This week Capt Matt and Andy chat with TJ Dezotell of the Jethro Gibbs Guide Service in the beautiful North East Kingdom of Vermont. TJ is not only involved in the Trout Unlimited chapter of Vermont but year round he guides fly fishing tours, snow shoe tours, canoe tours as well as overnight river camping tours. Listen in as TJ talks about what the NEK has to offer. Check him out and book a fishing trip at: https://www.tourvtnh.com/ or find him on instagram @gibbsguides
Don’t forget to check out www.3rdalarmcharters.com for your charter needs
www.vtflyfest.com
Welcome to the New England Outdoor Life podcast your go-to source for all things hunting and fishing in New England join us as we embark on thrilling Adventures share tips and tricks and delve into the rich Heritage of outdoor life in this beautiful region whether you’re an experienced Outdoorsman or just starting out our podcast is your ultimate companion for exploring the Wilderness that surrounds us so grab your gear lace up your boots and get ready to immerse yourself in the wonders of New England’s Great out doors this is the New England Outdoor Life podcast let’s dive in good evening everyone and welcome to New England Outdoor Life podcast I am captain Matt from third alarm Charters fresh in off the Waters of Lake Champlain our first day out today and we’re in the first week of May just returned from New York took a little breather to do some turkey hunting and uh Andy you’ve got a new purchase we were just taking a peacat out in the yard somebody’s got a boat to use now can’t confirm who that is well I got you suckered in you spent some time on the water last summer I guess I could take the blame for it it does cause problems this this whole podcast may cause a lot more problems by the looks of it well I can tell you I bought my first boat going on 25 six years ago similar size what you just bought and I’m on boat number nine so get ready that’s a lot of boat yeah well I’ve got three right now we’re going down to two pretty soon just cu the business doesn’t justifi keeping three but um folks we’re obviously uh kneed deep no pun intended into fishing season and lot of different topics we’re going to have uh in the next uh four to six weeks mainly based around the fishing world and a lot of different events going on uh different uh projects that lodges have got going on um and I was lucky enough to have a weekend day off that uh took my girlfriend to uh the Vermont fly fishing Festival that was uh down in Arlington Vermont in the home Waters of the Battenkill River and their um chapter of trout unlimited has done a ton of work on the river down there and putting on this was the third year of the fly fishing Festival um and uh you know it’s a three-day event a lot of different things going on from uh fly tying to fly casting seminars on River cleanup and ecology um they have dinners uh concerts all kinds of stuff so we met some great folks and the first tent that I walked into at the festival I’m standing there and talking to a young gentleman at a table and we looked at each other we think we know each other and of course with social media today um you get to meet people from all different walks of life and aspects of of the Outdoor World and uh I looked at the guy and I said Jethro Gibbs Guide Service I think I’m friends with you on Facebook and we had and excuse me on Instagram and tonight we’ve got TJ J desel with us how you doing TJ I’m great how are you I am doing fantastic and crazy busy answering phone calls which I think you’re probably doing the same thing so absolutely what did you think of the fly fishing Festival it was great uh it’s actually the the first one I’d been to um and we just have started a uh restarted the chapter of trout Unlimited in the Northeast Kingdom um and it was the board’s first opportunity to go down and get a chance at the educational opportunities that they were offering uh it along with that Arlington fly fishing Festival it was also the regional Rondevu for trout unlimited for the Eastern region um so lots of courses going on for that as well and the different fly fishing movies um and just you know a lot of a lot of great people set up in those tent areas too I think where we met there I was actually hanging out with the Vermont trout Camp folks um trout Unlimited es specifically Mad Dog chapter has run the Vermont trout Camp uh for the last lots of years uh at least uh 12 to 15 years um and this year it’s taking place again at Quimby country sure uh were yeah exactly so sitting there trying to promote trout Camp um and uh meeting lots of folks from uh to sure well that would explain it as I was um standing in line mine uh buying an adult beverage um I turned around I looked at a retired uh firefighter from the City of Burlington I said Dave Birch what are you doing here and he says I’m on the Champlain value Tu chapter so um unfortunately I had to run um misplace my wallet and we later found it but I was pulling my hair out but uh that would explain how I got a chance so Dave if you had a chance to listening to this you yes we do need to catch up and get a day on the water so um just it was an awesome time and um as I said I’m Anna a a turkey hunter so the fly fishing Festival coming on open weekend turkey season I wanted to make it down last year and um we were actually at our camp we um have a group of guys that pretty much all of us turkey hunt the deer hunt too so it’s our spring weekend and um I was at Camp Saturday morning and went home and caught up with my girlfriend and we wanted to spend the day together so I said what do you think of Tak it to ride Arlington she go why not and she got a ton out of it I got to say I I think we have peaked an interest and um not to go off on a tangent but her and I have been together that was our oneyear anniversary day so looking to take off and do some stuff and she’s all about the outdoors loves to hike uh bicycle kayak and um she’s doing a women’s shooting course this uh next month over in New Hampshire and she wants to take out fly fishing she was so caught up with everything that was going on here at the festival and that was why I want to encourage you to do it and I think you guys probably saw a lot of that yeah absolutely and I mean it’s the it it the the the women’s segment is actually the largest growing portion of the fly fishing uh you know business World um and so it’s a huge Focus for all the companies that I’m kind of working for it’s a huge focus of uh all the places that I’m making content for um is driving uh you know driving attention