Flylab Interview: Jim Klug

Jim Klug is the CEO and founder of Yellow Dog Flyfishing, a hosted travel provider, fly shop and website based in Bozeman, Montana.

Jim Klug began working in the fly-fishing industry at the age of 14. Over the years, he has worked as a guide, sales representative, travel coordinator and as past National Sales Manager for Scientific Anglers. He spent his 20s guiding in Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon, and has fished worldwide in over 60 different countries. In 1999, Jim founded Yellow Dog Flyfishing–a company that has grown to become the largest and most recognized entity in sporting travel and destination outfitting. Aside from his ongoing work with Yellow Dog, he also is the host of the Waypoints Travel Podcast, a published author (Fly Fishing Belize and Waypoints) and the co-founder of Confluence Films, a film production company that created the fishing movies DRIFT, RISE, CONNECT, WAYPOINTS and PROVIDENCE.

Jim, tell us a little about yourself and your focus in fly fishing.

I’m the founder and CEO of Yellow Dog, which is based here in Bozeman, MT. We’re a travel company that has been in the game for a little over 25 years, focusing on destination angling and travel, first and foremost. Today, we’re the largest booking company in the world of fly fishing. We send anglers all over the world to wherever great fishing is found, and we currently have about 255 different lodges and outfitting operations that we work with, market and represent in what I believe is 42 different countries. Chances are good if great fishing is found in a location, we have options and operations we work with in that area. And with every one of these destinations, we’ve been there, we know the offerings and we can line up anglers with the right guides, lodges and fishing programs to deliver a great overall experience.

Travel is what built the Yellow Dog brand over the years, but in 2022, a little over three years ago, we expanded our offerings to add a fully-integrated, A-to-Z retail component. We now have a substantial brick-and-mortar fly shop here in Bozeman, Montana. We acquired an existing shop that had been around for 20-plus years, rebranded the business as the Yellow Dog Fly Shop and established it as an integral part of our business platform and customer service offerings. We made the decision to expand and enter the retail arena for one very important reason–not because we thought it would be fun to jump into retail (because as anyone who’s been involved with retail knows this is a difficult business)–but to provide more seamless services and take better care of our traveling anglers on every level.

What we were finding is that even when we were sending people incredibly detailed packing lists–things like fly recommendations, gear suggestions and specific equipment lists for each destination–a lot of this stuff was hard for most people to find, mainly due to the fact that a lot of these items were somewhat exotic and destination-specific. The reality was that most fly shops did not stock what people need for GTs in the Indian Ocean, or arapaima in the jungles of South America, or Golden Dorado in Bolivia, or far-off atolls in the Pacific. People were having a hard time sourcing this type of gear. And as such, it was becoming a dilemma with a lot of our trips, as clients would show up not having been able to find the right gear, the right terminal tackle, the right flies and the right hard goods. It was starting to have a negative impact on a growing number of our trips. We needed to solve this problem, and after looking at a number of potential solutions, we determined (after avoiding the retail game for a lot of years) that the best way for us to close that circle, and make sure people were having epic trips with the right equipment and tackle, was to jump into the world of retail ourselves.

So, we did that, and now we have the Yellow Dog Fly Shop, which (again) is located here in Bozeman. We’ve also got one of the most expansive and fully-integrated ecommerce platforms and websites in fly fishing, where you can simply go to the site and search by location, species, time of year and more. We’ve attempted to make our offerings and information as granular as possible with all of our destinations.

Say, for instance, I’m going to Belize. Okay, great. That’s a good starting point. But where in Belize? Because northern Belize, central Belize, southern Belize…they’re all very different fisheries. So, you can enter exactly where you’re going, right down to the lodge. You can also enter the time of year that you’re traveling, because that’s especially important with, for example, flies. The patterns that you might fish in central Belize in early February are probably different than what you might fish in July or August. We have the ability to work with clients and figure out exactly where they’re going, right down to the lodge and guide team they’re going to be fishing with. We can then match them up with the right gear, so everything they have is relevant and up-to-date. When you show up on day one, and you’re rigging gear with your guide and the guide says, “All right, let’s see what you have. Break out your equipment.” What we’re shooting for is the guide to say, “Hell yes! You have all the right gear and you’re totally dialed in. Let’s go fishing…” The last thing we ever want a Yellow Dog client to experience is arriving on day one, the guide says, “Let’s take a look,” and then says, “Yeah…nothing you have here is going to work.”

