Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
Casting and Conquering: A Riveting Journey into Self-Taught Fly Fishing with Rylan Benjamin
Prepare to embark on a captivating voyage as we explore the diverse world of fly fishing with self-taught enthusiast, Rylan Benjamin. Hailing from the Okanagan in BC, Rylan dove into the vast world of fly fishing with a rod and a dream. Against the adversity of isolation and a steep learning curve, he treaded the waters of self-taught expertise, connecting the knots of knowledge from YouTube videos and a few helpful friends. From goldfish encounters to intense battles with aggressive fish species, his thrilling experiences will have you hooked.
Join us as we navigate the unpredictable currents of fly fishing, journeying through tales of the aggressive bull trout, feisty blackwater trout, and the unpredictable steelhead. Rylan's insight on salmon migration is especially fascinating, evoking awe and respect for the remarkable journey back to their birthplace. If you're interested in techniques, we share our experiences with tying flies, discuss the challenges of casting new rods, and celebrate the joys of the fly fishing season. You might pick up a tip or two.
Finally, we cast our lines into the delicate balance of local ecosystems, highlighting the impact of non-native fish species. Rylan shares a riveting tale of his encounter with the invasive carp. Our lively discussion embraces the thrill of wildlife encounters in Okanagan, from majestic bull moose to intimidating grizzlies. So, whether you're an experienced angler or simply an outdoor adventurer, this episode is sure to reel you in on a wave of anecdotes, lessons, and thrilling experiences.
•Instagram
https://instagram.com/backwood_angler?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Prepare to embark on a captivating voyage as we explore the diverse world of fly fishing with self-taught enthusiast, Rylan Benjamin. Hailing from the Okanagan in BC, Rylan dove into the vast world of fly fishing with a rod and a dream. Against the adversity of isolation and a steep learning curve, he treaded the waters of self-taught expertise, connecting the knots of knowledge from YouTube videos and a few helpful friends. From goldfish encounters to intense battles with aggressive fish species, his thrilling experiences will have you hooked.
Join us as we navigate the unpredictable currents of fly fishing, journeying through tales of the aggressive bull trout, feisty blackwater trout, and the unpredictable steelhead. Rylan's insight on salmon migration is especially fascinating, evoking awe and respect for the remarkable journey back to their birthplace. If you're interested in techniques, we share our experiences with tying flies, discuss the challenges of casting new rods, and celebrate the joys of the fly fishing season. You might pick up a tip or two.
Finally, we cast our lines into the delicate balance of local ecosystems, highlighting the impact of non-native fish species. Rylan shares a riveting tale of his encounter with the invasive carp. Our lively discussion embraces the thrill of wildlife encounters in Okanagan, from majestic bull moose to intimidating grizzlies. So, whether you're an experienced angler or simply an outdoor adventurer, this episode is sure to reel you in on a wave of anecdotes, lessons, and thrilling experiences.
•Instagram
https://instagram.com/backwood_angler?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
People are letting their pets go and there's a little lake I don't even care about saying the name of this one, the yellow lake beside me and it's a tiny little lake. It's, it's deep, but uh, somebody let goldfish go in there and it ruined the whole trout fishery in there. Now and and recently I've heard they've had some like success with reintroducing the trout, but there's still goldfish in there. But uh, they've had to like poison the lake a couple times to try and get rid of them, but Nothing gets rid of them. Like they're so resilient they're they're, they're stupid resilient. I, there's a little quarry beside my house like you can jump off into. It's like an old mining pit and somebody release him in there and I've seen goldfish like eight inches, like they get, they get fairly large and, yeah, and like the first couple generations I guess, they stay. They stay that orangey color or whatever, but after time they turn brown.
Intro/out:Welcome to dead drifter society, a Fly fishing podcast to share information, our adventures and our opinions. We want to see where everyone is at in life and on the water. We'll ask questions and get answers so we can learn everything there is to learn about fly fishing. And now here's your host, andrew Barony.
Andrew Barany :Welcome back dead drifter. On this episode we head down to the Okanagan in DC to chat with Ryan Benjamin. He is a fishy dude and Really, is just getting fully addicted to this thing we call fly fishing, and that's one of the reason I wanted to get him on. So we chat about fishing, lakes and just kind of the adventures and their love for the passion, love for the passion, love for the sport and the passion we have for it. There we go. So, yeah, I hope you really enjoy it. Just one other thing is I'm going to be uploading Episodes on Monday now just kind of works out better for the schedule and have the weekend to Record and then get it out if I need. So, yeah, I'm going to switch it to Mondays and start dropping new episodes on Monday. So I hope you enjoy this one and I'll see you down at the end. Yeah, so we don't even have to start this moment, but we can either or you fish, mostly lakes.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, so I learned how to fly fish about a year or so before COVID happened, maybe almost two. I moved out to Calgary and Didn't really have that many friends out there when I first moved out there and From there on I just kind of started regular fishing. I've fished my whole life Growing up in the Okanagan. Originally there was a river down by my house and me and my dad would always go down there a spring year and we toss a couple spinners in and get Some rainbows and take them home for dinner. But I started picking up fishing in Calgary again because I just heard that it was really good out there, and Started with my regular spin rod and from there on I would always go down to the bow and I'd see people down there all the time and they're fly fishing and I'm like, oh, like it doesn't seem like many people are doing what I'm doing, like I got a figure this thing out and I didn't have any guide or anything like that.
Ryan Benjamin :So I went to a local store there, picked up my first fly rod and went down to the river and just started Wacking away and snapping it behind me and everything like that and I was like is this how you do it. I just smacked myself in the back of the neck, I shot and you know I heard to put a split shot on to try my first time and yeah, that was not a good idea Like a BB gun and slowly just went home and watched youtube videos and and went from there, really like I learned I'm mostly self-taught. Obviously I've met some friends through through fly fishing out in Calgary that, uh, have taught me so much about it, but but mostly self-taught off of youtube and everything like that, just spending time on the river.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, that's sweet and that's like the cool thing, like the transition from going from a gear rod to To fly fishing on your own is like you said. You know you smack yourself. I I never used a split shot, but I had beads and they they hit me hard Because you're trying to add so much power in your cast because you don't know what you're doing. And then you just like that clips you in the back of the head or something right here. It's zoomed by your little ear and you're just like, oh my god, that was Almost in my face.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, you're thinking the harder I rip this thing back to farther it's gonna go out there right, and yeah, I'll in there. I suppose you eventually learned to to Refine that and and go from there. The the bow is a really really tough river to to catch fish on. So, um, the first time I actually caught a fish on the fly rod was on one of the cutty streams in southern Alberta. Okay, I'm going out there and sat on a rock and see all these fish for the first time right in front of me and I was like, oh my god, like they're. They're right there. I was chucking flies, slapping the water right in front of their face. I'm like why aren't they biting? And I look back at it like just Bent right over looking, rated the fish, like throwing flies and flies in their face, and Spent probably an hour or two in the same spot like Learned so much since then. But for sure, eventually, sure enough, I got one to come up and hit a little white mayfly and I was sold ever since then it's so funny too.
Andrew Barany :It's like seeing a fish and catching a fish is just two different stories. You see a fish and you're like, oh yeah, I could obviously make this thing fly. And then you like you said, you just keep throwing and throwing and throwing stuff at it and nothing's happening. And you're like, how do they do it?
Ryan Benjamin :You know, exactly like I just I've talked to the same people on this stream that said they've caught 20 fish. Today I've been looking at one.
Andrew Barany :That's two hours and they won't bite anything. Being like always working five days a week and then fishing on the weekends, I always find that I'm catching or that like days. Yeah, I'm catching days off when the weather is like not ideal, like super high winds and stuff, like today. I was driving back and I just looked over at this like Lake that was just glass and I was like, look at that like 330, 340 glass water. If I were to get the day off today and I'm gone fishing, that would have been like tsunami.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, you know I'll smash it all over and everything. Yeah, it's, it's definitely a good to balance it out. Yeah, I wish I could get out on the water more but uh, ever since I moved back to the Okanagan here most of the lakes are About an hour or so away, so it's hard for me to catch that after work bite. Recently I've been fine. It's pretty difficult when, when I had the bow in my backyard for for so many years, it was so easy after work just to go right down to the bow and Cast in and catch a couple trout and go home within an hour or so and it's a big change. Like I got a couple big lakes around me, but they're more trolling lakes. It's really hard to find the fish in them and if you do, it's there's 60 feet deep and it's. It's a whole other game that that I still haven't been able to figure out those, those huge, huge lakes.