to to women’s Focus fishing so that’s great to hear that it was a really rewarding experience for her yeah no she totally enjoyed it and uh um wish we had kind of had a little more time uh to spend down there and get to learn stuff and um we are doing a little weekend getaway right before Memorial Day actually uh down to the Delaware River area and she’s never been down there so we’re going down for a couple of nights and I don’t know if we’ll wet a line but just to to see how big the fly fishing world is down there for her too you’re in for an eye opening so absolutely what right the height of the H Hendrickson hatch you got it yeah there should be soup no doubt about it by the time we get down there and um I’ve gone down in the winter time and just kind of driven around when there’s hardly anybody fishing and so I’ve never been down the peak of when everybody will be there too so it be kind of cool get down and check the area out but um you know I I thought the festival was great and um obviously Tu has done so much when it comes to Conservancy and trying to work on uh you know different waterways all over the nation see nothing about just here in Vermont and um you know they had all the demographics of um what unfortunately the Baton kill had taken a bad turn as so many fly fishermen know from this region um you know back in the uh late ‘ 90s early 2000s the brown trout uh Native brown trout numbers on the river had really drastically declined and has rebounded wonderfully and a lot of it to do with the efforts of concerted uh groups such as the TU and obviously you seen that amazing to see how uh well the one of the courses was the Federman study um and it basically talking about all kinds of different different testing they’ve been doing to the river different monitoring they’ve got temperature gauges um set up throughout the river area so when they do a project they have direct data that that is telling them whether their project is successful and bringing the temps down in the river and that’s everything you know like as long as you have Temp and pH you’re going to have fish you got it and I mean so like as long as long as they can and getting those data sets is is the key component to being able to figure out how successful these projects are where where to put the resources I mean it’s a finite resource right to to try to fix some of these things sure and so you know knowing that you’re doing things that are worthwhile to do is a great great resource and anyway so you know just really interesting to see how that Community down there it specifically I think it’s s SWV Tu so Southwestern Vermont Tu has really engaged on on that River on the wum saac also and you know youve got the Deerfield down there as well so um the Vermont side of the Deerfield so sure I think that you know that anyways it’s just it’s it’s amazing to see how organized they were uh especially for us you know being a brand new chapter up here and to kind of really start to grind in on some ideas for some projects because I mean as you know luckily luckily in the Kingdom we do have the coldest water in the state but uh you know we we can never have enough cold water so that’s an understatement I think anybody that follows uh you know the fishing world knows that uh summertime especially if you’re talking Freestone streams that um your River temps can climb enormously and uh not a big issue with water flow last year we had too much and most of July and August but um you know most of the time in my region here um I fish uh local streams that are mainly tributaries to the Otter Creek but also just over the mountain for me is the white River and you know there’s so many different branches of the white um and course from a waiting perspective usually by mid June you’re you’re golden and um wish you had a little better flow for drift boating but you got a short window you get enough flows to be able to run any sort of whether it be an inflatable or hardcraft but uh you know it’s once you start looking at Mid July you’ve got to be hiking up into the mountains to stay on to fish that are still in cooler water because the lower water is is just too warm yeah that’s why the Connecticut River is a blessing for sure cuz July and August the Connecticut River is a great resource to have when when everything else is hot and I mean from from a drift perspective there’s always we always have blue lines where you can go brook trout fishing here where there’s cold water uh but like you said you’re going for a good walk um but you know the Connecticut almost every single morning you wake up it’s at 62 degrees so is not awesome yep I’m very very familiar with the Pittsburgh area and of course um done a ton of deer hunting in the last 25 27 years up there um never really had a lot of time to do much else I’ve done a couple of Summer trips and said man one of these days I’m just going to throw the the fly rod in and go up and get some fishing but obviously tail waterer fishery where you’re getting some decent water um off from the Conneticut lakes and Lake Francis and you know that’s a boon for you guys and keeping your flows going absolutely I mean we we work a lot from that Canon to Bloomfield stretch and it’s 35 miles just you know you’re 30 miles south of Pittsburgh there you’re you’re right in the heart of of like that Vermont New Hampshire borderline and uh you know there’s a lot of great foins in takeouts on the Vermont side and we’ve got the raft so we just we we rock those stretches and depending on flows you’ve always got a spot you can put in up there if it’s really high flows there’s some slower stretches up towards Kanan yep um you know that’s right now this time of year that’s a big fish country up in there no doubt um and uh you know it’s so interesting to the river is such so transitional like you’ve got gigantic fish in there this time of year and then we get into July and August and those fish have gone very dormant and quiet you can only find them in the middle of the night y but like I I tell you what there’s all kinds of other fish that are super active for dry flies in July and August so the river is just very transitional and then on com September and the big fish start to move around again and so anyway pretty fun cool stuff so Jethro Gibbs Guide Service tell us where the name came from and what you’re all about right on um so uh transition into the business I guess six years ago now um I was a Parks and Rec director uh and had written a guide book about snowshoeing and I had a degree in English Lit so it always