Hank Patterson: If The Bar Ain't High, I'm Your Guy

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 113 with Hank Patterson.

Introducing Hank Patterson, Fishing Guide

Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show today. This one's gonna be a fun one. Occasionally, there's somebody that busts onto the fishing scene doing something different, catching lots of big fish or winning a whole bunch of tournaments, or in this case, doing something that's kinda funny. And I saw his work and really enjoyed it. I thought it was very clever, humorous, and really entertaining.

Tom Rowland: If you don't know who today's guest is, I encourage you to go to YouTube and search Hank Patterson Fishing Guide and watch a few of his videos. And you'll know just exactly where we're going with this interview. It's designed to be fun. It's designed to be entertaining, and I certainly had a good time with it. Hank Patterson, fishing guide, up next. Hank. Hey. What's going on, man?

Hank Patterson: That was a hell of a beginning, wasn't it?

Tom Rowland: Well, I'm known for great intros.

Hank Patterson: No, that was fantastic. So a lot of times people will say stuff about, you know, how great I am, or just, "Hank, it's great to have you on the show," but just saying my name just like a statement. That was fantastic.

Tom Rowland: That was good stuff. Right to the point. I gotta say, I'm a little bit starstruck. I get to interview a lot of people. I get to go fishing with a lot of different people. I've had movie stars and politicians and stuff, but honestly, I rarely get as nervous as I am about this particular interview.

Hank Patterson: Well, I would hope that I'm better than a politician and at least as good as a movie star.

Tom Rowland: Okay. Well, you are kind of a movie star.

Hank Patterson: No, I never thought of it this way, but maybe I'm somewhere between. Like, somewhere between a politician, which is the last person on earth you wanna talk to, and a movie star, which is also the last person on earth you wanna talk to. So somewhere between the two groups of people that you don't wanna have anything to do with is me, somebody you probably shouldn't have anything to do with.

Tom Rowland: I gotcha. Big moment. I'm gonna try to do some breathing exercises or something to kinda ease my starstruck nervousness, but let's get to it, man.

A Low Bar: How Hank Got Into Guiding

Tom Rowland: So Hank Patterson, fishing guide. How did this whole life start for you? I saw where you were a competitive hacky sack player before you started guiding. Just wondering how somebody makes that transition. It's kinda interesting.

Hank Patterson: Lack of education. I had nothing better to do. I was qualified for absolutely nothing in this world, and so I thought, well, hell, what am I gonna do? And then I picked up a fly rod, taught myself how to cast it in about a half an hour, and I thought, oh, I should probably start teaching other people. You just self-proclaim yourself as an expert, and people believe you. Because people hiring a guide, 90% of them have no clue. So if I have the slightest clue, I can start charging them for taking them out. So, yeah, it was a low bar. Everything that I do in my life is based on how low is the bar, right?

Hank Patterson: And I went out with some guides, and I thought, well, these guys aren't -- you know, the sandwich they're giving me, the cheap beer they're giving me -- I thought, my god, this is what a life. The bar is so low that I thought I should probably get involved in it. And so I just sort of made some business cards. Well, I wrote my name and phone number on a bar napkin, started handing that out, and the next thing you know, people started paying me to take them fishing. And all you gotta do is give them a cheap sandwich and yell at them. It's just that easy.

Tom Rowland: Do you like yelling at them? Do people like that usually?

Hank Patterson: Well, I don't care. They've already paid -- it's a prepay situation. So whether they like it or not isn't really in question. But, yeah, I like to think it's part of the experience. Because if you're really nice to them, they go back to their friends and they say, "Hey, did you go out fishing with a guide?" And they say, "Yeah, it was really nice. Caught some fish. It was really nice." But they have a much better story if it's like, "Yeah, the guy ended up punching me in the face. He threw me over the boat. He kept screaming at me. He told me I did everything wrong. The guy wouldn't tie my flies on. He didn't bring a sandwich, wouldn't share his beer." That's a story. But if I do all those other things and I'm super polite, then they don't really take a story home with them.

Tom Rowland: Better than everybody else, I guess.

Hank Patterson: Yeah, I don't wanna be just one of the crowd. You wanna give them an experience they're gonna remember. Human nature is to remember the negative things, and so I try to provide as many of those as possible.

Tom Rowland: And how's that going for you so far?

Hank Patterson: Hold on. I gotta write that down because I'm gonna use that line. "Human nature." That was a good line right there. Whenever I say anything that I think is smart, I try to write it down. So you can imagine, I get to write things down every couple of months.

Tom Rowland: I would imagine that your hand is tired, and you're carrying around a giant journal.

Hank Patterson: It is tough. Not easy. Not easy.

From Guiding to Films and Sponsors

Tom Rowland: So how does the guy that gets started in the fishing business make his way into videos and actually feature-length films, from what it looks like to me?

Hank Patterson: Yeah, we got a couple of those. I always tell people to watch them in chunks. It's like, "Oh, man, you made an hour-and-a-half-long movie." I'm like, yeah, and it's good ten minutes at a time, or with beer. When people are watching my movies, I always tell them there's two types of people in the room: people that are gonna really, really enjoy this video, and sober people. So there's that. Again, it goes back to the low bar. Somebody was like, "Oh, man, there's not a lot of funny fly fishing videos out there." And I thought, oh, well, if there's not very many of them, then again, the bar is low, and so I'll make one.

Tom Rowland: This is a perfect place for me.

