S1, Ep 3: Shack Nasties and the Drunk & Disorderly: A Winter Chat with Tommy Lynch

Marvin Cash: 00:00:04

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Butcher Shop where the Meat Meets the Water. On this episode, I'm joined by Tommy Lynch. I caught up with Tommy on a cold winter evening in Michigan.

The brutal Michigan winter had left Tommy with a bad case of the shack nasties, but we managed to take a deep dive into the drunken disorderly with the assistance of a few monsters and a little Kodiak. I think you're really going to enjoy this one.

But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items to make sure you don't miss a single episode of the Butcher Shop. Be sure to subscribe in the podcatcher of your choice.

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Tommy Lynch: 00:01:59

Well, thanks for having me, Marv.

Marvin Cash: 00:02:01

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation. And before we go down the rabbit hole on the D and D, I just wanted to ask you where the name came from.

And I'm really hopeful that there's a really good story that possibly involves a bail bondsman.

Tommy Lynch: 00:02:14

You know, I don't know if I'm that cool.

I Marv, I gotta tell you, it's, you know, I, I, I suppose drunken disorderly just came from the the action of randomness without any, you know, real distinction. I mean a good movement.

But that's kind of those, those crankbaits, they move very randomly, side to side, bouncing around and you can't really know which way they're going to crank from this way to the next and et cetera.

And, and I like that, that drunk action, that inconsistency, that randomness in the movement and that those, those I believe were all really high, strong bite indicator or not bite indicators, but kind of, you know, bite in enhancement tools for those fish that were, I would say, open to the idea of predation. So if you, if you hit enough of the bite triggers, that fish or would be predator fish would give it an audience if nothing else.

So yeah, I like the drunk nature of that movement.

Marvin Cash: 00:03:18

Yeah, I was hoping for something R or possibly X rated, but we'll just stick with that.

Tommy Lynch: 00:03:22

No, I got, I gotta learn how to drink first. Right.

Marvin Cash: 00:03:27

But you know, just. It's kind of funny. So before you start recording, you've settled in with a monster and a big dip of Copenhagen, right?

Tommy Lynch: 00:03:34

Well, Kodiak I. It's a Kodiak right now. But yeah, no, that's, that's a good seat in the, in the sip there.

So, you know, it's, it's definitely winter here in northern Michigan this year. We've had a. I've been staring at that vice a little bit more than I normally do in the winter and yeah, we're going a bit stir crazy.

So the, the caffeine, the nicotine and that all kind of keeps the lights on.

Marvin Cash: 00:03:58

Yeah. Well, there you go.

So, you know, getting back to the drunk, you know, what was the hole in your fly box that you were trying to fill when you started designing the pattern?

Tommy Lynch: 00:04:08

So I suppose, you know, when I was younger fishing crankbaits, I kind of knew the potential movement of any would be artificial.

But we used to fish these Great lakes deceivers that were kind of a Mark Sadati style, you know, bucktail slash, you know, feather tail articulated streamers.

When we started fishing, Mile this is, you know, post his visit when he kind of introduced us to a different realm of big fly beyond what we considered to be a big fly here in Michigan at the time. I fish in strip leeches with, you know like zoo cougar trailers.

And you know, a lot of guys are fishing like, you know, big massive bucktails with lead. I mean there was just, there was a lot of kind of raz around after Mark was throwing those feather slammers here.

And when I saw great Lakes deceiver hit some of our tailwater boil wash behind boulders or off a ledge or, you know, in that current transition, what have you, you could always see that, that blank pause of movement and redirect of the head where the fly would not just jig or pulse or dart, but simply turn around on itself.

And I was, I, I just, every time I saw it in that unique water it might be in at any given time, I was like, now it would be really cool if we had a fly that did that all the doggone time.

Because the sales pitch of watching a bait fish not only dart run away, but then sometimes turn around in that inconsistent nature of maybe a fish that's been hit by another and, and just really off kilter, darting around, trying to find some reason and it's failing. And those predators, whether they're in that state of kill, kill or not, you know, they just, that's kind of their fucking job. Oh, sorry.

Sorry about that.

Marvin Cash: 00:06:15

Oh, that's okay. I marked this podcast explicit, so we don't have to edit that out.

Tommy Lynch: 00:06:19

Oh, okay, Very good then. Well then fuck it.

Marvin Cash: 00:06:24

But, but that being said, we're not in the business of gratuitous profanity, but if it serves a purpose.

Tommy Lynch: 00:06:29

No, no. Yeah, yeah. If there's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If there's a line running.

Marvin Cash: 00:06:33

Yeah, yeah.

So, so, you know, obviously so the Sadati patterns were helpful, but, you know, who are some of the other tires and anglers that kind of, you were kind of taking bits and pieces from as you started to work on the drunk?

Tommy Lynch: 00:06:46

Oh God. The Muddler Minnow was a huge influence on we. We have a lot of salmon fry here on the, the pm.

So, you know, for early clients, especially less than savvy streamer folks that are not, you know, ready to be given a, you know, a sink tip with a hunk of meat, you know, these couple of minnow patterns that would dart and dive or, you know, subsurfacely play floater intermediate or light sink on a five or a six weight was, I mean, just a very easy way to get a five weight corked out.

With an 18 inch, you know, late spring brown trout here on the Pere Marquette that's been feeding on everything from caviar to, to steelhead smold upwards of 10 inches and these fish will take these little minnows with frequency. I mean, a lot of people think they're looking at a hatch unfold when they see these crashes on the surface and whatnot and in surrounding rivers.

Here on the Pier Marquette, where the Residents get a huge influx of protein from the migratories that are entering the same system.

Be it eggs, smoke, fry par year round protein on top of all of the, you know, aquatic, terrestrial and, and other food sources that you can throw in there over the course of the year. But the predator grows early here. So that Muddler Minnow was a big one. I would say the Dahlberg diver, Larry Dahlberg.

The first time I saw that hunt for big fish and he's throwing for those peacock bass with those Dahlberg divers chugging and, and just moving and these big bronze come through that, you know that the movement of that fly had a lot more walk and ask from it than any jig style lead headed creation that I did ever.

Because I, you know, I, I came back from Alaska with strip leeches that were basically big lead headed, you know, front hook palm birds strung out with a little know, dacron in the back.

And we modified that as many ways as you could when we, we were back here in Michigan between putting like Madonna heads on it and you know, big wide round, you know, stuff and then, and even on the big sink, the big sink leeches we'd put like a little zoo cougar, Kelly's little zoo cougar. That the way that moved. You'd be surprised how many fish.

You know, we caught a lot of big fish on that big black leech that was upwards of, you know, seven inches at the time. And it was big barbell pulling your shoulder out of the socket trying to cast it.

