S4, Ep 59: SMALLIE REDUX: Jake Villwock of Relentless Fly Fishing

Marvin Cash: Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by Jake Villwock, owner of Relentless Fly Fishing. Jake shares his fly fishing journey and we take a deep dive into all things smallmouth. 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 sponsored by our friends at Norvice. Their motto is tie better flies faster. And they produce the only vise that truly spins. If you tie articulated patterns, you owe it to yourself to check out their new shank Jaws. The first production run sold out in minutes, but Tim and Tyler have reloaded to check out the new Jaws and Norvice's other great products. Head over to www.Norcom. Now onto our interview.

Well, Jake, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Jake Villwock: Thanks. It's great to be here.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation this evening. And we have a tradition on the show. We always ask our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

Jake Villwock: I would say, I kind of thought about this when I saw the questions. I would say my earliest fishing memory was actually, I was five, and I was doing a bass tournament with my dad. And I was fishing, one of those little like jitter bugs or some sort of top water bug, and I threw it towards these lily pads.

And all of a sudden this wake came out from around the bush and I looked at dad real quick and my five-year-old voice, and I was like, oh, dad, there's one. And out pops this mallard, and she tried to eat my jitterbug. And I remember getting so excited because I had no idea what was happening. And my dad said, no, you can't let that thing eat that. And I was like, but, but, but.

So besides the duck, I would say my earliest fishing memory was actually during a bass tournament with my dad when I was five. So it kind of suits the fact that now my main target is smallmouth.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and it's interesting too. I always ask folks when they came to the dark side of fly fishing.

Jake Villwock: I was actually probably more of a late bloomer. I picked up a fly rod when I was probably a senior in high school. And it was actually my dad, he had a 9-foot 6-weight fiberglass South bend rod and with a Pfluger medalist still had the same flyline on it that he, when he bought it 30 years prior to and I just went to a, went to a bass pond and thought I was going to catch a bluegill and did not.

So I messed around with that for a little bit and kind of went back and forth between the fly and spinning rod for most of my college career. And then post college is kind of when I dove headfirst into the fly fishing side of it and the industry and kind of jumped headfirst all in once I went from being a hobby here and there fly fishermen to full fledged guide. And that was a pretty awesome experience. But yeah, so that was my first experience and every once in a while I go home to my parents house and I decided I don't want to take a fly ride because I just want to visit my family and it's inevitable.

I'm a dad's like let's go, let's go bass fishing, let's go striper fishing. And I'm like okay, so let me have that fiberglass rod again. And it still 40 years later still has the same exact flyline on it. And I love the technology of fly lines today but somehow 40-year-old flyline still cast that rod just fine.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very neat and obviously right, you graduated from college, you went, you guided in Alaska, you came back to the east coast. You've probably spent a lot of time around a lot of fishy people who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly fishing journey.

Jake Villwock: Besides my dad kind of handed me the rod and saying this is how I taught myself, I'd give him a lot of credit just for not just fishing but, or not just fly fishing but fishing in general. He's kind of instilled that in me most of my life.

But my first boss in the industry, Paul Fitzgibbon, ran a, he runs. Well he still does, runs a single party lodge in Sitka, Alaska. So he still splits that. He does deep sea stuff and fly fishing. And Paul, when I started guiding 14 years ago he said, he had been guiding for 25 years at that point and there could be a lot of guys out there at that point in their life, in their career. They're just like, kind of burnout and not super energetic.

But Paul was 25 years in and just, he was contagious when it came to the love of the sport and just loved being a guide in general. And for me it was, I started off doing the deep sea stuff as well as fly fishing. So I was a deckhand and a fly fishing guide and I could have went either direction. But I just kind of fell to the fly fishing side and didn't love the client base that we would get with the D.C. stuff. It was how big can we catch? How many can we kill?

And there's whales breaching and orcas that are so close to the boat that you can see the water dripping down their dorsal fin and they're just like, I want another salmon. And then you get the guys that came out fly fishing and they're watching the eagle and the bears. You're hiking up these four or five mile rivers and there's nobody around and they're just full of salmon and trout and char. And just that beauty is what really sucked me in pretty hard.

And Paul was, to this day, every once in a while I get to go back up there and he calls it a celebrity guide appearance. He'll book a big group and he could find a local guide, but he just likes to get me up there. And so he'll say, hey, do you want to come guide for 10 days? And I'm like, yeah. And so good pushing, 40 years in the industry. He's still up until 2 o'clock in the morning and up at 4:30 and just doesn't even skip a beat. So I would say Paul was definitely a huge influence.

And then one of the guys that I guided with up there, Tom, Tom Larson, he was kind of part time, part time guide for Paul and just super fishy guy. Loved walked up the rivers and start. Time flies. Actually he got into it way later and I did. We Started time flies about the same time. And so those two guys were definitely like when it came to the guide side, they were my kind of motivation to stick with and moving to Pennsylvania.

Tony's the owner of TCO. He's kind of definitely a mentor, and I would consider him almost a fatherly figure anytime I have a question. The other day I had a question for him. I text and I said, I need some professional and some fatherly advice. And he's always one to give some good intel. And he's always believed in me from the day I walked in the store 12 years, 13 years ago till now. So he's helped me grow this business and saw something in my drive before I did. So those are kind of the three guys I would say besides my dad obviously being number one in that influence.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very neat. And you mentioned briefly getting into fly tying, and you were, you said you were kind of a late fly fishing bloomer. What drew you to fly tying?

Jake Villwock: I would say the first year I'm, I was in Alaska, so I kind of went again, kind of headfirst into the tying, talking to some of the clients. And one guy was telling me about his grandfather's estate that they just cleaned out. And he had like 12 vices that he was sitting on. And I kind of nonchalantly said, hey, if you ever want to get rid of one, let me know. I'll buy one. And he said, I'll send you one.

And so a week later when he left, I got a package in the mail, and it was a Thompson vice, C clamp and no rotary, any of that stuff. And I remember we were still at fishing and we used to use these starlight leeches. And they were all. They were only tied on a size two. And some of the smaller trout would come out and try to eat them, but they were too big. And I said, man, I got. I gotta tie these smaller.

So I went to the fly shop. There was one fly shop in Sitka, and there was a craft store slash flash tying area. You walked in and it was issues of Fly tying magazine from 20 years ago. Covered in dust and all this hot glue sticks and stuff. And you had a little bin of fly tying material.