wanted to kind of write some stuff and had sold some guide books out to a few bookstores and all of a sudden I was getting phone calls for people that actually take them on snow shoot and I made more money taking people on Snowshoe doors than I did selling guide books so the business kind of just started um I had got the dog uh like previous to that uh my kids had named it Gibbs uh gibbes after the uh Jethro gibes character on NCIS um and then so uh started the business um Gibs guides and yeah so that’s just kind of where how how it transitioned and then when I had to create a Facebook page I wanted to have a profile besides the business page like an interactive profile page so anyway that’s the I had to have a first name so jeffro gies that’s cool my father is a NC a big NCIS follower so I’ll have to tell him that story he’ll get a kick out of that oh my kids have watched the whole entire thing twice like every single episode twice so crazy awesome stuff so um and again I’m not going to uh let the cat out of the bag let you tell about it but I’ve followed you as I said on social media and and I know you’ve got um a very uh interesting guide service with in not just concentrating on one aspect and I love that so tell us about all the different stuff you do sure I appreciate that you noticed that too because that’s one of the things that I really work hard to to try to to portray and and like the Vermont experience is kind of where we focus um kind of the message um and within that Vermont experience we’ve got great fishing we’ve got great canoeing we’ve got Great Rivers Waters I’ve got the lond so I’ve got a lond Alaskan um we’re doing big lake fishing uh we’re doing Sunset Tours uh so basically kind of helping people who who come up into into this area to access that like authentic Vermont Northern Vermont experience and we really kind of work hard to drive home those authentic experiences like one of the most popular things we have going right now is our multi-day river tour where people will come in and E be it either a canoe tour or a fishing trip um we’ll meet them typically up in Canan we will have their boats all set for them when they get there well we’ll head off on our day for the for either fishing or canoeing um we’ll have a camp set up somewhere on the river for them so they’ll come into Camp uh fire going ready to make dinner they can hang out and fish at camp or just sit around the fire we sort of have that kind of down to a science on how we do the river camps and folks can get up in the morning get back in the boats uh again raft for fishing or canoes for just touring um and uh we kind of my dad helps a lot and then I’ve got a a person that helps as well uh and we kind of just slide the camp out through the the Road exit and slide it down to the next spot if they’re doing it to night or or just take it home but we do a lot of those two to three day adventures with people um and you can you can really set those up like however you’d like them to be set up it can be uh we just do the outfitting or it can be like we’re full guides and making your meals for you and making sure the food’s all provided and we’ve got some awesome tents we’ve got these uh Spring Bar canvas tents which are those like really tall you can stand up inside them we we have some great CS uh they have wood stoves uh so for if it’s if it’s cool weather we can provide wood stoves um and then we we have all sorts of other like Camp kitchen gear and things like that so just kind of make it fun and easy and uh provide that sort of Camp experience for folks there I mean a lot of folks you know from down country don’t get to get to go camping you know we all very lucky being from up here and uh you know get to experience camping as part of like what our parents take us to do and I think that there a lot of the people I experienc are like moms and dads who really want to take their kids to do that stuff but their parents never did that and so they they just need a little bit of push help that that whole little bit of safety extra you know like if if if we are in the on the River camping out in the middle of a thunderstorm oh you know so there’s always somebody you know that people just want to know there’s a bailout you know what I mean and so I think that having having that that level of experience and professionalism and safety orientation everybody just feels super comfy with us and and how we do it and and we’re just we’re not trying to grow fast we’re just trying to add one customer at a time really make friends with our customers I mean I’m sure this is your business model and you know and and just and and try to uh try to really focus down on that those you know fully authentic just Funtime experiences and then when the fish happen or you manage to see a bear on the River or the Eagles come in or what you know any of those things just blow that experience up to being really cool so well you hit it on the nail head I myself have changed my business model just in the last couple of years and I started off as a charter captain that was running big groups and trolling was 90% of my work um from the Hudson River to Lake Ontario Lake Champlain which I still love all three waterways not a a bad thing to say about it but um after I retired I realized that more and more people especially with my Vermont based business on Lake Champlain were there for the experience and as you said I’m out on a lake that I look West and look at the Adera I look East at the greens and I’ve got an awesome office that I wake up to every morning and and occasionally Mother Nature throws a little Loop in and she did today um but um you know like you said the group I had today on their fifth year coming with me you know and you make those connections those people now become family they’re not just fishing customers and we catch up about everything under the Sun from our kids to last hunting season successes to you know politics you name it you know and um but I really like what you were doing and uh my son is a guide out in Montana that does big game hunts and um he’s kind of wavering whether he wants to put in more year round work out there he only does seasonally right now but um I know a couple of guides in the Adera that do similar to what you’re doing and offer in those experiences from Mountain brook trout ponds to Camping overnight to they do some cross country ski touring and and Snowshoe hair hunting in the winter time all kinds of stuff you know and um but you’re really doing what a lot of the um the old Sportsman camps of Maine we’re