So, that is the long answer as to why we added the retail element to the Yellow Dog line-up.

I always think about flies, because they’re, obviously, super important in the context of a travel trip–all the time and planning and flights and trip insurance and vaccinations and all this stuff you worry about–and then you could show up for some saltwater fish and the hooks you brought aren’t going to cut it. You created the expectation that the trip was about catching fish and now you actually can’t catch them, because the hooks you have are breaking or bending out. It seems like such a small consideration, but it’s actually a big deal, right?

You’re spot on, Andrew. I mean, think about it. Flies are probably the least expensive component of your entire trip, right? But they are the last element of connectivity to that species you’ve now come tight with and you’re trying to land. And if you have the wrong hook or the wrong hook gap or something else that prevents you from finding success (if success is measured by landing fish), then you’re out of luck.

It’s a complicated conversation when it comes to flies and destination angling for a number of reasons: One, it’s really hard to source flies for every fishery, because most shops aren’t going to stock them. Two, every guide has his own favorite patterns. Let’s say you take the guide staff at a lodge in the Yucatan. They have 10 guides, right? You’re likely going to fish with a different guide every day, which is often the case with these destinations. So, on morning one, the first guide looks at your flies. He’s like, “Yeah, these are awesome. Everything’s going to work and this is my favorite right here.” And then the next day you’re fishing with another guide. Same lodge, same waters, same staff, right? And that guide says, “I don’t like any of these flies. None of these are going to work.” You say, “Well, the guide yesterday said this was his favorite fly.” And your guide today is like, “No, man. That fly doesn’t catch any fish. It never works.” So, you’re dealing with different opinions with different guides. It’s one of the trickiest things we deal with. The third challenge is that “favorite patterns” and the flies the guides want to be fishing are constantly changing. Relevant, up-to-date fly info is a hard thing to manage across multiple destinations, but we’re able to do it effectively because we do so much volume with each and every one of these lodges that we can communicate on a regular and constant basis.

This level of communication allows us to deliver the most updated trip reports, gear recommendations and relevant information. What the guides in a certain fishery wanted a year ago or two seasons ago has likely changed. It’s evolved. Maybe it’s just the thread color on a bonefish pattern. Or maybe it’s a new floating crab phenomenon that has, all of a sudden, emerged and become consistent. Having the ability to stay current and relevant on this information and then be able to recommend the right flies to our traveling clients is huge. Most fly shops can’t do that, because they don’t have that regular connectivity, that constant stream of communication and the back-and-forth with all of the different fisheries, lodges and outfitters throughout the world.

Some people would argue that you can simply check a lodge’s web page to see what they’re recommending, but chances are good the “recommended gear list” was probably updated about nine years ago. It always makes me laugh when I go to a lodge page for say, the Bahamas, and under recommended flies it lists a #2 Pink Puff. What, are we in 1984? I’m sure the Puff may still work, but we all know there are way more effective patterns out there than a chenille-head puff. It’s all about finding current, relevant, up-to-date information that allows the angler to arrive ready. The concept of “the most effective fly” for a fishery is ever-changing when you think about it. It changes for every angler, and, of course, it changes for the guides. There’s a running joke that the favorite fly of every fishing guide in the world is whatever the last client caught the most fish on. And that changes all the time. So, it’s a big piece of the equation and something we spend a massive amount of time, energy and effort on–staying up to date on what the guides at so many different destinations around the world actually want to see.

How did you manage all of this hyper-specific information in the pre-digital age?

Back in the day, we literally had notebooks that we worked out of–the large, old-school three-ring binders. We would print all of our information out and separate everything with different tabs for Belize, the Yucatan, the Bahamas, etc. We would update these pages all the time and live by the information. Today, it’s funny because there’s this information overload everywhere on the web. Sure, we have ChatGPT and all that, but it’s only as relevant as what people on the other end are willing to put into it. It’s a challenge to keep fishing reports constant and updated. Everybody’s busy. Not only that, but a lot of guides and lodges and shops don’t always want to put this information out there for the whole world to see.

