Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1016 is a conversation with veteran South Fork of the Snake River fishing guide Ed Emory, who walks through how first-time client, Caroline Langdale, landed a 30.5-inch brown trout, a fish that cleared Idaho's 30-inch catch-and-release state-record mark. Ed breaks down the landing, his prize-fighter philosophy for fighting trophy trout, where the river's biggest fish actually live, and the conservation fight over what should swim in the South Fork.
Listen now: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube · Press play in the player above to watch.
Ed Emory is a fishing guide on the South Fork of the Snake River in Idaho who guides out of South Fork Lodge. He has guided for 36 seasons and logged about 67,000 guided river miles, which he points out is roughly 2.8 times the circumference of the globe with clients in his boat. He is known for targeting and landing exceptionally large brown trout and for an analytical, psychology-driven approach to guiding and fighting big fish.
The fish measured 30.5 inches, with a girth Ed describes as about as big around as his thigh and a pectoral fin large enough to cover his client's entire hand. It is the largest brown trout he has landed on the South Fork since his 31.2-inch brown in 2011, and it cleared the 30-inch mark that Idaho recognizes for a catch-and-release state record. The fish was caught, measured, photographed, and released on film.
A client named Caroline Langdale, whom Ed describes as a petite angler from Georgia, on her first-ever day fishing the South Fork. She turkey hunts and had caught saltwater fish such as tarpon and redfish before, and Ed credits that saltwater experience for how she fought and landed the fish, keeping the rod bent at the right angle and sliding the fish sideways into the net rather than trying to lift it.
Ed treats it like a prize fight. He throws a jab to test what the fish will do, reads its response, and refuses to accelerate the fight, letting the fish tire itself rather than forcing it. He stresses situational awareness, knowing the river bottom, the hazards, and the depth where the fish lives, and keeping big fish in the 10-to-15-foot water they are comfortable in rather than dragging them into deep holes. He says landing big fish is mostly between the ears.
Ed's theory is that the population of smaller guardian fish is near a historic low, so a fly reaches the largest trout instead of being intercepted by the many smaller fish that would normally feed first. With fewer fish between the angler and the big ones, anglers are gaining access to trophy browns that usually sit concealed at depth, feeding on the easy food that drifts to them.
Idaho Fish and Game has worked to remove rainbow and hybrid trout, including by electroshocking, which was halted when funding ran out, to favor cutthroat. Ed argues the river is no longer a native cutthroat fishery but a wild, naturally reproducing one, since hatchery Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat have passed through the dam from Palisades Reservoir for decades. He favors cutthroat-centric management, such as placing egg boxes with Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat eggs in the river, and letting anglers decide what they keep.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1016 with Ed Emory is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
I have fished the South Fork with Ed as a client, and I brought my son Turner's bachelor party to his boat, so when a photo of a 30.5-inch brown trout came across my phone at my mother-in-law's birthday party, I knew exactly what it meant. Every angler wants that fish. Every guide wants it more. Ed has spent 36 seasons and 67,000 river miles earning the right to put a client on a fish like that, and I wanted to hear the whole thing from the guide's seat, the decisions, the doubts, the river knowledge most people never see. Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
Caroline Langdale had never fished the South Fork before that day. It was cold, raining, snowing down to 8,000 feet, and she had already lost two good fish to the current before the big one ate. What happened next came down to a rod angle, a submerged tree, a death roll, and a long-handled net, plus a couple of decisions Ed made in seconds that most anglers would have gotten wrong. He walks through every move of that fight in the episode. Listen to that stretch in the player above.
The rig that fooled the 30.5-inch brown was not fresh out of the box. The day before, those same two flies were broken off by a different angler on a different fish, drifted a mile downstream, and were recovered in a way Ed says he has seen only a handful of times in 25 seasons. He kept them for a reason. When Caroline lost a big fish near a tree, Ed reached for those exact flies and tied them on knowing what they had already been through. Hear how that played out in the episode.
Ed does not muscle big fish, and he does not let his clients muscle them either. He describes the fight as a prize fight, a jab to test the fish, a read on what it does next, then a counter, never accelerating the battle and never trying to beat the fish by force. He also has strong opinions about how much to coach a client mid-fight, and when saying less lands more fish than saying more. He lays out the whole philosophy in the player above.
Ed calls the biggest browns megalodons, and he has a theory about where they hold and why so few anglers ever touch one. Neither of his two giant fish had a single human-caused hook scar, which tells him they live concealed at a depth most people never fish, picking up easy food the way big bluefish feed under a school of smaller fish. He connects that to why this particular season has produced so many large fish. The full explanation is worth hearing in his own words in the episode.
This is the part that goes beyond one big fish. Ed has tangled with Idaho Fish and Game over how the South Fork should be managed, electroshocking, rainbow and hybrid removal, and what counts as a native cutthroat after decades of hatchery fish passing through the dam. He makes a detailed, pointed case for managing the river around wild, naturally reproducing cutthroat, and he does not pull punches about the agency's motives. Listen to that section of the episode for the full argument.
Listen to the full conversation: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or watch in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
What stays with me a day after this conversation is not the size of the fish, even though it is the biggest brown I have ever seen come out of the South Fork. It is the craft. Near the end of our conversation I told Ed exactly how I see him, and I meant every word of it:
There are certain people that take guiding to an art form and they work on it every single day, and you, my friend, are one of these people.
That is the read on the client, the read on the river, and the patience to let a fish beat itself. The trophy is the headline. The attention underneath it, built over 36 seasons, is the part I want listeners to hear, along with the fight he is willing to have to protect the river those fish come from.
Press play in the player above, or grab Episode 1016 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
South Fork Lodge · South Fork of the Snake River · Caroline Langdale · Oliver White · Idaho Fish and Game · Palisades Reservoir · Jackson Hole / Flat Creek Fish Hatchery · University of Wyoming · Grand Targhee · Douglas Sky G · Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat · Yellowstone cutthroat · Snake River Animal Shelter
Ed Emory is a veteran fly-fishing guide on the South Fork of the Snake River in Idaho who has guided for 36 seasons and logged roughly 67,000 guided river miles out of South Fork Lodge. He specializes in large brown trout and naturally reproducing cutthroat, and has landed two of the biggest browns in the river's modern history, a 31.2-incher in 2011 and a 30.5-incher this season. He is an advocate for cutthroat-centric management of the fishery, books almost a year out, and can be reached through South Fork Lodge or his Ed Emory page on Facebook.
