April Vokey: Living By a Strict Moral Code in Fly Fishing and Life

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 27 with April Vokey.

Tom Rowland: Alright. April Vokey, very nice to be sitting across from you. And thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I really had a good time. You're a very good interviewer.

April Vokey: Oh, thank you. I didn't actually say anything, I don't think, in that interview.

Tom Rowland: It's funny because I don't talk much. My wife would be like, you talked for like two hours without stopping? Well, that's one of the things that happens when you're a fishing guide. You're out there talking all day long and entertaining people, and then you come home and your wife's like, oh, how was work? And you're like, pretty good. She just can't politely, you've talked so much.

April Vokey: Yeah. No. But you're great because you just segue. I didn't even have to ask the next question because you just brought me there. It's perfect. And you're an excellent storyteller. I can't wait to share that with my listeners.

Tom Rowland: Well, good. You're also an excellent story. So I have done a little bit of homework. I came across —

April Vokey: I'm scared of what your homework is gonna be.

Tom Rowland: No, it's all good. It's all good. This isn't one of those shows where it's like a gotcha kind of thing.

April Vokey: But you can try. I love the nonsense that's on the Internet. Now a couple questions first, because now that I'm in the hot seat. Do you censor these? Like, can I just talk?

Tom Rowland: That's fine. Any way you want to. I have no sponsors right now, so there's no way to get mad at us. But I think that's what the podcast is all about. It's all about just being yourself and learning and not putting on any sort of mask. That's what I like about the podcast.

April Vokey: It's just it's been the best platform for me. I think a lot of people were — didn't know.

Tom Rowland: We're gonna get there.

April Vokey: Yeah. Let's do it. You take the reins. I'm the guest this time.

Growing Up in British Columbia

Tom Rowland: So I know a little bit about you, but I want you to paint the picture. From what I know about you, you grew up in a family where your parents were fishermen a little bit, not hunters. Is that correct so far?

April Vokey: Fishermen — no, not fishermen. My mom, no. Although she liked being outside, she tossed a line once or twice. Dad and I would go, like a family trip, we'd go troll worms around the lake. So fishermen — they wouldn't call themselves fishermen, but technically they went once a year.

Tom Rowland: They exposed you to it.

April Vokey: They exposed me to the river and to being outside. But yeah, I guess so. Dad put a rod in my hands. My neighbors probably exposed me more to it.

Tom Rowland: Okay. So coming from a family where fishing isn't the centerpiece. Even outdoors, not necessarily the centerpiece? Is that fair to say or not?

April Vokey: You know, I don't know. That's a really good question. My parents were all about taking us to the river, and so we did spend weekends going out, getting out of the city. But no, I wouldn't say that the outdoors was a huge center, but it was a big part of our life. This is back in the day where, obviously — and I'm not old, but I'm 35 — so this is before the Internet, and we didn't have games. And we were comfortable, but we didn't come from a lot of money. So we didn't spend a lot of money going and doing much. We found our entertainment playing in parks and going to the river.

Tom Rowland: And this is in BC?

April Vokey: Yeah. And that's the other thing, to be fair, being in British Columbia — how do you not make your province your entertainment when it's just one of the most beautiful places on earth? So yeah, I think we were outside, outdoorsy people, but not in the sense of what my listener would assume to be an outdoorsy person.

Tom Rowland: So how does a little girl develop this love for the outdoors that you obviously did?

April Vokey: Yeah. Well, my parents definitely helped me to love being outside. They made it so much fun. Like, dad and I would look in the rivers and we'd look for fish, and dad taught me how to skip stones, and mom would take us for walks. And looking back, I'm kind of eating my words because I guess we were really outdoorsy, in that my mom was a horseback rider. And we spent all of our time at the barn. Actually, I feel like a real asshole right now, because we did spend a ton of time because of the horses. She used to be one of the judges in the horse shows, and she used to show, and she had her own horse. And so I obviously had a horse, and I'd spend all my weekends shoveling shit out of stables. And that was my time outside. But there would be, like, a little creek thing that went by the barn. Granted, it was usually full of manure, and it had oil spots on the top. But I'd go collecting, catching frogs and salamanders, and you just pair that with the time that dad and I would do the occasional lake fishing trip. And it just all kind of comes together.

And one time they took us out to the Chilliwack River. Well, they took us out there all the time. But one time there was this big dead salmon. And my parents explained the migration — because my mom was a girl guide leader, a brownie leader, and I was also a girl guide. We'd go to see fish spawn. Like, do you guys have that here?

Tom Rowland: Not here anymore. But I could see that, like at the bottom of a dam or the salmon ladders or something.

April Vokey: Yep. And so we go look at that, and it all kind of clicked. So we go to the Chilliwack. Mom and dad showed me this big dead Chinook salmon. I'd already seen a little bit of the salmon migration. My parents explained it further to me. And because I'd already done the fishing with dad, it all clicked that, okay, I can catch that fish too. And that's really how it all started.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And then fishing becomes this overwhelming obsession for you.

April Vokey: Yeah. I don't know if it was fishing or if it was the water. I really loved the water. I just loved everything about water. It didn't matter if it was rain. You drive over a bridge, and I was the girl with my head cranked just trying desperately to see what was down there. And my parents were aware of that, and they'd stop. And we'd get out, and we'd go under the bridge and have a picnic. And yeah, I guess they really were influential from that stance. But I just love the water. The fish were secondary to the water.

Discovering Fly Fishing and Becoming a Guide

Tom Rowland: Okay. So you developed this interest, and then you actually pursue it. From what I've gathered, the next thing where you do this professionally is as a sturgeon guide. Is that correct?

April Vokey: Yeah. Professionally, yeah. But there's a time — and in hearing your story, I know that you understand this — there is a time between when you decide you're gonna do it professionally and then when you actually do it professionally. And so for me, I was fishing as much as I could.

Tom Rowland: What kind of fishing?

April Vokey: Salmon fishing. Because sturgeon fishing, you typically have to have a boat. I did do some sturgeon fishing offshore later. But to start, I was taking my spinning rod and going out and salmon fishing. And doing okay, but losing more fish than bringing to hand. And I met this guy on the river, and he was older. And I'm sure everyone who's heard my story right now is like, oh my god, please don't make us hear about Dave Puffer again.

Tom Rowland: We're gonna move on from that pretty quickly, but this guy was very influential to you.

April Vokey: Yeah. And he became my fishing buddy. And that was it. I was a teen. I had a fishing buddy in his sixties, and the rest was really history. And he and I did some sturgeon fishing offshore. And eventually I happened to stumble across some fly fishermen out there, and we weren't — I was across the river, so we didn't talk. But I came home and had the same moment you did where I said, that was what I had to do. And I was just in a daze about it. I had to make that my living, but I didn't know how.

Tom Rowland: Right.

April Vokey: So what do you do? You get damn good at it. That's what you do.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But in order, while you're trying to get really good at it, you become a sturgeon guide?

April Vokey: Well, no. That came later. I knew I wanted to do it professionally when I was 18. And so I was putting in the time every day to be a decent fly fisher, and I was fly fishing one day when I was, I think, 21. And this guy came up to me and said, I've heard about you because word travels fast on the river, and I've been working the occasional day a week at a fly shop just to be able to get gear at a discount. And he said, do you want to guide for me? And I said, well, sure. What is it? He said, well, half sturgeon, half salmon guiding. I said, yeah, why not? I was a horrible sturgeon guide. Like, absolutely tragic.

Tom Rowland: Really?

April Vokey: Yeah. Horrible.

Tom Rowland: Did you not like it?

April Vokey: No, I liked it. It was okay. It was a different group of people. People wanted to drink on the boat. I had some really aggressive clients. I am not a great boat person. I mean, I can run a boat, but —

Tom Rowland: Are these jet boats?

April Vokey: They're jet boats, but I didn't know anything about boats. They literally gave me a boat, and a week later I'm guiding.

Tom Rowland: It sounds like my first guided trip.

April Vokey: Oh, yeah. Right? There was no guide school for me. So it definitely was just kind of thrown into the hot seat. And then you gotta anchor your boat. So you have to understand the way the current's going, which sounds easy enough, but you're in a river like the Fraser. It's 60 feet deep. There's all of these eddies and stuff. So you've gotta find a way to get your boat anchored so that you're staying in one position because you're throwing your rods at the back. But then you also have to be looking ahead all the time for the bow to see if there's any logs coming down. Is there a tugboat coming down? There's always something you've gotta be watching for. So that was just a little too much for me. I like getting out of the boat and walking my clients to the head of the run and then being able to nitpick that run all the way down.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, you can certainly take it a little more slowly. Did you have some moments with the — when you're anchoring a boat in heavy current? I know I've done that both in Florida and in Wyoming, and there can be some incredibly scary moments when all of a sudden that boat just starts taking a different — did you have some of those?

April Vokey: Yeah. More than once, I'd have a log coming down. Well, now it's wedged on your anchor rope.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

April Vokey: The force of that and the pressure, it's gonna pull your bow into the water, and then you got a real problem. So I had a couple of those situations. I had a situation where I was obviously honked at by a tug. I guess I was right in the middle of a sort of three-way. I didn't know any of this. And it wasn't marked, to be fair. He was a bit of an asshole. But he definitely went out of his way to make it very clear that he was just gonna miss me with this tugboat. This is probably my least proud — actually, do I even want to throw myself under the bus here? Whatever. I didn't know anything about jet boats when I was 21 years old. And they're like, oh, yeah, you can run jet boats up to two inches of water. So me in all my wisdom starts the jet boat in two inches of water. Do you know how much gravel and stuff you suck up in two inches of water? Maybe five inches. But no. So I had some tough learning curves there, and I just decided this just isn't for me. I want to focus on the fishing. And don't get me wrong — I still use it. I own a jet boat, I run a jet boat, I use a jet boat. We guided out of a jet boat, and I used to guide on the Dean. I love jet boats, but I don't want to fish out of one of them.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, they're a good tool, I'm sure. But when you're doing the sturgeon guiding, part of it is also salmon guiding. So did that outfit have the same kind of clientele for that?

