Today's episode lives at the crossroads of science and trout water, where a freshwater ecologist

with a master's degree from Idaho State steps out of the research world and into a drift boat

on the Upper Snake River. Sawyer Finley didn't grow up studying bugs because of fly fishing. He became a

fly fishing guide because he understood bugs. He learned rivers by turning over rocks, mapping insect communities, and tracking how landscapes

shape life underwater.

And now he brings that whole lens to the Grand Teton Fly Fishing team where he guides

in the same waters he studied or observed first and where he's casting now.

This is the Wet Fly 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.

Slyer Finley is going to walk us through what really matters when we talk about streamside entomology.

We're going to start from the beginning and get into some good stuff today.

We're going to find out why understanding just three big orders is the key to most trout fishing out there.

How reading life cycles, timing in stars, and winter midges to make sense of what fish are actually doing out there

and why every day starts with

data collection.

Like we said, turning over some rocks, checking out some shucks.

That's where he's starting here.

We're going to get into a bunch of it today, including some interesting studies on the

Yellowstone area around wolves and elk and all that.

It's going to be a good episode.

I hope you enjoy it. You could find Sawyer at Grand Tetonflyfishing.com. All right, here he is, Sawyer Finley. How you doing, Sawyer? How's it going, Dave? Good. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, totally. I've been excited about this conversation because we're going to talk animology. I think I've been talking a lot over the years about the fact that it's hard to find an animalologist that also flyfish. Do you find that out there? I guess starting off the top, do you find animology, like finding somebody that has your skills as hard in the fly fishing world? You know, it's funny. I think

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