S1, Ep 18: All Things Soft Hackle with Allen McGee

**Marvin Cash (00:04-00:40):**
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash. I'm the host of The Articulate Fly, and tonight I'm joined by soft tackle aficionado Allen McGee. Welcome to the show, Allen.

Hi, thanks, Marvin. Yeah, looking forward to it.

And before we get going, I want to give a shout out to tonight's sponsor. Like we have the last few times, it's our friends at the Texas Fly Fishing and Brew Festival, and that event will be held March 23rd and 24th in Plano, Texas. And if you want more information, if you'll just go to our at thearticulatefly.com and check out the events page. You'll find out everything you need to know.

So Allen, I always ask all of my guests to share their earliest fishing memory with us.

**Allen McGee (00:43-02:08):**
Well, I don't have a specific memory in itself, but I remember growing up in the 1970s and my grandparents had a farm in Missouri. I lived in the suburbs, but we would go up to the farm almost every weekend in the summer and all. And so I spent a lot of time fishing when I was early, like four, five, six, seven, eight years old. And I can't remember specific—I just, when you're young like that, you can't target specific things.

But basically, I do have a couple pictures of me with some nice bass when I was probably five years old. And I don't remember catching them, but I know I had them because I got the pictures. But that was in the early 70s. And like I said, my parents weren't really fishermen or anything like that. My grandmother was a pretty good fisherman. She kind of taught me the ropes. It is a spin cast fishing. It wasn't fly fishing or anything, but it instilled in me probably the love of nature, basically, which is the cornerstone of all of it, I think, is just getting started early, actually.

And anyway, getting out in nature, getting that love for it in your blood, that's really the most important thing about it for me. And yeah, when people start later in life, it's cool and all, but I think something about starting early, even if you don't—just being out there when you're young gets in, even if you don't remember specific things, it's in your DNA almost when you're growing up like that. It's very important.

**Marvin Cash (02:09-02:13):**
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And so when did you make the jump into the world of fly fishing?

**Allen McGee (02:14-03:11):**
Yeah. Well, I didn't start fly fishing probably until 1992 when I moved to the southeast because I was from Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri, which there's not a lot of trout fishing there. It's warm water fishing. But when I moved here, I discovered cold water trout fisheries, and I'd really never fished for trout before, but I've been doing that since about 92.

And at first I started fly fishing just because that's why I figured, that's the way to fish for trout really is what I—reading through the literature. And that's all better than the spin casting because imitation of the bugs was the most important thing as opposed to bass fishing where you're kind of imitating larger prey, so to speak. So I wanted to do it the way it should be done. And so probably 1992 was when I first started fly fishing, but I've been fishing all my life, really, pretty much.

**Marvin Cash (03:11-03:16):**
Yeah. And as you got into the sport, who were some of the people that helped you kind of figure things out?

**Allen McGee (03:18-04:41):**
Well, I didn't have a lot of—basically I fished on my own a lot. And I just did a lot of practicing, but it was a lot of reading of books and hanging out in fly shops and just immersing myself in it. You know how that goes with fly fishing. I mean, once you start and it gets rolling, it's hard. It's like a snowball getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

And basically, I didn't really have a lot of mentors, so to speak, but my mentors were the books, the literature, the history of the sport, and just reading those. And I guess my mentors were the best fishermen, because they were these guys who wrote these classic books.

I didn't really have a lot of—I took, I had like one informal fly casting lesson by a guy and I don't even remember his name back when I first started. And after that, it was just basically just doing it on my own really. And I still do it that way now. I fish, I fish a lot alone. I like to be—I like to go out on the river and travel, take trips on my own and just, cause I like the solitude. That's part of the sport. That's the other thing I loved about it is just being, cause living in the city was just so busy and getting out in the rivers up in the mountains. It was good for the soul.

**Marvin Cash (04:41-04:49):**
Yeah, I can certainly agree with that. Can you think of some titles of some of those books that kind of jump out at you that kind of keep close at hand?

**Allen McGee (04:50-07:10):**
Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. And I was looking at, I have—I'm sitting right next to my bookshelf here. And it's actually completely full and I've got books on the floor and all. But yeah, so some of the guys in the beginning—it wasn't really so much—basically I worked backwards in a way. I started with some of the more modern people, but I'll start kind of in the beginning here with what I think was some of the most important.

So I like that G.E.M. Skues really got me into the idea of using nymphs more than anybody, probably. His book, The Way of a Trout with a Fly, is right next to me here right now. And he was such an innovator. You probably could put him as the first real nymph fly fisherman, at least, that documented it and really studied it so much.

And then you go to the Americans like James Leisenring and Pete Hidy. And The Art of Tying the Wet Fly and Fishing the Flymph was probably the most seminal book for me as far as, because I really learned about the wet fly from that book a lot. And it wasn't so much the English traditional stuff, but it was more like early American taking what they did in England and putting it on the American waters here.

And it's funny because Pete Hidy's son is Lance Hidy. When I was writing my first book, I didn't even know who he was or anything, but I found out that he did have a son. And I sent him a few emails. And now we're kind of pretty good friends, which is pretty incredible that I read his father's work. And now I know his son and all, which was kind of cool to be able to meet him and all.

And then we have like Ray Bergman with books like Trout and the wet fly of Bergman's. The winged wet flies in that book are pretty incredible. All the color plates are pretty mesmerizing. Talk about a lot of flies. My books have a lot of flies in them, but look at Trout sometimes.

And then we, Frank Sawyer—he wasn't a wet fly fisherman, but he was a deadly nymph fisherman. And his book, Nymphs and the Trout, was really important for me. His theories about the induced take, he only fished like two or three flies his whole pretty much career, if you want to call it that. But he fished them so well, he didn't need a lot of patterns.

**Marvin Cash (07:11-07:14):**
Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it?

**Allen McGee (07:15-10:11):**
Yeah, yeah. The original Pheasant Tail, we know he invented that. But all it was was copper wire and pheasant tail. It wasn't any other. He used the copper wire as the thread. And so he incorporated that. It was just a weighted fly. But his theory about the induced take was pretty important because I knew when I was fishing that there was something special about wet flies and how trout would attack them, so to speak, and the fleeing prey.

Anyway, but his theory about the induced take was pretty important to me and about how you can entice a fish to take by presenting something right in front of them and making it look, even if they're not necessarily interested in feeding, the induced take, just the behavioral makeup of that idea.

And then the whole time, actually, one of the first guys I read was Vince Marinaro, even before I was into wet flies. And his work with dry flies and terrestrials on the Letort and all that. Actually, the first fishing trip I ever took was to the Letort in southern Pennsylvania to see where he fished. And just because I admired Vince Marinaro so much.

And so he was sort of combining the idea of the guys like Leisenring and Marinaro together, which kind of brings me up to today where I'm kind of combining dry fly and wet fly together in some ways.