Andrew Barany :Yet yeah, they are definitely big water in general, like the bow river is pretty big. So, like you know, I found that as well when I because I was recently fishing the bow and that first day was like an eye opener to you know that fishery obviously and I found that I just couldn't, I couldn't read the water. I couldn't like, I didn't know any of the holes, I didn't know like all these things. That obviously would have helped quite a bit, um, and then what I was used to looking for was not there 100 have you ever been to vancouver island?
Ryan Benjamin :I've been to the island a couple times. I've never fished it, though. Okay, right on.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, so, like you know, seams banks, like they're it's at least to me, they're obvious where where the fish are lying, but on the bow it's like it's vast, it's.
Ryan Benjamin :There and it took me probably a year, after fooling around on cutthroat streams and and heading to where they're pretty easy to catch, to actually figure out how to catch fish on the bow like.
Ryan Benjamin :Eventually, my first fish on the bow was of uh, we call them bow river bone fish and it's just a white fish, and I got them on the staple, the wire worm. Oh yeah, some people would say that's cheating, but it was such a good feeling to finally link into a fish after trying for that river for so many, so many nights Until I finally linked into one, and ever since then I I love the bow. By the time I left Calgary it was definitely one of my favorite fisheries by far. It was. It was challenging and the fish in there can get huge and and there's so many different varieties of wild fish in there that are from different colors and different strains of this and that and um. Finally, before I left there, I finally started to dabble into the spay game and that was a whole. That was a whole game changer for me on the bow, like it's. It's so much fun to learn those tasks and to whip those spay flies out the middle of the river and get that tug on the end of it.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I uh, I did a little spay fishing while I was out there and I caught my pb brown, which was super cool. The browns, those, those things keep me up at night steelhead as well, but browns there's, I don't. It's interesting Is browns hold like a special little spot in a lot of people's hearts when they're generally introduced species. You know, yeah, it's, I always find that interesting. It was like everyone's, you know.
Ryan Benjamin :Because they compete with a lot of the native fish out there too. Right exactly, you get people that love, love, love their browns and don't say anything bad about the browns. At the end of the day they're they're a really fun fish to catch, but it would be cool to see more native species in there, that's for sure. I can only imagine what the bow is like before they introduced all those things.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I've even like I, when I was in crambrook guiding, I had a couple people like, oh, it's a white fish, yeah, we used to throw them on the bank. You know they just they're always in the way, or whatever they would say and I would just be like man. But those were, those were there, like Before yeah.
Ryan Benjamin :Leave them alone. That was the crazy thing about bull trout man, like back in the day they used to catch bull trout and they'd call them trash fish. They throw them on the banks and everything like that. And that's such a wild thing for me to think about now, because now there's such a revered species, everybody wants to catch a bull trout, everybody.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, have you. Uh, have you gone into the bull trout?
Ryan Benjamin :actually I made a trip this year with a buddy up to northern bc alberta and uh, and we got into quite a few bull trout that there's so much fun to catch and there's such a wild fish and they live in the most beautiful places out there In the middle of nowhere with the most beautiful rivers and drops and holes and everything like that, and it's so much fun to throw those big streamers out there for them and feel that tug on the end and they just rip, they just rip.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I've. I didn't catch the size I was looking for, but I got into a Quite a few. Every time I was like Because I I didn't really know I didn't do the research um On my way out there, which hindsight obviously would have helped knowing what. I should bring um. But yeah, I definitely was undergunned. Like I didn't really have the right Streamers for it, I obviously just bought some while I was out there.
Ryan Benjamin :Well, and there's such a weird fish too, because they they can do their spawning and they go up river and they can be in one spot and they can be in other like we'll spend a whole Week looking for them and never find them, because they can go up and spawn and come back down within like 72 hours and there's they're almost elusive in like a steelhead in that way, which I've never been lucky enough to get out there. Yeah, I would love to do that one day, um, but you're never guaranteed to get into them, and that's that's what I find so cool about them there. They're super elusive and and they're super aggressive too, like their streamer eats are so much fun.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, and that's like kind of how I went in with. The mindset was like well, I've got steelhead, I'll obviously get it. Oh, of course I could do this. You know, thought I was all that, and then I got humbled.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, it's super cool when you're out there on those little cutty streams you catch about a 10 inch cut of you're reeling it in on your dry fly and out of the depths a big bull trout comes up Out of nowhere to come and snag it off, yet Go grab it from you and keep it in their mouth and just swim around with it for a bit. And they're, they're so crazy.
Andrew Barany :That's what we were calling in my shark attacks, because we just you know, when I was, as I was guiding, we're going for cutties, come on the dry fly. And then all of a sudden, yeah, it's like, oh, you got a good cutty on, oh, there's a bull trout now your cutting just looks small, it's like 30 inch bull. Trout comes and like grabs a hold of your Next thing you know, your drags are screaming and like what's going on.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, yeah, really cool fish. I love them and they're beautiful, like they're the tones and like their spots and Everything about them looks like super cool.
Ryan Benjamin :You can get into them. Yeah, when they're really orange up and everything like that, they're gorgeous, yeah, it's. It's been a change for me coming out to the Okanagan, that's for sure, and learning this. These still water games like these panasks are so much fun to catch man, they, they, they tug, like nothing else I've ever caught before. Like, like, in comparison, like, like. I would say, like a 20 inch bow river rainbow compared to a 20 inch panask like that panask is going to rip you, like it's, it's going to tear your drag and you're going to think you have like a 10 pounder on the end of it and you bring it in. It's just like just a little tiny fish, like, but, but they're, they're really cool the way they have no spots and and uh, super insect eaters it's. It's definitely a change from from the stream or eats that you'd get out there.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I have yet to get the chance to go for panask. Um, I've only heard what you basically just said just a wild, wild fish to catch. I do have plans next year to go out and Ken Loops area and and target them was uh, did they stalk about on the island? You do not stalk them on the island, they stalk mainly um Fraser Valley. Okay, yeah, and nothing wrong with the Fraser Valley, but they're. They don't fight Half as hard. I think they're way prettier, the Fraser.
Ryan Benjamin :Valley. I think they're way prettier fish, but if you're looking for a fight like the panask is a way to go for sure, yeah, and then having you know the Cowjian River, which is my home water, that's all.
Andrew Barany :It's about an hour away as well, so I can't really get out for a late night fishing Either. So I feel I feel your pain there. But being able to, you know, compare those two, there's almost like it isn't a comparison. Like a 12 inch rainbow on that river will Out fight any size you get in the Fraser Valley, totally and I can't imagine a steelhead man like that's one thing that's still on the list.
Ryan Benjamin :I recently picked up a Bruce and Walker Rod from my buddy. It's an old, vintage one and it's uh, I think it's a eight, nine way, so I, or maybe a nine, ten week, but I just need to get a real in line for it and I'm heading out to the coast.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, yeah, it's you know an area already, or are you still planning all this out? I honestly like just the staple I've everybody obviously knows already.
Ryan Benjamin :I'm not hot spotting there, but Paris is obviously on the bucket list for for going for a steelhead and Anywhere I can get them all, go man, it's, it's on the list, that's for sure. It's one of the only trout I haven't caught yet. Yeah, yeah, they're, uh, they're lucive, that's for sure.
Andrew Barany :It's Like I Kind of started on steelhead in the river, which is, you know, now kind of a funny way to look at it, you know and I'm obviously still not by any means a steelhead Master, like far from it, yeah yeah, something about just swinging and swinging and swinging and like Hoping, and then finally one day it happens. It's so rewarding, it is so rewarding. The cool thing that I love about those fish is they're not necessarily a hard fish to actually get to bite, they're just a hard fish to find.
Ryan Benjamin :That's just it. Every year, it seems that they're getting harder and harder to find, as there's less and less of them, it seems.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I mean cow djin. I could be wrong, but it seems like the numbers are holding, or at least there's some good years and some not so good years. I like to think that they're doing relatively okay compared to some places that definitely aren't doing so good. I know well not. No, I've talked to some people about genetics and anywhere that there is residential rainbows, they're more likely will always be some form of steelhead population, because that's where they came from. There's always that chance, out of, let's say, a batch of a million rainbow fry, that some of them will go to the ocean and continue that. I like to think positively. Mine I don't do is ton of research into those things, but that's at least how I like to think about it, because I obviously am optimistic when it comes to that. I don't want to see them gone.