If you’re a guide at a lodge, or if you’re a professional outfitter, and you put all this information out there and it’s feeding the DIY mechanism, then maybe, at some point, you won’t be as needed. Which is why a lot of guides and outfitters may be hesitant to openly post every detail online. I would argue that with increased pressure and more people on the water, this information is increasingly being kept a little bit closer to the chest. So, while there’s an endless amount of data and information and opinions available on the web, it’s not always the most relevant or the most up-to-date. At Yellow Dog, we’re able to stay constant, because we are always talking to a variety of people who are in-the-know. This includes fishing managers or lodge owners, as well as our customers and clients who’ve just returned from a destination. Every time a trip comes back, we’re on the phone with our customers within days–doing a post-trip review, asking for feedback, gathering comments, finding out how things went and finding out what was working for them as far as tackle and fly patterns. We can then take that information, after it’s collected, and share with our next customers.

It makes me think back to the first book (Castwork) I did with Kirk Deeter and my sister, that there’s always been this tension in the sport between guides and information and what they will share and what they won’t, and then digital and social media has just put that on steroids. Today, you’re sharing some innocuous photos with friends and you’re having to make sure they aren’t blasting them up on social media. 15 years ago, none of that ever existed. It’s the scale at which this information can spread that has become pretty astounding.

I think that’s the conundrum our industry finds itself in. If you work in this industry, whether you’re a fly shop or booking agent or guide or outfitter or manufacturer, your job is to sell experiences, services, or equipment. Let’s say you work for Umpqua or Scientific Anglers or RIO selling leaders and tippet. You want to sell more product. You want to talk about where to fish the product and highlight success. You’re going to promote your offerings and the places you can use the product, and you’re going to do everything possible to sell.

But then there’s that element of the industry where, especially with guides, outfitters and lodges, they want to have in their quiver some tools that maybe they only share with their direct clients and customers. There’s a little bit of a balancing act there. And I get it. You are more likely to have access to that information when you work with a legitimate guide or outfitter, or when you go and stay at a lodge. You’re essentially getting access to information you might not get if you’re a DIY angler that says, “I don’t need to hire a guide. I can just go and figure it out for myself.” Well, maybe. Sometimes you can, and for those more experienced, hardcore DIY men and women, this path can sometimes work out. I would argue, however, that for most anglers, it isn’t that simple. When you are paying a professional, the old adage of “you get what you pay for” often applies, because with most legitimate professionals, their fishing is more than a hobby. This is their occupation. This is their career. And guess what? They’re really good at it.

Part of engaging the services of professionals is you’re tapping into that knowledge base, whether it has to do with fresh, up-to-date information or secret guide wisdom or whatever. That’s part of what you’re paying for. And there’s real value in that, especially when you apply this to destination travel and factor in the time component that’s involved. Everybody would love to be able to fish 300 days a year, but the reality is that the vast majority of anglers can only do it a handful of times. Time is almost always the most valuable commodity that factors into the equation. You want to maximize your enjoyment, your effectiveness and your success rate however you can.

You have to respect the value of time and ask yourself, “Am I going to figure this out on my own?” Maybe. If you’re in a situation where you’re retired or have a massive trust fund or are unemployed and don’t care and you can live in your car down by the river in order to fish 300 days a year, then great. Good for you. That’s awesome. But the reality is most people don’t have that luxury.

It seems like technology is a new place that is creating a lot of tension in the sport–all these geo mapping apps that are feeding the DIY component, which I do agree is awesome. But in my personal history, my grandfather was a huge fly fisherman, my dad as well, his friends, really everyone in my family, so all the information was handed down. I spent my whole childhood fishing and having knowledge poured into me from other people. I guess it would’ve been great to figure it out all on my own, but my personal experience was much more of a communal, family thing, where so much of the information was simply shared. I also wanted to fish with guides when I was a kid, because they were legends to me. They had more information. At some point you do break away and go to another level, but when I was beginning, I just wanted to spend time fishing with other people, to learn what they knew. Not sure there’s any point here, but I can see both sides of the continuum: being taught and teaching yourself.

But think about what you are saying, because this is a really valid point as well. Pre-internet, those of us that came into the sport, especially as young people, oftentimes learned from a parent or grandparent or the guys at the fly shop who took you under their wing. A lot of knowledge was passed on that way, and this tradition was a key component of coming into the sport as a young person and staying with the sport over time. You didn’t just learn how to catch fish or which fly to use. You were also taught things like ethics and outdoor values. You learned about conservation. You learned about how to respect the resources. I think a lot of these things are missing in the age of YouTube and ChatGPT. Right now, you can find endless amounts of information, including current fishing reports and lists of specific flies and effective techniques. But a lot of this info is largely devoid of the other key components needed to become a legitimate angler, including a connectivity to the resource, an ethos and a conservation mindset that should 100% be a part of this sport.

