Today, we finally got together and talked on the phone for probably an hour. He was a genuinely nice guy to talk to who has a seemingly endless supply of great stories about his journey as a fly fisherman. The good news is that many of those stories ended up in his new book as he explains the various elements of cracking the Selectivity code. When he mentioned that brown trout were his favorite fish, I knew I would really appreciate his book a lot. First of all, I want to thank Matt for taking the time to talk with me. I'm hoping to get a podcast or something similar up from the interview at some point, but in the meantime, here is what we talked about.
The Basics
Q: Tell us a little about where you are from and about your
regular job as a guide and lodge owner.
Matt: I am at the Gray Drake Outfitters and Lodge. I am the owner and we run a lodge, bed and
breakfast, and I am a full time guide that works sometimes 250 days a year on
the water, so that is quite consuming.
Since we have trout, steelhead, and salmon, we guide pretty much 12
months out of the year. I’ve been a
hotelier and also went to culinary school and have used that to work as a food
and beverage director.
Originally I was born in Niagara Falls, New York and spent
most of my time in western New York fishing the Niagara frontier. I spent a couple of years in Poland as a boy
when my dad moved back there to get his masters degree in Chemical
Engineering. The first chapter of the
book has stories of when I was on the farm.
We had a trout stream that ran through it to the Baltic Sea. We had a trout stream with Atlantic salmon
and browns that ran into it. My job was
pretty much to take cows and sheep out to pasture and butcher a couple of
chickens for dinner, and then I got to trout fish with my uncle’s Hardy bamboo
rod and to fish for Atlantic Salmon.
That was kind of a bonus to living in a communist country at that time.
I got kicked out of the school because I wasn’t a good communist. I was American so they booted me pretty quickly
out of there.
Q: How long have you been fly fishing?
Matt: I’m 56 right now and I’ve been fly fishing since I was
7 years old. Do the math. It’s been
pretty prolific, and I only took jobs where I had within an hour or two quick
access to trout streams. My biggest stint was in Washington, D.C., at the
Sheraton Washington, etc., but the Pennsylvania spring creeks were only an hour
and a half from my Georgetown Condo, and so that was key to making sure I was a
happy boy. I had to have trout or salmon
within an hour and a half of my working environment and so that was critical.
Q: You have had the opportunity to fish in some amazing
destinations around the world. Do you
have one specific favorite? If so, tell
us about what makes it so special.
Matt: I’m a big fan of Montana spring creeks, because I just
love the Absaroka Mountains and just the general feel for that whole Paradise
Valley area. Being in the hotel business, I would just take a month off and go
fish Nelson’s, Armstrong’s and Depuy’s and I just love spring creek trout
because they kick my butt.
The stream we had in Poland was a kind of limestone spring
creek so I got used to that type of crystal clear wild brown trout water. It was sort of ingrained in me so that’s why
I like spring creeks so much. When I
spent 10 years in D.C. I got to fish Pennsylvania a lot, and now we live on a
tailwater. But here’s the hard part, you
just asked me a big whammy question; it’s tough. I love tailwaters, I love your
Clinch River down there, the Holston, it all fascinates me. I like to find a trout that will kick my ass
and try to find where the toughest places are.
Silver Creek is another one. It taunts me because it is tough to catch
fish there. If I started catching a
bunch of fish I would probably quit.
Always looking for the chase is really cool.
Q: If time and money were no consideration, what species of
fish would you prefer to chase?
Matt: You know, I’m a trout guy, a bum by heart. That is at
the core of our religion, and you constantly keep coming back to trout. People ask how could you go back to fishing
little eight inch brook trout on the Rapidan in Virginia or something, and I
say it’s because it is so much fun to see a little trout come up and give you a
refusal. Trout is really what it’s all
about and that is why most of Selectivity,
three quarters probably, is really into the trout aspect. Trout is always, was always, my passion. I’m a trout bum.
On Selectivity: The Theory and Method of Fly
Fishing for Fussy Trout, Salmon, and Steelhead
Q: As a fly fisherman who appreciates fooling particularly
difficult fish, the title of your new book really resonated with me when I
first heard about it. Most of us
remember one of the first times everything “clicked” on a particularly difficult
fish and came together just right. Do
you have a particularly memorable fish from early in your career that still
stands out as a major learning moment for you?
Tell us about that fish and what you learned.
Matt: Yeah, if you go into the book, there is a section on
the garbage feeder. It is like a two
page section on cracking the code of the garbage feeder. The fish was a thick, 24 inch wild rainbow
trout on the Big Delaware River, which we fish a lot because my mother-in-law
has a place up on the Neversink River in the Catskills maybe 50 minutes away
from the Delaware.