And we run a tag somewhere, you know, two to three feet to get the, the tension off of that line so that that cougar could kind of walk around. Those fish would certainly come to the leech, but a lot of times they'd come for that little cougar as the teaser.

Kind of like running the pupa behind the streamer out west, you know, it was the big one brings them in, the second one sells them. And I've always believed that tandem fly thing, the, the root of that hit is the confusion.

Brown trout's, you know, superpowers, its ability to critique that single presentation. But when you have two flies, it becomes harder for them to focus on one.

Confuses and forces that kind of instinctual response instead of that highly critique or considered one. And, and that's why we would throw that cougar and as a trailer and again most of the big ones would come on the leech.

But again, you know, that cougar being a fraction of the size that got audience but its Movement was far different than the leech. The leech would fall and the cougar would just sit there and kind of swim and hang and hover in the water column.

And much like when we fish those muddlers for the, the fry back here, that, that late hover with the slack following the strip was really the magic of any good swim flying going back to those deceivers like in our tail waters. When I first saw those hit boil water, I mean it was obvious that a fly could make those movements.

It was just there was now the need to figure out how to make those movements more consistent outside of just hitting, you know, bland boil water and trying to retrieve slack whenever possible. So I'm sorry, that was a very weird answer. But I mean that, that covers a lot of that.

I mean the, the end game was with swim fly isn't the post jig reaction which when we fish lead flies, we lift it, it falls.

And there are different variations of parachuted material and this and that, but it all has that kind of up and down and very leachy sometimes sculpony look to it. And it's also a deeper fish versus getting into those, you know, muddler minnows, Madonna zoo cougars.

You know, back then you could see the difference between the sink flies and those swim flies and, and therein you could see that they match that walk of a repellent far more than any type of jig presentation, which might I add, is a very deadly technique.

I, I don't want to knock any, I caught a lot of fish on a sex dungeon and a strip leech when I was a kid and, and there's nothing to be said for catching fish, but it often lacked a lot of the visuals that you could get when you fished a neutral fly or a float recovery fly in some way where you were at least fishing like that halfway point of the column or just above that point and, and hoping to see all that violence and hatred unfold because that, you know, I, I, I suppose it's easy enough to say that nymphing will always out produce, you know, these, these variations of strip or, or predator, you know, ask styles of fishing there and you know, mousing and streamers and swing, whatever, but when you throw a bigger fly, you want to see or at least have some kind of violent refute to your fly that that gives it a reason to fish that style of less productivity. Does that make sense?

Marvin Cash: 00:13:12

Yeah, it does. I mean and kind of focusing on the bite trigger, I mean, I guess with the drunk it's really I mean it's not really profile, right.

It's almost like a belly roll, like a Rapala. Right, right.

Tommy Lynch: 00:13:24

Which is, I mean, the big reason everybody's, you know, I, I get asked a lot when people are tying these. They'll tie a semi good door stopper, but they'll leave a lot of that under chin deer.

And the idea of a drunk is to be fighting for that, that look of off equilibrium, as I say. And, and that is to say that whenever an injured bait fish has something wrong with it, they have this need to try.

And it's like they're trying to keep their belly under them because their equilibrium, being off being hit or injured or just having some weird amount of air that they can't resolve in their bladders keeps that belly.

Now if they roll over completely, that's, that's a death sentence for, you know, any prey or trout or any, you know, anything that's, you know, swimming. I mean they have to kind of keep that lateral movement through the water and gills to keep that. And if they go upside down, they die.

So when, when I saw repellas and you know, fleeting steelhead smolt that you would get killed right at my boots sometimes in the spring. I mean these are 8 to 10 inch smoke. These are, these are not minnows, these are not fry.

And these browns, which you wouldn't see until the last second crashing these things into, you know, foot of water and leaving dents in the river. I mean it was just fascinating to see that hatred fall down.

But it was also unique to see that the rest of the pot of smolt would be like just totally oblivious to that.

That whole hunt going down where that one off fish that that brown trout singles out and that herd of smolt moving down to the lake and snipes, it just, I mean, says you're the, you're the one that I'm going to kill. And that fish obviously knows it's been targeted, starts to run and then the brown trout hunts it down with extreme prejudice.

I mean it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's fun to, it's. It's fun to kind of be in that element, to see that next level of, of take.

And if you can recreate that and have that happen with some consistency via what you tie and create. I mean again, the drunk is a paper airplane. I mean there's a lot of Dahlberg in there.

There's a lot of muddler flank and, and, and movement and even that rear has got that cougar Y shimmy. And I mean, what you're trying to do is basically hit as many bite triggers.

So with a swim fly, you're trying to get a bug to go four ways to your one instead of with the jig fly that we usually have that one action to our reaction, which is we jig it up, it lifts and then it falls.

And in those parachutes and materials and head design and whatnot, we can have that different kind of head signature left for the lateral lines to pick up on that intrusive, you know, leech falling out of trout. Which is why I think 90% of jig fly presentation works is because they feel.

It's like here in Michigan we have chestnut lampreys that attach themselves to, you know, whatever trotter in those systems.

And I believe that a trout seeing a chestnut in that descent for a possible hookup would try and take it out before the attachment or a night crawler for that. Who. Who knows? But that, that intrusive I'm falling on you style jig fishing is a very potent way to especially pick the lock on fish in cold water.

But I've. I found over fishing as many years for the steelhead with the strip fly through the winter months.

Obviously not this year because we're, I mean, I walked across the fricking glacier to get into the man cave here, but it's, it's a real winter up here in Michigan and you know. Yeah. Getting back to it, it's. It's just there's a lot of different ways to say that you're streamer fishing.

I mean, they're, they're like jig nymph streamers. And there's, there's kind of lead streamers, there's swim fly streamers. They're swung fly streamers.

They're soft tackles, which is the type of streamer in my book. I mean, streamers as, as a, as a whole is a broad spectrum and it's whatever you want to get out of it.

If it's about numbers, you know, you could argue that, you know, fishing a pat's rubber legs underneath an indicator will do more damage than 90% of anything that I'm talking about tonight. But, but you won't get to see him kill it. And that's. I, you know, and that's, that's. I think, what's.

I think that as I get older, that's my slice of pie. That's why I get off on the cricks there, Marv. I like seeing that hatred unfold inside my rod. Tip. I want to see that.

I want to see the whites of his eyes. I want to see him get mad and I want to see it all. I want to see the start to the finish. I want to see his, you know, post slap reaction.

I want to, I want to know why he turned. I want to know why he used that structure element for his hydraulic sit. I want to know these things every time I make a cast.

