Intro: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly.

Intro: On this episode, I'm joined by fly tire and river keeper, Fletcher Sams.

Intro: We take a deep dive into shoal bass, Fletcher's fly designs,

Intro: and his work protecting central Georgia waters.

Intro: I think you're really going to enjoy this one. But before we get to the interview,

Intro: just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast,

Intro: please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in

Intro: the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.

Intro: And we're excited to partner with our friends at Jesse Brown's Outdoors to bring

Intro: the Chocolate Factory to Charlotte on May 4th.

Intro: Blaine will be teaching private tying classes, discussing predator and prey,

Intro: and sharing his favorite rod, reel, and line combos.

Intro: Check out the link in the show notes for more details.

Intro: Now, on to our interview.

Marvin: You well fletcher welcome to the articulate fly.

Fletcher: Thanks for having me very excited yeah.

Marvin: I'm looking forward to it and it was kind of it's kind of ironic that two southerners

Marvin: have to go all the way to ypsilanti michigan to meet each other in person.

Fletcher: Yeah that was uh that was quite the show yeah and.

Marvin: It's kind of funny too i was explaining to people i was like there was this

Marvin: whole like southern predator angler scoff posse up there.

Fletcher: Yeah yeah it's uh we

Fletcher: we carpooled up uh believe it or not at least half

Fletcher: of us so um you know it's it's been uh

Fletcher: a really cool show lots of relationships you know that you can meet on social

Fletcher: media but then you know now you have like real in contact stuff with them and

Fletcher: so um yeah that's that's been super cool uh especially Officially meeting folks

Fletcher: like Chase Smith in person.

Marvin: Yeah, absolutely. You know, so Fletcher, we have a tradition.

Marvin: I know you're a listener, so you know the tradition is we like to have all of

Marvin: our guests share their earliest fishing memory.

Fletcher: So, my earliest fishing memory that's really super burned into my brain is at a young age,

Fletcher: my family was super close, and I grew up a mile down the road from my cousin, Jimbo.

Fletcher: And Jimbo and I fished his dad's

Fletcher: bass pond, and maybe the biggest fish in there was half pound, pound.

Fletcher: Um, and we would go out there with jitterbugs and beetle spins and just have a blast.

Fletcher: And, uh, you know, that's kind of what I thought fishing was and it was a great

Fletcher: time. But then my dad took me to this farm pond down the road.

Fletcher: Um, and, uh, you kind of have this fish that haunt you. And this was the first

Fletcher: fish that really haunted me.

Fletcher: And I, you know, just kind of went down there and no one knowing what I knew

Fletcher: and tied on a jitterbug, threw it out and started reeling it back in.

Fletcher: And, uh, it got kind of underneath the branch and I thought that I was going to get snagged.

Fletcher: So I went a little bit faster and it just looked like a toilet flushed right there in the stick.

Fletcher: And, uh, this, she was probably five or six pounds, but, you know, as a kid, I was,

Fletcher: you know, 20 pounds and, and it jumped out of the air straight in the hook and

Fletcher: blew off and, you know, just totally distraught.

Fletcher: And my dad had to, you know, calm me down and everything like that.

Fletcher: But that, that's my earliest burned in fishing memory.

Marvin: Yeah, that's pretty neat. So when did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?

Fletcher: So, um, on a, a trip, my, my grandparents took, uh, Jimbo and I,

Fletcher: um, out on this, I mean, trip of a lifetime when I think that I was.

Fletcher: Say 10 and Jimbo is probably 12 or 13.

Fletcher: And, um, they took us out to the middle fork of the salmon, um, out now, Idaho.

Fletcher: Um, and we did a float for, I think it was seven days.

Fletcher: And, uh, you know, Jimbo was getting ready to go and, you know,

Fletcher: getting all the stuff that he wanted to take.

Fletcher: And he was gonna try fly fishing. And, of course, you know, I have to do what my big cousin is doing.

Fletcher: And so I begged for a fly rod to take from my mom and dad, and they got me one.

Fletcher: Went out there, and, you know, it was just dry flies for a really big cutthroat.

Fletcher: And this was back in the early 90s.

Fletcher: And it was just awesome. It was the coolest thing. And, you know,

Fletcher: I was terrible angler, but, uh, was able to catch fish.

Fletcher: And, uh, that was the first foray into fly fishing.

Fletcher: And, uh, when I got back home was kind of, you know, in this trout snob mode.

Fletcher: And then I kind of started trying to trout fish up in the North Georgia mountains

Fletcher: and it was crowded creeks, nymph fishing. And I just, it, it, it wasn't for me.

Fletcher: Um, and so I kind of dropped it for a long time.

Fletcher: It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I picked it back up.

Marvin: Yeah. Very, very neat. And the rest of course is history. You got a little bit

Marvin: of water under the bridge since then.

Marvin: And, you know, who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly

Marvin: fishing journey? And what have they taught you?

Fletcher: Um, you know, I, I, I lived in.

Fletcher: In, you know, middle Georgia, there's no fly shops around or anything like that.

Fletcher: The closest one we have is an excellent fly shop called the Fish Hawk.

Fletcher: And, you know, the one mentor, I guess, that's been kind of constant in my life

Fletcher: is this guy named Rob Smith.

Fletcher: Everyone knows him down here as Mustache.

Fletcher: And if you don't know Mustache, you need to know Mustache.

Fletcher: And he has no social media presence whatsoever, but everyone knows him.

Fletcher: And I remember when I went in and decided that I was going to,

Fletcher: I was doing a lot of duck hunting at the time.

Fletcher: And wanted to bring a fly rod with me for, you know, after the morning was kind of done.

Fletcher: And we were out in the boat and redfish were around and wanted to kind of get

Fletcher: into it and went in with the intention of buying a redfish rod. Um...

Fletcher: Rob kind of, you know, gave me a little refresher and got me all set up.

Fletcher: And as that kind of progressed into bass fishing, Rob was always there to kind

Fletcher: of steer me in the right direction.

Fletcher: Not necessarily like spending time with me on the water as a mentor or anything like that.

Fletcher: But he is always somebody that I really look to to help me problem solve problems

Fletcher: with my casting, my, you know, understanding how to fight fish, that kind of thing.

