Join Marvin Cash and the legendary Jack Dennis for a profound journey through the annals of American fly fishing history on this captivating episode of The Articulate Fly. Jack recounts his cherished memories of his friendship with the iconic Lee Wulff.

As Jack weaves tales of their adventures, from the serendipitous beginnings to the forging of a bond over shared passions, listeners are treated to intimate glimpses of Lee's life, his philosophy on fishing and conservation and the lasting impact he had on the sport. Jack's narrative is punctuated with anecdotes of other fly fishing greats, revealing the rich tapestry of relationships that define the community.

The episode is more than just a recollection; it's a tribute to Lee's innovative spirit, from his development of the fly vest to his advocacy for catch and release. It is a testament to the power of fly fishing to transcend mere sport, becoming a conduit for life lessons and personal growth.

So, settle in for an episode that is as much a masterclass in fly fishing lore as it is a celebration of the friendships and encounters that shape our lives. Cast into the past with us, and emerge with a renewed appreciation for the pioneers who charted the course of our sport. Tight lines, everyone!

The Chocklett Factory Comes to Charlotte!

All Things Social Media

Follow Jack on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Support the Show

Shop on Amazon

Become a Patreon Patron

Subscribe to the Podcast

Subscribe to the podcast in the podcatcher of your choice.

Helpful Episode Chapters

0:00 Introduction

1:02 Meeting Lee Wulff

9:33 Meeting Curt Gowdy

21:17 Lee's Excitement for One-Fly Contest

24:31 Experimenting with Fly Patterns with Lee

27:14 Evolution of One-Fly Contest

32:59 Memorable Fishing Trips with Lee

36:48 The Value of Fly Fishing

39:35 Special Connection with Joan

52:36 Lee's Journey with Dan Bailey

58:46 Protecting Trout Streams Through Catch and Release

1:09:11 Reflecting on Life as a Journey

Intro: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly.

Intro: On this episode, I'm joined by my friend Jack Dennis. I've been fortunate to

Intro: get to know and spend time with Jack.

Intro: He not only makes you a better fisherman, but a better person.

Intro: On this episode, he generously shares his stories of his friendship with Lee Wolf.

Intro: Jack is quite the storyteller, and I think you're really going to enjoy this

Intro: one. It's a great peek inside a special time in American fly fishing.

Intro: But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.

Intro: If you like the podcast, please tell a friend, and please subscribe and leave

Intro: us a rating or review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.

Intro: And we're excited to partner with our friends at Jesse Brown's to bring the

Intro: Chocolate Factory to Charlotte on May 4th.

Intro: Blaine will be teaching private tying classes, discussing predator and prey,

Intro: and sharing his favorite rod, reel, and line combos.

Intro: Stay tuned on social media for more details.

Intro: Now, on to our interview.

Marvin: Well, Jack, welcome to the Articulate Fly.

Jack: Like the name.

Marvin: Thanks. I'm looking forward to our conversation. I really enjoy the fact we've

Marvin: sort of become friends over the phone and kind of met through some fly fishing friends.

Marvin: And, you know, we've kind of kicked around this idea, you know,

Marvin: you have so much knowledge of the sport and the history of the sport that it'd

Marvin: be kind of interesting to bring you on periodically to kind of talk about,

Marvin: you know, fly fishing legends.

Marvin: And we thought we would start with Lee Wolfe. And, you know,

Marvin: I guess, Jack, the first question is, when did you first meet Lee?

Jack: Well, it was interesting. I met him kind of by accident. The first time I feel

Jack: like I really met him was my father, who never went to any games that I played, never went.

Jack: The only thing he liked to do was go occasionally to the movies.

Jack: And all of a sudden, he said, look, we're going to go see The Longest Day.

Jack: And it did very few. I went fishing with him and all the things that dads do.

Jack: Do, but he was a test pilot before the war and then went through pretty rough flying during the war,

Jack: and he never talked about it, so I got no idea until he died that he had been

Jack: shot down during D-Day, and he was able to fly the plane back to England,

Jack: and And so he wanted to see what it was like, as near as I could tell,

Jack: to see The Longest Day. Now, what that means is they had shorts.

Jack: They had the cartoon, then they had shorts. There were all different kinds of

Jack: shorts. But all of a sudden, there we were in a stream. We walked.

Jack: And it was the short, and it was beautifully filmed, and he had a six-foot rod,

Jack: and he caught this beautiful, probably close to 30 pounds, if you told me, Atlantic salmon.

Jack: And he released it. Now, you've got to realize that was in the 50s.

Jack: And, you know, releasing fish just wasn't in the—I mean, you caught it unless it was too small.

Jack: And, I mean, I was just fascinated. I said, right then, you know,

Jack: my father said nothing about it, and he was more interested in,

Jack: you know, the military part, what he flew over to see.

Jack: So I had that in the back of the mind. This is what I want to do.

Jack: I don't want to fly airplanes like my father. I mean, I had a chance to go to

Jack: the Air Academy, and he went to the very first Air Academy, and he pushed me

Jack: on that vision of Lee Wolf landing that fish.

Jack: Well, as it turned out, I had to get in the military one way or another with

Jack: the Vietnam War going on in 66.

Jack: I'm in college, and I wanted to keep on. They said, oh, join the reserves.

Jack: You'll be able to finish college, and then you can go and do your military service.

Jack: Well, I joined, and six months later, they called the unit up for duty.

Jack: And i had made the friendship of

Jack: randall kaufman who was a

Jack: young kid that uh we kind

Jack: of got to know each other we went in the

Jack: wind rivers together anyway when i got out of the military i called him i said

Jack: you know i i tried to work in california i was an artist uh in the military

Jack: which was kind of an interesting fun job instead of going to the jungles of vietnam but uh,

Jack: You know, I did my duty, then I went into reserve.

Jack: But I said to Randall, go to Wyoming to see if we can start a business.

Jack: He was 18, and I was 19, and we went to Jackson Hole in 1967,

Jack: and the generation of fly fishing was having one of their first conclaves,

Jack: their first really big conclave.

Jack: And we decided, gosh, what do you got to do to learn?

Jack: And he was in Southern California, and that was where the hotbed of these clubs

Jack: started. It spread through Oregon, actually started in Oregon,

Jack: but California had the Jews.

Jack: So all of a sudden, Jackson was a really small town there.

Jack: This guy stopped me, and it was Bob Lewis who was given the task of getting

Jack: the guides for the Federation because they needed guys to take the celebrities fishing.

Jack: And I said, look, I don't have a boat. And he said, oh, I got a boat,

Jack: will you? Old military ramp, that's what everybody used, or no drip boat.

Jack: And he said, I'll just show up. And so I told my friends I'm going to row the boat.

Jack: So we all went to the big banquet barbecue they had, and the next day was taking fishing.

Jack: And we got a chance to meet a guy in the shop.

Jack: His name was Dennis Black, which would be one of the most influential fly fishermen ever.

Jack: And nobody knew who he was and

Jack: only a few people did but he changed fly

Jack: fishing forever because he started umpqua feather merchants in 1972 which randall

Jack: and i helped him when he came to friends now okay what does this tie into lee

Jack: wolf well the next day who do i get i don't know how they They picked him,

Jack: but I got Lee Wolfe and,

Jack: oh, gosh, terrible, but I remember the guy that was Arnold Gingrich,

Jack: who was the publisher of Esquire magazine,

Jack: which was a huge magazine back then. And.