And so between those two places, I pieced together the materials that I needed for the Starlight Leech and tied it in a size I think six or eight. And honestly, learning, teaching myself how to tie flies, I tied it backwards. I started from from the eye and tied back. So the first fly ever tied a whip finish at the tail. And I said this is really hard. Why is that so difficult?

And then I started looking at one of the magazines I bought from. I don't know, it was probably like 88 or 89. And I was like, oh, you start from the back and you go forward. And from then on it kind of made more sense to me.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. And it's interesting because I talked to a lot of people that I bring on the show about fly fishing and a lot of them that tie, they also fish gear. And it really has a significant impact on their tying and their fly design. I know you fish gear too. Is that the same for you?

Jake Villwock: Absolutely. I've got a lot of die hard fly guys that sometimes will have the thinner rods in the boat because I just have them in there for the day before and they're easier to transport in the boat. And like, what are you doing with those things? And then I have to go through the 10 minute spiel on how fishing spinning rods is pretty awesome because you get to see not only like from the fly design standpoint, but also from like a hook set standpoint and a presentation standpoint.

If you're fishing a tube jig or a Ned rig or some sort of soft plastic on the bottom. I mean the guys that just slowly bounce that thing on the bottom don't really do anything. Just let that thing drag and make feel a little weight. They reel down and it's a very subtle hook set. They're five, six to one to the guy that's, Bill Danson reeling down and largemouth sitting on those things.

And when you have a, it's just like a rising trout. If you have a trout that's going to rise really slow to your dry fly, you don't rip that fly as soon as it eats it. And so when I fish crayfish and stuff like that, I tell my guys, I'm like, look, like, if you feel something, just pull a little bit harder. And if it starts to pull away or you feel something more than just a rock, like, then give it a little bit of a love tap and then go to town on it.

And so not only from a fly design, which I'll circle back on that, but just a presentation and even just a hook set. You can learn a lot from the ways that you spin fish to the ways that you present a fly and things like that.

And fly design. I've talked to Mike Schultz and Blane Chocklett and all those guys, and I would consider them all pretty good friends. And we always talk about how do you create a fly to do, to do what a specific lure will do or what a soft plastic will do.

And one of my signature flies that I'm super proud of, the Roamer. I was fishing stripers with my dad, and he was fishing like rubber flukes or swim baits, and he was just crushing stripers on them. And I couldn't catch one to save my life on any of my flies that I had tried. Or that were tried and true.

And so I went home that night and I tied this fly that kind of resembled the look of a fluke, and didn't really, at that point have any idea how to make it move like a fluke. But over a few years of tweaking and this or that, I got it to slide side to side and give it that kind of fluky look.

And so just from that experience with my dad and watching him fish that fluke and get these bass to eat it, and me not be able to do that with anything that I had because it wouldn't move that way. And the next day I went out and I caught two 30-inch drivers, which was for the Chesapeake at the time of year, that was pretty spectacular.

But yeah, I mean a lot of my crayfish patterns, a lot of my hellgramite patterns that I tie, I look at the splash that a lead head creates when it hits water in comparison to like, and how a fish reacts to that in low, clear water. And I just, I've been messing with different weight of, even going down to like be chain eyes sometimes when the water's super low and clear because you get a fly that just drops the bottom really fast with heavy lead, and it's going to get stuck almost immediately because it wants to fall right in this first crevice. It wants to get as deep as it possibly can, where if you start looking at these guys and how they fish lighter tubes and sometimes weightless worms, and you get those fish to eat them on the drop.

I want to figure out how do I create a fly to do that? How do I get it to fish not only on the bottom without getting stuck, but also how do I fish it on the drop, stay connected. What's the fine line between too light and too heavy and kind of switching around and messing with that stuff?

And so, yeah, not only are you trying to necessarily imitate what a specific lure does, and sometimes you don't need to, because I think sometimes flies, the way they're softer and the way they glide more than jerk around. I think sometimes, depending on the conditions, that softer, subtler presentation is what fly fishing has an advantage over spin fishing in a lot of ways. And so there's a huge full circle when it comes to fishing gear and designing and fishing flies.

Marvin Cash: It's interesting too, because I would imagine that there are other things that you're thinking about because, like, I know you guide a lot, right? So the last thing you want to do is to come off the water and need to tie a fly that takes an hour to tie. Right. So in addition to kind of the way that the to maybe mimic the way gear fishes and looking at those triggers and presentation, what are some of those other things that kind of, for example, different materials, finding an easier way to get to where you need to be, things like that.

Jake Villwock: I mean, I think profile is a huge thing. And so, like, I love sitting at device and spending 45 minutes tying a crayfish and then swear sometimes out loud. But a lot of times in my head when 10 minutes into fishing, it gets stuck on the bottom and we can't get it out.

So, but I also feel like I take a lot of pride in my fly box and I'm pretty OCD when it comes to fly boxes. And so, like, I want to look pretty and I want to fish well. And I want to be happy about the fly that I tie it. So a lot of times I would rather spend 40 minutes tying one fly or two flies, and they come up exactly what I wanted to and do exactly they want versus, like, how do I cut corners, how do I make it simpler but yet still effective?

And so it is a fine line between that, wanting to get home and spend some time with my significant other and make sure she's doing all right and happy and be a good partner and then like, all right, I'm going to the time room. I got to talk for three hours.

So I would say just profile is the biggest thing. If you can create something that doesn't take a long time but still gives you that profile and that action you want, that is a happy medium. But I have to fish and fly that I'm confident in, and if I'm not confident in it, I'm not going to fish it.

But I have a fly that's very similar. The Schultz's red eyed leech and a couple of his other bottom mouthy ones that are a lot of rabbit and a couple rubber legs and you add a little bit of foam sometimes to the glue it on the back of the tail to help that tail stand up a little bit more. And they take five, ten minutes to tie. So you can crank six or ten of them out in an hour. And they fish just as well.

But when I'm in my artistic mode, I'm gonna sit here and tie double or triple articulated or even a game changer style crayfish and just kind of have to deal with it if I lose it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, there you go. Like I said, hopefully not in the first ten minutes of the trip. Right?

Jake Villwock: Yeah, I mean, so you lose them. I've got a couple crayfish that do take me about 30 minutes to tie. And I fished one for four days before we lost it. And I said, that fly service purpose. It's got probably a hundred fish on it. A giant. Couple giant catfish. And it served its purpose, it caught its fish. So it's okay if I donate that one to the river.