Hank Patterson: Perfect. This is perfect. It doesn't have to be that funny. And so I just started making the videos, and the fact that they keep going, some people would suggest maybe I should stop. But I'm enjoying it, and I enjoy making people laugh and having a good time and getting out on the water. We only meant to make one, but it went really well. So I said, oh, man, people were sending me free waders and stuff. So I said, oh, we should make another one because I need a fly rod. And so we kept making them.

Hank Patterson: And then some people started helping out -- Orvis and Trout Unlimited and Montana Fly Company -- all kinds of different folks started to get involved and say, "We like what you're doing, and we'll sponsor." And when I say sponsor, don't start thinking that's a lot of money. It ain't. If you wanna make less money than a fly fishing guide, make fly fishing videos. But they at least help me keep it going, and I get treated very well by a lot of people. I was in Durango, Colorado this last weekend doing a show. I think a couple hundred people showed up, and it just feels good. Super fun to meet like-minded people and give them a couple hours of laughter. So that's why I keep doing it.

Not Everyone Gets the Joke

Tom Rowland: Well, it's going pretty well. Right at first when you first started, I was kinda thinking, do fly fishermen really have a good sense of humor? Did you find that maybe some fly fishermen don't have a good sense of humor? Because they say if you're not laughing at yourself, you're missing all the best material. But sometimes I hadn't found that that's necessarily the case with some of the people that I've had the pleasure of spending the day with.

Hank Patterson: Yeah. Not everybody likes me. Some people find me quite annoying and obnoxious, and they don't like it. And they get sort of vocal about that from time to time. And I'm thinking of making a video where I teach them how to hit the stop button or pause. Every now and then, you'll get a comment, and it'll be like, "Oh, man, I watched three of these videos, and they're all terrible." I thought, well, hell, man, stop at one. You didn't have to watch three of them.

Hank Patterson: People always are asking me questions about that. They're like, "Some people must be jerks if they don't like what you're doing." And I'm like, some people find me obnoxious and annoying. I am obnoxious and annoying. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not everybody has my sense of humor, and not everybody is gonna enjoy what I do. I have absolutely no problem with that. You can't please everybody, and you shouldn't try. There's no reason everybody should like what I'm doing.

Hank Patterson: But since we bring it up, I would say to people that don't like what I'm doing, just turn it off and walk away. You are under no obligation to listen to my podcast. You're under no obligation to watch my videos. Just turn it off and go watch something that you do enjoy. Because there is a chance that even outside of my videos, we might get along just fine. But if you're the type of person that decides they need to take it upon themselves to let me know that I'm ruining the entire sport of fly fishing, and that I'm awful, and that anybody that thinks I'm funny is an awful person as well, then I think maybe you're probably taking yourself a little too seriously. We don't all subscribe to your sense of humor either.

Tom Rowland: Right. That's for sure. And I would imagine that some people that might think like that, I'm not sure what they think their guides are doing after the trip, but it's mostly making fun of the clients. I hate to pop the bubble.

Hank Patterson: Sure.

Tom Rowland: But that's one of the things that I think you've done the best -- take the guide humor that guides have among themselves and bring it to the masses. Probably unintentionally, it seems.

Hank Patterson: Well, I've been told that I get to say things that other guides wish they could say. What I do is I try to look at situations that I find myself in and just sort of comment on how funny it is. And it's not always making fun of a client. It's poking fun at myself. It's poking fun at guiding. It's poking fun at people that believe they're experts that actually aren't experts. It's poking fun at the serious nature of everything. In the end, we're out trying to catch something with a brain the size of a small pea, and people get very serious about it. There's just so much stuff that happens when you're fly fishing that I find super funny. And when you step back from it, you go, "How ridiculous are we all?" And I'm one of them. I'm making fun of myself. I'm not making fun of an individual. It's just funny what we do.

A Hundred-Fish Day on the Alagnak

Hank Patterson: I was on a trip to Alaska. This is a good example of what I'm talking about. And we're floating the Alagnak River. We got 47 miles of river all to ourselves. We're the only boat on that entire river because we're the last ones down for the year before winter. And if one guy starts catching fish -- and there are silver salmon everywhere. If you can't catch a fish there, you should never fish again, because it's 100-fish days. It's ridiculous how many fish, and they're everywhere. The minute you hook one, you got a guy on your right and a guy on your left shoulder. We have 47 miles of river stuffed with tens of thousands of silver salmon, rainbows, grayling everywhere. You can't swing a stick and not catch a fish.

Hank Patterson: And it was so funny to me that no matter what you did, if you caught a fish, everybody would start crowding in to one spot. Then you'd be like, "Dude, give me some room." Or you'd catch a fish, and they'd hold it up, and they'd be like, "Oh, man, look at this one." And they would get super excited. Every single fish we caught: "Oh my god, look at this one. Oh my god, look at this one." They were all basically the same size. They're all the same fish. The variance between fish was three inches, a quarter of a pound, and yet you'd get excited every single time. And then you would hold that fish up like, "Oh my god, can you believe I caught a 26-inch, five-pound?" Yeah, I can. Because the last 30 were that size, and the next 30 are gonna be that size.

Hank Patterson: There's just so many funny things that we all do, and we all keep getting excited. But the beauty of fly fishing -- and I'm sorry, I talk a lot -- the beauty of fly fishing is how excited we continue to be about the fish that we're catching, and the fish that we're catching are probably a lot like another fish we already caught. But the excitement somehow doesn't wear off. It doesn't for me. I absolutely love it. And depending on the river, the water that I'm on, I love catching fish, whether they're big fish. I don't love catching small fish as much, but it depends on the river I'm on. Anyway, I just rambled.

Home Water in Idaho and Wyoming

Tom Rowland: Where are you calling home?