Jack: Here was Lee Wolf. And all they did was needle each other.

Jack: I thought, why don't they care about the fishing? They told jokes.

Jack: They needled each other. Lee wasn't particularly a – he was a pretty serious guy.

Jack: But he did like Arnold Schumer. And it was pretty sharp.

Jack: And he just took it. And I thought, man, this guy's a cool dude.

Jack: You know, being in the – at that time, everything was rad and cool.

Jack: And we love the baseball boys.

Jack: I just hit it off with him.

Jack: And what I liked is he was thought outside of the box, which I did too.

Jack: We just hit it off. And he said, look, what are you doing?

Jack: He says, I don't know. We're going to start a fly tying operation.

Jack: He said, well, there's no money in that.

Jack: He said, you're going to be guiding? I said, oh, yes, I'm going to guide.

Jack: And I told him I just got out of the military. And he loved flying.

Jack: And, of course, we're in a flying family.

Jack: We got into lots of conversations about flying.

Jack: And he said, look, I'm going to be doing a show in Los Angeles.

Jack: And I want you to come and do a little booth and see if you can drum up some business.

Jack: And I'll get you introduced into the fly fishing world. It was in Los Angeles.

Jack: And I went. And I got a chance. He was building us. He was working for Garcia at the time.

Jack: The fin fishing world had the money.

Jack: And they were trying to get into the fly fishing business, using him as a way

Jack: to do it. He was designing reels.

Jack: And he designed a pretty good saltwater reel. I'd never gone saltwater fly fishing.

Jack: And we set up a trip, got a chance to catch Bonita. And it kind of started right there.

Jack: From that time, he had just married Joan, and she was absolutely wonderful.

Jack: And they just kind of took me under their wing.

Jack: And I kind of thought that sports shows seemed to be the way.

Jack: There was no fly fishing shows in those days.

Jack: They would have fly fishing companies at the shows. They were big sports shows

Jack: with boats and all the stuff. And, you know, I learned from him about how you do presentations.

Jack: And it kind of right there, we just kind of started keeping in touch.

Jack: One of the key things was Kurt Gowden.

Jack: And I met Kurt at a TU.

Jack: I have to admit, I was really, I loved the American sport. And Kirk was from Wyoming.

Jack: He was like a legendary sportscaster.

Jack: And, you know, being from my part of the world, you couldn't help but love his love of fly fishing.

Jack: And I thought, God, he needs to do a show in Jackson. That's where the beauty of Wyoming is.

Jack: And I said, I'm going to go down there and meet him and talk him into an American

Jack: sportsman show. I went, nobody.

Jack: You know, I just started flying flies, had a little shot.

Jack: Randall had figured that Jackson was too cold. He left after four months when

Jack: it got down to 40 below zero. He was back to California.

Jack: But he ended up in Oregon meeting up with Dennis Black, and that friendship

Jack: went on until Dennis died.

Jack: But what happened there is I had to borrow all the money.

Jack: It was like $150 to fly to Denver. I didn't know anybody, but I got an invitation

Jack: to go to the first Colorado Trout Unlimited meeting.

Jack: They had all the board members except for Bing Crosby there.

Jack: Kurt was there, all the people that started it.

Jack: And I didn't know anybody in there. You couldn't even get near Kurt.

Jack: There were so many people talking to him.

Jack: This one guy grabbed me and said, look, you need to meet Kurt Gowdy.

Jack: He pushed to the crowd. He was an old friend of Kurt and said,

Jack: I said, this is Jack Dennis. He's a guy in Jackson, Wyoming.

Jack: Jack Dennis. Jack Dennis. Never heard of you.

Jack: I said, you're a good guy? I said, I'm a good guy, and I grew up on the Snake River.

Jack: He says, well, you know, I'm thinking about doing an American sports show there.

Jack: He said, let's talk about it.

Jack: So Ernie Schwieber was giving a presentation. We were sitting down there,

Jack: and, of course, he was a big gun back in those days.

Jack: And it was funny because he said, look, I've heard enough of him.

Jack: Let's go. And he gathered up his friends, and we went to a restaurant where

Jack: Louis Armstrong was playing.

Jack: And I was with the president of Frontier and one of the cores.

Jack: It was like all the elite Denver was with him. They were supporting Trout Unlimited.

Jack: And he said, all he wanted to do was talk about fishing.

Jack: And, I mean, I'm just like way out of my element.

Jack: The good thing was that I'd been used to being around these kind of people because

Jack: my father, after the war, flew for Warner Brothers,

Jack: and he flew for the movie companies up and eventually for a baseball company.

Jack: So I was around people, and I knew how to keep my mouth shut,

Jack: which I don't know about now, but – and – and – and –.

Jack: Kurt, he just made it all happen. The governor of Wyoming, Stan Hathaway, had called.

Jack: But the nice thing is my grandfather, I'd spent every summer,

Jack: literally, of my life with my grandfather in Jackson.

Jack: And he had a big ranch there, and he was well-known to the community.

Jack: Our family had come from Philadelphia in 1916.

Jack: They didn't live in Jackson, but they had ranches, and they were from a well-to-do family.

Jack: So my grandfather had a really good reputation, as did my dad in Jackson,

Jack: and they got behind it, and we did this show.

Jack: And it turned out to be the most viewed and most popular show in the American sports business.

Jack: Very few of those shows ever would

Jack: qualify for a rerun. It was rerun three times, one after a Super Bowl.

Jack: And it was just a pleasure working with Curt.

Jack: And we had Phil Harris, who at that time was one of the neatest guys,

Jack: part of the Rat Pack, and just funny.

Jack: And it was an amazing time.

Jack: So where does Lee fit into this? Well, all he would talk about is stories about Lee.

Jack: And, of course, knowing that, and, you know, we didn't have cell phones in the

Jack: day, and long distance was really expensive.

Jack: But Curt, you know, he was doing well.

Jack: We'd get on the phone, and we'd have the double line and talk with Lee.

Jack: And I get to see Lee during the sports shows. And, of course...

Jack: Our friendship kept going, and when he was doing one of his books,

Jack: Lee Wolf on Flies, he called me and said, look, would you mind if I take your

Jack: concept for your book where you're holding the fly in front of your face?

Jack: I thought, why in the world would the best-known fly station in the world call

Jack: me to ask permission to do that?

Jack: I was, like, dumbfounded. and so it actually.

Jack: We were we were in Jackson when Kurt came every year he became like a second

Jack: father to me I went to the funerals rode into the hearse with the body with Kurt and you know,

Jack: but he was originally Lee had come to us I'll never forget this he called us

Jack: and my wife knew where I was fishing and we were having cocktails,

Jack: at this ranch that

Jack: nobody could fish and Kurt was a bit

Jack: of a Lee and Kurt were both they kind

Jack: of stretched it and like this lady's rules

Jack: were that you had to use dry flies and

Jack: Kurt loved mudflat minnow and so

Jack: did Lee and so we were fishing there and

Jack: we came in for cocktails tails were sitting there in this lady's house

Jack: that she had uh charlie russell uh uh bronzes you know in a room look at there

Jack: here's a two hundred thousand dollar bronze next to you and we call as you get

Jack: old you gotta call some glee wolf.

Jack: And he was telling Kurt about, you need instant decision about what fly would

Jack: you pick if you only had one fly.