But yeah, I hate it when you're 10 minutes in, you're like. The guy's like, oh, shoot, I lost another one. I mean, I remember two years ago, we were fishing. I was. I got into tying the crafty changers and got super OCD about the taper. And so it take me an hour and a half to tie. And then I got into those mallard changers with the kind of veiled mallard and that. They'll take me two and a half hours if I really wanted to get it perfect.

And I've got guys, they'll throw it 20ft in a tree. How? I have no idea. But they do. And then they just rip it off and like, oh, sorry. And I'll nonchalantly say, like, oh, well, that there goes two hours of my life. And they'll turn around and they'll be like, what? And I'm like, well, that. I didn't buy that. And they're like, oh, shoot, I'm so sorry.

So sometimes I'll give a client of a hard time, but most time, you just kind of got to eat it and know that that's what's possibly going to happen if you spend that much time tie to fly. But I'm all about any fly that I would fish would also let my clients fish. So I'm not one of those guys. It's like, here's the guide box, and here's my box. It's like, if it's good enough to me and if it's good enough for them. So I try not to skimp on that.

Marvin Cash: Got it. And you mentioned Blane and Schultze, who are some of the other folks that have influenced you as a tire.

Jake Villwock: I mean, those two, for sure. And Lefty Cray, we kind of have a similar. We had. He was a Maryland boy, I was a Maryland boy. And I've always loved his receiver, and it's been one of my favorite flies. And so getting to meet him a few times was pretty awesome and just looking at reading some of his books and stuff.

And then Dave Skoke, big saltwater tire and fisherman in the Northeast, like his mushmouse flies, one of my favorite striper flies, and still to this day, one of the hardest ones to get right. You look at it, you're like, that's super simple. But when it comes down to it, it's a pretty difficult one to actually tie.

So of course, growing up on the Chesapeake and being originally being kind of a saltwater guy, a lot of my influencer guys that spend a lot of their time on the salt water because as much as I love smallmouth, the salt is definitely my true passion. So I should say it's my true passion. It's where I cut my teeth. And I love all predator fish personally.

But so, yeah, so I would say those four guys are huge. And even Greg Seno, I remember when I was still managing the shop, we did a couple celebrities tying appearances. And I got Seno and Schultz and Blane, and it was kind of cool. I lived above the fly shop. And so when I was setting up, I said, hey, if you guys don't want to pay for a hotel, you guys, I've got a couch you guys are more happy to crash on.

So all those guys stayed with me and drank some beer afterwards tied to flies. And I remember I was thinking about submitting some flies to Orvis at the time. And I showed Senyo my roamer, and he said, send that right away. That's, I've never seen. He's like, obviously it's a saltwater fly. It's got some deceiver influence. But he's like, I've never seen fly tide that specific way.

And I just showed him a couple other flies and he was very helpful. He was like, this fly is awesome, but it doesn't have any sex appeal. So you've gotta add it. Will fish eat it? Absolutely. Will people buy it? Probably not. It looks too simple. So go back and make it a little bit flashier.

And I took everything he said and sure enough, like, I submitted those flies and Orbis loved them. And so I have a lot of. Got to give him a lot of credit for helping me with that and being very, as if you've ever met Senyo or heard him talk. He's very blunt and he'll tell you how he feels. And I think that was awesome because he gave me some very good feedback and ideas.

And so those guys have always kind of. And I mean, one of the first blogs I ever looked at was Seattle Outfitters, Seniors Tying blog. So a lot of my original east coast steelhead flies came from tying those flies on his site. So gotta give him credit too. And I'm sure there's a bunch of other people, but I could sit here for an hour and probably tell you everybody that's helped me out.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very neat. And I always like to ask guys that tie a lot to share the most unusual tool that they use that they can't live without.

Jake Villwock: That's a good question. I would probably say I have two tools that I don't leave home without or that are always on my bench. And one of them is, so I tie a lot with the right bobbins that have the adjustment to it. And I was trying to figure out a way to make a handheld kind of wrench for that thing, and my buddy Rob came up to me one day. He's like, dude, I found it. And I was like, what?

He goes, it's a Lego. And it's this little four prong Lego that we mounted to a hair packer. We glued it in there and it. So now it's like a little wrench that loosens and tightens the drag on a right bobbin. And so that one, I have two of them and I might be the only person in the world that has them, but that's one of those weird tools that I never leave without.

And then because I tie with so much bucktail, I used to never leave home without a pen. The tube on a big pen to push that, push the deer back. But there's a new tool out that came out a couple years ago called the Proto John. And it's a 3D printer, three or four different sizes. And they make a really small one that's not much, a little smaller than a big pen. But it's got kind of grooves on it so it holds that bucktail when you push it back.

And I have one of the original ones. When the guy was designing them, he was. Had the full of a big one and like kind of what he would call the full size one. And I said, can you make one that's a little smaller for flies like this? He was at a show with me and he's like, yeah. So a week later he sent me one and I have that thing, it's bright orange so I can't lose it.

So yeah, those are two pretty unique tools. A common tool that I never leave without, or I've always got is a pair of hemostat. Because when you're tying with your rooster hackles or rooster feathers and stuff like that, and you're trying to put them on the side of a shank, if you tie them in with a non smack spine, sometimes they spin a little bit. And so I always have a pair of hemostats with me so I can smush the spines of the feathers. So they typically lay a lot easier on the sides of the fly.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very neat. When I was reading your book this weekend getting ready for the interview and when I saw that mentioned in the tools that you liked, I went. I think it was, there's a video on the Mad river site. And I was pretty blown away. It's a pretty slick tool.

Jake Villwock: Yeah, I mean it's super cool. And not to name drop, but I remember we were at the Lefty's Tie Fest in Maryland. Small show. And Bob Popovic was there and I was there. Actually I got smushed at the time table between Bob Popovic and Rich Stroller. So it was kind of cool. There was. I had kind of two streamer legends. I was smushed in between them.

And we were kind of talking about it and Bob came up with the idea of actually making it kind of variegated on the inside so the bucktail wouldn't spin, it wouldn't hold it in place as you push it back. And so it was kind of cool to have that experience. And I guess Popovics would also be another influential tire when it came to his stuff, his beast flies and his hollow flies and going down the. Actually heading down your way. October to do some Albie fishing. And so I've been obsessed with surf candies and stuff like that recently. And so I've been burning the pages of a book, looking at all reading every word to make sure I got it right. And so it's kind of fun.