I spent 7 hours on that one fish that was a rod length and a
half away from me and feeding on everything including Blue-winged Olives from
#18s to #26s, Heptagenia Sulfurs, regular Sulfurs, Invarias, Rotundas, the
occasional Isonychia, occasional ant, occasional beetle, occasional stick,
occasional twig. The thing tortured me
for 7 hours. I must have made 50 fly
changes. I went from 6x to 7x, I finally used my memory to bring me back to a
#20 hot orange ant that used to fool fish for me on the Yellow Breeches at
Allenberry Resort. There is a big flat section of river there that has some
really cautious wild brown trout and at times they’re feeding on little #32
midges and little white midges and are almost impossible to catch. The only thing that would really fool these
fish was a little #20 bright orange ant with grizzly hackle. I really gave this wild rainbow everything in
the world to look at and was at my last ditch effort.
My wife was ready to bail.
She was sitting in a lawn chair.
I don’t think we were married then.
I think she was ready to break up with me. I was this lunatic spending seven hours on
one trout.
I put this hot orange ant on and went down to 7x. The fish took it and took it about 200 yards
downstream I finally landed it and it was like the biggest prize you ever
have. So it is a combination of the
selective/reflective extremely, I call it the ultra selective/reflective fish,
and then all of a sudden, a perchance flashback to something that worked for me
in the past, years ago, just transcended itself to that experience even though
there were no orange ants around. This
fish pretty much had all the pick of mayflies and terrestrials that he could
possibly look at.
That cracking the code of the garbage feeder, which is a two
page spread in the middle of the book, if you summed up Selectivity, that episode sums it up. Most of your selectivity issues or problems
or issues, you always are trying to find closure. Closure is so important to a trout stream,
because we always come back after a day where we get our asses kicked by fish
and we’re trying to find closure. So we
go to the vise and we try to tie the pattern a little bit differently and we
think maybe I should use 6x or 7x or 8x and I needed closure.
So the next day I got a bucket and with no fishing rod, I
went down to the river and started digging for ants. Why the hell did this sophisticated, wild
rainbow, the most intelligent fish on the planet on the Big Delaware take a hot
orange ant, which didn’t really imitate anything. It didn’t make any sense to me. I was actually kind of disgusted that he took
the ant. I was almost disappointed even
though I caught the fish. I dug up ants,
and I found black ants, and brown ants, and I found a couple of mahogany ants
that were a little bit bigger, and I took them back to my cottage and put the
mahogany ants and brown ants in water, and guess what color they turned the
next day?
Me: Did they turn orange?
Matt: The mahogany ones turned a bright orange, so there was
the closure. Was it selectivity? Yeah,
but I think it was probably selective/reflective in overdrive. These trout have
PhDs and then some. By September each
year they’ve seen everything and are next to impossible to catch which is why I
spent so much time on that puppy. These
wild rainbows were brought to the Delaware back in 1870s and are so intelligent
they make brown trout look stupid. It’s
usually kind of the opposite and rainbow trout are stupid compared to brown
trout. That sums up Selectivity.
Q: When did the idea for this book first occur to you and
how long have you been actively working on it?
Matt: I think I’ve really been working on it since the
‘80s. It took about 4-5 years to write
it and edit it. I also had the fortune
of fishing with two very powerful mentors.
In Pennsylvania, I got to meet Vince Marinaro who wrote In the Ring of the Rise and The
Modern Dry-Fly Code, and I got the pleasure of buying Vince’s friendship. At the time he had cancer and he hated
everybody. He hated Trout Unlimited
people, he hated everybody, and he was a curmudgeon, and he only fished the
Letort when nobody was around. He was sort of this elusive ghost I was
trying to chase. He kept calling me the
damn yuppie from D.C. driving around in BMWs.
He hated us D.C. yuppies coming to his limestone country.
I bought my way with really fine Italian wines and smoked
salmon from Scotland since I was the food and beverage director. Once I offered him a plate as a gift, he took
me under his wing and showed me a lot about midging and back eddies and the very
selective/reflective trout of the Letort. So that started my passion for this
crazy #28 midge garbage, and then, coincidentally, I moved to Michigan to take
a hotel job. Who do I run into on the
river but Carl Richards, who with Doug Swisher wrote Selective Trout. So Carl was a good friend of mine for many years
and together we fished the very intricate caddis hatches we have on this river. It is kind of ironic that it started at a
young age, and then I had the opportunity to fish with Vince Marinaro, and then
I wind up fishing with the guy that wrote Selective
Trout. It was kind of like destiny that it was
meant for me to write Selectivity
because it just all came into place.