Jack: He said he was doing an article for Outdoor Live on if you only had one fly.

Jack: And so Kurt immediately said, hey, I'll pick the muddler middle.

Jack: Because I just caught three great big cutthroats on it.

Jack: And this lady's listening to and I thought, boy,

Jack: I better not I couldn't remember whether I had enough guts to say I was using,

Jack: because she looked at me and she looked at him and he was on the board of the.

Jack: Buffalo Bill Museum and she was in awe of Kirk and I thought,

Jack: man, is this guy going to get away with it?

Jack: And so when I got on the phone, she had said nothing to him.

Jack: And I said, mother mental.

Jack: At that time, it was because she'd used it as a dryer or wet.

Jack: And I don't know what he said to her, but he got away with it.

Jack: And so they're kind of where their lead was real interested And he always believed

Jack: that man was a competitive animal,

Jack: and he wrote a wonderful piece about the one-fly after he had a chance to experience it.

Jack: And that was probably the thing.

Jack: All of a sudden, and this would have been in the late 80s, we started the one-fly.

Jack: It took, you know, I mean, that's a whole program on how that started.

Jack: But we made it happen.

Jack: Thanks to Kurt. Kurt wanted to have a one-fly.

Jack: After hearing that, he had gone to the Lander one-shot antelope hunt,

Jack: which was a contest where you had one shell.

Jack: And there were teams, and the teams would consist sometimes of astronauts.

Jack: Ray Rogers, all kinds of people that like to hunt, go out and do this,

Jack: and it was ran by the Shoshone Indians,

Jack: and a lot of gala to it, and Kurt said, you know, why don't we have a one-fly

Jack: like that for fly fishing?

Jack: Well, you got to realize, this was like 1972 or three, and...

Jack: You know, that fly fishing gig honestly wasn't that big. That was the starting

Jack: of the Fly Fisherman magazine.

Jack: And they said, well, you know, I don't care. We're starting it and we're doing it.

Jack: And we would go out and I would hire one of our guides.

Jack: And we'd go out and have our one fly. His first one was in Dillon, Montana.

Jack: And we kind of made up, Kurt made up the rules. And he would announce it like

Jack: he was doing the Super Bowl.

Jack: And he could imitate anybody's voice. And he had a pretty good Lee Wolf voice, too.

Jack: He would go back to Lee and say, Lee, what do you think of this?

Jack: And, hey, Howard Cosell, he had a perfect Howard Cosell.

Jack: And he would mimic him.

Jack: And people would go down the river and they'd hear that voice, which they knew.

Jack: And they'd turn around and look at this. And it was great fun.

Jack: And so one of the ones we were doing, and we do it every year.

Jack: And I want to say this about 1976 and, uh, Kurt was saying, I'm going to beat you this time.

Jack: And I said, he'd never beat me. And I was competitive. He was competitive.

Jack: And we went right down and we're getting to the landing and I'm up by one point.

Jack: I need to catch a fish over 10 inches to beat him.

Jack: And we're the guy do work for me to make sure I got it. He went down the right-hand

Jack: bank where the takeout was as far as he could go. Nothing.

Jack: And I'm reeling in and going across in the middle of the river.

Jack: The Snake River doesn't have fish in the middle of the river.

Jack: They're along the banks. All of a sudden, I have a fish on.

Jack: Trolling a fly. God, he just said, that's it. That's it.

Jack: He was so mad. He said, look, you've got to do a contest so I can fish against somebody besides you.

Jack: Well, we made it happen. It only took another 10 to 1986.

Jack: Now, what this brings in talking about Lee Wolf.

Jack: During that time, I'm going all over the country to lecture, do programs.

Jack: I did 40-something years of sports shows and TV shows and all kinds of things.

Jack: And I would visit Lee and Joan up on their place on the Beaverkill.

Jack: And it was really wonderful spending the time.

Jack: And he and I would talk about the one fly and he said, man, I'd love to fish

Jack: it. Joan said, so would I.

Jack: So in 1990, he was sent it up. Now that's four years into it. And Lee was so excited.

Jack: And we remember sitting there with him on the porch, and his Piper Cub was on

Jack: his little landing strip at his house.

Jack: And he was right bumped up against Mike Rockefeller, who was the son of Lawrence,

Jack: who really didn't spend much time in Jackson.

Jack: And the Rockefeller family, my grandfather was a banker with Chase Manhattan

Jack: and close friends with the Rockefellers.

Jack: So we kind of had a chance to be around them.

Jack: And Lee was saying, you know, talking about it, he says, you know,

Jack: I really would like to take you. I know you can fly, right?

Jack: I said, yeah, but I'm way out of the license stage. That's all right.

Jack: I'm going to go get my license. And you and I, in the spring,

Jack: we're going to both fly, and we're going to go to my old lodge.

Jack: And I said, I think it would be a fun thing to do with you.

Jack: And during that time, we started talking about, I'd come up with an idea of

Jack: a fly, which I call the Parallel.

Jack: We had been experimenting. We both thought, what a wonderful fly the wolf pattern

Jack: is, but they just don't ride low enough on the surface to match mayflies.

Jack: He had tied the original wolf, which was a white wolf, to imitate big mayflies of Canada. And...

Jack: He had changed, actually, the Royal Whelp, as we know it, really got popularized by Dan Bailey.

Jack: And his next fly was the Gray Wolf. But we started talking about it,

Jack: and I said, you know, I've been working on trying to get a parachute double wing.

Jack: It would be more stable in the water. It would float close to the surface.

Jack: It would be really good in slow-moving water. And that's where he said he used

Jack: to cut the hackle off of a lot of his flies.

Jack: He would tie the flies on the bank with his hands. He'd have a little packet

Jack: with him if he wanted to change flies.

Jack: Lee would never say that he was an accomplished tier, but he knew how to tie

Jack: what he needed, and he had enough fly tying friends he never lacked for flies.

Jack: So we we discussed this

Jack: and he was working on plastic things pretty interesting

Jack: he was taking plastic and taking like a

Jack: squirrel stacked squirrel and sticking it in the plastic it would dry it would

Jack: be permanent he'd wrap brown hackle around the uh the post he'd make a plastic

Jack: post and he was working on trying to get a post up that would be a y if you can envision a y.

Jack: And I said, the problem is I can't go, the threads just, you have to use so

Jack: much thread to do this. You've got to build posts, then you've got to divide the wing.

Jack: The threads were just too big. A 6-0 thread just wouldn't do it, even to a 10 or a 12.

Jack: But it took the development of the threads from deep boy down to an 8-0 thread

Jack: that we could take it smaller. That changed everything. thing.

Jack: Unfortunately, you know, Lee didn't get to see the completed fly, but he knew about it.

Jack: And he was so excited. I ended up writing several articles for books on the whole process.

Jack: And it was really funny because when Joan read it, she called me on the phone

Jack: and said, you know, I learned things about Lee that I didn't know.

Jack: Because he would tell me things about his life life that he,

Jack: I don't think he would discuss with his wife. He said he was a terrible husband.

Jack: Joan teamed him and all kinds of interesting things, but he was a thinker.

Jack: And as Joan put it, he was a visionary. He was an idealist.

Jack: He was not a teacher. I'm the teacher. What he did was was inspire people.

Jack: He inspired me to be a guide. He inspired me to get better at fly tying.

Jack: He inspired me to learn to listen, to listen to his stories.

