Exploring the Allure of Fly Fishing in Western North Carolina's Lush Riverscape, with David Stelling

The trout streams in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina make North Carolina a premier fly fishing destination. In fact, north Carolina is the most popular destination in the entire eastern United States for trout fishing. In this episode I sit down with David Stelm, the owner of High Country Guide Service, as he shares the extraordinary allure of fly fishing in North Carolina's lush riverscapes. David reveals his passion for fly fishing, his deep roots in the community and western North Carolina, which stretches back eight generations. David's love for his craft and these mountains is deep. We journey into the heart of western North Carolina, famous for its fertile trout streams and local trout populations. We share the secrets behind the charm of local rivers and tributaries and we delve into the technical tips and discuss potential challenges that beginners might face. We also highlight the importance of being fully present, slowing down and absorbing the serene beauty around us while fishing. We then traverse into the realm of community and camaraderie that builds during guided fishing trips. We stress the significance of responsible recreation and sustainability in outdoor tourism, proudly sharing their partnership with outdoor NC and Leave no Trace in North Carolina. This episode is a testament to the sport's deep impact on our lives and its crucial role in preserving our natural resources for future generations. So tune in as we unravel the world of western North Carolina and Alaska fly fishing and discover its transformative potential. You're listening to Exploration Local, a podcast designed to explore and celebrate the people and places that make the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains special and unique. My name is Mike Andress, the host of Exploration Local. Join us on our journey to explore these mountains and discover how they fuel a spirit of adventure. We encourage you to wander far, but explore local. Let's go. I am with David Stelling. He is the owner of High Country Guide Service, a fly fishing operation here in Boone. We're actually in Boone today. We have been fly fishing this morning. We've been on the Elk River. We've been on the Wataga River. We actually netted one, so my daughter was here with us. We got to net one. I am thrilled to bring you this episode for a lot of reasons. It's about western North Carolina, a beautiful place of Boone, and we're also going to be talking about other things that are near and dear to David's heart. So, david, I can't thank you enough for hosting us this morning, my daughter and I. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. It's an honor and a privilege.

It's an honor and a privilege to have you. So we are in Boone. Like we said, we are at 140 South Depot Street. Off Main Street, we're at Boone's Fly Shop and that is the brick and mortar that you operate out of and Fosco fly fishing 105. You do some things out of there as well. So the beautiful thing about this story is that you graduated from App State and this is a place that you have really never left. You kind of found your place and you found your thing, and I think a great place to start would be to just talk about fly fishing, how you got into that and the impact it made, and I think that's going to really open up this conversation this morning.

Me getting into fly fishing was more of just the desire to check out the sport in general. I bought some gear from Walmart. You know I started with a foam handled rod and didn't have much equipment, Brought it with me to Boone, North Carolina, when I came to school here and my roommate suggested and invited me to come fishing with him. We fished on the Wataga River right there off of 105 on Old Sholes Mill Road. At the time it was still delayed harvest water. I caught two fish. I still look at that rock every time. I drive by it every day and it was a really fun experience. I remember enjoying just the fact that you had a resource that was so close to the school that I was at. I didn't even really expect it. I just came to school here because everybody suggested that I come to school here. I didn't even really realize how great the trout fishing was.

You knew about the snow sports. You knew about snowboarding, yeah right.

Yeah, and we had come up here, you know, as church groups and maybe a school group or two, but mostly we used to stay at the Green Motel which has just got recently renovated into like a rad motor lodge, like all my memories would have been the ski slopes. I never really knew Boone and I never really knew especially the spring and summer sports and stuff. I used to go camping down close to South Carolina and stuff like that but not around Boone. So to find that resource being so close, because I could just get rides with friends and you could do it for a couple of hours and come right back to school More or less knowing that I was going to do everything I could to make a living here, Started with a bunch of small different things and kind of worked a bunch of different jobs and, you know, washed all the dishes and worked it. I did a zipline place and did some ski slope stuff and just kind of dipped my hands in all kinds of the industries out here to try to make a swing at it. And then my college professors, our senior seminar, you had to send out 10 resumes. I sent out 10 resumes. I got a job in Montana. I moved out to Montana, had a blast for a summer and literally at the end of the summer came back to Boone, picked up a guy job here and never returned back to Montana and stayed, you know, in the Boone area and had a go at it, and that would have been 2005. Very nice, so graduated from App State in the basement of the flash top that I was working at over the phone.

Nice.

And came back to Boone, lived in a hallway, didn't even have a room, you know, lived like literally at the top of the steps of some friend's house. That was the year that I started dating my wife now. Our first date was the first national championship oh nice, Yep. And so she, you know, specifically loved Boone too. She had a reason to want to try to have, you know, a home here, Did a couple of off seasons down in the outer banks with her and then, I guess it probably I mean I started the first incarnation of my business in 2011. So I'm assuming that year would have been the first year that I would have tried to live here a year round. We lived in a bunch of different places. We lived in Valley Cruces, which we visited today, we lived over in Deep Gap for a little while, and now we live in Fosco, which is super close to Valley Cruces and a super special place to us.

