S3, Ep 176: Eric Naguski of Riseforms Fly Fishing

**Marvin Cash** [00:04]

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by bug man Eric Naguski. Eric shares a lifetime of knowledge on fly fishing in Pennsylvania and the patterns and tactics you need to be successful. I think you're really going to enjoy this one. But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And a shout out to this episode's sponsor. This episode is sponsored by our friends at Nor-vise. Their motto is "tie better flies faster," and they produce the only vise that truly spins. To see for yourself: in 2022, the folks from Nor-vise will be at all the fly fishing shows, the Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival and the Texas Fly Fishing and Brew Festival. Also, if you need to do some extra Christmas shopping, from now until 11:59 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve, if you purchase a Nor-vise e-gift card of $100 or more, you'll receive 25% off your next Nor-vise purchase. For all the details, head over to www.nor-vice.com today. Now, on to the interview. Well, Eric, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

**Eric Naguski** [01:22]

Well, Marvin, thank you very much for having me. Hopefully you won't have to change

**Marvin Cash** [01:28]

the name to the Inarticulate Fly. I'm sure that won't be the case. We have a tradition on The Articulate Fly – we always like to ask our guests to share their earliest fishing

**Eric Naguski** [01:40]

memory. Yeah, that's cool. Honestly, I don't have a whole lot of memories that don't include fishing. I'm probably going to say I was three or four years old at the oldest. My father was a sailor and we had a sailboat on the eastern shore of Maryland on Chesapeake Bay, and spent a lot of time in that marina. I always saw the fish around the docks and was bugging my dad for a fishing rod. Finally he said all right. I was in the marina store eyeing up a Zebco spin casting rod, and I really wanted that. He said, "I'll buy you a cane pole in case you decide you don't like it and won't stick with it." Well, that was almost 50 years ago, so apparently I decided to stick with it. It was cool growing up as a little kid around that marina. I did a lot of stuff, caught a lot of sunfish, a lot of bass, occasional striped bass that wandered too close within casting range, and a lot of big carp. Like I said, I don't have a whole lot of – I learned how to walk on that sailboat. I learned how to swim in that bay. I learned how to fish there too, I guess.

**Marvin Cash** [03:08]

Yeah, really neat. When did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?

**Eric Naguski** [03:12]

That was the spring of 1978. I was 10 years old.

**Marvin Cash** [03:18]

Very neat. And how did that come about?

**Eric Naguski** [03:20]

I had a cousin who was about 15, maybe 20 years older than I am. He happened to be a fly fisherman and he knew I liked to fish. He took me up to northern Pennsylvania and the Pine Creek Valley, and he stuck a fly rod in my hand on the banks of Cedar Run. I fished up there – Slate Run, Cedar Run, Pine Creek. Fell in, got wet in April and it's cold. And I loved every second of it.

**Marvin Cash** [03:58]

Very neat. We know it's all been downhill from there. Who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly fishing journey?

**Eric Naguski** [04:07]

It's interesting. I've thought about that over the years. I didn't really have a whole lot of people to fish with growing up. I did a lot of my fishing by myself, and I still do. I was basically allowed to run feral as a little kid and as a teenager along the cow streams and farm ponds and rivers around my house. I pretty much have done it by myself.

**Marvin Cash** [04:46]

Yeah, it's interesting because I think we're of about the same vintage, and so that whole experience of no YouTube – it was library books. Even in the 70s, there were not a lot of fly fishing articles in Field and Stream, and if you didn't have a grandparent or a parent to take you, or you weren't lucky enough to find someone willing to share the secret sauce, you kind of had to figure it out.

**Eric Naguski** [05:14]

Yeah, absolutely. I just went fishing. I was already fishing anyway, and now I just had a fly rod. I was enthralled by it. Saturday morning television, watching Curt Gowdy on The American Sportsman – I just sat there mesmerized by those casts on those fly rods. I was like, I want to do that. I want to catch fish like that. I want to go fishing. It didn't matter where it was. It could be the little trickle of a stream, a warm water stream by my house, or it could be Chesapeake Bay. I was ready to go fishing no matter what.

**Marvin Cash** [05:54]

And then the next step onto the dark side was tying flies. Do you remember your first vise and the first fly you tied?