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 1016: Ed Emory
In this episode: the 30.5-inch South Fork brown trout, the fight, the netting, the prize-fighter philosophy, and the cutthroat management debate — in the exact words spoken.
Ed Emory: I'm Ed Emory and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.
Tom Rowland: Okay. Ed , how are you, my friend?
Ed Emory: Doing well, grindin' away.
Tom Rowland: It seems like it's been quite a year on the South Fork already.
Ed Emory: Yeah, you know, it's been a fantastic year. We've had really good water conditions. it hasn't been too high, ha or off color. That's kind of the the mixed blessing of the the snowpack we have.
Ed Emory: It may look a lot different in July and August than we're ever used to, but we'll take what we have for now and run with it.
Tom Rowland: So the snowpack, tell me about the snowpack. It's low for for this y time of the year?
Ed Emory: Yeah, we got up to we were over a hundred percent of normal snowpack at one point. And then we had the January rains. I mean, I ski a lot at Grand Targhee in the in the wintertime, and I've never seen rain in January. I mean, that's it was just unheard of.
Ed Emory: And it it diminished and wiped out the snowpack. You know, you when you guided over here, you saw runoff. We're not having runoff. Typically the snake over in Jackson doesn't fish until mid July or later.
Tom Rowland: Really.
Ed Emory: Right now it's clear.
Tom Rowland: Right. Wow. But all that water that you got and that rain in in January, did that fill the reservoirs?
Ed Emory: So we've got No, we're at forty two percent. They're talking about giving us only about between fifty and eighty percent of normal flows for throughout the rest of the season.
Tom Rowland: Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, for right now, it seems to have made the fishing pretty incredible.
Tom Rowland: I'm sitting, I was at a birthday party for my mother-in-law, and I get a text from you with these pictures that I couldn't believe of your client catching a thirty point five inch brown trout. I get this picture from from Ed
Ed Emory: yeah.
Tom Rowland: And I'm like, holy cow. So tell us the story, man. Because I want to hear it from a guide's perspective. Because it's one thing to you know, every angler would like to catch that fish, but not as much as every guide would like to catch that particular fish, because that's the biggest fish I've ever seen come out of the South Fork.
Tom Rowland: I don't know about you. I would think that it's one of the biggest fish that you've ever seen, possibly. but every guide wants to catch that fish. It's probably more important to the guide because actually for an angler and hearing this lady's story, this is the this was the first time she had ever even fished the South Fork of the Snake River.
Tom Rowland: And but you you've been on the river what? How how long?
Ed Emory: 36 seasons, a total of 67,000. 67,000 guided river miles. That's 2.8 times around the globe. With clients in my boat.
Tom Rowland: Thirty six seasons. huh. Incredible. And so let's hear this story.
Tom Rowland: I wanna hear it because and and from the guy's perspective, because this is really a a a lifetime kind of thing, I think.
Ed Emory: Okay, we'll backtrack to 2011. 2011 was a really big water year. we didn't have hardly any hatches until the water dropped and warmed. Two thousand eleven, my boat landed a thirty one point two inch brown.
Ed Emory: And that was before they were doing the catch and release date records. You'd have to kill the fish, get it weighed, all that great stuff to qualify. And that's just not the ethos that we practice. Those genetics are far better off in the river to propagate the next generation of bigs.
Ed Emory: I call them megalodons. So that would that happen in 2011. There's always a breakoff season. I call it breakoff season for a reason, because we break off.
Ed Emory: I start counting fish. So this year we're up to 11 breakoffs. And that's on 2x. And you know how strong that 2x is.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: So the breakoff season
Tom Rowland: It's very strong.
Ed Emory: is comes in two different phases. It's right before the salmon fly hatch, that two or three weeks before. As those salmonfly nymphs migrate, as the sally nymphs, everybody's migrating, and these fish are starting to feed on that migration. So we get a really strong period of time where we get this breakoff season.
Ed Emory: And that was happening at the end of May when Caroline was here, because this is an early, early year. So fast forward, Caroline has two days booked at the lodge. She's a really interesting woman. I'm gonna call her a sponge.
Ed Emory: She doesn't want to be the best at everything she does. She wants to do it right. And she learns from every little aspect in her life. She's not there to take the glory.
Ed Emory: And her in her world, the glory goes to God. She's very humble. She's one of those perfect people to that will listen to somebody who has experience, does not come in with presupposition. So I find that out when I first meet her, which is not her first day she booked.
Ed Emory: The first day she booked, she couldn't make it. She was chasing turkeys in Sundance, Wyoming. And she hadn't shot her bird yet. As she was saying, those birds were all quote unquote hended up.
Ed Emory: So she had to wait it out. She opted for another day for turkey hunting because fishing is just fishing, right? She doesn't know what's in front of her. She has no idea what's in front of her.
Ed Emory: She has no idea what the South Fork is capable of. You do, others do, but she has no idea. She knows she's going to a great lodge.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Ed Emory: I have to give a shout out to Oliver White and the South Fork Lodge for taking care of our clients and making them comfortable enough so when they come out with me, they don't have any hesitations or regrets. So she comes a day late. Well, she was kind enough to give her day that she missed to two employees. That's on Friday.
Ed Emory: So Friday, I take out Andrea and Caleb. Andrea's a dining room manager. She doesn't really fish.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Ed Emory: She wants to know the water. She wants to have the experience. Caleb's a junior guide trying to break in. So I was put together with those two as a day.
Ed Emory: Because you, Tom, you know I don't take days off. I just go. I just grind and I I mean I love what I do and I keep following my dream. So I'm really excited to take these two out and show them my world, show them the river through my eyes for a little bit.
Tom Rowland: Right.
Ed Emory: So we're working this nice big hole on the upper stretch that already had broken off two fish earlier in the year when Andrea hooks into a twenty-five inch plus. Now mindful, she d doesn't really fish. She doesn't know big fish. She's caught fish in the past, but nothing of that caliber.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: She goes ahead and the fish is running towards the middle of the river. She goes ahead and feels the rod pulling out of her hands. The fish is literally pulling her towards the gun of the boat. It's that big.