So came to this area, loved the area, looked at every avenue to stay in this area and then, of course, here you are today too, yep. So let's put the conversation on pause there. We'll put a pin in it because you have one of the most unique stories that I've ever heard from anybody living here, and that is you have a very, very deep and long connection to the Cattalucci area. So places west of us here yes, let's talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, so I have roots in North Carolina as far back as eight generations. The Bennett family would have come to North Carolina in the 1750s and then pushed as far west as Cattalucci, which would have been at the time, essentially the frontier of America, and they literally hacked out settlement there with one other family, the Palmer family, and then at one time it was the county seat. I mean, there were 1,300 people living in that valley, wow, and the homes and the churches are still there to this day, which was really the only reason I knew about it. We went to a family reunion in 2011. So the families that were kicked out of the Smokies were invited back to like that's like a welcome, like hey, let's celebrate your families, basically. And so when I was 11, we went and did that, and that was the first time that I was like wait, what do you mean? They founded this place? What do you mean that they lived here? Because there's not really any. There's a handful of homes left More in Cades Cove. There's only like three or four in Cattalucci to this day. So our homestead would just be a. It's a flattened piece of earth, but there is a fork. There's a Bennett branch creek coming into Cattalucci Creek. There, which my family would have lived on, they built the road. So the road that you drive in on to get to Cattalucci was a road that they built with their you know tools and the power that they had Just a really interesting little stories of. I mean, he was an herbsman. An herbsman back then would have essentially been one step away from a doctor it's basically the doctor. So he actually was paid by the Lenore family. So a big connection there to the East Fork of the Pigeon River too. Down there my family would have been there before they got to Cattalucci and then before that they would have been, you know, further south, almost down into South Carolina. So I see them and feel them and hear them and stuff. When I'm out in the like creeks, like way up in the woods, you know, I feel like they're around and I remember my grandfather baptized me and passed away like three or four days later, like within the same week basically. And all of the old aunts and stuff, all the old bennets you know you're a bennet. You're the most bennet of the family, you're. You know you and your mom are the same and stuff like that. So I always had more of a just kind of knowing that that was who I identify with. I guess you would say is like my pioneer side of the family.

So cool, yeah, so cool. Well, I know we could spend hours and hours and hours talking about that, because you have spent hours and hours and hours looking back into your lineage, but I love the way you just said that you just said to sort of give you a sense of identity, a sense of place, a sense of just this. This is my belonging, these are my roots, and that is so cool because, if anyone wants to learn about this mission, very few people ever have the opportunity to look that far back, in that deep Super few.

North Carolina is a super special place to me, and to be able to have a family here and kind of make that reconnection, to be able to have more roots in North Carolina again to me, is something that's super special. So kind of yeah like you said, it kind of gives you a little bit of purpose. Like you know, you don't you know, like why am I here, why do I love these mountains so much?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a question that many of us ask, but I think that's a great lead in and a great segue. Actually back to you here fly fishing when.

I landed here I was working for a company called the Appalachian Angler and white. A few people in the high country and beyond would owe a lot of their roots and a lot of their training and their you know kind of introduction into the guiding world to that specific business. And my roommate that was living with me in Montana at the time had a job there and kind of recommended me and I remember speaking to the owner's wife on the phone and she basically said you know, come on down. So I got down here. I think it was like the first week of October of 2005.

Okay.

I would have came, came back and started guiding here, did the fall, did the spring, and then they asked me to come out to Alaska with them in 2006. So that would have been my first season out there. I was kind of guiding on a three man team, for I think I did five trips that year.

Wow, yeah Two. Alaska five Alaska trips Yep.

And then came back and, you know, continued to guide full time here, cool, and then yep, and then where we go from there, continue to do that. Just, you know exactly that and fill in with all the other odd jobs in the wintertime when things started to slow down, worked for some friends, did some random like roaded dendron banister work and stuff like that, did all sorts of things out of my comfort zones for what I really wanted to be doing. And then, like I said, you know, in 11, I kind of went out on my own, you know, hung my sign up to say hey, I'll. You know, take people fishing and did it. You know, worked kind of for everybody, worked for a lot of different guide services. There's really not any that I can think of that I wouldn't have at one time or another helped out you know kind of expanded your footprint doing stuff like that, because there's plenty of, I would say, us, but you know, now I run a guide service with full-time employees and stuff, so it's not necessarily us anymore, but there's there are a lot of world-class guides that literally just work for themselves and you know all they do is just guide for themselves and do single trips and really fantastic guides that do it, and I did that until 2016. I was given the opportunity to run the Alaska trips that I was otherwise just a guide on. So when I got that opportunity, I realized that I was going to need some help. I realized that I was going to need, you know, guides who would participate not only in those trips but also possibly guide and boon, because it's a great platform for training for any type of guiding any type of fishing. I mean there's so much, so much to do, so much to do and so many different techniques and tactics and things that you have to know and etc. So I hired a young man who is still working with me today, who now actually runs the Alaska trips for me on the Connectalk. Originally I hired him on to help me around here and to go out to Alaska and run trips with me, and that would have been 17, the summer of 17. That fall I opened up a brick and mortar down the street on King Street. It was 444 West King Street. It's a 800 square foot retail space, so maybe twice the size of the office we're in right now.

You know what I mean Like a tiny teeny tiny little space. But it was just guide service, right, it was a guide service.

I bought some equipment. I bought some tackle, some flies and some hooks and some tie-in stuff. Super fun memories from that spot. My now eight-year-old she would, I think, have been three at the time.

Yeah.

I was picking her up from daycare and then bringing her back, and she would like want to take naps, and so I would hang up a hammock in a closet no bigger than that, right there. That's funny, she'd be sleeping in there and then wake up and you know people would be in there like. So she has some really specific memories from that building. She really enjoyed the small the old shop is what they call it, so no parking. It was, you know, like I said, swinging for the fences man, I was just seeing if the experience that I could bring after doing it for at that point, 13 years you know what that would look like Ended up joining forces with the owner of Highland Outfitters and we moved to this space in 18. Had a go at it for a sec and then COVID kind of threatened to shut our doors. I specifically remember a moment of being like you know well, it was good while it lasted.

You know like.