**Eric Naguski** [06:01]

Yeah, I do. I was about 12 years old and I had a Thompson Model A. I was pretty sure it was either a Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear or a Woolly Worm, one of the two. I can't remember exactly which one, but I know I tied a ton of those Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ears. My cousin told me, "You've got to have that fly. It's a great fly." So I did my best to spin up some of those, and I'm pretty sure that was one of the first, if not the first.

**Marvin Cash** [06:34]

Very neat. So was that kind of like – I guess what we have now are those Wapsi kits with that type of clamp vise and some materials. Is that kind of how the materials came, or was it different?

**Eric Naguski** [06:46]

I didn't have a kit. I sort of pieced together some stuff from my cousin. He gave me some materials, but no instruction. I did read a lot about fly tying and fly fishing. By 1980 there were a few magazines that had supplies in them. I'd read those things until the covers fell off. I don't remember where I got all the materials, but it definitely wasn't a kit. It was definitely pieced together.

**Marvin Cash** [07:26]

Yeah. Back then, being in Pennsylvania you're a little bit luckier, but you couldn't mail order a lot of stuff, and there weren't a lot of fly shops.

**Eric Naguski** [07:35]

No, there definitely weren't. As I got older, I was fortunate enough to grow up about 15 minutes away from Bob Clouser's shop. If you want to say I had a fly-tying mentor – he was always very helpful and very kind to me growing up. I got my first Renzetti vise from him when I was in high school. He was always helpful and kind and willing to share ideas, and a little bit of cynicism too, but that's how they are.

**Marvin Cash** [08:17]

It's interesting. I can remember talking to him about developing the Clouser Minnow and him talking about how the dumbbell eyes were originally Gremlin weights. It's just interesting to see how that got figured out. And if we let a fair amount of water go under the bridge, you're now the owner of Riseforms Fly Fishing. When did you get the guide bug?

**Eric Naguski** [08:41]

I'm trying to think – this was like my 22nd season. I kind of eased into it. I don't know that I got the bug. I kind of had to be coaxed into doing it. I kept hearing, "You should guide, you should be a guide." At the time I was tending bar, and I'd run into some people who were fly fishermen. I was living in State College, Pennsylvania, fishing up there a lot. We'd talk. I wound up going fishing with a bunch of people here and there, and I just kept hearing that over and over again. Finally I said, all right – it wasn't a big deal to hang out a shingle and say, "Hey, if you guys want somebody to go fishing with, we'll go." I started doing a little bit for TCO, probably about 18 years ago. Here and there, not a whole lot, because they were still just in Reading at the time. I'd go down there if they needed me. I ran a couple of hosted trips for them in the early years. It just sort of grew. I didn't really want to rush into it. It was a little intimidating. I thought – it's always different when you go out. I'm always trying to figure out the puzzle. Maybe I just wasn't overly confident enough to say, "Yeah, I'm the greatest, let me show you how to fish." I'm still a little hesitant about that. I like to go fishing with people and we try to figure it out together. I try to talk to them about what I'm thinking throughout the day – how we're doing it and why I'm doing something. It's interesting. And now it's to the point where I'm busier than I want to be. It's a blast. I love it. I still love it.

**Marvin Cash** [10:46]

It's interesting, too. I noticed on your website that not only are you doing what folks would consider to be traditional central PA guiding, but you also have some educational things you do through your guide service. You want to let folks know about those?

**Eric Naguski** [11:03]

Yeah, sure. I offer some stream entomology trips, if you want to call them that, where we'll go out, talk about the time of year, I'll do a kick sample and look at some bugs, and hopefully we'll see some adults flying around if it's the right time of year. We'll try to identify them and talk about the roles that the insects we're finding play in the trout's diet and the role they play in the aquatic ecology of the stream. It's neat. I don't get as many people for that as I wish I did. I love doing it. But it's definitely something that could benefit a lot of people. To be a really successful and confident fly angler, I think you need to observe more than anything. And if you have a little bit of knowledge going in about what you might expect, it helps to figure out what's going on when no one else seems to be able to catch fish – you might have a little bit of an edge.

