BONUS: Castability Unleashed: Mark Sedotti's Journey with the Sedotti Slammer

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Butcher Shop where the Meat Meets the Water. On this episode, I'm joined by Mark Sedotti, the inventor of the Sedotti Slammer.Mark's name is another one that regularly pops up when you talk to the big streamer OGs. Mark shares a solution to the big fly castability problem. And like we always do, we discuss the Slammer from the vise to the the water.Mark even shares how the Slammer found its way to Michigan to influence the first generation of folks tying big streamers for big fish.I think you're really going to enjoy this one, but before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items to make sure you don't miss a single episode of The Butcher Shop. Be sure to subscribe in the podcast app of your choice.We're only distributing episodes on The Articulate Fly for a limited time, and if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcast app of your choice. In the age of AI, it's more important than ever, and it really helps us out. And finally, a shout out to our sponsor. TroutRoutes.We all know streams and rivers are getting crowded, and chances are you're not the only one at your local access point. Get away from the crowds and busy gravel lots by using TroutRoutes Pro.With over 350,000 access points mapped across 50,000 trout streams and much more, TroutRoutes has all the data you need to help you find angling opportunities that others will overlook. Up your game and download the app today.Use code ArtFly20A, R, T, F, L, Y20 all one word for 20% off of your TroutRoutes Pro membership at maps.troutroutes.com now on to our interview. Well, Mark, welcome to The Butcher Shop.

Hey, thanks a lot. Great to be here.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.And you know, just as kind of a reminder for our listeners, you know, we do what we do every time we get together on the Butcher shop and we take one pattern and we get the design and we kind of do everything, soup to nuts. And we always kind of start out. Mark, you know, where did the name for the slammer come from?

So anyway, it came from a friend of mine. There were two good guys. They were buddies from New Jersey, Neil Rice and Joe Nimeo.And I had this fly and I wanted to name it, and Joe was saying we were just throwing names around and Joe said, why don't you call the slammer? And I said, okay, that Sounds pretty good. So I named it Sedotti Slammer. He says, Sedotti Slammer. He said it sounds good. Said, yeah, sounds good. I'll go with.It was as simple as that.

Yeah. Very neat.And, you know, if we step back on the time machine and it's been a few years, you know, what was the hole in your fly box you were trying to fill when you started designing the slammer?

Yeah. Okay. It goes back to 1991. And I'd started. I'd started fly tying for the first time three weeks before I designed the slammer.And what it was was that I started tying because I should have started, you know, I mean, I started fly fishing in, in the late 70s, so it was about time that I started anyway. But there were patterns where, you know, I just couldn't get them. I couldn't buy him anywhere. You know, I would have to tie them.So I mean, you know, I had a need there, so I started tying also. I saw that all the bunker patterns were five inches long. You know, nothing was bigger.And the primary bait where I lived in western Long Island Sound was menhaden.Schools of bunker live bay fishermen would go strag them and liveline whole adult bunker, which could be up to 15 inches long, usually 10 to 15 inches long. Or cut bait and cut them up, put hooks through them and just throw them and let them lie on the bottom. That was the primary bait.I'm saying, here I am in western Long Island Sound and I see a bunker pattern five inches long. You know, these aren't. This will copy the bunker that I see that we use.So, you know, I couldn't find a bunker pattern anywhere that was big or big enough. And so I decided to tie one up myself.And the pattern, the bunker pattern that was out there that I knew of was by a guy, Lou Tabory, who was a pretty well known northeast striper fisherman, fly rod fisherman. And he had the slab side, the slab sider. And the slab sider probably was about 6 inches long at the most. And it was a clipped deer hair head.And then it also had bucktail behind that spread out. Well, I wanted something bigger and I couldn't find bucktail that was long enough.So I was saying, well, with the materials I have in my bag right now, how can I do this? And I don't know how to spin deer here. I said, well, I can high tie and I can low tie clumps of bucktail along the shank on the top and the bottom.You know, coming from. I knew about Joe Brooks's Blonde. And that was a high tie, right? So I said, well, I'll just put bucktail on the bottom like that too.And I'll probably have, you know, the wide profile shape to start with. And then behind that I can't use bucktail, so I got feathers. So I'll use feathers in a high and low tight bucktail behind it.And I'll have a longer pattern, you know. So my first. So I did that and my first. My first slammer was probably about 8 inches long. They'd be about 8, 9 inches long.And I'll offshoot from there was as soon after that, I knew that I wanted the bunker patterns in different sizes because the bunkers usually were out there in different sizes for different times of the year or just so you could see the difference in. In size in the classes. So I tied one for the peanut bunker, which would be three and a half inches long. That's the very small bunker.And I didn't use that much at all. I didn't like the way it looked in the water. I liked the way other patterns looked. So I would just use that for a little bit in the early 90s.And then I had the immature bunker, which. Which turned out being the great trout fly also, which was from, for the most part, six to seven and a half inches. Also six to seven inches.That was a common immature sized bunker that we had in places like in Jamaica Bay. They'd be in there in the spring. And in Long Island Sound, around Greenwich, Porchester, Rye, Mamaroneck, where I fished and I lived in Port Chester.That was a common fall size. The mature bunker, 8 inches was really a little small. But I wasn't sure because of what so many people said.Everything I read and everything people said that anything bigger than that was uncastable. Even that couldn't cast, you know, that was the feedback I got. But I tied one that was 13 and a half inches on a tandem.On a tandem hook which was connected front hook, connected the back hook by wire. And I tied 1/13 and a half inches because I said, you know, I might as well tie one that's the natural size of the bunker. Although I probably.I won't be able to cast that. But I got to do it anyway, you know, so I did that. So mainly I worked on it. First was that 8 inch pattern.And I was a stickler in all my sizes for profile. Definitely for some reason I wanted a really good natural profile of the bunker. I thought that was important.So with that one, I arranged the feathers. I didn't have to arrange the bucktail that much. You know, that was pretty standard.Clumps going down the shank of the hook or going up the shank of the hook.And then in the back, I had long, real long feathers right at the tail and up above that a little bit on the shank, I tied feathers which were shorter. Same thing on the bottom. It didn't take me long to get the right proportions to where I got the profile I wanted.Also, I put peacock curl in there for the back, but. And I would test my flies in my sink, and I would test my flies, you know, my bathtub at first to see how they ran, to see what they looked like.And with the peacock Herl, I didn't get the profile I want. Profile I wanted.When I put the peacock Herl in right at the front, right behind the eye of the hook, peacock curl, when it was in the water, actually lifted up. It didn't add to the profile. It just looked unnatural to me.So what I did was I just had a hunch, too, and it worked, was I put that peacock Herl in right before I put the two clumps in on top. On the top of bucktail. So I had bucktail behind the eye of the hook, followed by the peacock Herl, followed by more bucktail, and then the feathers.And that made that profile perfect, you know, And I hadn't seen that done before. I don't know if I was the first to do that or not on a fly pattern.I still see the slammer today, the feather slammer, tied where the tires put that peacock Herl in right behind the eye of the hook. And I never did that, or I did that, you know, back in 1991, second week, something like that. But that made a difference to me. I put the fly.I went out in my boat and I put the fly in the water, and I was shocked because that fly looked like. I said, this thing looks like a bunker in the water.I mean, I wanted it to, you know, but I didn't know really what it was going to look like out out in the ocean, per se. Out in the sound. I was, like, shocked, you know, because I just started tying, you know, I was like, wow, the thing really looks like a.Like a bunker. You know, I had put lead, lead wire around the shank of the hook.Because with all those materials that held air, you know, the bucktail, some of the feathers, I knew that I needed to get that thing under. I was always conscious of getting the fly underneath the surface. I didn't care if it Sank very far. Yeah, I really didn't care.You know, I could use sinking fly lines for that. But I wanted to do that so soon after that. Had trouble with the fly rolling, you know what I mean? Right.And you know, I mean the fly would, would have a tendency to roll because wide profile flies do.So my friend Tom Piccolo, who was a very fine tire and a very fine tire and fisherman at the time, said, siddharti, why don't you build a keel in the airplane? Okay. Yeah, I remember keel from Joe Bates's book on streamers. Yeah, I remember it from there. Yeah, we'll build the keel and blah, blah, blah, blah.Well, I built in some sort of a, like a, like a pyramid type keel, which ended up, I ended up adding more weight to it. You know, it ended up as, you know, a, a three dimensional box, box rectangle, you know, like. And that's how the keel came in there.I tied the keel in because I wanted to kill the fly. I didn't want the fly to roll. And it worked. And it worked.I went out in my boat to try out the 13 and a half inch block which had 20 schlopping feathers on it at about a whole bucktail's worth of bucktail on there and whatever else, two heavy hooks, lead wire on the shank, lead keel wire connecting the hooks, and it brought it out on the sound, thinking, I'm not going to be able to cast this thing. Maybe I'll get it 30ft. So I had scientific anglers, fluorescent orange floating fly line weight forward 10, which is 82ft.Sci Angler supreme back in the day in 91. And I had a nine foot leader and I put the fly on there and I made two false casts and I shot the whole thing.90Ft, the entire length of the fly line and the leader and it all turned over. I almost fell out of the boat. Almost fell out of the boat. I said, oh my God. I said, they're wrong. You can cast these things.Well, little did I know there was a reason why I could do that too. And so I went back and I'm not getting off the subject.I went back, you know, and, and as I was fishing it a few weeks later, I'm thinking I shouldn't be able to do this. And started sort of reverse engineer or think backwards about, you know, why is this thing casting so far? And I realized what it was.I realized that and it shouldn't have been all that weight in the fly. I was told for years and read for years, was counterproductive to the fly's cast ability. What I found out is, no, it isn't.This is why, this is the reason why that fly is casting so far. It's the weight in the fly, but not specifically the weight.I realized it was enough weight to counteract the wind resistance or the, of the fly when it's cast or you know, to, to neutralize the fly's drag. All that weight was doing that and I needed that weight in that particular fly, plus all the water that was absorbed by those materials.I needed all that weight in the fly in order to cast a fly that big, in order to cast a fly more accurately, more wind resistant. And so I call that weight balancing. That, that was, you know, the concept of weight balancing a fly.We have enough weight in the fly to accurately and, and finally, you know, have enough weight in the fly to, to balance, to counteract. Exactly. Or close to that. The, the flies drag as it moves through the air when it's casted. I said, wow, look at, look at this. And also.Any questions, I'll continue.

