Today's guest has built his life around the wild rivers of Northern California.

Guiding on the Trinity, Tom Mahan has carved out a reputation for chasing steelhead the hard way,

on the swing.

By the end of this episode, you'll hear why he prefers transitional seasons when the crowds disappear,

how he uses grease line presentations and custom

field leaders to move fish in clear water and what makes the lower Trinity feel like a

mini BC in the fog of late fall. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I show you the best

place to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that

big trip, and what you can do to give back

to the fish species we all love. Tom Mahan is here from swing waterfly fishing to share his

story on fish in northern California. We're going to find out what his approach looks like for

steelhead and we're going to dig deep into the Trinity and especially in the fall fishing.

This episode is going to be primed right now.

If you've ever wondered about fishing spooky fish, some areas and light flows and all that we're going to talk about today.

So let's just get into it.

Here he is.

You can find him at swingwaterflyfishing.com.

Tom Mayhan.

How you doing, Tom? Good. Thanks for having me on, Dave. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for putting some time aside today to put this together.

We're going to be chatting, obviously, swing water fly fishing. It's in your URL of your website.

You know, wet fly swing, obviously we have a lot of overlaps. I was just on the river last week fishing for steelhead. I know that's what you focus on. The cool thing is you're in Northern California, the Trinity. I know we've had some listeners recently that have talked about, you know, those rivers, the Smith, the Klamath, there's some really famous rivers. Really, that's kind of where the start of steelhead fishing, I think, in the whole country began, at least with the fly. So we're going to talk about that and all there, but maybe let's start on the history piece. Are you a big history buff? Do you know a little bit of that history on kind of fly fishing and all that? Well, I think so. Of course, I feel like I'll probably say this and there will be some guys that are making me feel like I don't know much at all.

Yeah, right. Well, I think so. Of course, I feel like I'll probably say this and there will be some guys that are making me feel like I don't know much at all.

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