Dead Drifters Society: A fly fishing podcast
Exploring Brian Smith's World: From Tattoo Artistry to Fly-Tying Mastery
Meet Brian Smith - a legend in the making who's spun the art of fly-tying into an intricate dance of creativity and finesse. In less than two years, Brian has journeyed from a novice to a seasoned fly-tier, fusing his impressive skillset as a tattoo artist with a passion for fly-tying. Come along with us as we dissect his journey, exploring his experiences with the Stoneflow Transformer vice and how his resilience has helped fly-tiers evrywere.
Speaking of resilience, it takes a lot to balance a love for art with family life, and Brian seems to have figured out the secret. Beyond his commitment to his craft, we delve into his fly tying escapades - an essential part of his life. We also touch on the impact of YouTube as a learning tool, social media on business, and his creative approach to turning challenges into opportunities.
Rounding off the conversation, we dive into Brian's thoughts on the importance of thread control in fly-tying, and how he uses music to bolster his focus while working. His keen insight into these areas serves as a wealth of knowledge for both beginners and experienced fly-tiers. Brian's relentless pursuit of improvement, coupled with an innate ability to spin problems into possibilities, leaves a lasting impression. So join us on this fascinating exploration of Brian Smith’s world of fly-tying.
•Instagram
https://instagram.com/_tiesflies_?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
•Tictok
https://www.tiktok.com/@tiesflies?_t=8gk95wgCBsg&_r=1
Meet Brian Smith - a legend in the making who's spun the art of fly-tying into an intricate dance of creativity and finesse. In less than two years, Brian has journeyed from a novice to a seasoned fly-tier, fusing his impressive skillset as a tattoo artist with a passion for fly-tying. Come along with us as we dissect his journey, exploring his experiences with the Stoneflow Transformer vice and how his resilience has helped fly-tiers evrywere.
Speaking of resilience, it takes a lot to balance a love for art with family life, and Brian seems to have figured out the secret. Beyond his commitment to his craft, we delve into his fly tying escapades - an essential part of his life. We also touch on the impact of YouTube as a learning tool, social media on business, and his creative approach to turning challenges into opportunities.
Rounding off the conversation, we dive into Brian's thoughts on the importance of thread control in fly-tying, and how he uses music to bolster his focus while working. His keen insight into these areas serves as a wealth of knowledge for both beginners and experienced fly-tiers. Brian's relentless pursuit of improvement, coupled with an innate ability to spin problems into possibilities, leaves a lasting impression. So join us on this fascinating exploration of Brian Smith’s world of fly-tying.
•Instagram
https://instagram.com/_tiesflies_?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
•Tictok
https://www.tiktok.com/@tiesflies?_t=8gk95wgCBsg&_r=1
The best way to start learning thread control is you know, I'm on Simperfly. Obviously I love their thread, but as a beginner, something like Uni-Adol or some thread that is like not as strong or like a Simperfly 18-Aught thread, something that breaks really easily, if you use that thread it will teach you better thread control. You have to make every single wrap count, especially you know if you're talking size 20, lean-mage or something anything. You know it. Just every wrap truly does count. So to me, you know, I try as hard as I can to make every wrap count and you know, with the tension that you use when you're tying your materials in just every single part of it.
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. Welcome back.
Andrew Barany:Dead Drifter. On this episode we head down to Virginia to chat with Brian Smith On Instagram. He's become a little bit of a creative legend. He's got a lot of flies going on and he just started tying flies less than two years ago and he's just going back for it. So, yeah, we have a pretty chill session where we tie some flies. I tie one fly, he ties multiples and, yeah, we just chat about tying flies, how he got into it. He also does tattoos, so you can tattoo artist and yeah, when you're just hanging out, tie some flies and shoot the shit. So I really hope you enjoy this episode and I will see you down at the end. Welcome to the podcast, brian. How's it going? Doing good. How are you? I'm doing good, man. I see that we're both on the vice. I'm just curious what you're working on right now.
Brian Smith :Right now I'm working on some Slim Rib, wet flies. Nice, basically it's Partridge Slim Rib, gold, tinsel and a little bit of hair is here.
Andrew Barany:Right on. So I know that we talked about you kind of starting fly tying pretty recently, yet your skill level is well. You got skills, so we'll give you that. How'd you get into fly tying and when did you start fly fishing and do you do fly fishing as much as you do fly tying?
Brian Smith :I don't say I'd fish as much as I tie. Unfortunately I'm not very good at fly fishing. I do like to fly fish. I can cast good. I just I don't know where and what to throw. Normally I'm learning now, but there's nobody around here that really does it that I know of. So I'm just still kind of learning.
Brian Smith :But I started fly fishing in July of last year or April of last year, I'm sorry. And then one thing led to the next and my neighbor said like hey, I think you would be really good at tying flies. You know you're artistic. So I ended up getting advice and trying it out and my first couple of flies were terrible. And I was like you know what, if I want to be good at this, I need to put myself in front of an audience, because I excel when I have eyes on me.
Brian Smith :You know, I started recording myself and then I started getting really anal about how I did my flies. Having a camera on me, I wanted to make sure everything was perfect. So I just started working on like perfecting everything and before you know it I was going back and looking at my old flies like, wow, I can't believe that I used to tie that and now I'm tying like this type of stuff, you know, and every couple of months I'll do that and I'll look back and I'm like, well, I can't believe I said that then. And now here I am. So in a couple of months from now I'll look back on these flies and like, wow, I can't believe I tied that. So I'll try to keep that, you know, keep it rolling like that, yeah it's pretty crazy.
Andrew Barany:I mean, you kind of take it to a whole another, you hit it from a different angle as well. Usually people start fly fishing and then they're like, oh, I want to tie my own flies. But you're kind of just like the I guess artistry of the whole tying flies.
Brian Smith :Which. I did start fishing before, but I didn't fish like a long time. You know I didn't fly for years, you know it was just a couple of months and I bought a little cheap kit and here we are.
Andrew Barany:Yeah Well, how many vices do you own now? Did you just get the cheap kit and then get the stone flow?
Brian Smith :Oh no, I have. Well, I've had eight vices and I've given six of them away, and then I have this one, and a peak actually, and I also have an MDK vice.
Andrew Barany:Oh, wow, so you really went through the whole thing, yeah.
Brian Smith :And I stopped here at the stone flow transformer, because to me this vice is great. I do want to get the Pedogene Master Vice at some point, just to have it. Yeah, because it just does so much.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, the stone, the stone folds. I really like it. I mean, it's good vice. You can easily change out the heads. I have no complaints about it. I find that the jaws are really strong, which I really appreciate for that.
Brian Smith :They are. Yeah, and I actually left a size 30 in the jaws overnight and you really shouldn't do that with all that pressure on it and not overnight, I'm sorry over an entire weekend and when I came back it was the slightest little imperfection in the jaws and I was like, oh man, you know I can't. So I messaged Stonefo and I told him what was going on. Dude, they didn't even hesitate, he go about it. They sent me a new set of jaws. Wow, I told him I was honest with them, what happened, and they were like oh yeah, no problem, no worries.
Andrew Barany:That's crazy.
Brian Smith :It's hard to find companies that are like that. Stonefo is a good company.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, well, and I don't know a ton about them, but I definitely remember watching a YouTube video about them when they were first building these vices. Yeah, they put a lot of time and care into it, so I'm sure they're like that as an overall company kind of thing.
Brian Smith :Yeah, they're definitely back there, proud of you know.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, so when you started your social media to kind of drive you to be more successful and or try harder and you're fly tying did you start on Instagram, tiktok, or were that also?
Brian Smith :I started on TikTok Okay, and it's funny because I hated TikTok I'm like, oh, you know, it's just a bunch of teeny boppers on there shaking their booties, and because that's all I've ever seen when I went on there, because at one point that's what it was, you know, you had 15 seconds and that was it. Tiktok was only 15 seconds. I guess they were trying to be like Vine and then they upped it to like one minute and then three minutes and now it's like 10 minutes. And you know, I just one day I was like you know what? I'm going to put a video on here because I've seen how easy it was to go viral, and I put the video up and then I'm like I don't know what happened. I put something up the next day and then, before you know it, it's been over a year now and I've uploaded every single day and haven't missed a day.
Andrew Barany:Wow, yeah, so that's pretty much the key to success on that platform is to actually upload every day.