Yeah, no, it's interesting because it makes me think about from a design perspective, it's almost like the brass collars on darts, that's kind of what that weight's doing.

Right? But yeah. Is it?

Yeah, I mean, it does.

The dart is kind of heavy and it's really, it's really not that wind resistant.

But it's, it's that mat. It's the mass that you need. Right. That keeps the, you know, keeps the feathers on the dart from just having it kind of flutter all over the place.Gives you the directionality. I mean, you don't have a keeling problem with the dart. Right,.

Right. No, no, my. And okay, I'll go, I'll get into weight balancing or more of it just in a little bit. So anyway, you know, with the,.

With.

The, with the five to seven and seven and a half inch fly, you know, I put the keel in there, but I really didn't need it. Actually. That fly with the keel in there was just a little on the heavy side.You know, it wasn't really perfectly weight balanced, but that was okay because it gave the fly other attributes, which I'll get to, especially when I get into talking about it. For trout fishing. With the 8 inch pattern, I wanted to, I wanted to have a little more three dimensional bunker shape, you know.And I bought the fly to Bob Popovics' at a show and he told me, mark, you know, if you put some on the side, just put some bucktail on the sides and then you put some feathers over the booktail. And if you do that just right, you'll get looking up at the fly from the bottom, you'll have a better three dimensional shape for that fly.A fish looks up from below, it'll have more of a bunker shape or the 8 inch pattern. Thank you, Bob. Really good. That worked.He also told me for the big fly, he goes, you know, because I tied the feathers in on the hook in two places at the back of the shank and right behind the eye of the hook of the trailer hook. And I had the regular slammer tie for the front hook. And he said, well, you know, you can tie along the wire and it'll fill the fly in.And that's what it did.I tied some clumps along the wire, the connecting wire, and it filled in the fly for that 13 and a half inch fly, you know, so that was like Bob Popovics' contribution. But for the 5 to 7 inch fly, I didn't need to do the thing with the bucktail and the feathers on the side for the three dimensional shape.Simply the way I had it tied gave me a good three dimensional bunker. And the same thing with a 13 and a half incher. If I'd done that to the 13 and a half inch, it would have been too wide for some reason.With all the material on the hook, on the hooks, the way I tied them in that fly was three dimensionally good, not doing that bucktail and feathers on the slide on the side. So that was pretty interesting.

Yeah, interesting. And so you were, were you doing the high low tide then? Or was that something that came a little bit later?

No, no, I. High, low tide, everything from the beginning, literally from the first day to what I did the first day.And then I had all these patterns and I even had them tweaked, Gee, just within. God, within a month, you know, within a few weeks.They didn't need much to tweak, you know, I had to tweak for the smaller ones so that the feathers would stay together and they wouldn't sort of like where your fingers come apart, you know, when you thrust your fingers apart. You know, sometimes that would happen with the, with the feathers at the back, but just, just for a day or two.And I took care of that really quickly and just from placing the feathers just a little differently on the fly.And everything was high and low tide from the beginning for all the size, all the sizes, you know, and as long as I had the right placement of the feathers going horizontally and I had the right length of the feathers and the bucktail. But the bucktail was easy. The bucktail was easy. And you know, I was, I was in like flint. It worked and it all worked fast.