Jack: And you know, at seven, almost 77, they come to me and then they go away.

Jack: They come to me and go away.

Jack: I remember him telling me about how he invented the fly vest.

Jack: And I have this actually on film.

Jack: I have all kinds of archives of film on tape that are really interesting. But I have this one.

Jack: He's talking about, Kurt Gowdy asked him, he said.

Jack: Didn't you invent the fly vest? He says, oh, yeah. He says, it made sense. in.

Jack: Pockets to hold your flies and everything. He said, well, how'd you do it?

Jack: He says, well, I sewed it myself.

Jack: I went to Macy's and bought a sewing machine. He said, the directions were on it.

Jack: He said, I just did it. It just made sense. And of course, that vest is in the museum, the Catskills.

Jack: He was such an inspirer. He jumped in the river to prove that you could swim with waders on.

Jack: If you knew what you were doing, you were safe in waders if you prepared them right.

Jack: And he wasn't really, he told me, I wasn't really sure I was right, but I had to prove it.

Jack: And this was, I mean, he's the only fly fisherman, sorry Lefty Craig,

Jack: but he was the only fly fisherman who had a whole page in Newsweek magazine of his death.

Jack: I have a fabulous us and you write as the new york times wrote in one page the

Jack: life of woody and and so let's go back because there's so much to this one flight

Jack: so we're at the one flight.

Jack: And this is his first one. And we make sure, gosh, we've got to get some.

Jack: So we make sure it gets filmed. And that, of course, is in the film that I posted on my YouTube channel.

Jack: And I'm surprised how few people even were interested in it.

Jack: I go back and forth and wonder how many people are really interested in history.

Jack: But I look at the group Classic Twyfishers, and they've got over 25,000 people

Jack: that are interested, at least the history of the equipment and the flies and everything.

Jack: But I often wonder, is this generation going to look back like we did?

Jack: I look back on Lee, and my favorite book was a book called Flies by J.

Jack: Edson Leonard, which had letters

Jack: from Dan Bailey and every one of the fly tires from the 20s and before.

Jack: He published it in 1950 and it had fabulous letters about, he would ask them

Jack: to explain this pattern.

Jack: If you haven't seen this book, you really need to see it. There's a history

Jack: of fly fishing in this book.

Jack: Steelhead fishlings on the west coast, names that are embraced and blazed in

Jack: fly fishing history right there.

Jack: And I really was lucky to have got to meet him at a speaking engagement and

Jack: I asked him which was the best letter that was in there he said by far Bob Carmichael

Jack: from your Jackson home and it's just beautiful rewritten.

Jack: So we go back to Lee and the one he's fishing with Kurt Gowdy how could you

Jack: not do it little as they would know although I,

Jack: And they just had great dialogue. We got as much as we could on it.

Jack: And Chuck Yeager was there.

Jack: And Lee was telling me about his 80th birthday, being on a carrier, how he loved flying.

Jack: By the way, we were sitting there in his place, and he told me he wanted to

Jack: fly with the plane, and he was going to get qualified in the spring so we could do this trip.

Jack: We were sitting there and Joan served us some strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar.

Jack: And she brought in a glass of wine and we're sitting there looking down there.

Jack: And he says, you know, the greatest things in life start with F.

Jack: I said, yeah. He says, yeah, food, flying, fishing, and you can figure out what the other one is.

Jack: Because we're keeping this a family program.

Jack: I'll never forget that. And Joan goes, Lee, you're just, because she heard the

Jack: last word. She said, you're awful.

Jack: And she says, well, can you do better? And she hugged him and said, no.

Jack: Why do you think I married?

Jack: It was just, going back to the one fly, I went through all the things he did.

Jack: He sat down and talked with Chuck Yeager.

Jack: And he was his hero. And he had talked about being able to have his birthday

Jack: on the carrier and all the broke out with the MC.

Jack: And he just told me he couldn't have had a better life.

Jack: At that point, Joan's wife, or mother, who lived to a long age like Joan has, had gotten sick.

Jack: And she said, look, I've got to go back to New Jersey.

Jack: Lee's going to the fly tackle dealer. I know you're going.

Jack: And he said, can you take care of Lee's until I get back?

Jack: And then take him, if I don't get back, I'm taking him to Denver to the tackle show.

Jack: And so I spent two magical weeks with Lee fishing and talking that,

Jack: you know, I treasure to this day.

Jack: And the funny thing, this is Oliver owned this fabulous spring creek.

Jack: Actually, she had bought one of my family's properties.

Jack: She found out that I was from the Nears family, which all of a sudden I could

Jack: fish anytime on her property.

Jack: And I bought Lee Wolf. And I remember she's at now, you got to realize she's

Jack: in her eighties, he's 86 and she's watching him fish and he says, yeah, what a stud he is.

Jack: Yeah. It's just gal probably worth half a million. I mean, 500 million or more.

Jack: He said, I said, I'm sorry, Emily, but he's taken. He says, I know,

Jack: but by must be by a much younger woman.

Jack: So and by the way he got away with putting a nymph under his fly and she didn't say a word,

Jack: and uh i put a nymph under the fly and one of her workmen told her and i got

Jack: i got read the riot act for using a nymph on her property,

Jack: just depends on who you are that's the way life is in the world indeed.

Marvin: Do you have any other kind of particularly memorable fishing trips you took with Lee?

Jack: Well, you know, we did one on the South Fork.

Jack: And when I had the chance with Lee and Kurt, I was not going to let this go by.

Jack: Because Kurt said, I just got a feeling this is the last time Lee and I are going to see each other.

Jack: And they both were anxious to film. And we just went filming.

Jack: And I remember, you know, I'm in the building, I'm watching the whole thing.

Jack: And so a lot of mine was, oh, we'll get back to a memorable one.

Jack: Sorry, at this age, they come to me and they flash fly.

Jack: But anyway, he wanted to catch this one fish. And what he wanted to do,

Jack: we sat there and the camera was going, how much of this do I film?

Jack: I said, you know, just keep filming. We can always erase it.

Jack: Thank God for video. and this fish is rising over there and he refused to change the fly.

Jack: He turned around to the guide, Gary Wilman, who was probably one of the best

Jack: fishing guides I've ever had.

Jack: We called him the predator.

Jack: He was that kind of guy. And,

Jack: Wayne tried all these different techniques. Finally, he pushed the fly and the

Jack: fish took it. And this is after half an hour.

Jack: And the guy who was just dumbfounded, the guy, he said, yes,

Jack: all I had to do was figure it out. Because you can make fish.

Jack: And it was a good point. It was really a good point.

Jack: And it changed this guy's life. line he learned how to be more disciplined and

Jack: he said i would have never done that well the rest of his life he did that and

Jack: in the other situation we're fishing a spring creek and uh jones there,

Jack: and uh she notices i'm i'm fishing a two-way because you really like those light

Jack: rods and i I said, gentlemen, they just land so soft on the water.

Jack: And casting is everything. And if you're going to spook fish,

Jack: I learned that from starting out as a kid all by myself, fishing the hard water.

Jack: Everybody said, why don't you go to the snake? You can catch all the fish you

Jack: want on that. Why do you want to catch the hard fish?

Jack: I'd go on my hands and knees. I'd get defeated.

Jack: But I knew exactly what you had to do. The lighter you could present the fly,

Jack: presentation was everything, but in the casting makes the presentation.