Brian Smith :Yeah, it doesn't matter what type of content. If you upload an every day, they will push your stuff Wow.
Andrew Barany:And as far as the stuff you're uploading, it's always tying flies and different flies. It's never really the same stuff. You're always trying to.
Brian Smith :Yeah, sometimes I do fishing, you know, but it's typically the same thing how do you get inspiration for your next fly? Sometimes I go on YouTube and look, or I'll go on Instagram and look. Typically, I literally just tie whatever comes to mind. Okay, I'll just start tying and whatever happens happens.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, so you've obviously spent quite a bit of time like looking at patterns, seeing things on, you know, like you said, instagram or YouTube, whatever. Oh yeah, so you now see, like you're, you got that artist, your artistry, where you can actually like see something in your head and then you just want to put it down.
Brian Smith :Yeah, the same way with music. I can recreate music just from hearing it, whether it be well, mainly with stringed instruments, Okay, Cool.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I can't play instruments worth anything but that's not for everyone.
Brian Smith :No, no.
Andrew Barany:Um, yeah, it's pretty cool, though, and, like I, when I found your profile on Instagram, I was like, oh wow, these flies are pretty dialed, so that's definitely what led me to want to get you on. I appreciate it, yeah. Do you do any like custom stuff, like tying flies for people that want them, or do you just really do this for yourself, because you just love it as?
Brian Smith :No, I do. I have you know I do tie flies for people. I'm not a commercial tire by any means, but I do. Like someone wants some real I mainly do realistic stuff and artistic stuff and someone wants a couple of flies, I do it for them. But if someone wants a bulk order of a hundred flies, I'm not going to do that.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I mean, like if I wanted some flies that were to hang up on the wall or whatever by you, then that you'll do.
Brian Smith :Yeah, I mean, if you wanted to fish them, that's fine too. But if you want like 10 flies, that's cool, but you know, 100 catasarvers. That's just not going to happen, yeah.
Andrew Barany:I'll get 10,000 of those flies, please. Yeah yeah. Tying that many flies is, I don't know.
Brian Smith :It's a lot.
Andrew Barany:It kills the artistic part of it for me. Yeah, when I'm because I guide and when I am tying nymphs or whatever, I try to dumb things down as much as possible. Yeah, at the end of the day, I just don't have time to to tie, you know, 30, 40 flies, yeah, and and have them, you know, with 12 different materials in them, that just won't work this doesn't make much sense, does it?
Brian Smith :No, not at all. Yeah, there are like Fully Mill and Unqua. You know they source their flies from wherever and those guys are really pushing them out. But they're pushing out quality yeah.
Andrew Barany:Yeah.
Brian Smith :The fly shop I go to, they use Fully Mill and man, I don't know who they're using to tie those flies, but they are good.
Andrew Barany:There's definitely. I've seen some really good quality flies come out of a few places. I know that there's obviously a lot of materials and hooks tend to be like really cheap when you get, you know, large quality quantities of hooks. But it's been a few times where I've been like holy moly, these are some amazing flies yeah.
Brian Smith :And you know most of them. They use really good quality stuff like Fully Mill and Unqua. I'm pretty sure that they use, like, only top brands, yeah, Like Daiichi and stuff like that. But in me I tie for A-Rex. I'm on the A-Rex bro team, yeah, and to me I think the A-Rex hooks are the best hooks in the world. They're, you know, they made a tomata for the tire. Yeah, you know, yeah.
Andrew Barany:I haven't used A-Rex a ton, but I'm definitely happy with their product. For sure, I do a lot of tube flies. If we're not talking about nymphs nymphs I got specific flyer hooks that I like to use the Hanix what are they? Hanix competitions yeah, the Hanix competitions. The H45XH yeah. Nymph hooks yeah, those things are so strong. Yeah. Yeah, I pulled in, not that I tried to catch steelhead on nymphs, but I've definitely pulled in decent sized steelhead on a little nymph hook. And or even like snagging on a rock and like pulling and pulling and having it pop off the rock and still having a hook that's not bent open yeah, that's crazy.
Brian Smith :That's pretty good, but I think it's crazy that people catch huge trout on those size 30s.
Andrew Barany:Oh, I know.
Brian Smith :Yeah, and I tie realistic size 30s. I tie size 30s with legs and everything.
Andrew Barany:Geez, Do you have like? I know you got glasses on, so are you using like a magnifying, or are you seeing that?
Brian Smith :I'm just feeling it, I'm just hoping that it looks good, you know. My eyes are hot dude. Oh yeah, that's terrible.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, that's funny. So you're an artist both in, like you worked at a tattoo shop, or you still do.
Brian Smith :I do tattoo full time. I'm actually setting in a shop right now. Yeah, I kind of thought that looked okay.
Andrew Barany:Is that your own shop or it is yeah?
Brian Smith :Okay, so I have an actual, like fully fitted shop, like it's legal. You know I'm papered everything right in my home. Oh, wow, that's convenient. And it's separated. You know, it's got its own bathroom, it's got, you know, it's its own space, you know has its own entrance and all that. If you would come here, you know you'd be like, oh, this is a shop, this is a home, yeah, and how did you pull up? Now You'd say, oh, that's a home.
Andrew Barany:And then you walk in and you're like, oh, this is a shop.
Brian Smith :Yeah, so it's a private studio. I'm tired of paying 50% of my earnings to someone who doesn't even tattoo, because a lot of these shops the owners don't tattoo. They're just reaping the rewards. And as an artist, you'll pay 50% of your earnings. I got tired of doing that and I just I don't know man, I just wanted my own little private spot because people prefer that. A lot of people travel from out of state and everything, just so they don't have to deal with the shop. Really, yeah, because the shop setting can be very intimidating.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I guess that makes sense. You know, you just want to kind of sit and relax. You don't want to have a bunch of stuff going on around you.
Brian Smith :Yeah, our females. You know she's getting a tattoo on on like an underbrew tattoo. She's not going to want the whole shops in there staring at her, you know. Yeah, fair enough.
Andrew Barany:So how did that start?
Brian Smith :The tattooing thing.
Andrew Barany:Yeah.
Brian Smith :Well, I was 15 years old and I was in the wrong crowd. You know, I had idiot friends. I was an idiot too and I could always draw really good and my buddy's like, hey, man, this Christmas I'm going to get you a tattoo done and we used to call them tattoo guns back then. Yeah, and I was like, All right, well, he bought me a machine and next thing, you know, I was messing all my friends up and I did that for like two years, just garbage, scratch your work. And then one day I was like you know what I'm done, doing this, I'm going to take this serious. And so I did. And now you know that's my career. That's super cool. Do you know I could do this full time if I wanted social media. But I don't know, man, I'm out of headache with social media.
Andrew Barany:Like the social media, for time flies, you can do full-time.
Brian Smith :Oh yeah.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, absolutely, are you making?
Brian Smith :any money off of tiktok I. Do. Yes, oh, that's cool. It's not a ton of money, no, it's a couple hundred dollars a month, but you know it's passive income. Yeah, it's just well. I mean it's kind of passive. You know, I'm putting in the time to make the content and then the money just kind of does its own thing.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, but you'd be doing it anyways, or either way, yeah.
Brian Smith :Feel it. I had a video a realistic mosquito that I did, yeah, and I got like I Want to say it was four hundred thousand views and for that video it was like three hundred twenty five bucks, which is good. That makes you think about, like, people that are Viral. With every video they post how much money they're making on there. Yeah, that's clean money to be made.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, definitely, yeah, it seems like tiktok's the easier one than Instagram for the whole money-making thing.
Brian Smith :Oh, absolutely like. I hit 10k on Instagram so they put me on there. Whatever it is with Instagram and I, I guess we'll see how that goes, but so far I haven't made anything.
Andrew Barany:Was that the kind of goal was to get viral or get to that kind of level, or did it just keep going and going and here we are just kept going.
Brian Smith :Originally, my goal was just to teach, and it still is my goal overall, but Now we've gotten into companies reaching out wanting me to try other products and it's just, it's escalated into something that it certainly was not when I first started. Okay, so I'm trying not to let it get political, have you noticed?