Marvin Cash: But yeah, very cool. And your current day job is you're the owner of Relentless Fly Fishing. And you've talked a little bit about guiding in Alaska, but how did you go from kind of being a late fly fishing bloomer to getting the guide bug?

Jake Villwock: Yeah, honestly, it was day one in Alaska. I graduated college having no idea what I was going to do with my life and never really thought about fishing being a career path for me. My dad's a commercial fisherman and so fishing has kind of always been my life. He's also retired tournament bass guy on kind of local circuits. And so I never really thought about it.

And I did a summer in Alaska in college. They had a program called Study America so you credit to backpack the inside Passage of Alaska. And I had some family up there and my cousin, who actually teaches with my old boss Paul. They're both teachers at a native high school in Sitka. And he was like, hey, man, what do you think of Alaska? I'm like, this place is the most amazing place I've ever been. Like, I'd love to come back. He's like, well, I could probably get you a job counting fish at a weir. I've got some buddies that are fishing guides. And I said, yeah, man, that'd be awesome. And that was the end of the conversation.

And three weeks before I graduated, he said, hey, Paul's looking for a deckhand and a fly fishing guy. Do you have. He's like, I know you fish a lot. Do you have any fly fishing experience? And I said, well, I have some, I know how to tie knots and I can roughly cast it.

And so I moved to Alaska and I got there and Paul, Paul came up and we introduced each other, we introduced ourselves to each other and he said, all right, well, we're gonna go seal up fishing for three days. You're in charge of cleaning the boat and getting it ready to go. And so college graduate coming out of college, you think when you graduate like you deserve everything. And I'm laying on my back underneath of a 27-foot ocean going boat scrubbing barnacles. And I'm like, I moved to Alaska to do this. I just, what am I doing?

And I looked over to my left and there was a giant mountain right next to me. And I said, oh yeah, this is okay, I'll do this. And then my first day on the steelhead, we did a little bit of guidance to steelhead in the early season and then fly fishing for trout and salmon and then deep sea stuff. And I remember walking up the river the first time with the fly rod sight-fishing for steel in these small creeks in southeast Alaska and just being like blown away by the intricacy of fly fishing. And that was it, it was the first day in Alaska that I was like, okay, this is something that I could definitely get into.

And moved back after two years up there and was working at a hardware store that I worked at in high school and college and I was terrible. I would go from grizzly bears and orcas and humpback whales to count nuts and bolts and in the hardware store. And so blindly I put a cover letter out to a few fly shops and guide services up down the east coast. And TCO got back to me and I went up and interviewed and they said, yeah, we'd love to have you.

And during the interview they asked me, do you have any questions? And the only question I had was, do you guys have a guide service? Because I knew that guiding was what I really wanted to do. And they said, well, we kind of have this on stream instruction, but it's not really guiding, but so we do some guiding, but. And I said well, and in my head I'm like, well, I know what I'm going to do.

So while I was managing the fly shop and reading, I basically started building a guide service. And we went from doing about seven to 10 trips a year to 100 and some, and then relentless is we're on our fifth season right now and we're quadrupling that number right now. So it's been a pretty cool experience.

So I would say that was an extremely long winded answer for. I just kind of as soon as I put a fly rod in my hand, knew that I wanted to teach people how to do this and I loved it. And so that's kind of what drew me to be a guide, was just loving the atmosphere and the adventure and teaching people how to fish and it just kind of fit. So it was one of those things that kind of got dumped into and then just ran with it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. Really neat and so you grew it and you're. I guess really, you're kind of like the contract guide service for TCO. What TCO fly shops do you guide for.

Jake Villwock: So relentless manages the Haverford location, the Reading location and the Boiling Springs location. So if you were to ever go out with, call any of those stores, we do all of the guiding for those stores.

And originally it was just the Reading and the Bulling Springs location because those are the two shops that I managed at one point in my career at TCO. And then we kind of decided, I had some guys that worked at both stores and between like Reading and Haverford or Boiling Springs and Reading. And so we kind of made sense that we would just put all three of them together and it's been great.

I mean, I've got an amazing crew of guys. I always, listening to Tony and Paul and those guys talk about successful business. And I'm, I was a business major as well. And so just going from the academic side to the real world side and just seeing the success of these few companies that I've worked for in the industry. They've always had an amazing team. Their team is what makes them successful. And I have two full time guys, Neil Sunday and Brendan Roosh. Brendan mainly does smallmouth and Neil is almost 100 trout. Does some steelhead stuff as well.

But those guys are like, they're my pinch hitters. Like anytime I need them, they're there. I asked them three years ago if they give, have a little faith in me and kind of commit to working full time. And I needed a couple years to make to give it, to get them to where they are now. But I needed their commitment to be full time. And they said, yeah, let's do it.

And then all my part time guys either work in the shop or do something in the outdoor world and then guide part time slash full time. Some of them are doing a good number of days, but they all bring something different to the table. And I think that's what makes us so successful is we have just a well rounded group of guys.

We've got some guys that are biologists by trade. And so they'll send me a. They'll send me a picture of a bug, and I'm like, oh, it's a sulfur. And they'll be like, no, it's a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't even know what that means. Neither does a trout. It's just yellow.

And but so we've got some guys that are super deep into that, and then we've got guys that are big steelhead guys. And Brandon is by far, I think he might be a fish. He might be a smallmouth, I would say, because he just loves smallmouth. And so they're in it. I'm in it. And it's been a great experience so far, so. Although I did have two casualties this year, two of my guys broke their feet, which I don't even know how to. I can't even fathom what that would be like in the middle of the season to lose lose a month to six weeks because I broke my foot. But so there's. It's never. It's never a smooth experience, I guess.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting, too, that you say that, because I think people are always asking me for guide recommendations, and I think just like, people have different personalities, guides have different personalities, and you're always trying to match the right guide with the right person, for sure.

Jake Villwock: Yeah, that's actually one of the biggest things that I have to deal with when somebody calls or emails, and I would say after over a decade doing this, you can kind of read a person's personality now even through email in a lot of ways. And then once you get them on the phone, you're like, okay, this guy needs to go with this guy, or this girl needs to go with this guy. And it's definitely a balancing act for sure of figuring out who's going to have the best experience.