Hank Patterson: I live in Boise, Idaho. Well, I live in a suburb called Meridian, Idaho. But if I say Meridian, Idaho, unless you're from here, you don't know what I'm talking about. So I say Boise.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's awesome. I got a friend that lives in Boise, and she used to hang out with us over in Jackson. That's where I started guiding, in that whole area. It's so awesome. I love that whole area.

Hank Patterson: Who'd you guide for over there?

Tom Rowland: I guided for a guy named Joe Bressler, and it was called Bressler Outfitters. And the Orvis store was in Jackson, Wyoming. The first year that it opened, I got a job working for Joe. And so we worked out of there and fished the South Fork of the Snake River mostly. That was our main river. That was in a time when it was really, really good. Every fish you caught was a 17-inch cutthroat, like you're talking about on that river up there. You would take a -- well, we didn't take a zillion pictures because that was back in the day of disposable cameras. So you had 36. You could take 36 pictures. If you really splurged at the drugstore before you went, you could take 36. Cheapo could take 12, and the guy that was middle of the road, he was a 24-picture guy. But you would go home, and you would have 24 pictures, and the friend that didn't fish would be like, "Why did you take 24 pictures of the same fish?" "Oh, no, no. Those are all different ones." And you don't see that.

Tom Rowland: But that river was great there. We used to do a lot of overnight trips, which is one of my favorite things. And then the Teton and the Green, and we had a permit for Henry's Lake, which we almost never used. But then Yellowstone National Park too -- that was really a great time for me to work in Yellowstone National Park as well. And my son and my niece and my nephew, they've all gone there and worked. It's a great area.

Hank Patterson: It's a beautiful area. Eastern Idaho, when you start getting over there, is definitely, in my opinion, the best fishing in the state. There's beautiful places all over Idaho. You go up north, and there's tons of phenomenal fishing. So anybody that is an outfitter in Northern Idaho, settle down, I also like going up there. But Eastern Idaho, the South Fork and the Snake, it is phenomenal fishing. It continues to be phenomenal fishing. It is a pressured river at this point. People know that it's a phenomenal fishery, and they don't get shy about showing up. That being said, there's a lot of great guides over there and people over there that have good etiquette, and we all realize there are more and more people on the river, and that's just the nature of more and more human beings in the area and in the world.

How the River Traffic Has Changed

Tom Rowland: Well, I guess one thing that changed is, when I first started guiding, there just weren't the availability of boats. I started guiding out of a John boat. The John boat, we had a 10-horsepower motor on the back. We rode it backwards down the river, with engine first going down so you could actually slow it down. And that was a perfectly fine boat. That's what I started guiding out of. Then there was, like, a Koffler, which Koffler still makes boats, but it was kind of the predecessor to the South Fork skiff. It was a low-slung Koffler design, where both anglers would sit down. The guide would be in the back. And then there was kind of the McKenzie River drift boat. But if you weren't a guide, there were maybe a few people that had a boat like that.

Tom Rowland: Now there's a lot more people, and there's a lot more craft. You got rafts, you got catarafts, you've got every imaginable inflatable kind of thing that would get you down the river by yourself with people. That's gotta have changed things a lot.

Hank Patterson: Yeah. I've talked to people that have actually paddleboarded that river. I don't think they were fishing, but I talked to one person that paddleboarded it. There's only one rapid, I think, to be terribly concerned about that I can think of. There are a lot of back eddies that I think you gotta be concerned about on that river for sure. But it's a great river. That entire area, though, to me is the Henry's Fork and the South Fork, the Snake, Yellowstone. Henry's Lake seems to be hit and miss. I haven't fished it much over the last ten years.

Tom Rowland: There's big ones in there.

Hank Patterson: There's some big fish. I grew up fishing up in that area. My uncle Ray used to take me up there, and so that's an area that I grew up fishing, and we certainly have old black-and-white pictures. Now, I'm 28 years old, but we have some old black-and-white pictures. Why we were shooting black and white at that point, I don't know. But we have some pretty nice fish coming out of Henry's. So that's cool. I had no idea that you guided up there.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's where it got started. And I guess Bressler Outfitters then turned into what is now WorldCast.

Hank Patterson: Oh, okay.

Tom Rowland: They're in Driggs now, I guess. My friend Fletcher White bought Bressler, and then that turned into WorldCast. I'm not sure exactly all the twists and turns it's taken since then, but I spend most of my time away from the Rockies even though my son goes to Montana State. And I think my other son's gonna transfer out to Montana State, so that will certainly get me closer to the area.

Hank Patterson: Yeah, that should get you closer to the area, with both the boys out there. And WorldCast is fantastic people, and we've shot some video in their shop, with one of their guides, a guy named Pete Erickson, and he's taken us down a couple of times. If you know Pete.

Tom Rowland: We started guiding together.

Hank Patterson: Oh, did you?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah.

Hank Patterson: He's a good guy. He's an English teacher. Did you -- I don't know if you know that, but people ask me --

Tom Rowland: Well, he wasn't then. What do people ask you about an English teacher?

Hank Patterson: They ask me all the time about -- I use Pete as an example. They say, "How much money can a fly fishing guide make?" And I said, well, one of the best guides that I know, Pete, who also is part of Team USA Fly Fishing and a pretty accomplished fly fisher, is an English teacher at the middle school in Boise. So that tells you how much money is in the game. He decided, "Well, I'm not making quite enough money guiding, so I'll get into teaching in Idaho," which is top dollar.

Tom Rowland: Top dollar. He's really raking it in as a teacher.