I'm just going to start running my guide service out of my basement again. So that reality lasted about three days. Roy Cooper, who I think did an incredible job navigating for North Carolina, basically allowed us to continue to operate as an outdoor business. We actually started selling groceries and selling essentials, and we had toilet paper and we had disinfectant and we had milk and butter. I mean we, wow. We sold it all there for a little while and, you know, kept our doors open. Yeah, basically, we're able to pay for the power at that point and the little bit of flow that was coming in. We both dove into our Google ads and you know our online advertising, knowing that when the lights got turned back on that, you know we wanted to be right there in front.

Yeah.

So when people started kind of accepting and embracing the outdoors as a safe space again, I really feel like North Carolina was equipped to accelerate it. And we have the resources that people read about. We have the resources that in our modern day age era see on screens, yeah, and people came to come check it out and we had a tremendous amount of increase in trips. I had to bring on more people and nowadays we have eight full time, but back then there was, you know, maybe five, so we really needed more. To help continue with it, I was given the opportunity to purchase my outfitter that I was working for at that point for 16 years in Alaska, and we literally signed the papers the week before St Patrick's Day of 2020. Wow, so wow. That was kind of put on delay because we didn't. We didn't even have a season that year. The native village that we float into is only 300 people, so super vulnerable, and they actually own the strip, so they literally demanded that no one come, which I thought was pretty rad. Like got their pay, they got their power back. Man, it was pretty cool, dude.

Right, right right.

So we didn't operate that summer. I stayed that summer in Boone. There was so much business here and we needed the help too, so it was kind of beneficial. 21 was my last season full time out there as a guide, you know, running all the trips. And then Sky, my senior lead guide, took over in 22. And then this past summer he also guided out there full time, you know, running the that part of the program. I've doubled my footprint out there and doubled my camp out there. So those trips, the other trips that I run, trips on three other rivers when I do those as well, I go out there and run those. So I still do some guiding out there and I'll do some this next summer and I can imagine a summer without doing it. But I still really prefer to go out there and see some of my friends and you know some people that I really just consider family at this point. The fishin' fun, of course it is, but it's more about seeing people that I care about a lot. I mean, we moved into the town that I operate now in 2013. And I look back on it and I mean it's not that I was a kid, but these people accepted me as a kid. And now you know I'm an adult who runs an outfitter who you know contributes to that economy out there, and they're still super close with me and I don't know, I consider that time with them way more specifically fulfilling than the river trips. Oh, yeah, yeah, the river is amazing, I mean it's. There's no other resource like that on planet earth. So to be able to participate in that is something that's unbelievable. But the wilderness is way beyond that. We're in a six and a half million acre wilderness, so it's 10 times the size of Smoky Mountain National Park. There's no permanent structures, there's no power lines, there's no pipes, there's nothing. So that's, you know, like a little bit more enriching. And then when you add the culture, the folks that I get to interact with when I'm out there on top of that, it's, you know, way more of a draw for me. And then you know I tell them stories about North Carolina and you know they want to come, like they want to come check out North Carolina all the way from Alaska, like why would you come to North Carolina, come check it out? But they know, when people hear you know the blue ridge mountains, why do you call on the blue ridge, mountains. And then they see you know that specific picture and they're like holy cow man. I want to see that you know so to me always kind of brought me back and see people from North Carolina out there all the time. I take people from North Carolina out there. For going on almost 17 years I've had a group that comes every single year from North Carolina. We book trips in this building and take folks out there who otherwise never really would have experienced it. So I don't know, there's a little bit. You know all of the guides who work for Chosen River Outfitters, high Country Guide Service. Out there are all North Carolina guides. So that's cool, that's so cool, pretty cool platform to jump off of for sure. Yeah.

Well, something you mentioned just a few minutes ago and we experienced this and talked about it a little bit when we were on the river today is the fact that the river's there, the assets are there, the experience is amazing. But one of the things that's really sort of resonating with me is that your connection with the people and you just mentioned that with some of the, I guess, the natives that are in Alaska, and then obviously, your guest, but you really you've expressed to me that you really want that full experience to be solid, powerful. That means as much to you as you know netting a fish. Obviously, you want to do that. That's why you're there and that's why people are coming, but you have a really unique way of kind of connecting with your guests and that's the experience you want for them, right?

Yeah, I harp on it a little bit like in my mission statement for the business, but it really is a rare moment and opportunity to connect. So you can literally connect with a fish my wife likes to kind of dive into. You can like connect with a cast. You know, like that cast that finally felt like awesome and it just hit the right way. You're like, oh okay, that's what it was supposed to feel like, kind of like a golf swing. Yeah, you can connect with that. You can connect with that river just by walking into it. You know some folks have never put waders on before so they don't really know the experience of like just walking around a river and not getting soaking wet the whole time. And you know, I mean people just love that sometimes. We did it today, you know, picking up rocks and checking out some things, checking out the environment around you. Yeah, a connection with Way more than Just throwing a line out there and getting fish. You know it, it has become so popular that people almost go into it. You know like we're gonna get the most and we're gonna get the biggest and as guides we kind of have a little bit of Responsibility to make sure that we Continue to expose every participant to the true Connection to what that resource is. Yeah, you know it's. It's cold enough water to support the trout, but it's also clean enough water to support the bugs and it's also, you know, an environment that has life brimming forth all the way from the edges into the river, into the river and out of the river back to the edges. So when people can kind of experience, like a play, a part of that, you know when they can immerse themselves in that. Make that cast, see that fish, at least experience. You know, looking at some fish and stuff like that, there's a lot more to it than just you know. This is how you cast and this is how I put a fish in the net for you.