April Vokey: They drew that type of client. It'd be like, you get a lot of Europeans.

Tom Rowland: And when you're doing this, are there other outfits on the same river that you're like — they're not doing what I'm doing. Like, that looks way better than fly fishing?

April Vokey: Sixty of them. No. They weren't. They were all doing what I was doing, and I wanted to shoot myself in the face. It was horrible. I hated it.

Tom Rowland: So did you have an idea where you needed to go?

April Vokey: I always knew that. When he asked me to guide for him, I said, can I do your winter steelhead trips? Which is what I was doing the moment I met him. And he said yes. So I counted down the summer so that I could then be able to do the winter steelhead trips in the same region, walking and wading, starting February running through April.

Tom Rowland: That's a different clientele.

April Vokey: Totally. And then the wheels started turning, and that was it for me. I thought, this is what I want to do. I obviously am not a great sturgeon guide. Salmon guiding's another thing, but that mentality of people is not for me. I really want to focus on the experience.

Starting Her Own Guiding Company

April Vokey: And so I started my own guiding company.

Tom Rowland: Okay. And do you have to have permits for this?

April Vokey: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: Are there an infinite number available, or do you have to purchase these permits? How does it work?

April Vokey: In this particular region in the Lower Mainland, anybody can guide. But you have to have a guide license. You have to have special insurance. All of those things.

Tom Rowland: Did you already have some of those things?

April Vokey: I had an assistant guide license. No, I had to basically start from scratch. And then, obviously, you need to own a company, all those things.

Tom Rowland: Then you're moving to a different river from where you were doing this before?

April Vokey: Yeah, but they're side by side. I was actually guiding for winter steelhead out on the Chilliwack, and it's a tributary to the Fraser. Now where I live now, where people see me today — and even over the last fifteen years up north — those are rivers that require permits. I have guided on those rivers before, but for other companies. I've never owned my own guiding operation on a classified river system, which is totally different.

Tom Rowland: Okay. And so when you're first starting out, did you have trouble getting customers?

April Vokey: Yes and no. It was at the time of Facebook, when Facebook first started. So I obviously wasn't gonna steal clients — I mean, I've heard people do this. That's not my style. I wasn't gonna take my employer's.

Tom Rowland: You didn't want those guys anyway.

April Vokey: No. Even though his fly fishing clients were a different clientele, a different sort of mentality. But that's just — I don't know, it goes against my integrity. So I now suddenly am in a situation where I need to get my own clientele. And I'd been taking people from work — I was still cocktailing at that time. So I was taking other gals with me and word just starts to spread. And then when the Internet came out, it was like, okay, I've got a platform here. And right, wrong, or otherwise, people were starting to figure out who I was. And I made the decision at that time, in my 20s wisdom, that if more people knew about me, then maybe I could get more people to know about my guiding operation. And that's what I did. I promoted myself, which landed me the customers.

Living by a Moral Code

Tom Rowland: From what I've seen so far with you, you seem to live by a strict moral code.

April Vokey: Yeah, I hope so.

Tom Rowland: What is that code? From just what you've told me, you didn't want to steal customers from your people. There's been lots of things I've come across with you, and that's one of the things that I think is most intriguing about you — that you live by this code. How did you develop that code?

April Vokey: True to myself, because I don't want to feel dirty by not being who I am. Now, that's not great, because being who I am has bit me in the ass many times. I'm not the most likable person sometimes. I stand by my beliefs. And one of the things about being the sort of person who stands by what you believe in is you can be outspoken. And when you have a big mouth, you can not be that likable. So it hasn't always been easy.

Tom Rowland: So when have you been outspoken? When you first got on the Internet, I know you got some — the Facebook thing, you got some, I don't know if it's hate, I don't know if it's — you got unwanted attention. Right?

April Vokey: Yeah. Well, it certainly wasn't wanted. It was expected, but not wanted.

Tom Rowland: It was expected? I would think that would not be expected because of the state of social media at the time. That thing was brand new, and you had no idea what to expect, I would think.

April Vokey: Yeah. But look at what I looked like. I was getting the same sort of attention on the river. People were like, why is she out here? There's no way she just likes fishing. She wants to find a man. She wants the attention. I don't know what they thought I was trying to make, but everyone just thought I couldn't possibly be there.

Tom Rowland: So you just go winter steelheading in frigid conditions so that maybe you might find a man out there? Which is so hilarious. Have you ever been winter steelheading? If that's the case, this woman is desperate, because that is awful.

April Vokey: So welcome to my life. It's just the stupidity of it all. And that's one of the reasons why I would get myself in the hot seat, because I'd be looking at these idiots thinking to myself, are you stupid? And so, of course, now you're suddenly into a war of words with people online, which is pretty easy to do on the Internet.

Tom Rowland: You're never winning.

April Vokey: No. So it's taken me — fifteen years ago, when I was 20-something. So it's taken me, say, ten years just to figure out to keep my mouth shut. But yeah, I stand by —

Tom Rowland: But back to you — your moral code doesn't allow you to keep your mouth shut.

April Vokey: But it does if you start to realize that there's just a certain amount of people out there who just don't get it. That's cool. It's not my business. What they think about me is not my business. So I stay true to my beliefs. I say no to people when they ask me to do things I don't believe in. I sleep well at night. I try my hardest. I want to die knowing that I honestly did the best I could. And I totally get and accept that not everyone's gonna like me. I understand that. I even respect it. But I think the big thing for me — I read How to Be Compassionate by the Dalai Lama, like, five times.

Tom Rowland: You read it five times, really?

April Vokey: Yeah. When I was younger. And for me, that was the big thing. I had to really beat it into myself. Maybe they don't like — maybe they do hate you. But maybe they just don't like you. Maybe they're just having a bad day. Maybe you remind them of the ex-girlfriend. But it's really none of my business why they don't like me. And since I've just accepted that, my life is so much easier. There's no war of words on the Internet. It gives me the time and headspace to focus on what really matters, which just lets me follow my moral code even more.

The Car Accident That Changed Everything

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. So you're guiding, and at some point you have a really tragic wreck. I came across this on your Instagram when we were first starting to connect about this. And I'm looking at this picture, and that had to be a major time in your life. What did that wreck do for you? Because if you look at these pictures, looks like you could have easily died.

April Vokey: Yeah. I can feel, like, right here, my stomach starts shaking as soon as I start talking about it. That was the moment. That was it. That changed everything.

Tom Rowland: So that was the moment that changed everything. Changed it from what to what?

April Vokey: Well, that's a good question. So I had been waitressing at that time, and I would waitress all night, and I would work all day. And I was really ambitious. After the accident, I was even more ambitious, but in a different way. So I had just landed a filming gig with some friends in Ontario. This was — I was on my way up to film my first episode, and it was gonna be — what was it back then? Not Fly Nation. Was it Fly Nation? No, it was before Fly Nation. Anyway, it was one of an early fly fishing show that we were gonna do. And on the way, we got in a bad car accident, a head-on collision with a drunk driver. I was going one-ten or whatever, she was going one-twenty — in kilometers — and we met headlight to headlight, and that was it.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

April Vokey: So all of a sudden — I mean, you asked about the change. So forget all the physical change. Obviously, there was a ton of damage. Mentally, after you've seen something like that, it's hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. But when you actually really think you're gonna die and you don't, I guess everyone handles it differently. For me, I just remember thinking, I will never take for granted my family or one more day of this. I'm not gonna live one more second of anything that's not something that I really want. If I'm gonna die again, I want to know I have no regrets. Because when I was looking at those headlights coming at me, I had regrets. So I made the decision I was no longer gonna have any regrets.

So from there — because I'd just been going into this new filming gig, I'd basically gone down to part-time at the casino job where I was cocktailing. No benefits. I really had nothing. So I woke up and I had no job. So the option was either go on to unemployment insurance or really dive head-first into Fly Gal, which I'd already started, but it was more part-time, or guiding in the summer. And now I suddenly had to make this a full-time job. Well, you're laid up — what are you gonna do? You're gonna write articles. You're gonna tie flies. You're gonna maybe start some merchandise stuff and stamp your logo on it. I did actually end up going back up and filming that episode. I filmed the entire episode on crutches. So I decided to go into filming. And when I got better, I would start guiding again. So what the accident did was it forced me to really dive into fishing full-time, because I couldn't go back to waitressing. They wouldn't let me.

Tom Rowland: Did you even want to?

April Vokey: Well, yeah. It was excellent money. I started at 8:30 at night, went till 4:30 in the morning. I never needed much sleep. I still don't. And I was making a killing. But because I'm now technically handicapped — I still am technically handicapped — they wouldn't let me back. They wanted me to work surveillance, go upstairs and work surveillance. So there was no option. I had to go into fishing.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting. No option. That's the way it felt for me, but it wasn't a disability on my ankle. It was a disability in my brain.

April Vokey: But it's one and the same. There really was no other — yeah, I could've gone back to do anything. I could've gone back to be a lawyer, but all I ever wanted to do was work in fishing. But the waitressing allowed me to make money in the night. There was no other option for career paths. And I remember the lawyer saying, well, you can just get another job. And I said, no, no. You don't understand. I'll die if I don't have fishing. It is the only job for me. And he said, well, you're not gonna make the same settlement if it's just fishing. And I said, well, so be it. And so I stood true to that all the way through to the end.

Building Fly Gal

Tom Rowland: That's cool. And so at that point, you decide to dive all the way in, and it sounds like you had a lot of ideas.

April Vokey: Yeah, I had a ton of ideas.

Tom Rowland: Really know which one was going to be the best? Did you just dive into all of them at the same time?

April Vokey: Every one of them.

Tom Rowland: And at this time, what are you doing to support yourself? Like, when you're recovering from this wreck and you're deciding this is my path, and that bridge has burned — I didn't necessarily want it to burn, but it has burned, and I can't go back to the waitressing and the cocktailing. So I am now on this path, and you're recovering. You said your ankle was messed up.