Ryan Benjamin :You got to be and we got to keep fighting for them right every single day. That's the thing is all these silly dams and stuff like that. I really miss the heyday out here with the Thompson River because I've just heard some unreal stories about the steelhead that used to run up that river and how they're just the biggest and best fighters out there. I hope one day we can see some of these dams go and we can see some of these steelheads start to come back and hopefully one day this ocean stuff figures itself out and temperatures become good again, because there's nothing more. I'd love to be able to go to the Thompson and catch some big old steelhead. Yeah.
Andrew Barany :I do believe to an extent that the world's working through cycles Once again. No actual scientific background on that.
Ryan Benjamin :But in my mind.
Andrew Barany :Things change, and things If it's not humans that are doing it. If we can get a hold of that, then I think that nature's going to do its thing and stay optimistic.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, I was going to ask about this too, and the guy was talking about it. He's like these fish have been around since before the ice age and all that stuff like that. Let's just hope that even if they dip down, they'll be back and strong one day, right, yeah?
Andrew Barany :That's kind of my mindset, because if we base it off of statistics for the last 15 years, 50 years or 10 years or 20 years, yeah sure it might look a little darker than it could be, but we're actually looking into the future and hopefully things are better than ever right?
Ryan Benjamin :Yes, exactly.
Andrew Barany :Stay positive people yeah. So, when you first started fly fishing did you find Lisa? You used a lot of YouTube. Did you find that helped you quite a bit with casting and all that, or was it still like a really slow go?
Ryan Benjamin :100%. It helped me with casting. It helped me with learning the fundamentals of everything. There's so many great YouTube videos out there nowadays from even the Stillwater guys that I've been learning about recently with Brian Chan and Phil Rowley and those guys. It's unreal the wealth of knowledge that's online that you can get.
Ryan Benjamin :Like I said, too, a lot of them is just from meeting people at the shop and in Calgary there and meeting other people that were my age and we would go down to the river and they would show me as they've been doing this a lot longer than I have, and they would show me the foundation, show me what's working here and there and slowly from there, like just a cumulative of all of it. And spending hours and hours on the water, spending hours and hours researching online and talking to people, I think is where I've gotten to, and I'm still, I would say, relatively new at this. I've caught a decent amount of fish, but it's been so rewarding to do it all by myself. And, yeah, I'm not opposed to getting a guy, but I'm also a young guy and I don't have a ton of money and I would have loved to do that and go out and experience it, but I was stubborn and spent all my money on my flies and eventually figured it out.
Andrew Barany :Yeah One. You know you're young enough that you got time, like if you're, if we were sitting here 80 years old and had fly fish our whole life, see, I'd get a guy get some, like you know. But then you got that disposable income. I don't really know what that's like, but I'm sure it's nice. You know what I mean, that's for sure.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, I found it so rewarding too to figure it out myself and not get the easy lessons and go out and have bad days on the water and come home and think about it and stew about it all night, the more I learned from. It was obviously the worst days that I had being out there and just being so frustrated and coming back home and doing research, the days I was catching fish all day. I don't think I ever really learned much from those days right, it was. It was. It was coming home and figuring out the question of why weren't they biting, why were they doing this, why weren't they doing that? And going from there right.
Andrew Barany :Those are the questions that made me into a better angler as well. It's just like why? It's a never ending puzzle. Why did that not work today? You know, or you get to the river and you're fishing and it's super tough, and then someone comes up and they're like, oh, you should have been here yesterday. You're like why was yesterday so good though? 100%, oh man, using the same stuff today.
Ryan Benjamin :Why aren't they biting?
Andrew Barany :Yeah, it's it's a trip. It keeps me up at night. It keeps me up at night Every night. Yeah, and I just had, you know, the still water or BC fly guys on and we're talking about it, and he was like, yeah, never, never, assume that the next day is going to be the same, and that goes for rivers and for and for lakes. For sure. We're like one day could be super good and this is the fly that's working, and then we go back out and nothing.
Ryan Benjamin :The same and you're like, yeah, those guys, those guys are awesome. I've already picked up so much information from those guys. Just by following their Instagram and watching their YouTube videos already, like they've, you can tell they've been at this for a long time and they got their stuff figured out for the most part, that's for sure.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, well, and I think, like you're saying with the, the question like why weren't they biting? That's a really important question. Or just questioning things all the time, like when you're out there and you're, you know, one year you did your setup this way and then next year you're not catching anything like that, like why, what could I tweak, what could I change? Those are the big things that you know. I definitely it took me a long time to figure out the questions to be asking, and I still am. You know I don't consider myself the best angler out there. I'm persistent. I think that's the. That's the next key. You've got to be persistent as all hell. Yeah, exactly, I will stay outside.
Ryan Benjamin :That was the boat like it would. It'd be February, January. I'd be standing outside and my waiter is in the water just refusing to go home. Like my toes were frozen, Nothing was working and I was like I can't leave until I got one fish. One fish is all that matters. Like super stubborn, super persistent, just to get onto something.
Andrew Barany :Just one fish, please come to me. And then it happens here Like okay, one more though Okay.
Ryan Benjamin :I got to figure it out now.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, and then it doesn't work again. My, my, the thing I'm always fearful for is when I get to the water and you get a fish right off the bat First, cast Always, always off.
Ryan Benjamin :When you passed weekend there. I was just pulled up to this lake and me and my buddies hopped out. I was in the raft, I was sitting there and literally just set up my first rod through the barber and picked up my other rod case, started to put my my sink tip lined together and, sure enough, I look over my bobbers down. I'm like, oh no, grab the rod, pick it up. Bobber floats to the top of the water and for the rest of the day no more bites. I was like I knew right from as soon as that bobber came up. I was like that's going to be it for the day.
Andrew Barany :It's so fun when that happens, like, and there's just so many times. This one time I was on Kennedy Lake, which is the biggest lake on the island of fun, correct, okay, and that's up by like Tafino and Port Remf or Tafino and Euclid, yeah, and I was out commercial fishing there and I had a day off, so I literally hiked there from Euclid and for anyone that wouldn't know that, that was like an hour, like I think it was a two hour hike on the road. Yeah, it was just brutal. And so I got to the lake finally I set up my float tube that I had. I had all my gear on me and my laters and everything.
Andrew Barany :Set up my float tube and I, like put on the fins, started walking backwards, got in the water, started kicking off and I was kicking up a bunch of the bottom I was making. This big cloud in the water casted out a woolly bugger in front of me, so like towards the shore in that cloud and I was just trying to get out. You know, I was trolling my flight outwards and I get a cutty and I'm like, oh my God, I just want to be like that all day. Didn't see it was clear water, didn't see another fish for the rest of the day and I ended up hiking back and it took even longer because I was now tired and actually ended up hitching a ride with some interesting people. That's the best Always.
Ryan Benjamin :I'm always hoping on those long hikes back from the river. Please somebody stop for me Just pick me up, pick me up.
Andrew Barany :I don't need to go that far, just please. If I was, they like right when I got in the car they're like, do you need a beer? And they like both had beers open and I was just like, oh yeah, if I didn't need this ride, so bad right now maybe.
Ryan Benjamin :I would get out yeah.
Andrew Barany :Yeah it. And then I went back one more time and same thing. That's far as not same thing. Nothing happened, no fish.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, it seems like it's getting to that time of year right now where things are. Things are starting to slow down for me over here too. Last couple of times have been to the lakes. The bites have been really slow. So I'm hopefully going to get out this weekend and do some chasing for Brookies up here, because I think that they should be getting a little more active and I haven't actually had the opportunity yet to go for Brookies out in BC. There was a couple of good lakes that I got to go to in Alberta where there was some fair sized Brookies.
Ryan Benjamin :But it's one thing about moving places. Like I got to find all new spots again. It's like it sucks, but at the same time it's really cool, like probably going to like 10 different lakes since I've been home and it's really cool to see each lake and how they work and super stoked to try and find that trophy Brookie Lake, because people are real, real secretive about their Brookie lakes out here. Oh, I bet Rainbow lakes people will give it a lead on something, and but the Brookies there, they're a good kept secret out here. That it seems fine.