So that's so cool to hear because I would imagine that that's as much as you would like. Maybe a guide services that are taking people's fly fishing angling that they would all have that. But probably like with any other sport, you have your people that love to see some beginners or some new people come onto the scene and experience something for the first time. Other guides may be like I'd really love for you to be intermediate to advance, because this is going to be a whole another level. So it's really cool that guides will kind of find their lane and I have the feeling and everybody I've talked to about you, you could probably Drive in any of those lanes that you want to. But when I got to see firsthand today was just your love for somebody's eyes Wide open, the aha moments cast, like you said, learning the fly in the right spot. You know all of that stuff is. It's just something I picked up on today. And the other thing I would say too that I think is really unique is that you actually it may not be unique and hopefully it's not unique in the outdoor space is that you take the opportunity to let people know they're connection to the river, the rivers connection to them, the rivers, connection to the, the whole ecosystem. And I think when more and more people become aware and they recreate in those environments and then they understand and they learn, they all of a sudden now Would hopefully become like these. You know there's an internal drive to be a steward of that. Yes, you know, to kind of help people understand and sustainability and our impact on on all of it. So right, yeah, like it was interesting, you talked about the rock and you know my daughter, she's been on the show too, so she's people know that she's been doing some environmental education in Colorado. See, you know, is as clean as it, dirty as it, polluted, is it not? What flies are there. And it was just a special moment for me when y'all had sort of that connection and it was. It was bigger than the fishing at the moment, but it was all related and tied together.

Yeah, exactly, and you know I mean the, the enjoyment of it all. I I find myself laughing a lot out there, and it's I'm laughing because I'm enjoying it, I'm having fun, and the folks that I bring fishing with me, at the end of the day, if they're coming back fishing with me. Sure, it had something to do with the fishing, but it had way more to do with the fun, way more to do with that.

That's so cool, yeah, so let's talk a little bit about our unique area, because people come to Western North Carolina Literally from all over the world. You just had a couple from Congo that didn't even speak English and you were able to get through that experience. But let's talk a little bit about the regions, maybe the pockets of rivers and places that you take people to. What is their uniqueness in the fly fishing world and then what is their uniqueness right here in North Carolina?

We live at the headwaters of Major watersheds, so the headwaters of the new, which flows for a significant distance through multiple states, and then what ultimately would be essentially the headwaters of the Tennessee, so the headwaters of the wataga, which would eventually flow into the Tennessee. So we have a very specific starting point of some of the most fertile trout streams that we have left, especially in the southeast. The wataga has a native population of trout that does not have to necessarily be stocked, you know, every single month, but there are stretches of it that have it but those wild places where there's still wild populations of trout I mean it might be right next to the highway but it's still a very, very fertile and very beautiful stretches of river with native trout in them that Populations have been there for going on now for over a hundred years. So there would have originally been brook trout and there still are some, but the ones that are in there now, you know, we're almost reaching the point to where it would be almost a hundred years total, to where that would have been their genetic link. Rainbows and browns aren't actually, you know, low like native to our streams. Rainbows would have come from the original archipelago of the landmass, that was Russia and Alaska. That's where the original strain would have come from and then the original strain of brown actually comes from Germany. So they kind of discovered that German Browns could populate and exist in Rivers all over the world actually, and they do, they do well, they do super well around here. You know they're they're not native, but now we have them as native populations and they thrive here. You know they do great. It's incredible and there's actually, you know, some creeks have more browns than rainbows. Some creeks don't have any rainbows. So it's, it's pretty interesting how they kind of figured out their little place in this whole little environment. We have more of species of salamander than any other place on planet earth and you can literally interact with that on any day. You can check out anything like that and find salamanders all over the place. I do it with younger participants all the time. Cool, yeah, definitely to kind of bring them into that zone. We see so many birds of prey, so many blue herons, you know there's, there's super easy ways to interact with all the birds with participants. We were looking at Kingfisher's today. Yeah, yeah, we really do have a Very unique environment. That can be taken for granted if you live here and you just kind of go check it out and you see the deer and you see all that stuff. But when you really look at a bigger picture of things, especially people that are coming from bigger cities that I mean I was just in Raleigh, I just, you know, drove through these, you know bigger population areas and no, they don't have that, you know, they don't have Super pristine streams that are, you know, still kind of more or less the same than they were a hundred years ago. So the the fact that we still do have some of that stuff, specifically when you get down into grandfather ranger district in Pizka, you really can kind of figure out that we do have a gym. I mean it really is as a as a whole, as a whole resource, especially considering that there are Native populations that exist without us having to enhance them. It really is Almost one of the, you know, bastions, especially in the south, but we're fortunate in Western North Carolina because there's quite a few of them, that's right. But ours specifically is Just as much special and just as much of a gym as a lot of our regions up here that still have those local native population of travel.

That's amazing. So we talked about the Elk River in the Otaga that you were. We were fishing this morning.

Mm-hmm I.

What are the other areas? What are the other rivers in this area that you're guiding and you're taking people?

to right. So I mentioned the new. So there's a few different forks of the new that we fish on. The middle fork of the new, right there on 321, is like one of the most stocked streams, I think, in the state, if I'm not mistaken, and it actually just got turned into a greenway. So there's super accessible spaces along there. It's a lot of fun it's. It's really cool. You know, when I was in college you would fish back there and almost feel like you were breaking some kind of weird rules or something, because nobody knew what it was, it wasn't designated, it wasn't this blah blah. There's an old dam back there that you know they busted through and and made it more of like a little access point. So there's a greenway Almost in its entirety, from boom to blow and rock called the middle for a greenway. Cool, it's got tons of access. It's really, you know, simple to kind of introduce people via that. And then tributaries to the forks of the new, tributaries of the new, for sure, fish a lot of that. The wataga has a number of tributaries as well. There's four or five, essentially from, say, valley Cruces to the Tennessee line. So we we got on those as well and then we have a permit to guide up to 200 user days down in Pizga National Forest. So a little bit of Wilson Creek. There's a delayed harvest down there that we do a little bit of, but it's more for what would be like the wild sections of Wilson Creek and then some of the other tributaries to those. So a little bit of Harper's Creek stuff like that. Plenty of places.