Fletcher: Um but you know by

Fletcher: and large um the the fun

Fletcher: thing to me about fly fishing um as far

Fletcher: as how i got into it and how i learned was really

Fletcher: trying to figure it out for myself and you

Fletcher: know kind of surrounding myself with fishing buddies

Fletcher: that liked figuring things out themselves and

Fletcher: you met some of of those guys that came up to michigan

Fletcher: uh adam smith and his brother travis smith

Fletcher: and uh seth clark and we all

Fletcher: just kind of nerd out about fly fishing and you

Fletcher: know trying to solve different problems and really just kind of feeding off

Fletcher: of uh the problem solving aspect of fly fishing and figuring it out for yourself

Fletcher: makes it a lot more rewarding experience in in my opinion Yeah.

Marvin: Which is interesting because I know we were talking up in Michigan,

Marvin: too. That's probably how you've kind of, you know, not to you,

Marvin: but to a lot of people have started chasing kind of edge species on the fly.

Marvin: And, you know, everybody that I talk to that fly fishes in Georgia,

Marvin: they're absolutely nuts about shoal bass.

Marvin: And, you know, for folks that aren't familiar, you want to kind of give folks

Marvin: kind of an overview of like, you know, what a shoal bass is?

Fletcher: Is sure you know i

Fletcher: i think most of your listeners uh women outside

Fletcher: of uh the southeast you know kind

Fletcher: of tend to think of bass as largemouth smallmouth

Fletcher: maybe spotted bass and there's 19 species um that that have been delineated

Fletcher: of black bass that you can go catch today um and georgia has 12 of those And out of the 12,

Fletcher: the shoal bass is very unique in a lot of different ways.

Fletcher: It's a habitat specialist first of

Fletcher: all and foremost um there's a reason it's called a shoal bass and that's because

Fletcher: they live in this what we call uh fall on habitat uh heavy current rock um rapids

Fletcher: for lack of a better description and um.

Fletcher: These fish require that for spawning habitat. And if you impound the stream

Fletcher: that they're in, they're not going to survive.

Fletcher: They do not do well with impoundments at all versus, you know,

Fletcher: say a smallmouth or a spotted bass, which is kind of more of a habitat generalist.

Fletcher: They'll kind of be all over the place.

Fletcher: They'll make huge movements up and down, 100 mile plus movements,

Fletcher: migrating every year between where they spend most of the year and then when

Fletcher: they come up to spawn. on.

Fletcher: To look at one, it's apparent that they're very different if you had both of

Fletcher: them in your hand, but I'd say that the coloration most resembles a smallmouth bass.

Fletcher: They have vertical barring going down the body,

Fletcher: kind of an olive back and a yellowish light

Fletcher: olive side flank and a pretty white belly and they have this big black spot

Fletcher: typically on their tail and their fins are almost like a mauve color.

Fletcher: And the other distinguishing thing from small mouth would be that their mouth

Fletcher: is almost as big as a large mouth.

Fletcher: Very, very large mouth. um and proportionately their tail is not as big as a smallmouth bass um,

Fletcher: And where they live for a good part of the year is in tiny little current breaks

Fletcher: inside the heaviest current that they can find.

Fletcher: And that's how they largely ambush food, is in and out of tiny current breaks when stuff washes down.

Fletcher: They can get fairly large. The Georgia record, I believe, is eight pounds,

Fletcher: four ounces, and it was tied two years ago.

Fletcher: And they only live, only native to one specific drainage, the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint drainage.

Fletcher: That the Chattahoochee forms part of the border from Alabama and Georgia and

Fletcher: kind of flows out the Appalachian Column to the Gulf of Mexico.

Fletcher: And then the Flint forms around the Atlanta airport and comes down through Albany

Fletcher: and meets the Chattahoochee and Lake Seminole.

Fletcher: And that is their native range. In the 70s, they were stocked in the river that

Fletcher: I work in, the Otmogi River in the Altamaha system.

Fletcher: And the native bass at that time in the 70s.

Fletcher: Old mogi were um a strain of red eye called the altamaha bass and largemouth

Fletcher: and these days in the shoal habitat um they're the largemouth are incredibly

Fletcher: rare and there are no pure.

Fletcher: Altamaha red eye these fish immediately took

Fletcher: over everything um so that's kind of what they look like and kind of where they

Fletcher: live um but they are habitat specialists and they have to have that shoal habitat

Fletcher: in order to survive gotcha.

Marvin: So it sounds like you know maybe unlike smallmouth bass you kind of have to

Marvin: target them like your fish in pocket water right.

Fletcher: Yeah yes and no i mean I mean, they will be kind of in more open water.

Fletcher: They will hang out in pools.

Fletcher: And, you know, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are listening to this and say,

Fletcher: oh, you know, smallmouth bass hang out in that kind of habitat in my neck of the woods.

Fletcher: And sure, they can be in that kind of gentle area.

Fletcher: Area but um i think the

Fletcher: the thing that's really bizarre

Fletcher: when when people experience anglers uh

Fletcher: come down and try for the shoal bass is how

Fletcher: much current they will be in um you

Fletcher: know people try to make them analogous to

Fletcher: trout and all this other stuff and it's it's it's

Fletcher: really just its own thing and because a lot of this habitat is pocket water

Fletcher: troughs ledges high current wood rock all this stuff it's challenging to get

Fletcher: your bait where you need it to go.

Marvin: Yeah. And so I guess, does that mean that you generally are fishing,

Marvin: you know, opting for like a

Marvin: streamer presentation over like poppers and sliders and things like that?

Fletcher: There, there are, um, you know, in the summer, um, poppers can be,

Fletcher: um, uh, a really good, fun way to do it.

Fletcher: Um, you can fish, you know, big nips for them that, that can be fairly effective

Fletcher: if you can get heavy enough.

Fletcher: But for me, the streamer fishing thing is the river that I'm in, unfortunately,

Fletcher: from a fishing standpoint, runs exceptionally clear almost all year.

Fletcher: And we just have super high visibility. ability.

Fletcher: And from a fishing standpoint, I don't really have a lot of patience for nymphing

Fletcher: or dry flies or even poppers.

Fletcher: I love animating a fly and I love seeing them eat.

Fletcher: And this fish is almost 100% pesimorous after they're 12 inches long.

Fletcher: So all they eat is fish pretty much and so my favorite way to target them is

Fletcher: totally with a streamer and if you see me out on the water with a bobber on

Fletcher: i am having a really awful bad day.

