardy moving forward.
19:01
[SPEAKER_00]: you can fill in what I don't know about this but in our area there are places where they're trying to protect the cutthroat population and one of the ways they've done that is by putting a barrier across the stream that water has to pour over that keeps the fish downstream from being able to swim upstream past the barrier so that way rainbows and browns and brookies that may have been introduced can't get into the native water above that pour over
19:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I using any of the correct terminology there?
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you're using all the right words.
19:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason behind the barrier is that unfortunately these fish need to be
19:46
[SPEAKER_01]: isolated from brick trout brown trout rainbow trout brick trout and brown trout will out compete the cutter trout in part because brick trout and brown trout are fall spawners so when they emerge from the gravel they're a little bit bigger and so they'll they'll out compete the the small cutthroat over time and and you'll lose those cutthroat and they'll get pushed out eventually and in in most scenarios rainbow trout are a bit of a different threat
20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: and that they can actively integrate, I'm sure you've heard the name cut bow, which is a cut throat rainbow trout hybrid, which then you're over time, you're going to eliminate that unique species of cut throat trout through hybridization.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the barrier is an important tool in the interior West to native fish conservation.
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it sometimes it butts up against the other parts of the country where barriers are bad.
20:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And barriers in general, they limit movement of fish within a watershed.
20:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can get very isolated pieces, but like the Pacific Northwest where there's been all this argument over Dan removal,
21:04
[SPEAKER_01]: here we are either creating or identifying barriers to put fish above in the interior west and so it's a little nuance the messaging around native fish conservation depending on where you are in the country.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, very interesting.
21:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, here's a related question.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to know your opinion.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I backpacked in a lot of places where there are series of massive waterfalls to get up to the high mountain lake where the cutties live.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And in looking at that, those are natural barriers.
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The fish had to get there somehow.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the question.
21:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone likes to sit around the campfire and say, how did they get there in the first place?
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
21:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's your theory about that?
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not my, what, on my shirt here, there's an offspring holding a trout.
21:55
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we had a offspring with, you know, reproductive age fish and either claw and drop them into a lake.
22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there were a lot of historically fishless upper watersheds and lakes that these fish were put into for, you know, for the right reasons and that they wanted to conserve this population.
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: or that population.
22:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But way back in the day, a lot of those leaks were stocked with non-natives.
22:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And so whatever ecosystem was there before was impacted by the fish being present.
22:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a conversation that fisheries biologists have as they're contemplating where we're going to put the native fish to ensure its persistence into the future, given a warming plan.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And so those, while many of these areas may have been historically fishless, I think because fish have been there for so long, now they're viewed as an opportunity to put the native fish in there.
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a discussion around that should we be removing all fish and allow these many of these water sheds that would have been historically fishless to go back to being fishless.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure how I land on that.
23:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a big enough of a cutthroat fan that I'd like to see them remain on the planet instead of just having fish-lessica systems.
23:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that would have been a lot of ecosystems.
23:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And all the main river have a tap below that now has browns, brooks, and rainbow trout in it.
23:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be logistically very challenging to reclaim that for need of fish given the public.
23:39
[SPEAKER_01]: private land interface and all the people you would have to convince of that.
23:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So these high mountain waters sheds are often the lower hanging fruit for reclamation and the habitat that's going to be cool enough into the future.
23:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
23:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's fascinating for me.
23:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to mention to the listeners out there, we hear a lot about climate change and global warming.
24:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't hear as much like I mentioned earlier about things like how Fisher being impacted by human activity and it's not just a fish though.
24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I bet you can speak to this.
24:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But I view water as a lifeblood of the planet and if you look at the well rewind if you go to the doctor and you say I don't feel well they're going to take a blood sample to try to figure out what's going on right because they can see what's going on by looking at your at your blood
24:36
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing is true for an ecosystem.
24:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You can look at the water in the species in the water and you can know what the health is for that ecosystem.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I think that water is more like the lifeblood of the planet.
24:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to know how an ecosystem is doing, in my mind, it's largely about the water.
24:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So Andrew, can you fill us in a little bit on how important that is and how natural water systems are being threatened.
25:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think we're in Colorado in particular, we're in a great situation where so much of the water that we get in our urban areas is coming from these high mountain watersheds, where the head, we're called a head water state.
25:24
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the water that we're consuming is coming from our mountains versus our neighboring states where it's gone through cities at least once.
25:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the water quality is very high here in Colorado and I think it's important to protect that.
25:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's by developing watershed plans, limiting development and those watersheds to prevent it from either being
25:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the water timing being changed or the quality coming out of the mountains being changed.
26:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But with a changing climate, we are seeing changes in snowpack, changes in melting out of the snowpack.
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So the predictability of getting that water, particularly as we grow as communities, we're finding that we don't always have
26:21
[SPEAKER_01]: water, the right amount of water when we need it.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's all sorts of challenges moving forward, not just for the ecosystems, but how we're going to meet water demand in the future where water may be declining with climate change.
26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: The precipitation is more variable and less predictable than the temperatures increasing.
26:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you look at the Colorado River,
26:50
[SPEAKER_01]: over the last fifty years, there's been a significant decline in the volume of water that's coming down the Colorado River, and that's for a lot of reasons, but that's the subject of heated conversations right now between all the states that depend on that, that water quantity, not quality even.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we've got a lot of, particularly in the West, we've got a lot of difficult times ahead in terms of
27:17
[SPEAKER_01]: water quantity and and water quality for that matter.
27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
27:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you're doing with your organization running rivers is shining a light on all of this.
27:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You're you're letting the world know that this stuff matters.
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: With the focus on on on the ecosystem part of it and and the native fish part of it, but yeah, getting
27:43
[SPEAKER_01]: seventy people in the woods is an opportunity to educate and when you've got a beer in your hand I think you're you're more easily educated and you may forget it but if you keep coming back to the races and over time you'll hear it all again and you're like hey I think I've heard this before well you described the the race in the Mexico but I think we we haven't heard about the others yet
28:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so there's two more in Colorado that we're doing this year and two others that are taking a year off for a number of reasons.
28:22
[SPEAKER_01]: We have the middle Creek fly-athalon, which is at the beginning of August.
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the longest running one.
28:28
[SPEAKER_01]: This will be the eleventh year of that.
28:31
[SPEAKER_01]: That's in the San Luis Valley.
28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So also benefiting Rio Grande cut through a trout.
28:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in
28:40
[SPEAKER_01]: September, we have the Lake Fort Flyathlon, which is on the Lake Fort of the Gunnison River near Gunnison, Colorado.
28:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And that one, that drainage is Colorado River, cutthroat trout.
28:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So the money we raised with that race goes towards projects benefiting Colorado River, cutthroat trout.
29:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And the two I mentioned that are taking a year off, we have a race in Iowa that benefits Brook trout.
29:09
[SPEAKER_01]: and a race in North Carolina that also benefits for Trump.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And the flooding in North Carolina from last summer is the reason why that one's taking a year off.
29:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the race in Iowa is taking a pause because the guy who helps, well, he and his friends organize it out there.
29:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, he's got young kids and he's like, this is a lot of work putting one of these awesome right.
29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to, I need to push pause these years.
29:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I, you know, after a lot of yelling and I said, okay, you can, you can take a break.
29:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's always been sort of all these races have been organic in their, uh, in their
29:57
[SPEAKER_01]: initiation and so when he wanted to take a break, I said definitely, but you know, come back for sure because it's a ton of fun.
30:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that really is fun.
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: What a unique idea.
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does the scoring work?
30:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The larger the fish, the more time comes off your card.
30:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that right?
30:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it by inch?
30:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it inch a minute or inch.
30:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
30:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
30:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So usually all fish the creek
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: the day before a couple days before and see how easy it is to catch fish and then make that make that call.
30:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very scientific and like, wow, that was really hard.
30:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be or four minutes per inch this year versus last.
30:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that's the, that's the magic behind where we set the set of fish bonus.
30:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But like in the lake fork in the Gunnison race, we have a big fish bonus where if you've got a fish over fifteen inches, those additional inches are worth more off your time because, you know, the size of the fish should matter otherwise it's just about how fast you are.
31:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also, I should note, have a crippling penalty if you come in without a fish.
31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like public shaming or embarrassment, but it's enough so that you can't just run the course and never fish and then still win.
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
31:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's do the lake fork.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the distance on that one?
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Ten miles, roughly.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Ten miles, and it's an out and back.
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so people people see so as you're going out if you're really fast You get to see water first before everyone else But as soon as you break off and start fishing people can go past you and then they see that water first and so There's a lot of strategy involved and my dad actually who's one of my primary volunteers He did a
32:04
[SPEAKER_01]: he interviewed people one year about what their strategy was before the race and then he interviewed them after what their strategy was and they totally abandoned their strategy most of them once they got out there because it, you know, the pressure of deciding where you're going to stop and fish and then fishing it and being like, oh my god, I got to catch a fish quickly, why aren't they, why aren't they gliding and so that's, you know, there's a lot of strategy involved in
32:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's all it's all fun.
32:36
[SPEAKER_01]: We typically at the turnaround point.
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: We have whiskey, which is optional, obviously, but salmon and cheese and so people will come and they'll hit the turnaround point and just hang out for a while.
32:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like a big business.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, moving through check points real quick and I like they gotta get to the finish.
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And some people do that, not everyone's stops for whiskey and cheese, but
33:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That's encouraged.
33:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the sound of this.
33:09
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I like about it.
33:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it kind of goes without saying, but it's a community of people getting together doing something slightly silly, but worthwhile and having fun.
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It's promoting awareness about threatened fish.
33:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, it's also promoting being active and being in the outdoors and being able to run ten miles, right?
33:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all of these things
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It just it all has such a good vibe to it to me.
33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So good and the other
33:41
[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite part of it, Curtis, the community that it creates.
33:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sitting around at the campfire assuming there's not a fire ban.
33:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And just listening to people talk about the fish that caught, the fish they almost caught.
33:56
[SPEAKER_01]: One of our races, the middle creek raised the Rio Grande Cutter trout is on course, and so they're talking about, you know, I almost caught a Rio Grande cutty in all this, and so
34:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And then on social media you see a lot of people that meet at these things that are going out and fishing together outside of the race and and that's really
34:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I think getting a bunch of like-minded people together in the woods away from their phones away from the news cycle is also super important in this day and age.
34:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well said.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I saw in your website, I don't remember what you call it, something slapping, like fish slapping or- What is this?
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah!
34:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So back to the the the flathe on ecosystems so both fish slapping and fastest known fish are non-race engagement opportunities for people to engage in flathe on like behavior and so fish slapping is simply if you're running a race someone else's race that's near a fishable body of water you just run the race with a fly rod or a fishing rod and
35:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Stop and catch a fish during their race and then take a picture on their race bib and send it to me and I've I've encouraged people to let the other as a race director I've encouraged people to let the race director know that they're going to do this and if they object then to not do it.
35:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But most directors are like, you want to do what?
35:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, go ahead.
35:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's a lot of fun.
35:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done it in a number of times.
35:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And when people in the race see you running with a fly rod on your back, they're like, what's going on here?
35:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Another opportunity to educate.
35:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And then fastest known fish for your listeners who are familiar with fastest known time, which is like an ultra running thing.
35:54
[SPEAKER_01]: where you go to a trailhead, it's the fastest time known to the top of a notable peak, or whatnot.
36:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We just add vision and beard of that, and so we've got a website that we've developed that has a bunch of different routes, and most routes people haven't gone back to at least not competitively, but it's an opportunity to document your effort on a particular run.
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And then also share that with folks so they say, oh, you know, if I'm in this area, I might try that to beat your time or just to get out there.
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And they know what's in the lake based on the report from the person who set the quarters.
36:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So those are two of the non race engagements.
36:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And then
36:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We have the long-distance side of things, which is the series of trout man challenges.
36:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And those were born out of the fact that I don't get to run my own races, because I'm in the throws of making sure people aren't overheating or that they're not getting lost in the woods.
37:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So the trout man, which is a marathon,
37:11
[SPEAKER_01]: four different species of fish gaining three thousand feet or more and a twelve percent beer or alternatively awesome alternative so you can you can not drink a twelve percent beer and still become a trout man or trout woman but you have to do that in twelve hours and then we have belt buckles for those folks that are able to complete that
37:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we've kind of built on that over the years.
37:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got one friend in particular who he's an actual ultra runner on just a one of the ultra runner.
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So as he's hit each of these levels, he's asked for more and so I've had to create more and so we have
37:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Old trout which is fifty miles five fish we have Lucifish which is sixty six point six miles six fish and then most recently the challenge I threw at him was called fin sanity which is ten fish a hundred miles gaining ten thousand feet and a twenty percent beer in forty eight hours and
38:18
[SPEAKER_01]: He and another friend of mine accomplished that in June.
38:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't even fine to twenty percent beer.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Another reasonable question is, where do you find ten fish species in ten thousand feet again, but twenty percent beers are few and far between, but I've got a secret source.
38:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I have a fridge full of
38:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have a fridge full of high ABV beers that I will.
38:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Stand to folks who are dumb enough to take these on.
38:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But I myself have completed up to, it's a progressive series.
38:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've got to do, you have to be a trout man before you can attempt the fifty mile version and up the chain.
39:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I've only made it through the sixty six point six mile challenge.
39:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, fin sanity is ready.
39:14
[SPEAKER_01]: long long term to do list.
39:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Fin sanity that that sounds rough.
39:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Hundred miles.
39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Ten thousand vrts.
39:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Ten species of fish.
39:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Twenty percent beer.
39:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Forty eight hours.
39:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And in forty eight hours.
39:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Which my alter running buddy did in.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to say twenty nine thirty one hours somewhere down there.
39:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to take every last minute of those forty-eight hours to get through it.
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's challenging, right?
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you can't really fish when it's two in the morning so you've got a time where you're going to be to find ten different species.
39:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to cover a lot of different water bodies and so you've got to
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more planning than anything.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you've still got to run a hundred miles, but you know, you need to be at the right places at the right times to be successful.
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And so pouring over maps and intel from Parks and Wildlife, what fish is where?
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And then hitting it, not in the middle of the day when it's too hot to fish.
40:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a logistical nightmare, but they got it done.
40:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Andrew, I've, I've interviewed several ultramarathoners and just the story of I ran a hundred miles and this is what it felt like.
40:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Just that story is amazing.
40:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, people that do this stuff and I don't run that far.
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: People that do this stuff.
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: are super athletes and what they've accomplished, but then to throw in the fun angle.
40:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just hard work.
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to catch ten different species of fish while I'm doing this.
41:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's a lot of fun, but
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But I would caution folks, there's an element of panic, too.
41:10
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're at a location where this is the only opportunity you have to catch a species that you need.
41:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Panic starts to set in when they're not eating.
41:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You do just have to remember it's for fun, but when you're forty-seven miles in and a grailing won't eat, it can be pretty frustrating.
41:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, you know, I had never heard of this before looking into what you're doing here.
41:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it's, it's a beautiful juxtaposition of the things that adventure sports should really be about, you know, it's the fun, the athleticism, the community to come, rotary, and connecting with nature in unique ways.
41:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.
41:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Well done.
41:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Very, very cool.
41:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the only thing I would add to that occurred is I feel like we as as people who, you know, get out on these landscapes.
42:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we pay taxes.
42:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, those taxes should go to the maintenance of those places, but we can do so much more as as users of of these public lands and public waters to make sure that they're
42:23
[SPEAKER_01]: you know in good health into the future and it's really going to require that investment in whether it's advocacy or through fundraising like our fly athletes do to make sure the resources are there to keep these things in the shape that they're in because you know as a trail runner I can show up at any trail and just run it for free but
42:47
[SPEAKER_01]: should I, you know, should I be more engaged in ensuring that that trail is going to be run-able for the next thirty years?
42:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of where I'm at my life is how can I make sure all of this is still around for my kids and their kids well into the future?