Andrew Barany :I noticed, even like I guess on the island I feel like people are really secretive, but they are very secretive of like steelhead stuff out here in terms of like where to go, especially like timing and what systems and when it is happening all that. But when I was in Alberta I found people were really secretive about like the Bo River, which I found like I was like these are trout. This is kind of interesting.
Ryan Benjamin :And then Bo River steels. You got to be careful about those. Yeah, people aren't going to give up their honey holes for their browns and their rains, that's for sure.
Andrew Barany :No. And then I realized that like I was like, oh well, catching big fish out here would be like us getting our steelhead out there. So then it kind of made sense and then I can only imagine with like the lakes out there it's the same thing where it's like we got something that's super special. You're not just going to be like, oh, I've never met you, yeah.
Ryan Benjamin :You're just where to go, you know. And it adds an element to find the things too right, where it's like all right, nobody's going to tell me I'm going to go. Have to go find one myself and find my own special spot. You know what I mean? Yeah, 100%, reading those stalking reports and finding those low numbers in those areas and going from there right, and when was this last stalked? And doing that. It's all a game, it is.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, and that's an interesting thing, that like, because I don't really look at stalking numbers out here, because what I'm going for in the river Got wild steelhead. Yeah, we got wild steelhead. We don't know there could be fish and there could not be fish, exactly it's a timing thing out here for that. But when we're talking like going and looking online and seeing like, okay, these are the stalking numbers this year, this had kill offs, this had blah blah blah, this it's a lot of information, like you said, like time on the water is really the thing spending, finding, looking, lots of research.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, and gas ain't cheap right now. So you better make sure that you at least catch one fish at those lakes when you get out there, that's for sure. And yeah, I'm not used to it either, like a lot of the places where I went to in Alberta. It was lots of wild bull trout, lots of wild cutties and it was. There was the odd rainbow stocked lake, but the bow is all wild fish.
Ryan Benjamin :They never stalked the bow, you know what I mean. So I was never looking at that. So it's all new for me coming out here and having to look at those stalking reports, because there's very few wild fisheries out here, unless you go to, like I say, those big lakes where you still get the odd fish that's in there that's native to this area. They're hard to come by, it seems, and unless you're trolling 60 feet down and with big old down rigors and big spoons and plugs and stuff like that. That's something that I'm not opposed to, but it's definitely not the same kind of action that I like. And going out there and really search and form instead of just doing circles around the lake all day until something bites, yeah.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, trolling is definitely one of those things that I avoid. If I don't have to do it, like when I'm on the ocean and bringing a fly rod, yeah, yeah, what's the chance of me catching a fish? Maybe not as great as trolling a flasher and a spoon or whatever, but definitely.
Ryan Benjamin :But the fight and the reward of getting them on the fly is so much better than catching 10 on the troll. Yes, 100%.
Andrew Barany :What was one of the big things you had to overcome with? Because you're fishing a lot more from shore back in Alberta and now you're on a raft or some kind of flotation device.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, so I have a raft and I did a couple still water lakes out in Alberta and there's some beautiful, some rainbow fisheries and cutty fishes. Then you can even get bulls from shores in some areas. But it's a matter of like out there the fish just behave so much differently, like I find the fish school around on the shore is more. They show themselves a lot more, whereas I don't know if it's just this penask strain, but they seem to be so much more hard to find and the lake color is so much different. Like a lot of the lakes out there they're pretty clear and glacier fed and you can see right through the water, whereas a lot of the lakes around here now are super tea colored and you can't see them.
Ryan Benjamin :So you really got to get in a boat and you got to look around for them. I do miss the wading aspect of rivers and stuff like that. I have a small river beside me here. There's a couple nice little wild rainbows in it, but nothing like trekking up those rivers all day and in the mountains out in the Rockies and stuff like that. So it's definitely a change, getting in the boat and anchoring and all this different stuff that I'm not used to.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, that's a good point. There's definitely like water color and just the different structure you're now looking for.
Ryan Benjamin :You know, even a different strain of fish is so different you wouldn't think it is, but it's a whole other kind of fish, it seems.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, yeah. So like are we still talking about rainbows here? I don't know.
Ryan Benjamin :Very different, but also the same. It makes no sense, but it's all a challenge, right, and that's what I love about fly fishing so much is it's never ending. There's always something that you can pick up, there's always something that you can learn, there's always somewhere you can try and the locations it brings you to right. Like I said, going to 10 different lakes this year and going to all those different spots, it's been so cool to see the different landscapes and wildlife around all those areas and being out in the middle of nowhere. That's my favorite part of it all. At the end of the day, if I'm not catching fish, I'm still having fun being out in the wilderness.
Ryan Benjamin :There. The air is so clean and everything's so quiet. Yeah, it's really peace for me, that's for sure. That's half the reason why I got into it. It's definitely just the peace because, like I said, I lived out in Calgary. I didn't have many friends or family out there when I first started, so it was really just a good way to spend my time and not sit in the basement all day long and watch YouTube videos. I can get out on the river and get some fresh air.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, yeah, and that's like the one thing. Now I don't stress as much when I don't catch fish. I mean, it doesn't happen as often.
Ryan Benjamin :It's nice. Thanks, bud. Yeah, it's nice.
Andrew Barany :Especially after like a full week of work, you're like okay, I just want to catch a fish here, yeah, but I definitely find that I'm a lot more peaceful about it. It's happened enough times that I've been skunked on a system, especially a new system. Like, if you get skunked on a system and you know really well, that raises questions like what am I doing wrong? Or the fish gone, the fish hate me. I didn't even know they could like me, Let alone hate me. But when it's a new system like I did so much fishing of new systems in the past or in the recent times here that I like the bull trout getting the size I wanted I was like, no, it's all good. Next year I'm going to come back with a little bit more information, a little bit more understanding of these fish. Better flies you know.
Ryan Benjamin :I mean it seems like it's such timing with bull trout Like there's such a small window where you can catch them, where one they're not on the reds. You don't want to go, and you know, and take them off their reds, especially if they're wild, native spawning fish. It's crazy how old they can get. But what do you can catch them on that move up or on that move down after Like it seems like it can be so good one day and then the next day there's nowhere to be seen for 15 kilometers in that whole system.
Ryan Benjamin :Like early season I thought I could get them out there and me and my one buddy hiked up and down and up and down and drove to the top of the system and down to the bottom of the system and it was like there was no bull trout in the river at all. It makes no sense. But then you go there the other day and it's just, it's stacked full of them and you're catching one after one after one. And yeah, it's all about that timing and probably less about what you're even throwing, just more about being in that right place at the right time and making sure they're there.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, what was one of the big things that you learned about? Still water when you made the switchover? That, like really helped you. I know I'm more so talking about like fly selection and stuff like that Like was something you had to kind of wrap your head around.
Ryan Benjamin :It's funny because my favorite fly on the rivers and still ends up being my favorite fly on the lakes Nice, I love my leeches. My leeches are always my searching patterns everywhere I go and they worked really, really well on a lot of the rivers out there. But this Chironomid game is a whole other game and that's a fun one that I'm still figuring out and from what time they're hatching and what color they are, and figuring that out is really challenging, but it's a lot of fun. Like the first time I got out here, I got this one fish on a leech and I pumped it and finally seen these elusive blood worms that everybody had been talking about.
Ryan Benjamin :I wasn't touching any fish all day and as soon as I was like I tied one of these, I'm ready. I threw it on and, sure enough, fish after fish, after fish, and I'm like this is insane to me that you can catch a fish on this tiny of a hook like size 20, size 16 hooks. You're getting these, these fair sized fish on. It's so much fun. And these penasks, man, they like to jump, they jump and jump and jump, and that's something that I'm not used to with a lot of the bows out there.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I didn't find the bows out there were super jumpy. They definitely had a handful that did. Mind you, I was streamer fishing the whole time I was out there. It was super like I did throw an inferior there, let's be honest. Yeah, but I never threw a bobber. I would have refused to. If I'm going to go bobber, I'm just going to go a little dirtier and throw Euro have you ever Euro nymphed?