Marvin: And and we'll and we'll talk about this when we get to to fly design because

Marvin: i know from talking to you in michigan um at bob in the hood that you've got

Marvin: some really kind of unique you know approaches to the way you like to design

Marvin: and fish streamers that are kind of unconventional for kind of what I think

Marvin: of as kind of traditional predator streamer folks.

Marvin: But, you know, on the tackle side, are you fishing those with like,

Marvin: you know, six and seven weights on like floating and intermediate lines?

Marvin: I mean, kind of what's your tackle setup? Yeah.

Fletcher: So, um, you know, shameless plug for Schultz.

Fletcher: Um, that, that swim fly rod that he developed, I've got four or five of them

Fletcher: and, um, all eight weights and the, the eight weight thing really kind of evolved,

Fletcher: not, not necessarily because of the fish, but because of the flies,

Fletcher: um, because they have such a big mouth, we're throwing fairly large flies,

Fletcher: um, you know, up to 12 inches long.

Fletcher: And so having the ability to quickly switch to a fly that's that size,

Fletcher: it helps to have the extra beep.

Fletcher: The other thing is, you know, these fish can live in really small,

Fletcher: really, you know, crowded canopy creeks and being able to roll cast a decent

Fletcher: size streamer, it helps to have the weight. weight.

Fletcher: And, and most people, at least most people that I fish with fish with eight weights.

Marvin: Got it. And so that for folks that don't know, that's a Loomis stick.

Marvin: Um, and I'll try to drop a link to it in the show notes. And are you then fishing

Marvin: a floating line or intermediate? I mean, what do you like to do?

Fletcher: So, you know, um, when I first started to really get, um.

Fletcher: Serious about, you know, tying and doing all this stuff for Shoal Bass,

Fletcher: I was essentially trying to copy Mike Schultz's program of kind of breaking

Fletcher: down the water column and having it situational to water temps and,

Fletcher: you know, kind of through the whole thing.

Fletcher: I've got, you know, full sink, sink tips, all this stuff.

Fletcher: And when we're fishing out of a boat, we'll, we'll have seven rods in the raft.

Fletcher: And, you know, we're, it's almost like we're the glitter boat guys,

Fletcher: you know, just picking up a different setup and, and growing it.

Fletcher: Um, but you know, it's kind of evolved over time.

Fletcher: At least my program, what I run is really kind of simplified and specialized

Fletcher: into a floating line program primarily.

Fletcher: And a large reason that I'm doing a floating line kind of base program these

Fletcher: days is I really like targeting these fish on foot.

Fletcher: Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm weight fishing most of the time and really the only time

Fletcher: that I'm bringing any kind of sinking line is when I'm in a boat.

Fletcher: And, you know, we, we fish a lot with conventional guys, uh,

Fletcher: trying to learn what they're doing and, you know, how the fish are reacting to the different baits.

Fletcher: And, you know, one thing that I feel like you can replicate a lot of the stuff

Fletcher: that, that's been fishing guys and conventional tackle guys are doing.

Fletcher: And, but the one thing that you're really able to do that they're not able to

Fletcher: do so well is like the floating line presentation.

Fletcher: Um, it's just really hard for conventional guy to do like a grease line swing, for instance.

Fletcher: And so, you know, I feel like because of the clear water, I've kind of developed

Fletcher: my flies to all be fished on a floating line.

Marvin: Got it. And I would imagine you probably given if they're fishing in structure,

Marvin: you're probably almost all fluorocarbon, right?

Fletcher: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It takes a lot for me to go under like 20 pounds.

Marvin: Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I know from looking at your Instagram feed that

Marvin: there's some other species you like to chase on the fly, too.

Marvin: You want to share those with our listener?

Fletcher: Yeah. So, you know, in Georgia, we do have 12 different species of black bass.

Fletcher: And my other favorites to fish are what we call the red-eye clade.

Fletcher: That's seven different species. species.

Fletcher: Some are only found in Alabama, some are only found in Georgia and South Carolina.

Fletcher: And because we're so geologically old down here in the Southeast,

Fletcher: we have all these isolated drainages.

Fletcher: And so you have all the speciation down here.

Fletcher: And if you're not familiar with the red-eye species, they don't get very big.

Fletcher: Like let's say a 12-inch fish is like equivalent to to a 19,

Fletcher: 20-inch smallmouth, right, as far as trophy size.

Fletcher: But they are incredibly colorful.

Fletcher: Some of the species have really bright red fins or orange fins or yellow fins and have.

Fletcher: They look like smurfs part of the year just totally

Fletcher: blue um bright blue coloration on

Fletcher: the face and the bellies and um they live

Fletcher: in a lot of places that you would think are

Fletcher: like brook trout streams um and those

Fletcher: are fun for me to kind of target and and

Fletcher: you know really i like doing that because it's kind

Fletcher: of a solo thing or maybe you and one other person and

Fletcher: you will definitely not see anyone else out

Fletcher: in most of the places that you're going to go target those

Fletcher: fish so really rugged really remote and you

Fletcher: know if it was a trout stream it would be packed but you

Fletcher: got the whole thing to yourself and so um those

Fletcher: species in general have a special place in

Fletcher: my heart because you know the the the

Fletcher: fly that you know the first fly

Fletcher: that i named uh was really

Fletcher: originally to target that specific

Fletcher: uh clade of species um

Fletcher: and and it was really kind of

Fletcher: a technique specific thing that that kind

Fletcher: of led me to them and um outside of.

Fletcher: The red eye bass um um i am

Fletcher: really really into uh fishing

Fletcher: for bowfin and striped bass and those fish are also kind of special to me because

Fletcher: the bowfin have really shown me a lot about fly durability material selection

Fletcher: um those kind of things and and you know same thing with a striper i mean um a lot of the.

Fletcher: Striper fishing we do is kind of targeting them when they're

Fletcher: acting like shoal bass um or or sometimes

Fletcher: while we're fishing for shoal bass they'll be by catch

Fletcher: but um they're they're not

Fletcher: small fish and uh the lessons

Fletcher: learned on fly durability from them um you

Fletcher: know kind of changed the way that i've kind

Fletcher: of gone about building flies too so um we we kind of tend to do a little little

Fletcher: bit of everything except for trout fishing um so it's it's kind of come full

Fletcher: circle back to you know what interested me as a little kid which is fast stuff yeah.

Marvin: And then you know i'll drop this in the show notes but uh you know folks should

Marvin: check out your instagram feed because there's some absolute hogs for stripers

Marvin: uh in your instagram feeds just it's kind of crazy really.