doing years past right yeah we do grous too I forgot to even say that part like doing doing grous and snowshoeing tours so that’s awesome awesome stuff so uh you know I think that like you said putting that whole package of an experience together which definitely takes effort as you said having your dad or another person whether it’s just a River shuttle or somebody that can get tents set up for you get you supplies there’s a a lot of things that you you know have to put it all together um and my youngest brother guid in Wyoming for five or six years again big game hunting but they did all remote tent camp and there’s a lot of extra leg work that people don’t see that goes on to making all that stuff happen behind the scenes you know so um tell us about uh fun sorry go ahead oh no I was going to say it’s funny it’s it it I talk a lot about how it’s the same lifestyle as parks and wreck because you get up in the morning and you have a camp about to go on and you have to just provide all these different activities and then then then there’s all the infrastructure of each one of those activities and like the first year it’s very difficult because you I got to provide all you got to think about all the infrastructure but year three and four and five you kind of start to have the infrastructure in place so then you can pull out the experience part you know like the like once the infrastructure works well you can start to fun you know make sure people are having fun so anyway it’s very similar how many of those camping type trips are you doing yearly okay so right now for this year I’ve got I’ve got I’ve got eight potentially nine I’m working on the ninth one right now booked and so those are all two to threes so in my brain I think it’s a 15 trip a year thing if I if I’m going to stick to making sure that I’m like one of the things that’s really important to me is that I’m providing all those different types of experiences so that I stay fresh um I think that you know it’s I think it’s really hard to be one of those fishing guides where you’re doing 265 float days a year on the same two miles or four miles a river bingo I don’t think that’s for me and and so and I think that like I’m able to be more excited and passionate about what we’re doing and and focus down on the experience Parts a lot better so um but I think that you know I think 15 potential so that’s a total of maybe 45 days of camping trips in the year um yeah and I think but people started really wanting to do that for the grous trips last year and I I would extend that a little further because people were all of a sudden willing to camp in the snow and have wood wood stove going and it’s it was just a different customer um and so that that is a place the business made cuz I can I can do gr sing till end of December so you know whatever I mean if if the business is there that’s a I don’t I’m not super busy in November and December I I do a little Pike stuff in early November and you know that’s kind of then then fishing’s basically over so you know you occasionally get a winter person who you know person who wants to learn about winter fishing but it’s a that’s a three or four times a year you know because you’re always like I’ll take you winter fishing you know what I mean like we we’ll do a lot of nymphing and if we hit a fish in the face we might catch one yeah but like it’s not like they’re running around eating so like you know taking somebody having somebody pay you money to take them fishing is in the winter is a little tough one because you’re like H might not catch fish I have done uh drift boating on the Salmon River for going on 10 years now and yeah I prefer the uh December and March April timeline uh there can be some great fishing out there in January February but you can have some long days too you know numb fingers and uh you know he’s on the guides and everything else but the steel head on a nice bright Sunday day will bite middle of the day’ll definitely you got a short window of feed to get on them but you know yeah I’ve had some nice days over there in March yes on the salmon yeah yep you know March is March and and early April is definitely my favorite time to be over there um you know and you were talking about staying fresh and I couldn’t agree more I I I did the exact same thing as you said I’m running um you know right now I’m doing 120 to 140 trips a year um and I was doing the same thing day in and day out and and I got you know kind of doldrums I said how do I mix this up and then um you and I were talking a little bit before we started our recording tonight and I’m I’m in that same transition period where um I’ve got my big CH boat up for sale right now I didn’t it’s doing about 20% of my work and um a $50,000 lawn ornament that it’s time for it to go sadly I love the boat it’s been great for me um but uh trolling trolling it’s the same thing groups in and out all the time and um I said I want to start mixing it up doing more Hands-On style guiding and also trying to Branch out to doing different things at different seasons and not just staying on one body of water for six seven months you know and um so that that I’m right there with you I can see myself doing this for another 25 years as long as my body allows me to right and I want to keep my mind fresh and doing new things and keeping people involved but um I as a Young Man uh early in life spent uh a lot of time camping up in as I said to you at the show uh IP Island Pond those of us that grew up in fromont in the in knowing about the Kingdom so the nek tell us about that sure um so well I’m literally in Island Pond right now um so I’m on spectacle which is the smaller of the two ponds in Brighton uh spectacle is the pond that the C the State Park camp you got it I’ve camped there probably a dozen times in my life absolutely it’s one of the coolest campgrounds anywhere like private private sites I can’t I’m put in a plug for the campground but um I it’s a it’s it’s I do all my snowshoe tours on their trail system basically because there’s I have an Airbnb here on spec um and then people come and and park next door to the Airbnb and we go out from here and do the do the snow sh tours as well so um a lot of folks I mean you probably know this but with for you know winter fishing but a lot of folks have never like even been on ice or crossed it and so the Snowbell trail goes right across the pond here and so anyways it it dumps right into the state park so that’s one of the things that like I have I have them pull up and they like they’ll Park in the