And then we can even talk about guys like Sylvester Nemes, of course, with the Soft-Hackled Fly Imitations book. Actually, he came up with the term soft hackles in the early 70s. And before that, they were just called wet flies. But he called them soft hackles. I like that term better because not all soft hackles are wet flies. So that's why I call my flies soft hackles and not just wet flies because they're not just wet flies.

And then we have Dave Hughes, of course, Wet Flies. His book is a pretty classic book, Wet Flies. And Davy Wotton, he hasn't really written books. He's written magazine articles, but he has some good DVDs out there that shows you his techniques.

And then I liked guys like George Harvey and Joe Humphreys, which Joe Humphreys, in my opinion, is probably the best nymph fisherman who's ever lived. I mean, him and Frank Sawyer, I don't know, they're running. But Humphreys, his techniques, I mean, are just incredible to watch him nymph fishing.

And then when it comes to dry fly fishing, some of the modern guys were René Harrop. I respect him a lot. He's got some pretty innovative stuff he's doing, and he's been doing it for a long time. And then Bob Quigley, who fished out in California, invented a lot of emerger patterns. And so I guess that's kind of a short list of who I see as some of the—if I could only own those books, you'd probably be doing pretty good.

**Marvin Cash (10:11-10:22):**
Yeah, no, that's a pretty good—probably, what, 12 or 15 volumes to have in your library. So you started fishing, fly fishing, really, when you came to the southeast. When did you get the fly tying bug?

**Allen McGee (10:24-11:29):**
Oh, it took me a little while because I first just didn't think fly tying was as important as I learned it is later on. But it took me maybe a couple of years. And I was just buying flies and I didn't think that fly tying was, I just thought it was like a utilitarian thing. I didn't think it was important in the aspect of the overall fly fishing and making one a better angler, which I know now it is.

But yeah, it took me a couple of years probably to start learning or wanting to tie flies, really. But once I started, literally almost the first day I started fly tying, I realized that how important it was. It felt like the rest of the puzzle was put in place. And like I felt when I was tying flies, I would start thinking about fishing scenarios and about how that fly should be fished.

I was thinking about fishing the fly more than when you were just on the water. You were able to think about that at home and study it and study the design of it and study the bugs more. It got me more into bugs, too, really. And entomology.

**Marvin Cash (11:29-11:40):**
Yeah. And so as you did, you kind of self-teach yourself again by basically kind of going the book route? Or did you reach out and find people kind of in the Atlanta area to help you learn how to tie?

**Allen McGee (11:40-12:20):**
I did it. I just did it myself. The first book I bought on fly tying was a Randall Kaufman book. And I think I got it here. He did two. He did the Tying Dry Flies and the Tying Nymphs book. And they were just step-by-step how-to. They were really good photography in it.

And just those techniques, basically, once you learn basic techniques, you can just start incorporating it into different patterns. Like you see a pattern, you can—But Randall Kaufman's books were pretty important to me in fly tying because of the way the step photography he had in them. Very good step photography for each pattern.

**Marvin Cash (12:21-12:23):**
Yeah, and what was your first vise?

**Allen McGee (12:26-12:59):**
Well, I still have it. It's a Regal. I have about four or five Regals, I guess. Just the standard Regal jaw, the old, not the stainless. I don't even have the stainless one. I got the old one and got a midge jaw too. But I like the Regal vises. I learned on them and I just find that I have good hook clearance around the whole hook. I can get my hand around it. I'm not interfering with any, I don't really need the rotary vise for the kind of tying I do. So yeah, Regal vises pretty much.

**Marvin Cash (13:00-13:05):**
Yeah, very cool. So you start tying. When did you get the soft hackle bug?

**Allen McGee (13:07-14:44):**
Well, let's see. The year itself, I'm not sure. It was in my, probably would have been in the late 90s, maybe like 99, 98, somewhere around in there. And so the way that worked was, well, I was out, I was on actually on the Big Wood River in Idaho and I was fishing, just nymph fishing there.

And somehow, somewhere I'd gotten a soft hackle Pheasant Tail nymph in my fly box. I don't think I tied it, but I might have, but I don't think I did. But I had it in there and I started fishing it that day. And I'd really never fished soft hackle nymphs before. I was fishing your standard Prince Nymphs and Hare's Ears, things like that.

And anyway, this soft hackle fly, it was a nymph, but I fished it. It had movement on it basically. And the partridge collar, it was just something about it where I couldn't fish it wrong, and I just—I was catching more fish that day than I'd ever caught before. And I only had that one fly. And at the end of the day, it was all torn up. I don't even know if I lost it or what, but I tried to that next day.

I went into a fly shop in Sun Valley and I tried to find another one like it. And no one had another, they didn't carry them, basically. And so that's when I got—I was like, well, I got to start tying. Yeah. And I guess that's really, now that you remind, that's when I started tying. That's when I got the urge to start tying is when I realized that there's things in fly shops don't have everything you need. Or they don't have, if you find a style that you want to do, you can kind of create your own methods. Yeah.

**Marvin Cash (14:44-14:56):**
Yeah. I've made that mistake. I've been on the Firehole and not had any Miller, couldn't find a Miller Caddis anywhere in West Yellowstone. Right. And you're like, why didn't I bring my tying kit with me? So I completely understand that problem.

**Allen McGee (14:57):**
Yeah. Yeah.

**Marvin Cash (14:57-15:03):**
And particularly for some of those more selective waters where you really do need to dial the pattern in a little bit.

**Allen McGee (15:04-16:09):**
Oh, yeah. It can be just a little size difference. I mean, or color or just really just the emerging, the life stage that the fly shop might not have or the way you want to fish that life stage. And so I basically, yeah, I like to have my own fly shop in my vest with me when it comes to flies, that is.

But I like to look through fly shops and see what they have. Sometimes you'll get specific patterns for specific waters and all. But it's pretty much just knowing, after you have a certain amount of experience, you realize, yeah, if you carry enough flies, you're going to have something that's similar.

And then what happens at the end of the day, I'll go back to my hotel if I'm on a trip or wherever I am, and I'll tie up more specifically what I'm trying to get out of it. That's the advantage of fly tying. You don't have to go to the fly shop and look for things. If you have the materials, you can create them for yourself, specifically how you need it.

**Marvin Cash (16:09-16:27):**
Yeah, so you kind of get the tying bug, and you're interested in soft hackle. So as you sort of moved in that direction, did you kind of go back to the early history of soft hackles and work forward? Or did you just kind of look at the techniques and the properties of those flies and kind of incorporate them into kind of the modern day fly tying?

**Allen McGee (16:28-17:29):**
At first, I was probably more kind of traditional, but I was always doing when I would tie my own flies. I was trying to kind of make them different in the beginning, but I was probably copying more older patterns at first. But I would say that I've always after a while you get kind of—here's the thing about it too is you get kind of bored tying the same things and you want to try new things and you don't just feel like the development of the pattern should stop at a certain time in history.