April Vokey: Yeah. I've got a rebuilt foot. This is a bone. That's a bone. These are all plates.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

April Vokey: And then — this is from waiting on the floor. Just a scar. And I can't really point my three toes. See? I'm trying to point them, and they get stuck.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, but that's pretty good. That's good mobility out of a smashed-up foot, because there's so many bones in there.

April Vokey: Yeah. And it's the Lisfranc fracture, so the joints are shattered. So I think they did a spectacular job.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's incredible. But you're recovering from this, and you're deciding, okay, I'm going to take it in these directions. And what are those directions that you're thinking about?

April Vokey: Okay. So I wrote out an Excel spreadsheet, and it was like, okay, how much money do I need to make? Because like you, I didn't want to be 75 years old and guiding. I needed to make my mortgage payments. I needed to pay for my expenses for business, and I needed to have money to put aside to invest. I've always invested money. So it was like, well — and at the time, I didn't really need that much money. And when you really break down —

Tom Rowland: You don't. And that is an incredibly good exercise for a lot of people to do. It's like, what is it that I want to do, and blue-sky it. Especially at 23 years old. What do you want to do? You want to try out three trips a year? Okay. Put it down on paper. And you come back, and I want to live in this house, and I want to drive this car. And you put it all down. It's really not that much money.

April Vokey: That's exactly what I did. So I wrote it down, and then I tacked on another ten. And I thought, alright, so that's what I need. It's not that bad. I need to sell ten t-shirts a month. Flies are great because I can tie flies. I only need five hours sleep. I can tie flies all day long.

Tom Rowland: And the kind of flies you're tying are more expensive.

April Vokey: Because I was able to sell them, you know, fifteen.

Tom Rowland: At some point — fifty dollars a fly?

April Vokey: No, no. One-five. But then eventually it was, like, eighteen dollars a fly, twenty. I just kept racking up the price. And then it got to the point where I was just on a waiting list, and I was like, okay, I can't keep up with this. But at that point my career had taken another path. But yes, I'm gonna tie flies. Alright, so I need to tie fifty flies a month. How many trips a month? How many casting lessons a month? How many of these things do I need to do a month? And then, obviously, in the spreadsheet it automatically totals your sum. And I realized, alright, I can do this. This is something I can do. I'm gonna try this for a year, and it worked.

Tom Rowland: That's very similar to Derek DeYoung. I had him on here, and he had a moment with his father-in-law that is kind of like, okay, you're taking my daughter — business-savvy guy — let's put this on paper and see how it works. And Derek said he put it on paper, and it was definitely not going to work. And that was a real eye-opener for him to say, okay, well, if that's not gonna work, then we need to try it this way. Because in his words, if we hadn't done that exercise, we would have gone down that road for five years and barely made it until we just can't make it anymore.

April Vokey: Yes.

Tom Rowland: And then everything goes kaput. So you're doing all of those things on a monthly basis, even despite the weather. Like, you're not taking casting lessons in the winter.

April Vokey: No. And I wasn't doing that many casting lessons back then because I really wasn't very talented. Or — I wanted to get my FFF. I was waiting for my certification.

Tom Rowland: That's hard.

April Vokey: Yeah. Well, it's done now. You just have to study. But so then I'd factor in — alright, so February, March, April, I need to book maybe seven days a week of guiding.

Tom Rowland: Because that's your main money, the guiding.

April Vokey: At the time, that was my main money.

Tom Rowland: And then you have writing?

April Vokey: Yeah, and writing doesn't pull that much income. I don't — you do some writing, you probably know it.

The Business of Writing About Fisheries

Tom Rowland: I write for free. I mean, it all goes on our blog and stuff like that. I have sold magazine articles in the past, and it was a lot of work to make a very little bit of money.

April Vokey: That's exactly right.

Tom Rowland: And that was even when the magazines were a thing. They were big, and people actually read them. They had 150,000 subscribers, and those were all paying money, and they had money to pay out. I can't imagine what it would be like today. People don't do that. I used to subscribe to eight magazines. I subscribe to zero magazines. My wife used to subscribe — we used to have magazines all over. There are no magazines anymore.

April Vokey: Well, what I would do is I would take an article. So say for a Canadian article, I'd make $500. Sometimes for an American article, I'd make up to $1,200. So you're looking between 500 and $1,200. I would take that article, but then I would turn around and I'd sell it to a Danish magazine. To an Icelandic magazine. To a German magazine. And then I'd be able to quadruple my money off of it.

Tom Rowland: That's smart.

April Vokey: Yeah. Thanks.

Tom Rowland: So would you write these articles, like, on the river that you're fishing?

April Vokey: Sometimes. Most of my writing is done best while I'm in reflection and on the river.

Tom Rowland: But you're talking about — these are stories?

April Vokey: Yeah. I can't do how-tos.

Tom Rowland: Because I was thinking that maybe your moral code might not allow for writing about a river that you feel very strongly about and then bringing a lot of people there.

April Vokey: Well, that's a good point, and it depends on the river. I would never — I've been asked to write about rivers that I refuse to write about. But there are certain rivers that aren't secrets, and maybe I'm writing a conservation story. It just depends. Or you can write about a river or an experience and describe the river and not ever mention the river.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. My experience with that — the first article that I think I ever published was on the Marquesas, and I think it happened at an ICAST show. And one of the publishers comes up and says, hey, I'd like to get you to write an article for us. And I said, okay. And so we start talking, and we talk after the show. And he says, we want to do this on the Marquesas Keys. It was a place that I used to fish a lot. And so I start having this uneasy feeling about it. Like, man, I don't really know if I want to write this article about the Marquesas. And so I reluctantly pick up the phone and start calling this guy. I'm like, hey, listen, I don't know that I'm gonna be able to write this article. Oh, really? Why? I just don't really want to exploit this place.

April Vokey: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: And I'll never forget this — it changed everything. He goes, alright, well, I understand that. He said, but I asked you to write that article for a particular reason, because I wanted you to write that article. And I said, okay, well, I appreciate that. He said, so it's on the calendar that there's going to be an article on the Marquesas Keys in that issue. Now you can write it the way that you want to write it, or somebody else is gonna write it, but there's going to be an article on the Marquesas. And so I then thought, oh, okay. Well, who's to say that the other guy's not gonna super exploit it? So I have this opportunity to write this article in the way that I'm gonna feel okay about, and that changed everything.

April Vokey: And that didn't make you resent him a little bit? I think every part of me would have been like, don't call me again.

Tom Rowland: Well, no. He was being friendly about it. He wasn't saying, like, look. He's like, I want you to write this article because I think you're gonna put out something good. It's gonna be authentic. The reasons that you don't want to write this article are the reasons we want you to write this article, because you're gonna take care. The information is gonna be authentic. You're not gonna do it in a certain way that's going to exploit the resource. You're going to paint the picture of what this is. People have to go out there and find it for themselves. There's not gonna be GPS coordinates. There's not gonna be all of these things. And so he was just saying, look, this was on the docket already before I came to you. You have the choice of writing it or not. And then the control is now with me, and it's like, okay, I can write this article in a way that I'm being true to myself and to the resource. And it turned out fine.

April Vokey: Do you feel good about it now? How long ago was this article?

Tom Rowland: Oh, a long time ago. Like, probably eighteen years ago or so.

April Vokey: Okay. And you still feel good about it. But have you ever done something where — just, I'm sorry, I'm gonna take it back for a second. When we filmed Fly — okay, so the first one I was talking about is actually Flymax Films, when I was talking about filming when I was on crutches. When we filmed Fly Nation, back again in my early twenties wisdom, I thought it was gonna be a great idea. Same thing. We're gonna film Northern BC. We're gonna film on these rivers. My big thing was we needed to be nameless. We can't mention the names of the rivers. So we go up and we do all this filming. We have an epic trip. We catch all of these fish. We assume it's never gonna end up on YouTube, by the way. It was only ever supposed to be on the World Fishing Network. And if someone asked me at that time if I was making a mistake filming on those rivers, even though they were nameless, I would have stood my ground in my strong morals, as you say. And I would've said, nope, this is great. It's gonna tell people that these rivers are amazing. We need to support them, etcetera. I look back now, a decade later, and I go, what was I thinking? Why would we do that?

April Vokey: And now it's on YouTube, and I feel like I've totally had a hand in exploiting the rivers. Like, I regret it every day. That's really scary to me.

Tom Rowland: But in that situation, a lot of that stuff was out of your control. You're not the editor.

April Vokey: No. I should've said no. I should've said no. I would never have put it up on YouTube, and I asked them to take it off YouTube.

Tom Rowland: But at the time, you are making that judgment. You are making that decision based upon the information that you have in front of you. You don't have twenty years of experience that you have now that you can look back and say that was a really bad idea. You're looking at it as, this is the experience that I have to draw from, and I'm going to make this decision now. And if you felt good about it at that point, then it was the right decision, I think, at that point.

April Vokey: But early twenties. The regret that I have from that really has taught me. If there's any interview that wavers, just say no. Just say no.

Tom Rowland: Right. Yeah. Well, you were saying before, though, that you would have stood your ground and said that there was no part of you that was wavering at that point.

April Vokey: Which is even scarier to me.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But you can't kick yourself for something that, when you — it was right at the time. You felt like it was right, and all the information that you have in front of you is telling you that it was right. If you go ahead and do it, and something changes, or you look back after many things have happened — you've seen other rivers be exploited, you've seen all kinds of different things that happen — and you're looking back going, man, I wish I hadn't done that. But at the time, that's all you had to draw from. I don't think you can feel so badly about that.

April Vokey: But you can learn about it moving forward.

Tom Rowland: You can learn about it moving forward. But what would you learn from it?

April Vokey: I would learn that something that may not have such a big impact right now, ten years down the road — especially given the reach that we have with the Internet — can come back to bite a fishery in the ass, and to leave it alone. And so I would say no to filming on anything that I feel could be exploited, for sure.

Television and Owning Your Own Content

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And so your experience with television is what? How many different forays have you had into television?