And honestly, sometimes I give trips away that I could potentially do, but I know that now in my career and where I'm at, like, they're going to have a better experience with Neil or they're going to have a better experience with one of my newer guys because I just don't have the energy to teach it like I used to. I still like to teach a lot, but I'm just. I'm not as good as some of these other guys is at teaching.

So I know that they're gonna have a better experience with this guy than they would me. So I happily slide that to somebody else. And that's something that I had to wrap my head around as well is I don't. I want to do every trip that gets that calls, but I don't have the time. And I know that that's one of the reasons why I have an awesome team is because these guys will fit with different groups.

And one of the really cool things that's come out of COVID is we've had a lot of new anglers and a lot of families and husbands and wives or sons and moms that come out and do it and we've seen a huge flux and, or a huge increase in female anglers. And I think that's amazing.

But some of my guys, like Neil, for instance, he was an Olympic snowboard coach. And he still coaches downhill snowboard racing. And so he's a really good teacher for kids and the younger generation. And so when. Anytime we have somebody that calls it, got a younger kid, like Neil is definitely my top choice. Or unless I've met them at a show or something and they request me specifically, I try to slide them to Neil. But, Yeah, I don't know where I was going with that. So. Oh, we were talking about personalities and stuff like that.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I mean, I think it all kind of gets put together to kind of that secret for being a good guide. Right?

Jake Villwock: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that you definitely have to know your strengths and your weaknesses and that was a lesson I had to learn. Especially being the owner and having 13 other guys that are working for me, like, I can't be on the water every day anymore. That was hard for me to kind of. I'm still doing a terrible job at it, but I'm trying really hard. That's my 20, 21 goal, is to step back and be okay with it.

And know that, like, it's not about, oh, I did 200 trips this year. How many did you do? And it's about how many did the guy. How many did the guy service do and how many happy clients do we have? And I love being the boss. And now I don't like calling myself a boss because I have a team. But being the point man and getting an email from a client that Brendan took out or Neil took out or Eric took out or Alex took out, and then saying, we had a phenomenal time. And please forward this email to that guide and tell them that we'll be back because of how awesome they were for me. That's awesome. I love hearing that stuff.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. And so you built this guide service while you were at TCO, and gosh, probably within what, the last four to six weeks, you released your first book. Smallmouth Bass Flies top to Bottom. Not everybody that's in fly fishing writes a book. What made you want to do that?

Jake Villwock: Honestly, it's, I would say, a dream of mine since the first time I walked into the fly shop in Alaska and there was some books there, and I was like, man, this is so cool to know something so well and to have the information that you want to share. And I was actually. If you were to ask any one of my English professors from like middle school through college, if you told them that I wrote a book, they'd probably slap you in the face and tell you that you're lying, because I was terrible at writing in the English language.

But so I was always afraid of that. But I always knew that I wanted to write a book. It was something that I was more or less like, what am I going to write it on? And I remember I bought, I might botch this, but I think it was Chico Fernandez's bonefish book when I was in Alaska, which is of all places, which was kind of funny. And I read that book cover to cover because I was like obsessed with bonefish.

And just the knowledge and the information you get from a book, it's like, why would you not want to share what you've put, dedicated your life to for the past 14 years? Why would you not want to like, try to cut a lot of that learning curve off for people and share that information? And the book was something that could reach people from all around the world, and not a lot of people can.

I would say, let me back up. You can't get that reach of people just by doing a presentation at a local TU chapter at a fly show. And so to be able to kind of go at a worldwide kind of education, I thought that was something that would be really cool.

And the book process was tough. I mean, when I was writing, I was not like sure I was ever going to finish it. There were times where I was like, oh my God, this. What did I get myself into? And then you get really close to the end and you, your mentality changes. If you would ask me six months into writing a book, might ever write another one, I would have told you you're crazy. No, but when I published it and I got the first copy in the mail, I was like, I'd read another one. Now that I know how to do it, I would write another one.

But so, yeah, I guess it would be an industry dream that I've had since the day I stepped into the industry. And it's kind of cool to have done it.

Marvin Cash: It's really neat too. And looking at the book and I'm obviously talking to you, you've got a ton of smallmouth knowledge and you share not just fly information in the book, but that's really the chassis that you kind of built all of this around and kind of the way, I guess you want to share your smallmouth knowledge. And for folks that haven't had a chance to take a look at the book, it's basically broken into surface, mid column and bottom flies. And I was really curious how you came up with the fly oriented approach to structure your book.

Jake Villwock: I think the biggest, the reason why we went with that direction was because I had a lot of flies and as much as I didn't want to be known as a fly tire, I want to be known more as a guide and that stuff. I realized that fly tying in a lot of ways or shouldn't say fly tying, but flies in general, in a lot of ways are the basis of fly fishing. And so you can educate people not only on a fly, but how to fish it, why to fish it, when to fish it and where to fish it.

And when you break it down that way, one of the reasons why we want to do that is because smallmouth bass are very similar to trout, to big water trout. Where they hold, what they eat, how they eat, when they eat. And so I really wanted to kind of try to bridge the gap between trout fishing and smallmouth fishing. So I kind of broke it down into the three main feeding columns for any fish really, not just trout, but and kind of show that they're a freshwater predator just like a trout.

And so I wanted to break it down that way. And I also didn't want to write a step by step how to fish book. I mean there's a lot of, when we were kind of deciding what we were going to write, how we were going to write it, it was like, there's a kind of three different types of books. There's like the fly encyclopedia book where it's just patterns and talking about different flies and then there's the tutorial book and then there's the tips, tactics and strategies book.

And so I kind of wanted to try to put all three of them together and give you an encyclopedia of smallmouth bass. Not just fly patterns, but the tying stuff, the new materials and kind of put it all together and make it a bench book and make it something that you can sit on your fly tying bench and look at it when you're tied, apply. And even if you're not tying one of the flies in the book, you can, there's a lot of techniques in there that go to plenty of different flies.

And so that was another thing I wanted to really talk about in the book was different techniques, not necessarily the fly pattern, but like, even like Blane's game changer, just talking about the different ways you can tie it, the different sizes you can tie it and different types, flies that you can tie on that platform. And I tell a lot of people that Blane didn't just create the game changer Blane created a platform for an articulated fly that wiggles and moves like nothing that's ever been designed before.