Hank Patterson: And here's a political statement. The only people making less than teachers in the state of Idaho are nobody. So my political statement is, could we please start paying our teachers in this state a lot more money? Because if we don't, then more and more people like me are gonna get high school diplomas, and I certainly don't deserve one.

Tom Rowland: That's funny. Well, probably a fishing guide can be a pretty good paying job, except it just doesn't last all year out there.

Hank Patterson: Absolutely. And again, I decided that what I should do is make fly fishing videos, which is pennies on the dollar as in comparison to guiding.

Launching a Podcast: Outdoor Misadventures

Tom Rowland: But that fills in the spare time, and I noticed you launched a new project recently. Wanna know how that's going for you, the podcast -- because that's what we're doing right now, a podcast.

Hank Patterson: It is. It was one of those things where -- here's my plug. It's Hank Patterson's Outdoor Misadventures. We talk about fly fishing and camping and other outdoor stuff, I'm sure, is gonna come up. And you're not gonna learn anything at all on this podcast. It's simply something that I think hopefully is an enjoyable, funny conversation to listen to on your way up to go fish or on your way to go camping. But I promise you, you won't learn anything. Maybe my ridiculous opinions, and then you'll learn that my opinion will change with any given episode.

Hank Patterson: I've really enjoyed it. I did a few podcasts with some other people who had me on their podcast, and I enjoyed it. And I'm a person that talks a lot. And I said, well, we might as well try it. We'll throw our hat in the ring and record some shows, see how it goes. If people listen to it, then we'll probably keep it going. And if they don't, then we'll pretend like we always meant for it to be, like, a one-season thing.

Tom Rowland: Well, the one thing that I've liked about it so far -- and I've only listened to maybe one and a half episodes -- but I loved your sound engineer and her patience with you eating the corn nuts right next to the microphone. That seems like something maybe I should try.

Hank Patterson: Well, hey. Our first two-star review was somebody complaining about the fact that I eat during the podcast, and so you may not wanna try that. That was our first one. Our second one was just somebody who hates me. I read it a few days ago, which I shouldn't do. I tell myself, don't ever go read reviews, because you can't believe them. But maybe you shouldn't start eating corn nuts on yours, because that guy didn't like it. Although, I still got two stars out of it. It wasn't a one-star review.

Tom Rowland: It's a pretty good choice. I kinda started thinking, if I were to eat something, that might make the editor upset, because sometimes that's half the fun. If you really don't think anybody's listening, then you might as well annoy the editor. And corn nuts would seem to be -- I really don't know if there's a better choice. You seemed like you might have thought about that.

Hank Patterson: Well, long and hard. The guy that didn't like it -- of course he didn't like it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not liking some guy chomping away while you're trying to listen to him talk. So I do not blame this guy whatsoever for the two stars, because it's probably pretty annoying to listen to me eat. That being said, we'll probably continue to eat on the podcast just because I get hungry, and I gotta keep the energy up to keep going.

Hank Patterson: But what was funny, and I kinda feel bad about this, is the very next podcast had already been recorded. Now, we're not gonna change anything. If I feel like eating, I'm gonna eat. But the very next one, if he were to tune back in, I eat an entire apple and a bag of pretty crunchy rice cakes.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Hank Patterson: And I eat it throughout a good chunk of it. And I thought, oh, man, if this guy tunes in again, he's gonna think it's even worse. It's twice as much eating on that episode. And so if he gave me another shot, I'm sure it was my last one.

Tom Rowland: Well, the good thing about the iTunes reviews is they only allow you to leave one.

Hank Patterson: Yeah. Thank goodness. He can't come back and decide it got even worse.

How to Survive Yellowstone National Park

Tom Rowland: What are you doing camping? I like the camping aspect and also the Yellowstone. I got a soft spot in my heart for Yellowstone. I spent a lot of time there, and you got some interesting perspectives on spending time in the backcountry there. Is that coming from personal experience -- that you've spent a lot of time before you started guiding, taking people back into Yellowstone -- or is this kind of on-the-job training that you've learned all through now?

Hank Patterson: This is simply me taking up the banner where I feel like someone has dropped the ball. Meaning, the whole Yellowstone thing and deciding to talk about how to survive Yellowstone National Park came from a trip through Yellowstone National Park that I was on with a buddy of mine, Jason. And we drive into the park. Nobody says anything about bears. Nobody says anything about not petting the bison. Nobody says you can't tickle the nuts of a bull elk. Nobody gives you any information. They give you a trifold, take your money, send you on your way, and then you drive in there, and there's, like, 40 tourists trying to put a child on the back of a wild animal for a selfie.

Hank Patterson: And my buddy Jason says, "God, these people are so stupid." And I said, no, they're trained to do exactly what they're doing. Because these people didn't grow up in Yellowstone National Park. These people didn't grow up in the wild. Most of these people probably have never experienced anything like what they're experiencing right now. They think that the bison are kept in cages and that they're trained animals, or a petting zoo, because that's what it looks like, because everybody else is trying to pet them. And grizzly bears -- the only experience they have with bears is Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, and they think, "Oh, well, they're fun." And so people get themselves in bad situations. So I took it upon myself to say, hey, what you actually should do is stay the blank away from all the wild animals. And if you can just take that away from the video, I've probably saved a quarter million lives at this point. That would be my guess.

