Brad Goes Fly Fishing In Montana Part 1

[gentle music]

Hey guys, today on It's Alive,

We're out here in the Yellowstone River.

And teaming up with Stevie from--

Oh! Oh I lost 'em.

[upbeat music]

Hey guys, today on It's Alive,

we're here in beautiful Bozeman, Montana.

We're gonna be meeting up with Steve Rinella

from the MeatEater folks.

And we're gonna do a little whitefish.

It's a native fish here in Montana.

And hopefully cook some up if we catch 'em.

So let's go fishing.

We're out here in the Yellowstone River.

My buddy, Steve Rinella, from MeatEaters.

And then we're gonna be doing

a little fly fishing for Whitefish.

I like 'em 'cause they're a native fish,

people don't target 'em.

If you sat and watched that boat launch,

all these yay-hoos launching their boats.

[Brad] Yay-hoos!

They don't wanna catch whitefish.

They wanna catch trout.

I love catching trout.

So I'm like, there's gotta be some other fish

up there that are probably awesome,

if not just as fun to catch, maybe even delicious.

But folks just kinda aren't taking flights out

to necessarily go catching the whitefish.

There's this fish, mountain whitefish.

There's a ton of 'em.

Very good to eat, good smoked.

Just recently, past two years,

I got into fly fishing and just absolutely love it.

Just the cast, the action of it.

Is that basically the primary source of fishing?

In these rivers, for sure.

If God came down and put a gun to my head, and said,

you gotta catch a whitefish in the next hour,

this is what I would bring.

We're gonna use the word bobber today.

What it allows you to do is it allows you to kind of

move down the river, and when you get it right,

you do a little thing called a mend.

That thing is just drifting down

like an insect larva floating downriver.

Just mimicking nature.

And you go out and lift one of these rocks up, man,

and you flip that thing over,

there's all kinds of species of bugs.

Look at these, he's got some big ones here.

Oh no, I'm good on that, dude.

No thank you.

What's that?

Salmon flies.

It's a stone fly.

That is a major fish food, right there.

Nothing about me wants to touch this thing.

So that's what we're trying to mimic

with certain flies, right? Yeah.

So look here, you got like, you see that bead on there?

[Brad] Yeah, yeah.

That catches their eye.

For this, it's very effective.

Here's what's gonna make the difference in you

catching fish or not catching fish.

Yeah, lay it on me, man.

It's how quickly and how aggressively

are you willing to set the hook?

As cool as this looks,

the minute it touches his mouth, he knows it's a ruse.

With the same aggression that you would use to cast.

So that thing's gonna be floating along,

and it's gonna pause.

It's gonna pause, or do a weird thing.

Something unnatural, A slight pause.

Fwam! [Brad laughing]

Fwah!

And then if he's not there, fwap, send him back.

You just go right back into a cast.

You'll catch fish. Hyah!

Here's the key motion.

Okay, you ready? Yup.

[Steve] Oh, bam, mend up a little bit.

Mend is just putting your line back upstream a little.

Yeah, and what that does is that keeps the, that,

if you let it go like, let's say you don't mend.

And you go down.

A lot of times, see the current's gonna grab that bow line.

And it causes that thing to sweep, and it doesn't dig deep.

Unnatural drifts.

[Steve] It flails out.

Let's say we get on the boats,

time to go try to chase after a little whitefish.

Maybe we'll catch a trout, we'll see.

Oh, I think you will. Have a little fun.

I'm excited, knock on wood.

[upbeat music]

We're going over to try to get some whitefish today, huh?

Yeah, man.

This river is loaded with 'em

and it's the right time of year.

My job is to get you guys in the right spot,

and make sure it's in there,

and put on the right hooks.

And kinda your job is to set that hook and hang on.

Yeah, all right.

Fair enough, man.

I will do my best.

[jaunty music]

Kind of just feed it line.

You don't have to recast, Brad.

There you go, right there.

Nice.

Basically with these, we're nymph,

fishing with nymphs, which is a underwater fly.

It's not sitting on the surface.

Just want 'em to look like a bug

that is caught in the current.

Now this river here, this river system we're in,

how many fish can this hold, a decent amount?

Thousands per mile. Really, thousands per mile?

Thousands and thousands per mile.

Really? Oh yeah.

Little mend, Brad, just keep 'em drifting.

There you go.

Now you can hit that mend, there.

Oh, that looked fishy. Damn!

Little mend, there. Oh!

It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.

There you go.

Oh! Come on, man!

I think I've got bad hooks, I think.

All right. Whitefish.

[Brad] See we got a whitefish, man.

[Steve] Look at that little teeny mouth.

That's what you're dealing with.

Oh, that's fishing, baby.

Oh, Steve's on.

[Steve] El Blanco, where's your net?

El neto?

[Brad] Nice.