Ryan Benjamin :I've dabbled in the Euro game around here. Yeah, you catch fish, but it's definitely not the same thrill, that's for sure, is getting a good tug on the spade rod, that's for sure.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, it's definitely a different field, but I mean, I love Euro. It's something that got me, you know, to understand those like the fish around here a lot better. Plus, it's just I don't know the way I do it. I love it. But yeah, there's, there's just different things. You know, when you can catch a fish that, like you watch come out of the depths chasing your fly, or you're just swinging endlessly all day, and then all of a sudden you're in wine, just like you feel this thing, and then you just like feel more head shakes and then you're like, oh my God, it finally happened.
Ryan Benjamin :This is crazy it reminds me of like this. One time I was out in Alberta at a spot for bullies and it was a really, really probably 20, 30 feet and that cast of the stream were out like deep and it was really murky glacier water and I'm stripping up, stripping up, stripping up, and I see my streamer come up and I'm just as I'm about to pull it out of the water. This bull trout comes straight up this ledge, grabs my streamer, hops onto the bank, starts flopping around everywhere and like it was just so cool watching it come from the middle of nowhere and just leaping right out of the water for this stream we're like nothing I know you'll ever beat the size of that bull trout jumping out of the water like that, that's for sure.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I found. Well, what was that fish thinking? Yeah, wait a minute, let's rewind to what was that fish?
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, I just jumped right onto these rocks and I didn't even get a chance that he flopped around, popped himself back in and swam off. I was like I don't even care that I didn't get a land, that fish. I'm like that was the coolest thing I've ever seen by far, like just the aggressiveness of him just leaping out of the water, stripping the bank. For it was a sight to be seen, that's for sure.
Andrew Barany :That's crazy. Have you ever had? When I was on the lake, there was this one day where it happened multiple times and I was like so one year they stocked my local lake with blackwater trout, okay yeah, and I didn't know and I was fishing prawnamids and it was awesome and I was like holy shit, these fish are fiery. What god did someone drop something in the water? And they're just going crazy, are they?
Andrew Barany :on drugs. They were acting so intense and I just was so stoked to be catching them. And I had it happen twice in one day where I like hooked a fish on the one side and I'm fighting it, fighting it and all of a sudden a fish flies into my boat from the other side and we'll be at it, only to realize that it had like gone up and then, I guess, as it jumped in the air, the line got tight and like forced it to flop into the boat.
Ryan Benjamin :That's awesome. Yeah, they're feisty fish man.
Andrew Barany :Has that ever?
Ryan Benjamin :happened to you where it's like flopped into your boat or into your boat. I've never quite had a flop into the boat, only on the bank, that's for sure.
Andrew Barany :Yeah that's crazy. It was so funny. I've talked to a few people that it's happened to and I guess, like if you think about it, so like as your line is on one side of the boat and they're swimming under the other way and then right as they go to jump, everything gets tight. That is forcing them towards it is going right in. Yeah, they do a big loop and flop right in.
Ryan Benjamin :I'm not supposed to get you to the odd fish. You bonk itself, you know.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, and I, we did so good that year and then the next year we went back and I was Fraser Valley again and I was like, oh man.
Ryan Benjamin :Bobber goes down and feels like you just hooked on a log for half a second and yeah, you see him dragging along.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, just spinning to the top, they spin to the top or they do some funny things Like cutthroat.
Ryan Benjamin :I don't know how the coastal cutthroat compared to the Westlope. I've never caught a coastal cutthroat before, but I know the ones that I was catching out in those streams out there. You hook into them and they just banana, they flop and flop, and flop and that's about it. You just bring them right to the net every time. I'd 100% rather catch a rainbow or a bull any day over a cutty.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, the cutties, the Westlopes. They're pretty fiery. The big ones fight pretty hard. I really appreciate the fact that they come up to the surface, even like a dry fly. Hatch isn't happening, you can make it, they're fired up.
Ryan Benjamin :They're ready to go to the top, no matter what. You throw a stick on the water, they're like I'm hungry, let's go.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, it is kind of cool Cutties out here because we got the coastals and then we got the sea runs. They're awesome, man, Sea run fishing is awesome. They look good Timing, they are beautiful Spots on them and everything like that. They look awesome. I think chrome is hell, just mint fish. Yeah, I think a rainbow generally outfights most fish. Rainbows have some. I always joke around in like you know, rainbows are on like cracks. They just like explode. It's funky.
Andrew Barany :Then if we go into it I've never done PCP or crack, but I'm just assuming these things. I'm out here assuming, but you know, steelhead is on PCP. Oh yeah, they're brute force, they nothing can stop them. When you land a steelhead it's like did that just happen? You're holding the fish and you're questioning it. You know, when I'm fighting salmon and there's, like you know, a lot of salmon in front of me Now I mostly target them in the ocean, not that I target them that often, but I'd like targeting them on open water in like an estuary. That's my favorite when I see them like, yeah, Well, and I haven't done a ton of like the ocean, ocean stuff, but I have definitely got them on the fly rod out there, but like estuaries. It's like flats fishing. You see the fish. You see these torpedoes, these triangles, these groups of fish you cast in front of them and they can go all around you and just light it up.
Ryan Benjamin :Those salt fish man. The salt seems to bring out another level into the fish every single time. I wasn't on the fly but I took a trip down to Panama last year to visit my mom and I went out and did a little cheap guiding trip with the guy down there and he took me for rooster fish and just trolling around big bonitas that we caught and I've seriously never been more tired after a fight than after I brought that rooster fish. It was some of the most. I couldn't even explain how hard that fish fought. It was unreal.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, I had a podcast with a group of people and one of the guys on there, connor, he was explaining that anagymous fish, so salt water going into a river system to spawn your tail fin has to be basically the same width as their body, whereas anything that's not going to freshwater their tail can be as long as it is. So that's where that sheer power comes from, because you look at the fish, you look at a spring salmon and these things are massive. But then you look at a rooster fish but you know what I mean like a small fish and it just kicked your ass and you're like, well, how it's because that tail is so much longer that they get that much more power out of one single stroke. Let's say they're basically a two stroke engine.
Ryan Benjamin :They got those big paddles on them. They're just ripping up those rivers. Like I live beside, like I said, that little stream here and every year we get a small sock. I return and there's some little fish, ladders and dams, and I took my dog down there for the walk the other day Just to see those things jump up those rapids. It's unreal, just like how far they made it from, because the river where I'm at like in the Okanagan, here it's connected in some way or another to the Columbia, I believe, which is it's crazy that those fish come all the way down from the States, like 700, 800 kilometers from the ocean, and make it all the way up here through all those dams, through all the bears, the sea lions, the beakers. You know what I mean. You got the people, you get that whole thing. It's so crazy to think that they make it all the way back up here. It's so wild to watch them do it. I'm so fortunate to live in a spot where I get to see that happen every year now.
Andrew Barany :And then even like I've watched Koho jumping up little falls and stuff, when the falls are just high enough that they can't just jump right into it, they'll jump into it and start like just howl right up it, howl right up it, and it's like, yeah, it's breathtaking to watch a salmon run and, like you were saying, the journey that they actually have to take is incredible. I always, like it still baffles me. But like, could you imagine, like if I don't know where were you born?
Ryan Benjamin :I was born here in Penticton in the Okanagan.
Andrew Barany :Okay, and if you hadn't been back there your whole life and I dropped you off and said get back to the hospital bed that you were born at, like on you Like, would you get there? No way. But they're like they're finding this like one little creek and going back to their like original spawning beds, like that, to me, is insane.
Ryan Benjamin :Like let's take it back a second.
Andrew Barany :We're in the ocean. You're in the ocean and you've been swimming around for like four years, and now you know they're obviously not stoneers. They have their brain cells still there, but they're making it back all the way, after four years, finding the same river and then crossing, like Coho especially, will go into the lake, into the creek and then back to their spawning grounds.
Ryan Benjamin :It really makes no sense to me. And starting as such small fry too, like you started off this tiny little thing in this river and make it all the way down there to begin with, like, even like past, all the giant fish and everything like that. It's truly remarkable to see I could live in a place where we get to see that every single year.
Andrew Barany :I fished one run three times at the bow river. If you dropped me back off close to the bow river, I couldn't get there without a GPS. Hell, no, I would be like shit. I took all the left turns, it wouldn't happen. Yeah, there's a sense of direction unmatched. Yeah, have you done any salmon fishing?