fishing access because there’s a state fishing access next door and they’ll Park in the fishing access and I’ll pull up and be like so would you like to walk across the ice or would you like to drive around and park at the state park and walk through and and like they always have a very specific response and like and and so it’s either a yes let’s do it or it’s like oh let’s go to the state park but almost every single one of them we walk through the State Park walk all the way out to the point and then when you when you get to the point you can come back across the pond so but by by then they trust me enough they’ll walk across the pond no matter what so it’s funny uh but anyway so that’s Island Pond uh so the Northeast kingdom is a pretty interesting like piece of Vermont it’s the most rural part of Vermont it’s the upper northeast corner obviously um kind of as the saying goes you’re in the Northeast Kingdom if from somewhere in the town you are in you can see Bald Mountain um so that’s the old old F my dad likes to that any um but any it’s basically from Jay down to Wells River and almost and and kind of all the way up to Canan um so big big triangle uh we like to think we’ve got the biggest fish and the the coldest Lakes deepest lakes and but I mean Champlain folks obviously can argue uh you got better Lakers in Maidstone than I’ve got in shamp play will be two so where our state record Lakers have come from so absolutely well that huge one that came out of echo last year too I don’t know if you yeah did see that um so anyways there and little averil has some amazing fish in it we we did really well in little lapr last year so I think there’s um anyways there’s a lot of fun places to fish up here there’s aot there’s not a ton of pressure um it I mean there are people that fish so some places get pressure right by the road or the common spots or whatever but there’s a lot of water that just does not get fished um and so I think kind of that’s one of my roles is to help people find those places that that people don’t fish much um and you know any like you can kind of kind of read the books and figure out those spots that everybody goes to but like I try to take them to places where there’s cool views places where that we might see animals places where I mean there’s two or three places where I’ve taken people fishing in the last couple years that there might have been 10 people there in the last 100 years total like I mean that’s just you know just neat places in that Kingdom that people don’t go so that’s great um we’ve got some cool brook trout water up here that only exists like in Maine um that you know I’m certainly not going to start naming spots but there’s there’s some there’s some very small small streams that have brook trout in the 16 to 20 inch category we’ve got a couple ponds up here that have as big a brook trout anywhere like as anywhere um that are completely wild you know native brook trout um um so I you know I we don’t necessarily have the as many as they have in Maine but we’ve got some big ones and you know there’s some spots in Northern New Hampshire uh that also have some some big brook trout too so I think that you know there there there’s there’s a lot of good reasons to get off the beaten path up here and to do all kinds of exploring um there’s all three species in large numbers um so you don’t have to just come up here and brook trout fish you want to come up here and search for big Browns I mean obvious I don’t know if you’ve seen my picks in the last week but I’ve had some amazing couple days like I had five fish over 18 inches the other day in like a in like a three-hour run like it that was just wild so good um and then one of those fish was like 23 like big so it was fun um you know so we’re we’re finding Brown trout we’re finding all kinds of nice big I uh took my dad out fishing this afternoon um and uh got him into some nice big rainbows awesome so you got any hatches going on or you nying or streamer fishing what’s working uh we’re streamer fishing primarily uh the I was I was what I would call swing nymphing on the for the Browns the other day um so basically activated nymphs or like the way that you would have traditionally fish to wet fly but you know kind of get it on get it on the swing and Get It On The Rise have it on the move a little bit like the Pheasant tailes can kind of swim you know what I mean like if the like what you’re imitating so like getting those bugs moving around a little bit sometimes the fish will move for them sure they think that emergers making it way to the surface exactly so uh so it’s it’s a good way to to fake an emergence basically um and and it’s a fun way to fish because the Flies on tension so you you know you know and I mean indicator fishing is great and we certainly do a lot of that with clients but like when I’m out I’m not doing a ton of indicator fishing and I’m also like I’m not a gigantic Euro guy so I mean I can tens a nymph and you know I like certainly see the reasons and the you know there’s huge like go up in the trophy stretch in Pittsburgh for an hour and you can see why guys Z on them you know what I mean like there’s six Lanes you can stand in and catch fish time through so I mean it just there’s totally reasons to do that but uh what else Kingdom I mean we’ve got we’ve got like best views I think I mean arguably with Willoughby and Jay and stuff like that I mean I shouldn’t say the best there’s there’s all sorts of great views in other places but well obviously your foliage up there is second and N it’s known all around the world um and I think that uh that wonderful Eclipse we all survived um I know has uh put us on the road map in many different ways and um the just enormous hundreds of thousands of people that came to Northern New York New Hampshire and Vermont you know to just to see that but now open their eyes and comes with a double-edge sword as we all know her in the Northeast since Co that development has taken off and property values have skyrocketed which another topic well for another night but um you know I think that you’re seeing more and more people that want to come up and get that taste of um being off in the wilderness and escaping the concrete jungle you know and it’s um you live in one of my favorite places no two ways about it I live in central Vermont 10 minutes from Killington and um have traveled up to the kingdom since I was probably 18 used to go up snowmobiling then stretch my legs to you know more into camping and when we started deer hunting you more over in New Hampshire