But they should keep developing and that's what kept me wanting to it just to keep it interesting if nothing else but also because there's materials out there that are probably more effective than some of the traditional materials. Some of the traditional materials are still effective, but I like to always just keep trying new things. It keeps the sport interesting for me as opposed to just tying the same fly over and over and over for forever.

**Marvin Cash (17:29-17:55):**
Sure. And I know people think of you in the soft hackle world as an innovator, and you've kind of meshed the traditional and the new. And how does that work for you? Or do you see a new material and you're saying, gee, I think this is an application or do you have a fishing problem that you're trying to solve? How do those new ideas kind of come up? And I know it may not be one way all the time, but I think our listeners would love to know kind of how that creative process works.

**Allen McGee (17:56-19:52):**
Well, so basically for me, it's just about like imitating the flies more appropriately. I mean, if it's a material I'm going to use or a way I'm going to fish the fly, I'll design the fly to be fished in a different way. For instance, if I want it to sink faster, I might not necessarily weight it, but I might tie it sparser or use a material that'll allow it to cut through the water better, a smoother material as opposed to a real buggy fur or something like that.

But I'm trying to match specific life stages more and more with my flies. In other words, I'm trying to have them be able to look at it and say, I know what that is, as opposed to just looking totally impressionistic. Now, if I'm just prospect nymphing or something like that, I might have more attractor-style patterns.

But as I fish more waters that are more technical and it's more match-the-hatch fishing, which I find myself doing more and more every year because I like the challenge of it, I know that my flies need to be more, not necessarily realistic, but look more realistic to the fish. In other words, they don't have to be like anatomically realistic, but they have to look like the hundred other flies that are in front of them on these fertile streams like that.

So they need to behave like the naturals and look like them, but still have life and some kind of not just static, no movement. They need some movement, even if you're dead drifting them. Sometimes like a dun will dead drift, but its legs will be moving. Sometimes duns will flap on the surface as they're trying to dry their wings. But you can still dead drift the fly, but the materials you create the fly with can move while you're fishing it. Or you can have the materials activated by more active retrieves. But either way, there's still life in both ways of fishing the fly.

**Marvin Cash (19:53-20:16):**
And I know, too, that you've sort of been a pioneer in thinking about fishing the entire water column with soft hackles. And I guess maybe before we go there, we ought to say that we're really kind of talking about what people think of as spiders and then winged wets and flymphs. But how did you kind of come up with that progression and why would an angler want to adopt that approach in their fishing?

**Allen McGee (20:19-22:18):**
Well, so like I said, first, a lot of my fly tying was just nymphing. I mean, fly fishing was nymphing or perhaps shallow water, wet fly fishing just under the surface. But as I went through my fly tying and my fly fishing, I wanted to create more patterns that had, like, incorporating soft hackles into more of the life cycles.

So basically I've applied it to every life stage of every pretty much important trout stream species in the country. But they all have movement in my flies. And I guess what I'm trying to say is when I fish my flies, I don't necessarily just want to fish, be limited to soft hackles as being a wet fly. Or have them be limited to a nymph.

If I have a spinner, I can put a soft hackle collar on a spinner and fish it like dead drift and then pull it underwater and then give it a mend and dead drift it like a sunken spinner. And a lot of people don't think about fishing sunken spinners because they think you just have to fish spinners on the surface. But if they don't get eaten by a fish, they're eventually going to sink and be available to the fish.

And that applies to terrestrials as well. I mean, I'll fish my soft hackle terrestrials as a dry fly dead drifted and then I'll pull them underwater and fish them as a sunken terrestrial, like ants, grasshoppers, beetles. And so, it's the idea is just to be able to cover all the bases and not be limited and then have to switch to a different style of fly, I guess, or different philosophy of fishing.

Like terrestrial should only fish this way and spinners should fish this way and wet flies fish this way. I think you can kind of blend that together and not have these dividing lines between all that kind of stuff.

**Marvin Cash (22:18-22:26):**
Yeah. It really sounds like you take more of a system approach and that's kind of how you've built your system out. Does that sound like a...

**Allen McGee (22:26-24:00):**
Well, it is. It is. And it's a philosophy of almost like a confidence factor because I know that my flies look—it's a knowing of the attractiveness of the fly to the fish, just from that they've worked so many times before. But then I don't have to cut off my mind and start thinking a different way of fishing. I mean, it all kind of is kind of like the idea of the life of the fly, whether I'm fishing at dead drift or with action, but it still has life in both ways.

And I don't have to categorize each thing into a specific kind of traditional way of doing it. And so it opens it. It kind of makes it more of an approach to my, a holistic approach to the whole thing. And knowing that my, so basically, all my flies have soft hackle collars incorporated in one way or another. And they're not always at the front of the fly. They're not always right behind the hook eye.

Sometimes I'll put the hackle collar like in the mid thorax or even the middle of the fly, depending on where the natural, how that life stage appears in the natural setting. For instance, like a stonefly nymph, I don't really put my soft hackle collar at the front of the fly because the legs are coming out of the thorax. So it's where I'm placing my materials to give the idea of what that pattern is supposed to be.

**Marvin Cash (24:01-24:15):**
Very interesting. And I know, and as we kind of talk about this a little bit more, you really kind of came up with the idea of a soft hackle dry fly. And why don't you tell folks what they are and how you came up with that idea?

**Allen McGee (24:15-26:57):**
All right. Well, the first, the way I came up with it was by watching the bugs, really. I was fishing on the Beaverhead River and right below the dam are these flats right there at the parking lot. There's a boat launch right there. Anyway, there's these flats and a lot of midges hatched there. A lot of midges are egg laying there.

And I was watching these bugs and they're pretty big, like size 18 chartreuse midges that come off there a lot. They're pretty big for a midge. But I captured a couple of them. I noticed they had egg sacks on them. And so I was thinking to myself, what's happening to these spinners or these egg layers after they're done drifting? They're sinking underwater.

So I got the idea for the idea of fishing it dead drift in the first half of the presentation and then mending it and letting it drift underwater throughout the second half of it, dead drifted like a sunken spinner. So, but I still wanted to have a soft hackle collar on it to give it the appearance of legs fluttering, even if I'm dead drifting the fly movement, that is, even though it's not alive, the spinners they'll still move and undulate even under the water.

So I actually tied up some soft hackle dry fly spinners there for the first time. And that was the first place I fished them and I did pretty well. So I figured, well, this is something here. And basically how I do myself. So basically it's two life stages in one presentation for like mayfly duns. You're going to imitate the mayfly dun on the first half of the presentation, dead drifted. Then you pull it underwater and you can fish the emerger on the sunken part and you can have it rise or whatever.