Carl kept saying about Selective
Trout that it was fascinating, but at the same time it was confusing for people
because it was introducing emergers and spinners and not normal nomenclature
that people would normally use. He hoped
that someone would take that concept and expand on it further as fish became
more educated and more selective. So, it
was sort of manifest destiny that I wrote this book because of my background.
Q: What is the most important advice you could give someone
trying to figure out a tough fish?
Matt: Two things, patience and observation, are the most
critical things. Frustration tends to dampen the whole experience. That’s what happens to 90% of people, they
get so frustrated that they go for something easy like bluegill and bass
fishing, which I have nothing against by the way, but it’s so easy. If I started getting big numbers of fish I
would probably give up on it because it is too easy. I think patience and observation and noticing
little tiny details are the two things we lack today. We’re so, with I-phones and instant media and
gratification, we’re constantly marching and marching in quest of something and
we don’t slow down and smell the roses or watch the trout. There are three
types of selective phases and if you understand the types of phases that
they’re in, you can catch them. It is a
constant observation and live knowledge progression that takes over.
Q: Over the years, I’ve heard many discussions on fussy
trout. Usually the discussion centers
around several different arguments, and two of the more common arguments
involve whether color or size is more important when matching the prevailing
hatch or food available to the fish. Do
you want to take a side on this argument?
Why?
Matt: Oh yeah, absolutely.
In the selective/reflective chapter, I talk about the all systems go
checklist. I have the beautiful photography
of Jason Jagger from Colorado who did some of the most amazing close-up
photography of trout inspecting flies. Vince Marinaro started that in In the Ring of the Rise. He was the
first to come along with that. As far as
color, there’s two schools. There are the agnostics, but then there are the believers. In that
checklist, I say the first thing is the refractive window, looking at the wings
and tails coming through, the profile.
The second thing is the body size and the banding of the body. There are definite segmentations on mayflies
and those are flush in the film. Third
is color, because they can see color. Fish have very finely tuned eyes, especially in shallower rivers. They can see
translucency, hue, and color. I talk
very specifically about these three things and size. The final one I talk about
is movement. Mayflies are not always
drag free, little tails are twitching and the drying the wings. Caddis are bouncing around all over the place
and also stoneflies. Color is not
folklore like many people say, and I’m a believer in it. Catch and release is what fuels this whole
selective thing. The trout are different
today than when Marinaro and Richards and all those guys wrote because of the
tremendous pressure. These are the sorts
of things that fuel that whole process.
Q: Obviously, as the author of a book called Selectivity, you recognize the ability
of fish to become extremely discerning in their feeding habits. I have heard many people argue that fish have
tiny brains and are not capable of becoming as picky as we give them credit
for, further arguing that some other factor, such as the weather, must be to
blame when fish won’t eat. How do you
respond to that mentality?
Matt: I basically just address it and say, you know what?
You can take your Adams and your 4x or 5x tippet and catch a trout on occasion. You’ll be very happy that you fooled a trout, but you’re going to get your
butt in situations be totally humbled and embarrassed unless
you adapt your thinking to understand that these fish are very innately
behaviorally intelligent or whatever you want to call them. Each fish has a life survival strategy. You’re going to get your butt smoked someday
and you’re going to come back and take a look at Selectivity and say “Hey maybe I should be paying attention to
this.” The problem is that these people sit in their comfort zones. You better be prepared for these situations
because it is going to embarrass you and humble you.
On being a widely
published author
Q: You have published numerous articles and several books as
well. What is the best part of being an
author?
Matt: The best part of being an author is that it forces you
to understand your fish a lot more, and it challenges you always to write
something refreshing and exciting and new.
If I didn’t get a wow out of it myself I don’t want to publish it. There is a lot of junk I don’t read anymore
because it doesn’t get me excited. If I
can’t get excited I have no interest in it.
I follow the tune of my own drummer, so I set my standards for myself
first and don’t look at what other people are doing.
Q: Is there any downside to being an author?
Matt: People think that you’re walking around in a tweed coat, smoking
a pipe, sitting by a fireplace drinking a scotch or cognac. People think you are constantly pontificating
about yourself. They think you're some
kind of holy god. People are afraid of
you, but I’m just a normal dude wanting to make it through the day, stick a few
fish, get a few shots, and make it to happy hour. So that’s the key to life’s success. As a guide, if I can do that, and make a
client happy and teach them something new, that’s what I try to do. Authors tend to be regular Joes, but they
tend to be stuck in a category of upper echelon by other people.