**Marvin Cash** [12:22]

You're buggy, right? We were talking in Parsippany and we've got common buggy friends like Matt Green, and he's a buggy guy. And I remember from my interview with Jake, he was like, "Well, I've got this guy, and I show him a bug and I tell him it's this, and he's like, no, no, no, that's not what it is." And that's you, right?

**Eric Naguski** [12:43]

I guess, yeah. Of course, nobody would know if I was right or wrong. That's my background. My education is aquatic ecology and aquatic entomology. I love that stuff. I think having that understanding certainly isn't going to work against you as a fly angler. Paul Weamer – I'm going to paraphrase him from the bug book – talks about how having a thorough knowledge of aquatic insects is kind of like being able to cast the whole entire fly line. You need it constantly all the time? No. But being able to make a cast and being confident in your casting, having that knowledge of the aquatic insects just gives you an edge – an understanding of what's happening around you when you're trying to figure out what the fish are doing, what they might be doing even before you go. It gives you a heads up if you do a little homework and build that knowledge base. And I'm always learning about it. It's always changing. I always see something new. There are always variations. The only thing I know for sure about fly fishing and bugs and fish is that you never say never and you never say always. It's always something a little different. The entomological knowledge you can gain over the years, if you just take a look around, turn over some rocks, pick up some bugs – there are a lot of good resources on the internet these days. Trout Nut is a great website with a lot of knowledgeable people. If you can't find the bug you're seeing in their archives, you can post a picture and somebody will help you out. I'm happy to help people out too. People send me pictures of bugs all the time asking what it is, and I'm happy to help anytime.

**Marvin Cash** [15:03]

You've got some gorgeous photography on your website of insects. Thank you. Yeah, I enjoy that part. So it's interesting too – it's one thing to dig into it to up your game on the water, but what was it when you were in school that captured you and made you want to study this?

**Eric Naguski** [15:22]

I think it's just something I felt comfortable in. It was something I had always done. I think it was a general inclusiveness. Even when I was a kid, I grew up in a rural area and I just wanted to know what I was looking at. I'll never forget – I was in the seventh grade in a biology class and the curriculum that year was an entomological unit going through the orders of insects. My science teacher happened to be a fly fisherman. I started talking and I knew all of them already – all the orders, especially the ones the trout ate. I wound up tying flies for that guy for years.

**Marvin Cash** [16:18]

Helps with the grade. That's pretty neat. It's funny – a lot of the retired science teachers from my high school worked at my hometown fly shop for the discount after they retired. So you talked about kind of easing into guiding. Who are some of the folks that mentored you on your guide journey and what did they teach
**Eric Naguski** [16:41]

you? I didn't really have anybody that said, "Here's how you should guide, this is what you should do." But I'm in an area that has a lot of really talented anglers. One person I'm going to pick out here is Tom Baltz. I never really fished alongside him or asked him a whole lot of questions, but I always paid attention to what he was saying and I still do – not only about guiding but fly tying and the history of our local area here. He's a treasure, and he's a great person to talk to. I pick up a lot of stuff just by being quiet and listening. That happened over the years in the fly shops too. Especially when I was a teenager, I would listen to what these guys were saying. And I'm talking about guys like Vince Marinaro and Charlie Fox who would come into the shop. I was there and I never said anything. I just listened.

**Marvin Cash** [17:52]

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because – kind of when you think about that late 70s, early 80s era – that's how it was when you were a kid. You were just happy to be around where all the action was, and you were well behaved. To your point, you kept your ears open and you could learn a lot of stuff.

**Eric Naguski** [18:10]

Absolutely.

**Marvin Cash** [18:13]

So it's interesting too. We were talking in Parsippany, and I guess earlier this year – I think it was in May – you released a book, Favorite Flies for Pennsylvania. Could you share with me and our listeners a little bit about the genesis of that project?

**Eric Naguski** [18:31]

Sure. Honestly, it was really never on my radar to even write a book. But I had a small contribution to a book called Keystone Fly Fishing, and the editor of that book was Jay Nichols. One day I was in the fly shop and he approached me about writing Favorite Flies for Pennsylvania. It's part of a series of books on fly fishing locations throughout the U.S. and fly patterns for those areas. It sort of caught me off guard, like I said, but I was certainly flattered. I was a little scared to do it at first, but he talked me into it, apparently.