April Vokey: Well, my series is totally different. I have no regrets about my series, because in the series we did film on a lot of these rivers, but the series isn't focused on catching fish. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was focused on the stories of the people behind the fisheries years past. So I sleep very well about the television series, but that was probably the peak of my television career. What I'm talking about now is like a ten-minute or a twenty — no, it was a twenty-two-minute or twenty-three-minute episode on Fly Nation Television years ago. And then I've done the occasional television appearance, but my series was kind of the peak of the television thing, and then that was it when the network stopped producing any more original content.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's that road, which we talked about on your podcast — the difference between owning everything and owning nothing. And there are definitely two very different models, and then everything in between of hybrids of those models. We've always gone down the own-everything and control what you can, as opposed to the amount of money that comes in the beginning from a funded production. But as soon as the ratings go bad, they pull it, and you just never have any control over it. And we have done that, and it's not on the air anymore. And so we've always gone down this road. But you have your series and then just a bunch of other shows?

April Vokey: Just being a guest on a show, or like Sixty Minutes.

Tom Rowland: Do you like that? Just being the guest on shows.

April Vokey: I haven't been a guest on someone's fishing show in a really, really long time.

Tom Rowland: Well, what was your role in Bones and Buccaneers? Were you a host, or were you kind of a guest?

April Vokey: I forgot about that. I was just a guest.

Tom Rowland: Did you like that one?

April Vokey: Yeah. I'll do television again. Don't get me wrong. It's just got to be — I've got to have the reins on it. I had the reins on my show, and I loved it. And I would do that again for sure.

Tom Rowland: How long did that go?

April Vokey: Just a season, and then they canceled all of their original programming.

Tom Rowland: That was on World Fishing Network?

April Vokey: Yeah. And I really, really enjoyed that. That was one of my favorite things I've ever done. But any television I want to do, I want it to be more than just fish numbers. It has to be, because I don't just fish for numbers. So why would a television series that's reflective of me be just about numbers? Whereas that Fly Nation piece, it's literally fish porn. It's just, oh, fish jumps here, fish jumps. That's not who I am, and so that's not what anything I do in the future is gonna be.

Conservation and the Role She Plays

Tom Rowland: And how does conservation play into your moral code and into what you do on a daily basis?

April Vokey: Yeah. Well, it's everything to me. That's a really big question.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I know.

April Vokey: Which country?

Tom Rowland: Well, let's — you are in two different countries, Australia and BC. So let's start with BC. That seems to be an easier one, because I don't know a lot about BC, but it seems kind of fragile.

April Vokey: It's super fragile. And the scary thing is it's getting more fragile every year. I'm still learning this myself. I'm still learning just how fragile it is. Which, again, is scary to me. Here's a prime example. I was a guest on Sixty Minutes. It's a pretty big show. So they said, we want to come in and we want to film you on the Dean. And I said, well, that's not gonna happen. Because I was guiding on the Dean, but we don't need any more pressure on the Dean — which in retrospect is kind of hilarious, because it's one of the best-managed fisheries in British Columbia. But I said, no, it's not happening. They said, well, you realize we're Sixty Minutes. I said, yeah, I realize that. So my brother-in-law and I sat down and thought, well, what river does need the help? Well, the Bulkley and that region in the Skeena region needed the help with some LNG stuff that was happening, different proposals. So I said, well, we'll do the Bulkley. And everyone's heard of the Bulkley. Who hasn't heard of the Bulkley? That's what I'm thinking. And I still don't think — I don't know what sort of impact it would have had as far as bringing pressure in, but we talked about conservation on that episode, and none of it was aired. And I love those guys. I love Sixty Minutes. I would do it over again. But I'd convinced the lodge owner to take us out on the boat because we were gonna talk about this conservation that was never aired.

Tom Rowland: What was the point of them coming in in the beginning? They wanted to film you on the Dean for what reason?

April Vokey: They just wanted to talk about my life.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, just a personal —

April Vokey: Yeah. But conservation's a big part of my personal story, so to cut it out really hurt. And so I'm pretty careful these days about what I allow my name to go on. So conservation-wise, you ask where it matters to me — I turn down a lot of opportunities, I think, that are going to bring unnecessary attention.

Tom Rowland: In the conservation?

April Vokey: No, no. Like media. Media stuff. If there's an opportunity just to talk about me, if I can't have a spin to it that's gonna do better, I'll usually pass up on that. Because now with my podcast, I have a platform. If I have something to say, I've got somewhere to say it. I don't have to go anywhere else to say what I have to say. So I really watch what I do as far as leading by example. I do my best not to be hoisting fish out of the water. I'm really cautious about my fish handling. I personally don't need to catch that many fish. I try to limit my fish to maybe one or two a day, maybe, if I even go fishing that day.

Tom Rowland: In BC?

April Vokey: This is in BC. I haven't really been in the forefront of any major leading causes these days, because most of the stuff I've been passionate about has been beat off. It hasn't been beat off by me, but it has been beaten by bigger groups like Skeena.

Tom Rowland: What are the pressing issues in BC?

April Vokey: These days? Well, I don't know. I gotta get back up north. No, I'm totally serious. For so long there was this big fight with all of the — there was Enbridge and LNG and all of these. And then before that, it was Shell. And I've always just been able to kind of dabble in it. And then the problem is then I have to leave countries again. So I never really can be fully immersed, which plays on my conscience quite often. But I really just got back a week ago. So I'm just on my way heading back up north. I'll be sitting down with the organizations there and figuring out what the next big focus is and seeing what we really need to dig our heels in with. The Thompson's going through some major issues, but again, I can't even speak on that right now because I'm so out of the loop. I've just spent — I had a baby in December, and everything's kind of just been on hold.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, we're gonna get to that too. But conservation has been a major theme in your life. Was there a moment that you decided that you are a steward of these areas and that you have to get involved in these issues, or were you always kind of involved in protecting the resource?

April Vokey: Yeah. I don't want to give myself that much credit, because you have to understand — I go in and I speak at an event. I'll go in as an emcee, and I'll speak at an event. I'll use my social media platform to raise money. That's something that I can be proud of. But I'm not the conservationist or the steward or the person who deserves any accolades. Not at all. The people I put on my show are those people who are the conservationists. I agree with the guests I have on the show. I support them. I use my exposure to help them, but I'm not a hero in any — not even a little bit. I'm just the news.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But you're choosing that that is important news.

April Vokey: Right. And there's little things that you do. Like, obviously, when we got married, we didn't want money. We wanted people to make donations. So we do little things here and there. Being a 1% for the Planet organization, I donate, obviously, a percent of my earnings. But I always feel a little bit hypocritical when people say, oh, you're a conservationist. And it's like, well — I am a conservationist, and I try my hardest, and I make daily decisions based on what I deem to be responsible. But if I was really a conservationist, I'd be Shauna McVale, and I'd be these gals who are with an organization and fighting for it every day. I'm fluttering around the world and so oftentimes not even knowing what's going on. So I just want to make that very clear, because that's always been a soft spot for me when people say, oh, you're a conservationist. Well, define conservationist, because I wouldn't give myself that much credit.

Tom Rowland: I think a conservationist is somebody who cares about a resource and does what they can to help. And in some ways — like, for instance, I care deeply about the Everglades and what's going on in the Everglades. I am definitely not on the leading edge of that fight. Daniel Andrews, Chris Wittman, Captains For Clean Water, those guys are on the leading edge. They've got the guns in their hand, the spears in their hand. They are the leading edge of that fight. They are in a position in their life, in a place where they have organized their life around this, and this is what they're doing. We need people like that. Without those people, nothing happens. But you are not in that position. You are in a different position, where you can bring attention to what those people are doing. If you choose to do that because you care deeply about that resource, then you're providing a valuable part of that fight too.

April Vokey: Right. That's fair. And that's what I see my role as. I'm not in all the government meetings. I wish I was in one spot long enough to be able to do that.

Falling for Australia and New Zealand

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, you're not, though. And you're in Australia, which is probably my third-favorite country in the world. I've only been there one time. And you go to a place and you're there for about a half a day, and you're like, I could live here. I could totally live here. I might not go home. I did an awesome trip, just the best trip ever. And I don't even know if it's still offered, but if it is, you should go. We flew into Cairns, and then —

April Vokey: Oh, you've already got my heart.

Tom Rowland: All the way up to the Carpentaria, which is very similar. If you look at the map, it's like an upside-down United States, and the Carpentaria Peninsula is like Florida. It kind of has a gulf on one side and kind of has an ocean on the other side, and it has all these rivers that flow out. And Howard McKinney from Fishabout told me about this trip. He was like, man, you will not believe this trip. It is the best ever. You go up and then you get on this boat and you hit these river mouths all the way down. And it was with this guy named Greg Bethune, and he was a remarkable captain that knew so much. He had this amazing giant catamaran aluminium boat. And he had made the outside look like tarpon scales with a circular grinder.

April Vokey: Oh, cool.

Tom Rowland: And so the whole thing looked like — I don't know if he intended for it to look like tarpon scales. When I showed up, I'm like, man, that looks like tarpon scales. This is gonna be great. And so then he had, like, six skiffs on it. You went all the way up there, hit these river mouths all the way down. And I went there with the intention of catching the Indo-Pacific permit, because I had already caught the Atlantic permit, and maybe Howard McKinney and a couple other people had done this around that time and caught both. There were probably lots of people that had caught both on fly, but I didn't know them. So I wanted to be the first person that I knew to catch both. And when I got there, I found the permit was the least interesting of all the fish. We caught 57 species of fish on that trip. And the permit was really cool, and I really liked it and caught a couple and then just moved on.

April Vokey: What was your favorite?

Tom Rowland: I really liked the queenfish.

April Vokey: I knew you were gonna say that.