El Blanco. Steve's kicking ass.

[gentle music]

Steve's kicking ass.

[Steve laughing]

I got bad hooks, I think.

[Chester] There you go.

Keep that rod high, Brad.

Gorgeous fish.

That was good, that was fun.

Yeah, so just like any fish,

I wanna cut the gills and get the blood out of the fish.

The blood is usually what gives that really nasty,

off flavor, that fishiness.

That's what goes bad first.

So if you treat the fish well,

it's gonna treat you well when you go to cook it.

So now it's, we killed it, bled it out,

it's ready for the ice.

I mean, that's just a gorgeous fish.

All right, right in the cooler.

I love that it's just a native fish living here.

Like you were saying, I'm sure folks,

way before the White man showed up,

have been eating this fish for a long time.

[Steve] That's the people, the Absaroka.

[Brad] So no doubt they were eating whitefish.

[Steve] No doubt, no doubt.

Whoa, or not! Told ya.

[Brad] Oh, a real slappa!

[Steve] Oh nice, Brad.

There he comes. Yeah.

I got a good old mess.

[Chester] It happens to the best of us, Brad.

[Steve] The best, and the worst.

[Brad] Come on, there you go.

[all yelling]

That was a stout fish.

Oh, we got pooches. [whistles]

How you guys doing today?

Any luck?

All right, Tom.

Another cast, Brad, straight out.

We call these like buckets.

So be going and then you get a little drop off,

or a little hole like right there.

[Steve] Getting away from the bank?

[Brad] It's too fast out here.

You're gonna catch a whitey right in here, Steve.

[Brad] Oh yeah. You almost pulled it.

[Steve] I take it back.

[Brad] That was impressive, Cap.

[Chester] Thank you, thank you.

[peppy music]

First half of the day was great success.

Yeah, we got into a lot of whitefish.

Steve and the captain were putting us on 'em.

And we caught all we need to go back and cook tomorrow.

So now we're gonna just try, you know, let's mix it up.

We're chock full of trout here.

We're switching up the flies, putting some big old,

big old wooly bombers on there.

What are we calling these?

These are both dryflies.

So they'll be floating on top.

That's a chubby and that one's called a water walker.

So, one of our camera guys that we use,

whose name's Dirt Myth.

Damn, you guys got good names over here at MeatEater.

He had, his name's Garrett Smith, but when he was a kid,

he couldn't say his own name.

So he'd say Dirt Myth and that's, it stuck.

He rode a grizzly bear.

Come on, Dirt Myth.

On accident, during a grizzly bear assault.

Damn. Heck of a songwriter.

Songwriter.

Jeez, this guy'll steal your wife.

We're gonna load back up into the, we're switching over.

We're gonna give the whitefish armada a little break.

We're gearing up to become a trout armada.

[peppy music]

Oh yeah!

Whitefish!

[Chester] Whitey.

[Steve] Oh my goodness.

They said it couldn't be done.

Yeah buddy, that's a nice one.

Brace for impact, Kev.

Last one.

[Chester] There you go, there's a trout.

There's a trout.

[Steve] Whoa man, he's putting up a fuss.

[Brad] Nice fish.

Come on, man! [audience clapping]

[Steve] That's the fish people come

from all over the world to catch, man.

[Brad] That's right, that's what they're coming for.

We came for the whites,

but this is our by-catch today.

Flash and he's gone.

Those yay-hoos just caught one over there.

Let's go, everyone's catching fish.

Back on the armada.

Oh, there you go.

Oh! That was nice.

Steve and Captain, just wanted to say, thanks guys

for bringing me out in your neck of the woods,

going fishing here.

And try to pay a little respect to the fish

that I feel like doesn't get as much as its big cousin,

the rainbow trout, or the brown trout.

So thanks again, boys.

Yeah, you did great. Thank you for coming.

Thank you Chester for rowing us around, man.

No problem.

All right, great, well, that's it boys.

Let's pull these boats out of the water

and let's get outta here.

Wrap it up!

[dynamic music]

That's better than smoked trout.

One guy liked it, Dirt Myth.

Dirt Myth is an alien.

[Man] Chester, what's your final rating

on these guys fishing?

A 6.8 rating as fishermen for the boat.

Let's say you had to break it down

and kind of do more like,

like it wasn't like a collective deal.

If I had to break it down?

What's Steve's score?

That's what we're getting at.

Steve got a few less tangles than Brad.

[Brad] I think he definitely got a few more fish for sure.

So Steve's score went up to a 7.5.

Which is pretty good, I think.

[Steve] Now you gotta do math

to figure out where he lands.

And Brad's gonna be at, you just snuck in a six.

Yeah, 5.9? Yeah.

As a rower, I'm gonna give you a 10, man.

'Cause I'm not [beeps] stingy.

[peppy music]