**Marvin Cash** [19:19]

He seems to have that effect on people.

**Eric Naguski** [19:21]

Yeah, right.

**Marvin Cash** [19:23]

It's always amazing. When you look at what people think of as the current fly fishing literature and how many of those books he's responsible for bringing to market – it's pretty incredible.

**Eric Naguski** [19:37]

Oh, it's amazing. He has been involved in just an unbelievable amount of books. You'd be hard pressed to find somebody else in the industry whose hand has been in so much of what's come out of the fly fishing publishing world.

**Marvin Cash** [20:02]

Yeah, absolutely. So you were encouraged to write Favorite Flies for Pennsylvania. Did you have a particular angler in mind when you wrote the book?

**Eric Naguski** [20:13]

Yeah, definitely. I wanted the book to speak to a fly angler who's never been to Pennsylvania to fish for trout – someone who could buy the book, read it, and come to the Keystone State with a fly box of patterns that would help them be really successful no matter what trout stream or river they were fishing, regardless of the time of year. It was difficult in certain respects leaving some patterns out, picking only 50. I'm sure there are people who'd say, "I can't believe you didn't put this pattern in, it's the best fly in the state." I just had to pick them. I did sneak in some more though. Jay was great to work with – a super nice guy, always willing to help me out and listen to what I had to say. Very receptive to conversations about the book. It was fun.

**Marvin Cash** [21:31]

For folks who haven't had a chance to take a look at it, you've got some of – to your point – Ed Shenk's patterns, Vince Marinaro's patterns in the preface, and you've got 50 patterns in the book. They're a really good cross section of what I would call traditional to newer patterns. How did you actually pick those 50?

**Eric Naguski** [21:52]

What I did was contact some of the people I know – the best anglers I know, some guys here in PA – and asked if they'd be willing to share what they were fishing every day and what patterns they thought should be in the book. I explained basically what I just said here – if you were coming to PA, what 10 patterns would you absolutely tell somebody they had to have? From those responses, it was pretty interesting. A lot of the flies in the book came up over and over and over again. But I also wanted to feature some Pennsylvania tyers and some of the patterns developed here. There are definitely some non-PA flies in here, but I think there's a good representation of modern tyers and innovators from Pennsylvania.

**Marvin Cash** [22:56]

Yeah, absolutely. When we were in New Jersey at the Fly Tying Symposium, Tom Baltz was there with us, and it kind of helped remind me about how rich and unique Pennsylvania's fly fishing culture is. It's very different. I don't know how to explain it, because there are other places that have technical fisheries, but there's just something really unique about Pennsylvania. Can you maybe help me put my finger on it?

**Eric Naguski** [23:34]

I think there are a couple of things going on. We have so many different types of water here. We've got spring creeks, mountain freestones, bigger rivers, little brook trout streams, large rivers, tailwaters, some marginal trout waters where we have migratory brown trout coming in and out. We've got a variety of water, not to mention the stocked trout fishery. I think that sets Pennsylvania apart – as compared to, say, New York and the Catskills, where there's an incredibly rich history of fly fishing and fly tying, but the water types are pretty similar as you go around. It's more of a centralized location with those brawling freestone streams. The innovators in Pennsylvania who came before me had a different set of problems to solve. Those different problems – be it flat water, super selective trout eating jassids on the Letort, or flat water tailwaters – I think those conditions and the problems those anglers had to solve are a little different than everywhere else. And then it kind of spread. A lot of the innovations that have come out of Pennsylvania have spread across the world and are applicable whether you're in New Zealand, you're on Henry's Fork, or you're on the Deschutes River, wherever you are. The variation in our water types and the innovators who worked to solve those problems – whether it be fly design for rough and tumbling waters like Al Troth's Elk Hair Caddis, where it bounces around great, it's a great rough water fly, or you have Vince Marinaro's Thorax Duns and the Comparaduns, which just solve a different set of problems. But those problems are not unique to Pennsylvania and they travel well.

**Marvin Cash** [26:22]

Yeah, it's interesting too because Pennsylvania is relatively easy to get to and really close to a lot of population centers on the East Coast. So I guess you also get a lot of anglers that get to do a lot of experimenting.