So when I'm in a crick I can learn these things. When I'm throwing a hundred feet out of tail water, I can catch a bigger trout. But I won't learn as much. I won't. I just, I think those cricks.

There's a. You can. That rabbit hole is very deep in my opinion. So yeah, very, very neat.

Marvin Cash: 00:18:54

And so, you know, if we come to the pattern, Tommy, and we start. Let's, you know, if we start in the back and we work our way up to just before the head, you know, can you kind of walk us through it?

And it would be really cool to hear, you know, some of the materials that didn't make the final cut for the drunk.

Tommy Lynch: 00:19:13

Well, and that's that. I'm.

I'm glad you can ask me that now, as many years into this evolution of the Bug because they're definitely, I mean my first heads are not the chiseled awesome that they are today. The, the first attempts at these drunk heads had almost too much deer in them. We didn't have the Solariz to keep that durability in the deer post.

You know, big brown chew up. I mean brown trout and deer hair is like, you might as. I mean the teeth are like velcro in that stuff and they pull it to shreds.

And you know, everybody wonders why we use the, the cement. You know, you could argue the Bug actually swims better without it.

But if you're gonna spend, you know, 20 to, you know, depending on your level of, you know, razor work or whatnot, I mean it can take some guys upwards of an hour to tie a really good pattern. Be an awful shame to donate it to just one. I mean that's something that should be shared with as many brown trout as possible.

And, and so that's why we started using that cement just like anybody else uses head cement in fly tying. It's just a. Keep a durability around the head of the fly and. And again it's a cut pattern. So you really do want it to last post one or two fish.

And, and the way we're building it now it's, it's so durable that I mean 90% of the time the, the wire fails. The bite wire that holds the, the connection together, that usually fails before the, the patterned material slip or anything.

And we're using that GSV proper now too. We're pulling that material or that thread into the material. We're not just wrapping. We're. We're every three to five wraps just digging that shit.

You know, I don't like these things moving around in the water. I like that paper airplane gliding and sliding through that water and I want that head digging.

And so all these steps that we work from the rear up, I mean the original drunk is simply flash. The triple having the extra rudder of the butter knife tail. You know, we tied it. You know, the rear hook you could argue could be fished by itself.

Kind of almost cougar like in the way we lay the, the, the one flank on the rear there and then up into the forward. And again we've, we've got these bite wires down to like each pattern has a certain pound test for maximum, you know, wiggle, waggle, what have you.

I mean we've got nanos, micros, we've got minis, standards fulls shad wraps and six flavors and triple Ds all the way through all of them. So it's not just a, it's not just a pattern. It's more of a platform.

And, and it can be used in a variety of different ways after you involve like jig hooks, side eyes, different degrees from, you know, 20° to 26 AREX makes, you know, owner makes a really nice side eye that walks the dog. You know, when you get into the side eye patterns, they obviously have a lot more glide than dig. Any of the downeye patterns are more for the dig.

And when I'm using the standard drunks as much as the shad wrap will get some ludicrous depths when you're fishing, you know, tail waters and, and not. And I've actually caught some good fish on the white in Arkansas on those shad wrap. So I'm not going to knock them too bad.

But yeah, every time we get into those sizes hooks, it's. I just feel it's a damn shame not to put that tail on them just because of how fishy because the drunk has that broke.

Broken repella kind of, you know, that brokeback repella shimmy shake, rattle if you will, as it. As it moves, very sharp actions versus the triple that has that ruddered tail and post finish.

When you get into that Forward, which is, you know, when you have the wedge flat and kind of horizontal.

And then you go behind the head, you go into those lateral two much larger flanks, smashing the polar chenille together to kind of create that secondary forward butter knifing into that cougar shimmy and then into that next butter knife tail. That's, that's where all that movement is, is in that shimmy.

And again, we've played with the leader designs and all this stuff to encourage that, you know, that post strip slack for that multiple move movement action, post strip instead of just having it fall. And you know, my, my saying is, is, you know, why sink when you can dive, you know?

And, and, and again, the nice thing about fishing these neutrally buoyant or, or maybe even a little bit of flow. There's some guys that, that tell me to add the belly hair and one of their stripes when I've, I've tied for them.

And that's to add a little bit of that float recover. I mean, you can play with these patterns based upon the type of deer you use. Obviously the body fur is a much more neutral.

You don't have to use as much of it and you can still get the dig and wedge. It's terribly helpful when we're using like the smaller patterns just because it's a finer hair.

Whereas when you get up into these four odd, I just tied four big or three big four ought, triples the style that we used to fish down there in Arkansas for the browns. Then guys gonna go fish a muskie tournament in Kentucky with them. And that's on a side eye 40 degree gamakatsu. And with a one ought trailer.

And the bug is eight and a half inches long, but deep with some mass in the correct spots. Because I don't like the mass. I like a signature left in the water.

And that I think is all done with a head of a fly versus any mass that you're throwing behind. It becomes more of a parachuting drag. Which is why I stayed away from marabou.

I tried the marabou and the baraboo is fantastic for, you know, some of my swing flies. I use them for doing the, the collar wraps and palmer and, and, and that kind of stuff.

And, and, and I, I do believe if I'm using a lead fly, marabou is an invaluable material just because of its parachuting effect.

Like you strip it and it goes completely flat, narrow, and then as soon as you pause, it opens and parachutes, which is great if you're trying to kind of get that lift and jig and that nice kind of soft, slower fall versus some darted, you know, mass just falling to the ditch. But we tried the marabou. I even tried some dubbing loops with a lot of the materials. And there's some arguments, you know, in that.

That middle edition of bunny where you could maybe put it there. But again, having the shoulders that the.

The bunny gives us gives us also then a platform to kind of build off of the other materials just in front of it. And the biggest reason we use the bunny on the zonk the strips is on the forward part there is to build the shouldering for the. That.

That big pinch of deer collar that we're trying to leave that signature like a good Buford. I've always been a big fan of the Bufords, and. And I've never. I've never thought the really heavy beauty.

I mean, a lot of the guys that throw muskie flies are throwing these fully mass. And they say I'm mimicking the mass of a full sucker. And I buy that. And they are.

But my argument is, is if the forward part of the fish is the largest on any would be prey, predator, whatever. It doesn't. A fish is usually largest forward.

In that case, with the fish moving through the water, that signature is left by that forward mass, and everything behind it becomes a cavitated nothingness. So I would take less material behind those heads to create that.

That kind of cavitated movement than I would want to add mass to blow out my shoulder. And then again, parachute. Any would be swim out of the fly, which is why that, you know, you can pick up a drunk and there's no weight to it.

They're very easy to throw. They're not like. I mean, it's the equivalent of throwing a bucktail without any. I mean, there's just. There's a lot of shed on them.

