Traveled #33 | Mike Komara on Competitive Fly Fishing – Team USA, Euro Nymphing, Innovative Angling
Wet Fly Swing Fly Fishing Podcast
Dave Stewart
4.7 • 530 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Show Notes: https://wetflyswing.com/832
Presented By: Visit Idaho
Mike Komara walks us through the mindset of a competitor — and how that mindset makes you a better everyday angler. From hand-me-down rods in Pittsburgh to medals with Team USA, Mike explains why simplicity wins: a single-fly approach, smart microleader setups, and a handful of adaptable rods. We talk translating spring-creek precision to big western rivers, reading water and bugs the moment you step out of the car, and the small technical moves (tuck casts, inverted drifts, matching bottom speed) that turn drifts into fish. It's part practical how-to, part origin story, and a reminder that good fishing usually comes from thinking less about gear and more about the water.
Show Notes: https://wetflyswing.com/832
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today's guest has spent decades learning how to adapt from Jinclair Spring Creeks of the East Coast to broad, powerful flows of the Yellowstone-Teton region. |
| 0:11.3 | In this episode, we're going to dig into what it takes to prepare for a world fly fishing championship |
| 0:15.5 | and how fishing under pressure sharpen your skills for everyday anglers. |
| 0:19.9 | By end of this episode, you'll understand how to scout new rivers with intention, |
| 0:23.6 | why seasonal shifts in the Teton's can completely change your game plan and what separates comp-ready anglers from weekend explorers. |
| 0:31.6 | This is the Travel Podcast series where we bring you new places to fish, |
| 0:35.6 | new tools you can prepare for that trip, |
| 0:38.3 | and the mindset you need to make every trip count. Today's guest, Mike Camero, shares his |
| 0:44.0 | process for fishing big Western waters versus the intimate spring creeks of Pennsylvania, |
| 0:49.9 | his go-to routine and prep for the world championships and tactics he trusts when the drift counts most. |
| 0:56.6 | This episode is presented by Visit Idaho's Yostone Teton Territory, |
| 1:00.8 | home to some of the most famous and diverse waters in the country. |
| 1:06.1 | All right, let's jump into it. |
| 1:07.1 | Here we go. |
| 1:08.1 | This is Mike Khmer. |
| 1:08.4 | You can find him at innovative angling.com. |
| 1:12.8 | How you doing, Mike? Hey, good. How you doing, Dave? Not too bad. Not too bad. This is going to be a |
| 1:17.5 | fun episode. I always love some of the episodes we do with, you know, competition, talking about |
| 1:23.5 | competition, Euro-Nimping, Team USA. We've done a number of them over the years where I think the exciting thing now is that it's all back to the home waters. So I think the youth team, the women's were in eastern Idaho fishing this year. And now you guys are going to be back to the men's. But you've also got a big history. I think you've got a number of medals under your belt, so we're going to talk about that. |
| 1:44.7 | But maybe before we jump into it, won't you give us a background, you know, kind of what you got |
| 1:48.6 | going now, where you're at, and, you know, kind of how things got going for you. |
| 1:53.4 | Yeah, sure thing. So I've been competing since about 2014, so pretty much all of my, |
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