than the kingdom we’ve got a camp in central Vermont so we would go up there um years ago the that Coos count Zone used to be open the week after our rifle season went end so we always started hunting up there so we could extend another week of hunting and then when they Clos that we love the Pittsburgh area so much we said well we’re going to make Thanksgiving week our week week up so we still do that to this day but yeah you’re right just to see U moose and Fishers and uh Pine marss mean it’s just the animals you don’t get to see down here much you know yeah yeah yeah we uh we tracked the links this year dur in the snowshoe tours we didn’t see it but we saw the tracks it was amazing uh we like I had I had a a group of four and we tracked it for 900 yards like it was it’s it was neat um that was that’s cool I mean yeah I mean we just have great animals up here we one of the one of the river trips two years ago I had a group of 20 of Quimby country folk uh on the river and canoes we were just doing a canoe day uh and we came down to like just below coldbrook is a bunch of cornfield Fields um we came down into the the cornfield section and it was like probably it was August and the the corn was like just about ready and so this bear probably went to town and then was you know half drunk on corn and then came down to the River’s Edge and it was just sitting there drinking and the boats were 30 feet away from it and like for 10 minutes and three qus of these people have like I have been I have lived in Vermont my whole life you know what I mean like I’ve spent never spent eight minutes with a bear you know what I mean like like they just run away you know like and like but none of those folks had any idea that like that that was abnormal or like they’re just like oh this happens in Vermont you know what I mean there bears so my dad had this my dad and I have this joke in the canoes where we’re always like okay cue the Bears cue the Eagles like if you could make that stuff happen on Q Man isn’t it crazy and you know it’s it’s all about uh time in the outdoors and and you and I are probably so much alike that I spend easily 200 days or more a year outside and um some of it recreational but a lot of it guiding and my last Marina that I ran out of on the Otter Creek or tributary to Lake Champlain the marina was over 2 miles up River and uh you know initially I got frustrated with that I said you know what just use that as an ecotour part of my business and everything as you said to Bald Eagles Ospreys a multitude of water foul um to you know wild turkeys and deer swimming across beavers you name it honors you know we would see it and you know people just eat that up you know it’s uh especially with folks that aren’t from around here and and getting to see Mother Nature at its finest that’s what it’s all about right yeah well I think I think if you’re sitting in New York City or you’re sitting you know and your thinking about why you would want to go to Vermont like those are the things that you kind of would would I mean yeah you want to catch a fish or yeah you but I mean like like like that quiet night by the river with the beaver Swimming by with the fire popping with the like that is not your average experience you can’t pay money for that you couldn’t you know what I mean like it just you have to go you have to do it you have to sit on the bank of the river you have to make the fire like but I think that’s what people you know they’re thinking about it I think that’s what they really want they want to have that experience and if if they can’t figure out how to do it they’re willing to you know help me do it and that’s I mean I think that’s what i’ like to do best is help people do that yep you know getting to see things like that to you know where you’re just out and there’s no ambient light for man you know and I’ll never forget a night I was snowmobiling we had ridden uh from Mount tabber in southern Vermont down to the mass Border in Woodford and we’re going back up through the Green Mountain range and we stopped at a a gravel pit from waiting for sleds to catch up there was eight or 10 of us in the group Starlet night not a cloud and we just set this shut the snowmobiles off and we probably watched a dozen shooting stars in about 10 minutes there was a solar storm going on and not a peep of an airplane of a car horn nothing and those are little things in life that just stick in your head you know and um and no ambient light anything but just what’s out in outer space you know it was pretty cool stuff you know so those are the type of things when you get those experiences for clients that they’re just an a you know and absolutely I’ve said that to my son dozens of times he’s been going outside since he could crawl into my backpack literally I’ve got pictures of him at 2 years old scouting for deer and turkeys with me and and he’s kind of taking for granted everything that he’s been able to experience and do up here and I said buddy this is your life up here but to a lot of people this is heaven they don’t get to see this every day and you’ve got to show them that experience she everything that we live in so fortunate to have up here so fortunate and I I mean I even think I’m the same way I think I started you know I went to college and started coaching and life and and like I don’t think I appreciated this until I came back and really started to try to express it to people like you know to think about ways to create content to you know obviously I want to work I want to guide people but like to do it well you know what I mean and to to come up with reasons to and then one of the things I do is create content for for four Brands um and so I’ve got the I’ve got the four brands that I’m really you know busting stuff out for really hard and then they’re not I’m not like getting paid they just keep me in in equipment you know what I mean so um but but so Thomas and Thomas and waterm and then I’ve Got U Wayward Nets um and then uh a couple got a couple of the small ones but sure um tell me a little bit about your waterm how did you find you I don’t know of anybody that’s got one up here I did one of my first floats in a flycraft on the Baton Hill a couple weeks ago with a guide from New York and just might be one in the uh Entourage for third alarm Chargers in the near future but what do you think of the waterm the waterm is probably the thing that makes us the most unique um so 4 Ines of water is all I need to for draft so I can get that thing into anywhere um it weighs 127 lbs with the frame so