So if you look at the game changer platform itself, that can translate into a lot of other flies besides bait fishing and stuff like that. So there was a lot of different stuff that went into that. And quite frankly, reading it now and looking back, there's more and more stuff that I've learned in the past two years that I didn't get to put in that book that I'm like, man, there's some stuff that I missed. There's some stuff that I wish I would have elaborated a little bit more on. But who knows? Maybe there's another bass book in the future. I don't know.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, there you go. And it's interesting, too, because each section has, I don't know, probably six or seven patterns. And it was interesting. I thought I noticed some of them are your patterns. A lot of them aren't. And I was curious how you picked the half a dozen or so top water flies, mid column flies, and bottom flies.

Jake Villwock: Honestly, I looked in my fly box and I was like, what are the flies that I use the most? And then I have a shoe box of flies that have been taken out of the box from 12 years ago when I started smallmouth fishing on the Schuylkill River. And the flies that we use there were a little bit different than what we used on the Juniata, a little bit different than the stuff you used in Michigan.

So bass are bass, but I think I've heard my experience many times is like bass are bass, but each system fishes differently, and so there's a different approach to each system. And so I was digging through this shoebox full of flies that I would call my reject flies, and pulled some stuff out that I was like, oh, my gosh, I totally forgot about how great this fly was. Like, that's got to go in there. I haven't tied it five years, but this one's got to go in there.

And then just some other iconic stuff that I wanted to elaborate on. Like obviously Blane's book came out the game changer book, and so it was kind of hard to put one in there, but I had my own spin on one of this, on one of the changer patterns or platforms, and wanted to share that.

And I've got some buddies that are huge trout streamer guys. And they do a lot of bass too. And my one buddy, Austin, was going to the White river, and he pulled out his fly box, the White River. And he was like, dude, check this out. Check this out. And I was like, oh, my God, that's an amazing spring bass player. Oh my God, that'll be a perfect like wintertime fly. And I said, can I have one of those? And it was like. He said, yeah, sure.

And so one of them, which is the crafty bait that was one that he tied to the White river for trout. And I was like, this is a perfect example of a trout fly that will go into a bass, that would go into the warm water world as well. So I did a few tweaks to it and made it a little bit more bashy by adding a rattle and making the head a little bulkier and just a couple other minuscule things under the hood. And I said, austin, check this out. And he was like, how did you make my pattern better? And I was like, I don't know. I just thought about it the way I would want a bath to eat it or bath to see it.

And then I asked him, I said, can I do a tutorial this one? Because I think it's a perfect trout streamer that will go over, no back. He was like, yeah, absolutely. So a lot of it was influenced from some of my buddies that were trout guys too.

And I wrote an article for Fly Fisherman magazine, which was pretty awesome too. To be able to write for that magazine was pretty awesome. But I wrote an article on trout tactics for smallmouth. And it kind of took some stuff out of the top water pieces of my book and put it into a magazine article and talked about how low water smallmouth are very similar to spring creek trout or western trout. Thinking about the Missouri river and stuff like that.

And so that's where some of the parachute. Chubby Chernobyl or parachute Chernobyl Hopper. Got into the book because it was one of my favorite grasshopper patterns to use for western trout. And then when we had started to see bass spooking off of frogs and bigger poppers, I started bringing out some grasshoppers and stuff. And that became one of my best low water summit popper or summer bugs.

And so when you kind of move around in that side of the world, you kind of want to show everybody the different stuff. So I would say flies that have been tried and true, not only bass, but also trout, and then tested on bass and they work.

And we talked about the other day when we talked on the phone about the book that the guys from Wisconsin did. And they talk a lot about the Mr. Wiggly and the foam game out there and the confidence eats. And I remember reading some of that stuff and actually I think Brennan was the first one that showed me the old Mr. Wiggly Fly. And I was like, wow, that's awesome. And I said that's the key that we needed for summertime.

And so taking some influence from those guys have been guiding longer and I've been here on this planet in some way. So taking a lot of stuff that you've learned from other people too, and kind of showcasing that that's the best way to do it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I think one of the neat things too, and we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording tonight, is the patterns are not just kind of the most modern, most current, but it's clear that you have a lot of respect for kind of what I think of as the entire progression. I mean, you've got kind of classic Chuck Kraft patterns that people think about and you've got some of the kind of early Michigan articulated fly designs and then some of the current stuff too. So I thought it was really interesting how your fly selection really kind of covered the history of smallmouth flies.

Jake Villwock: Yeah, I mean, I obviously watched, unfortunately, Chuck Craft passed away, but I remember talking to him at some of the shows and down at Mossy Creek a few times and just looking at his flies and being like, wow. Like they're simple, but man, do they work.

And you think about the term guide fly, and you think about just how you wanted that fly to work. And when you take the simple fly, like even the Clouser Minnow, I mean Bob came up with one of the greatest flies that will ever be created, not only for smallmouth, but for trout and for saltwater. And you can't. You can never forget about where the basketball started.

No matter how new you are, how old you are into it, you always got to remember that these guys are the guys that were doing it way before I picked up a fly rod. And so the stuff that worked for them will always be a staple in the bass world. And so I think it's really important to always remember the guys that came first and the guys that kind of blazed the path first.

And I think I get a lot of that from the commercial fishing world because like, my dad, when I was when I was a kid, he was in his 30s and 20s, and he is very respectful of the commercial guys that were in their 50s and 60s. And so like, kind of seeing that at a very young age of like, oh, you always have to respect the guys that been doing it longer and the guys that are still to this day cutting. Cutting the edge of fly design and even just reimagining stuff or like, tweaking the flies that were amazing back then so that they'll then work a little bit more.

Because I think one of the biggest things with fly design today is that like, the fishing pressure is way more. And so those bass can get not just bass, but any fish gets very familiar with certain things and the way that they move. And I think that modern fly design is trying to break that puzzle of how to get that. How do you get those fish to eat the way they did 20 years ago with 20, 30, 40 times more pressure?

And I think that's one of the big things with fly design today. And just thinking about those guys back then, their flies still work today, which means that like, they figured it out, and they figured out long term. So I think it's important to show that stuff. And all the guys. I mean, Ellie Rhodes down in Virginia, he sent me some amazing flies. Obviously he was right there with Chuck Kraft, and I just, I love seeing some of that his influence in those guys as well, and just the confidence that they have in those patterns.