Tom Rowland: I would imagine so. Seriously, though, when we were working in the park -- I worked at Lake Hotel -- you would have, similar to your videos, all the employees would get together in the evenings and go to the watering hole, or someone's room, to talk about all the stupid questions that the tourists ask you all day. Some of which were, "When do deer become elk?" Another, multiple times, people were asked at breakfast -- the servers would be asked -- "What time do they normally let the animals out, and is there a good place to get them before they're going back to the cages?" I mean, legit questions. People would ask me sometimes, "Those bison, what do they eat? Like squirrels and stuff?" And you just look at these people, you're like, wow, you really haven't spent a lot of time outside. I'm really happy that you chose to spend your vacation in one of the greatest wilderness areas on the face of the earth. But maybe a little reading beforehand, maybe a little research.

Hank Patterson: Maybe your first vacation should be to the local park. You figure out how a swing set works before you decide that you need to come and try to ride a bison.

Tom Rowland: That does happen. It does.

Hank Patterson: I do think that when you drive into the park -- and they may disagree -- I still think that there is, like, a 12-statement list that could possibly be made that would inform these people enough to keep them a little safer. If you see a wild animal, stay in your car. Stay the F away from wild animals. They're not kept in cages. They're wild. It's not a petting zoo. Just something short like that, I think, would help a lot of people.

Tom Rowland: There are no nets below the overlook. If you fall, you really will hit very hard.

Hank Patterson: If you're gonna look in Old Faithful to see where they turn it on and off, there are specific times where you shouldn't do that. That would be a good one.

Tom Rowland: Maybe as you get started on this, maybe it turns into a little slightly longer than the fifteen seconds. Upon thinking about it, maybe there's a few other things that we should put into this.

Hank Patterson: I went on a helicopter tour in Hawaii last year. It's super fun. But they make you sit down before getting on the helicopter and listen to a little spiel that they give as some safety tips, and you watch a little video. It takes about ten or fifteen minutes. The only thing you have to do on a helicopter tour is look out the window. That's it. You don't have to do anything else. And they make you take a fifteen-minute class on, I guess, how not to open a door and jump. I can't remember. But if they have to do that, maybe everybody coming into Yellowstone should have to sit through an online course. Oh my god, I'm gonna put this together. Alright, you and me, buddy. I'll cut you in on the deal because it came up during your podcast. We will certify people eligible for national parks by going through the Hank Patterson's I Know How to Survive Yellowstone class online, and then they'll get a certificate and a T-shirt.

Tom Rowland: I think you're finally gonna make money.

Hank Patterson: I'm finally gonna make money. My PEZ dispenser for flies thing never took off. And so this right here, this is my deal.

Tom Rowland: Good job. Do you think that you could kind of expand this out to maybe include some other national parks that you're not as familiar with -- desert areas, Everglades, crocodiles? Don't pet crocodiles.

Hank Patterson: Don't.

Tom Rowland: The Everglades has a lot of strange species. There are a tremendous number of these invasive species that have gotten in there, and people have let them go. Pythons.

Hank Patterson: There was a story on Yahoo this morning about them catching the largest python ever in Florida this past weekend. I'd have to -- you can look it up later. Everybody Google it. Everybody listening to the show, Google this. But yeah, they just got, like, the largest python ever.

Making Plans for a Florida Saltwater Shoot

Hank Patterson: Now, before I forget, not to change the subject, but we're coming to Florida in June, down by an island somewhere -- not in the Keys. It's, I think, north of the Keys. It's on the Gulf side. We're gonna come down there and shoot some video. So what I'm saying is, we need a guy. We need a boat. Are you in? What's your schedule? Early June. Like, the sixth through the tenth is sort of our window that we're gonna be down there. And so if you're anywhere near there --

Tom Rowland: I'm not even joking. Are you gonna be in Boca Grande?

Hank Patterson: Is that the one? Boca Grande?

Tom Rowland: Is that the one? Boca Grande?

Hank Patterson: It might be near Sanibel, or it might be somewhere -- I'm not sure it's there, but it's somewhere near there. When we get off the recording, I'll email you the information. This is great stuff for the audience to be listening to. You and me making plans is probably super exciting. But I didn't wanna forget to tell you that we're coming down to that area.

Tom Rowland: So what kind of videos are you gonna be doing? This is kind of interesting, because one of the big challenges for a saltwater fly fishing guide is dealing with the expectations and casting skills of a trout fisherman that --

Hank Patterson: Right.

Tom Rowland: -- may or may not have ever known that there was backing on the reel.

Hank Patterson: Kind of a rare experience for me to have to deal with backing, because we don't get there much. You're absolutely right. My expectations are right where they belong. Very low. Very low expectations. I don't go anywhere expecting to catch anything at all, nor do my videos require a caught fish. So yeah, I'm a guide's nightmare, because I'm gonna probably end up teaching them how to do it better. And I'm gonna question absolutely everything that they tell me. If they're telling me to cast at 2 o'clock, I'm at 3 o'clock. If they're telling me to cast at 40 feet, I'm like, just row the boat. Move it over there, like, 10 feet from the fish. I shouldn't have to cast 40 feet. Everybody always talks about saltwater and how you have to double haul and you have to cast really far. I'm like, are these guys just too lazy to get me where I need to be? That's all I'm thinking. And so I'm gonna put somebody to the test on this trip. And for zero dollars, it could be you.

Tom Rowland: Okay. Well, I'll take that into consideration, and I'll also think about some of my friends that live in that area that might be interested, or in wanting to pull their hair out.

Hank Patterson: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: There's an opportunity for some publicity, though, through your platform.