it can go up and down any Bank uh I’ve got a winch attached to my trailer uh so I can pull it up Banks um so like I don’t need a put in or a take out um the thing about watermaster that I I kind of fell in love with was it’s a Montana based company um the guy was rich is super approachable uh they they really really worked hard to kind of figure out what we were looking for um and it fits so it’s a of the rafts like of the major raft companies this the the like it’s probably it’s the it’s the smallest version that is very very good in class 4 white water and I needed one that could nail those Clyde River trips in the spring um I don’t do a ton ton of them but I do do five or six a year and that can get pretty hairy um and so you need a boat that can easily handle class 4 stuff um so that was a huge piece of the choice the lifetime guarantee huge piece of the choice um Rich again huge piece of the choice a couple of the folks that were my original um like of the original client friends basically like my my first year clients that became friends like a couple of them had come out of the Investment Group for watermaster and sort of pushed me in that direction um and so it just it all kind of serendipity you know I mean you know anyways I just think it’s Serendipity sure awesome looking vessel yeah I mean they’re sharp they’re green they’re very noticeable they all stand out um the I mean the thing that that’s really going to progress with my business is that the three man is obviously the most useful tool those oneman rafts are unbelievably cool like that’s what we were in today um and you can you can go to into any of those spaces you can use ores anywhere you you that that’s weighable you just stand up in the hole in the front so and you can wear flippers so you can kick Botho them or you can ore yourself uh for uh like for an evening on the Connecticut River like there is nothing better in those slow stretches because if you get into a set of risers you basically can float down and Ian you’ve been in there before the Connecticut like up in there never fished it but I know exactly where you’re talking about those areas so basically anywhere like for that 30 mile stretch from anywhere the it gets kind of slow on about 6 o’clock at night the fish just start eating on the surface and it’s both sides of the river and it’s most of that space you can’t fish from the bank so those fish never get touched unless you’re in a boat but in those slow stretches when those one mans you basically can can just line up work a work a stretch then go back up the outside of the other side and then just come back down through and I mean I’ve seen I and kid you not I’ve seen guys do 60 fish in two hours isn’t that crazy like yeah yeah just and I mean not you know they’re just they’re they’re they’re all just trout in the river they’re but I mean 60 fish in two hours yeah so and like on dry flies you know what I mean not like on not like you know riffen stream or not ning or but I mean like off off Surface heat fish that are coming up surface heat yeah nothing and so the level of of like people people you you only get the surfice eat you know for a month and a half or two months or whatever so like but people like when they actually get that to happen in their fishing experience for the first time they’re like oh we’re doing this more yeah you know what I mean oh like that’s why you fish kind of you know so anyway I enjoy that very much and then the like they’re easy they’re 35 lbs so they go in a backpack and I can take them into the brook trout ponds I can take them so that that and then we’re offering them as rentals now so I had a father son group last week show they came here grabbed two boats went up to Canan put in and they got a they got a 26 inch Brown the dad had never fly fish before Oh my God and his his first fish on a fly rod with 26 in brown to it’s crazy yeah can’t make yeah and and probably couldn’t access that fish if you didn’t have a boat but I mean for I mean for 89 bucks they each just ran out a boat you know what I mean and then and then they had it for the whole day and they just hit every hole and you know so I so I think that’s going to be a big part of what we do going forward and I think that’ll change um I think it changes fishing in it like substantially because it just gives you direct access to everything um and how many you know how many folks would love to drift you know I mean they’re they’re competent fishermen they would love to go on a drift but they go on two a year you know what I mean like it’s I get it you know like they go on two a year and so but if you can you know if you can rent a boat for 89 bucks and make it in a drift trip or rent it for two days for you know whatever 130 or something and then you can make it a camping trip like pretty cool yes absolutely yeah so what do you see coming down the line for Jethro Gibbs Guide Service any new stuff yeah I mean I think that really really getting focused down on those camping trips and filling out to that 45 days like I talked about um I I I really want to see uh I want to I want to really like the focus down on some high-end experiences for like Rivers lunches I mean like River fishing lunches like I don’t do a lot of like pull the boat over and cook steak tips and stuff like that I have like most of my customers tend to say no like I’m go with sandwiches and like let’s just fish sure so but there’s a there’s a definite client out there I just think it’s maybe a hard booat client um so I see us potentially in the future having a hard boat yep um I don’t know that I think that’s probably a two-year out thing um but really would love to have a hard boat uh physical location on the river um definitely you know one of the things I would love to have uh I think that there’s there’s a lot of reasons um to to have like I mean I have the Airbnb uh I would love to see that sort of springboard into like a little mini Lodge you know Shop with a place that you could get right into the water right there awesome stuff so yeah I mean I think that’s kind of you know I don’t know maybe that’s three four year plan or something but I think that unless something amazing came available but I think that uh I would love to I would love to be over on the river uh on the or I mean the the Clyde is not necessarily year round enough to be like on it sure um there’s a few ponds I I would also see like Holland Pond is pretty cool place to H Pond but it is um there’s some great trout fishing in h pond so there’d be a reason that be a place to be on yep um