Yeah, very, very neat. And you know, Obviously starting in 91 to today, there have been a lot of changes in materials.And you know, that's kind of helped the evolution of the slammer. Kind of talk about, you know, maybe, you know, moving to some of the more synthetic stuff kind of as things progress. Yeah, sure.Because I think people would really find that interesting because I know you mentioned earlier talking waterlogged flies. I mean you can really solve that problem with some of the synthetic hairs we have today.

Right, right. Yeah. But above see the. My, my catch was that the waterlogged flies added to, added to the flies cast ability. If, if you did it right.That's what I found especially in the big patterns. They aided the castability of the fly.And even for years afterward I'd hear, you know, well, you know, it sheds all its water when it's cast, so it casts so much easier. No, you're preventing your fly from casting. Well, a lot of the time if your fly is big, you're actually preventing it from casting.You're making the fly more wind resistant. Right. A wet fly collapses, you know, it cuts through the air easier. It doesn't have as much drag on the fly. So you know, maybe you want that.Maybe you want that. I saw that weight in the fly weight from absorb water oftentimes, not all the time. You know, you could have too much weight, too much water.You know, as long as your fly was weight balanced, that was the key. That's the key to castability and flies that gets the cat. It's more of the key for the cast ability.Especially if streamer flies weight balancing than the fly line dragging the fly. The old concept's an old concept that the fly line pulls the fly along for the ride.And as if the fly has nothing to do with that except for being small and out of the way. And nothing could be further from the truth. Fly could be more important in the cat in its cast ability than the fly line itself.Unless that fly is really, really small and or you have a very heavy line and a very small fly.

Yeah, it makes me think about muskie fishing and I know you can absolutely get into trouble if you try to false cast those things too much because to your point, it's kind of throwing a feather. Right. Doesn't work very well.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know how you can tell your fly's weight, balance or really weight balanced? Well, finely tuned, it false cast marvelously. Giant fly.I've had 18, 20 inch flies false cast marvelously. They say if you, you don't have enough, you go out and you false cast your giant fly. How many people do this?Actually take their flies out, you know, and they cast them and they tweak their flies. You know what I mean? I mean, if you're seriously into fly tying, you really gotta do this.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, at first you don't have enough weight. Fly really drags, it can't turn over. You add a little more weight and you get a big figure eight forward.And, you know, going forward, going back, getting that big figure eight, you add a little more weight. You don't have quite as big a figure 8. You add a little more weight. Ooh, you're closer. Very narrow figure 8.When you get it just right, you're false casting the fly slows down. Your casting slows down. You false cast the thing easily with a normal loop.Add more weight to that, you start getting back into a bigger and bigger figure eight because the fly is too heavy, you can't handle it as well. To the point where you add weight and, you know, cast like a stone. It is virtually uncastable at that point.But you know that point where you can fly a cat, where you can false cast your fly, any fly, but especially a big fly, well, that, that means it's weight balanced and that's what you want. That's how you get a fly to really cast the giant fly, to really cast easily and to really cast a long, long way.

Interesting. And I know you're very particular too, about the construction of your keels.You want to kind of walk through that, because I know you, you're like, you're really averse, for example, to shortcutting it by, you know, cutting like big chunks of block solder and things like that.But you want to kind of, you know, to your point, like how you're kind of, you know, particular about the keel and getting the weight balancing in the fly.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think if you can get it another way by just cutting off some thick solder, you know, that has a real good diameter, if you want to do it any other way and you can get the right amount of weight, more power to you. Because it doesn't matter how I tie the keel, it matters that it's the correct weight for your fly.You get what you get What I mean, it's okay to do it any way you want, but it's got to be a weight to where you're weight balancing that fly. I did it.I just started doing this, you know, from the beginning or soon after the beginning where I would, just for the big fly, I cut half inch strips of a 0.035 lead nowadays lead free wire, but at the beginning lead wire and I just put in three levels of like three wraps of five pieces, right.One layer, first layer against the, the bottom, not the bottom of the shank of the hook, but the, the shank of the hook is wrapped with some weighted wire already so it's wider. And I put five strips in so that it looked like a raft, you know, that they're next to each other, the sides are next to each other.I'd wrap that in, I'd wrap in five more below that and then I'd wrap in five more below that for the, for the big fly, you know, even the big synthetic fly. So I'd have a rectangularly boxed keel.So I would do it that way and I, and I still do it that way simply because, I don't know, I just didn't want to change, I guess, you know, it worked and I didn't care so much if the fly sold commercially or whatever.You know, I, I'd, I put in my flies to be, you know, commercially made and it would come back like Otto Beck did this and it came back, they said, well, it's just too big a fly that, you know, we're just a fly fishing rock and buy this thing. It's too big. They'll find it uncastable. They'll think it's uncastable.They gave it back to me and eight months later they have, they had their market in that same fly under a different name.

Yeah, yeah. And so do you kind of just because you've done it so long, you have a really good idea. Like I'm going to tie this length fly.This is the hook I'm going to use. This is, you know, the amount of lead I need.Or you keep it like, or do you keep a roll of lead in your boat bag and you kind of micro tune the flies on the water.

Now I don't make.The only time I've micro tuned the flies when I'm doing fly casting demonstrations and I, you know, I was really concerned about how I looked and what the cast would be like. I wanted everything, everything to be fine tuned, you know, for, for casting demonstrations.And that's you know, it's getting kind of anal, but you know, I just wanted, you know, to be able to be at my best.

Yeah.