Yeah, I mean, they're all over. Yeah, I'd love to shift a little bit and and talk about sort of the, the technical part of the sport. Okay, and then I don't even know how to define the other one, but we we've talked about it numerous times today, just what being out there Does and how it slows you down and how it makes you more aware, and I'd have some things I'd love to share later, but maybe we can kind of start there. For somebody who's maybe looking to get into this sport, what are some good ways, some good places, good products? How should somebody really come? What's the? Are there berries to entry?

Hmm, I I try to be a realist. I've built my business on trying to have open and honest communication with my clients. I personally feel like you would be a fool to say there are no barriers, because I mean, if you want to go in the wintertime, you need waders and boots. If you want to go on your own, you need a rod and reel, and they're not all the way super cheap. You can get some that are like I said. I mean, I bought one from Walmart that at the time, was probably less than $60 for a rod and a reel and I went out there and, you know, gave it my best shot. You can absolutely start that way, you know, but once again, I mean, $60 could be a barrier for entry, you know so. So, absolutely, there, there are tools that you need. And then when you really throw in terminal tackle, I mean think about that, think about that concept. You're buying things to throw them away. Basically like when, yeah, like I had lost three sure exact. I mean you know when you lose them they're gone, right, you know, and so that you that takes money that takes. You know you have to keep buying stuff like that. So, jumping off point, you can get very fairly priced rod and reel combos for, say, around the 250 to $450 mark that people can use for a variety of fishing conditions. You know a lot of people want to get like a trout rod that's for bass fishing. Sure you can do stuff like that. You can absolutely do stuff like that. I Would recommend getting a nine-foot rod to start with. You know, getting a shorter rod might be great for creeks and stuff like that. But, like I said a lot of times, people were looking for something that they can use all the time in a lot of different scenarios. So like a nine-foot five weight is a great place to start for us around here. You would need some leader material, which is basically Just looking at a fly line. The fly line is the colored plastic portion and the leader would be the clear portion. So nowadays they make these, you know, pre manufactured ones that are kind of designed to start big and go small. So you can get those. You just get, you know, a package of three of those, so then you can string those on the end of your leader. They make these loop-to-loop connections. It's super easy, like way accessible, feed that through your rod, get to the end of that. For a lot of the fishing that we do around here we did some of it today you do a dry fly dropper. So you do you know a big dry like a something that's made out of foam, that kind of acts like your bobber, and then you're Using pieces of tippet, which again you'd have to purchase those, but you know seven, eight bucks a spool for like 33 yards, and then you would drop down a fly off of that and just one fly on top, one fly on bottom For just jumping in. You can do pan fishing. You can, you know, catch brem and sunfish and stuff like that. Doing stuff like that. I do that all the time with my kids. You can catch trout doing that. You just have to figure out how, how deep is it gonna go? And you know all those little specifics. But just a jumping off point, I'd say, without the waiters and boots. You know you're looking at somewhere in the $400 range to kind of get like your own stuff. We do rod and reel rentals from the shop. Okay, so it's actually super fairly priced. You can do rod, reel and boots and waiters for less than a hundred bucks for a day Okay so we do that. We have that program. Some people rent them for a couple of days, some people rent them for their friends that are coming into town, which I thought was really cool, like to be that forward thinking, instead everybody sharing one rod. That's much better. So we offer that and then you can like you know the used market and stuff like that. You can buy them on Facebook marketplace stuff like that too, okay, which you know I think is great, is a perfect way to start out and to figure out what you like and stuff like that. I would not recommend it for waiters and boots. I would recommend buying those new. Like I was saying today, there's, there's different, you know, summer, made in the United States and they're super expensive like Sims. But there's also they have price point ones and then Orvis is a great company for price point stuff like that too. I feel like Orvis. I Kind of grew up in this guiding world of anti Orvis, you know like why would somebody want to be an Orvis guy type place? And then Orvis was introduced to me because I made a partnership with somebody who is an Orvis you know dealer and it's unbelievable. I mean just the the fact that you can get a free clinic in any Orvis store that you go to. It's amazing.

It's unreal.

Yeah, I never knew that you know what I mean until it was like part of my wheelhouse and then I started really kind of diving into the fact that they do. You know they got waiters and boots. You could get some for you know, say, a set for less than 300 bucks. So you know, long-term investment that would be, for you know, fishing kind of like more in the cooler parts of the year. People wet weight a lot, the guides wet weight all the time. You don't have to have waiters if you're just trying it out in like late April May.

Okay, you know me like you really don't.

Yeah, you can do it in Chakos and stuff you do in Crocs, you do it and you can do it in the salt water in Crocs. You know what I mean. Like it just depends on how deep you want to go and how much you want to do it. If you want to do it a lot, yes, it's gonna take some chatter. Yeah, if you want to just check it out, like I said, there's rental stuff and then, yes, you would be shooting for like Orvis price point stuff, echo price point stuff, and then Reddington make some price points up to.