Ryan Benjamin :I've done very minimal salmon fishing. Now that I live a lot closer to the coast, it's something that I plan on doing a lot more. I really want to get this bay rod rigged up so I can get out there and do it next season, even maybe possibly get out there this winter and do some winter steelheading at some point We'll see. Yeah, I'm learning how to cast this new rod I got too. The bay rod I learned on is just a Reddington trout spade. It's an 11 foot four weight. It's a new rod that I got. Like I said, I think it's a 9, 10 weight but it's 14 feet. The learning curve on that is going to be quite steep. Learning how to rip that thing out there to the middle of the river, that's going to be a whole other ball game than what I'm used to.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, well, I definitely wouldn't say so. I'm taking a picture of my fly and you're my background. Sweet, yeah. So right now we're currently tying flies, and that's how this podcast came to be. So we're killing two birds with one stone, but A little purple and shooter action there. Yeah, you know I haven't. This is actually my first fly in months. I shouldn't say that. I've tried some random stuff here and there, but this is the first it's fishing season right now. It's not fun, I know, I know. Well, we on the Vancouver Island, it's always fishing season.
Ryan Benjamin :That's true. You never have a break out there. You're lucky enough.
Andrew Barany :Kind of yeah, yeah, it costs you money, though I'll tell you that that's for sure.
Ryan Benjamin :And you never have those boxes quite as stocked as you'd like them.
Andrew Barany :No, I like salmon season. I can stock those boxes Nymphs. I can stock those boxes hard. I can tie nymphs very quickly. Mind you, I don't tie like super intricate nymphs.
Ryan Benjamin :They'll catch fish still just as much intricate ones will.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, it's true, and like that's something that I was talking to Brandon about last episode with the still waters is like you know, how many details do you really need on your flies? That's up to you. I don't want it down as much as possible because I'm like, especially for guiding, like I'm not trying to spend 20 minutes on one fly just to watch someone snag it on rock. That's, you know, it hurts my inner self. Yeah.
Ryan Benjamin :Like some of the first flies that I ever tied up, like I had none of the right materials, I had saddle hackle and replacement of Marabu for my leeches. Like it was nothing looked good at all but it still caught me bull trout, it still caught me rainbow. It was like it did the job, you know, and that's all that matters at the end of the day. No point in spending a million years on a fly just to lose it in 20 minutes.
Andrew Barany :Oh man, the amount of flies that I've tied, that took me so long to tie and then cast them out and lost them first cast makes me cry, it hurts, it makes me cry inside. So, yeah, pretty intruders and all that, yeah, and this is like just, I guess, a micro intruder, just a little guy. It's going to be for a specific day. I don't even necessarily plan to fish at early season because it's red or purple and black, and that's usually not what I start with early season for steelhead. But the day that it gets pulled out of the box it's going to have confidence behind it.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah yeah, these intruders weren't even deadly on the bowman.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, one that was kind of the thing that I found was really interesting with the bow was the leeches, because I just am not really used to seeing leeches. We don't have leeches in our lakes out here, or a few of them and not all of them whatever, I don't know. Yeah, I've pumped stomachs, never seen a leech.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, I find they're hard to show up in a stomach pump sometimes.
Ryan Benjamin :Okay, maybe that's all it is, but I've eaten them, but I think if you get, if they're eating the big ones, I finally don't come out or something. Because, like the lakes were around where I'm from right now, like personally, I've never seen a leech in the bow, but the links that I'm fishing now, every single time I'm pulling into the lake or around there, there's always leeches on the surf, like just crawling around on the bottom of the lake and I've still yet to pump a fish. But I know that they eat them every time I throw them. So it's some of them, yeah.
Andrew Barany :Well and that's the thing too is on our lakes. We're still getting them on leeches, yeah throw on a leech, a little black and blue or a little red and blue, and cast it out. Do some very slow strips and maybe pop it a few times and we'll probably get a fish.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, that's probably my favorite all around the fly. I have to say, as a leech is. My friends bug me about it. All the time they're out on the lakes they're throwing blobs, they're throwing gonfists, they're throwing cronimids, everything like that. They always look after me and they're like what are you throwing? I'm like what do you think I'm throwing? Every single time I'm out there at some kind of leech Like they laugh at me all the time about it, but I'm still catching fish beside them, so that's all that matters.
Andrew Barany :Yeah Well, and you'll find that a lot or at least I find it a lot where you know, even if you're not using the same fly, probably you'll still catch fish. I would I feel more confident thinking that I'm putting flies in front of fish versus what fly I have on. I'm sure there could be a fly that would work better in certain times, obviously with hatches and all that, but like if there's a presentation, but if that fly is in front of it, it's mouth. It got pretty good.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, you got some good, you know, unless you've spooked it or pissed it off some way or another. You know, or he really hates you, I don't know, but chances are yeah. There's fun, but not that fun. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't even know how smart they are. I think they're smart enough to not bite my hooks all the time, but not smart enough to never do it, you know.
Ryan Benjamin :Smart enough is to where I don't feel bad about taking one home every now and then. Yeah, do you like to eat fish? I prefer white fish. A lot of the lakes around here is. Another thing I'm getting into is a smallmouth bass fishing, and that's like a whole other thing because there was no bass out in Alberta and I really like to taste the bass. If I like brain or rainbow, or if something happens where it's just not coming back, I'll eat a rainbow every now and then, but it's not preferred If I have everything that's ready, if I have like a cooler, I know I'm going to be home within an hour or this or that. You know what I mean. Like I won't just catch one just to keep one, but if it happens, it happens. I like smoking them and brining them and doing all that stuff and, yeah, it feeds a family every now and then. They can't complain about me going.
Andrew Barany :So yeah, well, and I think bass is an underrated fish for eating Like it is so good, totally.
Ryan Benjamin :And they're invasive like super invasive out here, like they're totally native to the East Coast, like I don't care if anybody says anything bad about me eating bass, like they're not meant to be here so I'm going to keep them every single time.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, no, but like butter salt pepper, that is some good white fish. That is a delicious, delicious fish to eat. The first bass. Yeah, the first bass I ever ate. I was like, oh my God, yeah, this is crazy. Specifically small mouth and super easy to flay.
Ryan Benjamin :Mm, hmm.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, like you don't have to get it, and they're fun to catch.
Ryan Benjamin :They, they tug, they're, they'll eat literally anything you'll throw in front of them, Like I've been messing around with them off the shore on my local lake here recently and just casting like little frog poppers and stuff like that for them on my flat rod and plopping them across the surface and they just jump out of the water for them, Like they're super fun to catch and yeah, they're, they're tasty fish and they're not.
Ryan Benjamin :They really. I think a lot of the reasons why these bigger lakes around me are hurting for rainbows is because of the bass, and we also have some huge carp in our lakes too, which I still have yet to catch on the fly. It's on the list, but there's there's quite a bit of like invasive species from the bass, the carp. We have a like bluegill, like pumpkin seed out here as well, and some of the lakes and in a lake just down the road for me there's like black croppy, crappie, crappie, whatever you want to say and yeah, it's crazy the amount of fish that have made it up here. So every time I can to help out the rainbows, I'll take a bass home.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, amen.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah.
Andrew Barany :Don't just kill a fish for no reason, but never know if you're hungry and it's a bass. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure some Americans might not like that. Yeah, Because they love their bass fishing. But I think the same American that might not like that has probably ate a bass and thinks it's a good fish to eat.
Ryan Benjamin :So Exactly, and there's a couple of large mouth lakes around here too. I don't know if I'd eat a large mouth I heard they're not the best, but I know the small eyes are good Small eyes are yeah, and that's what I ate.
Andrew Barany :I've definitely done my fair share of bass fishing. You know, a deep, dirty secret is I do like a bait caster that is a fun set up to cast out and it's like Is that the bass rod man that's, that's get them on right. Yeah, that sounds good, but I like doing them on the fly. I usually it's like I'm out of like fishing for rainbows and rainbow fishing is a little slow and I see some lily pads or something and I'm like, well, all right.
Ryan Benjamin :I guess they're a great fish to catch. Like they'll eat anything you throw in front of their face. They're so aggressive Like you'll catch a big one and then you'll like you'll bring it in beside the boat or onto the shore and there'll be another big one beside it ready to hop on it, like they're. They're feisty fish and they'll eat, like the poppers, anything you throw on the top of the water. They're going for 90% of the time.