Jack: And I learned about that. And so she was talking about, I was telling her how

Jack: the three weights were, you know, you can use a three weight anywhere in the world for trout,

Jack: you know, unless you got to throw great big streamers, but for normal trout

Jack: fishing. And she says, I really like that.

Jack: And Lee said, look, tell me how you both understand this. And tell me how you cast.

Jack: A two or three-way i was like what i'm going to show you how to cast it she says yeah,

Jack: you can always learn you don't have to be eight and five to stop learning and

Jack: i i told them the attributes of it and and they said well he said i want your

Jack: rod and he first the rest of the day with me.

Jack: I think that was a two-weight at that time. Two-weight Scott.

Jack: That was memorable. Then we had the cameras and interviewing Joan and Lee about this.

Jack: The most important thing I think I learned from him was the value of fly fishing

Jack: and your wife to handle the other things that don't go right.

Jack: And he talked about his divorces and how fishing may have caused that.

Jack: And he said, every time I would have something that upset me,

Jack: I could go away and fish and come back like it never happened.

Jack: And I think if your listeners there pretty much understand that.

Jack: All it takes is, and Lee, like myself, liked to fish alone.

Jack: And not that, you know, I do lots of boat fishing. I still row down the river.

Jack: But nothing beats getting out on your own.

Jack: I spent a bunch of time in New Zealand as a consultant.

Jack: And by the way, Lee really wanted to go to New Zealand.

Jack: And the one flight kind of helped that way because, you know,

Jack: he ended up passing away. And I feel so much responsible because he was qualifying for our trip.

Jack: But we had his license since I didn't have one.

Jack: I grew up in a family and knew how to fly. And he ended up having,

Jack: John thought he made a mistake, but the instructor lived.

Jack: What happened when he was coming in to land on final, the aorta bust and flooded

Jack: his cavity and he died instantly.

Jack: He fell on the stick in the front of the plane.

Jack: And he was six foot three or four,

Jack: six three or something like that and he played basketball for Stanford and baseball

Jack: for Stanford he was an incredibly good athlete.

Jack: So he still weighed enough where the guy could pull it up and they had a dead stick landing,

Jack: and luckily the guy survived and told Joan Joan, that he had passed his test,

Jack: which made her feel good that he didn't make a mistake.

Jack: And that was very touching when Joan called.

Jack: And I went back several times to help her try to figure out what to do with everything.

Jack: It was a tough time for her.

Jack: And I just think we have a very special relationship, Joan and I.

Jack: And it doesn't mean you have to talk all the time. you just feel it every time

Jack: we'd be at a show together she'd stop and we'd go talk and she would let anybody

Jack: interrupt us until we were done but.

Jack: She said Lee mellowed a lot in his early age and I you know I remember him from

Jack: the time I first met him to the time he died and there was a man in that 20 years,

Jack: yeah a little over 20 years that really understood how life was.

Jack: And he let Kurt Gowdy, let a few people in to his life. Very similar to Ted Williams.

Jack: Kurt compared the two of them as both legends in their sport.

Jack: And not because of what they accomplished, accomplish, but how they felt and

Jack: how they gained as close to perfection as you can.

Jack: I remember Ted telling me, he says, think of baseball.

Jack: You fail six times out of 10, and you're the greatest hitter that ever lived. You fail seven out of 10.

Jack: You're in the major leagues. You fail eight out of ten, you don't play.

Jack: He says, life is about overcoming failures.

Jack: And I think every time you lose a fish, every time you go, you learn something.

Jack: And then eventually, you don't lose fish.

Jack: And, you know, one thing, Marvin, that I see nowadays, days and I don't know

Jack: Lee how he would take it you know he would hold up,

Jack: the Atlantic salmon and always release them in the early days of the camp they

Jack: would keep the brook trout because they were so good eating in the lakes of Canada,

Jack: you know his gift to the world you know his famous statement is a game fish

Jack: is too valuable to catch only once,

Jack: and there's all kinds of different quotes from him that really,

Jack: truly, the father of catch and release.

Jack: And I have one of the articles that he did for Fly It, Run, Reel.

Jack: He wrote for them when they first came out about he and a friend of mine both

Jack: wrote articles together on the value of catch and release.

Jack: And it had a profound effect.

Jack: And i think i i look uh

Jack: now and and i think what what really

Jack: happened with lee is he gave us the energy to make the one fly work he he gave

Jack: valid he wrote the article giving it praise and it wasn't popular i got a lot

Jack: of hate letters um about i was going to ruin fly fishing it become mike golf when you paid for it.

Jack: And I just, I ended up coaching the world fly fishing team and being a part

Jack: of it just so I could learn from a real contest.

Jack: And they don't kill fish and they have very strict regulations.

Jack: And, you know, there's a competitive edge. But so far in the U.S.,

Jack: what I want is a wonder of these contests to raise money.

Jack: We've raised over $20 million in stream improvement projects,

Jack: all stream improvement projects.

Jack: And you can go to the streams and see what the work has done.

Jack: But what we've done is inspired other clubs. I would say there's close to 200

Jack: contests throughout here in Canada, and none of them have cash prizes.

Jack: They're there for fun.

Jack: And I think I look back on that, And I wish more people would understand that.

Jack: And it's about the flies.

Jack: My God, what would you ever...

Jack: The Chernobyl came from the guides of the Green River. I was there when it was designed and made.

Jack: And it was a fly that was pounded. And then you had the double bunny.

Jack: And then you had the church tarantula.

Jack: You had a whole series of flies that are in the fly fisheries repart. apart.

Jack: And so there's so many advantages to what this has been to highlight flies and

Jack: highlight becoming a better fisherman.

Jack: And it's fun.

Jack: I couldn't tell you who even won last year or who won because I don't care.

Jack: I don't care who wins. Everybody having a good time.

Jack: We raised a lot of money with our bank and I think it was about $600,000 last

Jack: year and I sit back and look at all these people and what fun they're having in fly fishing,

Jack: when Kurt and I envision just

Jack: a simple little contest has become honored now

Jack: by the American Museum of Fly Fishing we're

Jack: receiving their Heritage Award

Jack: award um and on april 18th

Jack: we get a preliminary award where we go to

Jack: the new york english club and to their in the american fly fishing museum fundraiser

Jack: and we we do this wonderful film it's on the ifa for a film tour called tension

Jack: and we've been allowed to show that at at the event,

Jack: And so it's really fun to see, you know, getting the recognition.

Jack: And you can't be any prouder. I feel like I've done about everything I could

Jack: to try to, you know, I've touched a lot of things, Mark.

Jack: It's been a wonderful float.

Marvin: Yeah, and it's amazing, too, because I've been, we were talking before we started

Marvin: recording, Jack, you know, You've been incredibly busy putting some of your

Marvin: kind of older, more original content on your YouTube channel.

Jack: Yeah, it, you know, I just, I got into it too late.

Jack: I didn't really understand. I didn't, you know, we were moving to North Carolina,

Jack: and ended up having to start over after I went up to 5,000.

Jack: Didn't understand, you know, YouTube had kind of led all the people to believe

Jack: that, especially in the fly fishing film, that they monitor what was copyrighted or not.

Jack: And everybody threw in whatever they could find, you know, from old stuff.

Jack: And all of a sudden, you know, DVD market had fell and all this stuff was out there.

Jack: Everybody's putting my stuff on. I didn't, I'll tell you, I couldn't afford

Jack: to copyright and they cost so much.