Brian Smith :because that does happen, yeah, when you're dealing with competitors, and so I try to stay out of all that. But you know, like moonlit fly fishing, I reached out to them and because I love their stuff, and they're sending me a rod and reel, I Asked them about the rod and they were like, how about we send you a rod reel with our line and this and that on it, which I thought was really, really awesome? So I'm gonna review their product and. But doing stuff like that is sketchy Sometimes because I'm on the A-Rex bird team and they have their own line of hooks. Oh, the things like that can get political, but I'm not doing a hook reviewer, you know.
Andrew Barany:Yeah Well, and I guess at the end of the day it's like All the companies are going to try I I don't really like talking too much about companies I don't like, but once I like, I obviously always down to rep them because you know they put in the time to make a good product. So, absolutely, I'm not necessarily loyal to anyone per se. Yeah, I think a lot of a A lot of the times, you know, one thing will be lacking in one company and the other company will kind of come out with something that's pretty solid. So, yep, everyone deserves a little bit of a shout out. But how did you? I know you said you have an attention to detail, but how did you really like Perfect the skills that you had? And where were you finding the little tricks of the trade? Was it a lot of Instagram or YouTube?
Brian Smith :YouTube and Instagram. I definitely the definitely the top for that.
Andrew Barany:Yeah.
Brian Smith :I mean, you know, youtube's a great place to learn. Yeah, I mean especially a Barry Ord Clark. You know, that guy is man, he's amazing. There is nothing that that man cannot tie with these. Yeah, it's a YouTube such an amazing tool to use it is, you know, and I wouldn't say that it's underutilized at all. I mean people use that for everything.
Andrew Barany:Oh man, that's like the first. If I have like a problem I need to solve, that's the first place I go, you know.
Brian Smith :Yeah, that's with anything. You know whether it's fly time. If I need to know how to wear the air condition report is on a 1985 Cavalier. You know it's on there.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, was there anyone specific that you really enjoyed watching? They found had the right tricks of the trade? Definitely Barry Ord.
Brian Smith :Clark man.
Andrew Barany:Yeah.
Brian Smith :That man such an inspiration? I've never told him that, you know, but have you talked to him? No, I mean, I've talked to him a little bit on his, in the comments on his videos. You know, like I've, I've commented and he's replied, but never like a conversation.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, yeah, that's pretty sweet one.
Andrew Barany:I know like I'm in construction, so I know, you know you can be trying to do something and it's so complicated or so difficult, and then you know this one little trick and it makes all the world a difference. And it's the same with fly time when you don't know how to you know spin a certain material and you get that little trick. You're like, oh well, now it's just like any other material, you just put it on and yeah to go. But the attention to detail that you have is pretty like amazing. So do you find yourself, maybe not so much right this moment, but when you were first starting, where you undoing your flies a lot and restarting them, or would you just finish? Oh, I still do all the time, yeah.
Brian Smith :Yeah, if it's not, if it's not a hundred percent, even if it's 95 percent, I will undo it, I'll take my burner and I will burn it right off. That's me, and you know, if I'm Making flies for fishing, people are like you know why are you putting that detail in there? To me, confidence is everything, man. If I'm throwing nice flies, I'm having more confidence. Hmm, if you're out there throwing trash around, you're not gonna have confidence, and if you don't have confidence, you are not gonna catch fish.
Andrew Barany:That's so true. There is such a like key to having confidence in what you're doing when comes for anything really. But when you're fly fishing and you like you Could be I don't know so many times I'll throw on a fly and Start, you know, swinging it or whatever, and then I'll Literally take it off and go back to the fly that I just had on because I yeah, I had that feeling inside. I was like, yeah, I could fish that with confidence for sure. That's a good point. That is a good point. And what? What are you usually targeting? Mostly trout mostly trout.
Brian Smith :You know, I have only caught six trout my entire life.
Brian Smith :I love that five of them were in the same day in the exact same location and I caught five trout there. They were stopped, I guess I don't know, but I caught five trout within, like I don't know, probably two hours. And Then I went to my and this was in this about an hour away from where I live and then I finally caught one in my home waters, but I didn't have much what's the word I'm looking for? Like I wasn't very confident in my home waters because I didn't know that they like stopped them I repeat them on, you know okay, so now I know that there are trout there, so I'm a lot more confident. So now I know I'll be catching more trout. But yeah, a lot of people think that I'm just a huge fly fisher. That you know. You know that's not true. I Try, but you know I fail a lot.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, well, and it's fair enough. I mean, it really depends how much time you spend on the water and obviously, if you just getting into it and all that. But I mean, how much time do you spend at the vise? I?
Brian Smith :probably spend three hours a day.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I mean three hours a day to get to ten thousand hours, that's. It's going to happen a lot quicker to perfect these, these flies that you're tying Because I go live on TikTok every single night.
Brian Smith :Well, I do it at least 28 out of 30 days a month. Wow.
Andrew Barany:That's pretty like impressive. I really like that. You're not All right either way, but I like how you just fell for flying or tying flies Just dump so much time and energy into it. It's pretty sweet to see that.
Brian Smith :Yeah, and it's expensive too. Man. The first, the first six months I spent over 10k on fly time material. Yeah, it's not hard when you walk into a shop and you.
Andrew Barany:You know you get a handful of things and it's already at $100 and you're not even Halfway done.
Brian Smith :Your list, yeah, now I have well over 30k of bolt materials, plus, you know, materials that I've gotten from companies. You know I'm on the Simperfly protein, so I get their thread and stuff, whatever they offer for free, and then a rex, an address, anadromous, flaco, mm-hmm. That's the proteins. I'm with them. You know they offer their services for me. Yeah, so I mean, I have so much stuff, dude, it's ridiculous, man, just wall. And also to clarify, because you know I'm in a shop and I have a fly tying desk. You would think you know everybody's fly tying this messy, and mine as too. But I have this curtain right here, mm-hmm, and it wraps all the way around, so when you walk in it looks like it's a boost back here. Oh, you would think it was a tattoo booth, but it's my time.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, there's this mess of different materials. Yeah, now that's pretty cool. I like that you have like both your little passions kind of in the same zone, very yeah he's be creative for sure. Mm-hmm was Very younger, were you always doing doodles and class and stuff like that? Is that where?
Brian Smith :oh yeah.
Andrew Barany:Yeah.
Brian Smith :Oh yeah, all my notebooks were filled up. I Mean I was doing full on portraits at ten years old, not saying they were good, but they were definitely better than you know the other kids, most the other kids. And then when I got into high school, I mean my, I was doing portraits that were. They were like make literally making the news. They put me on the news for a couple of the portraits that I did and yeah, it's art man, that's like it's all stuff that and then music through you.
Andrew Barany:Where did the musical and his stuff play part?
Brian Smith :Yeah, well, my dad played guitar for years and he played backup guitar for a couple pretty decent bands, and I'm not gonna go into that because, but I Guess I got the music from him and my dad, I mean he's not, you know, he can play anything and he's not the type of person that you would look at and think that but I mean any instrument, dude, he can pick it up and play it.
Andrew Barany:Yes so it's kind of in your blood, in a sense.
Brian Smith :Yeah, sorry, I keep clearing my throat there. My third son.
Andrew Barany:No, it's all good. It definitely happens when you keep talking to talking.
Brian Smith :There we go, no, right, anyway, you still hear me good there.
Andrew Barany:Oh yeah, no, no, you're that little. Mike is where it won't. Mike, is that pretty good?
Brian Smith :I Got this on Amazon. It was like 10 bucks. It's the. It just says wireless lavalier microphone right on.
Andrew Barany:That's it. I use the, the little snowball. It was like a hundred bucks on Amazon. Yeah, doesn't clip on to you or anything it's, it's on the desk. It's pretty good. Eventually, I'd like to get another microphone. It's easy to Want to upgrade when you're on. You upgraded my laptop first, though, is that was obviously a little more important for Editing and all that, but you're, are you just doing, I guess, with tick tock? Are you doing it all off your phone?
Brian Smith :Oh, yeah, yeah, yep, I use VN video editor and then cap, cut and Put it right on tick tock.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, for your photos and all that, the videos. Is it just off your phone as well, like you're recording everything on your phone and oh?
Brian Smith :No, I used to, but now I use. I have a Sony Alpha. I was using the AR 7 and Then I switched to the a6000, and a6000 is like a third of the price, but for some reason, man, that the close-up video is just it's less complicated. I like simple and it's a lot more simple, so I switched to that.
