Simon Chu is booked years out, fishes two hemispheres, and spends more days on foot than most anglers spend thinking about fishing.

He guides spring creeks in Montana sight fish's wild trout in New Zealand and test gear for Patagonia by fishing it until it fails.

Not by talking about it, not by spotlining it, no noise, just time on the water

and decisions that hold up when conditions get demanding. This is the Webfly 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.

Simon Chu is here today on the podcast and we're going to find out why Simon believes

most airs happen before the first cast.

We're going to find out what walking and waiting reveals that boat fishing often hides,

how sight fishing New Zealand reshapes patience and decision making.

And we're also going to get some details on how to test fly fishing gear in real conditions. We're going to jump into all this about Patagonia. We're going to talk waiters. We're going to go down on some random tangents. We're going to get on some serious history here as well today. So this is a fun one. Enjoyed it with Simon. You can check in with him anytime on Instagram or you can go to patagonia.com if you want to check out what they have going there as well. All right, here he is, Simon Chu. How's it going, Simon? Good, mate. How are you? Good. Good, good, good. Great to have you on the podcast. We've got a lot to talk about today. I think we're going to talk about you guide in New Zealand. You're back now for a little bit of a break, but we're going to talk about New Zealand, maybe give people a taste of that. We're going to talk about Patagonia because you're an ambassador and dig into some of their waiters and what they do there. And also, you've got a fly fishing school that you also do, and probably a bunch of other things I'm not thinking about here. But first off, before we get into all that, take us back real quick on fly fishing. What's your first memory out there? You've been doing this a while? Yes, I've been fortunate enough to be doing it for the last 40-odd years. And probably my maybe my first memory apart from my dad bringing home

an old fly rod was looking upstream and catching my first fish downstream when I wasn't watching

because he kind of took my fly. I really didn't know what I was doing but that was the start of a

journey really. Yeah. Where was that? Where were you at when you, where did you grow up? Yeah, I grew up in New Zealand. I grew up in the Manor 2 and yeah, I used to bike down about 10 minutes from my house to the Mano 2 river and yeah, it was full of trout. So, and it's still full of trout which is kind of cool

so that was that was my childhood really nice how do you spell that river m a w a t u

one or two it's uh near palmas the north um in the north island of new dland the north island

gotcha yeah this is going to be great

because i think that we hear a lot about new zealand i think a lot of people want to go to new zealand just because you hear about it if you haven't been there and it sounds like it's amazing and you've got you know you're not too far from you know australia but it sounds like new zealand's maybe more of the natural wonder and beauty and all that. So we're going to talk more about that today for sure.

Let's let's start with but it sounds like New Zealand's maybe more of the natural wonder and beauty and all that.

So we're going to talk more about that today for sure.

Let's start with what is a topic that's been on mind in mind and a lot is the swift current waiters.

You know, I've got a pair of those.

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