Tom Rowland: Well, the queenfish — love the queenfish. Started this whole different chapter of my life. It was the first day. So we stop at this river mouth. There were no guides — they just gave me a boat, and we're like, go. So I just took Fitz Coker's son. Me and him fished together, no guide. And Fitz Coker and Dottie Ballantine, they fished in one boat. And Fitz had his whole family there, and it was like a hosted trip, but the hosted trip with the people that I like the most of all my clients. So it was perfect. And we go out, and there's like a riffle, just like a riffle in a trout stream, and queenfish just stacked in there. And so we start catching them on fly, then I brought spinning rods. I catch them on spinning rods. I catch them on poppers. I catch them on jigs. I catch them every way that I can possibly catch them. And I don't know anything about a queenfish, but I'm picking these queenfish up, and I'm like, wow, I don't know how big these things get, but that looks like a really big one. That looks like a really mature, heavy-bodied, old fish.

So then we go back to the boat for lunch, and I'm sitting there talking. Everybody's just on top of the world. We just had the greatest morning ever. And I'm talking to Fitz, and I'm like, you know, those fish looked big to me. I don't know how big a queenfish gets. Let's look — there's a world record book right here. So we open it up, and we had some Boga Grips, and we were Boga-Gripping them. And it turns out almost everyone we were catching would have been a world record.

April Vokey: No way.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And I had an IGFA-certified Boga Grip. And so we were just having the best time, but I mean, how many more queenfish can you catch? We've caught them on every tackle that we've brought. We caught them on every fly. The next thing would be to hand-line them or something. There were just so many there. We were starting to get bored, and so I just proposed to Dottie and Fitz. I said, look, Dottie, there is a women's record on 12-pound. All you gotta do is catch a six-pound queenfish. The ones you were catching are 18 pounds. Would you want to give this a try? I'll tie it up. And she said, I don't want to kill it. And I said, that's fine. We don't have to kill it. We can weigh it on this. All we gotta do is get to dry ground, which is right over there. And so she broke off a whole bunch of them. And she caught one, weighed it, took a picture of it, turns out to be her first world record. And Dottie went on to be the first woman ever in history to get more than a 100 world records.

April Vokey: That was how it started.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's how it started. And it was right there in Australia. And I just thought Australia was just the coolest place ever. It reminded me of, like, old Florida. Like, if you went to Florida back in the eighteen hundreds and you just happen to have a Yellowfin with a 300-horsepower motor and an infinite supply of gasoline, and you could go do anything, the fishing would be like that. We caught all these different kinds of fish. Fish I didn't even know existed. And what I liked about it the most was that each fish that I feel strongly about — tarpon, snook, permit, bonefish — they all had a complementary fish over there. The snook, I found, was very similar to the barramundi. The tarpon — there were oxeye herring down there, but they were better than tarpon because they only got this big, but you could catch them like Jack Crevalle. So you just keep catching them over and over, and they did everything that a tarpon would do. But I just thought that country, that trip, the Great Barrier Reef —

This is the — I just have to tell you the story. So I'm going down there with the sole intention of catching a permit on fly. I had no idea that all this other stuff was there for me. And somehow, I was supposed to go to Lizard Island with Fitz and his family, but I left Key West and landed in Memphis somehow. And I was on the tarmac in Memphis, and there was a horrible lightning storm. And it delayed my plane from Memphis to LA so badly, or just enough, that Fitz and his party left to go to Australia. So I get there, they're already gone. Which puts me a day behind. The next flight was twenty-four hours later. So I have to stay in LA, and I'm trying to call them. No cell phones at this time. This is a long time ago. And I miss them. And they're going on to Lizard Island. They couldn't find me, so I was just gonna have to catch up to them later. So I caught the next flight, went over there, and I'm in Cairns all by myself for four days. Because they went to Lizard Island, and I have to catch up to them. I know where they're gonna be, but there's no way to contact them. And so I have to meet them in four days.

So from there, I was like, well, Great Barrier Reef's right there. So I'm going to the Great Barrier Reef. I just booked a little tourist snorkeling trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. And I've got a Del Brown permit hat on, and it's got a picture of the permit on it. So I'm talking to the dive master, and I'm like, yeah, I came here to go on this fishing trip. He's like, oh, that's cool. And I said, I'm looking for this fish right here. Have you ever seen one of these? And he says, no, no, never seen one of those. And I said, and you snorkel, scuba dive around here all the time, and you've never seen these? And I'm like, well, it must be further up north. And so we get there, anchor the boat, they dump us all out, and it was a very professional — not super tourist, but high-end kind of snorkel thing. And so the guy's got a camera, and he goes in, and I'm right next to him. And I go down, and I'm snorkeling around, and I'm just looking at the Great Barrier Reef in awe. And I look up, and there's a giant school of permit right there. And so I swam back up, and I was like, hey, man, look. This fish that I was telling you about, they're all right there. And he said, no way. I said, yeah, they're all right there. And so he goes, let's go find them. And he takes his camera down, and we go down, and these fish basically envelop me. And I'm like — in the video, I'm like, look, what the hell? You said they're never here. And he's like, I've never seen these before.

April Vokey: It's no kidding.

Tom Rowland: And so that was my experience on the Great Barrier Reef, and it was just amazing. And then we went up there, and I actually caught the permit on one of the first couple days, but then I was like, but there's so much more. So what's your fishing like in Australia?

April Vokey: It depends on which side of the coast I'm on.

Tom Rowland: Where do you live?

April Vokey: I'm embarrassed to tell you, Manly. It's the first northern beach out of Sydney. Look, I love fishing in Australia more than probably any other saltwater trip I've ever done, but you have to go to the other side. So Exmouth is my favorite. Exmouth — I hope I'm not exploiting that.

Tom Rowland: Well, I don't know much.

April Vokey: Yeah, Exmouth. And I haven't fished up in Cairns up where you were, but my husband —

Tom Rowland: I was way up there. Look at the map. As far up as you can get.

April Vokey: That's where my husband used to tromp around. Just out of this world. But yeah, Exmouth is as far up as I've gone. I fish Hinchinbrook on the East Coast as well. But if you look at the map and find Exmouth, it's kind of got, like, a gulf in there. And it's just full of — I mean, milkfish, giant trevally, permit, tons and tons of big queenies, barramundi, a saltwater barramundi. Like, it's absolutely unbelievable.

Tom Rowland: Have you figured out the milkfish?

April Vokey: Not in Australia. I tried everything I do for them when I'm in The Seychelles. And I just can't seem to get one to bite. But obviously I'm using quotations there, because they're eating algae, right?

Tom Rowland: I don't know. One bit my fly in Christmas Island.

April Vokey: Oh, yeah. On Christmas Island. On purpose?

Tom Rowland: It seemed like it was on purpose. It was right in the mouth, and it came flying out of the water. And I had cast those things. The first time I went to Christmas Island, I cast to them for hours and couldn't get anything. And this time, I was stripping the fly in and, boom, he eats it and takes off. Have you seen them eat? When they're just doing their thing wide open, kind of like carp.

April Vokey: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: But somebody in The Seychelles — and we were just talking about this with Robert Trosset, because he just went and had this amazing experience catching hogfish on fly in The Bahamas, and not many people do that. He caught this big 10-pounder. And I was relating that to — the first time I went to Christmas Island, nobody fished for the milkfish and nobody fished for the triggerfish.

April Vokey: Oh, not even the triggers?

Tom Rowland: No, they weren't fishing for them. They said they don't bite. And you fish for bonefish or trevally. That's all you fish for. And then the second time I go back there, many years had passed, and now triggerfish is like a thing. There's flies for them. There are guides that only guide for triggerfish. There are anglers that only fish for triggerfish. I was like, what the hell happened? This is completely different than last time, but okay, fine. I'll fish for them too. And turns out they're not that hard to catch, and they're really cool. I had a great experience with the triggerfish. But I kind of related the hogfish thing to — in a few years, you think that that's the only place that they are, but in a few years people will be catching them in all these other places because one person showed that it was possible. And I always think about one of my clients that used to fish on the Dean too. His name is Ken Dunston. Do you know him?

April Vokey: No. He was one of mine.

Tom Rowland: So anyway, he was there, and he was telling me that these guides got some kind of green shoelace. And they were working out some kind of green shoelace, putting it through there. And they were actually hooking the milkfish and those things.

April Vokey: I've never had my arm shake as much as with a milkfish.

Tom Rowland: That one has a motor. Like I was saying, it looked like a ladyfish with a tarpon tail. Just the biggest, craziest fish, but they fly out of the water. They're super fast. I don't even know if you can land them. I mean, some people are landing them, but I don't know.

April Vokey: You can land them. I was trying this year, or last year when I was in The Seychelles. I was trying to get them on the flats. You could hook them, but —

Tom Rowland: That where this one was, on the bonefish fly, it was in knee-deep water.

April Vokey: Oh, really?

Tom Rowland: And it wasn't with a whole bunch of them. It was just a single milkfish.

April Vokey: Oh, that is so cool.

Tom Rowland: Well, I don't know if that's a thing. Like, maybe I just kind of caught him in the side of the mouth accidentally.

April Vokey: No, I don't think so.

Tom Rowland: And I could see him, and I cast to him and, you know, strip, strip, strip, and I don't think he's gonna do it. And then the next thing I know, it's over my head and lands in the water and takes off fifty, sixty feet of line, and then it just separates. But really cool.

So Australia — what do you think about the Australian country? When you got there, did you feel the same as I did? Like, this is amazing, and I love this place.

April Vokey: Like, how is this not all over the Internet right now? Let's keep it that way. Yeah, that's how I felt. I definitely felt like I just stumbled into a fisherman's paradise.

Tom Rowland: But not even fishing, though. Do you enjoy the Australian culture? Do you enjoy the Australians? Do you like where you live?

April Vokey: Yes. Like, yes.

Tom Rowland: Do you like BC better?

April Vokey: Of course. I love Canada. I love Canada. Look, I'm an adventurer. I love exploring. I really get off on exploring, and I really get off on feeling small in a big world. And Canada does that for me. I look at a map — even on the flight here last night with my daughter in my lap, I had the map that's on the screen in front of you, and I had it enlarged. And I'm going, oh, look at the Cascade Range there. Oh, we could get lost in there. I love feeling small.

Tom Rowland: You don't feel small in Australia.