Jack: And the market was so small. I mean, you had a bestseller at 5,000 DVDs,

Jack: Although I did the Cabela's and they sold,

Jack: I mean, we sold 50,000 or more learning to fly fish.

Jack: I think the whole total was about 200,000.

Jack: You know, we also made them priced reasonably. And, you know,

Jack: to pay for a DVD for $30, just, I mean, what's happened is YouTube has made it really good now.

Jack: But it takes a lot of time. And, you know, I'm trying.

Jack: People find I saved a bunch of live

Jack: fly time from seminars when I was the producer of the Fly Time Theater.

Jack: And, you know, I show those. those. I've got a lot of stuff back there.

Jack: It's just how much time do I devote to it for so little return other than the

Jack: satisfaction at this age that somebody liked it.

Marvin: Yeah. And I'll drop a link to your channel in the show notes,

Marvin: Jack, so people can check it out.

Marvin: And I guess before I let you go, do you have, you know, maybe one thing you

Marvin: can share about Lee that, you know, maybe folks generally don't know that got

Marvin: to spend some time with him or kind of, you know, remember his public life.

Jack: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I watched him when he was older years when he was

Jack: pushing these flexible flies at the sports shows.

Jack: And I thought to myself, God, here he is at this age pushing there in a booth,

Jack: where he should be, you know, with a room talking about his life and everything.

Jack: But he was trying to promote, you know, uh well product joan really was the

Jack: one joan had her fly casting school which is still going and she's still a part

Jack: of and but they had the fly line and let me tell you his taper,

Jack: his triangle taper has been matched and copied he sort of trademarked it but

Jack: you know like a lot of things you shouldn't have done you know and i look back

Jack: a hundred times and says boy i I should have done this or that.

Jack: But Lee was, you know, I thought, man, I'm not going to, I don't want to get to that.

Jack: I don't want to be at a booth promoting something in my 80s.

Jack: You know, I thought about, well, one of the things I can really do is go talk

Jack: about creating a sports show. And they don't seem to be interested in it.

Jack: I mean, I've never really, I've done it. I ran a sports show in Salt Lake City,

Jack: a fly fishing show with another guy and I for about seven years.

Jack: And after the pandemic, I moved and it went on to other people.

Jack: But I know how hard it is to produce that.

Jack: But I just saw the mood that nobody seemed to care about it.

Jack: And yet, you know, I find a few people that are still interested in it.

Jack: But there was a time, I think, how important I had the picture of Lee time at a 28.

Jack: I got it in my drawer right here. A 28 gray hackle peacock.

Jack: And in his hand, and I'm looking at it, and Yvon Chouinard is looking at it. I invited Yvon.

Jack: I thought he could learn a lot from Lee.

Jack: I've known Yvon since he was a climber in the Tetons.

Jack: He was living in his car when he first got there, and I was a young guy moving

Jack: the climbers back and forth after hours. Nobody wanted to stay there because

Jack: the climbers' time frame was their own.

Jack: And so I'd just go over there, park the boat, and fish.

Jack: And Yvonne would always ask me what I was doing. And he caught the fishing bug.

Jack: And we've gone through our lives with watching Yvonne grow into what he is today.

Jack: But he was so impressed. So he tied one for me and tied one for Yvonne.

Jack: And I'm sure he has that. But his abilities, oh boy,

Jack: I wish I could, you know, the way to put it in the man is a deep thinker who's always thinking.

Jack: And his personality went to the person that he was, he would show what he wanted

Jack: to to the person asking the question.

Jack: He had great respect that anybody that had risen in his field.

Jack: And he would give them more time or anybody that's coming up.

Jack: My guides loved it. He went out during that two weeks. He went out more with the guides.

Jack: I was wrapping up one fly during that time. And the guides just loved him.

Jack: And he would give them a fly. I mean, each one of those guys had the flies. flies.

Jack: And I think after he died, Joan sent me a fly, which is not to stay in my family.

Jack: And it was his fly from the book, The Art of the Fly.

Jack: And he said, this was Lee's most treasured fly.

Jack: So I always felt that he kind of passed. Oh, and he loved my Royal Humpy.

Jack: Oh, geez, he just loved it. He loved the Humpy, couldn't see it.

Jack: He was very abysmal. type of guy. He liked his drive slides so he could see them.

Jack: That's why he put the when he started out, of course, I don't know how many

Jack: people know, but he started out with Bucktail.

Jack: And Lee had this wonderful friendship with Dan Bailey.

Jack: And Dan Bailey said, look, you got the wrong material. And well,

Jack: that's not how you start off with Lee.

Jack: But Dan convinced him.

Jack: That he could show him how. And And he took care of Lee. I mean,

Jack: they didn't have any kind of program like they have now.

Jack: That was developed by Umpqua, where you got paid for a pattern.

Jack: A man I can't imagine, but he never had to worry about anything.

Jack: Dan Bailey just took wonderful care. And I'm sure at the end of each year, he sent him a check.

Jack: But he's the one that really developed the Wolf pattern into what they are,

Jack: changing them over to what they called in those days, Kip-Tails.

Jack: Nobody wanted to call it a cast tail impala tail that was always the best one in power like.

Jack: You know, and, uh, but he, uh, what, you know, that's amazing what you can gather

Jack: from, uh, from people. Uh, he was simple.

Jack: He didn't want to, I mean, he was more interested in the approach and fly fishing, what the fly was.

Jack: He was interested in, in figuring out the situation. He liked to go one-on-one with the fish.

Jack: I was able to film his last fish he caught in Wyoming. I thought for a long

Jack: time it was the last fish he ever caught.

Jack: But he did do a piece just like three months before he died.

Jack: So when he was in the one fly, that was about four years or four months,

Jack: I mean, before he died. He died in February.

Jack: But he did a deal on his home river, which is wonderful. But you could tell

Jack: he had lost his energy since the one fall. It's just like you're looking at two different people.

Jack: For whatever time, you could just see that, the difference in the two people in a few months.

Jack: But he did it. He only caught some fish. But it was real fishing adventure when we had him.

Jack: And we just let him go out on his own.

Jack: And we filmed it. And we just watched everything. And I got this all on film.

Jack: And eventually, I will get to where we put it on YouTube.

Jack: I just...

Jack: Kurt interviewed him about his life. And it was very...

Jack: I don't know how to put the word, but not melodramatic, but sad in some ways,

Jack: the way he viewed himself.

Jack: He viewed Kurt as a much bigger, you're famous and everything,

Jack: you're better at your job than I was.

Jack: And Kurt's trying to tell him, no, you're not.

Jack: You rose to the top of the field.

Jack: But you know i could see the reluctance and

Jack: lee said you know you just there is no such thing as

Jack: a professional fly fishing and they can make any money he

Jack: says the lucky i had a career in advertising and they had people that were very

Jack: good to they did he said i i couldn't have lived on this and and i think he

Jack: had a lot of the skepticism about where fly fishing was going to go and.

Jack: You know it has gotten bigger and I'm sure you you know if you look at all the

Jack: rod companies are all owned by except for St.

Jack: Croix they're owned by well-to-do people that can afford to be in it you know

Jack: you look at Orvis the Orvis family and you know the rod guarantees I always

Jack: saw it when they put those lifetime warranties that was going to drive up the price,

Jack: and it made the company virtually unsellable,

Jack: And, you know, the same people pretty much still own it.