And no, for, for standard, for standard thing like with the synthetic fly, you tie that fly from 8 inches to, to 18 inches. You need, you don't need it. You need. All you need is the same amount of weight in the fly.You don't need any more weight in a fly through that range of sizes. Why? I'm not sure. I'm not sure, but it works. So that's pretty standard for giant fly. You know, that you're, that you're gonna time.You know, I don't consider, you know, I don't even consider an 8 inch fly. Giant fly, but it's a big fly that, that's about the cutoff point and 8 inches to however long you want it. You know, however long you want it.I started tying the, the fly out of synthetic material in about 1995, 1996, primarily because I couldn't find the saddle hackles or the schlappen.And I wanted, you know, big fly started becoming popular enough at that time that people were, you know, we're all buying up big saddles and they were buying up schlappen. You know, I found all I wanted at the beginning and for the, and for the first couple of years, the first three years.And then I noticed, you know, they were getting tougher and tougher to find. I could find them anywhere I wanted. Any show, any fly shop, especially local fly shops, would have these things with dust on the packages.Dust on the packages literally of the schlappen feathers. And I just grabbed all I wanted to there. So that's primarily why I started tying this thing with synthetics.And I had my friend Jay Bobowitz bother me. Say, Mark, you got us tie that fly with synthetics. You know, you just got tied. Okay. You know I will.Well, when I couldn't find the feathers I wanted, I tied it with synthetics. I tied it with bozo hair. And all I did was high and low tie those materials along the shank of the hook. It was very easy.And I put a little bit in on the sides. I couldn't put too much. If I put too much, it got way too wide. It didn't look like a bunker.So I wanted the thing to look like a bunker in a three dimensional shape. And I didn't want it to be too wind resistant. And you know, I used the same keel that I used on the, on the big feather slammer essentially.Maybe I added a Little more weight to it. I went from.035 wire from 0.030. That was about the only change.You know, maybe the hooks, hooks got a little bigger, but it didn't matter that much, you know, really, it didn't matter that much. And I had a synthetic fly.I also have to say that, you know, although I tied it that way, I know that Dave Chouinard of the fly hatch, who's been involved with the fly fishing industry, right around that time, he had a synthetic fly that looked like that. And so did Jeff Northrup up in Norwalk, Connecticut, who was a guide and had a guiding service. We had a fly like that too.So I really wasn't the first to tie the synthetic fly like that. But I wasn't thinking about that, you know, when I did it. These were people I know who I ran into shortly afterwards.You know, I told them, oh, you know, no, no, okay. You know, I realized that you had what you had. So I really couldn't take all the credit for that fly. But I just.High tide and low tide it, and the big fly. Then I tied it from 10, usually to 14 inches long. A lot of the times it'd be 11 or 10 inches.I found that the, the adult menhaden, were from usually 10 to 15 inches long. They weren't bigger than that and they weren't smaller than that.And I noticed that the blues and the, and the bass, especially the big blue fish, it seems like they, they were locked in on if, if that fly was shorter than 10 inches, you know, and you're fishing in the bunkers and they were feeding on the bunkers, you know, they weren't going to eat that fly. It had to be 10 inches and longer. Wow, look at that. Look at that kind of selectivity to size. That was pretty neat.So, you know, I keep it in those sizes. It also allowed me to tie a bigger fly, to tie a longer fly. Like I would go up into Canada, northern Canada, lake trout fishing.I always found this wonderful, wonderful place, my friend Matt Wilder, where he had lake trout in shallow water for almost the entire season.And they'd go down into the Whale river out of Lake Chanderei, and you have these big lake trout in shallow water in a river, you know, for weeks at a time. They would be eating whitefish, which were big and landlocked salmon, which they call ouananiche up in Quebec.And I just wanted a big fly because I wanted a big lake trout. You know, they eat big stuff, those fish. So I tied a fly that was 17 inches long, you know, look good in the water.And I, I was fishing it on a floating line with an eight weight rod, you know, because it was weight balance. And the biggest flies I've used have actually been for freshwater than for lake trout. That's the biggest that I use, but not the biggest I've tied.I'll do casting demonstrations either up to today where I'll cast an 18 and 20 inch fly to show the effectiveness of weight balance. And sometimes, you know, the end of my show, I'll cast that giant fly with a five weight to show how effective and how important weight balancing is.If you weight balance an 18 inch fly, you can cast it with a five weight rod, you know.

Yeah, it's interesting and you know, we were talking before we started recording, when I kind of think about this kind of size castability solution set, you know, I think about your platform and then I think about Popovics' hollow Fleye platform.And I was kind of curious, you know, as you've kind of, you know, you know, worked on the slammer, you know, over gosh, what, almost 35 years or 35 years, just kind of your thoughts on kind of the differences between the two and you know, when you might prefer or prefer one platform over the other. That'd be very interesting to get your thoughts on that.

Why? Okay, well, the only reason Bob Popovics' flies will be castable if they are very castless because they're weight balanced.You might not have thought of that. Or anglers, you don't, you know, don't think about that. But if they can cast those things well, it's literally because they're weight balanced.You don't have to have put weight into the fly for it to be weight balanced. The fly that can be cast the furthest is a fly that's weight balanced. But it's as light.It's weight balanced but at the same time can be as light as it can be. It can be as light as it can be. It can, it can collapse as well as it collapse. So it doesn't have much wind resistance and it's weight balanced.So you don't need much weight in the fly. Oftentimes all you need is the hook. All you need is the hook in that fly and it collapses real well.Like if you make a fly out of it, it's the flash deceiver, right?It's a deceiver with your regular flashaboo as a tail instead of the feathers, you can tie this thing 10 inches long and you have some bucktail up on top in front, bucktail up on the bottom in front. And all you need is the hook and the weight of the absorbed water with that fly and it's wonderfully weight balanced and it casts beautifully.Beautifully.I mean, I did a casting demonstration at the Salty Fly Rodders in New York at one point wanted to show them, you know, how castable this flash receiver is. So I got the thing and I put the thing on a four weight rod with a four weight floating line and I zip the thing the entire length of the fly line.It was the first time I ever had an audience gasp when, when I made a cast at a demonstration, I say, see, you know, I think that's pretty audio understandable if that's the right language.

Yeah, because I know, because I know. Like for example, the slammer with the lead keel has a little bit more momentum on the strip.

Right.

And the profile might be a little different in the round, but you know, I was just kind of trying to think through things.

Of course, of course.

Yeah.And so, yeah, and so the other thing we were talking about before we started recording because, you know, by not being a saltwater guy from the northeast and like, as I told you, I get horribly seasick, so I generally will opt to fish for trout and other things where I'm not just green around the gills the entire day.But, you know, your name came up over and over and over again as I was doing, you know, research and work and talking to all kind of what we kind of called the original kind of big streamer guys in Michigan. And I really wanted to hear the story about, you know, how the slammer found its way to Michigan.You know, who are some of the early tires that saw it?

Absolutely.

Yeah, that would be a great story.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you, I want to add this first thing first because it's part of castability.When you, when you, how, how you can make, you can design a really giant fly, then that's really, really cast upon you. And I, I know that you can cast giant flies about as long as you can cast any size fly, any size fly, no matter what size it is.Tiny, medium, big, you can cast giant flies. You know, you think of that, you can't simply, it simply isn't true.You know, and I'll relate this to Michigan in that I was doing casting demonstrations and casting classes and tying stuff at Mike Schultz's shop, you know, Schultz Outfitters and Ypsilanti for one of his big open days, you know, I think this was in September. It might have been in June. I'm not sure if it was June or September because I think I did a couple of them.And I was doing a casting demonstration and I was actually demonstrating with a prototype G. Loomis short stick, which I helped design. And I had a 7 foot 9 inch short stick which was a prototype. And I had like a 417 grain shooting head on that thing. And I cast a 10 inch fly.I cast it pretty far, but it wasn't like one of my longest ever cast. And then Mike Schultz, not Mike Schultz, but Mike Schmidt who you mentioned before, said, I'd like to measure that thing.I'd like to measure how long that cast is. So he went out and he measured it and I cast a 10 inch fly. 189Ft, right? 189Ft. So like, oh.And then last year at the Long Island Fly Fishing Festival, a thing put together by Paul McCain, he's the owner of River Bay Outfitters in Baldwin, Long Island, I cast an 18 or 20 inch synthetic slammer. I cast it 150ft with a five weight rod and I'd cast 120, 130ft.Lots of times before it was 150, I said, oh my God, people, you don't know what you've just seen, you know, but I mean, you can do it. Now I'm a really good caster, right? But if you're a decent caster or a good caster, you can cast these things a long way.If you're a, I'm gonna say a decent caster, you know, because a lot of people really aren't even decent casters. And like I tell people, if you can't cast a small fly, you're not going to be able to cast a big one.