So the guide experience seems like it is just a fantastic way to start, because all the knowledge that you have I mean even sort of just walking, like if I were to go out and fly fish on my own and just buy the gear and I was intrigued by seeing people along the river that would not be the same experience For me, I don't think if I went out and just bought this stuff and then just tried to emulate what they're doing. I mean the little things that we did about walking downstream and working our way upstream and you knew exactly where to look. And we're looking for pour overs, we're looking for sips, we're looking for all these little things that I'll never hike the same way again anymore when I go hiking. You're always looking there, going well, that's the kind of way we're tossing into and just the technique and just the micro adjustments with the technique. How many times we got all of our lines, especially not Carson and me. I got my line tangled and you came to my rescue and I couldn't imagine doing that without a guide. So I think for somebody who's really trying to get into this, I think a guide is really the way to go to get the full experience without huge commitments, except for that one-time guide experience.

Right, yeah. So when you really break down how much it would cost to buy all that gear and do all that stuff and then maybe just slip on the rocks and not catch anything, yes, guide trips are expensive, but they're not as expensive as that. I mean, you're talking about $500 plus dollars worth of stuff, whereas for the trips that we run they're all inclusive, so all that gear is included and you would be in a place that you experienced today of an enhanced experience. That's a good way to put it Of experiencing something that you otherwise maybe wouldn't have even really known about without the use of a guide and you mentioned it kind of like a place you know, like kind of realizing the resource and participating in the resource. I never really used to give people a rundown of like where the whatata comes from, where, where at in it and where it goes. I actually learned that from one of my other guides, like during one of their trips. They kind of broke it down for somebody. I was like man, that's a really good way to like introduce like how big of a resource. This is For sure. Yeah, so you know I personally believe in guided trips, so much so that I do I try to kind of insert myself with other of my guides on trips intentionally to like kind of use some of the stuff that I learned from them on trips with them. Just the other day, you know, just kind of talking about the use of a guided trip, our trips right now start at $300 for, you know, four hours of wade fishing. So that is not cheap. And one of my guides actually pointed out to me while we were walking, you know the clients were in front of us and it was just him and I walking and he said, you know, I just think about, like if I were to go on a $300 trip, what I would want it to look like. And I was like, yeah, I mean, that's actually a really good way to look at it because you know you really do need to bring some honesty to that table of you know what. What does a four hour fishing trip look like? What sort of commitments are you giving to that trip? That's going to be lasting that long and stuff. We did some fence hopping and stuff like that that day. Like it was a really cool like pastoral experience. The leaves in particular were incredible. We got fishing was good, we caught you know quite a few fish with some experienced people and had a really fun time. But I definitely it kind of stuck with me him saying that because, yeah, I mean the you and I both can agree as far as, like what it brings you and why it's important. But then, from the guide's perspective, to really consider, you know, like if you were a family that was on vacation, what it would look like and what type and instead of just writing it off as I got to take these people fishing and catching my fish, you're thinking of it as more of a big picture experience of you know these people travel from out of town to experience our resource, the high country in general. You know, even if they're staying in a hotel room, they may actually go eat an authentic, you know, local restaurant and, you know, be a part of our local community because we're still, you know, small enough of a mountain town for people to do that. And, you know, kind of bring all of that to a fishing trip rather than just, you know, put the fish in the net.

Yeah. So I share with you a little bit about my experience in the colleges and universities and starting an outdoor program, and for us that was very much. One of the things that we tried to do is understand that you're stressed out because you're studying for a medical board or a dental board, or you were in the ER operating room the night before or two days before and you know somebody died on the operating table, all these kind of things. Part of it was the release to be able to get out and get away, but the other part was as much as we knew about an area and we would take the return trips. One of the most joyous things, honestly, was like the pre-height before that trip, because we'd have pre-trip meetings and people talk to them about this is what we're going to experience. You know this is what we've seen before. We may or may not see this, we have no idea. Every time we go back is a different story, but it was just the same thing. That's why I think that just resonated with me so much when we were talking earlier, because you really want that person to have more than just that fish in that net. You want them to leave with an amazing experience and experience that like and I think you identified it too You're like hey, a lot of these people are on vacation, so when I'm in vacation mode, that's like a different mode altogether. But you're still bringing, without a list in a classroom of this is the ecosystem, these are the fish, this is how you do this, this is how you leave no trace. It's you just infuse that into all you're doing and it just seems to kind of come natural.

So yeah, yeah, to me it's a part of the guided experience. Personally, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to some pretty incredible guides and a lot of different atmospheres. The brothers that taught me everything out in Southwest Alaska had more experience than anyone else at the time that they took me on and they imparted in me a ton of professionalism and a ton of how to like navigate the rivers, like how to really row it, how to really like figure out eddies and fairy angles and like really how to read rivers and put people in the best positions to catch the fish. The outfitter that I was working for that I bought the company from in Alaska taught me how to treat people how to treat people like super kind and like way more welcoming than any other outfitter I'd ever experienced before. I'm talking about like turn to leaf.

Wow, yes.

Like I was blown away. And then he also taught me how to book trips super far in advance. I mean I think his law just booked until like 28. Like, my man's got bookings all the way into the future.

You've got bookings to 2027.