Jack: Thomas and Thomas went to several owners and everything, but it's kind of where

Jack: things are. And I see Lee saw that.

Jack: And he talked, you know, and I looked at his boxes,

Jack: and I have to laugh because three of the best fishermen I know have old boxes

Jack: and they just throw all the flies in.

Jack: Randall Coffin is the most organized writer I've ever been around.

Jack: And I open up his fly box. I say, hey, get out of catter.

Jack: He goes through about three boxes to find it. It's not even separated out.

Jack: And I realized, you know, I'm that way too, but I have to do it to make it look good.

Jack: People see that, they'll look at me and say, what are you doing?

Jack: But Lee was that way too.

Jack: He wasn't super organized, except for his thinking.

Jack: I know, here's the thing, as Joan said, he was the ultimate predator,

Jack: especially in the ocean fishing.

Jack: And he says, look, ocean fishing is easy, you just got to find,

Jack: once you find them, they're not hard to catch, but you got to find them and that's hard.

Jack: And I asked him what kind of fishing you like the best.

Jack: This is a great answer. He said, whatever I'm fishing for, it's the best right then.

Jack: And I thought, man, is that ever true?

Jack: Wherever I'm at, whether it's bone fishing or in South America or where,

Jack: in New Zealand especially.

Jack: New Zealand was where I learned the most about fly fishing.

Jack: And Australia, wherever it may depend, it's great.

Jack: And one of the things he said, you know, you can build any number of golf courses.

Jack: You know, golf will get it, but you can't build new trout streams.

Jack: And the only thing we've got is to protect them is catching release.

Jack: That's on this tape. And that just really hit. And that made me,

Jack: now that was filmed in 1990.

Jack: And he died in 91. And that has stuck with me and stuck with me when we turned

Jack: the OneFly into an organization to rebuild strings. It hit.

Jack: I can tell you right now, fishing is better on the Snake River and pretty much

Jack: all the rivers I fish than when I was a guide in the 60s.

Jack: Fishing is better. Better on the green. It's better. I mean,

Jack: go on South Fork, Lake River.

Jack: I can't speak for Montana because I didn't fish it when I was really young. Yellowstone is better.

Jack: The Yellowstone Lake's coming back with great big cutthroats that can survive the Mackinac.

Jack: They learn to evolve into big fish.

Jack: You do believe 11-pound cutthroats caught last year on a fly.

Jack: And Yellowstone Lake, the lake that the Mackinac run.

Marvin: Yeah, it's one of my favorite places to fish. I love fishing the fire hole.

Jack: Yeah, but think of Yellowstone Lake. There were hardly any fish left in the river.

Jack: And they evolved. Of course, they reduced the mackerel population, which helped.

Jack: But the spawning is limited. But it'll come back.

Jack: Nature has a way of doing this. And the nice thing about Yellowstone,

Jack: just the way it is. But, you know, the big problem I see, and the fire hole

Jack: hasn't changed one darn bit.

Jack: You have a little bit of, the rivers do have a little bit of a problem with the buffalo.

Jack: There's far more buffalo than historically there.

Jack: And they have beaten down the bank, but, you know, that's part of nature.

Jack: You know, the fish will survive.

Jack: No stream improvement in Nashville Park.

Marvin: It's interesting though I know the stream banks have recovered since they reintroduced

Marvin: the wolves too that's kind of helped kind of move the elk and the bison kind of off a little bit.

Jack: I don't even want to get into that there's some hard feelings on that that's

Jack: one thing in Jackson that I've learned my wife was an ER nurse there so she's

Jack: got plenty of bear incidents I just,

Jack: And it is so much like everything, a political move.

Jack: I just don't really get an opinion on it, other than there's too many buffalo in Yellowstone Park.

Jack: But, you know, the tourists like them. The park tries to do the best they can with it.

Jack: But there is negative effects. effects, you know, none of those streams flowing

Jack: into the Yellowstone can reproduce fish like they used to because they've been all trampled down.

Jack: And the buffalo wouldn't have been there if a white man hadn't run them in there.

Jack: So you know, where do you go?

Jack: But, you know, I, you know, getting back with Lee is that he saw like a lot

Jack: of people don't remember, you know, trap fishing was really threatened in the 1890s in New York.

Jack: They had pretty much killed all the, the fish that ran up into the rivers and,

Jack: you know, so that it came real, you know, their answer was to have a private

Jack: club, redo the streams, you know, and monitor the fishing.

Jack: And Lee was a product of that, understanding that not only catch and release,

Jack: but trying to undo the damage that was done in the sake of ignorance.

Jack: You know, how much do you value fly fishing?

Jack: You know, what do you put as a value when you look at the people that have done it?

Jack: You know, from the Bush family, you know, really, really got to be interested

Jack: in fly fishing to Dick Cheney, who would rather do anything.

Jack: I asked him, what would his last trip be? He only had one trip. He says, I got it.

Jack: Go to Canada on a steelhead stream all by myself.

Jack: I want it snowing. I don't care if I catch a fish.

Jack: That's my last trip of my life. And he said, now you've got to do your last trip of life.

Jack: And that was going out at 6.30 at night and spending all night fishing a crane fly hatch.

Jack: That was my last trip. Both said we had to do our last trip before we knew we were going to die.

Jack: And that was kind of Lee. I mean...

Jack: The best time we talked with Lee was when we were eating lunch.

Jack: And he did Kurt and I. And they'd start talking about their old days filming and laughing.

Jack: And he told one story. This is a good one.

Jack: They were filming in Canada. And Lee had this idea of how he was going to do this segment.

Jack: And he wanted to have it. and during the American Sportsman they would let independent

Jack: people Kurt would become the producer, Lee would become the producer,

Jack: and they would, you know, they would set it up hire the cameramen and deliver

Jack: the final product to ABC to be on the show,

Jack: and so they were filming and he said, what I want is to have you Kurt with the

Jack: rod underneath your hand, flies

Jack: out in the water and you're lighting the cigar back then, that was okay.

Jack: And this was during the time of the day when there was no fishing, middle of the day,

Jack: and so what Lee would do and he always looked to cut money, Kirk didn't cut,

Jack: he just paid the best to get the best photographers, but Lee was a cheapskate

Jack: and he would hire a French Canadian cameraman, which he could get for,

Jack: very cheap, now realize you're using and 35-millimeter film,

Jack: which is when edited back then was $1,000 a minute.

Jack: So if you had a 23-minute show, just in that fee is going to be $46,000.

Jack: That's a lot of money back then.

Jack: And so you didn't waste it.

Jack: So Lee's idea was to get a big daredevil without the hook on it,

Jack: cast it out, and get the big brook trout to chase it in.

Jack: And they would take flies on the surface real easily.

Jack: So we'd do that. The fish would come in and send it up. The fish wouldn't take the fly.

Jack: It just went on and on. And Lee was very devoted on doing this.

Jack: He'd look up and see the camera, and they're standing there.

Jack: What they needed to do is once they brought the daredevil in,

Jack: they would then hit the camera and film that.

Jack: Then you'd build it afterwards. And how you did the old shows with film is you

Jack: caught the fish, then you acted out everything before it.

Jack: Now, of course, you can film everything because video doesn't cost anything.

Jack: So he's doing that and doing that. Finally, the fish takes a flight.

Jack: Kurt throws a rod in the air.