**Eric Naguski** [26:36]

Yeah, absolutely. People were coming from New Jersey and Maryland, and guys like Lefty would come up and see what was going on in Pennsylvania with the local anglers and kind of spread the word. Ernie Schwiebert is another person that comes to mind – he fished around here a lot. The list goes on. These people who would come to Pennsylvania to see what the local anglers were doing and the innovations they were making, and sort of spread the word. And it's interesting when you really start to dig into it. I'll give a little plug for the Pennsylvania Fly Fishing Museum here in Carlisle. It's cool to walk through there and take a really close look at all that's happened here.

**Marvin Cash** [27:37]

Yeah, very neat. And that's a nice segue to my next question. For folks who haven't had a chance to check out your book – for each pattern you've got the recipe and suggestions about how to fish it, but you also include the pattern's history. To what we were just talking about, why is the history so important to you?

**Eric Naguski** [27:56]

I think it's probably because I grew up here. I grew up fishing in the footsteps of some really legendary figures in our sport. Even as a younger teenager, it was never really lost on me where I was and what had occurred on the same banks I was walking through, stuck in the mud along those little streams. There were a lot of people who came before me that were doing important things in the fly fishing world, stuck in that same mud. And since I didn't really have a mentor as such, when I wasn't running around the trout stream I spent a lot of time reading about fly fishing and fly tying. Those names of streams I knew, and the people I had heard of or met who fished them – they kept showing up in those same articles over and over and over again. Being aware of what comes before you is important in charting the course for the future of fly fishing and fly tying. There's a lot that goes into constructing a fly, whether it be a streamer or a dry fly. Everything should be on that hook shank for a reason. If you look at how the tyers and anglers before us solved those problems, it's worthwhile having a knowledge base of that. Especially in fly tying today – the plethora of materials available to us is great. We can utilize those materials the same way people did before in fly design to make a dry fly float better, give it a better imprint on the water. I just think it's important to remember what went on before you and how it ties into what's happening now.

**Marvin Cash** [29:54]

Yeah, I think it's interesting too, right? Because it makes you humble, because you realize that what you think is new is not as new as you think it is.

**Eric Naguski** [30:01]

Oh, yeah. But that's sort of the beauty of fly fishing and fly tying. A lot of it is derivative, but a lot of times there are slight improvements, especially in fly tying and tackle. Geez, you start talking about fly lines – a plastic fly line might be the biggest innovation in fly fishing ever, especially if you want to keep your flies floating. It's important to understand why things are the way they are.

**Marvin Cash** [30:40]

Yeah, absolutely. Following up on what we were talking about earlier – Pennsylvania has a really unique concentration of technical fisheries, and there are certainly some patterns in your book that are very specialized. We always have this debate about presentation versus pattern. Your nymphing guys will tell you they can catch fish on pretty much anything, and then you've got other people that are really dialed into matching the hatch. Curious to get your thoughts on where you shake out on all that.

**Eric Naguski** [31:16]

Presentation wins every time, whether you're presenting a tight-line nymph through a run or whatever. Absolutely, presentation wins every time. Casting – from my perspective as a guide, people always ask me at the end of the day, "Is there anything I should work on?" It's always casting. Always casting. But back to presentation versus pattern – presentation wins every time. That said, like you mentioned, there are these technical fisheries where you can present the wrong fly perfectly and be snubbed by a trout in plenty of waters. Especially here, but not just here – there are a lot of places around the country that are really heavily pressured and have prolific insect hatches. Some of the patterns in the book were developed specifically for those conditions. The CDC Bubbleback Caddis comes to mind right away, from René Harrop on Henry's Fork. That is a technical fishery that gets pressured beyond belief. That fly was developed out there, but we have similar conditions here – say, on the Upper Delaware system or Penn's Creek or other places that have a lot of bugs and are fished heavily. Those fish see a ton of flies. So your presentation better be perfect, but your fly better be darn good, too. Presentation wins every time because there are places where the fly pattern doesn't matter as much. But there are also places where you better have both things going right for you. That's what I try to do with the book – prepare people for those waters. If you're out there during prime time, beginning to middle of May on Penn's Creek, you're going to see people and those people are throwing flies. Maybe some of the flies in this book will give you a little bit of an edge. Maybe it's something a little different than what some people are throwing, or it's floating in the surface film or moving under the water in just a slightly different way. Or it has some trigger on it – whether that trigger is movement or color or flash – there's something a little different about the fly that may put the scales in your favor.