Fletcher: Yeah and you know going back to uh mustache at

Fletcher: the fishhawk i i've kind of gotten to the point now where um i don't i don't

Fletcher: post fish pictures anymore because it's just it's hard not to burn spots and

Fletcher: stuff with with those pictures so um kind of cool cooling it on uh posting any

Fletcher: more of those for at least a little bit yeah.

Marvin: Well there you go and so you know we've kind of danced around the fact that

Marvin: you, uh, that you tie flies, you know, how did you get interested in tying flies?

Fletcher: Um, you know, probably 10 or 12 years ago, um,

Fletcher: my parents, um, took a fly tying class and they really got into it and,

Fletcher: you know, for a little bit and they thought that it would be something that

Fletcher: I was interested in cause I was kind of starting to fly fish and everything

Fletcher: like that and of course i was like that that like arts and crafts i don't need

Fletcher: to do that i i just want to buy the flies and go out there and fish and and so you know after um,

Fletcher: a couple years of it you know the the vice

Fletcher: and the little you know combo pack of materials sitting in the closet i had

Fletcher: a pretty frustrating day shoal bass fishing where i could not get a fly deep

Fletcher: enough to hit where i wanted to hit in the hole and so i i dragged that thing out of the closet And,

Fletcher: you know, pulled up somebody's YouTube tutorial on how to tie a clouser and

Fletcher: bought the heaviest tungsten eyes that I could and, you know,

Fletcher: a bucktail and started spinning them up.

Fletcher: And it's kind of been an obsession ever since.

Marvin: Yeah. So, you know, what do you tie on today? day?

Fletcher: Um, you know, I, I, I think I, I, I started with a peak, um,

Fletcher: and, you know, kind of wore it, wore it completely out.

Fletcher: And, uh, these days I primarily tie on a Renzetti.

Marvin: Gotcha. And, uh, what's your favorite flavor there?

Fletcher: Um, it's, uh, just a saltwater traveler.

Fletcher: Um, I've, um, you know, worn out a couple of jaws and, And, you know,

Fletcher: the thing about the Saltwater Traveler is I really don't need,

Fletcher: for the flies that I tied,

Fletcher: like, you know, true rotary function or anything fancy like that.

Fletcher: I just, the arm design on the Renzetti allows me to get a little bit more purchase on shanks.

Fletcher: And so that's primarily the reason that I really like that vice.

Marvin: Got it. Yeah, I've got two of them. I've got I'm left handed.

Marvin: So I had one for the back in the old days where we didn't work from home.

Marvin: I had one for the office and one for the house. And now they're both in the office at home.

Fletcher: Yeah. And now my, my daughter, um, is showing interest.

Fletcher: So she's, she's using an old peak, um, time with me. So.

Marvin: Yeah, that's pretty cool. And so, you know, who are some of the,

Marvin: um, the tires that have kind of influenced your development over the years?

Fletcher: That's that's a really long that's really

Fletcher: long list um you know i i

Fletcher: think if you if you look at my pages it's it's

Fletcher: very obvious that the blank chocolate's a huge influence but um you know i didn't

Fletcher: start tying um changer style flies

Fletcher: for a few years um and you know kind of started out out with classics,

Fletcher: you know, Bob Clouser, you know, some Popovic's flies, like hollow flies.

Fletcher: And then, you know, lefty deceiver, double deceivers, that kind of thing.

Fletcher: And really, it was kind of around the double deceiver that I started looking at,

Fletcher: you know, the stuff that Madden was doing with a peanut or,

Fletcher: you know, articulated flies and really started looking at what Gallup was doing

Fletcher: with the extended body articulated fly and all the variation that, that he was doing with,

Fletcher: you know, that kind of body design to, to get the length with these natural

Fletcher: materials that he wanted to get.

Fletcher: And, you know, same, same thing with the extended body concept

Fletcher: on the B-Squad with Papa Vic and the way that I really started looking at these

Fletcher: articulated extended body kind of flaws was in my brain, it's...

Fletcher: All different styles to kind of accomplish the same basic idea

Fletcher: which is you know a single hook streamer i

Fletcher: was only able to get so long and um

Fletcher: by adding the extended

Fletcher: body tail articulation whatever you want

Fletcher: to call it you're able to get a much bigger

Fletcher: bait but on top of that you're able to get the movement

Fletcher: in it and so you know i would

Fletcher: say that um pop of x

Fletcher: madden um blaine um

Fletcher: are all huge influences but then there's also like conceptual stuff that i like

Fletcher: to take you know in other words i don't tie their patterns but i really like

Fletcher: the ideas behind their patterns and And like Mark Sedati with the weight balance principle,

Fletcher: I really try to build my flies in a way that they are weight balanced.

Fletcher: That's not always possible, but I like to have weight balance flies in my box

Fletcher: so that I can hunt all day on a new river.

Fletcher: And so, you know, I'm not, I'm not all out there tying Sadati Slammers,

Fletcher: but you know, that, that concept that he brought, um, I really,

Fletcher: really adhere to that. at Andy Sabota with the Swimmy Jimmy.

Fletcher: It's one of my favorite flies of all time. But again, you know,

Fletcher: it's going back to the extended body thing.

Fletcher: My favorite way of tying any kind of extended body fly is doing it with a Game Changer platform.

Fletcher: And I think that it allows me to use materials in a way that the fly looks more

Fletcher: realistic, in my opinion,

Fletcher: and less suggestive.

Fletcher: And because I fish a lot of really clear flows, trying to take flies from a

Fletcher: suggestive standpoint to a more realistic standpoint, but not really...

Fletcher: Losing action, gaining action, that kind of thing.

Fletcher: I think that the shank-based bugs are really kind of where I'm totally adherent

Fletcher: to the Game Changer platform, pretty much.

Fletcher: I do tie some single articulation flies, but even those, it's not using a wire and a bead.

Fletcher: It's connecting them with shanks

Fletcher: and really kind of going back to some durability stuff from the bow fin,

Fletcher: the pickerel, and the big striper is, you know, a lot of the wire connection, a lot of this stuff,

Fletcher: you know, it'll put your tackle to the test.

Fletcher: And so, you know, even on the single articulation flies, I'm articulating it

Fletcher: with shanks just from a durability standpoint.