April Vokey: I do, but it has a giant landscape. It's like one big — there's, like, nothing in the middle, which is great. As an explorer, I'm like, yeah, let's go exploring the middle. When I moved there, I was so excited to go exploring. But then the middle of the continent's pretty —

Tom Rowland: Nobody lives there for a reason.

April Vokey: Really nothing going on there. I would love to do some exploring, don't get me wrong, but I think I would just feel thirsty and lost rather than overwhelmed.

Tom Rowland: When I took my son to the Desert Southwest — thirsty and lost.

April Vokey: Yeah. I want to feel like I'm being engulfed. I just want to feel like I could disappear into a mountain range somewhere and have to survive on my own. And if I was dropped into the middle of British Columbia, I could do it. If I was dropped into the middle of Australia, I would just die.

Tom Rowland: It'd be like that movie with the Coke bottle comes out — The Gods Must Be Crazy. You've seen that? You don't know that? Oh, you gotta see The Gods Must Be Crazy. There's like a plane flying over, and he drinks a Coke and throws it out the window, and it lands in this untouched civilization, finds this Coke bottle, and thinks it's from the gods. And then the whole movie is about this. They want to try to return this Coke bottle, and it's hilarious.

April Vokey: That sounds unbelievable. Greatest movie ever.

Tom Rowland: You've gotta see that. It's so funny.

April Vokey: I'll have to watch it. But no, I love the Australians. I love all of that. But I miss feeling like I could be lost in the woods. I like New Zealand for that.

Tom Rowland: Wow. Well, that's not very far away.

April Vokey: No. We spent a lot of time there.

Tom Rowland: Do you really? I mean, that's like a — how is that? A three-hour plane ride?

April Vokey: Three hour.

Tom Rowland: And are the tickets reasonable?

April Vokey: Totally reasonable.

Tom Rowland: Are they really?

April Vokey: Get there for, like, $300. And the thing is, everything is a little bit behind in New Zealand, especially as soon as you get into the countryside. And you want to fish up a property, you just go to the person's house, knock on the door, you go in, you have coffee together. I love hearing their stories. I love hunting, and I love farming, and it's so cool to talk to them. They show me their gardens. I really love New Zealand.

Tom Rowland: Think that's a place you could live?

April Vokey: I think that that is a place I will be living very soon.

Tom Rowland: Really? Like, your husband's work allows for that?

April Vokey: My husband's work might be taking a back seat to us spending half of our year in New Zealand. So give us some time.

Tom Rowland: So half a year in New Zealand and the other half in BC?

April Vokey: Yeah. So it's a one-to-five-year plan, but the motion is set in.

Tom Rowland: Oh, wow. Well, you've spoken it, and now you can watch it. Make it happen.

April Vokey: There's more to that, but I'm gonna just leave it for now for what I'm willing to talk about.

Marriage, Motherhood, and Life in Camp

Tom Rowland: That's cool. Well, tell me about this. So we talked about a major life change when you had this wreck. And that sent you down this path of Fly Gal and maturing that. And now you've had two other life changes. You got married, and then you have a baby. What is that life change like for you?

April Vokey: I just never laughed so much. I just laugh all day long. I'm constantly laughing. She's hilarious. She's just the funniest thing. But she's only seven months. So everyone's like, oh, life's so different now, isn't it? And I'm going, well, no. I mean, I laugh more. I'm happier, more fulfilled. But give me some time. Let her get a little bit older and then ask me. I think last night was my first experience of, oh, this could get hard. Our flight — she loves to entertain people, and she hates sleep. She hates sleep just like her mom. And so she fights it. And she fights it by staying stimulated. And so what she does is she entertains everybody on the airplane. And of course she's cute. So they're all like, oh my god, she loves me, look at her smiling. And I'm going, just ignore her. Just leave her. She won't sleep. So yesterday was my first time, which is why I'm kind of all upset.

Tom Rowland: Flight from Australia to The United States?

April Vokey: No. We went through Canada, but we landed at one, and then Delta lost our car seat. So if I look tired, or if I sound tired for people listening, it's because I bloody well am. It was a very late night. But yeah, that was my first experience of having a moment of, oh, this could be different. But up till then, everything's been pretty smooth.

Tom Rowland: And your daily routine before you have a baby is something that is similar now that you have a child?

April Vokey: Yes and no. She loves being outside. So as long as she's strapped onto me, she's happy. She loves being — I fish and hunt with her. She absolutely loves it.

Tom Rowland: When I had my kids, I remember there was a time when they were in front, and then they graduated to being in back. I would think at seven months, she's still in front.

April Vokey: In front but turned around, so she's out looking.

Tom Rowland: Oh, yeah. That makes a huge difference, because now she's like, wow.

April Vokey: She loves it. So we call in deer together. She's so cute. She loves calling in deer, and obviously we play with the wombats, and we run into foxes.

Tom Rowland: What's a wombat?

April Vokey: In Australia, it's like the cutest little rodent. It's like the size of a small pig. And they're so cute. And they look like a little bear. No, they're really, really sweet little animals.

Tom Rowland: What do they eat?

April Vokey: Probably grass. I don't know. They live in the earth.

Tom Rowland: Don't get in your garden?

April Vokey: They're like a big mole. But really, really cute.

Tom Rowland: Okay. And so you're getting those in. Do you have any other wildlife around your place? Australia.

April Vokey: Wombats, kangaroos, wallabies — she finds those hilarious. Fox, deer, obviously we have fallows and stag. And then in BC, we've got a lot more animals. So I'm gonna be a little more cautious. I won't be hunting with her in BC like I did in Australia. This year, in Australia, she was out the entire hunting. The whole rut, she was out with me. But this — we had an experience with a cow. We got charged by a cow.

Tom Rowland: Like a real cow?

April Vokey: Like a beef cow. It sounds silly, but no. Like a big heifer. A female cow who was the dominant one in the group, and they had calves. And I thought I was seeing things at first, because she wouldn't let us walk by her. I was scouting a property I'd scouted before that Adelaide likes. And so I thought I'd take her just for a scout. And it chased us, and I thought, surely, I'm just being an overprotective mom, but she chased us over a barbed wire fence. And so we got put out of the property, and we had to find a new way in. And have you ever tried shuffling a baby through a barbed wire fence?

Tom Rowland: No. No.

April Vokey: No. Not fun. I've done a lot of things with a baby, but not barbed wire.

Tom Rowland: Not barbed wire.

April Vokey: That was interesting. So we made it through, and then we did our scout. And then a few hours later, went to come back, and she's there again. And my gut just told me something didn't feel right. And I texted the owner and said, hey, look, I don't feel good about this. And he didn't get back to me, so I just passed the time waiting to hear back. Didn't hear back. Now it's getting dark. And we decide we're gonna go through. And, anyway, I was right. She growled. She was growling. She was pawing the ground at us. And she came at us. And I didn't have a bow. I've got a baby strapped to me. I felt totally helpless. And so I didn't run, but I couldn't get to the gate in time. But there were these two big trees, like a V of trees. So I got behind that, and she was literally trying to come around the tree. It was like something out of an animation. If you YouTube "cow attacks" — because I thought, I don't know what happened. Like, was she rabid? And I put it up on social media, and I just got bombarded with emails from farmers saying it's a real serious thing.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

April Vokey: More people are killed in The UK every year by cows than any other animal.

Tom Rowland: And not mad cow.

April Vokey: Yeah. And not bulls either, but by cows.

Tom Rowland: Wow. Well, you know, the female moose, very dangerous.

April Vokey: Well, that's the thing. So I had to go, okay, if I'm like this with a cow, how am I gonna feel when I am hunting with her and I run into a grizzly or a cougar or a moose? So she will be coming grouse hunting with me, but that's probably it. I've gotta be really careful of that. But anyway, the point is she loves being outside, and she travels well. So not that many changes yet.

Tom Rowland: What happens when you're taking care of your property? Do you just go cut down trees while she's taking a nap?

April Vokey: So that's where we go in a week. It's gonna be a real big experience for me, because I have a camp, obviously. I have no running water. I have no power. It's a pretty simple camp.

Tom Rowland: And it's just gonna be you two?

April Vokey: Yep. Charles will come in for five weeks, and her and I are there for — well, we've got July, and then we go back to Australia in August. I'm gonna try to catch a marlin in Exmouth. And then September till January, we're in BC. I don't think we'll overwinter there. It's too cold. But yeah, it's gonna be an experience. I've spent the last six years cooking on a fire, drawing on a fire and making salsa on a fire. And so I think I can still make her food and stuff there, and it's going to be an experience. You'll have to touch base after a season of being up alone in camp with a baby, but I think we can do it.

Tom Rowland: I'm sure you can. I have no doubt.

Starting the Anchored Podcast

Tom Rowland: Well, those are big life changes. So also, the podcast. I want to know what the podcast has done for you. And why the podcast? You went down the television road. It seems to me you're multitalented. You could go down any road. Why is it that you're drawn to the podcast, and what has it done for you?

April Vokey: Okay. So the podcast came because of the television show. As you know, you only have so much airtime. And I was doing these two-hour-long or hour-and-a-half-long interviews, and they were being edited down to three minutes. And all of this amazing content was just being thrown away. So I thought, well, I'm gonna capture that in a podcast. Also, I think people are always curious about me. I mean, they're curious about everybody. They're curious about you. But people want to hear what you have to say away from the edits. And I love that I have the podcast for that. Like, if there's something I want to address, I no longer have to feel desperate to get onto film or onto a media channel to say it. I just go on the show and say what I have to say. And I really love that the podcast is just voices. No one's tuning in because they want to see my boobs. They're tuning in because they want to hear — and they're not even necessarily tuning in to hear me, but they want to hear what my guests have to say. They're there for the right reasons. That means a lot to me, knowing that there's an audience out there who are interested in hearing stories. That's really cool to me. It's nothing more other than that they just truly want to hear the story.

Tom Rowland: Right. And what is your communication with your audience like?

April Vokey: That's a big question. In what way?