Flat out, I agree with you on the fundamentals. They're super important, right? And you got to start there.But if we back up just a little bit, I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, so Schmidt was there. You were at Schultzes. This would have been probably in the early days of the shop.You know, talk to me about kind of how that kind of light bulb went off for people on this size castability thing and kind of how it started to work its way into kind of that Michigan tying ecosystem.

Oh, okay. You know, so through that, it started when I was out. I was fishing down in Arkansas and I fish in Arkansas a lot and I love it.I love the White River. It's one of my favorite places in the world. And so I go there again with my friend Matt Wilder, who get the stuff together fishing up in Canada.And he owns and runs a recording studio in Nashville. And so got back to Nashville and then he said, boy, steelhead should be good in Michigan. Now. Let's see what happens. Let me call Matt Straw.And Matt Straw is involved with In-Fisherman. He was friends with Matt Straw. Matt Straw said, well, I'm going to give you.Get you in touch with this guy, John Kessner, this guy at Pere Marquette River Lodge. Okay, that's good. We talked to John Kessner, and John Kessner said, oh, the guy you want is this young guy. He's a great caster.My God, does he have enthusiasm? He's a really great fisherman. He does these neat, unique things, you know, like.Like sight casting the white sand flats of the Michigan shoreline for steelhead, chinooks and brown trout. Now. Yeah, man, he sounds like our guy, right? And it's Russ Maddin, the kid. A kid Russ Maddin. So we call Russ Maddin, and Russ actually answered.You know, he actually called us back and I was told, like, Kelly will tell us, boy, he calls Russ. You'll have to call Russ six, nine times for Russ even calls him back. So I was like, boy, we really got lucky here.And so we flew up to Michigan, up to Traverse City, and that's where I met Russ, man. Now, he picked us up at the airport, whatever, and he took us fishing. And that's when I met Kelly Galloup, because Kelly had the Troutsman there.Russ was working at the Troutsman. So that's where I met Russ. I met him, you know, right up there. And then we fished the flats, and then we went out, we fished steelhead.And they said, well, what he was really into was trout fishing, you know, with streamers or whatever. So, you know, we started talking about that, going fishing with him.And then I went back up there pretty often for a few years throughout the 90s, into the early 2000. Well, no, that was like 90. That might have been 2000 actually when I met Russ.So throughout 2000 to 2014, I'd go up to Traverse City fairly often to fish. I really got into that streamer fishing and. And essentially they were using all these small streamers. Maybe the biggest were four and a half inches.You know, the. What was Kelly's fly? You know, the.

The first little sex dungeon.

No, no, before that.

A zoo cougar.

Before that. Yeah. Now before the zoo, cougar was it zoo cougar. Is that the first one?

That's well, that's not the first one. Yeah, that's the one with the duck flank over the top,.

Right? Gee, I'm not sure. You know, it was about three inches long, three and a half inches long. I think it was the Zoo cougar. I think.Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was. It was the zoo cougar.So there are all these small flies and, you know, I'd been out to the Beaverhead river out in Montana, and when I was out there, I used that, that six, seven inch slammer, the trout on the Beaverhead river, you know, when I got to go out with the guides after they finished their trips and they wanted to go do some serious fishing, streamer fishing later in the day, said, yeah, man, I'll go along.

You're on.

And go along, go along. The guy who went along with was Kyle Jampioli, who's pretty well known.He's become a tarpon guy, you know, for maybe the last couple of decades or so. And he was guiding right up there, Five Rivers Lodge in Montana, so that the fly had a single hook in the front.And I still caught a lot of fish and I had them go crazy for the fly. So I knew it was good. You know, I knew it was good.And then I also used that, you know, medium sized slammer on Kensico Reservoir, which was near where I lived in Portchester, New York. Kensico and Valhalla. It's kind of just outside of New York City. It's one of the New York City watershed reservoirs.It's really clean water in there. And so I caught lake trout on that fly and I caught brown trout in the reservoir also. So I knew it would probably work.You never know if something's going to work until you actually do it, you know, plenty of times with tying certain flies and different aspects of fishing. Yeah, man. Well, I think this is going to work. And it doesn't, you know, it just. It just doesn't. It just doesn't happen. It just doesn't work. But.But this time, you know, so I didn't know we'd have to take it out there. So that was the version that I brought out in Russ Maddin's boat on the first in the Manistee river in, you know, Russ's drift boat.And the fish went crazy for the fly, you know, he was mumbling like, you know, like, Russ can get so excited. I don't know if he still does, but he did back then was, you know, the fish just went wild for the Flying. And I went out there with Kessner and Russ.This is maybe, you know, early 90s. And, and, you know, they, they were just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, tying it up.And I was tying it through everybody there, and they called it the Screaming Jesus. So why did you call it that? He says, well, because you're throwing the thing and it's Jesus. Did you see the size of that one?So, you know, it started getting around Michigan.They didn't want to let people know about it, but the word started getting around about this pattern, and people were describing it to one another, and they hadn't seen it. And Kessner and Russ were trying to keep it a secret. And, you know, Alex Lafkas was one of their friends who's become pretty prominent also nowadays.And I tied a bunch of flies up for Alex, whatever. And, you know, essentially, you know, there's a, a big streamer trout craze in the world right now.And it started, it started when I brought those flies, you know, when I pulled them out of my fly box in Russ's boat, and I pulled those flies from, you know, western Long Island Sound and started fishing them in Michigan. The whole craze started there on the Manistee river in Russ's boat.

That's really neat. And so was that. That was probably what, a little bit after Kelly and Bob had their first streamer book out, Right? Probably about like that. Right?It was. Would have been a little bit after that.

Yeah, I, I, I, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I'm not sure, but I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think that already had been written.

Yeah.And, and so, you know, if we kind of shift gears to kind of the presentation, and we were talking, you know, and I know because I've, I've heard that you are, are a great caster. You know, obviously, presentation starts with the cast. Right. Because if you can't cast, you just can't get in the game.And so, you know, if we come back to kind of your original, let's just say your usual, you know, saltwater bunker imitation slammer, you know, what is your preferred rod setup? And also, you know, we can talk, if you want to talk about line and leaders at the same time, we can do that now or we can talk about it later.

But also, too, now. Yeah, sure.

And then I would say too, you know, obviously, you know, people casting, you know, weighted flies, and I know they're perfectly balanced, and we've really explored that, but, you know, talk about any kind of, you know, Tweaks to traditional casting mechanics or different casting mechanics that you like to use when you're fishing those larger slammers.