There's not much material. I mean, the bulk of the body is polar chenille, which sheds on the lift. And. Yeah, sorry, I was rambling there, boss.

Marvin Cash: 00:27:44

No, dude, it's all good. You know, and it's kind of interesting because, you know, we know that the wedge head gives you the dig.

You know, how long did it take you as you were developing the drunk to kind of dial in? And I know you're. It's still evolving, but, you know, how long did it take you to really kind of dial in the head the way you wanted it?

Tommy Lynch: 00:28:01

Well, the first ones I was tying, I was really fighting the float Recovery because not only was my packing skills not where they are today, but also my cutting. The idea of the drunk was always there.

I mean as far as its inception, as far as the movement, the paper airplane underwater type of thinking, the problem with the whole thing was, is, you know, I had been limited to tying Madonnas and the occasional cougars and muddlers and you know, a couple of these, you know, brook trout flies that we use, the Turks whatnot. And anyways, we always had that rounded effect.

And what I was looking for was what the repella had which was like when I used to fish it when I was a kid, you'd reel it really fast and then it would dig really hard, not to the bottom so much, but definitely into that mid column would be kill area and, and then you'd back it off and you'd wait for that kill or you'd swat it and reel it as fast as you could and take that decision away from, you know, that's the magic of the two handed burn is you, you, you, you fail to give them the time to critique it. And in that, that inability for them to critique it, they have to give it audience in any consideration so they have to stay with it.

Two handed burns they produce but their turnover rates relative to how many fish you see are often, you know, it's not the same as stripping and teasing where you're hitting, you know, four or five different bite triggers with every, you know, couple few movements of, of of your action.

With a strip with a, a two handed burn, you're trying to basically take that fish's ability to sit there and you know, find the error of your presentation and just force him to give an audience and chase. So I fell off of that question there. Marv, help me out.

Marvin Cash: 00:29:57

No, it's all good, you know, and so it's, it's interesting, right? I mean, you know, you talked a little bit about kind of, you know, substituting like belly hair and things like that.

Can you talk a, for some of the obsessive tires out there about kind of how you can tweak the, the composition, you know, of the head to you know, adjust float recovery. And also too, you know, we talked about this I think yesterday, you know, talk to, about maybe if you ever considered putting any foam in the body.

Tommy Lynch: 00:30:26

Well, and, and as you can see, as I was telling you like early on in these, these first ties, I was using the wedge in a grander form than it is now. Like even those big four odd triples are probably almost twice as big back then. As they are now.

Because I realized I didn't need float recovery so much as I needed neutrality. Cause I wanted all that action. Dive, dig, sweep, chuck and jog, whatever. I wanted all that or chuck and jive to, to happen.

And then I wanted that fish to kind of consider how just, just dead that fish looks. I want it to look like the fish just gave it its last few dying kicks.

And that trout has got no other option than to take that just dead fish because it's fresh and it offers no chase. It's kind of his job. That's, that's the big trigger in, in pause fishing.

So in that evolution of considering how much float relative to how much dig and then how much movement, the width of these cuts, the, the lack of chin material, I mean, and don't be ashamed when you get to the thread because having material under that, that chin is not nearly as important as having a very nice, slicey, dicey wedge top.

Because in the end, whatever crazy drunk action this bug may or may not give because we don't use the rod in this presentation, there are a few variations of our, our, our, our presentation because we've branched out. We've gotten away from just one size fits all style presentation.

And we have basically have different presentations for different styles of water that you're fishing, be it size, depth, even direction.

As we're fishing up the cricks, you know, you have to use bowline tensions to use all the water drag you can to create that downstream fashion, just like a repellent guy would walk up a crip. We're fishing this in that style too. And it's just naughty.

It's, it's, it's so fun to see that many trout come to a fly in a day that you can just barely get your hand around. And so, yeah, I mean, that evolution of that head has now certainly shrank. Some tying tips are number one.

I see the biggest error that people do is they never leave themselves enough head room for the amount of deer that they would want to have there to cut and kind of sculpt that, that, that needed material. So, you know, always remember that the body length is secondary to how well that head comes out.

And as long as you understand that most of the bugs will come out shiny and use, use the whole hook.

I am a sucker for using like every little bit of the hook to a point where I'm just like in there trying to find a place to get two or three whip finishes in there to lock them in.

But that's all the room I give myself, I want to have as much length and fish look as far as natural mass and movement because every one of these collars is far different than, you know, the one size below.

So like If I'm fishing a 4, 0, obviously I need to use a certain kind of deer hair length grade to be able to build a long enough collar to cover that 2/3 to 3/4amount of the, the bunny shoulder that we just built behind it. Don't try and use just regular, you know, denier threads. Get into the gel sponge. The semper fide nano silk is just cherry.

I, I have been tying for a long time and I can tell you that arguably one of the best additions besides, you know, regal vice and having that ability to tie bigger flies easy and all of these fantastic materials coming out.

I mean it all starts with your ability to how, how well you can lock a streamer onto that hook without getting into all gluing this step and then that. I don't like the glue because it breaks down the threads. And I would certainly rather stretch the GSB just about.

And I often do break the GSB when I'm tying it because I every third four rep I give it that what more so that it not just wraps around the material, but bites into it. And that's what keeps these, these paper airplanes kind of locked in. It's just like anything else.

As soon as your paper airplane's got a dent in the wing or something, you gotta pull it in, you gotta straighten it out, get that thing flying again. So you wanna have a solid kind of, you know, foundation on these bugs so that they, they're, they're, they're a swim fly, they're not a jig fly.

You want this fly doing more than you're doing to it, and that's the end game.

Marvin Cash: 00:35:22

Got it? Any other kind of mistakes that you see people make when they're trying to.

Tommy Lynch: 00:35:25

Tie drunks teardrop size. The teardrops. Make sure there's a nice teardrop in that connection.

You don't want it to be extra long because the wave will be too big per the length of the 4x long hook or jig hook, whatever you're using for the forward. But leave the teardrop there so that the hook is allowed to bounce up and down and freely.

I mean, if you run your bead tight to the thing, what it does is it ends up pinching the eye of the hook and you just knock whatever potential, you know, movement out of that tail there could have been when you're doing your tails. Use the nice whiting saddles. Those whiting saddles are the bomb. I mean you can make a perfect butter knife.

You can fish the thing for six days in a row and it doesn't turn into a Mr. Twister like your basic slop it some. Check out the cascade flash stuff. You know, their blends of flash are very, very fishy and potent.

You know, choose a better grade of bunny. Use, you know, use different lengths of bunny for different size patterns.

Like only use that really, really long grade bunny for doing your really big flies and anything smaller. You can use the low grade. Stay away from the thick. The thick hides too on the bunny. It makes it a son of a to time.

