Hey, how's going? Welcome to the Wet Fly Swing podcast. This is Dave, your host. And today I have a special episode for you where we're going to dig into the art of fly fishing and fly casting straight from the heartland with our guest, Marty McVeigh. And here's what we're going to dig into today. We're going to get into some on his journey from bait fishermen into fly fishermen and now respected casting instructor

we're going to find about the hidden gems of iowa and some of the great opportunities in

iowa we don't hear a lot about that so that's going to be awesome we're going to talk about

how marty became a casting instructor and elevated his game we're going to get in some tips and tricks

on that too to help you with your game and your fly casting today. They've got some awesome tips. Marty does some casting instruction online as well. And then we're going to talk about this challenge. We've got a little fly casting challenge I have for you at the end. I'm excited to start getting this one out there. All right. Let's get into it. Let's find out how Marty does it. Here we go. Marty McVeigh on the Wet Fly Swing podcast. How you do, Marty? I'm doing good today. We got weather around 30 degrees, which is a balmy for Central Iowa right now. Oh, it is. Yeah, I heard there's some weather up north of you. I heard I just talked to somebody who was on Ontario and he said he had three feet of snow out the back door yesterday. That's a good place for it. I love Iowa because, first of all, shout out to Shannon, one of my buddies. He's from Iowa, and we have a lot of all, he always jokes about it, you know, and stuff. But I think it's this place that, you know, we were just there. We were down at the Drifflis, right? And you have the Driflis up there. I think it's a place that like is not on the radar for a lot of fly anglers. But maybe describe that for us. What is Iowa? What keeps you in Iowa? For me, I really enjoyed the seasons. I like the snow in the wintertime. We get great colors, especially in the driftless. We get great colors in the fall. Summertime, I'm not a heat guy, and it can get a little hot, but usually those are, you know, just a couple weeks spell or something like that. And then spring is always pretty, too. And you love seeing the crops get put in the ground. I grew up rural Iowa.

I love seeing the crops get put in the ground, watch them go through maturation and harvest,

and the scenery is always changing in Iowa. Every season brings a different little bit of color and

things like that. And there's just a, there's a lot more to do on the outdoor side than

people think.

We've got a great deer population, although we were hit a little bit with some disease this year.

Fesson hunting, I've got a Brittany that had to retire last year.

He's 12 years old going on 13, so this is the first year we haven't been out fessim hunting together.

And then the fishing is really good.

You know, we've got the Driftless

in northeast Iowa. We've got wild browns, wild brook trout. The DNR does a great job,

keeping the rich stream stocked with rainbows as well. And we've got a lot of warm water species,

too, small mouth, large mouth, pike, things of that sort. So there's always a lot to do. Yeah, cool. I think that that's a great thing about it. And we have listeners in every state, you know, so I feel like, you know, every state has fishing opportunities, you know, whether that's like, whether it's brown trout or warm water species, you know, every state has something. I think that, you know, Iowa and some of those

states right down the middle just don't get as much press probably. And maybe in a lot of ways, that's good for you probably, right? Do you guys find the crowds out there for fishing? Not as much as I'm sure the other areas do. It's not like if you go, let's start with the driftless. If you go to the driftless, you're not standing elbow to elbow with somebody,

and the distance between guys is probably a lot further.

And you can go around somebody as long as you give them plenty of room.

But I will say in the summertime, my driftless time starts in October and then I'll fish all the way through May

because it's a three

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