Hank Patterson: Yeah, we're gonna be down there. So we're gonna shoot a video for the F3T film tour, and then we're going to also, I think, shoot a little side video with the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. Because you shouldn't, in my opinion, if you're somebody making these sorts of videos, go to an area that you've never been, fish, use the resource, and not take a moment out of your schedule to hook up with a local conservation group and see if there's anything that you can do that might bring awareness to the issues that are being faced there. So we're gonna do that as well. Should be fun.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Maybe you should check in with Captains for Clean Water. There have been a lot of great strides made this year on the water issues in Florida.

Hank Patterson: Yeah, their name has come up several times, and so hopefully we'll meet up with them as well.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, they're a bunch of good dudes.

Hank Patterson: Anybody willing to put up with me, I'll talk to them. And anybody that wants to put on a barbecue where I don't get charged for eating there is my kind of person.

The Future for Hank Patterson

Tom Rowland: Well, outside of the podcast and your new saltwater adventures, what's the future hold for Hank Patterson?

Hank Patterson: You know, I'm making it up as I go.

Tom Rowland: Would you consider yourself to be, like, a goal setter?

Hank Patterson: A what? A goal setter? Yeah, no. Not at all. I do not set goals. That does not do anything at all for me, to have a goal. A buddy of mine -- I like to run a little bit, and I do a lot of that on a treadmill, and I don't know why, but I just do. It's something that I'll keep up with, and it's because I have no goals. I'm not trying to run a marathon. I'm not trying to run a half marathon. I just want to get some exercise. If I ever set a goal to run a marathon, it would be the day that I stop doing it altogether, because I'm not a forward-thinking person like that. So no, not a goal setter. I'm just literally making it up as I go.

Hank Patterson: I'd imagine, eventually, me, my videos, everything that I do will somehow wear out its welcome, and I'll have to go do something else. But for now, as long as people enjoy the occasional video and they enjoy listening to the podcast, I figure we'll keep going. I enjoy making them, and I'm having a super good time with it. Not everybody enjoys them, like I said, but I do, and a lot do. So I just keep going. But I don't even know what I'm doing next.

Tom Rowland: Of course. I would definitely keep going with it. I think a lot of people like it. What about the camp?

Hank Patterson: Oh, Camp Hackaraga. Yeah, that was one season.

Tom Rowland: Still gonna be -- no? Just the one season?

Hank Patterson: Yeah, we called it season one. Never any intention to do a season two. That being said, sometimes I think I should consider it. And so maybe a few years down the road, I should consider doing a season two, because if you wanna have, like, the best time ever as an adult, go to summer camp. Go back to summer camp. That was the absolute best time, because we would shoot videos and basically have a beer and eat food and sit around a campfire and have sing-alongs and roast marshmallows. And we do everything that you do at a regular summer camp, except for the fact that we're not kids. You can't find a more enjoyable thing to do. So I don't know, maybe I'll do a season two, but right now, it's not in the books. I got to kiss a girl in it. And so the entire thing was written and produced and filmed, and the money that went into everything was just so I could trick a girl into giving me a kiss. It was fantastic.

Tom Rowland: Well, I'm sure that season two would probably be well received. Season two, the breakup.

Getting Kids Into Fly Fishing (Hire a Guide)

Tom Rowland: Now, today, so many people are interested in helping the sport to continue. One of the things that's going on that I see a lot, and something that we pay a lot of attention to, is getting kids involved in fishing, fly fishing. Do you have any kind of strategies about getting kids involved or teaching them how to fly fish?

Hank Patterson: Oh, boy. Maybe. My next podcast that comes out this week is all about taking kids and how awful it is and how you need to leave them at home. Because it's a lot more pleasurable if they're not around bothering you, grabbing your hat, asking for food, that sort of thing. But that being said, yeah, you're absolutely right. We have to teach the kids to love to fly fish and get them out there, because if the future generations don't love the outdoors, then they'll destroy the outdoors. So we have to teach a certain number of them to love fly fishing, or whatever kind of fishing -- bass fishing, bait fishing. I'm not really that stuck up about it. I just prefer fly fishing personally, and camping and hiking and all those sorts of things.

Hank Patterson: But here's the deal. There are millions and trillions of children in the world. And if we take them all camping, there won't be anywhere left to camp. So what we need to do is decide which ones to leave behind, right? And so I would say most of the smart ones, because the world needs engineers and somebody that sort of keeps the computers and the lights on. And so the smart kids, just leave them at home with some computer programming books and let them do their thing, because they're not gonna enjoy it anyway. So there needs to be indoorsy people in the world, and so let's not ignore that.

Hank Patterson: But the first thing I would do if somebody asked me what I do to get my kid into fly fishing, I would say, hire a guide. Make somebody else teach him. There's no faster way to ruin your relationship with your daughter than to try to teach her how to fly fish, because it's like teaching her how to drive, or teaching your son how to drive. Just how frustrating an experience that is. Let somebody else who is a trained professional go through all of that with them. And when they come out the other side, they know how to cast, they know how to tie their own fly on, they know all that stuff. Then you can all of a sudden start planning trips where you're gonna enjoy it together. Hire a professional so you don't kill your children.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's some pretty good advice. Really smart. Really good advice, that. I can tell.

Hank Patterson: Don't hire me, though.

How to Vet a Fishing Guide

Tom Rowland: How do you find -- how would you suggest that somebody find the right guide? Like a telephone interview? Like, if someone were to call you up and ask you, is that a good idea?

