[gentle acoustic guitar]
- Peter Cozad: People say they want the easy information.
"Take me to your favorite spot, tell me how to fish."
Well, that's not part of the adventure.
I'll give you a general direction,
I'll give you streams, all the streams you can look at,
but that's how you find your own spot,
is by finding it on your own.
I pretty much learned how to cast on my own, fish on my own,
until I started getting into the circle
of people that were more experienced than me,
and then I started fishing with them.
Then my learning curve just started going up.
This rod is meant to cast at a certain speed,
a certain distance.
And once you've achieved that, it's an extension of your body,
really, your hand.
And being able to look at a log and say,
"I'm gonna make a perfect cast," have it land,
the fly drifts two feet and the fish eats your fly,
then you understand what fly casting is.
Casting is something you will always learn something about.
You never will master fly fishing--
you'll only get better at it.
Everybody asks me, "What's your favorite fly?"
Well, I have a lot of favorite flies.
It all depends on the season.
Right now we're in June, so we're using crickets,
grasshoppers, ants, beetles, any kind of terrestrial...
anything with a big profile.
Because the food source right now is starting to taper off.
We have brook trout and brown trout.
Some streams, and very few of them, have rainbow trout.
Trout need three things.
They need cold water, they need oxygen in that water,
and they need a place to hide, shelter.
They only have a certain range of comfort level,
just like humans.
Anything about 63-65 degrees, the fish start stressing.
We went through two major floods here, almost a year apart.
After the second flood, the fishing was terrible.
They were supposed to be hundred-year floods,
and we had two in two years.
I think part of that is seeing things
that we've never seen before here.
And talking to guys that have been fishing here 40 years,
they've said, "I've never seen that."
[gentle music]
Fly fishing is something that you become connected to
in much different ways than modern technology.
It's something to keep me grounded
and focused on the lifestyle I want to live.
Guiding, yes, it is a job, and people say
it's the greatest job in the world-- well, it's still work.
But for me, I feel very fortunate to be able
to go do something I'm very passionate about.
To watch people catch fish, that's my payoff.
Fishing on my own is more of a spiritual thing for me--
the solitude, the sound of the water.
The environment I'm in, the trees,
it's kind of my sanctuary.
I tell my parents I go to church every day,
it's just on the river.
[gentle music]