I fish a lot of rivers in the west, from the rogue to the Skeena and beyond, and I'll be honest,

I've completely missed the story behind the boats that shaped half the fisheries I love.

Somewhere between Grants Pass and the Upper Skagit, the entire history of modern riverboating was written,

blowing up rivers to access wild and scenic areas, hand-built drift boats, and one

wild idea at a time. And at the center of it all was a kid who built his first boat for $6,

pointed it into the Rogue River with zero experience, and decided the only way to learn the river

was to run it. That kid grew up to be Glenn Woolridge, the man who carved out channels of the rogue,

ran the salmon river of no return before anyone believed it could be done,

and mentored the inventor of the jet pump.

This is the wetfly swing podcast where I show you the best places 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. Grant Woolridge, great grandson of Glenn Rollridge is here today and he's going to

take us into a bunch of the great stories about the man who conquered the rogue and first floated down it and came back up in a jetboat.

We're going to find out what this first run was like.

We're going to go back to the mid-1940s and even earlier.

We're going to talk about the first motors that allowed Glenn to go up the river.

We're going to hear about this insane jackass motor lift and why boatmen of the day, this was a game changer. And we're also gonna get the real history of Blossom Bar. We talk about Blossom Bar on the picket fence, a rapid I've run that's super technical, super hard for me, but when Glenn was running it before they blew it out with dynamite. He was running a real rough river.

So we're going to get into all those stories.

This one's amazing.

Excited to share this with you.

We get into a little bit of everything, including some Alaska chat.

And so I hope you enjoy this one.

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