Andrew Barany:Were you already in photography kind of think? Did you have a bit of a passion for that as well? No, no at all. No, I had to, completely teach myself.
Brian Smith :Yeah, how do?
Andrew Barany:you know, yeah, well, you had to get this, the shots that you wanted, right yeah, I had to come teach myself Regular photography and then macro photography.
Andrew Barany:YouTube, youtube. Back to you too, man. Yeah, like we were saying before, you know, like, yeah, they're. Today I was setting up this little train and it has like a magnet switch so when it passes a certain spot on the track it'll start to go back. We have like a Halloween setup in our barn. Yeah, we run programs and so it wasn't. It wasn't going back and Go on to get old YouTube. And, sure enough, there's what I needed to find and was able to fix the little train. And, yeah, such an important tool these days I mean, yeah, anyone's not using YouTube, it's Such and it's such a good search engine, which is pretty, pretty crazy.
Andrew Barany:It really is. Well, it's.
Brian Smith :Google? Yeah, of course it is, you know.
Andrew Barany:So you say barn Like you live on a farm, yeah, so we, we got a farm with my wife's mother like three, four years ago and I guess they kind of always wanted to To run like some programs and stuff. So it's like a therapeutic farm, I guess. Okay, yeah, we got like a handful of animals, so like two, two donkeys, two ponies, six, yeah four goats, chickens, dogs, cats, and then, yeah, they started running programs like drop-ins and One-on-ones, parent and toddler groups, all these different little little things and yeah, it's a ball, it's still going and people that come. We got like quite a decent returning Appliance which is really cool. And then some of the kids, like we do it after a school program now.
Andrew Barany:So, yeah, after school, instead of the kids going into a house and just, you know, watching TV, they Sit outside. Well, not sit outside, but they're outside playing, running around and yeah, it would be. I Think this is a long way. Yeah, I think it's the third year and it's it's a lot. I mean, animals are destructive, so there's always something and obviously, weathering and all that, so there's always something you could be fixing or, yeah, doing that way, but yeah, no, it's, it's been pretty cool.
Brian Smith :I mean, yeah, the reason I asked about the barn is because my wife she's a deputy now. She's a sheriff's deputy but when I first met her she was a professional horse trainer, oh cool. And so we lived on a farm there for a little bit and I Just got tired of that man, the politics there, because we were, we were living in a house that was free to us. It was part of her. Hey, you know, we got a free house but she had to manage the barn type of deal and man, that was just awful. She was working like 70, 80 hours a week. Yeah, I was like, yeah, we're done with this here, like we can't do this anymore. You're, you're literally wasting your life in this bar.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, farm work is there's always something you can be doing. I mean yeah, absolutely.
Brian Smith :It just wasn't what we signed up for you know.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, well, unfair enough. I mean, quality of life is definitely something a lot of people are searching for, and when you spend that much time, you know a week, just yeah, it's a lot. We luckily have like volunteers that come to the property and all that, so it's been Super helpful, and you know a lot of the. Even the kids, though, when they come here it's I don't know. It's really nice to see Kids wanting to be outside and like being around the animals and they're just kind of being kids, you know, not on phones, not doing that kind of stuff. So, yeah, there's definitely a need for it these days, that's for sure. So you're just working on a little skydiving. So you're just working on a little scud right now. Is that what that is? Oh, I think your mic cut out. Nope, just went silent. Can't hear you. Is it on my end? Technical difficulties?
Brian Smith :Battery probably died yeah.
Andrew Barany:Now we're back.
Brian Smith :I had another one on back up. Can you hear me now?
Andrew Barany:I can hear you now. Sorry about that.
Brian Smith :Yeah, I'm tying a little cad of saliva here. Just something simple, some simple. I think they're simple, you know, but they are realistic and they are challenging to a lot of people. But if you tie enough of anything, it becomes pretty simple.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, do you usually tie like multiples of one fly to kind of perfect it, or do you tie like one fly and then change it out?
Brian Smith :I usually like, if I'm going to do a video, I've gotten to the point where I can just usually do it the first time somehow. But you know, if it's not perfect I definitely will do it over. But I'll do a fly and then I'll work on something else and then I'll come back to that, because if I just sit there and work on the same fly, I'll get burned out and I don't care what it looks like. You know what I mean.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I find I tie like if I'm trying to perfect a fly, I usually will tie like five or six yeah.
Brian Smith :But sometimes I do.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, but I guess it really depends.
Brian Smith :I try really hard to. I guess I fall short on that, because I try really hard to perfect it at first, and so I tie a really good one. And then I'm like, okay, that's good enough. Yeah, really, you know, I haven't perfected that pattern, I should tie more of them. Yeah, because I do learn extremely fast, man. So usually I'll tie a pattern. I'm like, yeah, that's good, I'm good now. I shouldn't do that. It's a bad habit, to say the very least.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I definitely seems like sometimes when, like, I didn't tie flies for a little bit here and I just got back on the vise, that was the way guiding and for some reason I decided not to take my vise with me, which was a terrible decision on my part, but you'll have to learn. I didn't think I would have time to tie flies and then obviously I did. Yeah, and there's always something you can be tying.
Brian Smith :So I guess when you're guiding, you know you get to match the hatch pretty much. Is that what's happening?
Andrew Barany:Yeah and I mean most of the time. So I'd say you're kind of trying to match the hatch. You just read the water.
Andrew Barany:It's a little bit of both. I mean, if you're putting a fly in front of fish's face, they don't have hands right, so they're going to try, they're going to test the water, let's say yeah. So if you place a fly in front of a fish and you haven't spooked it, you know there's a good chance you're going to make that fish curious enough to bite your fly. But I don't know, sometimes matching the hatch for me doesn't work as well as you know, throwing something else out. Someone explained it to me. Like you know, if you had a conveyor belt of oh, it was a course I took, but anyways, if you had a conveyor belt of, you know fries coming down at you and you're just much more fries and all a sign of piece of baking comes, that might be a nice little bit.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, you might try that out. So, yeah, reading water is really important and that's something that you can always improve at. Yeah, Persistent.
Brian Smith :That's something I definitely need to work on being persistent.
Andrew Barany:like you know, with you and time flies, you just kept going and kept going and kept going and kept trying to improve the craft. That's, you know, another big player in it. So a lot of the times when I was first starting to fly fish, I just didn't give up. And so even when I wasn't getting something, you know, I didn't know the questions. The questions are a big thing, like why am I not catching a fly? Why is this not working? What is it?
Andrew Barany:My setup is, you know, all those little questions. If you start asking the right questions and then trying to answer them in the moment, you know, make your leader longer or try to get a different depth in the rivers it's definitely like, yeah, are you in the right column? Are the fish happy? I say happy fish or not happy fish, kind of thing, like a happy fish and a fly put right in their face, very good odds that they're going to take it. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of times where you know everything seems to be going good and you're just not getting fish. And then you go out the next day and there's nothing you could do wrong. Yeah, oh yeah, that's a nice. That is nice, just showing me this guy.
Andrew Barany:We should take a photo of this. I'm going to upload this one tomorrow. I'm changing it to. Instead of uploading on Friday, I'm going to start uploading on Monday. So I'm going to throw this one up tomorrow to get that going. So, yeah, we'll take a photo of that and we'll post our flies that we're tying today. Yeah, I'll do that.
Brian Smith :Oh yeah, so how long do you typically run these podcasts?
Andrew Barany:I try to go for at least an hour. Gotcha, I definitely have done ones that are much longer. Nothing against doing them longer, but I feel like as long as I get to an hour that's pretty good. Most people travel about a half hour to work or something, so I imagine two parts of the day they can finish an episode. I don't really know why I started uploading Friday. I think it got in my head. But I've definitely talked to some people that said Fridays are kind of not the best day to be uploading, like earlier in the week when people are just getting back into the work kind of thing. Yep, there's a better time.
Brian Smith :Do you find uploading at a certain time for your yeah, around between 7 and 9 pm, Eastern Standard Time is like gee, Okay. And if you look, if you Google it, you'll find the peak times for any platform. And peak times are different for different platforms because some people it's like a schedule that they're on, man, they'll go look at their TikTok and they'll look at their Instagram and then they're on Instagram for the rest of the night or however you know, Because a lot of people live and breathe social media. I mean, it's the world we live in and people do it like on a schedule. They don't know that they're doing it on a schedule.