so I mean I got some ideas but we were not quite nailed down on that one yet sure well without a dream you nothing ever happens and uh that’s right uh that’s right I can remember growing up as a dairy farm kid in Florence Vermont and when I said to somebody I’m going to be a career of firefighter you’re a farm kid what do you know about firefighting other being a volunteer 31 years later and put my mind to it went to college and um had a great fire career was a State Fire instructor taught a over New England and um I’ll be part of that brotherhood forever and that’s you know I’ll be firment I’m 6 feet under the flowers but I’ve been an Outdoorsman since I could crawl my dad taught us I taught my son um and this is my second career and I continue as I said to morph it and change and um want to keep fresh want to be ex you know out for exciting experiences to my clients and um just mixing things up that add that spice of life you know and and the podcast is another thing that you know just kind of took off with Andy’s a little bit of a a nudge and um this winter I had a couple of different people after I used Facebook to kind of express some opinions I had about some goings on in here in Vermont and they’re like man you should do some podcasts I’m like funny you say that I say you’re looking across Mandy chuckle because we were like guess what maybe this pipe dream should take off this this mostly works out because of how much I love to talk yeah that’s funny I do have the gift gab so works out well I think it’s being in the boat all day I think you develop it at least I mean I certainly have felt that I have developed it anyways because I wasn’t sure I had it before but I definitely do now so well I’ve got another venture that uh U I’ll be announcing next week that my gift to gab I think is going to go well along with it and it has a lot to do with my captain’s license so you just never know what things will be thrown at you and this one literally got thrown at me four weeks ago and here it is congrats that’s very cool so um but it’s just another feather in the cap the way I look at it it’s not anything year round it’s going to make me a very busy man in uh in the Deep summer months from Memorial Daya Labor day but that’s okay that’s when I want to be making money and take my time to chill in the fall so ah totally yeah I mean that’s it’s been it’s been a couple weeks for me to the Thomas and Thomas thing just happened so I had a neat sit down with our CEO and like he he talked about the same stuff he just loved how authentic we were and I like I feel like that’s just such a cool addition for us because it’s you know the kind of the Mercedes or Rolex of fly fishing so it is correct just kind of it’s a yeah so it was neat it was a neat addition for me uh and I thought it was very cool to hear him say the words like we think that your stuff is just really authentically cool you know because it was like it’s if you wrote down if I wrote down like what I was trying to do in market like it’s exactly that so I was like oh wow neat so well I I’d say you’re on the right path my friend you know there’s no question I appreciate that yeah I think you guys are doing a great job too so well this is just the fledgling level and who knows in a couple years when Andy told me the numbers he was doing with music and I was probably Dead Silence in the boat I’m like are you kidding me dude and it just shows what the internet can do today you know and um you know once people get a hold of something that they have interest in and that’s why we’ve started this and you know we are going to be working on sponsorship stuff and when the time comes and we know that we’ll start ganging ground with this and and we’ve got a multitude of different interviews lined up we’ve got some interesting little in-house stuff we’re going to be doing later uh next month in June we’ve got some guides from Maine that I film with every year and they’re going to come down we’re going to do some filming we’re do a podcast some fishing little Camp tour of our new camp and fromont all kinds of stuff and wrap it all into one whole experience that we’ll put out for the world to see you know so yeah well I’d love to do some filming if you want some help absolutely yeah I’m sure as this is literally taken off Andy and I are getting all kinds of different offers and ideas thrown at us and and you and I are in the same boat no pun intended it’s how do you make the time you know it’s literally um I booked two trips today you know so um you know it’s just the phone is ringing this is that time of year where my girlfriend says do you even know what state you’re in I’m like yeah the state of confusion yes I just know where I’m going tomorrow morning that’s all I know am man I’m on Champlain the next two days so I at least know that and I’m fishing for bass so yeah but uh yeah I I think we will be talking further I’d love to have you aboard and I think uh a lot of different ideas we could throw back and forth at each other as I’m uh looking at changing up some investments in the next year or so too with vessels so but now we want to thank you very much for uh taking the time out for us tonight TJ yeah man I appreciate it I had a blast it was great talking to you guys absolutely well hopefully we get a chance to do it again and uh we want to thank everybody for listening to New New England Outdoor Life podcast and yes I do have the Gift of Gab and’s chuckling at me I was I haven’t slurred my speech much yet but um stay tuned folks for lots of stuff coming down the line and as I put on my Facebook live the other day we have covered all the lines of social media now and Andy’s work hard and getting our Facebook page up and running Instagram YouTube um we’re going to be working to try and add more video content we’re doing little shorts here and there so um stay tuned lots of cool stuff coming down the pipe and um we hope if anybody’s got any comments ideas send us a message and hope that you’re listening out there in the ever expanding world of social media and the internet so um we thank everybody for listening in and if you’ve got anything else that you’d like to hear us send us a message we’ love to have uh new people on board so Captain Matt from third alarm Charters thanks again for listening hey there thanks for joining us today don’t forget to head over to New England outdoorlife.com to sign up for our mailing list and while you’re at it check out third alarm charters.com that’s third with the number three have a great week and we’ll see you Outdoors