Marvin: Uh, God, and it sounds too, like, you know, given the species that you like

Marvin: to chase on the fly that you didn't really kind of, you know,

Marvin: you didn't start tying pheasant tails and then get to predator flies.

Marvin: It seems like you were kind of predator flies out of the gate, right?

Fletcher: Yeah, pretty much that, that was, you know, it was like, Hey Rob,

Fletcher: what, what, uh, what a bassy, you know, and, and, you know, showed him a little

Fletcher: box, uh, you know, some nibs and stuff like that, that I was trying to fish with.

Fletcher: With and my station was like bigger, bigger, bigger, you know,

Fletcher: and, and, you know, once, once I saw a fish eat a streamer for the first time

Fletcher: and how aggressive it was, I, I was hooked. I didn't want to do anything else ever.

Marvin: Yeah. And, you know, so for folks that aren't, you know, familiar with your

Marvin: patterns, kind of let us, you know, know some of your, you know,

Marvin: more notable patterns and kind of, you know, kind of how they fish and kind

Marvin: of what they're geared towards.

Fletcher: Um you know the the like i

Fletcher: was saying the the first pattern um that that

Fletcher: i really named and i guess what most

Fletcher: people know me for is is um what i

Fletcher: call a tweaker and um the the

Fletcher: idea for the tweaker kind of evolved out

Fletcher: of uh red-eyed bass fishing and um another one of my favorite flies is a blind

Fletcher: chocolate pattern the bugger changer and when I don't know the story but you

Fletcher: know originally when when he.

Fletcher: I designed that fly. It was a tailhook fly. And then, um, you know,

Fletcher: there's some issues and there's a change to one shank back, um, on that fly, um.

Fletcher: With the head just kind of float, not floating, but lead eye head with a little

Fletcher: bit of brush and that thing will, you know, jig all the way down to the bottom.

Fletcher: Them and it's a gray fly it's one of my favorite flies of all

Fletcher: time um but when i'm

Fletcher: red-eyed bass fishing it's hard to roll cast that

Fletcher: thing um effectively and so i

Fletcher: really wanted to figure out a way to you

Fletcher: know just tie essentially the same bug but

Fletcher: have a bug with less heavy lead eyes And the way I was trying to do that was

Fletcher: just tying them with a deer hair head and having the deer hair kind of provide

Fletcher: buoyancy that would keel it in addition to a little bit of weight.

Fletcher: And so instead of tying them with, like, say, medium eyes, I'm tying them with

Fletcher: extra small eyes and deer hair.

Fletcher: And they were great red-eyed bass flies.

Fletcher: Um and um also changed

Fletcher: a really light wire hook and

Fletcher: being able to roll cast that thing in those

Fletcher: red eye creeks was great um and you know caught a ton of fish on it but the

Fletcher: thing that i really kind of noticed in in fishing that version of the fly a lot was um Um,

Fletcher: and I guess talk about this in a little bit, but, um.

Fletcher: I was not really great with deer here when I started tying that bug and had

Fletcher: a lot of variations to, you know, how I was carving the head.

Fletcher: Um, and noticed on the heads that I was tying more like a Gallup Nancy P like

Fletcher: really tall instead of really wide heads,

Fletcher: that the fly was super weedless,

Fletcher: like throw it in a weed bed, drag it out, throw it in a brush pile,

Fletcher: drag it out, and never really getting snagged.

Fletcher: And what was happening was the hook point was kind of loading back behind the head. head.

Fletcher: When a fish would bite it, of course, had plenty of hook back there,

Fletcher: but because the deer hair head was more buoyant than the hook point,

Fletcher: the hook point would float ever so slightly behind the head while it was traveling through the water.

Fletcher: Decided that because it was so weightless man this thing is going to be a great shoal bass fly and,

Fletcher: the shoal bass would eat the hell out

Fletcher: of it but almost every

Fletcher: fish would straighten these little light wire hooks out and

Fletcher: so we started tinkering with it

Fletcher: a little bit more um adding more

Fletcher: weight to the head and trying

Fletcher: to go to heavier gauge hooks but we would

Fletcher: lose the weightlessness because the hook would just

Fletcher: kind of flop to the side the head

Fletcher: would keel but this heavy gauge wide gap hook would just kind of fall to the

Fletcher: side and one of the mods that we made to it to really kind of keel it was was

Fletcher: adding a little bit of weight to the hook to keel it.

Fletcher: And the really crazy thing about

Fletcher: the final design is, yeah, it's still weedless, got a beefy hook on it.

Fletcher: It's going to hold any bass species that you're going to want to hook on it.

Fletcher: And it's because of the weight in the back of the hook.

Fletcher: If you're familiar with like a yard sale supply that Matt Grudjewski ties,

Fletcher: he weights the back of the hook.

Fletcher: And that's really what kind of provides the glide and the jerk showing profile on that fly.

Fletcher: Fly and what happens when you, you know, just kind of pop this fly is the belly will roll almost.

Fletcher: Above sideways and flash like crazy.

Fletcher: And it will show like t-bone.

Fletcher: Kind of profile every time you're stripping

Fletcher: it and so having that action that

Fletcher: um the way that we fish this fly especially

Fletcher: for for shoal bass is a pretty

Fletcher: unconventional uh way of

Fletcher: fishing and it's it's a boat fly you know

Fletcher: the majority of the way that we fish that fly it's we do

Fletcher: sometimes use it waiting but it's primarily

Fletcher: a boat fly and um there are

Fletcher: lots of these pockets that are up on

Fletcher: the bank and a lot of

Fletcher: them have wood and all kinds of other stuff and a lot of

Fletcher: high flow and we will

Fletcher: put on a really heavy gauge uh

Fletcher: really long like 10 11 foot floating

Fletcher: line leader and we'll throw

Fletcher: this up on the dry bank and drag

Fletcher: it down into these bank side pockets on

Fletcher: the really clear low flow days and um

Fletcher: try to make reaction

Fletcher: bites happen right because otherwise it's

Fletcher: it's um you know kind of having a tough day and so it's manufacturing uh reaction

Fletcher: bites but um we're we're casting up onto dry land and dragging this thing into

Fletcher: not near structure into structure um.

Fletcher: And um hauling fish out over over structure fish will climb up over dry branches

Fletcher: chasing this thing down um just

Fletcher: a really really cool fly and a really cool way of fishing um but it's um.