Andrew Barany:What they are yeah, yeah, and I know for a podcast it's generally based off of when they're driving head into work, yeah, and when I don't listen to a ton of podcasts these days, I think it's because I'm creating that I tend to. I like music, I love listening to music. So a lot of the times when I'm heading to work, that's kind of what I want to be doing is just kind of listening to some music, kind of getting pumped up for the day. But I liked listening to fishing podcasts when I was on my way to the river.
Brian Smith :I found out I've never really listened to any, yeah.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, they're good. I mean, you get tips and tricks, you get different perspectives and all that. And I think that's a big thing for a lot of people during the week, listen to a podcast or two or a bunch, and then go ahead to the river and have all these different ideas in your head that you can kind of play out.
Brian Smith :Yeah, so what would you say? Who, would you say, is the biggest name you've ever had on your channel, as far?
Andrew Barany:as a podcaster or as far as yeah.
Brian Smith :Like who have you interviewed?
Andrew Barany:I mean, I don't specifically target big names, but I guess like Tom Rosenbauer was definitely one of them. Oh yeah, dude, phil Rowley.
Brian Smith :Do you know, phil? Phil Rowley was actually my mentor for Summerfly. Oh cool, there you go. That's a good buddy of mine right there, man. Yeah, he's a great guy I took a course from him. Yeah, he's good at what he does man.
Andrew Barany:Oh man, he's legendary.
Brian Smith :Those little deer hair flies he makes are absolutely ridiculous yeah.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, he's a great tire as well and, like his YouTube stuff is super helpful. I mean a lot of still water stuff. That's where I was finding my that course. I took from him too. It was him and one other guy, Drawn Olerich, who doesn't guide anymore, I don't. Yeah, he's not guiding anymore, he's doing some other things. But oh man, I can't say enough about how helpful taking a course was.
Andrew Barany:I've taken many courses for fishing and tying flies. I mean Chronomids. My Chronomids looked as thick as your skud just was when I first started tying them and then I took a course on it and game changer. So I mean, it's like anything. I could have watched YouTube videos, but I just happened to have fallen upon a course. It was like a still water course and it taught everything from tying flies all the way to how to fish the flies properly, what you look for in the water and stuff. Yeah, that was a really good course. I've taken some like Emerger's Ones from oh, I'm just blanking on his name, They'll come back in a bit Tim Camisa. There you go.
Brian Smith :Tim Camisa was also my other mentor. Oh right, on.
Andrew Barany:You're going to him, yep, yeah, so yeah, and I've had I don't know. I like to interview people that have a passion. I mean, that's Like I said when I saw your flies. I was like, well, he's clearly passionate about it.
Brian Smith :Yeah, I try, man, I really do try Truly. Yeah, it's a lot to keep up with sometimes.
Andrew Barany:Yeah.
Brian Smith :Because my mind just goes like when I get on a, when I get onto something, man, I just run with it. He's been that way.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, how often are you doing tattoos these days? Are you still pretty consistent? Oh.
Brian Smith :Absolutely. You know, not as much as I was, though I've gotten to where I Just don't like to tattoo stupid stuff anymore, man, like, if I don't want to tattoo it, I'm not gonna tattoo it. But it's not like, it's not like a. You know, I'm not gonna tattoo Some might spend in a relationship for two weeks. I'm not gonna tattoo your girlfriend's name on you.
Brian Smith :Yeah, I'm not gonna do face tattoos like I just I'm just done tattooing dumb stuff. Dude, like, if I don't want to tattoo it, I'm just not going to, because I've done enough of that and it's it's exhausting tattooing stuff you don't want to tattoo. And then now, like social media, if I wanted to do this, well, time I can. So I've just kind of concentrated on what I want to do. You know, now I tattoo what I want. The social media has really helped me in that aspect, because it's gave me confidence, like I no longer have to worry about Not wanting to do something. I just don't do it if I don't want to do it. Yeah, that's nice. And the reason is because you know I Do make money off of Tiktok and off of I do sell a couple flies. You know I Don't make as much as I do tattooing, but I make enough to be comfortable.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, yeah. And then you just put it back into materials and whatnot yeah.
Brian Smith :I don't always have to Make six figures a year to be happy. No, you know it's draining when you're tattooing on people, man. Well, it's like anything on your.
Andrew Barany:You know doing it all the time, and especially if you're doing things you don't really want to be doing in terms of, I mean, art is one of those things that I could imagine. I mean, besides, from time flies, I'm not really that much of an artist, but I've talked to, I've had a few tattoo artists on and, yeah, I mean I have a buddy who's a tattoo artist and I've talked to him about it and he's like, yeah, there's definitely things that you don't want to be really Doing, but it's what pays the bills, so you kind of do it anyways.
Brian Smith :Yeah, it's, it's just you know, when you're tattooing, you literally have someone's life in your hands. If you ruin their tattoo, dude, you ruin their life.
Andrew Barany:That's a good point, yeah there's a bit of a stress level on that. I mean one little mistake.
Brian Smith :So the whole time I'm like what happens if my client sneezes? You know, I'm gonna just, you know, like anything could happen, dude. And then I'm the ass right, use my language. Yeah, no, worries, no, I have experience.
Andrew Barany:I don't know where I have explicit content to checked off on this podcast.
Brian Smith :Okay, I'm still trying to watch my language. I guess that's not a bad word really, but no, I've heard worse, that's for sure. But you know what I'm saying, though, man. Like it's just always that level of Stress, dude, and I don't like to be stressed, man, I don't do well under stress.
Andrew Barany:Hmm, where are you getting most of your clients now from, like repeats and yeah, most of it's repeats and dude.
Brian Smith :I have people reaching out from all over the united states wanting to come and get tattooed by me Because I'm the fly smith. Hey, oh, he's got a thousand followers across platforms. You know, like, come on, man, not that many people, you know. And people just social media, just they look at someone and they think that they're just so awesome because they have a following and it's, you know, kind of annoying.
Andrew Barany:But your irregular dude tying flies just took off.
Brian Smith :Yeah, I mean yeah.
Andrew Barany:Fair enough.
Brian Smith :Did I help so many people out? I'm not. You know. I do too. I send a lot of free stuff to people, and anybody listening to this podcast that knows me they will.
Andrew Barany:They will confirm that I, yeah, and as far as the, the teaching going like do you do youtube as well?
Brian Smith :I don't think we've mentioned that I do have youtube but I don't really like concentrate on that as much I should, because it is a great tool, like we've said. But I don't know, man. Youtube is just different. It's different orientation. So every time I film for youtube, I have to put a different tripod on, I have to unscrew my camera. I'm just lazy.
Andrew Barany:Fair enough. Really, I mean, that's what it amounts to is laziness, you know yeah, and I mean, if the other media platforms sort of been working out for you, I mean yeah, who's to say that's not good enough right?
Brian Smith :Yeah, for sure, man. I mean, that's what I'm saying, mm-hmm.
Andrew Barany:Do you have like a kind of game plan for the future, or are you just kind of enjoying yourself and letting it go as it goes?
Brian Smith :I would really like to open up a shop, a fly shop. Okay, that's like my, my end goal Just one day to own a fly shop. But you know that is very hard to do, mm-hmm, in today's economy, because there are a lot of people that fly fish there. For a while that I heard that fly tying and fly fishing was like tying out, but that does not seem to be the case these days. These days, it seems like so many people are tying flies and fishing, whether it be young people, older people, you know, all kinds of people are doing it now.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, yeah, well, and it's a pretty sweet hobby. I mean, you know, when I started tying flies, it was specifically to catch fish. Um, yeah, so Going home after a day of fishing and being like, oh you know, I think I should have had this flyer, I should have tried this, or maybe I need to tweak this material, it was too long, it was too bushy, whatever it may be, and then, you know, so it kind of like it's preparation For sure, where you're, you know, planning the next step to to be able to catch a fish. Um, yeah, so for me it was, yeah, it was very much like Taking what I love about fishing and coming home and doing more of it. So it was a really cool kind of I don't know, it's just awesome.
Andrew Barany:I mean, you don't fish a ton, but you love tying flies, like it's. It's that cool that you can literally spend hours and hours tying flies and, yeah, you know, dump yourself into it. It's a good thing to be doing at home. Do you like to like watch shows or anything while you're tying flies or listen to music, or do you usually just kind of, I do listen to music, man.