Ed Emory: Caleb sees it. I see it. It's over 25. We're all excited for her to get her picture, you know, the whole nine yards when she does the Vulcan death grip.
Ed Emory: The subconscious says a big fish is pulling this $1,300 worth of gear out of my hand. It's pulling me over the edge of the boat. And I am going to hold on for dear life with both hands with a Vulcan death grip. So that doesn't happen.
Ed Emory: And it was like a shot went off. That 2X broke. She fell backwards a little bit, not out of the boat, but just kind of fell back in shock. Caleb and I are looking at each other like, my God.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. man.
Ed Emory: You know, we want a woman to catch a fish of that magnitude more than anything else. Us guys have that shot. She that would have been fantastic. So it took the indicator and the two flies below.
Ed Emory: We started working the hole looking for it. I got it on the green for 25 seasons. I've seen indicators break off. We can chase the indicator, catch the indicator, hopefully, and get the fish that's on still.
Ed Emory: We sat there for half an hour. We couldn't find it. Andrea has to be back for a one o'clock meeting. We book it downstream about a mile, and I'm looking, I go, my God.
Ed Emory: There is the indicator. Cause I do two different colors.
Tom Rowland: No way.
Ed Emory: I do a white and a fusure, a white and an orange, so people can see the indicator turn for light hits, as opposed to all just one color. And that's my color combination. We see it towards the shore on the left-hand side. I excitedly row down there.
Ed Emory: I give Caleb the I have a really super long handle net. Give him the super long handle net. He scoops up the indicator and it swims back to the middle of the river. We're thinking okay, Megalodon Junior is on.
Ed Emory: It goes out to the middle of the river. We're all kind of crestfallen for a second. I pull over, drop the anchor. I said, Caleb, give it just a minute.
Ed Emory: This is just like Captain Quentin Jaws. When they shoot those buoys into the in Jaws and they go under, Quint just goes, just wait. They're coming back up. And all of a sudden, about halfway out in the middle of river, you can see the indicator pop back up again, just like Jaws.
Ed Emory: And it swims towards shore because it doesn't want to battle that heavy current. We're just thinking this is an incredible situation that Megalodon Jr. is on. We're going to go get that.
Ed Emory: Caleb walks up, makes two cash, hooks the indicator, because it's a nice foam indicator.
Tom Rowland: Right.
Ed Emory: He hooks it, starts pulling it in, and I just look at the line and I look at the indicator, I look at the fight, and you can tell by the way the rod tip's doing this, that's a white fish. He gets it in, lands the the indicator, the rig, and the white fish. We're a little crestfallen about it because it's not the big fish, but it's one hell of a story, right? I cut those two flies off, I hand them to Andrea.
Ed Emory: She and I say, you know, this is a memory. Keep these flies and she gave back to me. We end the day, we had a a great day, they've had a great experience. Andrew has something to share with the the guest at the lodge now.
Ed Emory: Fast forward to Saturday. Saturday was a front coming in. It's raining, it's cold, it's snowing down to 8,000 feet. And here comes Caroline, this petite Georgia girl.
Ed Emory: She's ready to fish. I know she turkey hunts, so I know she can handle this weather. She was dressed to the nines in great, great rain gear, everything else. We're gonna go out and we're gonna have a great time.
Ed Emory: So we go to our private access. There's a little hole at the private access that most everybody kind of skips by because it's little, right? Doesn't look like it holds much. Her second cash, she lands a 21-inch hybrid.
Ed Emory: She's excited. That makes her trip already. She's done something great. She's she's given the data to a couple of employees.
Ed Emory: They learn the river. They have a great experience. She's rewarded with a 21 inch hybrid. And all I can think of my mind is hey, girl,
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: That's just a start. Next fish she lands is a nice 19, really fat hybrid. And hanging out of the side of its mouth is a rubber San Juan worm. And I kind of jokingly pull it out and hand it to Caroline and say, You just bested somebody else who had lost this fish earlier.
Ed Emory: You beat that fish. So she's all kind of pumped up. She's got some photos. We're doing great.
Ed Emory: We start our day after that. We start drifting down. She catches another, 16, 17 fish. She has one fish on a flat, Tom.
Ed Emory: Especially in the rain, these big fish can move into the shallows. She has one fish that she hooks, goes behind the boat in about five feet of water. And I see it doing this. And I know it's a big fish of some sort.
Ed Emory: Don't know if it's a cutthroat, don't know if it's a brown, but it rolled. And again, Vulcan death grit. Fish gone. So I'm crestfallen now because I know that's a really good fish.
Ed Emory: That's a potential. We kind of settle ourselves back down into a hole below that. This hole is about 40 feet deep. Super fast water on the right side, nice riffle and shoreline on the left, but there's a tree at the bottom of it.
Ed Emory: And every time we hooked a big fish in that that hole, it goes for the tree. You'd have to been there for 20 years to know that tree's there. It's just a big bush. It's a shrub.
Ed Emory: Just doesn't ever leave the hole. So we get to the hole. She catches a couple of nicer fish, 1819s. She's super stoked on the day.
Ed Emory: It's still raining, almost snowing. And she hooks a big. She gets this big on, and it runs right for the tree in about 12 feet of water. And she breaks it off.
Ed Emory: This is one of those fish that kind of pulls her over the edge, does everything it should to try to get away from it. But it's one of those strong fish that runs, is running towards an obstruction. It's moving fast and hard. So that doesn't mean it's truly a megalodon.
Ed Emory: That means it's a bigger fish. It's a really nice fish. But it doesn't mean it's a super big, like the one that rolled before. So she breaks that off.
Ed Emory: And we're again we're a little crestfallen, but we know the potential's there because this is two in about 20 minutes that are really nice. So what do I do? I have Andrea's flies from the day before. I have them sitting next to me for a reason.
Ed Emory: I didn't start with those. Those have reverence in my mind. She's done something fantastic by cooking that fish, unfortunately losing it, but recovering it. So there's some reverence there.
Ed Emory: Those flies mean something. What do I do? I reach for those flies after she breaks off that fish in the tree. I retie the rig.
Ed Emory: Second cast later, Megalodon.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Ed Emory: You can tell. She's thinking it's bottom. She's thinking she's done something wrong. It's megalodon.
Ed Emory: It's rolling. It's as long as my leg. It's as thick around as my thigh. You can see it rolling.