And you can do the same thing with a spinner, fish it dead drift, then mend it and then fish it as a sunken spinner on the second half of the presentation. And caddis can be the same thing. An adult caddis, maybe with a shuck on it, you fish it dead drift and you pull it underwater and emerger on the second half.

So you can see the idea of fishing two life stages in one presentation. And so the wings, when I do my, so basically they're dry flies, but the wings can be made of like CDC or deer hair, or even like the EP trigger point fibers that I use sometimes, which is a synthetic that doesn't absorb water.

But I tell you, I'm sure you've seen how they look that basically my wing goes back over the back of the fly at a 45 degree angle. And so they're not like comparadun wings or they're not parachute wings. They're back over the back so that when you pull it underwater, it's still, the wings still swept back over the fly, like an emerging insect. Yet it still will ride on the surface as a dry fly if you want it to.

**Marvin Cash (26:57-27:10):**
Sure. And since you've kind of got this two level approach when you fish the fly, are you having to dry the fly after every presentation or are you able to dry the fly off just by false casting?

**Allen McGee (27:11-27:46):**
Usually false casting. So I don't really treat it with a floatant unless the fish are just totally taking duns or something like that. And if they are, I won't fish the second half as a subsurface presentation part of it. If they're just taking surface flies and I observe them taking that, you got to watch the fish. And if you see the rise form on the surface and it's not an emerging rise form, then I might just treat the wing or whatever, but I'll just fish it on the surface and I won't worry about the second half of the drift.

But if I don't treat the wing, I can fish it both subsurface or on the surface.

**Marvin Cash (27:46-27:53):**
Do you have a preferred floatant? I mean, I imagine you're probably using like silica powder for CDC, but what do you like to use if you need to use a floatant?

**Allen McGee (27:55-28:28):**
I don't—like I said if I do use a floatant which is semi-rare but that's maybe 20 percent of the time but I just use Gink to be honest with you not on the CDC but on the deer hair. The deer hair floats or on the EP trigger fibers but I just use Gink. I've been using it for years so I just very sparsely put it on the wing part of it and then set the fly in the water so that the bottom half isn't, I don't treat the whole fly with it. I just do the wing and perhaps the top of the hackle collar.

**Marvin Cash (28:28-28:29):**
Gotcha.

**Allen McGee (28:29-28:33):**
But the bottom half will float, sit down in the water surface.

**Marvin Cash (28:34-28:49):**
Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about kind of this two-staged approach on the surface, but can you maybe briefly talk about the progression from stream bottom up to the top of the water column and kind of how you change your fly design and how you change your presentation as you move up the water column?

**Allen McGee (28:49-31:00):**
So like if I'm nymphing, basically I'm going to either do one of two riggings when I'm nymphing. I'm either going to put like a, come off a point fly with a lighter weight fly, and this will allow that lighter weight fly to kind of have a jigging action to it. But the problem with that method is sometimes you'll get a strike on the dropper off your point fly, and you won't feel it as well because you're feeling the point fly hitting the rocks on the stream bed.

So normally how I like to fish is put the heaviest fly on the point fly and put droppers up the leader. In other words, put them above my blood knots, which I tie my own leaders. And so each blood knot is a stop for a dropper, basically. And so if I'm just like prospect nymphing and I want to fish all levels of the water column, I can fish two or three flies and cover three levels that way, where my lightest fly is my top fly, my middle weight fly is the middle fly, and the heaviest fly is the point fly.

And what that system does is allows you to feel out to that point fly. And any one of those flies that gets a strike on it, you're going to feel it immediately. And I'm not fishing these with a tight, not necessarily tight line. I call it semi-slack line leader control, where I can feel the strike, but I'm not dragging the flies. And yet there's not a lot of slack in the whole system either.

So basically fish nearly set themselves. It doesn't take much, but just a slight lift of the rod tip to set the hook on these fish. So, and this is for prospect nymphing. You cover those three levels. And as you find fish if you find them all taking that heavy bottom fly you can maybe change your middle or upper flies to heavier flies and then fish just all three flies deep. But if you're finding fish taking the top fly more often then maybe you want to switch out your bottom two flies to lighter weight flies and fish just under the surface there and it's a way of finding the fish there that day if they're taking random—some are taking the bottom some are taking—then I'll just continue to fish the three columns the whole day.

**Marvin Cash (31:01):**
Sure.

**Allen McGee (31:01-31:15):**
And so that's kind of for nymphing. But as things get more technical and more sight fishing comes involved, I'll take off those prospecting flies and just go to single flies and fish the level that I know that the fish are feeding at.

**Marvin Cash (31:16-31:21):**
Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like you like to weight your flies and that you don't use split shot or anything, any kind of weight on the line.

**Allen McGee (31:22-32:20):**
Not normally, because with the combination of a heavy point fly, even a tungsten bead or something like that, and if you're fishing three flies, with the addition of the other two flies, the whole system has a weight in itself. It has a way of weighting itself. And then when you add like mending, either stack mending or hump mending or something like that, to allow the flies to sink to set up for your, basically where you're trying to target the fish, you normally don't need a lot of split shot.

And the split shot, if you do use it, only in the heaviest water circumstances would I ever need to use it. But if you do use it, you're going to, there are times when you'll feel the split shot, it'll create that hinge between your point fly and your first dropper, middle dropper. And you won't feel the point fly as well that way. So I try not to use it.

**Marvin Cash (32:20-32:23):**
I don't have to. Yeah. It sounds like you probably don't use an indicator either, right?

**Allen McGee (32:25-34:10):**
I don't. No, I don't. And I don't use an indicator. I've never used, I've really never used one. So I guess I'm not, it would probably be harder for me to try to use one, but I find that, well, first of all, an indicator can actually cause drag in certain situations where you have like heavy fast water and it's semi deep, maybe four feet or so deep, maybe deeper.

And then you have that fast water at the surface and that bottom, that stream bed water is going slower. And so your fly should be drifting down at that stream bed because probably the fish are going to be, most of them are going to be deep anyway because of the slower water, allows them to save their energy.

So what happens with an indicator is you have that fast water at the top pulling that strike indicator faster than the bottom water is running. And it's actually dragging your fly faster than it should be drifting at the bottom there. So that's one disadvantage to it.

The other thing is you can't follow the stream undulations. As the stream shallows up or gets deeper, your fly is suspended at a certain level. And if it gets shallow, your fly could basically run across the bottom, and that'll create slack in your leader there between your strike indicator and your fly, and you'll miss strikes that way, which is ironic. Or it can lift the fly off the stream bed if it drops off and gets deeper because it's suspending it at a certain level.

So basically, without using an indicator, I can follow the stream bed undulations and depth changes just by lowering and raising my rod tip and or mending, things like that. But following it in my mind's eye where that fly is and knowing what depth it should be at by the way I'm fishing it.