And I think that was a big deciding factor for me, which is how much confidence is. Do other guys have in these flies and how much confidence they have in their flies. And it wasn't just the bass book. Bass book for Pennsylvania was the bass book for everywhere they're smallmouth.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting too, because kind of talking about that, it's really interesting to see those kind of fly design and material selection really for people that are really serious about tying and particularly, none of us get to fish as much as we want to. Some of the things you share in terms of. We were talking before we started recording, like how to manage flash and veiling, a game changer. Little things like that, I think are really kind of for everything else, make the book a super worthwhile purchase for folks who want to figure that out. What made you so comfortable to share some of that secret sauce with all of us?

Jake Villwock: It's funny, I remember my dad being a commercial fisherman. He's always like, don't tell anybody anything. Next thing you know, you're gonna have 10 guys in your spot. And I remember telling my dad the first time that I was writing a book, and I thought he'd be like super proud of me, which he is. But he was like, huh, huh. Didn't I teach you anything? Gonna give away all your secrets?

And I said, well, part of the fun of being a guide and being a if you would call it a quote unquote professional in the industry is that you learn the hard way. And if I can share some of that information, I'm gonna share that information with other people. And most of people aren't gonna fish as much as I am, and they're not, so for that information to get into the hands of people that don't have the ability to experiment as much as I do, I think that's my part of giving back to the industry and like, making my time on the water, whether it's a rock star day.

Or it's one of those days where it leaves you scratching your head like, what did I just do? I mean, I remember last year, water got so low that there was a couple times I was like, I just wrote a book on smallmouth. I can't figure them out. Like, what is going on? And then you have to take a step back and you think about, okay, well, this is what the conditions are and this is how I would think about it.

So for me, I just thought it was giving back. And another thing that's that I think is important too is is that flies, no matter how well or bad they're tied or how many times they're fished, like every angler fishes applied differently. So like, I am happy to tell you how I fish them, I'm happy to tell you how I tie them, but the way that I fish it versus the way Brennan fishes them or Bill Bob, who's coming down in a kayak, fishes them, they're all going to be fished different.

And so I think one of the biggest things for me is that like, I know that that there's minuscule differences in the way that I'll fish versus the way another guy will fish. And so I'm not really that scared about it. And I also think that the information that I've learned, I want to share. I had somebody once tell me, like, isn't the fun of fly fishing being able to figure it out yourself? And my response to that is like, yeah, but another part is being able to share all that information with people that don't do it as much. And I think that's important.

So I don't know, I think I just wanted to share people. I wanted to make it easier for people. I wanted. I really. My main focus on this book was to get people jazzed on smallmouth because it's a rapid growing part of our sport. And I think that getting, if I can get people excited about it, whether they hire me as a guide or one of my other guys or just get out, fish and get excited about smallmouth, that that's what I really care about. So I guess that might be the main reason why I did it, was because I want people to get excited about that.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting too. And in addition to, I don't know, probably the 20 or so main patterns in the book. I mean, you literally have hundreds of patterns from all over the world. I mean, not just people that we know about, like Chuck or Ellie Rhodes or Schultze or Blane. But, I mean, I think I saw some patterns from Europe and tell us a little bit about what the process was like soliciting and collecting all those patterns and organizing them for the book.

Jake Villwock: Yeah, I mean, some of it fell on deaf ears. And I just kind of reached out. I will say know social media, depending on who you talk to. Some people say social media ruined the sport. Some people say a black hole of ideas. And some people say that people just fish now to become into famous. But I think that what Instagram did was it opened up a lot of avenues of just getting to know people.

So I'll be honest. Like I found emails with some people and obviously got information from other people that I knew and was like, hey, do you know this person? Do you have their contact info? Can I get their stuff? I want to get the slides. But also some of it was I just drafted up basically an email, a very short and to the point email, and I sent it to like 20 different tires via Instagram. And probably 15 of them got back to me and said yes. And then some of them never sent flies. And after the six or seven time I asked them for them and they said, yeah, yeah, they're coming. I got to the point where I just didn't have time anymore and they didn't make it.

But some of the guys were awesome. And they just were like, yep, what's your address? And a week later I had four patterns or five patterns, and it was great. So a lot of guys are super stoked to see it. And I also thought it was really cool because to see the number of people, I mean, I've got bass buys from Colorado and Montana in California and Texas and I think out Texas. And then the main states like Michigan and New York and Virginia and Maine and PA.

But it was really cool to get some guys that were trouty guys in Colorado that tied certain Crayfish patterns that trout eat. And I was like, hey, can I have some of those from a book? Because those are a basic crayfish pattern. They're like, yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah, Instagram was a huge part of that. And then just kind of going through people at the industry and they were bass guys or trout guys that had good flies. And I just kind of reached out and said, hey, can I have some flies? And I now have a bag of flies from around the world, which some of them I have fished. Some of them are so nice that I refuse to fish. Some of them I just have as patterns to have and talk about.

But some of it was just like I wanted. I went through the kind of gamut of like, what are the classics? What are the originals? And then what are the more modern ones? What are some of the more off the wall ones? You're like, man, that guy in Spain spins some amazing deer hair bugs. Like, yeah, they might be very similar to Pat Cohen, who I've got a bunch of his flies or a couple of the guys that I've got from out west or Midwest. But like, man, like, he's just got a different spin on him and I really like the style. And so shoot him an email and say, hey, like, can you send me some stuff? And they're all about it.

So I know that we've sent, the fly shop did most of the book sales for me. As well as other shops bought books too, but TCO has sold like, well over 300 copies at this point. And I know they've sent them to Australia, England, I think there might have been one in South Africa or something like that. So people are buying them around the world, which is really cool. I think that having influence from all over the country in the world just added to that kind of camaraderie of fly fishing. So it's not the US versus the rest of the world. It's the whole world as a whole in this industry is pushing the edge.

Marvin Cash: So, yeah, it's really neat. And you mentioned that you're ready to write another book, but the writing and editing process was a bit of a grind at some point. What was the process like? And what was kind of the biggest challenge or surprise that popped out?