**Marvin Cash** [34:03]

Yeah, absolutely. You've got varieties of all different kinds of flies – nymphs and streamers and wet flies – but it was pretty clear from reading the introduction of your book that you really love fishing dries.

**Eric Naguski** [34:17]

Geez, is it that obvious? To paraphrase Girard – I'm not a dry fly purist, but I want to be one when I grow up. I think what attracts me to fishing the dry fly is a combination of things. First, I'm a bug nerd and I love to solve the puzzle. I love trying to figure it out. What are they eating? What's that bug flying around? Are they eating the adult? Are they eating the emerger? Is there a nymph struggling in the surface film? Is there a caddis pupa swimming to the surface? I love trying to figure that game out. The next thing is it just comes down to being visual. I don't know too many fly anglers or any angler who don't like to spot a fish, make the cast with the right fly, and then see that nose come up out of the surface and inhale that dry fly. What's not to like? And here's the other thing – I like to cast a fly rod. I'm not great at it and I'm not winning any casting contests anytime soon, but I'm back to solving the problem. What cast do I make? Where do I position myself to try to make that presentation in a way that I think's going to fool that fish? It's pretty satisfying to get in a good position, see a fish in a tough spot, make a cast, get a good drag-free drift – and maybe that drift's only nine inches, but it's the right nine inches – and see that fly disappear. It's pretty cool. And if I had to pick one more thing, I'd say I'm not really a big fish hunter. If I were a big fish hunter I would probably just throw streamers. But catching a big fish on a dry fly – and when I'm saying big fish I'm talking over 22 inches, big two-footers – it doesn't happen a lot, but when you do your homework and you know the hatches and some of the locations where these fish are and what specific bugs bring them to the surface, they will definitely come up and eat a dry fly. It may not always happen, because everybody knows that a trout gets to a certain size and its diet changes to a piscivorous palate. But there's something extraordinary when you take a big trout on a dry fly. Observation is key. Timing is key. And perseverance is key too – but that's true if you're going to chase big fish no matter how you're fishing for them. I guess because there's a lot of hype around streamer fishing and catching big fish on streamers, it's maybe a knee-jerk reaction, but I find it pretty satisfying to catch a two-footer on a dry fly.

**Marvin Cash** [37:38]

Yeah, it's funny. While you were answering the question I was having flashbacks to fishing the Bighorn and working specific fish for a while, or doing the same thing down in Argentina. It's fun, for sure. And it's humbling.

**Eric Naguski** [37:55]

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of cool to catch a fish on your terms. I think there's plenty of times when I'm fishing by myself where I never even make a cast. I've got it set in my head that this is what's going to happen, and if it doesn't go that way, it doesn't go that way. I want to get in that fish's world and I want to be there when that fish is looking up. When I'm there, the payoff is worth it.

**Marvin Cash** [38:27]

Yeah, it's also fun too sometimes just
**Eric Naguski** [38:31]

to kind of play with them and see if you can get them to eat something they shouldn't, right? Absolutely. I think early mornings is a good time to do that. Early mornings are a good time to find a big fish on the dry fly during prime hatch season – around here it's May into early June. We have lots of caddis in the evenings and in the mornings, when you have all those dead, spent caddis and spent mayflies that get knocked loose from a little eddy somewhere. Those fish will get along the banks and you'll see some pretty big noses poking out early in the morning when they still feel safe in that shallow water. It's a good time to target those fish. And again, you can throw all kinds of stuff at them – I call them garbage eaters, but it's whatever's coming at them and they're going to eat it. They don't get super picky. They're just there to chow down for the morning breakfast.