**Marvin Cash (34:10-34:20):**
Got it. And do you put any kind of like high visibility mono or some type of sighter in your system? Are you really watching kind of the, just the...

**Allen McGee (34:20-35:15):**
So it's a semi, so my presentations, there's a couple of things. If I want to get the fly deep and it's faster water, I may have to do some mending when I first present the fly into the water with either a stack mend or a hump mend to let that fly system sink to depth. And then I'm setting up for maybe an across stream or slightly across and down or slightly maybe up and across.

But depending on where I'm targeting, I'm setting up for that depth by the beginning of my cast. And then when my fly reaches that point where I'm targeting, it's at the right depth. And so when it gets to that point, I have a semi-slack line leader connection there where I can feel the strikes, but it's a dead drift. It's a fine balance between dead drift and slack. So there's nothing to really watch. You'll feel the strike.

**Marvin Cash (35:16):**
Got it.

**Allen McGee (35:16-35:17):**
I'm not dragging the fly either.

**Marvin Cash (35:18):**
Got it.

**Allen McGee (35:19-35:20):**
It's a balanced system.

**Marvin Cash (35:21-35:32):**
Got it. Yeah. And so it would be great if you could walk through maybe your preferred kind of line leader and rod setup for fishing nymphs and fishing dries. I think that'd be really interesting to learn more about that.

**Allen McGee (35:34-39:14):**
Okay. Well, so basically it depends on, again, if I'm doing prospect nymphing or if I'm doing specific targeting of sighted fish. But if I'm doing prospect nymphing, I normally use like a nine foot 5-weight rod, or sometimes I use a 10 foot 4-weight, but I like to have a long rod so I can hold it over the current and manipulate these flies and set it up for the thing we just talked about, which is that line leader balance, semi-slack line leader presentation.

So I like to use a double taper. When I'm prospect or I'm nymphing, I like to use double taper lines because I can mend past 30 feet better. So if there's more than 30 feet out of line, I'm not back into the running line and I can still keep mending into my, to keep mending to allow the fly to sink.

I also use a system called the figure eight line retrieve which I actually use it to feed line out into my nymphing which a lot of people think of the figure eight as a retrieve system but you can actually feed line in to prolong a dead drift by just opening your fingers and pointing them out through the rod guides and it'll allow the line to be swept off your fingers and then you can retrieve it back on.

But what I'm trying to say is when you get past 30 feet that double taper really comes into play to let me keep mending out or slowing the fly down. And then after that, for prospect nymphing, I'll use like a 12 foot knotted leader, which is important for my droppers, as I talked about earlier, because each one of those blood knots is a stop for a dropper.

And my droppers, I do a little differently. I use Duncan, I called, they're called Duncan loop droppers. And it's kind of hard to explain it, but they're basically an open Duncan loop with the tag, and then I can tighten it against my leader and just slide it up the leader, wherever I want a dropper to be above a blood knot. And then that stop is the blood knot.

And so these droppers are two or three flies on my leader, usually, as we talked about a minute ago from prospecting. And so that's kind of like the setup for the nymphing as it gets more technical. If I'm fishing dry fly, like on the river, like Hat Creek or the Henry's Fork and on the Harriman Ranch, and it's pretty much sight fishing for specific fish. And I'm fishing really only dry flies and not many subsurface flies.

I'll normally fish to a weight or switch to a weight forward line just to get a better ability to cut through the wind. And because I'm not doing tons of mending past 30 feet either, and then I'll use a longer leader, like maybe a 17 or 18 foot knotless leader at that point, because I'm not using any droppers and I want to just have a total smooth casting system.

Another thing I'll do is my line leader connection. I like to use the super glue connection because there's no knot there at all. There's no hinging. It's basically just like from your fly line straight out to your fly. There's just a transition, a smooth transition. And when you're using like a 17, 18 foot leader and you want to land that fish, you also got to bring it through the rod guides and that helps a lot to have that super glue line leader connection there. So those are a couple ways I approach it differently. So what I know what I'm saying here is it depends on the water I'm fishing and where I'm fishing is depending on the setup I'll choose whether it's going to be a dry fly only day or if it's going to be more of a nymphing type situation stream and then I choose that based on that.

**Marvin Cash (39:14-39:17):**
Got it and when you're doing the nymph thing, how long do you generally like your tags to be?

**Allen McGee (39:20-39:22):**
The, oh, the, off the droppers?

**Marvin Cash (39:22):**
Yes.

**Allen McGee (39:23-40:06):**
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So they're four inches or less. And I use, like, Rio PowerFlex 4X is pretty much just the only thing I use for all my droppers because it's the right combination between 5X is too limp and 3X is a little bit too stiff, actually. So I use the Rio PowerFlex 4X, just monofilament, no fluoro needed just that.

And then I'll create those Duncan loops ahead of time normally and I'll carry them in like my vest just like in a Ziploc bag. I'll have them made up so I'm not having to rig—I'm not having to tie the droppers on stream and I can just have them pre-made saves time on the water which is valuable time.

**Marvin Cash (40:06-40:10):**
Yeah sure it I completely get that right because you just basically drop the open Duncan loop over the end of your fly line and bring it up and tie off.

**Allen McGee (40:10-40:58):**
Yep yeah and the other thing about that is you can say like you're nymph fishing and then a hatch comes off or you just want to fish a dry fly or something like that for a little while. It's easy to take them off without having to cut your leader up and what's even easier though after the hatch is over to go back to dropper fishing by just sliding them up and pulling them tight. You don't have to rebuild blood knots and also as you get up you can really separate your flies to longer—you can separate your flies further apart in other words. If you're using a 12 foot leader you could have your point fly and then a fly six foot up your leader whereas if you're trying to do it with a blood knot or something that blood knot monofilament is going to be way too thick if you're just trying to use the static blood knot as a dropper.

**Marvin Cash (40:58-41:24):**
Yeah it makes a lot of sense. If for kind of people that haven't fished soft hackles a lot there's a fair amount of I guess change in presentation technique. How would you suggest people that are interested in fishing soft hackles kind of start to work it into their fishing routine and see if it's something that they like to fish that way if they get the positive reinforcement of the increased catch rate what would you suggest for just kind of your average angler to kind of start to work it into his system?

**Allen McGee (41:24-44:56):**
Well I guess the easiest way to do it would just be to just use soft hackle nymphs really. Just fish them like you probably are you're fishing your nymphs right now. I mean that's the easiest way you don't have to change any of your high-stick nymphing you can just basically if you're doing that you're just changing your fly out you're not changing basically the method. You don't even have to do like any of the Leisenring lifts or anything like that or retrieves or anything, you can just do high-stick nymphing with just changing the fly to incorporating a soft hackle in your nymphs.