Andrew Barany :I don't think that large mouths go for top water. As much my understanding, but I haven't spent enough time doing it. But I know the small mouth I've never caught one.
Ryan Benjamin :I've never gone on a large mouth, I've never gone to the lakes. They actually closed another lake close to me Recently. It used to be like a trophy rainbow lake. Yeah, I guess somebody released large mouth in there and so they shut the lake down for a study. So they're like they're closely monitoring this lake beside me right now to make sure to see what happens to it, I guess, and if they are coexisting or what. But sucks for that person that released it, because now they can't even fish in that lake either. He ruined it for everybody.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, that's such a like I can't even really imagine being like oh, I want this fish in here. And like now. You have to go get, I guess, either a bunch of fry or a female that's pregnant, which seems like such a task in itself.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, where are you going to get a large mouth bath from and then keep it alive?
Andrew Barany :Keep it alive, travel it across the state or across provinces, whatever you're doing, and then release it. And then you're just like, ha, I did it Totally and that. That, to me, is crazy.
Ryan Benjamin :You know, and the goldfish too, like we have bad problems with goldfish and lakes around here as well.
Ryan Benjamin :Because people just drop them back in. Yeah, people are letting their pets go and there's a little lake I don't even care what's saying the name of this one, the yellow lake beside me and it's a tiny little lake. It's deep but somebody let goldfish go in there and it ruined the whole trout fishery in there. Now and recently I've heard they've had some success with reintroducing the trout, but there's still goldfish in there but they've had to like poison the lake a couple times to try and get rid of them, but nothing gets rid of them. Like they're so resilient they're stupid resilient. How big did they get?
Ryan Benjamin :There's a little quarry beside my house Like you can jump off of into it. It's like an old mining pit and somebody released them in there and I've seen goldfish like eight inches. Like they get fairly large and then they're fat, brown, eight inches and like the first couple of generations, I guess, they stay. They stay that orangey color or whatever, but after time they turn brown. Like they recede into like a, because they're essentially like a carp, like a, like a small carp, I guess, or one of those species.
Ryan Benjamin :But yeah, they start to get like naturalized after like a couple of generations of them being in there. So you'll see blacks and browns and all different kinds of colors and they're still goldfish. And you'll still see like the odd brown one, like a little speckle of orange in it. But yeah, they've. They've done some, they've done a number. But I've heard like in some of the lakes where the trout are still surviving, you can throw like small orange boobies and stuff at them and the trout of like they figured out how to eat the goldfish and everything like that, so you can get away with like little goldfish patterns. Some of these lakes. Now it's pretty funny and fattened the rainbows right up.
Andrew Barany :I'm just going to show up with a bag of goldfish. Like the snacks, put those on hooks cast them out.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, exactly that's how some of them got in there. At some point somebody used them as bait.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, that's interesting, I know that.
Andrew Barany :Like I remember when I was young I found a turtle on the sidewalk it was upside down and I like took it home, got a tank for it, and my mom, she didn't want the turtle for some reason, probably because she had to pay, like buy stuff for it and we weren't in a financial setting for that.
Andrew Barany :So like, maybe that was the reason. I don't know her exact reasoning behind it, but she was. We were out of like a pet shop once and she like told the, ask the, or was talking to the guy about the turtle and he was like oh, yeah, I take turtles in blah, blah, blah. And she was like, oh, okay, cause I was just going to release it at the pond. And he was like, oh, that's like a $10,000 fine if you get caught, or some you know whatever amount of money. But yeah, I don't think people can like, if you're not in the fishery game and you're not, you don't know, you wouldn't think like, oh, this one turtle or this one goldfish isn't going to do anything, it's responsible for wrecking an entire ecosystem.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, so I think that's where people kind of overlook it and and you know, so on and so forth.
Ryan Benjamin :But yeah, and we're lucky to hear we have the native painted turtles and they're so cool because you'll be out on a lake and like this, yeah, and out of nowhere like you'll see, like this little head pop up and they'll just like they'll be sticking up there, if I just just to take a look at you and and you'll go by them and you'll watch them swim to the bottom of the lake and stuff that's. That's something that I never had in Alberta. That's really cool to have out here is the little turtle scurry and bio, or your fishing, yeah.
Andrew Barany :So most of your you were saying like a bunch of different species named the carp. That's kind of what I'm getting at. The carp are in just some of the bigger lakes. Are they in like a lot of the systems out there?
Ryan Benjamin :We've made it into the main system that it of the Okanagan Valley from like Okanagan Lake through Okanagan River into Skaha, all the way down through Vassal Lake, all the way down through Ossoyous Lake and, and I'm sure, onwards to the Columbia. So there's like there's like there's Perch Um yeah, perch, carp bass, all that stuff, and it's all not native to here. I'm sure it's got a small like. I'm sure it's got a huge effect on what the like the rainbow population, but obviously, like from the data shows, it's like a lot of that is ends up coming down to dams. But the most that we can do to get those out of the system the better. But I don't think we're ever getting carp out of here, no you can't Well.
Andrew Barany :from what I understand, they can have up to a million eggs.
Ryan Benjamin :Or like or more or something like six times a year. I think they spawn or something ridiculous.
Andrew Barany :And they're resilient as well, like they can literally live at a dump and survive. It's smart.
Ryan Benjamin :Like super, super spooky and smart, like they cruise the shallows in, uh, in Skaha Lake here and I've I've tried a couple of times to throw leeches at them or shrimp or anything like that, and they just look at you and like almost like they're laughing and just slowly, so you got to look, you got to look.
Andrew Barany :So when they're just cruising, that one you probably won't catch. But when you find one with its tail up and it's digging, then you cast in front of it and you let your fly sink and you wait till it gets close, then you strip it. That's. I haven't. I've done it once or twice, but that's the technique with carp. And then I've even talked to someone who was saying that like you have to kind of know what they're feeding on, so like, if those carp are eating clams, you know, then you need to be fishing clam fly of some sort, if you know they're eating leeches or they'll eat chronomids.
Andrew Barany :Under an indicator I could see that.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, they're really smart. But yeah, that's so funny. You say that cause totally one of the flats nearby my house, like I seen this one digging and it was cool because it would, it would totally go up, like you said, nose down, tail up, and it would, it would completely go under the weeds. Yeah, like you need to see it like, and it was like a shallow bed of weeds and it would disappear for like a minute and then it would pop back up like a couple, like like 30 feet away, you just see it pop up out of the weeds again. Like they're really cool in that way. They're just super destructive. But they're.
Andrew Barany :They're cool species. But yeah, you need to look for feeding fish. When it comes to carp and stealth, you've got to be stealthy with them because, like you said, those past and they're they're crazy, like they breathe air so they come up for air. They can be like. I used to fish for them with like bread balls and and corn, the classic EK way.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, and I had one on the dock because we had this gentleman that would come pick them up because he liked cooking them. He was Vietnamese, interesting, yeah, he'd trade us some. He'd bring me folk Okay, I don't know if this is legal, so hopefully I don't get arrested for it. He would bring me foe for the fish I caught. It's not a car foe, yeah. And then I had one on the dock and like I bonked it. Oh no, you want me to bonk it. Anyways, I can't really remember I was pretty young at that time but he, the fish, was just there and like a long time later was still alive and I was like super tripped out about that and this old man gave me some knowledge and I was like that's crazy. So like yeah, they, they'd be there and just a different fish man.
Ryan Benjamin :I remember the stink growing up on Skahaw Lake here. I would walk out onto the beach there and at the odd time there'd be one washed up on the beach and man, did they ever stink? And they're sitting there on the bank like just putrid and they're really cool. They're destructive and I bet you they tug. I just I haven't caught one since I was a kid on the spin road.
Andrew Barany :I believe they're considered the poor man's bone fish. Yeah, cause I could believe it, cause they ripped they like I've caught a few on the fly and they put up a fight Like they'll take you into your backing, maybe even a couple of times if you get a good one.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, I guess we've got to get used to fishing them too. If they keep, if they keep breeding like this, they're, they're going to take over sooner or later.