Brian Smith :What kind of music do you like?
Andrew Barany:Oh, I definitely am into the hip hop rap. Same J Cole, oh yeah. Yeah, I saw J Cole at a festival. He put on a show, yeah, so definitely a lot of that kind of Um style of music. I really like EDM as well, yeah, yeah, I found this guy daily bread. He's out of Atlanta and I can. I, for the last like two weeks I've just been Putting this involved in it.
Brian Smith :Yeah, I put his like mixes on.
Andrew Barany:They make me feel good, that's all like Um, hip hop and it's just it's. It's uplifting music in terms of you know what you're listening to. For a while there I was listening to like a lot of like trap and kind of darker stuff in a sense and, yeah, I started realizing like, oh, okay, yeah, like it does play with my mindset a little bit. So, for sure, dude, I've been trying to listen to a little bit more uplifting music or stuff that just like kind of makes me feel happy inside.
Brian Smith :Yeah, um, I like a lot of lo-fi, a lot of what lo-fi, lo-fi lo-fi music, like, like, it's kind of like, kind of like. Uh, if you watch my videos on instagram, like you know, it's like background music. Yeah, it's not really words, it's just like lo-fi hip hop. It's like the beat Of smooth jazz hip hop, but no words.
Andrew Barany:Okay, yeah, yeah, and I feel that because it's Especially while I'm like working and stuff, I like to listen to something that's. You know, I don't necessarily have to listen to lyrics, I can just like sit there and enjoy the different sounds, or, you know, I can tune in and out of it and it's not Yep, yep, yep. Oh man Just trying to set these wings down. They're not perfect and I'm not worried about it. I tend to not really worry about my flies being perfect as long as I know they'll fish properly. But I guess that comes from a fishing standpoint.
Andrew Barany:Don't uh, I definitely don't post my flies Half as much as I was, um, when I first started it. But With the like he said, you know what the social media? It does take up quite a bit of time. So I've definitely had to pick and choose what I'm spending a lot of my time on. So Put a little more time and effort into the podcast, um, and making sure that I get that uploaded and Make sure I record the next one and all that. There's only so much time in a day, especially having a family as well. I gotta be a little picky on certain things. Do you have plans for kids or anything like that?
Brian Smith :Okay, I just realized my mic wasn't working, so we're going to unplug these mics.
Andrew Barany:Okay, well, the sound still sounds good. Did you hear that last question?
Brian Smith :Yeah, kids, I do have two kids. I have full custody of my 10-year-old and then I also have a 16-year-old that I do not have custody of her, but you know still, my child and my wife. I'm 33, and my wife is only 20, she'll be 23 here next month. Okay, well, 10 years older than her. So we don't have any kids together. And I'm sure that she says she's unsure, but yeah.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, okay, yeah, time will tell. I don't want kids.
Brian Smith :And you know, I would happily have a child, whether she's a great woman.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, right on. Yeah, kids are fun. They take a little bit of energy, but worth it, they're sure are.
Brian Smith :Doesn't everything go. Sorry, what was that?
Andrew Barany:Doesn't everything, yeah, anything worth it takes time and energy, that's for sure.
Brian Smith :So can you still hear me good.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, no, the sound quality is a little different, but I'll be able to Figure that out, because I do have a plug-in mic.
Brian Smith :I can grab real quick if you want, sure, let's try that out, I'll be right back.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, no worries.
Brian Smith :All right, let's see, this is definitely a. This is a new ear mic. See if we can get it set up here. Yeah, okay, can you hear me?
Andrew Barany:Yep, yeah, that sounds slightly a little crisper. It's crispy up in here now.
Brian Smith :All right. Unfortunately, with that mic I cannot hear you, so oh, there we go.
Andrew Barany:Well, it's no big deal. Like I said, I can deal with that in the editing. I'll just speak up a little bit. There we go. Yeah, so if we were to kind of think of some tips for tying flies in terms of thread control and stuff, is there anything that pops into your mind about that? Because I know that's a lot of a lot of it comes from thread control and how to place them.
Brian Smith :I'd say the best way to start learning thread control is you know, I'm on Simperfly. Obviously I love their thread, but as a beginner, something like Uni Adol or some thread that is like not as strong, or like a Simperfly 18-Aught Thread, something that breaks really easily if you use that thread, it will teach you better thread control. You have to make every single wrap count, especially. You know, if you're tying a size 20, lean, midge or something, anything. You know it just every wrap truly does count.
Brian Smith :Yeah, so to me, you know I try as hard as I can to make every wrap count. And you know, with the tension that you use when you're tying your materials in just every single part of it, you just keep the same tension on the fly all the way through. And if you make every wrap count and you put, you don't have to put as much tension as that thread can handle. That's where a lot of people go wrong. They pull as hard as they can. That's not the right thing to do. I think thread control is just using the weakest thread you could find and learn how to tie nice flies with that. Then you'll have good thread control. Yeah.
Andrew Barany:No, that makes sense. I definitely started with like UTC 70 for a lot of my like chroniments and stuff. And you know, you nick it on the barb or not the barb, but the hook point and she's breaking. So you eventually learn not to do that and then that's a good tip. Yeah, I like that. Is thread control really like it could be underrated? If you're not trying to get your thread control and we even mentioned one just unwrapping stuff, yeah, if it's not the way it's not sitting properly, then unwrap it and start over. That's like a huge one.
Brian Smith :That one took me a while to kind of get through my thick skull, but eventually Even then if you're just like going back a step or two because you don't like the way your tag says, you're going to go not destroy the whole fly, You're just going to go back. You still have to keep tension when unwrapping. Yeah, At least I do. You know, I don't just back it off real quick because then other things come loose and then your fly is compromised. Once the integrity of the fly is compromised, you might return the garbage.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I mean I would still cast it out. I'll lose it on a rock or something.
Brian Smith :but I just yeah. You know what I?
Andrew Barany:mean, no, I do, I do. I find like, when it comes to tying flies, you know and I was first starting out my flies I remember one of the first time I tied a fly for a specific reason. It was just like a woolly bugger and no one out to the lake. I was paddling around doing my thing and I caught a fish. I was so fired up and then I casted for like another hour and finally I was like, okay, I got to get going. When I reeled in my line, I realized that I just had a hook with like a little bit of thread left on it, you know. So like that drove me to want to tie stronger flies and then that kind of led me to, you know, yeah, tying stronger flies.
Andrew Barany:Paying attention to my thread wraps, that's a huge one when you lay down. Like sometimes we'll see it on YouTube where people are just whipping and whipping and whipping plot or the thread on and they might be using the right amount of thread for themselves. Fair enough, but it's very easy to just, you know, especially if you're tying small nymphs or dry flies, like you can't be doing that. You got to be counting your thread wraps basically, especially if you want to do consistency.
Brian Smith :I'm going to set these flies to the side here, that I tie on this and then, whenever you upload it or whenever you'll have a picture, if you want, I'm going to tie Chironomid, because talking about this makes me want to tie a buzzer. There you go. Yeah, get it out, you buzzer, chironomid, whatever.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I love tying chronaments. They might just be like a super simple fly in terms of you know, not a huge amount of material, but boy, do they look sexy when you're done them and you put the resin on them. Well, I guess our head cement. What head cement do you use for your chronaments?
Brian Smith :I use Semperfly UB Resin.
Andrew Barany:Okay, like a button dry. Yeah, bone dry is a great one.
Brian Smith :You know, Semperfly is the best to me.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, this is the one I use. Binnerds sealer varnish yeah, have you ever used this stuff?
Brian Smith :Yeah, I have some.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, this stuff I love for my chronaments because it gives it like a little bit of a glassy look. It seems to do the job. It seems to do the job, it really penetrates. Nice, which is nice. Check this out one time.
Brian Smith :Yeah, semperfly is my favorite. I do have a seller's varnish, but I have it in the black.
Andrew Barany:Oh, okay, I didn't even know they made black.
Brian Smith :Yeah, it's a, and then as far as head cement goes, I have Murray's fly shop. Is a low-fooled fly shop to me.
Andrew Barany:Okay.