**Marvin Cash** [39:38]

Yeah, it's funny too because – something crazy – when you're walking a stream early you can actually hear them smacking. Yep. Yeah, it's pretty slick. We touched on this a little bit earlier in the interview, but even if you aren't planning to fish Pennsylvania, can you remind our listeners how they can use your book to help them up their game on their home

**Eric Naguski** [40:00]

water? Yeah, I love this question. I think a whole bunch of the flies in the book travel really well. After all, the patterns come from some of the fishiest people I know – there's no doubt that the flies catch fish. Most of the nymphs in the book are either attractors or general imitations of immature aquatic insects, and any place that has mayflies, caddisflies and stonefly nymphs, the patterns in this book will work. The dry flies are – and I do this consciously – easily adapted to different hatches across the country and even across the world. Small changes in the color of the body materials on, say, Henry Ramsay's Thorax Dun – it's a great dry fly here – you just change the color scheme and maybe change the hook size to whatever you need in your local waters. The materials are relatively simple and easy to get, and you're in the game. The patterns I've included are included more for their construction than their coloration. I think the silhouette or the imprint in the surface film allows some of the dry flies to excel in different hatches, different water types, or even different lighting or seasonal conditions. Like Tom Baltz's Paranymph – depending on the wingpost color you use, it will allow you to fish it in different light conditions. That applies no matter where you go. It's a great generalist dry fly that can be fished successfully anywhere. And the streamers in the book – well, streamers work anywhere that big fish eat smaller fish. There are a couple of great sculpin patterns in here. I have the Game Changer in here, which is just a phenomenal platform. A lot of these places – not only in Pennsylvania but elsewhere – are heavily pressured, so maybe you're taking a fly that's not a local favorite, but it's just something a little different than those fish are normally seeing, which might give you an edge. Back to Tom's Paranymph – take that thing and throw it at a picky riser on the Missouri River. Maybe that fish hasn't seen that fly that often. My money's on that Paranymph, if the size is right. So with the nymphs, subtle coloration differences on the triggers – the attractor nymphs – maybe there's a certain color that works better in your local area. Switch the Frenchie from a red thorax to a yellow or orange, whatever you're just picking. Change them up a little bit. That's why they're there. I think they travel well.

**Marvin Cash** [43:20]

Yeah, I think it's amazing. If you're lucky enough to travel to fish a fair amount, particularly fishing heavily pressured water, and you talk to the guides – you go to Montana and they're like, "They just don't like beads." And if you're like me and you fish relatively sterile freestone streams in Western North Carolina, you're like, "How can they not like a bead?" But it's like, well, they've gotten stuck a lot. So it's interesting, and it's fun. I can always find patterns from all kinds of tying books that work really well

**Eric Naguski** [43:59]

kind of in the mid-Atlantic for me. Yeah, for sure. And again, I think it comes back to – especially on heavily pressured water – throw something they just don't see a lot of. If the silhouette's right, the size is right, or the trigger's right, I think you're going to be successful.

**Marvin Cash** [44:21]

Yeah, absolutely. We'll kind of segue to the blocking and tackling. I'm always curious to ask authors how they liked the writing and editing process.

**Eric Naguski** [44:33]

It was great. And this kind of goes back to Jay. Like I said, he was incredibly helpful and supportive throughout the whole process. I think the biggest surprise to me was how easy the writing came. Because apparently I can just blather on about this stuff. But I really loved the photography part of the book as well. Again, Jay's expertise there. There's a little bit of a learning curve to doing this kind of photography, but I'm especially happy with how that turned out. The other really fun part of it was just talking to people about it – talking about flies and techniques, talking to other people who are into it just as much as I am. I don't always get to do that.

**Marvin Cash** [45:29]

Yeah, very neat. Did you kind of write the book episodically? You've got 50 patterns and a framework for how you want them presented – did you sit down and write them one pattern at a time?

**Eric Naguski** [45:43]

Yeah, I just knocked them out one at a time. I was able to talk to some of the creators – Craig Mathews for the X-Caddis was super generous with his time, and René Harrop was another one who was very generous and spent some time talking to me about the flies and how they came about. Those people – like I said, talking to them was one of the best parts of the whole experience. Getting their take on why they did what they did, why the construction of the fly is the way it is – it gives you insights. If you're a tyer like I am, it gives you insights into making some tweaks on other patterns for yourself. Like I said, I rely heavily on throwing something that's just a little different than what the fish are seeing.