Anytime you can find a thin whatever color, you can build the color around that. And I hope one day we broaden the fly tying communities potential color draw from the.

The fly tying companies that are offering kind of the same colors and flanks for a long time. I wish there was just a little bit more maybe color and even some detail that we could start adding to some of these.

I mean the select flanks that we use for like doing spay collars and stuff, become the, the primary flanks that we use on those giant triples.

I mean anything over a one and you're using spay flanks to build that larger paper airplane because you need those, those, you know, those better lines in the water to compensate for larger head.

You know, some of these four out patterns that, I mean you're six, seven pencils a deer and then you're cutting a wedge that's you know, five times as big as this one that I'm looking at right now. That's a micro. And you know the head on, it's about like my thumbnail. Not even my thumb. It's more like my pinky nail.

So there's a difference of locomotion you're trying to build with each of these bugs. So you know. Yeah, I mean it's, it's definitely a neat platform to play with. And it's, it's loose.

You can add it to whatever smallmouth pike, whatever predator vendetta you've got. This one plugs in just because it does have a ton of move, pardon my French shit, ton of move moves like Jagger.

Marvin Cash: 00:38:22

Yeah, there you go. And any, any tools that you like that make tying the drunk easier.

Tommy Lynch: 00:38:30

I got a, what I think it's called a whitetail hair stacker. I was at a show, I think we were. I was at Mikey. I was in Mikey Schultz's booth that year and, and I go over to this.

I can't remember the name anyways. It's called Whitetail Supply. I think it is. Hey, and I got pretty chubby Irish fingers, so I can stick my thumb in this packer or stacker.

So when I'm doing some of these larger patterns, having a big stacker is in invaluable Solaris for your heads. Do yourself a favor. Get the nice plasma light from Loon. That'll burn the heads proper. Montana fly 4x long hooks are. There's like some kind of weird.

It's, it's, it's a stiffer, better metal in their 4x longs. I really like them Gama's right up there with their B10s. I like a lot of those owner hooks just because they're knifey.

A little soft, but they are knifey. I mean, you stick yourself at least two or three times when you tie on an owner. Trying to think of what else. Yeah, I don't know.

You can get all these flies now from Montana Fly KK over there at Montana. He's. He's dishing out a lot of different colors and he's getting the pattern down to a rough science.

Marvin Cash: 00:39:51

So, yeah, any, any kind of preferred tool for trimming the deer hair. So you keep all your fingers.

Tommy Lynch: 00:39:59

Oh, yeah. I haven't had an issue with the razor blades. Mikey Schultz turned us on. Oh, I think it's a Renzetti. Hold on a second. It could be a Dyna King.

Okay, hold on here. Oh, that's right. It's a Stonfo. Am I saying that right? Stomfo. They have this little tool. I've had it for years.

It holds the blade and basically instead of.

I used to finger grab that thing for a lot of years and, and that you could still make a good head, but you'd start getting hand cramps and get the claw when you woke up in the morning. The little tool makes it really nice because it allows you to hold that.

Those level angles when you're trying to get ahead instead of that rounded kind of push deer style pattern, you know, or you're not just trying to push water so much as. And get that float recovery in whatever sense the deer's offering. But you're trying to dig this bug, which is why the presentations vary.

We're using like down spots with the thumb to over engage the wedge into a extra amount of dig, you know, per action. It's not a right to a left. There's no lift. You actually swat the rod tip Like a jerk bait fisherman does much like it.

You swat it right down, allow that wedge to grab that water and swat that bug in a direction left or right. And then the very next time you do it, it goes the opposite way. It's a very nice jerk bait style pattern.

And yeah, I mean as far as the tying goes, that, that, that Semper fi nano silk is pretty cool though. I will say.

Marvin Cash: 00:41:33

Yeah, I will, I'll try to drop links to all that stuff in the show notes for folks. And you know, we, we've talked about kind of how, you know, there's jig style and you've got the unweighted, neutrally buoyant swim fly.

You know, I know you fish both, but do you kind of have a preference, you know, for lead versus line, I guess in terms of how you.

Tommy Lynch: 00:41:52

Like to fish as far as the lines go?

Marvin Cash: 00:41:55

Well, no, in terms of whether you like to fit. I mean you generally like think a swim bait is a better tool than a jig style.

Tommy Lynch: 00:42:04

I would say I, you could. Number one, I'm not going to say that a, a jig style pattern fish is less or better. I mean that would definitely be. Case in point.

I've, I, I can't tell you that I always had the faith that I did in a drunk as I do now. So we often had like multiple variations of, you know, be it fry little, you know, zonker patterns, a little co. Whatever.

I mean we threw other stuff before. The confidence the end game becomes once you start fishing the bug correctly.

Because the most potent being the straight strip action where you're just popping.

You're simply following the line's entry to the water where the baggage of line from the tip of the rod to the water is jumping to a point where you can see some line hissing and ripping off of it. But the rod doesn't move a bit.

In fact, you try and keep the angle of the rod in line of where the line is entering the water to create the most amount of shock per strip. That shock delivery into the line to the head is what causes this four to six way action. Fucking bug will do us 360 when it's hit, right?

I just, I just, Yeah, I mean. And then we have this other one lift wiggle where you'll actually throw it over a shallow bar.

Something that's usually out of bounds for any type of, of leaded anything. Just because, I mean we're talking about that kneecap stuff. You know this. If you hit bottom, it's wood. If you stay off the bottom, you win.

And if you're using a sink tip, if you allow for that two to five second traction grab of that sink tip in such water, you just stick your fly right in the bottom, swim, fly or otherwise. However, if you're using something that digs, you can throw it as far as you want and then lift the bug.

You'll notice as you fish this pattern and start cutting the heads better as you go to lift the pattern, sometimes from the water. It sticks to the fucking water like Velcro.

I mean, it's hard to get out because that wedge grabs it and it doesn't want to come out, kind of like a crankbait.

And when you throw this thing over a shallow bar, which is usually out of balance for a lot of streamers, especially with a sink tip application, you throw it over there and you lift the line so that the sink tip's never allowed to fully get down. But because the wedge is already just in the water, you shake the line left to right. I mean, just the line.

You're looking to shock it right and left as you lift through that ascension of that sink tip to make sure it doesn't grab. And the movement of that bug, it looks like a fricking crankbait. It's very fast. It's hard to get hard commitments on it. You get a ton of chases.

And often what I'll do is I'll do the lift wiggle off of the bars, and as it moves into the deep, I'll start going with the down swat into a straight strip, slowing down near the boat, waiting for the kill. I think the best part of the sale isn't in the first five strip, it's in the last five strips. The first five strips are suicide fish off the wall.