Ed Emory: These megalodons do the death roll. They do this to wrap up your line. They don't get big by running towards an obstruction, running out to the middle. They burn too many calories.
Tom Rowland: Ha ha.
Ed Emory: They roll and they know they can break you. So that's their behavior. The fish rolls three times. I'm kind of worried now because the fish is now rolled in its line.
Ed Emory: And you know from salt when it does that, it's almost impossible to get it back unless it unrolls. I pull the anchor as quick as I could, as hard as I could. I pull out around the fish because I know once that fish gains the advantage, it's going right back to the tree. I worked the way around it.
Ed Emory: The fish is now, the indicator's now back under. It's a seven-foot indicator. It's now back under, heading right into the tree. And Caroline, to her credit, has she's caught saltwater fish in the past.
Ed Emory: Pretty sure she's done tarpon, she's done reds. She knows how to U the rod. Not like this, not where it drops and the angler drops. She bends the rod at the perfect angle.
Ed Emory: And she's got it bent at the perfect angle. I'm moving the boat to pull the fish away from the tree because she can't give it line. She can't retrieve line because she's at that moment that we need to unroll that fish. Not we.
Ed Emory: That fish has to unroll itself. That's the good grace of God. We were so lucky as it went into the tree, it wanted to hit some of those branches. And in its attempt to get into those branches, it turned its side and unrolled.
Ed Emory: I watched the indicator go one, two.
Tom Rowland: boy.
Ed Emory: Three. At that point, I truly knew the size of that fish because a smaller fish, when it unrolls, will do this. One, two, three. It's the cadence.
Ed Emory: One, two, three, small fish. One, two, three. That fish unrolls as it's trying to get in tree. Now my mind is we've got it out of the tree.
Ed Emory: She's got a fair fight now. She's got a chance at it. It tries to go back. My mind is pull the fish out.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm. I'm following you.
Ed Emory: Everybody's mind is get that fish in deep water so we can battle it, right? My mind's different. I don't want it in deep water. I want it in the 12, 10 to 15 foot of water where that fish lives and feels comfortable all its life.
Ed Emory: I don't want it trying to go down to the bottom of a 40-foot hole. The current and the too many things happen there. So I'm directing the boat into 10 to 15. It's a nice slope like this off the bank.
Ed Emory: We've got control of it. We're working it. It's trying to get down to 15. It's coming back up with her pull, down, and then you could tell it just started to give.
Ed Emory: And at that point, Caroline did the right thing. She's got the rod bent at the U. She raises her arms. And this is a Douglas Sky G four weight 10 foot.
Ed Emory: This is not six-like ten foot forward. That's that's all I fish anymore. Been doing that for 20 years. So she's fighting it.
Ed Emory: It's unrolled. We've got it. The rod's bent to max for that rod. I mean, it's doing that.
Ed Emory: And when I just slowly bring the boat over into the shallower water, not shallow, but ten feet. And that fish now is trying to swim along the contour.
Tom Rowland: A four weight. A ten foot four weight. Wow.
Ed Emory: Well, I know the contours, if we can direct that fish just a little bit up, it's gonna get shallower and shallower and shallower, and we're gonna get that fish. And that's exactly how it played out. And that was just amazing. She had the fortitude, she had the ability, she had the background to do that.
Ed Emory: And then the whole storm came together.
Tom Rowland: So Tell tell me about netting it though. Like did you net it inside the boat or did you get out of the boat to net it?
Ed Emory: No, we netted it from the boat. If you bring the a larger fish to shore like that, they don't want the shallows. That fish lives its whole life being sunlight and shallow adverse. That fish lives in a depth that we don't really understand.
Ed Emory: We know it's there. It doesn't live in the shallows. So if it goes to the shallows, we try to get out and net it that way, it's not gonna work. So we net it from the boat.
Ed Emory: I have a super long handle net. Tom, I've taken a an ordinary net with a big basket.
Tom Rowland: Right. Mm. Mm, mm.
Ed Emory: Then I stuck a broom handle into it and I wrap it with some sort of tape to keep the handle from being slick. So I don't have to get out of my seat to go jab at a fish. Jabbing at a fish is the worst thing you can do, especially on a big. So I have this super long handle net.
Ed Emory: I'm really I'm sitting in my seat, and I just slowly raise up, put the net at an angle, and she guides it right to the net, and we pick it up.
Tom Rowland: Right. Yes.
Ed Emory: So if she hadn't had that saltwater experience, she would have tried to lift it. I had a client a year ago last June. I have two nets in the butt. I keep two, one for backup.
Ed Emory: This big net that landed that 30 and a half last year in June, I tried to get a fish into that net. And I had to break out my backup net to try to trap that fish as opposed to net it, because it wasn't going to fit in that net. And that's when the angler lifted the rod and broke the line. So Caroline did the all the right things.
Ed Emory: She absolutely slid it sideways, brought it into the net, guided it in there, and we got it. Right now we're moving into the shallows of the riffle. Neither one of us can believe it. We're not even looking at each other.
Ed Emory: We're just kind of looking off in the distance like, what just happened? There's no big high five. No congratulations. One second.
Ed Emory: Siss it. Sorry.
Tom Rowland: Man.
Ed Emory: There's no big high fives, there's no congratulations. We're just all look, we're both looking in the distance, going, What just happened? I just can't believe this. And she can't believe it.
Ed Emory: We work our way into shallow water, we start off looking at the fish, knowing it's big. We're gonna measure it loosely and release it. The thing is that earlier in the day, when we sit and we meet our Before we meet our clients, the guides all sit together, kind of in a group. They talk and about the day of fishing or the next day or whatever.
Ed Emory: One of our young guides kind of looked at me and goes, You know, the state records only 30 inches for catch and release. I'm gonna get that fish. I'm like, dude, you're you're you're a young guide. You're here for a year.
Ed Emory: You know, it's gonna take a lot more than that. There are a lot of circumstances. And that's what put the seed in my mind to really look. for the new state record.
Ed Emory: State record is right on the nose at 30. We're going past that. We know we're going past that, but how much was to be determined by the tape? So we get the fish in the shallows, we have it in the net.
Ed Emory: No pictures yet. I'm fumbling for the tape. We get the tape, and now it's 30 and a half. The girth time of that fish is as big around as my thigh.
