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My recent client Mike sent this feedback on me as a guide.   Thanks Mike, I have been referred to a bucket full of something before, but that time is was not knowledge!
  Seriously the fishery gets all the credit.  The fishing here is world class and nothing beats helping people figure out how to make a day on the water more enjoyable.



My Information ‘Guide’
It ain’t about the number of fish

In late June, 2010 I enlisted the services of local guide and fly-shop owner in Viroqua.  My fly fishing experience to-date was limited and to be honest, a bit spoiled.  I learned to fly-fish from my brother-in-law Dan in Arkansas on a little stretch of river that could quite possibly be the best brown trout fishery in the world.  20” trout were common, 30” might raise an eyebrow once in awhile.  My first time there required very little casting and a whole lot of catching and ruined my expectations for all other trout outings.  If you could flip and mend, you caught fish.  For three years since that initial trip I have wandered the grass infested banks of our spring creeks fantasizing about what it would be like to find a 20” trout here or 70 trout in an afternoon. Nonetheless, I have been intrigued and but somewhat frustrated by the technical nature of fishing the Driftless area here in Wisconsin.  I decided to seek out some help.

My expectations for this trip were simple.  It wasn’t about catching fish.  It wasn’t about finding all of Mat’s secret locations.  It was a quest to learn as much as I could in five hours about fly fishing this area, get a critique of my lack of casting ability and a better understanding of what our area truly offers the fly-fisherman, once he or she has mastered a few basics.  Mat met my expectations and then some.  We agreed early on that trout fishing here in the Driftless is more like honing and testing one’s hunting skills and less about catching tons of fish.

The one-way information flow from guide to client didn’t take long.  After hanging my fly up in a pine tree for the 2nd time, as Mat removed the tangled leader from the branch, he patiently reminded of rule #1.  “Point the rod in the direction you wish the fly to go after squaring up your hips.  Flip the rod straight back past your ear”.  Amazing.  Something practical and simple I could use.  I hooked a few weed banks and forgot rule #1 on occasion that morning, but I now had something I could lock away for future reference when I snag my first pine tree next time and save me the aggravation of a 2nd hookup there.

After working a small riffle next to this pine tree, we were headed up to the next pocket and riffle.  And lesson #2 was immediate, again very simple and a huge frustration saver.  I always wondered with a 9” leader and an 8’ rod, how to secure the fly/line and not get snagged on the bank, tree branches etc.  Carrying the fly/leader in one hand and rod in another didn’t work well.  Winding fly line tight always snagged up on the strike indicator and left gobs of leader not taut, so hence a loose loop that caught the tops of Timothy grass or milk weeds.  And then Mat attached my fly to a middle eyelet and looped the leader back around the back of my Konic reel and presto, taut fly line, taut leader line, end of snags, end of THAT frustration.  And we walked, un-snagged to the next riffle.  Lesson learned and absorbed.  This may be the best trick of the entire trip in terms of the frustration it will save me.  Do you ever wonder if guide’s think their clients are just plain dense? 

And lesson #3 came seconds later after we arrived at that next riffle.  Always, always, always transfer the line to  your right hand pointer finger (rod hand) as the your fly line hits the water, so the rod hand controls the line and can react immediately to a twitch in the strike indicator or floating terrestrial.  This lesson took about 403 reminders from Mat during five hours, but by the end of the trip I think I had it mastered.  And the times I forgot and Mat didn’t remind me (207 times), I had a few trout remind me as well.  I was way to slow in reacting if I left the line in my left hand and the fish hit the hopper when it landed on the water.  It was almost like the fish KNEW when I didn’t follow Mat’s advice.  Bastards.  But it was a good lesson learned.  And now a new habit.

Lesson #4 was easy too and so simple, but left to my own stubborn ways I would have never imagined it.  Some bottom snags on the nymph seemed like they would never come off and I was always one to pull tight towards me  and try to rip it off.  Letting the line go limp, pulling out some additional line and then doing a roll-cast upstream past the snag worked magically on a number of occasions to pry that hook loose from the rubble.  It seemed like magic at least, but upon further thought, it simply rolled the fly line up stream and gently tugs the leader/hook upstream, AWAY from where it got hooked.  Pulling downstream typically just embeds the hook further in the rock or wood.  This much I knew, but the upstream roll-cast allows for at least an opportunity for the small hook to come loose in a natural way of un-doing what it did in the first place.  After all, if I hooked my skin deeply with a fly hook, the last thing I would do is attempt to pull it out as hard as I could in the downstream direction.  I am not really sure I would let someone roll-cast to remove the hook from my skin either, but the logic of the upstream roll-cast makes perfect sense in a physics sort of way and a branch or stone is not my tender arm.  Definitely worth a try.

There were other fine points addressed that day.  Times when lines needed to be mended first in one direction and then in another based on current changes at various points in the down-stream float.  Tying on a dropper with a terrestrial and covering two parts of the trout’s world at one time instead of just one.  Using a drop of super-glue when the tip of the fly-line dries to keep the core from sinking.  And there were many more little tips and techniques learned that day.  So working with a guide, at least for me on this trip, wasn’t about catching fish.  It was about a continual learning process where I acted the part of the sponge and Mat acted the part of the bucket of water.

And by the way, I caught and missed tons of trout that day.