Yeah, I do Holy cow. So you know, like I kind of took those two things and started to kind of build my guide service around it and then really kind of jumping into the concept of standing on the shoulders of giants. I mean, although Mike Trotter might not be the most recognizable name in the outfitter world, he is a complete hero to me and to know that, like the things that he imparted to me and like the things that I'm trying to carry on for him, as we say, you know, wave the flag. It's a really it's way more important to me to help carry that kind of stuff on than it is to you know. Just say, we took X amount of trips in a year. You know, like I feel like the user experience of people that come fishing with us is more about, you know, like almost holistic experience of an approach to maybe seeing things differently and not really knowing about something prior and then almost like not being able to stop thinking about it afterwards sometimes for some people. You know like I think I mentioned it today, but I've had tons of people you know, hey, you know, we fished with you, however, many years ago and they don't even remember. You're like, yeah, yeah, I think we caught fit. You know what I mean? Like they're not even thinking about that. They're just thinking about how much fun they had. That's right. So that's right. I don't know Another couple of guides that I used to guide with in Alaska too, you know they're, they're, you know, now not really guiding full time anymore. Some older heads, you know, like some people that would have came from a different generation of guiding how about that? Who kind of would have been like almost outcasts because they had been doing it for so long. I mean Bruce Meek, my man. He's been guiding for 42 years for the same outfit, for the same person. I mean, like, consider how kind of a person it is to can even think about working for somebody for that long and the way that they share that Disney world experience with people. And it is. I mean, people get off the plane sometimes and short some flip flops. You know what I mean. Like it's wild, how plug and play it is, but they really taught me the side of, you know, kind of jumping into it full of energy, and you know it's it's written in my handbook but greeting everything with a smile. Sure, there's a lot of details and a lot of stuff that didn't go exactly how you wanted it to as a guide. But you know, kind of enjoy all that stuff too, like the tangles and stuff today. You know some people get frustrated by that. I'm not saying that I love it, but I definitely laugh all the time about it, still like, wow, look at that one. You're like it's not even world class and it's going to take me 15 minutes.

Oh, too funny. Well, so let's stay on that thread for just a tiny bit longer. And we're talking about the experience, and we mentioned that today. I'm finding myself like still, even though you and I are sitting here recording a podcast and we were fishing all morning, I'm still thinking back to that experience and I still have that, I mean the visions, in my head. Obviously, it was just a couple of hours ago, but one of the things that we talked about was that if I, if I hike, I'm never in the same spot. I love hiking, but I'm always forward moving. When I'm paddling, I'm always negotiating the rapids. The difference for me today was that I felt like I was finally at a point where I could allow myself to just release, like I'm in a different season of my life and I just feel like the world's coming at me and so many different angles and family responsibilities, work responsibilities, all of that. But for me, the greatest thing was watching my daughter catch the fish. But it was seeing you with her, her having some aha moments, making the improvements Big time. But it was the wildlife and it was just the you know, the ripple of the water over the rocks, and it's hard to put into words because it's such a personal experience, but it was extremely cathartic and it was just allowed me to just like literally forget about everything. And I know that that sounds cliche like when it comes out of my mouth, but experiencing it on the side of the river today was very different than most things that that I get to experience in the outdoors. To be honest with you, that's special for me to hear.

I have a challenging time releasing all the way, disconnecting all the way when I'm fishing. It is still a place of sanctuary for me. I do go fishing by myself, believe me, and I enjoy it, but all the things still were around in my head and I'm thinking about what I got to go home to and all that stuff while I'm fishing, when I'm guiding, when I take folks fishing and I have to live in that. I have to shed all that other stuff and get all the way into that moment of what we're doing and what it's going to take as the best phrase I've ever heard. Sometimes all it takes is all you got and when you're that focused because you're having to kind of give it your all, you can release just as much. And I do like my guiding. I find myself guiding more and more Like I kind of took myself out doing it so much and now I'm like kind of accelerating it back like man, I want to get back in the field more, like it's just so much fun to be fishing with people and stuff. So I completely I've gotten in more trouble because of the release of fishing than anything ever, even when I was a kid. You know, like we would go fishing on the golf ponds and stuff and I'm talking about I wouldn't, the sun would go down and I'd be like, oh no, that's what time it is.

Like that's.

I didn't even think about it prior to that, like, oh yeah, that's right, I am hungry and thirsty and it's dinner time and I need to go to bed, but otherwise, you know, I mean the turtles and the snakes and stuff like way, way more interesting than actual time. So I don't know. I try to approach it like I was telling you this morning, you know, like kind of thinking about it from when I very first started fishing and when I very first got into it, and that's definitely a release, no doubt. I mean, that's what it all kind of comes back to.

So yeah, you know, you said something was interesting too. You said that if you're by yourself, then those thoughts of all the responsibilities and everything else can sort of keep coming at you. But you know, there's something in that community piece like, even if it's a guide and a guest, there's a community that exists. And I think when you, when we're in those spaces and we're allowed to sort of just you know, I'm getting to know you, we've talked on the phone a few times right, but just being on the river, just kind of being able to kind of get to know you, watch how you work, that element alone is also something I think helps me and I do know what you're saying when I've guided other trips, mostly whitewater paddling, in the past. It's that you suspend, you and then you're completely invested in that person that you're guiding and teaching and so. But I wonder if there's something there you know about the community of just kind of people being on the river experience and the things.

I hadn't really considered it a ton, because some of the stuff that I fish by myself like it's almost like I don't even know if you could get two people down in there. But I will say, some of my funnier and more fun memories of those same exact places was when I did indeed, you know, go with a homie, go with a friend, cool down to those places and kind of experience it together. So yeah, I mean you can't really float the river by yourself, like you can't float a drift, but you can. You can drop the anchor and fish from the cockpit and stuff, but it's way more fun if somebody's with you. So I definitely can agree that it is a community in the broadest sense in that regard, like the floating community for sure.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's so cool. So how can people find out about the Alaska trips? How can they find out about your trips that you got and your team guides here in North Carolina and around Sure?