And you can take really any nymph and do that. You can take a—and when you think about Prince Nymphs, that's an example, they're normally tied with normally a stiffer collar, but instead of tying a Prince Nymph with the, what is it, the rooster collar you use normally tie it with a partridge collar. It's going to give a little more action.

And so you can really the easiest way is just to incorporate it. You don't have to change your style completely if you don't want to at first but change just the way your flies are built a little bit and when you're especially if you tie them yourself. You could—it's really hard to fish a soft hackle to fish it wrong as an attractor prospecting thing. It's not—soft hackle fishing is not difficult at first. It's actually probably one of the easiest ways to—the classic wet fly swing is a pretty simple method and you're just casting across stream and letting the fly drag at the end and swing across and raise up in front of the fish.

And that's one of the most basic things you can do. But I don't think it takes—soft hackle fishing is not, like I said, it doesn't have to be in an own itself, like its own little thing. It can be incorporated into the rest of the fishing, which what I do with all my fly fishing is it's not its own little niche. It's the whole thing for me. So, but what I mean is it encompasses all the life cycles of my fly fishing.

Sure. If you will, it's hard to say exactly where you should start. Just get some flies and go fishing is what I would say to that. Just start fishing them and see how they work for you. You don't have to change a lot of the present. If you know how to fish now, if you know how to nymph, you can start that way and think about retrieves, learn about some of the action you can impart to the fly, learn about a lot of it is also studying bugs and learning about the entomology of the rising insects and the behavior.

And that's really where I get into imitation of my specific life cycles and learning about how the bugs work, and then trying to fish my flies the way that they look. Who was it—it was Dick Galland. He was a hackle—he's a Hat Creek guy out in California and he says—he says think like a trout act like a bug. So that's kind of good to think about right like you got to think like the trout is but you got to act like a bug and that'll make your fly come alive.

**Marvin Cash (44:56-45:27):**
Nah, it makes a lot of sense. As we shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit more about the tying, obviously the hackle is very important, whether it's partridge or hen or starling, and it's getting harder and harder to, at least for me, I'm a big believer. I don't like buying natural tying materials if I can't put my hands on them, but that's getting harder and harder to do. Can you give some folks some tips about what they should look for when they get a chance to go in a fly shop and start picking out material?

**Allen McGee (45:27-49:47):**
Yeah, yeah. I mean, some of the most common materials I use are not the hardest to find. I mean, there's a lot of English materials that you can, that are harder to find, like, for instance, like woodcock and jackdaw and coot and things like that. But really, I really only use like hens, grouse, quails, partridge, really materials that are not that hard to find.

But there's a lot of variables to those materials. Hen comes in a million different colors and you can get mottlings and especially with the hen, not the non-genetic stuff. But the genetic things are good to the Whiting and the Metz. But the thing about it is you want to know how much web you want in your fly. You want to know if you want a little bit stiffer fly for like a little bit stiffer hackle for like a dry fly that might give it a little bit of floatability yet still have movement to the hackle collar. Or if you want it to be just a nymph that is going to be no floatability, but just total soft webbiness and action to your hackle collar.

And so with things like partridge, you're going to have a good web on most game bird feathers. But when it comes to hen, you want to really look at how much web there is, look at the stem of the feather, and see how far that web extends out to the tips. And you can see that clearly because you'll see the webby center to the feather. And the further out it gets to the tips, the more softer that feather is going to become.

India hen is pretty much is webbier than the genetic hen that we get from Whiting and Metz. And that's mostly just due to the genetics of the breeding from the roosters that's been trying to breed for the dry fly that's been getting into the hen. It makes it a little bit stiffer. But the India hen is very soft.

Partridge, I, now, so your question is what to look for in a fly shop. Well, don't buy the packaged feathers. Don't—try to buy the skins if you can. You're going to get a lot more useful feathers on them. The quality will be better and you'll have more choice. You want to, and you won't have to look through the whole bag of feathers to find the specific feather you're looking for, which is always fun.

But I guess what I'm trying to say is just, it's good to have your eyes on things. I actually have been, some of the things you can buy nowadays is in fly shops have a decent amount of choice at times, but some of the hunters out West are now selling their feathers on eBay actually. And like around this time of year, actually, in like January and February, you can find a lot of good partridge on there.

And so I buy a lot of partridge. And you can see the actual feather you're getting. And they sell a lot of them. They're not just selling one at a time. So they know what they're doing. And they treat them. They tan them well. So I've gotten some nice partridge that way. Like bobwhite quail, California quail.

The other thing about it is calling the fly shop and talking to somebody there and seeing if they know what they're talking about and then just seeing what they have. Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone is really good for something like that. Feathercraft in St. Louis is good. There's a place in England called Cookshill Fly Tying that sells a lot of soft hackle birds.

And so, it's knowing what you need before you go look for it. A lot of it is that and knowing what you're looking for. I tend to buy a lot of my, so my flies have, I know what kind of feather I'm looking for for each fly. If it's a soft hackle dry fly, I'm probably going to use a little bit stiffer hackle like I talked about, either Whiting or a Metz. But if it's a nymph and I'm using partridge, there you go. But it's just knowing how you want that fly to behave before you even get to the material choice. And then once you get there, you know what you're looking for.

**Marvin Cash (49:47-50:09):**
Sure. And I know, for example, if you read your books, you tie with a ton of different stuff. Some of it's really hard to get. If you're starting out, what would you suggest people? Obviously, the performance characteristics are kind of what lead the decision-making process. But if someone's starting out and they want to get one or two kinds of feathers to tie with, what would you suggest they'd look at?

**Allen McGee (50:11-51:58):**
Well, I don't think, I think if there was only one feather I could use, I mean, aside from soft hackle dry flies, because I like the hen for that. But just for nymphs and soft hackles and general wet flies, it'd definitely be partridge. I mean, there's just so many different mottling and colors on a skin. You have the gray partridge from the neck and the back lower back has the brown. The marginal coverts on the wings have the sort of mottling of brown and different colors of brown on them.

So good partridge skins are really worth their weight in gold. And whenever I see a good one, I go ahead and just buy it, even if I don't need it. Because who knows when I will need it. So that's the other thing about buying feathers. If I go into a fly shop and I'm just looking around and I see some good feathers in there, I normally go ahead and just buy them because who knows when I'll find another. They're not something you can just produce on an assembly line. They're each different.

And that's the other thing. Look through, and this is kind of common sense, but if they have a number of skins, look through them to see how much, because every skin is a little different, has more grays in some skin, more browns in other skins. And depending on what flies you're tying and if you like gray partridge or brown partridge or whatever, then you'll know what to buy there.

But I guess if I was just to say one thing, it'd be partridge. That's it. I mean, I still, they tie, you can tie small with them and there's a number of sizes of feathers on that skin. And I still think it's the best skin if you're willing to buy one skin. But I got so many feathers in my fly tying room here that I don't know what I do if I only have to add one skin here.