Ed Emory: You saw the picture, it the pectoral fin engulfed her whole hand. That fin was so big it covered her whole hand up. So we take the tape, I get a good accurate measurement. We photograph it, we get the grip and grins.
Ed Emory: And part of the catch and release record you have to do is you have to film the release. There's really no trust amongst anglers and fishing game, you know, it's probably on somebody's wall. No, this is a catch and release. So we film the release, and I think I sent that to you.
Ed Emory: Nice, slow, easy release. We work her into the water and she's free to go for another day.
Tom Rowland: It's incredible fish. There's some tense moments when you got a fish like that. you know, that's that's just like the way that you're talking through the the the landing of that fish. I mean, as a guide, you struggle with okay, your client seems to be doing everything just right, maybe more instruction is counter counterproductive here and maybe less instructive I mean l maybe less information right now is is not the right way to go.
Tom Rowland: Like you've you've just have so much experience here, with sixty seven thousand guided river miles. how do you know, like advice to to young guides that that have this fish of a lifetime or fish of a career, like what what would you like you obviously went through with your experience, you knew exactly what the contour of the bottom of the river was. That was a really important thing for landing this fish. But When you if you were to give a young guide some instruction or advice on how to I mean, some people on the first one they freak out, right?
Tom Rowland: They're just so excited and they want it more than their client. You know, they they really do. The guide really wants this fish more than their client because it means it it probably means more to them than it does to the client, honestly. because it's I mean, that's your reputation, that's your credibility, that's your that's your career.
Ed Emory: Yeah, it's river credibility.
Tom Rowland: right there. If you land that fish or you don't land that fish, there is a massive difference. And so what what kind of advice would you give a a younger, less experienced guide about getting that fish in the net and landing it?
Ed Emory: First of all, it's situational awareness. Know where you are. Know what's on the bottom of the river. Know your hazards.
Ed Emory: Don't be in a hurry to net that fish. You're at that fish's mercy till the very last second. You've got to determine what that fish is doing. Is it running?
Ed Emory: Is it tumbling? Is it turning? What's the water in front of you? What's the water behind you?
Ed Emory: Who's coming around you? What's here? What's there? What's going to happen next?
Ed Emory: If I lean over too far, is the bark boat gonna go over? Pay attention to all that great stuff. And that fish will come to you. Don't accelerate the fight.
Ed Emory: Let that fish come to you and work its way towards you and do the proper fight. The biggest credit is to Caroline because she fought it with a saltwater acumen. She fought it like anglers don't. The one we caught in 2011 at 31.2.
Ed Emory: The only reason why we landed that fish, that gentleman had been steelhead fishing. Two weeks before and landed 34 and 36-inch steelhead. It's all up here. Big fish are here.
Ed Emory: They're not in your brute strength. They're not in your flies. They're not in your line. It's all right between the ears.
Ed Emory: You don't luck into them, you work your way into them.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, for sure. Now, let me get this right. You've caught a thirty one and a half and then you've caught this thirty point five. Are those the two biggest fish of your career?
Ed Emory: at the South Fork, yes. Those are landed fish. Yes.
Tom Rowland: on the South Fork. Right. And you feel like you've hooked bigger fish than that? Had people hook?
Tom Rowland: Wow. Wow.
Ed Emory: yeah. Especially the one last June where we saw it. It literally broke the rod. It sounded like a shotgun went off.
Ed Emory: The guy went ass over a tea kettle. It was that big. You don't lift a megalodon well over 30 inches like an eight-inch bass into a net. And that's what he tried to do.
Ed Emory: He was a first-time fly fisherman, never fly fishing before, had been bass fishing, knew how to land a fish on a on a spinning rod into a net or into a boat. And his mind was
Tom Rowland: Hm.
Ed Emory: I'm gonna accelerate this. I'm gonna land it quicker than I need to. But he doesn't understand that part. He's just trying to land it because he's excited.
Ed Emory: You've got to let the fish do what it's gonna do, and then you can get it. And he accelerated the process and broke the rod in, and it was just he was crestfallen. And the guy in the back of the boat, by the way, who was hosting his trip, who's been fly fishing all his life, started dry heaving. He's literally going because that fish was so big.
Tom Rowland: Ha ha ha
Ed Emory: He knew what it meant for everybody. Here's a guy fly fishing all his life, and the guy who's never fly fished before gets the super megalodon. I mean, that's those things happen. It's it's a perfect world when you can get it into the net.
Ed Emory: You can't accelerate the fight. You can't try to beat it. It's got to beat itself. We're not there to beat it.
Ed Emory: We're there to it's a prize fight. I've been using this analogy for a while now. When you're on a big fish, it's like a prize fighter. Okay, the top prize fighter is gonna test you with a jab, right?
Ed Emory: He's gonna see what his opponent's gonna do and how it's gonna respond. That's my philosophy on fighting big fish. We're gonna test that fish. We're gonna throw that jab.
Ed Emory: We're gonna have that fish feel that, and then we're gonna see what its tactics are, what it's gonna do, what its next move is. We're gonna anticipate that. That's what a good fighter does. Throws the jab, is he gonna throw a hook, an undercut?
Ed Emory: What's he gonna do next? We're gonna throw that jab and watch what that fish does. and try to get it another tactic to get it in. We just keep doing that.
Ed Emory: We keep jabbing away until that fish tires out or it gives us the opportunity to net him.
Tom Rowland: Mm. That's really the that's really the the real art of guiding, I think, is is the communication of of things like that. Because that's like a long we're having a long conversation here and you're telling me about how your your you feel about your philosophy about fighting big fish and and I get it, and that's great. But it's a whole different deal when somebody is standing in a in a drift boat for the first time, they've never done this before, and you're trying to give
Ed Emory: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: kind of an analogy about a prize fighter and you're saying, well just pull on it a little bit and then, you know, let's see what it does. That's hard to do. It's really hard to do. It's hard to do and sometimes as a guide you just look at the person and you go, Well, they're doing a pretty good job.
Tom Rowland: I don't know, like if I give them more instruction right now, do they just clamp the reel down like you're saying and and you know, it's like don't let go and you know, don't don't don't let you know, don't let pull too hard and then they clamp the reel down and break off. And you're like, Man, if I hadn't of said that, then maybe they wouldn't have done that, right? Like I maybe I made nervous or maybe I gave too much information when things were going kinda pretty well. And I I just kinda wonder that.