Hank Patterson: Yeah, that's probably smart. You probably wanna vet the guide. Ask around about guide services. Ask around about the particular guide. If you're gonna call a guide service, like WorldCast or something like that, you might let them know what you got planned. "Hey, who's the guide that's got the sensibilities or the patience to deal with the fact that I'm bringing my kid, and she's never cast a fly rod in her entire life? Which guide is that?" They'll know. The guys in the shop will know. Either that, or they're playing a terrible joke on both sides of this equation. So they're thinking, "Oh, you know who would be good is Joe. Joe would be really good." And then they think to themselves, "Oh, this will be funny. Send them with Rick. Rick hates children. Rick has definitely slept for two hours last night, and he's probably still a little hungover. Zero patience." That sort of thing. But yeah, vet the guide, make the phone calls, and make sure they're not trying to play a trick on you.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It kinda goes the same with fishing with your wife or girlfriend or significant other. That's often a really good way to spark interesting conversation -- is to try to teach them how to do something that you like to do.

Hank Patterson: Yeah, a lot. When I -- hey, nobody wants to date an expert or a know-it-all, and so don't be that. Hire somebody else to do that. And if it is for a significant other, let's just say you decide, "Oh, man, I should get my girlfriend into fly fishing." Again, vet, right? So you're gonna want an ugly guy. You don't want some super good-looking, sort of fly fisher leading, like, some beatnik life that looks super romanticized, taking your girlfriend fishing. You're gonna find sort of a homely dude, and they're easy to find. Just walk into any shop. So again, think ahead of who that guide is that you're hiring, but definitely hire a guide.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, these days with the websites and everything, their pictures, Instagram -- it's probably a good place. You could vet them a little bit.

Hank Patterson: It's like, "Oh, man, this guy is --"

Tom Rowland: Did you ask your girlfriend, like, "What do you think about this guy? Is he cute?"

Hank Patterson: Oh yeah. Just maybe in passing. Just sorta, "Yeah, look at this guy." You don't have to ask. Just like, "Yeah, we're gonna hire one of these guides, and maybe this guy," and then she'll just have a look on her face. That'll tell you the whole story. Or if she's really quick, like, "Maybe this guy," if she's like, "Oh yeah, that guy" -- if it's really quick, that ain't your guy.

Tom Rowland: The one that looks like Brad Pitt?

Hank Patterson: Yeah, no, no, no. But which, again, so you shouldn't hire me.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Hank Patterson: Oh, I put out a vibe. I put out a vibe. Confused. Obviously. It's always out there.

Meet Alex, the Sound Engineer

Hank Patterson: Hey, guess who just walked in? Alex. Alex, I'm on another podcast. Do you wanna say anything at all? You wanna just come in and say hi? Come in. So, Alex -- for people listening to this podcast who maybe don't know about my podcast -- my sound engineer is named Alex. Alex, say hi. Alright, beat it. Go on. She's gonna go edit a podcast. She's wearing a Star Wars shirt today. Typical engineer. Nerd.

Tom Rowland: Now, how did you find your engineer, Alex?

Hank Patterson: She was on a video shoot, a project for somebody else that I was on, and I was like, "Man, she's a hard worker." And she was just graduating from college, something that I thought, "Oh, man, I never did that. We should probably have a college graduate around." And so then I hired her. I talked her into taking much less money than she's worth, and that was probably the thing that sealed the deal. I was like, "How about this much money?" And she's like, "Okay." And I thought, "Really? No kidding. You went to college? Okay." It's fantastic.

Tom Rowland: I don't really have a sound engineer. I'm not even sure what they do. I do have an editor for this podcast, and they mostly clean up anything that goes wrong. So as far as creative control over your podcast, your projects -- is that something that you maintain total control over, or do you kinda leave it in the hands of experts occasionally?

Hank Patterson: No, I mean -- not that you're not -- no, I have complete control to a degree. So the final file that goes out is something that I've made final decisions on. But no, Alex adds a lot of creativity, and she edits the podcast. And then I'll listen through it, and there's things I'll cut out or little things that I'll add. But she's doing more than just pushing the red button -- not much more during the podcast, I just wanna make sure she's not here. But the editing, she's the editor. We give her a little bit of rope, but then I come in. And if I cut anything or change anything, I always make sure to say things like, "I shouldn't have had to do this, Alex. You should have known to do this." I do a lot of that. That's the sort of management style I have.

Tom Rowland: You'd be an absolute nightmare to work for. Seems to be working for you. You've surrounded yourself with a good team. You're putting out an interesting product.

Hank Patterson: Oh, I appreciate that.

Well Behaved, For Now

Tom Rowland: You have a lot of reviews. A lot of people -- like you said, you got a couple of two-star reviews, but most people seem to be really liking what you're putting out. I think it's funny. So I was hoping that this podcast would go well and the conversation would go well. I think that it has. You seem to be remarkably well behaved. Did you get enough sleep last night?

Hank Patterson: No. I've been in Colorado the last few days at my mom's house, like, 7,500 feet. So I'm just starting to get oxygen back to my brain. It was some flights and layovers yesterday, so I'm probably well behaved based on how tired I currently am. But I promise, if you wanna have me back on the show, I'll show up drunk and angry.

Tom Rowland: I'm sure that everybody will be looking forward to that. The drunk and angry. Is that how you -- what's the state that you normally like to show up in for a guided trip, like, for the first-time client? Do you have, like, a mindset that you're trying to get yourself into?

Hank Patterson: All I'm thinking is I'm just there to -- I'm thinking ahead as to when I'm gonna take my first nap. I try not to get too much sleep the night before a guided trip, because I have to take the edge off. The way I can take the edge off is to be way too exhausted to be too mean to the client. And so I try to show up with only about two or three hours of sleep. And then once I get, like, a fly on the end of their line and I set them up somewhere, I like to set up my chair and try to doze off a little bit. That's my whole thing. If I can get in a couple of naps, then I'm gonna be in a good mood, and we're all gonna have a much better time.