Yeah, okay, okay. Nothing beats good fundamental technique. That's what casts a big fly. That's your basic casting for any casting, but especially big flies.Your basic fundamentals, you know, your strengths are amplified in how you cast a big fly.In your strength is in, in your fundamentals and your weakness in your fundamentals are also amplified with a big fly, you know, so mainly that's what it is.It's really to have good fundamental technique and timing, you know, for, for most everybody now I throw my furthest on a back cast and on a back cast that I develop call the Sayonara sling. So when I'm giving you these big distances and I'm casting, I'm doing those with the Sayonara sling and the Sayonara sling.Essentially you get two handed rod distance with the one handed rod. And it's simply because at the, at the end of the stroke I have a straight casting arm. So that adds a foot and a half to the length of my rod.The longer the rod is, the easier it is to get that tip moving faster, right? So you want that tip moving as fast as it can move right at the end of the stroke, the tail end of the stroke. That's where you get line speed.It's how fast that tip moves right at the tail end of the stroke you have a longer rod. It's easier to get a higher speed there. Also the, with the Sayonara swing, I turn the reel to the side.It's as if I turn my casting hand and my forearm as if you're turning a doorknob in the opposite direction that you usually turn it to open the door. Turn it in the opposite direction so the reel is facing out to the side. That allows you to get that butt to get the pressure of the rod, right?The pressure of the bend of the rod pushing the butt of the rod into the bottom of your forearm, right below the wrist, you get more leverage. You can bend the rod more that way, you can bend the rod way more that way. Or we'll say get it bent.You don't press it in there, you let the, you let the tension of the rod, right? And the bend of the rod, all the weight from the cast, you let it push that thing in there so you can bend the rod more that way.The more you can load the rod, the further you can bend the rod, the further you can cast. So you have more a rod that's bent more. You got your tip moving faster right there at the end. You can get a longer cast, at least on this planet.And it's why you cast spey rod, you know, a two handed rod farther, easier. Simply because you have a longer rod, your tip is moving faster, easier and you support that rod with two hands.With the Sayonara sling, you're supporting that and you're supporting the rod in a different way.You're doing it with one arm that, that fighting butt, you know, or the butt of the rod anyway, you know, really aids in getting that rod to bend more. So that's how I cast a further, you know.

Yeah. And so. Yeah. Do you have a preferred rod action?

Yeah, I like a fast action rod. I don't necessarily like an extra fast action rod that usually an extra fast action rod is too tippy, the tip is too light.I need a fairly heavy tip, you know, a fairly stiff tip, not a real stiff tip, but a fairly stiff tip. So I usually like a fast action fly rod. I have my preferences. You know, right now on, right now I have a 8 1/2 foot 11 weight atlas rod.Atlas made by the Trident people up there in Portland, Maine. You know, they make atlas rods and, and I like the taper of that rod. I like the way that cast really well. I've had my favorites over the years.For the real big flies, I like an 11 wing. Even though I can cast them with lighter stuff, I like an 11 wing. A really great casting 11 weight rod is one weapon, let me tell you.I really like it. I know a lot of big fly guys, you know, like a 10 weight.And I started using a 10 weight, you know, but I use an 11 more of the time for my striper blue fishing and stuff like that.You know, I can take a tarpon fishing if I want to, which is, which is nice, you know, like I designed short rods and whatever and they're, and they're good. But it doesn't matter. It's how you cast the rod. You gotta, you want a big flies rod, buy a rod that really fits you, you know.You know, you don't necessarily have to buy what Mark Sedotti says or anybody, anybody else, you know, any other considered expert, you know, or whatever. You don't have to, you buy the rod that fits you. That's the most important thing. And everybody, you know, likes something a little different.I, I think, yeah.

Plus you want to kind of amplify your strengths and minimize your weaknesses if you can with some equipment.

Right of course. Of course. Yeah. You got to be comfortable with, with your gear. Absolutely, absolutely.

Do you have. Yeah. Do you have any preferred, like line and leader setups?

Yeah. Really, really interesting.Generally speaking, you know, over the years, I've used the, the integrated lines a lot like the old scientific angler, streamer express and lines that are good now or they don't call them uniform sync. It's. It's like, you know, sonar 1, 2, 3, or whatever.They have three different densities along the line so the thing will, will sink straight and uniformly to the fly. You know, those are really good lines too. With, with really big flies. The, the real outbound shorts, a lot of, A lot of people use those.Early on, I used shooting heads a lot. I had this wonderful airflo di7 shooting head. My God, it was marvelous casting. Just marvelous casting.You know, in fly fishing, if you really like something. Right. Buy a whole bunch of them because sooner rather than later it's going to be discontinued.

Yeah, amen to that.

You know, I mean, really. And so I would, I would use a shooting head, you know, with a, with a braided mono running line.What we would do, we get a braided mono running line and put super braid. Call that at the time. Now it's just braid. Put braid right through the middle of that. You know, it's a hollow core.You put braid right through the middle of that and it takes away the stretch. So you could set the hook easy at long, long distances. And it behaves, behaves on the ground.It behaves in a shooting basket, you know, doesn't tangle that easily. That works really well. So, you know, if you want to use shooting heads, hey, more power to you.

Yeah.

No matter what kind of running line you want to use.

Yeah. And so do you have any kind of, you know, obviously with the blues, you've got some kind of wire, but kind of. Any favorite leader setups?

Yeah, leader.Usually with, you know, with an integrated sinking line, I use the one piece of say four feet mono, you know, I mean, you know, you know, 20 pound test, and I want to go for records, So I use £12. Oh, God. Brain fog. What's that? The tippet that the tarpon guides use. Oh, it's thick stuff. It's real thick stuff.The 12 pound tests out just below the 20 pound limit. So you're using 12 pound, but I use the 12 pound in case I get a record. It won't go over the 20 pound IGFA limit. So it's really not 12 pound at all.It's heavier than that and it's thicker than that, but they call it 12 pounds.

Yeah, it's like overweighting fly lines like MPX and GPX, right?

Yeah. How about that? Right? Yeah, exactly. I don't have to say anything about that.

Yeah.And so, you know, on the retrieve side, right, so you've got, you've got bunker schools, you know, let's kind of walk through, cast it out there, you know, where do you. Where do you want the fly in the column, you know, what are your favorite retrieves with the slammer.