So we have a website called flyfishthehicountrycom so you can jump on there and find a bunch of information. We're actually I'm basically getting an overhaul right before Christmas, so brand new website, it's going to be awesome. It looks really good. I got some new branding from Uproar Media, so really looking forward to kind of unveiling all of that. It does have a pretty comprehensive stuff about Alaska as well, but definitely we have some intro videos on YouTube about, like, what our trips are, the time that they are, what you can kind of expect, the stuff that's included in the trips. So those are embedded on our website but, like I said, they're also on YouTube. We have an Instagram handle. That's High Country Guides. We have a lot of stuff on there. It's mostly just, you know, families having fun, but it kind of gets our message across. And we have online booking so you can literally, you know, google search for High Country Guide Service and the little button that says book. Now you can do that. It comes right through me. I know exactly where it's coming from, so people can do it that way. And then, like we were talking about the brick and mortar, so Boone's Flash Shop has some information as well, but all my Alaska information will be on that same website. Okay, yeah, it's just the name of my outfitter that I operate under out there is called Chosen River Outfitters. So that's kind of what it's referred to, but pretty comprehensive, and it has availability for those dates. I'd have some open seats for this next summer. So although I do have bookings super far in the future, I'll also have like little holes here and there that I would love to fill with North Carolina. Like you know, people that come out of this Flash Shop and stuff like that, it's a real treat to kind of bring them out there for sure.

That's great. Yeah, all right, before we sign off for today, there's one last thing that I think is really special, and you mentioned Uproar, you mentioned those folks who are doing some of the rebranding stuff, but you also are one of the very first cohorts of a partnership between outdoor NC and Leave no Trace, and you actually just had your first guide summit this past week.

Yes, we did. We had a North Carolina guide summit, Like you said. It was basically in partnership with Outdoors NC and honestly, you know, candidly, I had no idea that North Carolina was basically, you know, bringing on Leave no Trace as like their front of house basically. So, in other words, people from all over the world when they're looking at any kind of verbiage for North Carolina, it's literally intertwined with Leave no Trace. It's amazing. It's not flat out saying, hey, this is what we're doing and we're Leave no Trace, but the way that they're presenting it is unbelievable. It's exceptional. I mean, I just feel so lucky and so honored to be a part of something like that as guides. It's a no brainer to me. We're going to kind of get some momentum behind this thing. I think the 2024 guide summit is going to be pretty unbelievable and there's going to be a whole lot more guides and, you know, more people participating and kind of jumping on board with something that all the guides are going to care about. Leave no Trace. Of course they are, but it's a direct connection to the outdoor tourism economy and literally the state connection to it, what it looks like, what we can do, what we should be doing, where we need help, why we need help. I mean, I was able to interact with what would essentially be all of those things in a way that I never had before. A direct communication of like this is where this mess is up and this is why yeah, yeah.

Seeing that we are, North Carolina is the first state on the entire East Coast to partner with Leave no Trace in this way, as well as the first ever coastal experience for Leave no Trace. Oh nice. Yeah, and I was able to see some of that stuff firsthand last weekend and it was. It's really special to see and it's really encouraging to see the constituents and the stakeholders all around the state of North Carolina are really truly getting behind this whole movement, which is remarkable.

And something that you touched on earlier about you know, the encouragement of essentially the guided experience for somebody just starting, just checking it out for the first time, to know that North Carolina is basically getting behind saying, hey, you should use a guide for this experience. I mean that's pretty rad.

Leave it at that man, I don't.

there's no other place on planet Earth that I would want to be than in a place that's going to embrace it like that. So I think it's pretty incredible to have that connection to just saying that the guided experience is the way to go.

Well, brother, listen, I cannot thank you enough, number one, for just who you are as a person, and I appreciate you taking the time this morning with Carson and I and just kind of showing us the ropes. It was such an amazing morning. I know we just had a little bit of a glimpse of how you are and what your ethos is when you're dealing with customers, but, man, it was. It was so cool to not only experience it for myself but then to see my daughter get a chance to experience that with you as well. And thank you for the work that you're doing, the important work of sustainability and talking about being a responsible recreator, all of those things. Man, I just I can't thank you enough. I love being in your shop, I love this space. This is really cool and, yeah, hopefully you and I will have a chance to kind of carry the conversation on in the future.

Yes, I feel like I would be remiss tonight. Say, if people do want to contribute, we do cleanups all the time. The Wattaga Riverkeeper does cleanups all the time. He does, you know, live staking a lot. We have a lot of app state students that participate it, but anybody can come, anybody can help out. It's Mountain True Organization. We have a riverkeeper that's literally for our resource. He's the most approachable person in Wattaga County and would love anything, any type of help, any time. Oh, it's a great call out. It's Mountain True. It's a great organization too.

Yeah, yeah 100% Well, david, thank you for your time. I know you have a family to get to, but I totally have enjoyed this day with you. Bud Good, me too, thanks. In a world consumed by fast paced living, david stands out as a reminder of the importance of slowing down, appreciating nature and fostering connections with both the environment and fellow human beings. The world indeed needs more people like David, passionate individuals who not only pursue their dreams, but also share the beauty of these dreams with others, leaving a lasting and positive impact on the world around them. What sets David apart to me is not just a skill with a fly rock, but also his ability to create the sense of community among those who he and his team guide. He believes that the joy of fishing is amplified when shared with others. His clients not only leave with unforgettable memories of the big catch, but also with a newfound love for the sport and a commitment to preserving the natural beauty that serves as the backdrop for their adventures. I'd like to give a really special shout out to Made by Mountains, who made this episode possible. This episode is part of our Made by Mountains series, where we're diving deeper into the lives of people who call these mountains home and how these mountains have made them. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please consider leaving us a review. It truly does help us reach more people, and if you know someone who also might enjoy the podcast, be sure to share this episode with them too. Follow me on Facebook and Instagram and keep those episodes suggestions coming, you can email them to me at mite at explorationlocalcom. That's going to do it for this episode. Until next time, I encourage you to wander far, but explore local.