Brian Smith :And he's an older guy and he makes it all himself and actually making head cements pretty dangerous Really. Oh yeah, man, it's dangerous dangerous chemical Mixing chemicals eh. But I get it from him. It's super runny and it smells like just a future gunk and I don't know man. It's amazing and it doesn't look like it would get hard, you know, it just looks like a water.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, that's it. That was the main thing with my that fly that fell apart on me is I didn't really use head cement when I first started. Yeah, because when you first start you just don't know. And I mean I didn't. I did watch YouTube videos but of course you know you're not at the shop or at the store when you're watching YouTube videos and I didn't make a list of things I needed, I just kind of went out there and you know.
Brian Smith :Yeah, lord knows, we've all made that mistake. Every time flies man. I think that every single tire, at least for me. I feel like everyone does this. You buy garbage like you bust up off AliExpress and these different places. You just look for the cheapest materials and then, once you start taking it seriously, you have just all these materials that you're never going to use and you just get buyers are more shrilly, bad, like man. Why did I do that? You know?
Andrew Barany:100%. I got, you know, I'm sure well, you definitely do know that but I just got bags full of like Meribu that I didn't sort when I was buying it. Like that's a big thing when you're buying Meribus to actually pay attention to the quality. Now I just buy the quality stuff, like if it's an extra five bucks and you're getting half the amount. I'd rather do that because I end up with, you know, every feather is usable.
Andrew Barany:The Trump's quantity any day, man, 100%. And I mean, yeah, if you're just whipping up some, like you know, woolly buggers or whatever, but I do a lot of tube flies and you know I like fishing for steel heads. So a lot of the materials I need need to be kind of up there in the quality, or at least stuff I can use. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not too worried if there's, you know, a fiber that's sticking out or whatever, I consider it buggy so I'll leave that alone. But, yeah, definitely, definitely bags on bags of Meribu that I will never use again. And then, yeah, a wall full of material and probably use like half of it. Yeah, the rest will just be there for the rest of eternity.
Brian Smith :I have 35 saddles like dry fly saddles. Yeah, the East Coast ambassador for Jim's Placo, okay. So constantly on their page like monitoring, checking it out, and I see stuff I like man and I just buy it and then it just sits there.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, it's a bit of an addiction buying, you know, especially like I feel like when you're at a shop and you see material and it's new and you're like, oh my God, like how was I ever catching fish without this? When you were, you know you weren't catching fish without it or whatever. But I used to stress a lot like if I didn't have the exact material that was on the recipe on YouTube or whatever, I'd go out and buy that. But now I just substitute, quite a bit like, even if I don't have the right hook. But I'm not like. You know, if you ask me, you know what shank am I using right now to tie this? Whatever this fly is? I don't even know what it is, it just was in my head.
Andrew Barany:You know I'm not a fish. I know that it's going to swim really nicely and I know that if I place it in front of the fish's mouth there's a really good possibility that it will link me up with it. So that's enough for me. But yeah, I very rarely know what hook I'm using.
Brian Smith :No, I'm saying all about my hooks man. Yeah, I should have a life-saving tip.
Andrew Barany:Okay.
Brian Smith :A binder.
Andrew Barany:Oh, with the cart, like the card holders.
Brian Smith :Yeah, picture frame holder Picture holders, they're a little bigger than the card holders.
Andrew Barany:Okay.
Brian Smith :So now, when I need a hook, I flip right to the page that's on.
Andrew Barany:Okay, so you just have like a school binder with the picture, like those plastic sleeves that have multiple spots. Then you can just put the little tag in from the hook and put the hooks in there. That's smart, I like that man.
Brian Smith :it's made my hook finding experience so much better.
Andrew Barany:What other kind of things do you use for keeping all your materials organized? You got any other kind of tricks on that?
Brian Smith :Yes, so on my wall. If you go to Walmart, they have spool holders for sewing. Okay, so on my wall.
Andrew Barany:That's nice, okay. So now we got the hooks organized and we got the spools organized. That's beauty.
Brian Smith :And then I use the Fominizer from Hairline and that's a. You can put spools and tools on it.
Andrew Barany:Okay.
Brian Smith :And you know I got these tools. I have a ton of tools. One of the best tips for dubbings is cut the corner of the bag and just pinch it out of the corner.
Andrew Barany:Okay, yeah, I did this yeah. I got the tackle box and I drilled holes in the tackle box. I guess kind of same idea, but I like that. I think I've heard of that. So you just have the bag of dubbing and you just cut the very bottom corner off and then you can always pinch out a little bit at a time. I like that.
Brian Smith :Did you see my dubbing wall just now?
Andrew Barany:I did yeah.
Brian Smith :Yeah, and then another really good one is flash. So with flashaboo you take the top of the package, you just punch a hole with a hole puncher and when you need flash you just grab one fiber out or however many you want. That flash never comes out of the package.
Andrew Barany:Oh, that's nice. I like that, yeah, because I'm one of these people I just pull the thing and flash out and then it just becomes part of the desk.
Brian Smith :So I got some flash right here, no-transcript. Well, a little hole buncher one fiber.
Andrew Barany:Oh, yeah, okay, so you do it at the top corner, so you can even just pull the hole strand out, even through the zip tie. Yep, okay, yeah, that's good, I like that. I've seen these little stands that are like a not a display case, but it's like a revolving circle and you can attach your flash around it so you can kind of spin through. But I feel like that would still kind of get messy in the end.
Brian Smith :Yeah, those are pretty cool though.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, they do look cool. I like seeing all the flash. I know what about any materials that you don't buy from like the fly fishing industry? Do you substitute for any like craft stuff or anything?
Brian Smith :I did at first and I'm sure there's stuff, like you know, from Walmart, yeah, but you know there's always stuff like that, like, or if I do balanced leeches, you know I'll use the little nail things from Abilabi, the little pins, but most of it I just prefer to buy quality man. It's more expensive, but I'm pretty bougie when it comes to my materials.
Andrew Barany:Pretty bougie, I like that. Yeah, I find you know kind of like we're talking about the select flies. I did buy some foam from the craft store to tie some skaters and whatnot, but the foam just didn't really float as well. You'd spend a little bit more time not a lot more time, but just a little bit more time actually, you know drying it out, putting more floating on it, whereas like the foam that you get from the fly shop, I find you almost don't even need float in. I'd still throw it on, but it's like it's just way more dense and stays afloat, which obviously is something. Now, you used a tool right there. It was like a white wand. Was that like a heat wand? What was that?
Brian Smith :Yeah, that's the hairline coterie tool.
Andrew Barany:Okay.
Brian Smith :So this thing, anything you touch with it, it's coming off. So when I go to clean up my heads, you know you can sit there with scissors and you can't get it all. You put a little dab of resin on it to make sure your thread don't come apart, and then you hit it with the coterie tool and there is nothing left. Oh, that's a cool. Any little bit of excess is just gone at that point.
Andrew Barany:It doesn't affect the glue, but it'll pop off whatever material or shrink it if it's plastic, or yeah it will affect the glue if you hold it on there long enough.
Brian Smith :But you know, the glue just gives it an extra layer of protection, I guess.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, nothing worse than tying a fly and having your thread come on done, unraveled at the very end. Yeah, that's the worst. That's always a brutal one.
Brian Smith :It happens, though you know that happens.
Andrew Barany:What's the material? Is that the gill plate? You're kind of working or you're going on the, I guess the gills yeah, this is the gill plate, I guess.
Brian Smith :Whatever the side of it is, this is the sexy floss, oh yeah.
Andrew Barany:Okay.
Brian Smith :As it gives it that rounded out. Look, I don't want that piece of flash on there. I'm going to take that off.
Andrew Barany:I have to say I've really been enjoying tying flies while doing the podcast. I don't normally do it just because of the sound and stuff. The last few that I've done I've been tying a fly while doing the podcast because I got to kind of utilize time. But it's also fun to just kind of whip up a bug while you're chatting with someone. Yeah, I do that a lot with my friends Not so much lately, but I was doing that a lot where we'd get on Instagram and do a video chat with like two or three people and sit there and just tie flies and shoot the shit. It's pretty sweet having the ability to just hop on, like we're doing recording over Zoom or be face to face with someone and tie some flies For sure man, it helps for sure.
Brian Smith :It's just something about it. Discord's a really good place for that too.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I've heard that there's some pretty good Discord group chats and stuff that are almost always going, or always going, in the sense of there's always someone to talk to or post ideas or photos and people can critique or help you out if you need it. Are you on? Do you do Discord quite a bit.