We all want to see them, and we're all tickled when they grab it. But you could argue any fish that hits inside of two or three strips was a suicide.

You could have thrown a tennis shoe over there, you would hit the same thing.

The sales pitch occurs from the point that you hit that middle column and you go deeper through that area that he may or may not be more likely to be in.

And then as you lift through that kind of ascension, that slowing presentation, you're, you're, you're telling that fish that that prey is in its last moves, that it's darting, it's ascending to the surface, it's failing, it's losing the war, and now is the time to take that flight. And if you're not fishing that fly to the boat in that mindset, then you got a thousand guys that are always lifting up at the last. Oh, see that one?

And, and if you add those up over the course of a year, that's a lot of Ms. Dan Brown trout.

Now, if you were under the assumption that that bug was getting noticed and considered from like the halfway point or the first third off the wall, you'd start fishing it slower. You'd start thinking, oh, if I did this, that would look cool. Oh, there he is. Oh, and then you got it.

But if you're lifting through and you find that fish in that last half second before you grab that fly in a hurry for your next cast, you're never gonna fish that fly. Right. The best part of the sales pitches, the end. You know, the Kirby vacuum salesman never got the check in the beginning of the sale.

He gets it at the end. He gets the check at the end. So fish the buck, you know, I mean, we tie him up all pretty and swimmy and you know, have some fun with it.

Watch it, watch it make its moves. See the different bite triggers that create that hatred. And then play it. And then play it.

Marvin Cash: 00:46:48

Yeah. And so, you know, you're, you're targeting it to kind of fish mid or upper column.

You know, what are your kind of preferred line and leader configurations to fish the drum?

Tommy Lynch: 00:46:58

So you get into these like white river tailwater stuff. We were using, you know, 12 foot leaders just to compensate for the bow tensions. At 110 foot cast with 40 plus airflow flows.

Blue lines are beautiful for that by the way. Anybody that wants to up their sink tip savviness for tail water application. A 40 plus airflow is a type 5 sink tip.

And stay away from the type sevens for swim fly. I've never really found a good use for that much lead that close to a fly that you're trying to get swimming out.

If you have that much lead that close to the to a swim fly, you're essentially dousing it because the, the lead is always constantly pulling on the head, never allowing for that post strip slack. So the type fives keep that better neutrality through the water. Leader designs in the cricks are, you know, sometimes as short as 4ft.

But I don't really get into these two 3 foot even in the cricks because as soon as you start getting again, even in those, those smaller sink tips that drag or that water tension drag, be it weight or the water tension on the head of the fly douses the wood. The would be action.

The bonus to fishing A creek though, is that when you do fish upstream, you're guaranteed the downstream pace, which means you're not fighting the current and you can make it walk. The hard part is the line control because again the bugs kind of in some way coming at you. So there's a lot of cleanup in aisle seven.

There's there now like when you're fishing a tail water, we, we incorporate on clear water, long ball casts, we'll be throwing extreme distances where we, you know, the fish are spooking at the boat.

At 60ft you might make 100 foot cast and you have 45 foot grace period to sell that fly and hopefully get a take versus a chase, which is when that water's clear and you're getting that two handed game and play, you'll get fish on it. But it's not nearly the commonness of that close quarter. You know, multiple reaction tees.

You know, going back to that leader design, when you start at those at the end of the sink tip, you'd have a short butt section of foot and, and then you'd go like two to four feet depending.

Again, this goes back to whatever length, but you're essentially getting longer per bead to the, you know, the longest piece becomes the low tippet to the fly. And often I like running a swivel. Not always, especially in the cricks where the spin is not.

But anytime you're fishing in a high flow or just a, a long distance cast scenario where like if you've ever fished crankbaits before, if you reel them too fast, they start rolling over right. But if you reel them just right, they walk the dog. And, and that's the thing to consider with all the sizes of these bugs.

Everybody wants to use that kind of, you know, jig style presentation with a swim fly. And that is very, very wrong. That is not walking the dog. That is you trying to lift something that wants to be popped.

And anytime the rod bends, that is to say, if you're stripping a drunk and the rod bends per strip, that is the rod taking, that would be shock you're trying to deliver to the sink tip. Because the sink tip is essentially fishing the fly.

It's not like, you know that direct connection that you have when fishing lead where you do lift right directly to the head of the fly.

When you fish a swim fly, it should be fished in a manner where the shock and the manipulations of the sink tip direct the action of the would be swim outs of the fly. The fly is allowed to do its own thing essentially. You're just trying to create as much movement with the least amount of effort.

And so if you have a rod bending that's like the shock absorber.

When we do the lift wiggle, when we shake the line side to side in that ascension of the rod, keeping the sink tip traction from occurring, we're shaking that line and snapping it right to left. We're not just jogging and swaying some. Stevie. No, it's not like that. It's. It's very aggressive and snappy.

When we down swat, it is full on jerk bait. Swat thumb on top of the cork. Swat that rod tip to the water. Not right, not left, but directly where that line goes into the water.

Create that most direct, wedged, wedged kind of pulse to that, to that line. And the way it goes, like when you hit that fly with those down swat, it is a true left to right walk the dog.

And especially when you get into like these, these larger sizes like those owner 26 or not 26, but I think they're 24 to AirX is 26. And I can't remember what the owner one is, but it's, it's got a side eye and not a down eye.

And that side eye creates a, just a tremendous amount of right to left versus the downeyes again, which will grab plenty of right to left, but certainly as much or more digitized.

So if you're trying to get deep, the down eye jigs were always better for that kind of that extra depth where the side eyes were always good for that. You know, left to right, very good pike, musky style platform with the side eyes. And I got off subject again, Marv, I'm sorry.

I got like the train of thought of a durable. So.

Marvin Cash: 00:52:32

No, it's all good. Maybe you should throw a Zen on top of the Kodiak. That might get it all evened out for you.

Tommy Lynch: 00:52:37

Oh, hey, hey, hey. Thanks sir. Thanks, sir.

Marvin Cash: 00:52:42

So any other presentation styles? You know, you talked about the wiggle, you talked about the downswat.

Any other kind of presentation methods you can share with folks to get kind of really bizarre, kind of, you know, swims on the fly.

Tommy Lynch: 00:52:56

Yeah, I was talking with Alice just the other day about this. Thanks for telling me to put that bear in. That was necessary.

Marvin Cash: 00:53:07

I'm here for you.

Tommy Lynch: 00:53:11

I was talking with Ellis the other day about, you know, the cold water persuasion of the swim fly thing. You know, for years there were guys around here that fish swung flies dead through the winter and they told me they would need a strip streamer.