Good one. Yeah. Nowadays, out in saltwater, I'm trying for really big fish now.And usually where I fish Montauk and Southwest Ledge on Block Island, I want to go deep and I have to go deep. So I'm fishing the fly deep.You know, if I'm drifting with a 400 grain streamer Express, I know when I have that entire fly line out that I'm down about 35ft. And I'll fish places that are sort of around 35ft, 40, 45ft. When the, when the bass are feeding, they'll come up to grab a fly.I mean, you know, they'll come up some to. To grab a fly.So in that instance, I'm using that integrated line or I'm using a shooting head, or I'm using that uniform sink and you know, I'm down and the strip I'm going to use, it's pretty standard, you know, for recent years. Very standard. You know, once I get tight to that fly, I feel tight. I'm going to make a real long, fast strip as fast as I can make.It's going to be strip, strip, strip. And then I'm going to hop and I'm going to wait for that.That pressure to come back, you know, and that pressure where I feel the resistance from the fly again. And then I'll strip, strip, strip as fast as you can with a long strip, three strips or a couple of strips.That fish is going to climb on right at the end of that last strip, right when you stop, when you pause, that's when that fish climbs on, he climbs on then. Or then maybe a couple of seconds after that, as that line straightens out, wham.You'll feel that tape where you have all that weight at the end and then you set the hook. And that's been pretty standard. You know, I've never been a person to twitch big flies, to fish them slowly. It never ever worked for me. Never.Yeah, you know, I knew that the bass and the Blues when they saw a bunker, and the bunker knew that that predator was eyeing them, you know, was serious about ending their life. They get the hell out of there as fast as they can. You know, big, big flies.Usually it's a, it's a, it's a fast retrieve usually, you know, in salt water. Yeah, it usually is. And then I listen to your. Your podcast with Ben Whalley, and I also use that fly on a floating line. I like the floating line.I'm fishing shallow water. If I'm fishing boulders just like him is if I'm fishing ledges, you know, I'll fish the floating line. I did from the beginning. From, from at first.That's what I used because I was fishing a shallow reef. That's what, that's what I was where I was testing my flies and where I was casting fish. Excuse me, catching fish. And I was using a floating line.So like Ben, I like the floating line and I like the very fast sinking lines.

Yeah. And so, you know, obviously the slammer. We've talked about how you kind of, you know, brought.Brought the magic to Michigan and the trout guys got fired up. But I mean, people are using it not just for striped bass, but muskie trout and other things.Is you kind of downsize your applications because I know you mentioned, like, for example, in the smaller flies, you don't even really need to kill them. Talk a little bit about kind of how the fly changes and kind of how the delivery system changes.

Okay, yeah, sure. So get into leader system first. I found, you know, I'll often use.When I streamer fish, I'll often use a floating line, and they sort of recommend against that. But I use a floating line because a lot of time I'm bringing that fly in, you know, just under the surface to a couple of feet down.A lot of the time, you know, that that's the zone that it's in. Not all the time. That's a lot of the time that, that I'm. I'm in that zone. But I also.When I started fishing in Michigan, I fished the line that Kelly used. It was a. It was a number six sinking way forward total, totally sinking fly line. You know, he.He was using Rio back then, so I use that, and that was really good. And then I would use some integrated lines at times like Russ uses nowadays or in recent days, and those work very well too.You use the line that you're comfortable with, that real. That really works with you. Now here's the catch between trout fishing and deep water streamer. Fishing now I use a long leader for my trout fishing.I'll use a nine foot leader.Maybe I'll use an eight foot leader because it tangles less, but I'll use about a nine foot leader or like I said, an eight foot leader when I'm fishing, no matter what line it is when I'm fishing trout streams and rivers with streamers because it gives the fly better action. Fly has better action. It's going to get hit a lot more. I talked this over with Tommy lynch one time. Said, you know, I like the long leader.It gives better ag goes. Yeah, me too. It really does, you know. Said, yeah, just from trial and error, you know, learning it from doing it and trying different things.

Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's really about introducing the slack into the system to get the action right.

Yeah, sure. I mean, it adds to it, right? Of course it does. The fly has to do its thing. You know, it has to finish out with its momentum. It wants to move.You want it to move freely at times.Like when you're going across current seams, you want to pull that thing across the current seam or right in the current seam and let it do its thing. It's going to twist, it's going to turn. The feathers are going to move seductively. You know, the slammer with the keel is going to start.It's going to roll a little bit, but the keel is going to pull that thing back into equilibrium. That's just what a bait fish in trouble will do. You know, hey, it's not quite right.It's out, you know, it's rolling, it's out of equilibrium and it always will try to go back into that thing. I think that triggers strikes, but stuff like that. And that's accomplished with tight line and a little slack in there too.You know, you need a little experience in fishing. You got to see what works for you, what works with your tackle, your line, your leader, the fly.You're using the fly you like, you know, you got to do a little experimenting, see what you can do to get that max action.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's funny too because I know you don't commercially tie the slammer, right.And so, you know, if folks, mark, want to get their hands on the pattern without tying it, you know, where should they go?Or if they're more industrious and they want to tie it themselves, you know, where are the best places to kind of track down kind of the state of the Art components.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I was using. In my big slammer, I was using yak here. Yak here is gone. Harder to get. But if I can. I was using yak here.And Captain Ian Devlin was making his yak here with Devlin bland. So he would put in. He'd integrate flash in with the yak hair. And so I could be lazy, you know, and I just would. Would get stuff.Get packages of that from Ian, and I would use that in a pinch. I've used the. The wig hair. You've heard that mentioned. You know, you can get that at some.At some beauty shops or you can get it at craft shops or wherever.The last skiing that I got, I got coming up from the Atlanta Fly Fishing show at a convenience store when we pulled up for some gas on the highway, you know, I'm right. Ooh, that's the color I want, you know. Ooh, bright yellow. That's been working for me lately. Like, it was put there for me.

Yeah. So, you know, that helps on the material side. But what about for.Are there people kind of commercially tying the slammer that you kind of point people to if they want to grab one?

Yeah, I think Captain Ian Devlin will do it, you know, I think he'll do it. Hope he doesn't get mad at me. I don't think he will. And I guess. Is it Sabine? What? Petard Sabine, I think, is from Vermont. He go.He goes to school at Bowdoin, I think, you know, and he would. I think he'll tie some.Well, that tells you a lot when I can't even give you his correct last name because I've always known him just as Sabine, you know.

Yeah, I'll find him and I'll drop his information in the show notes.

Okay. And aside from that, I'm not sure, but, you know, I see tires and young guys come up at the.At the Edison show, and they're tying the slammer, and their flies look pretty good, you know, So I think for whoever those tires are, there's one guy from Minnesota, you know, he has four rim glasses. He has a big, dark beard, and, you know, he ties them also. And.

Oh, yeah, that's probably Gunnar, right?

Gunnar. It wasn't Gunnar. It was another guy. Right, it was another guy, but Gunnar. I hope Gunnar would tie him.You know, he's been sort of sidetracked lately because his wife is ill. He's had to put a lot of time into that. So I haven't been in touch with him. I've talked to him in the past, fairly often.But gunnar ties a marvelous fly, you know.

Yeah.

And I try some marvel supply. So he'd be a good one. I mean, you'd get a really good slammer with him.

Yeah, I'll. I'll try to hunt these folks down and drop them in the show notes for everybody, you know.Mark, before I let you hop this evening, is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners?