Andrew Barany :Dude, I think they're an underrated fish, like I've talked to a few people that fish carp and love, love fly fishing for carp because they're just like intense, like and and they don't stop growing. That's another thing. Like 20, 30 pounds easily, easily, and then like I think I don't know what the record is but upwards like 50 plus pounds, unreal, yeah, like it's big, like bottom water vacuum. Yeah, that whole their mouth. It was like yep, yep, yep, yeah.
Ryan Benjamin :I guess back in the day, like there was. So the river that I used to live on, or like live close to now, was a. It was a natural river. I guess probably early 1900s, maybe late 1800s, and back in the day when people came through here they channelized it all and they cut it straight, they dredged it, they took out all the bends, all the boulders. You know everything bad that you got to do for a stream, put dams and everything like that.
Ryan Benjamin :But prior to that we used to get steel head up here, we used to get Chinook up here every, all those kinds of things, and it wasn't unheard of to be catching 18 pound rainbows in our lake and everything like that. And there's still the odd one cruising in there, I know it and I'm set on to catch one one day. But it's gone downhill and but luckily a lot of the bands around here they're pushing to get a lot of those dams taken out and they've done a lot of restoration already. They've threw a bunch of big boulders in, they've added some bends, some curves, they're slowly adding as much more natural fauna and everything to the river river sides and hopefully one day like it can return and I'll have a world class fishery in my backyard. But until then it's it's going up to the hills, driving two hours, driving an hour away to find those little mountain lakes.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, are they alpine lakes.
Ryan Benjamin :Or most of them. Yeah, I think like 1500 meters plus, so pretty high up there yeah.
Andrew Barany :Yeah yeah. My first alpine lake was not too long ago and I was like, oh my God, this is. It's something crystal clear water, just beautiful scenery, and like fish that well. They didn't want nothing to do with me that day, but that's fine.
Ryan Benjamin :All the things on the day with them. Yeah, there was a couple of alpines in Alberta Hightoofo, cutties, and you. You were having 60 fish day every single time. It didn't matter what dry fly, like you said, those Cutties they'll, they'll eat anything. You just toss it out there and they're, they're on it right away.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, definitely let miss those Rockies, like they're so breathtaking. Every time you go out there. It's just my jaw just dropped, like immediately. Yeah, but it's still beautiful around here too, like this season early season, I was fishing with a couple of boys and out of nowhere it was a small lake, like I don't know, like maybe a couple acres, like two, maybe three or four acres. A bull moose came out of the brush and dipped right in beside the lake, beside us, and it swam right by us and it was just so breathtaking to watch that huge dinosaur looking lanky, like they swim right by us Like we meant nothing to it. And after it got on the water and shook off, we was dead calm day. We went over to where it was and just the whole layer of the, the top of the lake had moose hair just all over it, like it just shed everything it had right across. You could see the whole trail. Yeah, that's cool. They're really really cool creatures.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, it could be and that might like could happen again, but that might be the only time you ever see that Like. That's crazy.
Ryan Benjamin :One thing I don't have to worry about out here as much as I did in Alberta is those grizzlies, the grizzlies out there.
Ryan Benjamin :Yeah, there's not many grizzlies around here, I think it's mostly black bears. But there was a couple of times, like me and one of my buddies, Kiana, we were out there fishing one of the lakes out there and left the campsite, walked down beside the lake and there was a creek bed running into the lake and as we looked up, there was sure enough, like probably I don't know, five or 300, 100 meters or so away from us. We've seen, like these big shoulders just standing right beside the beside the creek there. And yeah, it was. It was a massive, massive grizzly bear. And I remember I just looked at Kiana, like we need to leave here right now, and we turned around and slowly made a big, big, big circle back to the campground and yeah, it was. They're scary man. Like I've seen black bears, I've seen grizzly bears, and black bears kind of look at you and grizzly bears look through you. Like that's the difference I find Like they're they're a different breed of animal. Like every time they give me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.
Andrew Barany :Yeah Me, I haven't, because in Spain, kuber Island we do get grizzlies that cross. There's one point that is closest to the mainland and they'll cross to hunt black bears. So it's kind of epically scary.
Ryan Benjamin :That tells you right there.
Andrew Barany :That tells you right there. But the wolves out here are the thing that I'm always like the most worried about, because there's I've been I've never gone like super close to any, but I've definitely been like walking down a beach knowing around just with my dog and then like started hearing the wolves and then seeing some in the bush line and like was close enough to my truck that we need to my truck and I was like yeah, nothing makes a next stand up.
Ryan Benjamin :more than that, oh man.
Andrew Barany :And I've had cougars. I'm pretty sure Kuber followed me once when I was coming back from the lake. It was like late at night, it was like getting on starting to get a little dark and I just had to catch one more bass and I saw in the middle of the path this like big creature and I was like, oh, it could be a dog, of course, I'm just like hoping it's a dog. So then I didn't have my dog with me, so I started like whistling at it and then like it turned its head and I just saw its eyes glow in the light no light basically, but still glowed and it ran off into the bush and the rest of that walk back to my car.
Ryan Benjamin :I was like had music playing on my phone, had my arms like slapping, like yelling and stuff, and I was like I'm just like I'm like looking for a way to make a disturbance, not only to scare them away but to distract yourself a little bit too.
Andrew Barany :I'm not losing it, I'm not losing it.
Ryan Benjamin :You guys got like the densest population of mountain lions in the world out there.
Andrew Barany :I think I believe so yeah, yeah, they're out there. I've seen, I guess fortunate enough, because a lot of people don't get to see them, but I've seen quite a bit. Even one of my old schools that I went to it had we had warnings all the time through Malmines yeah, they're scary, whereas like we weren't allowed to go to the backside of the school because, like they've been seen and you know, that's where small little kids and easy, yeah, it's just a bite sized snack to them. It reminds me of that family guy episode where, like Peter, he's like slow kids, fast animals, and it's like that little fat kid with his lunchbox and he's like come on, guys, wait up for me, the cougar just running. And then he's like guys, come on. And then he's like lunchbox open and he's like, aw, I got jelly on my knees.
Ryan Benjamin :So easy, man, because like they live so close to everything and like there's so many of them and how little we actually see them. Like they know where to go, they know when to hide, like I'm sure that so many of us being out fly fishing have encountered them once or twice and had no idea that we were encountering them. You know what I mean. Like they're just hiding, they don't want nothing to do with us. 99% of the time they're gone as soon as they're watching from the bushes.
Andrew Barany :I've stumbled upon a deer kill. That looked pretty fresh and I was like that, definitely the cougars, definitely watching us right now. And then I've seen one across the river which was super epic and, yeah, I've been on paths where I've seen remnants of them and I've probably only seen like five or six cougars in my adult life actually like out fly fishing, are there across the way or, like you know, in a tree once. That was cool. It was like, yeah, it just. You know, that's another awesome part about being out fly fishing or fishing in general or any kind of hiking, whatever. But I don't like. I like to go fishing, I don't just yeah.
Ryan Benjamin :Every time you'll catch me hiking when I've got a fly rod in my hand and I'm going out somewhere, yeah.
Andrew Barany :So someone asks me, you want to go on a hike, and I'm like, well, what river are we going to?
Ryan Benjamin :The lake and to this take Like yeah, exactly.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, that's funny, but hey, man, we've been chatting for quite some time. That was a lot of fun, so I appreciate you hopping on with me, but of course, thanks for having me on man.
Ryan Benjamin :I really appreciate it.
Andrew Barany :Yeah, that was cool. I just whipped up a couple of bugs and tried it out.
Ryan Benjamin :fly fishing- yeah, so if you have time, we'll have to link up on these days. I'll have to get out to the island sometime, yeah, hell yeah, Ryan, I'll definitely.
Andrew Barany :I'll get you on the raft and I'll show you the couch and river. That'd be awesome. That would be super cool. All right, man? Well, you have yourself a good night and I will chat later. You as well.
Intro/out:Thank you for listening to Dead Drifter Society. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. In the meantime, keep up with the show and get to know Andrew on Instagram at Dead Drifter Society. Until next time.
Andrew Barany :And there you have it. That was Ryan Benjamin out in the Okanagan. You want to follow along his adventures? It's Backwood underscore angler. I'll definitely have that in the link down below, but he's got beautiful photos and just a super cool guy to chat with. So, as always, if there's anyone else you'd like to hear on the podcast, you know to shoot me a message on Dead Drifter Society on the social media platforms. And yeah, till next time I'll catch you later.