The steelhead Here, Much less the brown trout. And I will tell you, a brown trout under 38 or 37 degrees is definitely a very susceptible fish to the leaded persuasions.

Just because they're not as willing to give chase. Right now. Anything over 38, 39 degrees and I. I dare say you can hit more bite triggers with a swim fly. You just can't. There's just.

There's just more happening there. And as more and more people fish these watersheds, Any of the fish that.

That I'm interested or a lot of my clients are interested in, A lot of those fish are they. They really definitely need to be sold a different popsicle. So.

Damn it, I got off track again, Thinking about my dog here that's looking at the other one. I don't want him to fight. So what did you just say there? Sorry, Mark.

Marvin Cash: 00:54:16

Oh, no. So we're looking for other presentation methods Other than the wiggle and the downswap.

Tommy Lynch: 00:54:21

Oh.

So the cold water thing, I found that basically these absurdly long pauses A little deeper through the mid column, the normal were to the point where you're still gathering the eyesight of your fly, Seeing it flash and chuck here and there, but you're not essentially fishing at that two to four feet right below the surface. For all the icon. Icon candy that you can kind of muster from each episode, you know, with that colder water, the browns would go.

What I found is they just.

They don't want to give it that hard chase that if you've ever seen a brown trout in 60, 65 degree water, give a streamer audience, I mean, they'll jump into your damn lap trying to get it. They're mean about it, they're fast, they're aggressive and almost rude about the way they. They come for that flight.

Now in the post spawn winter bite here, where a lot of times the water temperatures are floating, you know, let's call it 35 to 38 when we give it the old college trial. I was trying to make this swim fly thing Start keeping up with some of the leaded presentations back when and.

And I found that simply adding a greater amount of pause and less retreat in the overall presentation, Just like any other streamer feat, which is you slow down the presentation as the water cools.

Seemed like it really hit a note Because I always struggled for several years in the wintertime to make swimfly work Until I realized that I was selling the same pitch as I was in different water temperatures. So the motivation of the trout at 37 degrees is not what it is when it's 25 degrees warmer.

So if you cater to that idea in whatever pattern that you do, the fly being in whatever strike zone, it's your ability to give movement in that strike zone. So in paw, if a fly is post strip and allowed to re swim and swim out and dart and dive or whatever else versus fall or jig or something like that.

And I don't want to say anything about a jig flying in the middle of winter because they just, they work that thing's sitting right down through their thing falling right on their head.

So it's painfully obvious in the same breath I could say that the amount of water that you could cover with a swim fly when the water is over 40 degrees is far more. Be it two handed presentations, multiple casts, quicker presentations to kind of ward out the predator in a faster manner.

I believe there's arguments on both sides of that for sure. You know, I think the biggest ticket in the modern day stream right now.

I don't want to give too much of the ball away just because I really hope that a lot of these streamer guys try and get surprised by a lot of these, these epiphanies.

Just, I mean that's, that was a lot of cool stuff, kind of figuring stuff out, being versus told or sent a pin when I was younger and you know, give yourself that time to kind of sort through some of the do's and don'ts of this and that and whatever somebody's telling you and that. I, you know, I'm not going to say I, I know everything about string.

I, I will say this, I, I don't know anybody that's, I mean I haven't really done anything else with my adult life. So if I haven't figured this or some of this out, I mean the rabbit hole doesn't stop falling, but it's definitely something that you get better at.

It's not something you should expect a lot of resolve or a result from when you first start doing it. The payoff is in the quantity so much as the quality of the experience when you do streamer fish and in that discretion.

I like the visuals, you know, that's, you know, I think in the presentation standpoints my ability and what I get excited about most is just going out there and watching the fly work, much like a dog works the fields for a bird. It's just fun to watch that take place and hunt up and.

Marvin Cash: 00:57:58

Yeah, very cool.

Before I let you go tonight, Tommy, are there folks out there tying variations or evolutions of the drunken disorderly that you find particularly interesting.

Tommy Lynch: 00:58:10

Oh well, you know, they. There was the said by Andreas that was kind of a, a neat kick on it. A different head style. He really likes that. That a Rex 26 degree wedge.

Schultz's spin on it for the smallmouth with the swing indeed was pretty genius. And that bug continues to evolve. He's got shanks and all kinds of stuff kind of growing off that thing now.

So I mean that thing's probably getting into a whole different world of movement. This Keith McDowell guy from overseas sent me a picture of a really unique drunk that was tied.

I think Ellis and those guys are going to beat that thing proper just because they've got a nice arena in which to do so. They get a nice winter fisher.

And it doesn't sound like it's too terribly busy as it might be getting on the white these days, as you were mentioning last night. So. Yeah, I mean there's, I mean it's, it's. I don't know if there's any really.

I mean obviously the game changer tail and the shank thing, I mean that's gotta be the biggest evolution in fly tying, you know, ever. I mean that's. That tail movement on that bug is pretty fantastic. I've seen guys do evolutions of the drunk Jame Cainter.

I mean Mike did a couple of those at a Sims Ambassador thing or whatnot like that.

And me and Dano have been, I mean, you know, between the, the days on the pm, the trips to the white, you know, Daniel got a 30 incher this year on a drunk down there on the white Arkansas. He was down there for four days. He took a shot, shot guys down there and the guy.

If there was ever a guy that was ever due for a 30 incher, but yeah, he got one on a giant dark one down there. So it's just, it's good to. It's good to know that, that the bug has evolved into a better fishing fly instead of just the idea of what it was.

So it's, it's. Yeah, it's. It's taken time, but it is a better bug now.

Marvin Cash: 01:00:07

Yeah, it makes the, the winter pass a little quicker. Right.

Tommy Lynch: 01:00:11

If I haven't casted in, it's. It's been five years since I've gone a month without casting and I am, I have gotten all of my fly boxes up to speed.

I've gotten a couple of orders from my regular clients done. I've gotten. I mean I'm running out of shit to tie. Thankfully.

Dan will just Downloaded a whole bunch of material on me so it'll give me reason to sort through some more of it. But yeah, there's a few mornings there with some swollen hands.

I was just chewing at the bit so bad to cast and we're supposed to get a warm up in a week and it's probably going to take a week just to take the frost off the winter around here. But I mean there are signs that there is, man, it's been a real winter up here. It really has.

And but are you guys having that kind of winter down there? Marv?

Marvin Cash: 01:01:04

Well, I mean we're not having Michigan winter, I would say. I guess the way I would relate it to folks is we're having what I, you know, you know, winter was like in the 70s when I was a kid.

Like, I mean it's been legitimately cold. You know, in Virginia where I grew up, they're getting a lot more snow and frozen stuff than we are down here in the Carolinas.