Fletcher: You know kind of the first named fly i guess that i did um and we have a ton of fun with that bug,

Fletcher: but it's a really specialized bug as far as you know like any weedless fly you're gonna decrease,

Fletcher: your hookup percentage somewhat and so for fishing open water near structure

Fletcher: we like to fish other other bugs.

Fletcher: But if we're tweaker fishing, there's no better way to do it than with a tweaker.

Fletcher: We don't do it with other flies.

Fletcher: It's kind of its own little sunny, bright, summer day fishing program.

Marvin: Very, very neat. And also too, talk to our listeners a little bit.

Marvin: You were showing me some game changers that you tied that kind of had a spoon

Marvin: face on them that It actually were fish kind of parallel to the water surface

Marvin: instead of perpendicular. And you were telling me that was also for a shoal bass presentation.

Fletcher: Yeah, that is, you know, I kind of tend to break my flies into different categories.

Fletcher: And that's probably the most versatile fly in my box.

Fletcher: I can, if I'm fishing an area that I'm not too familiar with,

Fletcher: I can make long reaching casts.

Fletcher: And, you know, swim it back like any streamer over a long distance trying to

Fletcher: elicit a strike over terrain that I'm not sure about.

Fletcher: Or you can just kind of toss it in a hole in one specific zone and twitch around and work.

Fletcher: But it's kind of a...

Fletcher: More, more wide, more flat kind of profile is what we're kind of ended up with

Fletcher: of a Andy Sabota, swimmy Jimmy,

Fletcher: and we're tying it on a game changer body.

Fletcher: And we're, we're trimming the body, um, where it has, instead of a vertical

Fletcher: profile, it's got a horizontally wide profile.

Fletcher: Um, and it, looks like a dying bait fish up on the surface and um kind of swims

Fletcher: sideways depending on the the presentation it's um if you.

Fletcher: You can you know if you're a lot of people fish andy's fly on sinking lines

Fletcher: but for me I like fishing on a full float and a long lure,

Fletcher: and I will typically

Fletcher: use it to fish one zone

Fletcher: and dive down into that zone or into that pocket or into that shelf and then

Fletcher: up over the next little shallow portion and back down into another bucket or

Fletcher: hole in these giant shoal cones. complexes.

Fletcher: And it allows me to cover a lot more water than say, like a deceiver or something

Fletcher: like that. That's a regular hook down fly.

Fletcher: That's once I get it in the water, it's just going to kind of maintain depth.

Fletcher: This thing I can dive and then hover over obstructions

Fletcher: and then dive down into into the next hole and that

Fletcher: really you know we we we

Fletcher: fish um a bunch of dams uh

Fletcher: in the state and you know sometimes you'll have shad come through the turbines

Fletcher: and if you've ever seen that you know those fish when they're kind of knocked

Fletcher: out still alive they're kind of up on the surface they're They're sideways,

Fletcher: they're flat, and when they are trying to resuscitate themselves,

Fletcher: they'll kind of dig down and then kind of pause and just kind of shimmy,

Fletcher: float up, back up to the surface and repeat that.

Fletcher: And this fly really mimics that super-wounded baitfish kind of activity,

Fletcher: but you don't have to swim it like that.

Fletcher: If you fish it on a 45 downstream out of a boat, for instance, the fly will...

Fletcher: Right itself, so to speak, where it looks like it's keeled vertically, um, and it kind of,

Fletcher: will, will jerk up current and then show profile down, jerk up current,

Fletcher: show profile down on the pause.

Fletcher: Um, it is, it will do a whole lot of things, but I don't really take credit

Fletcher: for that because I'm just, you know, trying to mash up a longer, extended,

Fletcher: more realistic version of Andy's fly by putting Blaine's body on it.

Fletcher: But yes, that is one of my go-to favorite flies for any species.

Fletcher: If I am trout fishing, that's my number one bug.

Marvin: Got it. And so, you know, any other, you know, flies, even if they're not,

Marvin: uh, we'll say, uh, Fletcher originals, um, uh, or, or, uh, or techniques you

Marvin: want to share with our listeners?

Fletcher: Yeah. So, you know, um, there's another bug that, that we've been fishing for

Fletcher: a couple of years now, um, that I'll call the quack head.

Fletcher: And, you know, it's kind of trying to be a habitat specialist for these shoal

Fletcher: bass is where it started.

Fletcher: And when Blaine came out with his Jerk Changer, awesome swim and fly,

Fletcher: and it's great. and we still use that for shoal bass.

Fletcher: But there are a lot of places where I could not get that fly,

Fletcher: more than a couple of inches under the

Fletcher: water in some of these really fast pockets and

Fletcher: i wanted to have something that was

Fletcher: able to have

Fletcher: a similar action yet get

Fletcher: down deeper and the other

Fletcher: thing that you know going back to the realistic uh version of the flies i really

Fletcher: wanted to be able able to put eyes on it and have the ability to use natural

Fletcher: materials and add colors and stuff like that that I wanted for the clear flows.

Fletcher: And so I took some of the things that I learned about fly design for messing with a tweaker,

Fletcher: like the belly flip um on the um on the strip and and uh a couple of things like that um and.

Fletcher: This fly is a very thin profile um it's only got a couple of articulations out

Fletcher: of the back and it's It's tied on either a really long,

Fletcher: I think it's a TPE 615 AirX hook,

Fletcher: which is a 3X long streamer hook,

Fletcher: and half of the fly is hook, and that kind of gives it that jerky kind of movement.

Fletcher: But the way that I weighed it and the way that the wing of the fly is kind of inverted where,

Fletcher: the belly of the fly is the wing

Fletcher: when you strip this thing it it'll show a whole lot of belly and kind of.

Fletcher: Carve almost like a 360 while it's showing belly it's it's a pretty wild fly

Fletcher: but you can also walk the dog and it'll punch down and get pretty deep pretty quick on the paws um so,

Fletcher: trying to accomplish a lot of what uh grajewski was doing with the yard sale

Fletcher: and and kind of the concepts of waiting with the wing and the belly flip with

Fletcher: the tweaker and a lot of the action out of the jerk chambers,

Fletcher: kind of where that fly idea came from.

Fletcher: And it's a super cool fly.

Fletcher: And now that Erex has come out with that new Beast long hook,

Fletcher: hook, which is proportionately the same hook as that trout predator hook,

Fletcher: it has become an awesome striper fly too.

Fletcher: We could not hold the stripers with the TP hook, so had to work on that one

Fletcher: a little bit. But that's another cool fly.