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
43:09
[SPEAKER_00]: There are awful lot of adventure sports that are kind of water-based and
43:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the idea of combining those with the health of the ecosystem and the watershed.
43:22
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, and to you found a great way to do it because the, I mean, the fish are an indicator of the, of the health of ecosystem, right?
43:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So there, there's even a stronger drop, but I'm thinking about people that are doing high water paddling sports or canoeing distance sports or distance kayaking challenges or, I mean, the list just goes on and on and on.
43:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the people that do the fishing.
43:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the people that do the scuba diving, even.
43:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know,
43:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Having an awareness of what this is all about, helps so much, and that's what you're talking about, getting people out there so they have a connection to these native waterways.
44:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got to be having fun doing it.
44:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's going to make them want to keep doing it.
44:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And that'll make them the best advocates and best champions for those places.
44:22
[SPEAKER_01]: are having a great time while they're doing it.
44:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you know what, we went this whole show so far without actually explaining to people what fly fishing is.
44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's easy to assume that people know, but not everybody does.
44:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So we will explain to us how fly fishing is different from other styles of fishing while it makes it unique.
44:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, sure.
44:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's instead of like spin fishing or bait fishing, you're you're doing a whole lot more casting and so you're getting your line off the off the water and extending the line out with the back cast and then a forward cast and instead of bait or a
45:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a spinning lure, you're imitating the food that the fish is eating in the flies.
45:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called fly fishing for a reason, but the flies are adult and immature forms of bugs that live in the rivers and the lakes.
45:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're imitating the food that the fish is eating naturally and trying to trick them into
45:32
[SPEAKER_01]: eating your food, which has a hook on it, and then that's when you bring them in and release them.
45:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I would say there's a learning curve to fly fishing, but it's not as steep as many people think.
45:48
[SPEAKER_01]: as long as you go to the right places where the fish don't see pressure all the time and so yeah as a newbie your fly is not going to be floating quite as well as maybe my fly is after fishing my whole life but if you go where the fish are desperate and we don't use the word stupid we say naive because it happens seeing a whole lot of fake flies
46:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to be successful and that's where you learn.
46:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And if any of your listeners want a tip on where to go to find naive fish to learn on, have them shoot me an email and I'd be happy to point them in their right direction.
46:28
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of Brook trout out there that are willing to eat your terribly presented fly.
46:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And Brookies are fun too.
46:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And so your website is River, let's see, I set it backwards, runningrivers.org.
46:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the best way to get in touch with you?
46:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think we've got, I think my mail is up there.
46:54
[SPEAKER_01]: If it's not, I'll put it up tonight.
46:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a toxicologist, fish ecologist, not a website developer.
47:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So if my website is terrible, I'm sorry, listeners.
47:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm working on it.
47:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But my email is super easy.
47:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's cut through at Gmail.
47:18
[SPEAKER_01]: If your listeners want to shoot me email, I'm happy to point them in the right direction because it is a wonderful sport and it's something you can do your whole life.
47:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I can say this much.
47:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I did a lot of fishing in Oklahoma as a kid.
47:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I tried fly fishing,
47:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I was very pleasantly surprised.
47:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It is just a whole new ballgame.
47:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And line casting is also fun.
47:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even if all you have on the end of your line is a piece of a cotton ball, just getting that line to float correctly and to make the distance.
48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's just a really, really fun thing to learn.
48:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's something you can spend a whole lifetime mastering.
48:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm good until I go fish with my buddy Ben.
48:15
[SPEAKER_01]: younger than me, but is a hundred times better than me.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I learned something from him every time I go out with him.
48:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned something new from all the people I run around in the woods, doing these dumb long distance challenges with you learn.
48:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You learn new things every time you go out as long as you're open to learning.
48:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like any sport, I think they're
48:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there are some frustrations and there are some people that take themselves too seriously, but I think it's a wonderful sport to learn and as long as you're open to that learning, I think it's enjoyable.
49:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I think one of my favorite things about it is where it takes me.
49:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it takes me to pristine waterways nestled in canyons and to beautiful beautiful mountain scapes and you experience all the elements and you're often standing in the water.
49:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, you're dealing with the elements one on one.
49:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a matter of looking out the window of your car.
49:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You're there.
49:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's something about that.
49:34
[SPEAKER_00]: just having a goal, having an activity that will take you to places in nature is so valuable and that's one of the things I like most about fly fishing and I'll be he candid with you Andrew often when my son who's just crazy about fly fishing was growing up.
49:53
[SPEAKER_00]: He's very tenacious and he can he can fly fish for a very long time and so quite often I'd be done.
50:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But he's still going at it and I had so much fun just sitting on the bank observing, watching the Eagles fly by, you know, looking at the rocks and the geology and for me, it's just as much about where I go as it is, whether I ever catch a fish or not.
50:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's the progression of fly fisherman is, you know, you want to catch your first fish and then you want to catch the most fish, then you want to catch the biggest fish and then you're, you want to take a nap next to the river because you've got enough fish and you just want to listen to the river as you take a nap or maybe that's the progression of just aging and you want to take
50:51
[SPEAKER_01]: take a nap by the river, but the other thing you jogged in my memory is for listeners, I mean, fly fishing has a, I think undeserved reputation of being super expensive to do.
51:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I think
51:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you get, get it out to the extreme and with waiters and a boat and all that, it can, can be expensive, but at its core, all you need is a, a rod of real and some flies and a willingness to stand and cold water from time to time.
51:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's not prohibitively expensive, particularly if you're, if you're willing to experience nature without a barrier between you and nature and just stand in the river.
51:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's the purest way to do it anyway personally.
51:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I had to share Andrew what a guy in a fly shop said to me once when we were looking at rods.
51:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He was holding a rod in his hand that was over seven hundred dollars.
51:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was holding a rod in my hand that was somewhere probably south of a hundred.
51:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And he looked at me says, you know what the difference is between those two rods.
52:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I said no, no idea.
52:03
[SPEAKER_00]: He said about two to three feet of cast.
52:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the point and I mean, I can go for the best, but.
52:16
[SPEAKER_01]: In particular, as you're learning, you're not going to know the difference between the nine hundred dollar run and you're more likely to break the rod anyway.
52:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So mine as well, how that a hundred dollar rod.
52:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I think that's important for folks to know is that it's not a cost prohibitive, particularly if you're interested, which I've never done because I have fat fingers and I'm not terribly crafty, but I know tying your own flies is a whole new level of getting into the craft and can save you some resources in terms of buying flies.
52:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think it's a wonderful
52:58
[SPEAKER_01]: wonderful way to experience the natural world and would encourage everyone to get with a shot.
53:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I agree.
53:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing about fly tying, I said it's a great wintertime sport.
53:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like, it's like craft beer though.
53:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Kurt, I, you know, so many people do it so well.
53:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to screw it up.
53:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm, I'm at all that others do it for me.
53:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Andrew, thank you so much for being on the Adventure Sports podcast today.
53:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And thank you for sharing what you have going on with your running rivers organization.
53:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a really cool idea.
53:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And man, I think it's fun.
53:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad that other people out there can learn about your organization.
53:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, we have a worldwide reach.
53:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there will be people that want to emulate what you're doing so that they can build awareness about their local rivers and ecosystems too.
53:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Well that's the great thing is it's it's exportable and we actually do have it's called the High Country Flyathlon a guy from Australia reached out to me and said can we do this in Australia and I said I don't know do you have the time and he's been put them on for the last couple years but it could it could be done anywhere it doesn't have to be a trout stream we've looked at Arkansas for small mouth bass
54:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So if anyone is interested in exploring the development, wherever you are in the world, feel free to reach out because I'm happy to share all the ways I've messed it up so that you don't do that as you develop yours.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and people can reach you at runningrivers.org and cutthroat at gmail.com.
54:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, sir.
54:44
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
54:45
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, Andrew.
54:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you very much.
54:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And all the listeners out there.
54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your time today.
54:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't talk a lot about fishing on the Adventure Sports podcast, but it is a fantastic adventure sport.
54:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And so until the next show, find your fun.
55:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that is one of these fly affelons, then more power to take care.
55:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Kurt.