What if the biggest threat to your river isn't what you can see, but what you never think to measure?

Today we're breaking down what actually is happening beneath the surface and how a small group of anglers is uncovering changes most people would never notice.

Ali Cunningham from Science on the Fly is here to share how everyday anglers are collecting real data from their home waters,

and how this data is starting

to influence real decisions on the ground. Today, we're going to talk about why nutrients and

water chemistry matter just as much as water temperature, how science on the fly grew from a small

idea into a nationwide effort. We're going to get the story of how they discovered this polluted stream in Texas

and how they fixed the issue and managed to get a $20 million grant to help out this process

and how long-term data is helping track shifts across entire watersheds.

Plus, we're going to let you know how to get involved today and how to take some action, even if you've never thought about science before. This is a good one. You can find Allie Cunningham at science on the fly.org. All right, let's get into it. Here she is, Allie Cunningham. How you doing, Allie? Great. How are you doing, Dave? Thanks so much for having me on Wet Flies the Way.

I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, yeah, thanks. It's going to be a good episode today because we're following up on a conversation we had with Johnny at Fish Pond. It was great. We dug into a little bit of their history, which was awesome to finally hear. and then he brought up science on the fly and we're always interested in hear more of the good stuff that's going out there in the conservation world. So

we're here now to hear the story from you. So we're going to talk about that today. Maybe just

kick us off kind of from the top on science, you know, on the fly. How did you come into this

role as the director? Well, so I grew up in New England in Plymouth, Mass, or Rochester, Mass.

So right near the Cape did not fly fish over here at all.

But I went out west to Du Bois, Wyoming for a little ranch camp every summer.

And as a little girl, we would go on backpacking trips at this ranch. And then my

counselors would always bring fly rods. So one time I asked like, hey, could I, you know, come with you

and fish after we've been hiking, like nine miles that day. And obviously the counselor wants to,

you know, get away from the kids. It's a kids camp. It's their, like, favorite, like,

hour to themselves. And he's like, sure, sure, why not? And so first cast on a dryfly, I got like a little burkey. And I was like, oh, cool, that was fun. We fished for like an hour. We got a bunch of fish. I handed back the rod. And I was like, cool, don't really need to do any more of this. Thanks for let me do it once. And then about 10 years later, I went back to work at that camp. And I was just a counselor. And same thing. I was on a backpacking trip, but my co-counsel had brought a fly rod with them. And I asked, hey, could I, you know, take a few casts? And then as I was casting, I was like,

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