Fletcher: And then the newest fly that we're messing around with,

Fletcher: going back to my obsession with this sideways um

Fletcher: bay fish fly is uh what

Fletcher: we're calling a a swimboat fly you know

Fletcher: kind of named it after my cousin jimbo

Fletcher: because it's you know getting on that jitterbug thing

Fletcher: as a kid i just uh cannot get over

Fletcher: the top water bite and you know that's kind of the closest thing that i'll get

Fletcher: to uh using a top water fly or those swimming jimmy flies but i wanted to be

Fletcher: able to tie a bigger bug that I could get a hen saddle to get the body the way that I wanted it to look.

Fletcher: And so, um, started messing around with, um, trying to make a synthetic version with bone. And, uh.

Fletcher: Going back to sadati's weight balancing principle um you know that fly's got

Fletcher: a whole lot of drag and because it's got a whole lot of foam on it and um we

Fletcher: we're we're heavily weighting those flies,

Fletcher: um and putting a lot of foam on them which seems kind of odd but the reason we're waiting on One,

Fletcher: they're on a bent shank hook, like a TP650 for smaller fish.

Fletcher: And then we're bending SA292s with a blowtorch to do striper versions,

Fletcher: like really, really big versions.

Fletcher: But the principle is more or less the same.

Fletcher: You're getting a dive and fly got a big rattles in them that we're tying on

Fletcher: with heat shrink wrap and a really realistic looking painted head on this foam and does,

Fletcher: almost everything that this swimming jimmy fly does but harder it swims up harder,

Fletcher: it dives harder, swims more just a really really cool bug.

Fletcher: And because it's got rattles built into it, it is just something that fish can

Fletcher: absolutely not ignore. It's.

Fletcher: A bug that can suck a

Fletcher: throw all day even though it is weight balanced it's

Fletcher: you're you're hucking a whole lot um but once

Fletcher: it's in the water uh it's really hard for a fish not to kill that thing um and

Fletcher: those are the you know kind of the the bugs that are you know named bugs that that we tie,

Fletcher: but we, we still finish a whole lot of brush head game changers,

Fletcher: hybrid game changer, jerk changers.

Fletcher: Um, we'll, uh, finish a lot of, uh, Chuck craft flies.

Fletcher: Um, we will still fish a whole lot of clousers and, um,

Fletcher: the other flies that

Fletcher: we fish a bunch are um fisher rats

Fletcher: flies um and you know

Fletcher: yes we do fish some pole dancers but he's

Fletcher: got a fly called a spot on bait fish and it a really flat single fly with and

Fletcher: we tie him with a ton of weight and that is really you know when we're trying to hit bottom,

Fletcher: that's that's what we're using but you know our fly boxes are kind of getting,

Fletcher: smaller as far as the number of patterns as we you know kind of dial in this

Fletcher: floating line program it's my box is really looking like you know bugger changer tweeter a,

Fletcher: swimming jimmy a a.

Fletcher: Spot on bay fish and maybe a couple other things if

Fletcher: i'm really particular about whatever fishery

Fletcher: that i'm in um and it's it's

Fletcher: really kind of simplified uh the way that i fish because it's uh kind of limiting

Fletcher: my options and so these days the patterns are kind of getting fewer and the

Fletcher: colors are getting more.

Fletcher: The other mentor that I have is a UGO fisheries biologist by the name of Jay Shelton.

Fletcher: He's not really what I would call a fly-time mentor.

Fletcher: He's really more of a mentor on and baitfish and other,

Fletcher: you know, the target species quarry and how I can get flies that look like they

Fletcher: look like and behave like they look.

Fletcher: So these days I'm really just kind of fine-tuning color schemes to mimic different

Fletcher: species and really kind of limiting the number of patterns that I'm playing with.

Marvin: Got it. And so if folks wanted to get a closer look at your handful of patterns

Marvin: and wanted to buy some, where should they go?

Fletcher: Well, yeah.

Fletcher: You might be able to go to um this year's input catalog and order tweakers um

Fletcher: we i do not know if it's gonna make the deadline for production but i uh signed

Fletcher: off on the samples a few weeks ago,

Fletcher: and they're awesome um so you should be able to get um the tweakers in three

Fletcher: different colors this year.

Fletcher: I do occasionally tie batches for Mike Schultz, Schultz Outfitters for promotion stuff.

Fletcher: There's another fisheries biologist down here that just left Auburn University.

Fletcher: It's named Hank Hershey and he runs this little boutique shop called Hank's Bait Shop and.

Fletcher: I'll do a batch every once in a while for him but other than that,

Fletcher: don't really sell flies but I am happy to give you pointers,

Fletcher: give you recipes do all the stuff and I'm working,

Fletcher: with Hank to try to get a video up about how to tie a quack head on Southern

Fletcher: culture on the fly here soon.

Marvin: Yeah. Inside baseball says that they're actually circling up the,

Marvin: uh, the posse to, uh, to work on the next issue here in the next week or so.

Fletcher: Awesome. Yeah.

Marvin: And so one thing I always like to ask really serious tires is to,

Marvin: if they have like one kind of nutty, unusual tool that they can't live without.

Fletcher: Absolutely. And that's the hairline has a material stager that Druch Kohn designed.

Fletcher: And it's literally just a piece of foam with a bunch of slits in it that you

Fletcher: can, you know, organize your material.

Fletcher: And I'm pretty sure it was originally for production tires where they could,

Fletcher: you know, lay out like 10 flies on one of these little foam blocks.

Fletcher: But, you know, fly tying for me is kind of two different things.

Fletcher: One, it's this creative, analytical, problem-solving design process.

Fletcher: Process and it's also meditation and kind of therapeutic and the the way that i kind of,

Fletcher: sides of my brain is you know i'll do all my design and all my material layout

Fletcher: and all that stuff i need i need to use my uncreative side of my brain to to

Fletcher: kind of organize all that and then.

Fletcher: And once I kind of have everything laid out and organized and get up to the

Fletcher: vise, um, you know, have everything laid out when I'm hunting material or anything,

Fletcher: I'm just wrapping up on and wrapping thread on top of that.

Fletcher: It lets me kind of zone out and, you know, getting to a meditative stand, just tie the bug.

Fletcher: And so that, that tool allows me to do both instead of, you know,

Fletcher: kind of going back and forth,

Fletcher: kind of not getting that focus that I get when I'm actually at the bice, if that makes sense.