**Marvin Cash** [46:48]

Yeah, I can imagine having a long phone conversation with one of the originators and then being super stoked and just banging out the

**Eric Naguski** [46:57]

fly writing. Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I can talk about this stuff all day long and I just had to rein that in. There was some significant editing on a lot of them, and most of that came from myself. I thought it would be harder to sort of talk about a dry fly kind of thing, but it really just kind of flowed. Overall it was a great experience. We were a little delayed with COVID and all, but that just gave me a little breathing room, made me feel better to go back and edit a little bit. It actually worked out okay.

**Marvin Cash** [47:43]

Well, so you're one of the people where it didn't make you not want to write anymore. Do you have another book project in your future?

**Eric Naguski** [47:51]

I don't know. I've kicked around some ideas but nothing right now.

**Marvin Cash** [47:59]

Got it. And anything else going on in your fly fishing world you want to share with our

**Eric Naguski** [48:03]

listeners? Not really. I'm doing some presentations here and there to some groups. What I'd really like to take this opportunity to say is just thank you to everybody who's been supportive of the book and helped out with it, and to those who've been nice enough to come fishing with me. Who knows what's going on in the future. It could be another book, could be anything. As long as we can keep conservation on the forefront of our minds and try to protect what we have – make the bad things better and keep the good things good. I've got nothing immediate coming up. I just want to take the time to thank everybody.

**Marvin Cash** [48:57]

Yeah. And the great thing too, right, is that you brought a book out during COVID – basically no fly fishing shows, a very different way to promote. But knock on wood, we're all excited about what we're going to see happen in early 2022 on the show front. Do you have any shows you plan to be at or any events you want to share with our listeners?

**Eric Naguski** [49:20]

Yeah, I'm going to be at the Lancaster Show in March. I'm not going to be able to make the show in New Jersey – I think I'm going to Mexico. But the Lancaster Show, I'll be at the Fly Tying Symposium. I'm planning on giving a few presentations at that show. Hopefully some people will come out and say hi. It would be great to see everybody. It was nice at the Fly Tying Symposium to get to see everybody – almost back to normal.

**Marvin Cash** [49:50]

Yeah, it's nice too. I like that event because it's really subdued. I was talking to someone else earlier this evening. When you're at one of the other shows and you're talking to a tyer, you kind of feel like you're in an autograph line at a rock concert – you only get a certain amount of time to talk and then people are kind of giving you that look like you need to move on. At the Fly Tying Symposium you can have a nice long conversation with a tyer and really talk about stuff.

**Eric Naguski** [50:18]

Yeah, absolutely. It's really nice. There are some phenomenal tyers there, some modern day innovators. It's really cool. I didn't get a chance to walk around as much as I wanted to. But it's definitely neat – I had some super nerdy conversations about hooks and things like that. It was fun.

**Marvin Cash** [50:46]

It's timely too, right, because we're heading into the holiday season. Where are the best places for folks to find and purchase your book?

**Eric Naguski** [50:54]

I would encourage people to contact their local fly shops. If they don't have the book, you can always reach out to me via email or social media, or the book is available online from all the online sellers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target. My contact information can be found on my website, which is riseformsflyfishing.com. I also have a social media presence – Instagram is at riseformsflyfishing – and I'm on Facebook under my name.

**Marvin Cash** [51:36]

Cool. I'll drop all those in the show notes. And if folks wanted a personalized copy of the book, are you selling those through your website?

**Eric Naguski** [51:43]

Yeah, you can just contact me. I don't have the ability to sell over the website, but we can do PayPal or whatever. If they contact me via email or phone call or whatever – like I said, my contact information is on my website.

**Marvin Cash** [52:01]

Yeah, you might have a few extra copies around the house.

**Eric Naguski** [52:04]

Yeah, maybe. Although not a whole lot, honestly.

**Marvin Cash** [52:11]

Well, that's a good thing too, right? Well, listen, Eric, I really appreciate you carving some time out for me this evening. I've really enjoyed our conversation.

**Eric Naguski** [52:20]

Yeah, me too, Marvin. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. It was great to meet you, to talk to you here tonight. I hope you all have a happy holiday. Great to meet you.

**Marvin Cash** [52:31]

Absolutely. Same to you. Take care. All right, thanks a lot. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Tight lines, everybody. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.