Brian Smith :Well, I had my own Discord there and I was using two-factor authentication. I don't know what happened, but I lost my two-factor. I no longer had access to it. So I contacted them and told them like hey, this is what's happening there. Like, yeah, sorry about your bad look. So I lost a Discord server with thousands of people in it. Oh no, yeah, that's all good. I mean, the Discord's still there. I just can't. I can't control it. I can join it.
Andrew Barany:You just can't control it anymore. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm fair enough, I guess. And are you still pretty active on it then?
Brian Smith :Nah, I don't ever get on it really, to be honest with you, which is foolish really, because I should.
Andrew Barany:Is it still going like? People are still using it quite a bit.
Brian Smith :You know, I'm not sure. I'm sure they are, but I'm not sure how much. But I do know they definitely still use it. I mean they have to be using it. There's people in there active all the time, so I'd be willing to bet they're definitely still on there.
Andrew Barany:I need to go check. When I was using Discord it was for gaming, but I haven't gamed in so long. Yeah, yeah, I used to game pretty consistently. We'd always get together and play like Call of Duty Zombies or Rocket League or something like that. Well, I guess I had a kid, so obviously time on the water was more important to me than killing zombies.
Andrew Barany:We used to sit there and I worked at the KGit this time and two of my buddies were really hard into Call of Duty Zombies, so we would play for like four, five, six hours. Go to bed, like after work, get home, play for like four, five, six hours, leave the console on, paused on the screen, go to bed, wake up, keep grinding on the same game. So we would be like getting to like level 60. And by the time we're getting to level 60, one round is like they come in waves, and so one wave would take like another hour and we'd play that till we had to go to work. And we'd get home from work and continue the same game, only to die, you know, after, like putting eight hours into one level or one game and then start it over again. We were just oh man, it was. It was funny.
Brian Smith :Now thinking back on, how many times they get mad at you for not letting them on the bus?
Andrew Barany:Yeah, exactly. No, that's so funny. Wow, just thinking back on that, like even Rocket League, we used to spend like three, four hours every night playing Rocket League. Rocket League is probably still, to this day, one of my favorite video games, just because it was like I don't know. I kind of grew out of the shooters but driving a car around in like zero gravity arena when I started learning how to fly and do backflips and actually link up with the ball in the air, that was too much fun. But I, like you know, it's kind of like this where you're actually chatting with people. So that was the thing about you know, the zombies prior to it always being online or all the games being online is you know? I actually want to sit down and like play with friends. I didn't really want to sit there and be silent.
Brian Smith :Yeah, and now when you play online, you had to hear some eight year old talking about screwing your mom.
Andrew Barany:It's vicious what I've heard on, especially playing like shooter games. You're like, oh my goodness.
Brian Smith :Yeah.
Andrew Barany:Things that are said holy. Where are your parents, bro? Oh, if my mom heard even a tenth, even 4%, of what some of those kids are saying on that thing, oh my goodness, she would have taken the TV and thrown it out. You know what I mean? Yeah, what about you? That's good. The question that's 31. I'm 31, I believe.
Brian Smith :He's at all. Let me think.
Andrew Barany:Well, I hit 25 and that's when you were able to rent a car, and that was like the last upgrade of your life. After that you're allowed to do everything, at least in Canada. So you know I got to drinking.
Brian Smith :I'm in.
Andrew Barany:Canada. I'm in Canada. I'm on Vancouver Island. I don't know if you've ever. Oh yeah, it's pretty beautiful. Where are you located? Again, I know you told me I'm in Virginia here in the States.
Brian Smith :Yeah, it smells like cow shit and methamphetamines around here. Man, I'm not going to lie, oh lovely.
Andrew Barany:Two great smells to just you know.
Brian Smith :Wake up in the morning, take a deep breath, yeah, yeah, it's small town, farmer town, you know, and it's full of drugs, man, it's awful here. It really is such a terrible place. It's beautiful. It's just the people, man, the people ruin it. That's anywhere you go, I guess.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, I mean at least out on the water in your shop. You're not dealing with that.
Brian Smith :Yeah, I just stick to myself, dude, because you know I lived my, I had a troublesome past and I did my thing. And now you know I'm married to a cop and I changed my life around and I just want to live good man, I just want to live happily. Yeah, Chasing that type of life, that is not a life, dude, that sucks.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, definitely. Well, it sounds like you're in a good place now, running your own business, enjoying tying flies, I mean.
Brian Smith :And for those people that's out there that think they don't have any one. A lot of people don't have any one man with addiction and stuff. Dude, reach out to somebody, man. Yeah, I feel that For real, dude. I thought I would have just reached out in certain times it would have changed the course of my life, but I never did. I was always hard headed, like, oh, nobody loves me, nobody's going to help me. I learned the hard way, that's for sure, dude. Yeah.
Andrew Barany:Well, it's definitely with males. I mean, I'm not saying females are in a different suit, but definitely with males. You know, we can be pretty thick-skulled when it comes to like asking for help or, you know, or even admitting that we might be in a place where we need help, but it is very important to especially. There's always people around you that want to help you. I mean, whether you think there is or not, there is always someone that's out there. I know I've struggled with addiction and I've struggled with depression and all that and, you know, got help and that's when things got better. So, yeah, I feel that.
Brian Smith :You need to, man, and there's always people in your corner, man. They just they're not going to show you that they're there if you're doing dumb stuff.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, 100%. Well, I just realized what time it is. We've just been chatting and chatting, all of it. That was fun, yeah that's true, man. I really appreciate you coming on, brian. It was. Yeah, it was a nice treat to just chat with you and tie some flies with you.
Brian Smith :Yeah, dude, I look forward to hearing this podcast here. I'm going to send you over these pictures, if you want them, of the flies that I've tied.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, please do. What markers are you using right now for your chronoman?
Brian Smith :This is a realistic one. I finished that chronoman like 10 minutes ago, okay.
Andrew Barany:I zoned out on my fly. I've been just petting my fly, man. I've been petting the hackle Like, yes, I could have tied the I'll critique my own fly for a second but I could have tied this about an eighth further forward. Kind of misjudged that. But that's not something that the fish are going to mind, that's just. Is that a tube fly? No, it's on a shank. I guess it's like a hobo spay or something like that. I don't know.
Andrew Barany:I don't have a spay for sure. Yeah, I just got a little crafty in my mind and was like, okay, I'm going to do this and that. Yeah, like I said, I usually don't really follow anything. I just know how the materials are going to act in the water and what I kind of look for in my fly. So that's how I tie it. But yeah, we'll post these. I mean, I only tied one fly, I took my time on it, I guess, but yeah, I'm just over here in the zone.
Andrew Barany:In the zone just whipping up bugs, yeah.
Brian Smith :So what are you?
Andrew Barany:working on now, and what were those?
Brian Smith :markers. Those are Darnaces art on Amazon. They're just cheap craft markers and they're awesome. D-a-r-n-a-s-s-u-s you get. I think it's 72 markers for 15 bucks or 20 bucks.
Andrew Barany:Oh, beauty.
Brian Smith :And I mean they are awesome. And this is a realistic night crawler. It doesn't look realistic at first, it kind of looks cartoony and then, once you put resin on it, it seeps through the latex and it pulls that color through.
Andrew Barany:I love how markers and resin work. It's pretty neat, isn't it? It is. I love when I like put some Sharpie on something and then I put resin down and it like sucks the Sharpie into the resin and then it just like makes it look like glass. Yes.
Andrew Barany:Yeah, it's super cool. Putting markers on flies is super underrated. I mean, even if you have like a white fly and you add some dars into it, you know whatever, just add a little texture, I think that's Well a lot of people they think that the marker is going to scare the fish.
Brian Smith :That's not true, though, oh yeah. Oh damn, that does look like a make-crawler, 100% Well yeah, man, I appreciate you, man, and I'm going to send you some pictures.
Andrew Barany:All right, you have a great day and enjoy.
Brian Smith :Bye later, man Cheers.
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 Brian Smith. On Instagram His handle is underscore ties flies, underspore, and on TikTok it's ties flies. So if you want to go, follow along on his venture. I'll have that all in the link down below or in the description down below. That's where the links will be. And as far as the podcast, if there's anyone else you'd like to hear on it, you know to send a message over at Dead Drifter Society and I will see what I can do Till next time. I'll catch you later.