Marvin: Yeah, no, no, no, it totally makes sense. And, uh, yeah, I mean,

Marvin: it's, it's an amazing thing, even if you're not tying a lot of flies,

Marvin: I mean, it's super productive to lay stuff out, uh, and measure it.

Marvin: It, um, yeah, it makes things go a whole lot better. And, you know,

Marvin: folks may not know Fletcher kind of your day jam is, uh, being the,

Marvin: you're the executive director of, and I'm going to make sure I get this right.

Marvin: The Altamaha Riverkeeper. Did I do it? Did I get it?

Fletcher: Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Uh, the locals call it Altamaha, but,

Fletcher: um, yeah, everyone else, Altamaha.

Marvin: All right.

Fletcher: Um, and it's, uh, it's a cool day job.

Fletcher: If you don't know what river keepers are started up in the Hudson River up in

Fletcher: New York with a bunch of fishermen that,

Fletcher: Couldn't catch fish because the Hudson was so polluted.

Fletcher: And so they decided that they were going to go catch the polluters by letting permits.

Fletcher: And at the time, the state of New York would kind of pay a bounty.

Fletcher: And so they kind of became pollution bounty hunters.

Fletcher: And as they saw success and as the Hudson began to be shad run and striped bass

Fletcher: again, and you can start making their living.

Fletcher: Other people want to replicate the program. And now there's a few hundred river

Fletcher: keepers all around the world.

Fletcher: We all are assigned a specific water body.

Fletcher: And mine is the Altmaha base. And Altmaha system is the third largest contributor

Fletcher: of freshwater to the Atlantic.

Fletcher: Atlantic, very long river system, largely undammed from the fall line down, completely undammed.

Fletcher: And it has an Atlantic drainage.

Fletcher: It covers about a quarter of the state of Georgia. And what we primarily are

Fletcher: designed to do is enforcement through utilizing the Clean Water Act.

Fletcher: So we are designed to sue people that are polluting over their permit levels

Fletcher: or implicitly polluting a permit.

Fletcher: But we like to use all the other tools that are at our disposal to further our advocacy of a cleaner,

Fletcher: more fishable river system.

Fletcher: And so I've been on that job since 2019, and we haven't seen anybody since.

Fletcher: So, that's kind of a last resort, but that's more or less what we're designed to do.

Fletcher: So, we lobby, we advocate, we do cleanup work.

Fletcher: Other agencies to promote swimmable drinkable fishable water in the watershed so um even when,

Fletcher: i'm working i i've got a fishing rod either in the truck or in the boat with me,

Fletcher: so um i get a lot of little bits of fishing time here and there um pretty pretty cool job yeah.

Marvin: Very very neat and you know what are some of the challenges that are currently facing your watershed.

Fletcher: Um we we've

Fletcher: got a couple of fairly large projects

Fletcher: um the um the largest

Fletcher: coal burning facility in the western hemisphere is in our watershed and um when

Fletcher: you burn coal you have a byproduct of waste called coal ash and it's really

Fletcher: nasty stuff it's uh got uranium radium sodium,

Fletcher: arsenic, lead, mercury,

Fletcher: all kinds of awful stuff in it.

Fletcher: And it's stored in ponds that are more or less pits that are submerged into the aquifer.

Fletcher: And our EPA in

Fletcher: 2015 created rules saying

Fletcher: you got to dig that stuff up and stored in a

Fletcher: line landfill or at least stored in a way that is not in contact with groundwater

Fletcher: and this specific plan is surrounded by residents that are drinking groundwater

Fletcher: and so it was a really bad situation we have a.

Fletcher: Been able to successfully convince the county

Fletcher: to put in water lines but we're still fighting the

Fletcher: power company on proper waste disposal and that's the number one

Fletcher: issue that we're dealing with and then uh on

Fletcher: a more positive note um we

Fletcher: are hoping and and i don't know what date this show may air we may have legislation

Fletcher: by then um that we are in the final stages of of creating a national park in Georgia,

Fletcher: Georgia's first national park on the Old Mulgee River.

Fletcher: Right in the center of the two big shoal bass habitats.

Fletcher: So that's been a really cool process.

Fletcher: It's multi-agency, multi-municipality kind of group working together on this.

Fletcher: And, you know, that includes the Air Force Base and also one of the removed

Fletcher: tribes from Georgia during the Trail of Tears, the Muscogee Creek Nation,

Fletcher: will be a equal partner at the table with U.S.

Fletcher: Fish and Wildlife and the other partners with National Park Service.

Fletcher: So that's a really cool, fun project that's kind of hopefully in the final stages.

Fletcher: But we do all kinds of stuff. What I tell people is it's kind of like mowing grass with a push mower.

Fletcher: As soon as you get done, you've got to do it all again.

Fletcher: So some of it's Groundhog Day, but some of it's really fun, really moving the needle.

Marvin: Yeah, that's needed if someone wanted to support your work, what can they do?

Fletcher: Best thing is donate and become a member.

Marvin: Got it. And I will drop a, uh, drop a link in the show notes.

Marvin: It's kind of funny you say that because, uh, here in Charlotte,

Marvin: it's like the spring fundraiser week for public radio. So perfect time to become a member.

Fletcher: Oh yeah. Yep.

Marvin: So before I let you go this evening, Fletcher, is there anything else you want

Marvin: to share with our listeners?

Fletcher: You know i i think um you know get outside your comfort zone try new stuff if

Fletcher: you're not a fly tire start and um you know if some of these species are interesting

Fletcher: to you or you know no matter where you live there's always something else to

Fletcher: chase something else to learn and um,

Fletcher: no matter what your skill level is as an angler um don't let the ego get in

Fletcher: the way of learning of new stuff.

Marvin: Very, very neat. And, you know, what's the best way, Fletcher,

Marvin: for folks to kind of get in touch with you and follow your adventures at the bison on the water?

Fletcher: Instagram.

Marvin: And you want to share your handle?

Fletcher: At Fletcher.Sams.

Marvin: Well, there you go. That's pretty easy. And, you know, Fletcher,

Marvin: I appreciate you spending some time with me this evening. It's been a lot of fun.

Fletcher: Yeah, man. I had a blast. Thanks.

Marvin: Absolutely. Take care.

Fletcher: All right.

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Intro: in charlotte on may 4th tight lines everybody.