Jake Villwock: I think the biggest challenge was just time. I mean, you don't realize that writing a book is not just writing words on a piece of paper. It's gathering the flies, it's kind of contacting different tires. It's you ask them to send a recipe in a specific kind of order and it comes completely backwards. And so instead of sitting down for your two hours allotted a day that you're gonna write, you're gonna have all these ideas. You've got to sit there and rewrite all the recipes and when you take the photos, you have to number the photos and then you have to remember which photo goes to which pattern.

And so there was a lot of back and forth and organization that I thought was the hardest part. And it was coming at all different speeds. And so I'd say the biggest challenge for me was just like putting it all together and realizing once you start writing that the writing itself is the easiest part of the book process. And so getting the photos and making sure everything is the right resolution and all of the little stuff.

I mean, honestly, I finished the book and then it was a three month back and forth to stack poll on what about, is this the right way that this is supposed to be spelled? Is this the right term for this is do you want all of these to be this way, written this way or this way or. And so the details that go into writing a book and getting it published is just daunting, in my opinion.

But once you do it once, okay, now I know that I have to write and then I have to manage all the photos and manage all the captions and make sure it all comes back full circle and it's not just a bunch of ideas on a piece of paper. I think that was the biggest challenge, but honestly, it was a lot of fun.

One of the things that I thought was really fun was actually getting to do a couple photo shoots. So it was kind of like you're photo shooting, but you're really just fishing with your buddies and taking a really high quality camera along and trying to get the right shots and the right angles. And so it was a process for sure. But it was definitely fun. But I would say that the writing part, realizing that the writing was the easiest part, was probably the most daunting thing to kind of overcome.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, interesting, because you kind of think you're done, and then you're not.

Jake Villwock: Yeah. And then you're like, oh, shoot, I forgot about. I forgot all of the hook sizes for those 25 flies, and you got to go back through and get the right. The other thing that was interesting, too, was you had to have the right size of hook, the right name of name of the hook, and the right brand of the hook. And sometimes you would get a fly, and you'd be like, oh, it's just a size six streamer hook. Well, what kind of streamer hook is that?

So then I have to go through and like, look at, I'm like, I'm working in the fly shop and being a tire, I have a pretty good eye for most hook brands. And so I got a hook, and I'm like, that's probably a mustard. It's on a saltwater hook, and it's not as shiny. Mustad's known for their kind of more like matte finish. And so you go to Mustad, and you like, look at the fly, you look at the hook, you look at the fly. Some of it was just a guess of like, yeah, that looks pretty close to what I think it is, and then you just kind of go with it.

But knowing all of the materials, I mean, when I was writing, I would say that 70 of the time I was writing, I had a hairline in a wopsy catalog sitting next to me to make sure I got the right color name and all that stuff, right? So. But it was fun. It was definitely a challenge for me. But once it all started coming together, then my kind of OCD organizational mind just got really excited, and I just kind of rolled with it.

Marvin Cash: Very neat. Is there anything else on the horizon you want to share with our listeners?

Jake Villwock: Well, we kind of talked a little bit about my love for the saltwater and the Chesapeake. And hopefully, maybe in the future there will be a little bit water influence back in my life as well as relentless. And so we might. One of the big things that I'm hoping will happen if everything follow stars line is that maybe. Maybe as Long as it doesn't drag me too thin. Is kind of getting back into a little bit of my home waters on the Chesapeake and kind of maybe guiding down there a bit.

But the other big thing that's hopefully going to happen is show season this year. If it actually works with COVID and stuff. But I'll be at the International Fly Tying Symposium this year and I'm pretty excited and also kind of blessed to be a quote unquote celebrity there. So I'll be doing a tying demo and a presentation and then at all the other shows I'll be doing some temos and I'll be at the author's booth and stuff.

And so show season will be my big thing. I'm trying to plan a book tour right now. But there's a lot of maybes, if ands and buts. A lot of shops still aren't doing the in person stuff. And so what's kind of trying to figure that kind of navigate through that situation. And then if that doesn't work, what I'll probably end up doing again this winter is doing zoom classes and presentations and stuff like that. And we did some last year which were very successful.

And I think the zoom stuff's not going anywhere because it can reach so much further. And people want to learn how to tie certain flies, but they might be in Michigan and I'd be in New York and they're not going to drive before they experience something.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And before I let you hop, you want to let folks know kind of the best place to buy your book and kind of how to follow your adventures and Relentless Fly Fishing's adventures online.

Jake Villwock: Yeah, sure. So obviously you can get the book on Amazon. A lot of people have prime, so that makes it pretty easy. But your local fly shop has it. I know Schultz has it, Tight Lines has it, Mad river has it. TCO obviously has it. But most of my book sales go through TCO, so if you really need to get them, they've got them in stock. And so that would be the easiest way to get them. Hopefully if my books show up, I just ordered a few more cases because I sold out, they'll be on my website as well.

And my website is Relentless Fly Fishing dot com. That's got all the information for our guide service. It's got some links to some YouTube videos and I've got a blog that I kind of keep up on. I'm not doing a great job at it right now, but you can click on the link to subscribe to our mailing list and we're, right now quarterly newsletters and hopefully next year we'll do monthly newsletters with kind of things that are going on and whatnot.

And then you can follow me on Instagram, Relentless Fly Fishing or Facebook. It's Jake Billwalk or Relentless Fly Fishing. Got a page for that as well. And I think that's about all I got right now. Oh, I do have a YouTube channel, Relentless TV. It's got some time videos and some other stuff like that. I'm kind of trying to revamp that a little bit. I've been out of that game for a bit. So depending on how cold the winter is, that's when you'll see more videos come up. Probably this winter.

Marvin Cash: Well, there you go. And I imagine too that if folks buy the book through your website, probably the best way to get a personalized copy back, right?

Jake Villwock: Yeah. So right now, if you buy them through any of the fly shops, TCO specifically, it's just a book, if you want it signed, you just put it in comments and I'll drive to the shop and sign it. So it might be an extra day or two for chips, but once I get them up on my site after I get more back in stock, if you put a put a note in the comments on if you want to personalize to a specific person or something you want to say, we can sign all that stuff as well.

Marvin Cash: Well, very neat. Well, listen, Jake, I appreciate you spending some time with me this evening after what I'm sure was a pre launch, long day on the water.

Jake Villwock: Yeah, no worries. Early morning tomorrow and I'm excited about it.

Marvin Cash: Well, there you go. Well, listen, Jake, thanks again so much.

Jake Villwock: You got it. Take care.

Marvin Cash: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you again. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcaster of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.