**Marvin Cash (51:59-52:02):**
It's like fly fishing. Yeah, it's like fly tying survivor or something, right?

**Allen McGee (52:02-52:10):**
Yeah, what's funny is I probably got, I have enough feathers and materials, except besides hooks and thread, to last me definitely the rest of my life at this point.

**Marvin Cash (52:12-52:34):**
I won't tell anybody that so you can keep buying skins. No, right. Yeah, it's kind of, and it's interesting, right? Because you say to start with partridge, those feathers are pretty fragile. And I know, me included, sometimes, wrapping them can be pretty frustrating. What would you, you have some tips or tricks to kind of help minimize that frustration?

**Allen McGee (52:36-54:17):**
Well, a couple things. I guess, like I said, going back to the skin, buy the whole skin. Don't buy the individual feathers. And the thing about the also individual feathers, they can get bent and they can get in the little bags, they sew them and all that. Whereas when they're on the skin, they kind of stay protected and in place and flat. The stems stay protected and all that.

The other thing is, well, I tie it in normally by the tips, but I'll take my hackle pliers and preen back enough fibers just so I can get that tip tie in. And then you just got to be gentle, really. I mean, the first wrap is just take it easy and get that first wrap. Once that's made, it's pretty simple. I like to sweep back the fibers in between each wrap around the hook. That keeps the fibers spread out and swept back towards the back.

Also, with my hackle pliers, I use the Tiemco hackle pliers, which are just those black teardrop shaped ones. And they make them in like a standard and a small size, but you can use both of them. Either one doesn't matter. But what I do is there's that little rubber, that little yellow rubber band on them. And I like to take that off. That way I can just get the use of, it's just the tips of the hackle pliers. And that lets me hold onto that feather better. And I use that when I'm first preening back those fibers too. I'll take my hackle pliers and clip them on that tip so that I can preen back the fibers and then have that tip tie in. And then I go over and I'll wrap it with them too.

**Marvin Cash (54:18-54:25):**
Got it. I know you say you generally prefer to tie the feathers in by their tip, but are there times when you tie the feather in by its base?

**Allen McGee (54:28-56:04):**
There are a few times. Normally with things like partridge, no, because the feather, the stem gets progressively pretty dense, pretty fast as it goes down towards the aftershaft. But with like hen, genetic hen, especially things like that, the feather, the stem stays pretty thin and pliable throughout. And so in those cases with like maybe hen cape, not with hen saddle, but with a hen cape, I'll take the feather, tie it in by the bottom of the stem and by the base and wrap it that way.

The reason I do that is because those feathers, the hen capes, genetic especially, are sometimes not that soft. We talked about the web extending out to the tips a minute ago. But the web actually gets, as you go down the feather, the web actually extends out further. So if you can tie it in by that base, you're going to actually get a softer feather out of that hen than if you tie it in by the tip.

Now, it depends, again, what you want your fly to be imitating. If you want it to have a little bit of better flotation yet not stiff, you'll tie it in by the tip for like a soft hackle dry fly. But if you're imitating like a flymph or an emerging mayfly, maybe you'll tie it in by the base and use those lower aftershaft near those fibers that are really soft, but the stem lets you do that.

So it's up to the amount of how soft that stem and how thin that stem is, if you can tie it in by the base or not, and also the fly you're trying to come up with.

**Marvin Cash (56:06-56:18):**
And is that kind of the same guideline about kind of the performance characteristics drive your decision about whether to strip half the fibers off of a feather or not, or do you have a different rule of thumb?

**Allen McGee (56:19-57:43):**
Yeah, well, I only strip, and really it's only with the hen I do that. I don't do it with partridge or anything. I only do it with a hen sometimes. And there's a couple of situations I'll do it. When I use a hen cape and I want a really sparse hackle, even less than what one turn would create, with both sides of the feather, I'll strip off one side and make a turn, or I can even make a turn and a half and still get less than one turn with both sides of the fibers on the feather.

And so I'm getting a very sparse soft-hackle dry fly hackle collar with just like imitating a few legs coming off the fly to imitate like that mayfly dun. So that's one situation where I'll strip off half the side of the fibers. And the other is when I'm using like a hen saddle. And those fibers can be very almost thick and they don't like to wrap well and stay in place.

So I'll strip off one side of those and it just takes away half of what I'm trying to deal with when I'm wrapping the feather. And they stay in place better. When I'm wrapping each wrap consecutively in front of each other, the fibers stay better swept back than if you have both sides to it.

**Marvin Cash (57:44-57:54):**
Got it. And in terms of hook selection, can you kind of walk folks through how you think about that as you look at flies to fish towards the stream bottom all the way up the water column?

**Allen McGee (57:56-01:00:12):**
Yeah. Yeah. So I like to match the hooks to the shape of the life species I'm trying, life cycle species I'm trying to match. And so like, most times it's either like a straight hook for nymphs and things like that. Sometimes I'll actually bend the hook if I want to get like a swimming nymph appearance to the fly. And to bend the hook, like I'll put the hook in my vise and then I'll just take forceps at the front up near the thorax and just bend it up slightly. And it creates that lifting of the thorax. It makes it look like the fly is like swimming, like the abdominal swimming of mayfly nymphs.

But to achieve that, you have to use like a lower carbon hook. And so I'm not really tied to a specific manufacturer. Like I only fish TMC and nymph hooks. I fish hooks that allow me to create the fly I want to create. And so using a low carbon hook like the old Mustad or these Eagle Claws I have are pretty low carbon. And because if you use a high carbon, you can't bend them. They're so brittle. And you try to bend it, they'll break.

So I try to choose hooks to imitate, to get the appearance of the fly I'm trying to imitate. If I don't need to bend the hook, it doesn't really matter. But if I am, it does. It's just mostly about choosing the shape of the fly. I don't really care if it's specific like brand, like I said, but I do like the Tiemco 100s for dry flies. The Mustad R30 is a nice dry fly hook. And even the Eagle Claw L59, which is a little cheaper hook, some people think, but I like them. They're fine.

And so I don't really think about the manufacturer, but I think about the shape of the hook. For imitating that life stage, I want to know what that life stage looks like at that time and place that I'm trying to imitate it on the water. And then work backwards from there to try to find the hook shape that works best to imitate that.

**Marvin Cash (01:00:13-01:00:21):**
Got it. And do you also try to vary the gauge of the wire to kind of help you adjust weight after you've got the profile that you want?

**Allen McGee (01:00:21-01:01:40):**
Exactly. Yep. Yep. So, for instance, the heavier weight nymph hooks, like I said, these Eagle Claws, they're made in America. They're a nice hook. A lot of people don't think about them, but they're actually a nice bend. The bend goes, it's a perfect bend. It goes, the shank, it's a straight shank, and then when it bends, it doesn't have that sproat bend or anything, so you can get a complete long top shank to tie on. And it's also a heavier gauge wire, which allows me not to have to weight it as much.