Hank Patterson: And here's the thing. I'm not a river butler. I'm not there to do everything for you. If I can tell you here's the fly to use, there's the place to fish, that's really all I should have to do, because the next time you come out fly fishing, I'm not gonna be there. And so the more self-sustainable I can make you, the better we both are. So I should have time for at least one to three naps.

Tom Rowland: That's an interesting perspective. I can't really say that I've heard anybody say that publicly before. But I like how you just own it. You're just straight up with it. Maybe that could get turned into some kind of a motto, like some kind of a mission statement for your guide service, that you could put on your business cards or the napkin.

Hank Patterson: Yeah. Right now, they say, "If the bar ain't high, I'm your guy." But we can work on it.

Where to Find Hank Patterson

Tom Rowland: Alright, man. Well, listen, I wish you all the best of luck. I'm going to be watching, listening to your podcast, and I'll think about who I can get you hooked up with around the Sarasota area.

Hank Patterson: That would be awesome. Let me know. We're coming down. But no, I appreciate you having me on your show, and I apologize in advance for whatever two-star ratings you're about to get.

Tom Rowland: Well, I appreciate that. I'll try not to take it personally, if that counts.

Hank Patterson: Blame me for sure. Blame me absolutely 100%. I don't mind. I will shoulder the two stars. Now, if it's a one-star review, that you took it down even further. I'm a two-star, but us together, that might be a one-star, and then you gotta shoulder 50% of a one-star.

Tom Rowland: It could be. So on this podcast, we have a lot of Florida people that listen. We got a lot of people that fish for all different kinds of stuff -- bait fishing, fly fishing, spin fishing, conventional. So maybe not everybody has heard of you, because they might not go trout fishing so much, and they may not know where to find all of your resources. How would someone kinda catch up on all the stuff that you've been doing? Where can they find you?

Hank Patterson: The best way is hankpatterson.com, and that sort of links you out to everything. The videos are all there, and I would start at the beginning and watch some of the videos. Watch the Yellowstone video -- that's a good one to sort of get to know who I am, and that's a good place to go. And then you can find me on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. Just "Hank Patterson fly fishing" will get you there. But hankpatterson.com is a good place to go. And then the podcast, if you're looking that up, is Hank Patterson's Outdoor Misadventures. Subscribe and give me five stars.

Tom Rowland: Is that part of the title?

Hank Patterson: Yeah, I would like to share the title, but, you know, we're like any podcast. We're in a constant state of begging people to give us reviews and stuff like that. I don't know why. It's not like I'm getting any money for getting a review. So I'm not 100% sure why I care. And then after this last one -- I can't remember the guy's name, but he hated me so much -- I thought, okay, I'm gonna stop reading them. So I probably won't read them anymore. I'll make Alex read them, and then she can just tell me the good ones. Then I don't have to be reminded that there are people in the world that don't know how to just turn a video or podcast off and go about their business.

Tom Rowland: That could be a good video or podcast.

Hank Patterson: That'd be a good one. You could give people instructions on how to never listen to it again. I always tell people, it's like, "Did you like my other video?" "Not really." "Well, then you're not gonna like the whole canon of work. You can stop right now, and it's not personal." We all like different things. We all have different senses of humor, and that's absolutely fine. But the only thing worse than a bad sense of humor is waking up and realizing, "Oh no, I'm a troll." Don't be a troll. You can hate anything in the world, but there's nothing worse than -- the worst movie ever made isn't as bad as the person who has to take their time to tell everybody how much they hated that movie. So that's how I go about my life.

The Bear Spray Scene and Cousin Wally

Tom Rowland: Well, I came across a lot of your stuff, and the one thing that hooked me immediately, and I became a fan for life -- and I can't remember which movie or video this came out of -- but when your buddy, you send him over to get the bear spray, and he sprays it all over himself, because --

Hank Patterson: He uses it like mosquito spray.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I literally laughed so hard. I thought that was so funny. And I actually watched it yesterday, because I'm doing a little research for this conversation, and it was just as funny the three-thousandth time that I've seen it as it was the first.

Hank Patterson: That moment is part of the Camp web series that we have on Amazon, and on Vimeo as well. But you can watch it on Amazon Prime. It's free if you have Amazon. And it's called Hank Patterson's Camp. It's part of that series. But you can also just find that scene on hankpatterson.com in the videos, and it's a fantastic moment. That's my cousin Wally, that ain't too smart. He makes me look smart, if that tells you anything about him.

Tom Rowland: I'll tell you what, man, that was really funny. And we've been doing this podcast just talking with you about all of your stuff. But in all seriousness, the humor that you have and the way that you're putting it out there, it's extremely hilarious to those of us who have made a living being a fishing guide. Because, like you're saying earlier, these are all the things that a fishing guide might want to say, but thinks better of it. And it's just hilarious. And the things like somebody spraying themselves with bear spray -- which happens.

Tom Rowland: But the way that you did that, and the way that you had it in the background, kind of unintentional -- it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Anyway, man, listen, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast, and we'll do it again. I'd love to talk to you after you have your Florida experience and see how that goes.

Hank Patterson: Let's do it. Absolutely.

Tom Rowland: So stay in touch, man. I really enjoyed it. And for anybody that doesn't know Hank Patterson, check it out. Maybe you could even run into him in an Idaho bar somewhere and encourage him to take you fishing one day.

Hank Patterson: Absolutely. Come on up.

Tom Rowland: Alright. Hey, listen, man, thank you very much. We'll talk to you soon. Appreciate it. Good luck with everything.