Tom Rowland: As I got more experienced guiding, I started to just kinda wonder, like, what is the best approach there? And and it's one thing when you're deal when you're dealing with somebody, why? What are you chuckling about?
Ed Emory: I'm chuckling because it's all right here. It's between the client's ears. The client's an extension of you only if they listen to you. So clients learn in a in a clients learn in a variety of ways.
Ed Emory: There's tactile learning, there's verbal, and there's visual. No one has one above the other. They do them in combination. So if you can figure out how that
Tom Rowland: Right. Good.
Ed Emory: client learns, then you can appeal to them differently with your language and your instructions on how to cast, how to land a fish, how to set a hook. You've got to be able to figure that part out. How is that client learning? What's he doing?
Ed Emory: Is he responding in a tactile fashion to that heavy pull? Sure he is. But what's between his ears? What's going on with the rest of it?
Ed Emory: Is he visual? He's not paying attention. Is his mind gone blank? He's just feeling that fish.
Ed Emory: That's where you got to get in the psychology, the deep psychology of what they're thinking and what they're doing and what the next move is going to be and trying to preempt that. Not just don't grab the line, don't grab the reel, don't do this. It's coaching him into their next move, trying to anticipate what they're going to do next, whether it's right or wrong.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm. How many of the bigger fish of your career do you think were from very experienced anglers and how many from very inexperienced anglers? You see any correlation there?
Ed Emory: no. No. The gentleman who landed 31.2. It just happens.
Ed Emory: But I've I've formulated a theory on where these big fish lie. And like the gentleman in 2011, he couldn't hit the bushes like we want him to hit. We couldn't get in underneath the trees, couldn't do this. He was 10, 12 feet off the bank in eight to ten feet of water.
Ed Emory: That's where those big fish sit.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Some days it just happens.
Ed Emory: So there's a randomness to it, but it's not as random as you think. If you look at how we fought that fish in 10 to 15, that's where that fish lives most of its life. If we can access those fish in that kind of water, it's not the big fish underneath the tree slapping a salmon fly. That's a lot of fun, right?
Ed Emory: It's the big fish picking up the dregs. It's just like bluefish beneath the schoolies. You got schoolies?
Tom Rowland: Mm.
Ed Emory: And you got the big blues down below just gently feeding on everything else in schoolies have torn up. That's what these big trout do. They find a depth, they feel comfortable, they're concealed, they haven't been seen. By the way, both of those fish did not have one human-caused scar on them at all.
Ed Emory: Not one. Everybody thinks these are big grizzled fish have been hooked a dozen times and kicked everybody else's ass. Not one hooking scar on either one of those fish, period. Nothing human caused on either one of those.
Ed Emory: So they live their lives in seclusion at a certain depth and away from the other ones. They're picking up like the the big blues underneath the schoolies. They're picking up that food. They don't have to go seeking food out because they're burning calories.
Ed Emory: You're burning calories trying to seek food out. Let the food come to you.
Tom Rowland: That's Right. Mhm. And that's what they do. what about the what about the other guides at the South Fork Lodge?
Tom Rowland: Are i are is everyone having a big fish year? are there b I I mean, I've heard from other friends that are fishing the South Fork right now of some really big days. Like ten fish over twenty one inches, I think one day I heard somebody catch. That's a that's a great day.
Tom Rowland: I mean, that's a really fantastic day. I just wonder what your like your your crew
Ed Emory: Yes.
Tom Rowland: so far this year. What do you think about this year?
Ed Emory: Yeah, so the the whole river is fishing on that level. And my theory is we're we're almost at an all time low in fish populations. Fishing game did the electro shocking. We did that other podcast on fishing game in the South Fork.
Ed Emory: Fishing game's been electro shocking. Populations are low. What I'm gonna say is that the guardian fish, the little fish, the littler fish, I a 21 fish, what inch fish compared to a
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: A 30 is a little fish to me. Those those guardian fish that would normally eat your flies and create a hundred fish day are gone. We don't have as many as we used to. The population is down to almost a historic low.
Ed Emory: So what's happening is those fish that would get to a fly in advance of a bigger fish aren't there anymore. That's why we're having this big fish cycle and access. It's not a it's as much a cycle as it is.
Tom Rowland: Sure, right, right.
Ed Emory: Accessing the big fish because the guardian fish aren't there anymore. Does that make sense? If we have a higher population, if we're up to 6,000 fish per mile, that big megalodon has got 20, 30, 40 fish in front of it just doing this. Your fly never gets a chance to get to that megalodon or that 24 or that 25 or that 21, because all those guys are doing this in front of them.
Ed Emory: When you have this.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well it really does.
Ed Emory: Or you have the megalodon doing this because there's nothing in front of him, that's how you access these bigger fish. So it's more in my mind, it's more an access issue.
Tom Rowland: And so what's going on with Idaho Fish and Game, you've had your your your your disagreements with them. what what fill us in on what's happening there as far as the South Fork goes?
Ed Emory: Well, they ran out of money for the shocking. So they're not electro shocking anymore. They were sh electro shocking for as much as seven weeks, four days a week, hitting the same holes for seven weeks. Their mortality rate was far greater than they ever thought.
Ed Emory: They were saying it was one to three percent. It had to be much higher because our populations plummeted. They didn't release their numbers in two thousand twenty-two because the I believe they were so dismal. We tried several different requests and several different avenues and they never came out.
Ed Emory: So right now they're leaving it up to the anglers to remove rainbows and hybrids, which by the way, the river's already hybridized to a great extent. we're probably at ninety-eight percent rainbow cutbow hybrids, and there's hardly any pure rainbows left. So they're leaving it to the anglers to go ahead and do that. So
Tom Rowland: And so are the anglers and guides doing that?
Ed Emory: The lodge is doing it, the other guides are not. So the angler, the public's contributing in about, they've never really gone above a couple thousand fish a year. The South Fork receives 400,000 visitors a year. I mean, it's a really highly used resource.
Ed Emory: Out of 400,000 visitors, you've got the general public keeping 2,000 fish. That means they're not on board with the program. They don't want to kill all the fish, fishing game wants. Fishing game's first target is like 22,000 fish the public will kill for us.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Ed Emory: They will kill for us. And the public did not. And they continued not to. That's why they stepped it up to the electroshocking to remove the fish because the public wasn't doing what they wanted to do.