And then there's another hook that I like. If I want a lighter weight, like the Umpqua 201 is a nice surface film emerger hook, because it's a thin gauge sort of a scud type hook, but it's not your heavy scud. It's got the curvature, but it's a light gauge wire. So that's going to allow me to fish that surface film better.

So yes, the weight of the gauge of the wire is actually very, very important. And that's probably set, that's probably primary is shape and gauge of wire, shape and gauge of wire and size, are my primary concerns. And then I go find the manufacturer that has that hook that I'm looking for.

**Marvin Cash (01:01:41-01:01:59):**
Got it. So, and it's interesting, I just pulled out your most recent book as I was preparing for this interview. And I mean, it's folks, if you have, if you don't have a copy, Fly Fishing Soft-Hackles is a really phenomenal resource. I guess you published it, what, in 2017, Allen?

**Allen McGee (01:02:01-01:02:03):**
Yeah, it came out in the beginning of 2017.

**Marvin Cash (01:02:04-01:02:28):**
Yeah, and for my listeners, it's really great because it respects the history of the soft hackle, but it gives you a ton of tying and fishing information. And I guess before that, you had published Tying and Fishing Soft-Hackle Nymphs in 2007 or so. And kind of along that path, when did you decide that it was time to update your 2007 book?

**Allen McGee (01:02:30-01:03:54):**
Well, it kind of came about just by the places I was fishing more and more. I was going to these, there's a progression of the fly fishermen where you want to catch a lot of fish. And then you want to start to catch more technical fish because you feel like that's more of a challenge. And so I was fishing these more technical waters out west and Henry's Fork and Delaware River in the northeast and Silver Creek and places like that where you really couldn't just fish in an attractor style fly. You really had to have a species specific pattern.

And so that's kind of where my second book came about from is all the, is imitating each life stage of each important trout bug in North America. Caddis, mayfly, midge, stoneflies, and life stages that are important, terrestrials, scuds, everything. So it was basically just the places I was fishing that required better flies, if you will. I mean, really, and better presentations and better observation of the water and the fish and everything. But the fly was a lot of it. And so I tried to cover that in my new book. And I'm always working on new flies and presentation methods and things like that. So it was time to unleash it.

**Marvin Cash (01:03:55-01:04:03):**
I mean, it's an incredibly well-written, well-photographed, and very dense book. How long did it take you to write it?

**Allen McGee (01:04:05-01:05:03):**
It took about six and a half years. It took about six and a half years. And it was something that I, writers always coming up with ideas as they're fishing, as you're writing a book, it seems like you're always adding things to it because you have maybe a new idea that, I'm, like I said, my evolution of my stuff doesn't stop. I mean, I think every night I sit down, I think of how I can make a little variation in something or try something different. And if it works, I keep it. If it doesn't, I don't.

And so that's kind of just how I approach fly fishing. I don't stop at one point and just do that forever. I try to keep evolving it. And that's just for myself. And then that's my own way of doing it. And then I just let other people know about it once I figure things out. That's what I do.

**Marvin Cash (01:05:03-01:05:21):**
Yeah. So, you're working on it for six and a half years. I mean, how does, what does that writing process look like? I mean, are you kind of going on a trip and you solve a problem and you write a piece and you're kind of meshing it together? Or do you say, oh gosh, I'm going to really write for a week and then put it down for a month or?

**Allen McGee (01:05:23-01:06:11):**
Well, what I really normally do is I, I don't, when I first, I don't start writing a book until I got a lot of stuff to say. I don't like put it together piece by piece. Like just, I'll fish for a few years and develop some more things and then I'll start writing it down again. And then once I do that, I just start to outline it. And then I work outwards inwards, basically kind of like building a house, I guess you'd say.

I have all the ideas I want to put out there. And then I put the details that I know into the book. But the first thing is I build the frame of it and then I work down into the details but I know the details just what I'm saying is when I'm writing I first put out everything I want to say so I don't forget something and then I work down deeper and deeper and deeper.

**Marvin Cash (01:06:12-01:06:25):**
Got it so this most recent book came out at the beginning of 2017. Are you working on any projects right now you want to share?

**Allen McGee (01:06:25-01:07:25):**
Well right now I'm just going to be fishing as much as I can over the next few years and like I said things come out when I'm ready. I mean, I don't force them, but I'm accumulating ideas the whole time. And then when I get enough, I put it out. And so there'll something be coming in a few years probably, but for now it's just fishing as much as I can, traveling, fishing new waters.

And another thing about all this is I like to know that my flies work on a different number of waters. I don't, I want them to be pretty much, not universal, but be able to be adaptable to any water you fish. And so I like to test them out on a different, a lot of, even the most technical waters and things like that. So that's how I know that there's sound methods and it's also fun to be able to travel and fish places and test them out. So field testing is fun.

**Marvin Cash (01:07:25-01:07:34):**
Absolutely. And believe it or not, we're getting close to daylight savings time. So it's going to be easier to fish later in the day. Right. I know show season is winding down, but do you have any show appearances or club appearances that you want to let folks know about?

**Allen McGee (01:07:34-01:08:11):**
I don't really have much. I'm, well, I'm doing a couple like private clubs here in Trout Unlimited in Georgia in April and June, but I'm available for presentations for clubs if anybody ever wants to get in touch with me and things like that. But mostly my spring and summer are looking like a lot, a couple trips coming up here in the summer and then one in the fall. So yeah, I'm just looking to get back to fishing. It's been a, there's been a wet winter down here. So haven't been a lot of fishing going on really.

**Marvin Cash (01:08:12):**
Yeah.

**Allen McGee (01:08:13-01:08:15):**
Hopefully the summer spring dries up a little bit.

**Marvin Cash (01:08:15-01:08:27):**
Yeah. But we'll probably end up with a drought this summer is the way things seem to go. But how can folks find you on the internet if they want to book you for presentation or learn more about your books?

**Allen McGee (01:08:28-01:08:45):**
So my website is alenmcgee.blogspot.com. You got to do a forward slash at the end of that. alenmcgee.blogspot.com forward slash.

**Marvin Cash (01:08:46-01:09:11):**
Awesome and I'll drop that in the show notes too. And I've known Allen for a long time and if you have a chance to book him for your club or have a chance to run into him at a show you should definitely do it because you'll learn a lot. But, Allen, I appreciate you spending some time with me tonight. Everybody, if you like this episode, I'd love it if you give me a review in iTunes to help me out with my advertisers. It's always great if you can subscribe in the podcast of your choice. Everybody, tight lines and have a good evening. Thanks again, Allen. I really appreciate it.

**Allen McGee (01:09:12-01:09:14):**
Okay, thanks, everybody. I appreciate it.