Well, I wanted to say, you know, just not as.Not as overkill, but, you know, I really have such belief that, you know, that if you're a decent cast or a good caster, you can cast these things a long way. And of course, I mentioned why that's the case, you know.But very seriously, you know, this guy back in the 90s, he asked me to tie a fly for trolling for lake trout on great bear lake. And he wanted it to be giant. He wanted it to be giant. I said, okay. Okay. And I'd read that 100 pound lake trout.100 Pound lake trout's food would probably be a 15 pound lake trout. Okay. He wanted to catch a really giant fish. So how long is a 15 pound lake trout? Well, a 15 pound straight bass is 33 inches.So I tried, but I only got to fly 27 inches long, right? 27 Inches long and full. And they said, you know, I got to take this thing out and see how far I can cast it. Is it castable? I think it is.I took it out to the dock where my boat is, and I cast the thing 100ft. I said, oh, my God. You know, revolution, Revolution.You know, it just, you know, I mean, I came to the conclusion that the easiest and most practical way to fish, really giant lures, or to cast truly giant lures or live baits, if you gotta cast them, is with the fly rod. Designing a giant fly that big and it's castable and it's.It's easier to do that than it is trying to cast how heavy a lure that's 25 inches long is it going to be?

Yeah, that'd be pretty brutal.

Yeah, right. So I said, my God, you could do this easier. Fly rods are awesome with very small baits and extremely large baits. You know, the extremes.That was the conclusion there. Other thing I want to talk about is I want to go back to weight balancing.And what I discovered was that any fly that's castable, no matter what size it is, is weight balance. Absolutely weight balance. And it has to be, you look back, small number 14 dry fly, right? Small number 14 dry fly cast really well.You cast a weighted nymph, that's a number 14 nymph. Doesn't cast so good, you know, I mean, I noticed my small, but it doesn't cast so well. I don't have control over it.You know, when I want to cast it. Distance on a floating line without weight, you know, okay, it's too heavy.You go to the fly fishing show and what do they put at the end of your leader? Maybe they'll put a piece of yarn on or some yarn and you're out there casting and you can't turn the thing over.And you know, you have casters who can't turn that quote unquote fly over. They're looking back and forth and they're embarrassed because, you know, they think it's them.And well, you know, I haven't cast it since, since I trout fished in the floor, whatever. I haven't casted in months, whatever. It's not the yarn, it's the fly.That hook that makes all the difference in the world in the good castability of that little dry fly. As you move up to a streamer, say on a number four hook or a number two hook, right.You have more material on that fly, but you have more weight in that fly. It's heavier. The hook is heavier wire and it's bigger. And that hook weight balances that streamer fly, right.The weight of that hook counteracts the drag of that more wind resistant materials in that fly. And that fly is weight balanced. Go to a deceiver six inches long, got an even heavier hook.And maybe that fly absorbs a little water to add weight to that. Casts pretty well, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Casts a lot better than when that deceiver is dry.And you try to cast that thing through the air when it's dry. Really drags. But why wasn't this discovered or talked about?Simply because if a fly wasn't castable or didn't cast well, fly tire just cut the thing off his leader, put it back in his pocket, threw it in the dustbin when he got home, wasn't castable, wasn't practical to fish. It was like self policing, as it were. Weight balancing was self policing. They didn't even know what they were doing.Take into consideration big clipped. Here, here, bass bug. Try to cast that thing. It's always been known as a terrible casting fly because it drags like hell.You add a little weight to that fly to the point where you weight balance it, it'll cast a lot better. It'll cast pretty good. May not function the way you want it to function. Right.It might, might sink, but it'll cast better, you know, and flies that are too heavy, clauser minnow, a sparse clauser minnow everybody talks about in salt water at least how miserable those are to cast. And keep them away from your rod tip because they'll cut the thing right off and it'll hit you in the head, hit you in the ear, whatever, you know.Well, if you add more bucktail to that clauser, to the point where you weight balance it, it's going to cast way, way, way better. The fly is too heavy the way you're fishing it.And of course with, with big flies, you know, you know, I, I uncovered, you know, why those things were, could, could be castable. But weight balancing applies to every aspect. The fly tying and fly casting and really fly fishing, you know, it's an a, it's an axiom.I really believe it's an axiom and I'm really surprised that it hadn't caught hold. It hasn't really caught hold in, you know, 36 years or 35 years. You know, I'm really surprised.Only recently, say in the last six years or so has it been talked about on the net with Gunnar Bremmer and Ian Devlin and some of the other fly tyers, you know, so it's gotten some traction with those guys. But you know, what can I tell you? It's just what I found that that's all. You know, I don't mean to sound arrogant or anything like that.It's just what, what worked. And, and you know what I analyzed.

Yeah, and it makes sense too, right?Because I mean, given kind of your casting centric aspect of who you are as an angler, that the weight balancing would come into how to augment that part of the system. Right. So kind of makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.

Absolutely.

Well, that's super neat. Mark, I appreciate you taking some time with me this evening.If folks want to follow your adventures at the vice and on the water, where should they go?

Okay, good one. So I give a lot of fly casting, I give a lot of fly casting lessons, you know, private fly casting lessons all over, even at my home.And you can reach me by my email is sedottimark@gmail.com and that's s E D O T T I m a r k@gmailmail.com. If you want fly time lessons, I get those also. You want to learn to lessons or a lesson on tying the Slammer. I'd be happy to schedule that.Also, you know, I have, you know, the few tying videos out there. You know, a really good one for the feather slammer was shot by Sergio Diaz, Long island guy.And you know that's been loose on the Internet and on YouTube. And of course you know that video on from the Virginia Coastal Fly Anglers, that's on there too.I have to make a video soon of, you know, of the bigger synthetic slammer you know, on. Do you know an updated version on that? I also have a bunch of casting videos on YouTube through Mark Sadati, the video angler.And I also want to say that, you know, I do, I do speaking if anyone would like to bring me out or to have me speak at a TU meeting or an FFI meeting or speak do casting demos, tying demos, casting classes at any conclave or fly fishing show or fly fishing festival, you know, you have those all over the country. I'd be happy if you got in touch with me and you wanted me and you know, any fly tying show, I'd love to do that too. And all.Anybody who's an owner of a fly shop who has influence on a fly shopper goes into a fly shop often. I've done many casting classes and time classes at various fly shops, but I would love to continue doing that.Casting classes, tying classes, casting demos. You know, I'd like to. I do that too.

And are you active on like Instagram or Facebook or are you smart enough to stay off of that stuff?

I'm not on it. I'm really like, God, it's like I'm an older fashioned guy but I would get on it and would do that more so recently but haven't.

Yeah, well resist the temptation because you won't know where all the time went once you get go down that rabbit hole. Well, listen, Mark, I super appreciate you spending some time with me this evening. Take care.

Excellent. Thank you. My pleasure.

Have a good evening. Well folks, we hope you enjoyed the interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.Don't forget to check out the links to all this episode's sponsors in the show notes. Fish hard folks.