Ed Emory: So the court of public opinion's out there already saying, Hey, we don't like your program. So it's it their program hasn't won the court of public opinion at all. It's the exact opposite. It's like less than a a quarter of a percent of people are participating in the program.
Ed Emory: So it's kind of where it is. We're looking at it from a couple different angles. There's there's a group out of the University of Wyoming that's just done a basin-wide genetic study all the way from Jackson Hole through here. We're waiting, I'm waiting personally to get the results to
Tom Rowland: Really?
Ed Emory: To see where that's gonna lie, to see if these fish, I know by by anecdotal evidence, by the stocking records, by the passing of hatchery fish from Palisades reservoir into the river, we don't have a native fish. We just can't. It just doesn't happen. We're waiting for those genetic records to come out for an official reason, not just an anecdotal.
Ed Emory: And by the way, the the current the current genetic testing.
Tom Rowland: What do you
Ed Emory: cannot differentiate between a wild native or hatchery cutthroat. So you can't you can't tell who's native. You've got three different possibilities and they all three exist in the river.
Tom Rowland: And so w if this if this information comes back and you find that the cutthroat that is in the river is not necessarily a native strain, the Snake River fine spot cutthroat, right? That's the one that that should be there. And if it is hybridized or it's not the right strain, then what happens? They want to kill all those?
Ed Emory: Right. You know, it it's an interesting conundrum. We all love the cutthroat. The South Fork has a very, very unique opportunity because its spawning tributaries are all protected.
Ed Emory: They have fish sorting weirs on the spawning tributaries, so the cutthroat can swim up and be sorted away from the rainbows and hybrids, and they're all hybridized. So they can swim up there and reproduce naturally, and then those fish come back into the system. That's implanted on them.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: so we have that unique ability to maintain a cutthroat pot a wild naturally reproducing cutthroat population. The South Fork is no longer a native cutthroat fishery. We all agree it's a wild, naturally reproducing cutthroat fishery. So the question is, what about the balance?
Ed Emory: So the balance has been tipped because they're calling us a Yellowstone cutthroat fishery. They stocked a whole bunch of Yellowstone cutthroat in here that's a far inferior fish to a snaker or fine-spotty cutthroat. fine-spotted cutthroat has seven different predators it grows up with. The Yellowstone cutthroat has two.
Ed Emory: This fine-spotted cutthroat is set
Tom Rowland: What are the different I mean, what what are the predators? Two two versus seven.
Ed Emory: You have the in-stream predators. You have the in-stream predators, I mean whitefish eat fry, cutthroat eat fry, everything eats fry. Then you've got the the avian predators, then you have the otters and mammalian predators. And so between all the ones that are in the river, basically, it's made that snake river cutthroat a a really a hard fighter.
Ed Emory: The water up in Jackson's more tumultuous, it drops, it's it's it's harder to to to survive in.
Tom Rowland: Okay.
Ed Emory: So the Yellowstone cutthroat growing up with two different predators really doesn't have that ability to fight monoimano with a rainbow population. In the past, there's been a couple hundred thousand rainbows stocked into the reaches around Jackson. And lo and behold, what's happened is a snake river fine-spotted cutthroat outcompeted him and chased him out of the system. So if we re centralize the priority to snake river fine spotted cutthroats, we're gonna have a far better chance for these fish to survive on the river.
Tom Rowland: And what do you think the Idaho Fish and Games opinion of that is?
Ed Emory: I don't think they just want the native fish. There's some sort of drive in Idaho fish and game. It used to be monetary because they were receiving a grant to do this. That grant expired after five years.
Ed Emory: So it's not angler satisfaction because anglers, by their very own studies, have said we want, you know, plenty of fish. We'd have rather have trophy fish above native fish. So
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: It's it's really a mix it's a real conundrum. I I believe it's financial driven. So
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well Well, a lot of things are.
Ed Emory: I think we really again we have that unique opportunity to maintain the cutthroat population through the management of the tributaries. My opinion is we need to put egg boxes in the river with cutthroat eggs, with snake river fine-spotted cutthroat eggs, and put those in the river to to surplant that population, not a hatchery population, but to really do the naturally wild reproducing cutthroat population. There's one you know, Tom.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: Kind of going back to the native argument, the Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat is propagated by the Jackson Hole Fish Hatchery. You know, the Flat Creek hatchery in Jackson? They only propagate Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat. They don't propagate, they've never propagated a Yellowstone cutthroat.
Ed Emory: The broodstock for that came from the South Fork before the dam. They put that in the hatchery, and that's all they propagate. They don't do anything else. Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, right. Yeah.
Ed Emory: And they put those into Palisades Reservoir. So what was it about three years ago, Idaho Fish and Game gave the Flat Creek Hatchery sterilization equipment to sterilize all the fish they're putting into Palisades Reservoir. So in my mind, Tom, every argument has a big red truck argument. You know what a big red truck argument is?
Tom Rowland: No.
Ed Emory: The blonde calls up to the fire department and goes, Fire Department, Fire Department, my house is on fire. And the fire department says, Well, how do we get there? She goes, Well, duh, big red truck. So this is the big red truck argument for the non-native blow palisades, is they're sterilizing all the snake river fine-spotted cutthroat they put in a palisades because they come through the dam every day.
Ed Emory: They've been integressing into our population below the dam ever since they've been the dam has been finished and propagated with snake river fine-spotted cutthroat from the hatchery. You can't undo over 60 years of integration. You can't call it native after they've come through for 10 years. So you have a wild naturally reproducing population.
Ed Emory: So let's get the management back to being cutthroat centric. Let the anglers make up their mind on what they want to catch and keep. If they don't, they don't, that's just fine. Let the public make their mind up, not and let fishing game manage the cutthroat population for higher success.
Tom Rowland: Right. Well, and is there a are there meetings all year long that the public gives gives their opinion or are they doing that by surveys or how what w how is the public giving their opinion?
Ed Emory: They've done surveys, but the public really doesn't weigh in very heavily. And it's it's it it's
Tom Rowland: Mhm. Well, it's an interesting thing because it's not I mean, there's the public that lives in and around Jackson and Swan Valley in that area, but then there's four hundred thousand other people that are using the river every year, that are the public. And maybe once they leave that area they don't think about I mean, they think about their trip and they want to go back, but they don't really they're not in communication with I don't know, maybe maybe Idaho fishing game is. I mean they have fishing license information, so maybe they are sending them surveys, but chances are they're not most of those people are not filling them.