But yeah, it's, you know, it's unusual for us.

Like when I was up at Bob and to telling the guys I was like, you know, I know it's not cold by your standards, but I mean for us to have a week where it rarely gets above freezing is incredibly unusual.

Tommy Lynch: 01:01:37

Yeah, I mean we haven't, I haven't hit freezing here and I think it was 11 days ago, the sun came out for like four and a half hours. It melted everything into like a glacier around here.

I mean there's, I mean we're not going to have any, I foresee no problems this year with my hudo, my personal not to say that Michigan has such standards, but I don't think we're going to have to worry about that water table in June this year getting above 68 because I think it's going to be around the 1st of June when, when all the snow is actually gone in Michigan because I mean we have got a glacier up here. I mean there's two and a half feet of ice outside my window with another ten and a half inches of fresh snow on it.

We're supposed to get six more tonight. So. Yeah, no, no problems. Yeah, that's good for the trout, it's good for Michigan. We've been in a drought for five years. We needed this winter.

I didn't need this winter, but Michigan definitely needed this winter. So.

Marvin Cash: 01:02:35

Yeah. And so Tommy, before I let you go tonight, is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?

Tommy Lynch: 01:02:42

Yeah, we're coming up on a time of Year. And this is, this is just my locale for any of you coming into Michigan to live the pipe dream of steelhead caught off their beds.

Don't snag wild fish off their beds anywhere you are, anywhere, anytime special place in trout hell for such actions. And we're coming up on a season in Michigan that I, I do not even participate in.

And I just want all of you that listen to such a podcast to know that whatever guide is selling you on the pipe dream of those fish on beds eating flies is lying straight through his teeth, much less not showing you how to fly fish by giving you a chuck and duck rod.

Marvin Cash: 01:03:20

So, well, tell us how you really feel. And you know, I just, you know.

Tommy Lynch: 01:03:26

I might as well be the fly. I mean I, I'm a bit of a black sheep here in the western Michigan. I mean there's that.

We have some, we have some serious issues with our water management. I think around Michigan, I think we're just, or shooting a good wild fishery in the foot.

And, and there's just too many people on the take from the, the ease of taking people out for hero shots, you know, for three and a half months a year.

The shame of it is now is that a trout guy can't walk into a blue ribbon section of trout stream and fish without getting him that with a big split shot and a whole bunch of verbs from some, you know, guy that's just playing mouth hockey with some poor. Why, these are. I mean, it'd be one thing if this was like eerie.

You know, the pure Marquette gets no steelhead stock, you know, the flies only no brown trout stocks whatsoever.

And it strikes me as odd is that the single best year round piece of water in the state of Michigan with the highest amount of regulations, produces not only some of the best brown trout fishing in the world, but is allowed to be kind of pillaged for, you know, a couple of months of the year by a bunch of people that have no interest in getting a bite so much as just the hero shot to take home and show their buddies.

And they all dress up like Halloween, like fly fishermen and they go out there with their, you know, Orvis this and TNT that and you know, whatever, and they, they make it look real pretty. But, but just remember when a fish is spawning, it's trying to make more wild fish.

So anytime you harass one on the bed, you probably hindered the potential of three more fish that could have been there in three years. So I just, I hope, I hope one day Michigan kind of grows out of These nasty habits. But I, I kind of quit holding my breath a little bit too.

But it's, it's worth the two cents to at least keep that idea out there for all these less than ethical entities that are promoting a false narrative. Do you know what I'm saying? It'd be one thing if, if they were just straight up about it. You know, it's like, hey, come on up to Michigan.

Snag fish with flies. It'll be fun.

But they're not, they're selling this Michigan fly fishing trip and they give them colored monofilament on a, on a fishing, on a fly rod, they attach a fly reel. But it's essentially a conventional approach where no bite is needed so much as, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a bad, it's a bad spot.

And I did it when I was a kid. I, I did it just long enough to know how tragic it really was. And, and it's just a doggone shame.

But yeah, these are wild fish, you know, out on the west coast, if we, if they did such a thing to wild steelhead, you'd just, they, they wouldn't just go after you, they'd go after your family because they want to make sure that gene is nipped out of the gene. Cool. And you know, here in Michigan we just, you know, give it a license and a, and a hero shot and say, see you next year with a rebooking.

And it's, and it's just, it's just sad to know that we have such potential in these fisheries, being cold water as they are, that we don't nurse the idea, not in all.

But certainly a lot of the streams in Michigan could be, you know, managed to a point where we have a better quality fishery, like bigger fish, wild fish, better fighting fish, reproducing fish. But I, I, I just, I believe that we are very, you know, we are a very hatchery orientated state right now.

You know, we dish them all out to Erie and you know, we plant them here and we plant them there and, and it's just, I mean, it was fantastic to hear that like 94% of like all of the wild fish in anywhere of the Lake Michigan basin, that's Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Upper Peninsula, all of it. The whole west side of Michigan, 94% of the wild fish are coming out of the Pere Marquette and the little Manistee river.

And we open it up to that, that snagging for four months of the year. It's like we're trying to shoot it in the foot instead of nurse it. And yeah, it is what it is. So.

Marvin Cash: 01:07:49

Yeah. Well, before you need to pack another Kodiak in, if folks. If. If folks wanted to learn more about the.

The Fish Whisperer and follow your adventures at the vice and on the water, where should they go?

Tommy Lynch: 01:08:06

Yeah, I'd say go tothe.com, but I haven't done a report in a couple of years. Yeah, I post some stuff on the Insta. Instagrams, you know, the flies that I tie, and occasionally a fish or whatever.

And yeah, I haven't been doing as many pictures these days, Marv. I mean, if a client wants a picture of his fish, I'll take a picture of his fish, but that's his fish. So if he wants to post, that's his gig.

So, yeah, as far as updates and that, I think the best way is through these little podcasts and the little Insta farts. And if I get a cancellation or whatnot, sometimes that's on Facebook.

Marvin Cash: 01:08:39

Well, there you go. Well, Tommy, I really appreciate you taking.

Tommy Lynch: 01:08:43

Thank you, Marv.

Marvin Cash: 01:08:43

Well, I appreciate you taking a break from the Shack nasties to talk to me this evening.

Tommy Lynch: 01:08:48

It is a Shaq. That is so you. I'm so taking that one too, Marv. Using that one. Shaq. Nasty. It is. It's. It's full on this year, you know, so.

Marvin Cash: 01:08:59

Well, thanks again. Have a great evening, Marv.

Tommy Lynch: 01:09:02

You rock. Be well.

Marvin Cash: 01:09:04

Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed the interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Don't forget to check out the links to all of this episode's sponsors in the show notes. Fish hard, folks.