Tom Rowland: Well, today you can communicate through social media. Somebody could send you an email. There may be other ways to contact you. But I find that I did the television show for thirteen years and received a few hundred emails.

April Vokey: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: I do the podcast for a few weeks and receive a thousand emails.

April Vokey: Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?

Tom Rowland: And the emails that I'm receiving are — it's like a friend just wrote you an email. Or you're hearing from somebody that you hadn't heard from in a long time, or somebody has a real question. Like, not just "I love the show, man, it's really cool, can I ever fish with you?" More like, "wow, I didn't realize that this is how you got into fishing. My son wants to do this. What do you suggest about these kinds of things? Is it this that I heard on this one podcast, or is it this that I heard on another podcast?" And I just find that there is a much deeper connection with the people that are listening than television, video, even articles, or any of that.

April Vokey: Yeah. Because it's a real connection. I feel like it's a little secret club. First of all, I take emails very seriously. Anybody who takes the time to email me gets a response. I mean, you'd have to be pretty brutal in your email to me to not get a response. I started answering Instagram questions, but not all of them, honestly, because it's too easy. It's too easy just to press a button to send me a message. But if you take the time to email me, you've got my attention. So I think my interaction is pretty high. But yeah, I feel like I'm part of a secret club. If you've listened to the show, then you know what I'm about. There's no secrets. I'm what I am on the show. And they mean a lot. I kind of feel like they're sort of like family. I know it sounds crazy because I've never seen half of them.

Tom Rowland: But like, again, with Derek DeYoung, he was telling me — when he would go to these summer art shows, he used to do that, and he used to think that that was the way that he was gonna make his living. And he would say that he would be talking to somebody about his art, and then he would actually go and give it to them. And then there was this void inside of him. Like, I just put so much of myself into that. And now he's selling it to someone, and it's going away. And he's like, wow, that was a piece of me. But the podcast is a piece of you. I mean, you are being vulnerable. You're opening up. The one-and-a-half-to-two-hour format allows for your guest not to give their sound bite, but to give — the sound bite's over in twenty minutes. Then the good stuff comes at about an hour, I think. And then it allows people to actually get to know you in a way that they're not going to unless they went fishing with you. And even then — well, I don't know. That's why I think that some of the fishing podcasts and the hunting podcasts are particularly good, because these conversations are exactly the same conversations that I had on the boat for eight to ten hours.

April Vokey: Or standing on a flat spot.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I mean, you've gotta entertain this guy. So, you know, you grew up in Michigan? Oh, cool. What do you do there? And then it just goes from there for ten hours. And you find out that you turn out to — I mean, some of my best friends were my clients. The same thing with the podcast. But I just didn't know what you thought about the podcast.

April Vokey: I think it takes a lot of — people are curious about me, I think. Like, is she the real deal? What's her story? Is she a bitch? People are curious. So it takes a lot of the curiosity out of it, because if you listen to a hundred episodes, obviously you're gonna figure it out. But the deal for me — you'll notice if you listen to a lot of episodes, I take a back seat a lot of the time, because it's not about me. I come through when I have to, but it's really not about me. My deal is I want to get the stories of people who don't have platforms out there. Because a lot of these guys, especially, like Ed Rice — I just podcasted Ed Rice the other day. Well, he's 80 years old. He doesn't have any of these accounts, and his story is just laying dormant within him. I want it out there to inspire other people, to educate other people, and to give us an idea of our history in the sport. And that's what I see my role as in this industry. I'm not here to entertain people. I'm not here to teach people. I'm not even here to inspire people, but I am here to preserve these stories. And that's what my podcast is about.

Tom Rowland: And do you have a long list of people that you want, or do you kind of add to it all the time?

April Vokey: I add to it all the time, but it's always long.

Tom Rowland: Well, there's a lot of good stories. There's a lot of interesting characters in the fishing world, I think.

April Vokey: That's exactly right. And I can go on about that, but I'm just gonna leave it at that. There's a lot of characters.

The Pursuit of Permit and the Natural Eat

Tom Rowland: That's cool. I'm gonna go over my notes a little bit and see if there was something else that I wanted to talk about. But I think I've covered most of what I wanted to talk about. I did come across something that said you like to do a lot of permit fishing.

April Vokey: I love permit.

Tom Rowland: Do you? Is that your favorite?

April Vokey: No. No.

Tom Rowland: What do you like about permit fishing?

April Vokey: Oh, I love that they're hard. I love a challenge.

Tom Rowland: Have you caught many?

April Vokey: Not many, but I've caught a few.

Tom Rowland: And have you caught any in Florida?

April Vokey: No. Actually, my one opportunity at a permit in Florida — my best friend was on the bow of the boat. I had gone to the bathroom, and I was literally peeing off the boat, and she was just holding my spot. And this normal, like, legit 40-pound permit. Yeah. It haunts me.

Tom Rowland: So do you fish with Lori-Ann?

April Vokey: Only a couple times. In Belize once, back before.

Tom Rowland: She fishes for permit a lot, right?

April Vokey: Yeah. She's all about it. She's got the obsession.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I hope she'll be here. I saw her last, maybe, last year. I think it was last year.

April Vokey: Okay. Yeah. She should be here.

Tom Rowland: So where do you do your permit fishing?

April Vokey: In Exmouth, in Hinchinbrook in Australia.

Tom Rowland: So Indo-Pacific permit.

April Vokey: Yeah. In Belize. That's it.

Tom Rowland: So between the Indo and the Atlantic, I think you're the only person that I know that has caught both.

April Vokey: Yeah. So — although I haven't actually caught an Indo in Australia, I've only caught an Indo in The Seychelles.

Tom Rowland: Okay. Good enough. Both. So what do you see as the difference between the two fish?

April Vokey: I haven't caught enough to give you an honest answer on that. I like the Indos because I like the yellow. I think that they're sexier.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, you can get a lot of yellow on the Florida fish too.

April Vokey: See? There you go.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But they have a different nose.

April Vokey: They do have a different nose.

Tom Rowland: Picked it up. I was like, whoa, that looks different. They have a different nose.

April Vokey: I can't answer from, like, fighter. I'd have to ask you that.

Tom Rowland: I thought the fight was extremely similar.

April Vokey: Do you find it's easier to see the black tails?

Tom Rowland: Yes. But I only have my one Australian experience to draw from, so I don't have a lot of experience either. Where I was fishing for them, I saw them no problem. I'm sure that there are other places where the bottom is a little more yellow or whatever, and they just don't show up as well. Could be incredibly hard to fish for. Where I was, who knows? Maybe I just happened on a perfect day in a great place, and I caught a couple.

April Vokey: This sounds like permit's changed.

Tom Rowland: I thought that they weren't as hard as the Florida fish, but I was equally as interested in them.

April Vokey: But that might not be the species. That's the fact that it's Florida. Do you think Florida fish have a lot of pressure? We've seen everything. I'd be curious to see how you did somewhere remote for Pacific.

Tom Rowland: I don't think that Florida fish have any more pressure than a lot of the fish that are around the resorts in Belize and other places like Ascension Bay and all of that. I know that those guys go there, and I don't know much about those places at all. But what I do know about destination fishing places is that usually you have a five or ten-gallon tank or whatever size tank is in that boat, if it's a Dolphin Super Skiff or whatever. Maybe you got a 25-gallon tank. Within 25 gallons of that resort, they're getting hit every day, all the time. If you can get outside of that, you are gonna find some fish that haven't been fished for very much. I think in the Florida Keys, there are a lot of guides, there are a lot of boats, but there are a lot of areas that don't get fished very much, because it's such a giant area. It's a hundred and fifty miles long. There's oceanside all the way down. There's the backcountry. There's countless islands and flats and everywhere, and a lot of people fishing in a few places. There are certainly lots of places where you're fishing and you don't see anyone. And certain times of the year where you fish and you don't see anyone. And I think that they're definitely a smart fish, but I don't know. Certain permit get a lot of pressure, and they get way smarter, and they don't like to be thrown at, and they run off the flat real fast. But to me, it's more like the day. Like, you get out there on the right day, and they're all dumb. I mean, they really are. I've had a world-class fly caster one day, world-class, like in the Steve Rajeff class, a guy that anyone would want to be as good as him. And he's putting it exactly where I tell him over and over and over again with no luck. They just won't eat it. They look at it. They won't eat it. And then the next day, the wind blows ten miles an hour harder, and maybe the temperature goes up three degrees. And I got somebody from Ohio that has literally never held a fly rod in their hand and can roll-cast 30 feet, and he catches one. I mean, they're a funny fish.

April Vokey: When you figure it out, let me know.

Tom Rowland: Yes. Not going to.

April Vokey: But I think that's why we like them.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, well, no doubt. And I keep thinking that there's going to be some kind of — somebody's gonna come up with a fly, somebody's gonna come up with a technique, somebody's gonna come up with something that really, all of a sudden, you're catching a lot. But I don't know.

April Vokey: But we don't want that. It'd be like your queenfishing day in Australia. You don't want to get bored.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But I don't get bored catching one on crabs.

April Vokey: You don't?

Tom Rowland: No. Not at all.

April Vokey: Even if you were catching as many queenfish as you are, you'd still be okay catching permit. So what is it about the fight of the permit? I mean, they don't jump like queenfish do.

Tom Rowland: It's not the fight. It's the bite. For me, it's the seeing them, watching them come over. What I like about a crab is if you do it right, you're gonna catch every one.

April Vokey: And you don't get bored. That's amazing. I've been caught on a crab. Maybe I'll do that.

Tom Rowland: Well, if you want to catch more on fly, you can learn the best.

April Vokey: How do you know how to get that out of the fish?

Tom Rowland: When you're fishing with live crabs, it's super crucial that you keep that crab alive. Like, when the crab has been thrown 20 times, and then your client leaves it out on the deck of the boat and it gets real tired, you put it in the water, and it barely moves. You know how they look at it? You'd make a perfect cast in front of that permit, and it goes down, and the permit comes over and goes, yeah — and it looks at it just exactly like it does a fly. Like, no.

April Vokey: Even if it's just tired?