Q: The past several years, print versions of fly fishing
magazines (and really most magazines) have been having a tough time
selling. At least some of that is
because of the availability of information and entertainment on the
Internet. As an author, is it becoming
easier or more difficult to get articles published in magazines? Why?
Matt: Speaking for myself, I’ve been blessed with the fact that
I’ve never had a problem getting publishing.
The thing I see today which is lacking is that magazines are so cramped
for space because of advertising.
Advertising is hurting this whole great industry. They make articles so short now that people
lose interest in the articles. I used to
submit articles with 10,000 words because my enthusiasm took over. We need to get back in touch with telling
stories. I got a review just today from
another blog or something, and he was very fascinated by my book because I took
the how-to stuff and made it anecdotal and told a story. The problem with
magazines is you don’t have enough space to personalize them. So the beauty of blogs is that you can really
go on and tell a story. You have the
space to do it, the time to share more experiences and it’s not about page and
size. I think that’s what hurt the
industry. You look at magazines from
years ago and they are like volumes and now they are barely a pamphlet. I’m trying to convince some of these editors
that you have to change your focus because you are boring people, but bloggers
are going to continue to be a very powerful tool because you have the space and
time.
Q: Do you see blogs completely edging out magazines? How does the future of hardcopy magazines
look from someone who has been at this game a while?
Matt: That is very interesting.
I think you are going to always have the written word in magazines
because there’s nothing like getting a magazine and sitting by the fire or
reading a meaty book. Now, you can take
your Kindle or iPad and get just as meaty.
There is no question that the Internet has put a major damper on
it. There’s a difference though. If you are sitting outside by the pool or the
ocean, from a practical standpoint I think books and paper will always be
there. But by economics, I think there
will be some challenging times, and I think we are already experiencing that.
Atlantic Salmon
Q: Based on a quick scan of your new book, fishing for
Atlantic salmon is obviously a passion of yours. However, Atlantic Salmon are not a species
you just head over to your local river to target and in fact take a
considerable investment in gear and travel expenses to get started. Furthermore, they are notorious for being
difficult to induce to take a fly. What
got you into the Atlantic salmon game in the first place? What keeps you going back?
Matt: What keeps me going back is ‘A’ they are one of the most
beautiful fish in the world, and ‘B’ they live in some of the most beautiful
places in the world. They think a lot
and are top water oriented. Most of my
Atlantic Salmon fishing is dry fly fishing.
Also, you’re dealing with a fish that doesn’t need to eat. I think most selective trout fishermen will
eventually get into Atlantic Salmon fishing.
That thrill to hook that one fish in three days is such a religious
experience. Why they take a floating bomber
for really no reason is really cool.
They are just sophisticated brown trout. You hook a 25 pound Atlantic Salmon on a dry
fly and the rush you get is just mind-boggling.
Q: Many people have stories of fishing for a long time
before getting that first Salmon. Did
you have that type of entry into Salmon fishing or did you experience
beginner’s luck?
Matt: It took like two years before I landed that first fish. I hooked one on the second day but lost it
when I put my hand on the line like I was fighting a trout. I think it is so cool that you can put a dry
fly 15 feet above the fish in a pool but if you put a streamer on its nose it
will run away from it. They’re kind of funky fish. They are constantly playing with your mind.
That is what selectivity is, one giant mind game that you eventually jump into
and play along with the fish.
Q: If you were trying to convince someone to give fishing
for Atlantic salmon a shot, what would you tell him or her?
Matt: Come with an open mind, read as much as you can about the
fish. Go with one of the best guides you
can get. Try to hire the most seasoned
older gentleman you can find who has been doing it for decades and decades. These guys are a fountain full of knowledge
about Atlantic Salmon. There are days
where you just have to sit and watch them.
Go with a reputable lodge that has a tradition of introducing people to
it. Soak up as much knowledge as you can
from your guides. It is definitely a
mentorship. You need a slow, mentoring
hand at that sport.
Out of Curiosity
Q: As a Tennessee boy I recognize that we have a lot of
excellent but underutilized fisheries.
If trout is your game, the South Holston tailwater boasts incredible
Sulphur and BWO mayfly hatches and thus grows some very large brown trout. Several other fine tailwaters consistently
produce lots of quality trout. If you
enjoy smallmouth bass fishing, we have numerous rivers including the Holston
that routinely put out bass over 20”. Of
course, the Great Smoky Mountains offers the chance to chase wild trout in
freestone streams and offers everything from brown trout to 30” in the lower
elevations to native brook trout up high.
The fishing for striped bass can be excellent as well. Recently, fishing for musky has been taking
off here as well. So, have you done much
fishing in Tennessee? If so, tell us a
little about where and what you thought of it.