Ed Emory: Well, if if I can let me backtrack for a second on the psychology of how people don't participate. This is recreation. These people are recreating to release from these arguments. They deal with them in their everyday work-a-day world.
Ed Emory: They come out here not to get into that world. They don't want to be in that world. They want to release it. Until that pain is so great that they don't catch any fish for multiple visits, they don't weigh in.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: They don't want to ruin that recreational experience. They don't want to ruin that relaxation of it.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, well. They also there's a there's a significant amount of those people that just go somewhere else. They they don't wanna like you say, they don't wanna get involved, so they just go to the green or they go to a different river or they just try a different vacation next time.
Ed Emory: It's too easy to point a finger at failure if you get involved. It's fish and games failure. I'm not catching fish because of fish and game. Well, sometimes it's that's the a lot of times that's the case.
Ed Emory: A fish and game is mismanaging, but sometimes it's the anglers' fault. They're not willing to progress or grow in their sport. We get all that. That's a it's a huge spider web that contributes to this.
Ed Emory: We just it's not it's not easy to even point at one or two reasons. It's just a big conundrum that it it just doesn't unravel itself. And it and that's human nature. That's why business doesn't flow.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Ed Emory: Minute by minute it flows by committee by committee.
Tom Rowland: Yep. And this is this is business too. one way or another. And it's a big business.
Tom Rowland: I mean the the sport fishing industry in inland and in saltwater is massive and drives tremendous amount of other business like lodge business, hotel business, restaurant business, rental cars, airplanes, everything. It drives a lot of of business. So there there is business there. Well, I'm so glad we got a chance to to to do this.
Tom Rowland: I know that you have an excited client waiting for you at the lodge here momentarily. so I want to be respectful of your time. You Ed Ed, you're not a you're not a guy you're not a guy that shows up late. And I just wanna commend you on something.
Tom Rowland: I I think of guiding and I have tremendous respect for guiding. I feel like guiding is a profession
Ed Emory: I appreciate that.
Tom Rowland: that should be looked at as an art form. And there are certain people that take guiding to an art form and they work on it every single day. And I've fished with you as a client and I have talked with you as a guide. And you, my friend, are one of these people that takes guiding to an art form.
Tom Rowland: You are paying attention to the psychology, you are paying attention to the river, you're you're taking care of the fish, you're you're standing in the way of of things that damage your river and I just want to give you some real accolades for that. I I can see it and I'm sure that many, many other people see it. Sixty seven thousand guided river miles don't go you know, that you don't do that without learning a few things along the way. But you are you are taking guiding to a to an art form and I really I really appreciate that personally.
Ed Emory: It's it's nice to be able to share for people to learn and bring themselves up. I hope this podcast does that for for the guides, the future guides and for clients as well.
Tom Rowland: I hope so. I have to ask you wha what about dude? Your little dude, your dog. Yeah.
Ed Emory: Dude. he's he's ambitious. He reminds me of a little like me. You know, I was young and hot and yeah, he's still around.
Ed Emory: He's got skills.
Tom Rowland: Is he still around? and does he fish with you every day? Still?
Ed Emory: No? and what he fishes for the South Fork. mean Little Bro.
Tom Rowland: I know, but you had a little your little little bro. I called him dude. bro. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: Is
Ed Emory: Little bro. No, I'm unfortunate, little bro was killed in an accident.
Tom Rowland: my gosh, Ed, I'm so sorry. that's one of my favorite pictures I have. on that day when we did my son's bachelor party with you and the other guides and I had little bro. he was a great dog.
Tom Rowland: A great companion for you. so did I hear did I hear a a replacement in the background there? Do you have another dog that you go fishing with?
Ed Emory: He influenced a lot of people. Yeah, I have three. I have a silver labrador, a Llewellyn Setter, and then a a rescue. And ironically, the rescue I saw the rescue's picture on Snake River Animal Shelter site the day that Bro was killed, and we all swore that that was Little Bro Junior.
Ed Emory: So I had to go rescue that rescue him in memory of of Little Bro.
Tom Rowland: How Good for you. Is he a boat dog?
Ed Emory: No, he's still scared of his own shadow. He was abused. So he's found a home here. He's very comfortable.
Ed Emory: But Sissy's the boat dog now. She's the one that sits in your seat, puts her head on your lap when you have a tangle and looks at and says, The world's not that bad, Tom. We'll get over this together.
Tom Rowland: okay. Well Ha ha Well, I know I know that Bro did that with me. everybody gets tangles and I don't know. I like dogs.
Tom Rowland: since we fished together on that bachelor party, I'm now a grandfather, fourteen, fifteen month old boy. So Turner has had a baby and his name is Bridger, named after the Bridger Mountains out there and just doing great. It's it's been it it's i I I just can't believe
Ed Emory: Sweet.
Tom Rowland: that it's been that long since we fished together, but that's that's what's happened.
Ed Emory: Well it'd be great to be part of his first Snake River trip if you ever get it back out here with him.
Tom Rowland: I know. Let's do that. That would be so amazing. They're coming out this this this summer.
Tom Rowland: but I don't know, he may not quite be old enough. Maybe maybe from Spring Creek to to Conan. or Spring Creek to the lodge, he could probably float that right now. He's a little guy.
Ed Emory: Absolutely. We can make it work one way or the other. Kid I mean kids love it.
Tom Rowland: Okay, well I'll tell Turner. Listen Ed. thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it and we'll get out there and fish with you soon.
Tom Rowland: If anyone wants to go fishing with Ed or try to get on his schedule, I I think he's got a very, very tough schedule, but you are at South Fork Lodge. Tell tell people how they can fish with South Fork Lodge, with your crew, with you, how they can keep in touch.
Ed Emory: j yeah, it's fantastic. Just go to South Fork Lodge or Ed Emory at Facebook. we're really busy. We're booked almost a year out in advance.
Ed Emory: So call early, call often, book early, book often.
Tom Rowland: Good advice. That's good advice. All right, Ed. I hope you have a great day today.
Tom Rowland: and we will be back with another great guest like Ed next week. So we'll see you then.
Ed Emory: Appreciate your reaching out.
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