Fly Fishing and Stewardship on the Truckee River [EP 209]

Welcome to episode 209 of The Outdoor Biz Podcast. Today I'm talking about Fly Fishing, Podcasting, Stewardship and more with Nico Sunseri and Ben King of the BearFish Alliance. Nico and Ben believe that by enabling multilevel stewardship via unified communication channels, it is possible to preserve the integrity, legacy, and future of the Truckee River as a wild rainbow and Brown trout fishery for the community to enjoy and generations to come.

"So here's a little thing about the Truckee River. We've given it a nickname, The Big Two Faced River"

Find out more about the Bear Fish Alliance here:
https://bearfishalliance.com/

What are some of the stewardship activities that you guys are working on right now?

Nico- "In early June, and we're having a River Clean-Up in cooperation with Trout Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy".

underwater view of a golden trout — Fly Fishing for Golden Trout, Highway 108

How did you get introduced to Fly Fishing and the outdoors?

Ben-"I surfed my whole life. That includes many trips down to Mexico. My grandpa's the real true outdoors and my dad has same passion. Growing up camping and in the boy Scouts we did a lot of backpacking, hiking, and I just most connected to the Outdoors in so many different ways."

Nico- "I was more of an inland kid growing up in San Dimas, California and started fishing probably about five years old. From the time I could ride a bike after school or before school or in summers I went fishing. A trip to Lake Powell really got me hooked into fishing and it just kinda carried on. The transition to fly fishing didn't really happen, Oh my gosh, I mean maybe about seven years ago."

When Was the first time you went Fishing together?

I introduced Ben to Fly Fishing and to his credit he pays attention. He picked up on some things. I would say within a month of us going out constantly, one day he just geared up and hopped in his car. After a bit, he gives me a call and says "I'm fishing on my own". An hour later he sends me a picture. Probably it was a little Rainbow or Brown or something, but he started Fishing by himself.

Tell our listeners about the bear fish Alliance. How did you, what inspired you to create that?

It kinda came from number one- being self-taught on the river. It’s kind of an enduring hardship, you know, getting into the sport of fly fishing. You go out and see all these people doing it, you're watching all these YouTube videos reading books, and seeing people being successful and that's a lot.

This river is not easy, you basically learn through trial and error. So I was thinking there has to be a way for us to collectively get all this information together and available to people that want to get into the sport. And for people from out of the area. There isn't one single collective place that you can go to in this region to find information on the Truckee River.

There are a few different groups here like trout unlimited, they have a great presence. Nature Conservancy's done a phenomenal job on the Eastern Truckee doing restoration work and a couple of few other groups doing good work. But the challenge was everyone had their own little stake and they have their own communication channels. So I thought well, maybe we could just step in and fill that void.

We came up with the name BearFish Alliance, which gives a historical nod to the Truckee River. During the time of the settlers, the California grizzly was common in this area and the Lahontan Cutthroat trout ran freely between Pyramid Lake and the Truckee River. The Truckee does maintain the propensity to grow very large Brown and Rainbow Trout.

Aerial view of a burrito with salsa. — Photographer: Bret Kavanaugh | Source: Unsplash

So what’s with the burrito part of a fly fishing show?

We like our guests to be comfortable, you know? If you can get in their environment, it relaxes them. Ben and I both were born and raised in Southern California. And you have two main types of burritos, Carnitas and Carne Asada. We also have a Jurassic park scale we use, you must get close to legitimate food poisoning to be considered a real burrito. The only other requirement is the horchata, you know if they have the machine they're legit, if they have the jar, that’s next level. Locally here in the Eastern Sierra up in June Lake near June Lake brewing there's a trailer called Ohanas. It's absolutely the Best burrito in the Sierra. They use pork in that Jurassic Park burrito shell and Wow! It's just an experience. Like everything's wrong about it and you want somebody to drive you home cuz you're going to have a food coma.