Tom Rowland: Absolutely. 100%.

April Vokey: That is amazing.

Tom Rowland: That's why a lot of people hit me with this argument of, oh, well, if you just rubbed a little crab juice on it. I'm like, rub crab juice all over it. Try it. Do it. It still doesn't move. It doesn't look like what they eat. It can smell like what they eat, but I'll throw a dead crab at a permit all the time, because now they're all dead in the livewell. You've used all the good ones, and the ones that are left are dying or dead or whatever. You can throw it out there, and, man, they gotta be really on the job to eat that. Really on the job. They don't like it. They don't want it. They're not interested in it. What they are interested in is if that crab, especially if it has pinchers, and it is fighting and those pinchers are up like this and its legs are going like this — bam. They eat it like you can't believe.

April Vokey: So excited to go permit fishing.

Tom Rowland: But I mean, they are all over it. They come from the other side of the room, come up in the water and then come down, and mud comes out, and it's streaming out their gills because they pinched it to the bottom so much that there's absolutely no possible way that thing was getting away. They come up with mud streaming off their head, and they're just so happy. And they're just like this, and the crab's biting them on the lip. And it's just awesome.

April Vokey: I have never experienced anything like that.

Tom Rowland: No. Because you're fly fishing for them, and they don't want it. Because it doesn't look like what they are eating. And so you can catch them on fly, and it's amazing when you do, and it's super awesome. And the best fish that I've ever caught is a fish where you throw the fly out there in front of it, and it eats something, and it eats something, and it eats something, and then it eats your fly, not unlike a trout. Like, it eats a real one. It eats a real one. It eats a real one. Mend, mend, mend, it eats a real one. And without altering its body at all, like, not thinking about it — oh, you know, that doesn't do anything for me. It's when the fish has a certain rhythm, and you get in that rhythm, and then it just eats your fly exactly like it ate the others. That means you had the exact right fly, the exact right size, the exact right color, the exact right presentation. It didn't have to deviate out of its line one inch. You did it exactly right. That gets me going.

April Vokey: Would a permit eat a crab off the top?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. They'll also eat a dry fly.

April Vokey: So have you done that? Caught them like that?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Like my friend Simon Becker, I think he catches a whole lot of them like that. And there are guys that, like, on those days where I was saying I don't really like to permit fish — the days that are really slick calm — a lot of those guys will go to a channel, and the permit will get in there, and they will actually be eating stuff off the surface. And then they get up-tide and roll this down, not unlike a salmon presentation, where they get this to go right through them and maybe wake it a little bit, and they're having some really good luck like that. But again, it's very technical, and it's very, very challenging, because if the line gets there first, then that's no good. I mean, I'm not good at that kind of fishing, but there are people that are, and they're the real deal.

But what gets me is, I like to catch any fish in a way that's totally natural. Like, if you get out to a reef and you start throwing live pilchards in the water, and the kingfish shoots through there and eats a live pilchard — no hesitation, and he does it, and he turns out like this. And you throw your fly in there, and the thing kind of comes up and looks at it and looks at it and looks at it. You might catch him, but you didn't really fool him. You might be able to get him to eat. But when he comes in there exactly like he did for that pilchard, that's when you fooled him. That's when your fly was exactly right. That's when you were moving it the way that the pilchard was moving. That's when you have gotten out of the fish its natural behavior. Same with trout fishing — when you throw a grasshopper out in front of a trout and it doesn't look quite right, and they stand on their tail like this and float backwards for six feet looking at it, they're like, man, I don't know.

April Vokey: It's interesting to hear that's what makes you tick, though.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

April Vokey: It's all about being natural to you.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. You want to fool them. And I don't like it when you throw something out there, and the fish has been eating like this, and you throw something out there, and it just reaches over there and just kills it.

April Vokey: You feel like that? Like it's just breaking the rhythm.

Tom Rowland: What I like to do is observe the fish in its natural behavior and see that it is very happily eating something, whether it's a trout or a permit or whatever. And I want to throw out there, and I want to do it exactly right so that the fish doesn't deviate from that behavior that it is doing, and it just continues to rise in that same rhythm. And there's your fly, and it just eats it just exactly like the natural. That just tells me that it's the right fly choice, size, shape, color. He didn't see that it had any tippet. You mended well. You made a good cast. Everything's going perfectly, and there's no reason why the fish wouldn't eat it. But when they have to deviate, or they stand on their head, it's not the same thing. It's not right. You didn't do it right. You didn't pick the right fly. It has micro drag. Something is wrong. It's passable.

April Vokey: It's like getting a 71 on your test. You coulda had an A, but you got a C.

Tom Rowland: But that's what drives you crazy. When you watch a lot of people catch fish, you're like, kind of cheap. And I mean, happy for you, because you're just — it's what's going on in the guy's head. You're just kind of like, could do better.

April Vokey: Actually, I'll give you that. I may have had some of those thoughts. Yeah, I used to go —

Tom Rowland: But that's the thing about bonefishing with a shrimp and spin-casting with a crab. If you do it right, they should eat it. And so if you are getting refusals, you didn't do it right. So you can improve your casting. You can improve your technique. You can improve your leader situation. You can use a smaller hook. You can take better care of your bait. You can do something to get that natural eat out of that fish. And whether that's bait or fly, doesn't really matter to me. They're just tools to me. Like, I like to bait fish as much as I like to fly fish, and I like to fly fish as much as I like to bait fish. And I like to fish with lures as much as I like to do either one of those, as long as it's happening natural.

April Vokey: So interesting to hear that.

Tom Rowland: You point out idiosyncrasies. And people just call it weird, I guess.

April Vokey: Sounds great.

Tom Rowland: Do you have any of those? Like, is there a perfect fish for you? Is there a perfect presentation? Or are you just happy to catch a fish? You roll up to a riffle, and you make a — you're not even casting, you're just getting some line out there. Oh, is that good for your one fish a day?

April Vokey: No. But it's really tough because — let's say New Zealand, you see a trout. I've seen trout take without breaking the rhythm, like you're talking about, that you like. I've seen them take horribly presented flies just like that, as if it was natural. So I don't put as much merit on the skill. I've seen fish take in that same rhythm that they were taking naturals on a bad fly, on a bad presentation. So it's hard for me to be like, I just saw you do a 71 presentation, and you just got rewarded with an A plus. Like, I know that was a C presentation. So it just depends. No, for me, it's all about — I don't know. I really — it's not about catching the fish, honestly.

Tom Rowland: What is it about?

April Vokey: Finding the fish. It's not about catching it. It's about finding it. I love exploring and then trusting my gut that I'll find it there. And then when I find it there, my job is done. I'll try to catch it. Sure, why not? I'd love to see it up close. I'd love it in my hands more than anything. I'd love to feel it. But no, it's more the need to find it, that it's there. So I want to get on the flats, find the permit, get into the mountains, find it.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's how it's super rewarding for a guide in an area like Louisiana or the Florida Keys or one of these places where you could just explore endlessly for the rest of your life. And you go home and you're doing the homework, and you're like, if they were there, then they should be here. By looking at this chart, this looks like it does this little thing, and the water should come in here like this. So now, if I'm to look over here and I see the same similar kind of thing, I guess I would be looking for an incoming tide. All this is going through your head, and so then you go, tomorrow I'm going there at noon.

April Vokey: Now you're talking. When you do that, I can feel myself getting excited. I love looking at maps. What's the gradient like there? Where's the entry there? What's the estuary? Where's the salt? That gets me off.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And then you go there, and they're there. And for a fishing guide, you don't want to catch them, because tomorrow you got a client. I'm coming back, and you're gonna be there. And I'm not gonna bother these fish. I'm just gonna ease out of here. And that's what we used to do in the redfish tournaments. That was the hardest thing — you would find the meat, and you wouldn't even make a cast.

April Vokey: Yes. And then you bring the clients back, and they —

Tom Rowland: Oh, you were the client. You were fishing for $50,000, and you were the client. And you would come back the next day, and they wouldn't be there.

April Vokey: Oh.

Tom Rowland: Because we didn't know enough about redfish in Louisiana to know how the salinity affects them, and everything pushes them out. But countless times, you think that you're gonna win. Like, they're right there. And if the tournament was happening today, that's what we're looking for. And then you come back tomorrow, and there's no sign of them. But that's all the obsession. That's what drives the obsession, I think, is the fact that sometimes they're not there when they should be. And sometimes they don't bite when they should. When everything seems to be right and they don't bite, that's what makes you go back.

April Vokey: Otherwise, the Seychelles has no problem.

Tom Rowland: Otherwise, it'd be the queenfish in the riffle. You get bored.

April Vokey: If it was too easy, we wouldn't want it.

Wrapping Up

Tom Rowland: Right. Well, I think this is a good place to stop, and I want to thank you very much for sitting down. I was not disappointed. You are a very interesting person.

April Vokey: I'm sorry. I wish I had more to add. I feel like — I would love to take both of our podcasts and merge them together.

Tom Rowland: Oh, we can. I'm sure that we could. Let's do it. Let's do a part one and part two on both channels, and people can listen to both of them.

April Vokey: Could do. Thank you very much for having me on the show.

Tom Rowland: So tell everybody how they can find you.

April Vokey: Oh, yeah. So my podcast is called Anchored — Anchored with April Vokey — and it's on iTunes, Stitcher, same as all your stuff. And these days, probably just aprilvokey.com.

Tom Rowland: That's the hub that has your writing and podcast and everything.

April Vokey: There's about to be a lot more writing happening, so it's pretty bleak on the blog front these days, but that's gonna be changing soon.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Alright. Well, congratulations on the biggest step. The biggest step in my life was having children, and the most rewarding. You are in for the greatest adventure of your life. I can assure you that. If there's one thing I can guarantee, you are in for the greatest adventure of your life. No one could tell you how it's gonna go. It'll be different every day, and every moment is worth it.

April Vokey: It has been so far.

Tom Rowland: Well, good luck to you.

April Vokey: Thank you. Thanks, Tom.

Tom Rowland: And we'll do it again.