Jack: The cigar goes everywhere. He goes, oh, we got it. I've been trying for years to get that.

Jack: He turns around, and there's no cameraman there.

Jack: He yells, did you get it? There's one guy standing there. I said, get what?

Jack: Lee went right up there and just decked the guy.

Jack: So that was another part of it he had a quick temper,

Jack: you gotta take the good with the bad here always said this is how you evaluate

Jack: a friend somebody you want to have a friendship with like a sports game you

Jack: add up all the good things,

Jack: and you got your score then you add up all the bad things and you got your score

Jack: the good things outweigh the bad things you got a friend And.

Marvin: Yeah, that's a novel concept in this day and age, right?

Jack: Yeah, that's the way Kurt really helped me understand what it was to stay in your lane.

Jack: You know, the saddest part of all of these guys, and I know what they mean now

Jack: that I'm 77, is that nobody remembers you after a time.

Jack: When you're in the middle of the battle and everybody knows you,

Jack: then all of a sudden you start on a – I look at life like an airplane.

Jack: You take off. My family was involved in aviation.

Jack: You take off, and I got to be able to fly Boeing jets and simulators and all

Jack: kinds of planes on my adventures, but not wanting to do it as a profession.

Jack: But if you take off, that's what you do.

Jack: You work your way through school, you're doing the college, you're doing everything.

Jack: All of a sudden, you get married, you have kids, and the plane is in what we call cruisimatic.

Jack: Going down, you back off the power, and you enjoy the ride.

Jack: When you get down, all of a sudden, you're going to have to land.

Jack: You've got to bring back the power more, and you start to descend.

Jack: And as you descend, it's each part of your life that all of a sudden you're on final.

Jack: Out comes the gear, and you hope you make a nice off-landing die in bed.

Jack: Anywhere along that climb, that plane can crash. But that was my idea how life was.

Jack: And, you know, everybody says live every day like your last.

Jack: I mean, that's great. I just live every day like it's a day.

Jack: And try to do as many things with friends as you can.

Jack: And that's why people ask me, why did you still row the river at almost 77?

Jack: I said, because that's what you do.

Jack: If I can do it, I'm going to do it as long as I can. Because I get to see beautiful

Jack: skies and be away from people.

Jack: Many times I'd float down and never see a person all day. Think about that.

Jack: Never see a human all day. And you're in a boat. Can't beat it.

Marvin: It's certainly one of the reasons why I like fishing the Rocky Mountain West,

Marvin: although it's gotten a little harder and harder to find that solitude.

Marvin: But I always think, you know, floating in Montana, that, you know,

Marvin: when you kind of get out a little bit and you don't see anybody,

Marvin: that you're literally looking at the landscape exactly the way it was when Lewis and Clark came through.

Jack: Well, that's what I love about Yellowstone. When you go to Yellowstone,

Jack: that was the way it was all the way back.

Jack: Forget the roads to it. Just look out there where there's no roads or trails

Jack: and say, and that's the way it was.

Jack: And of course the wilderness areas, but you have to hike into the older you

Jack: get. You just can't do that. You know, you can't do that.

Jack: So what I like is you just learn to be create.

Jack: The guides have to be there. My grandson's a guide at this, in the shop where

Jack: I guide and where he guides.

Jack: I mean, I don't get where he got and they have to go out at seven 30 and They

Jack: expect it to be back at 530 because all the restaurants close at nine o'clock,

Jack: except for a brew pub closes at 10.

Jack: So you go out at 10 or 11 and you fish dark and you don't see anybody.

Jack: You have to be inventive to not see people. Now, that may not happen on a man

Jack: or something like that, but you'll run into privates, but people want to be

Jack: off the river. They're afraid of the dark.

Jack: They don't feel comfortable rowing, and they don't really.

Jack: The rivers are long. Some of them are 24-mile stretch in one day.

Jack: You have a motor, but if it gets too low, you don't have the motor.

Jack: You know it's it's being inventive I think you know that's what Lee would say

Jack: that he he would just figure a way so he could be alone,

Jack: but meant getting on private property he'd go to private property I don't like

Jack: the deal with private property I had to get on about any private property but

Jack: it comes with a price you the call up I need you to come out and get my buddy

Jack: a casting lesson or take him fishing it always happened when it was on your daughter's birthday

Jack: thing and so i learned

Jack: there's plenty of water out there and and

Jack: uh it just private lamb came with there you know you know if you did it you're

Jack: gonna and then that's rightly so nothing wrong with it just something i don't

Jack: particularly want to do so i i think it's wonderful you know lee has gotten the,

Jack: notoriety of being such an.

Jack: Adventurer. But you think about it right now.

Jack: What is a building now which is so wonderful for the country is that we have

Jack: the fishermen that has the money to travel to,

Jack: Argentina and all over the world now, all these places and bring them money.

Jack: Get people jobs. You know, when I started helping on the travel,

Jack: there were just so few people.

Jack: We were working in New Zealand on trying to figure out how I only had a 38% return rate.

Jack: And I got hired by the government near New Zealand and the tourist commission

Jack: in Frontiers to try to figure out why. Well, it was really simple.

Jack: They were bringing people from Alaska. Right.

Jack: Were used to catching, you know, 50 fish a day, and they just didn't have the skill level.

Jack: So what we did is we brought over, we worked an intricate plan over 10 years

Jack: of bringing fly shop owners for free over there so they could see how difficult the fishing was.

Jack: And so when they booked a person, they knew they were sending them, they were qualified.

Jack: And they targeted at places like Pennsylvania and California and Colorado,

Jack: where they had conditions that were similar to New Zealand.

Jack: And it was just wonderful to watch that grow from one lodge.

Jack: When I started, there was one lodge. It really wasn't a lodge.

Jack: It was called Hookah Lodge.

Jack: And then it built up to where the government helped build lodges up to about six.

Jack: And now I think there's over 60.

Jack: And the fishing has remained really good and it's mainly because the enlightened

Jack: fly fishermen there they're locals,

Jack: they have to be good to catch fish and they have ingrained the catch and release

Jack: and it has become a very important industry for this small country of New Zealand

Jack: and I see that all around the world, I see people,

Jack: I get my texts from my friends in Tasmania.

Jack: I've worked with them, and they're all just saying, boy, we've got to get more cats in the leaves.

Jack: We've got to look at the water levels. They're doing all the stuff that we're

Jack: doing, and now they've got a problem.

Jack: The mainland Australia is protecting the native fares.

Jack: The conservation-minded people want the trout out of Australia.

Jack: Yeah, that's a battle. When you

Jack: consider about every prime minister of Australia has been a fly fisher.

Marvin: Yeah that's uh it's an interesting thing i mean the whole you know native wild

Marvin: thing is an interesting discussion and you know jack i appreciate you spending

Marvin: so much time and you know sharing a perspective on lee that you know most people

Marvin: don't have and you know certainly look forward to you coming back and uh sharing

Marvin: some more stories with us whatever.

Jack: You want to do it and i'm happy to talk about techniques and stuff too not just

Jack: Just the things I've learned out of boats and things.

Jack: Whatever you want. Just try to be relevant.

Marvin: I appreciate that.

Jack: I have a lot more stories.

Marvin: Oh, I know you do. I'm excited to record them and bring them to the listeners.

Intro: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.

Intro: And don't forget to check out The Chocolate Factory on May 4th at Jesse Brown's

Intro: Outdoors. Tight lines, everybody.