The fact that many of these components are largely missing when it comes to the digital realm and the modern search for information is a tragedy, because, collectively, this is a key part of being a complete angler. With everything going on in the world these days, we don’t have the luxury of not paying attention to these things. If you really love the sport and you’re getting into it and you’ve decided this is your thing, then it’s not just about how many fish you can hook or how hardcore you think you are on the water. It’s about a connectivity to these other things: conservation, ethics and respecting the resource. That’s just my opinion and my perspective, but I think that many of these key elements are often overlooked in the digital and social (online) world.

That’s something our team talks about a lot–a stronger sense of fishing ethics and how we are teaching people to interact with these shared resources in more responsible and respectful ways. How many fish do you need to catch? We’re not even having that conversation.

I think Deeter has emerged as a really solid voice for that, and I always love when you guys weigh in on this. I don’t know how long ago it was, probably a couple years, but you featured a really cool piece by Steve Schmidt from Western Rivers, who I think is an absolute legend in the sport. He talked about his own personal journey and evolution, and it really resonated with me. Shortly after reading his article, I actually wrote something similar for our annual Yellow Dog travel guide that talked about the journey and evolution of a fly fisherman–where you come into the sport and you’ve got big eyes and you’re so excited and you’ve decided this is your thing. You want to go all in. So, the natural thing is you want to go out and catch as many fish as possible. And then pretty soon, you evolve a little bit more, and you’re like, “Okay, I just want to catch big fish. That’s going to be my new thing.” Then you start zeroing in a little bit more and it’s like, “I just want to catch difficult fish.” Maybe a difficult species. Maybe I’m going to do that first trip for permit or try steelhead or tarpon or whatever it is. And pretty soon it almost comes full circle, where you say, “You know what? I just want to go fishing. I just want to be out there, in the moment. I want to appreciate it. And if I don’t catch every fish in the river, I don’t care.”

This gets back to Steve’s original article, where he made a personal decision where when he went out, he was only going to fish dry flies. And he knew that in the middle of the winter, it was going to be hard, and he might have to wait for that little window where there’s a midge hatch or whatever. But for him, that was the evolution–almost a spiritual realization that came from years and years of fishing. Obviously, this may not be the answer or the path for everyone, but the point is to recognize the value of constant evolution and the journey as an angler.

You certainly don’t have to judge everyone by those same standards. But I think it’s really cool when people progress through the sport from “I’m going to catch everything” to “I’m going to catch big fish” to “I’m just going to go fishing and enjoy being out there.” And if you don’t catch fish every single time you go out, that’s okay, because this sport is much more about the places that fishing takes you versus the fish themselves. It’s nice when people or the media talk about that aspect of the sport, instead of constantly writing articles that focus on the “Ten New Effective Strike Indicator Techniques” or whatever. It’s like, alright, there are people out there who get it.

When I was a young guide down on the Frying Pan River, and a lot of these guys aren’t alive or working anymore, but guides like Kea Hause and Johnny Thunder…

Kea was an absolute legend, right?

Yeah, he went all the way to the final level. They would float the Fork or Colorado at night and snip the hooks off their Stimulators–they called it tagging or rolling. Get the fish to eat and have them on for a second or two, then they’re gone. I suppose if Kea was still alive, he’d be floating and not even fishing. You care so much about the fishery and resource that, of course, you make your living off of it, but you also want to keep it healthy. If you’re in the industry and not struggling with that inevitable tension, that’s probably something worth looking at.

I completely agree.

How did you decide, at some point, that you wanted to take anglers fly fishing around the globe?

I grew up in the fly-fishing industry, in central Oregon, and started working in a fly shop when I was about 15 years old. At that time, I was sweeping floors, bagging hooks, cutting up fly tying materials and doing whatever it took to be able to work in that shop. I fell in love with the sport, and I was immediately captivated by the industry. All I wanted, when I wasn’t out fishing, was to be around fishing. Eventually, I was hired by an outfitter in my hometown who taught me how to row and run gear boats on the Deschutes, where I was able to cut my teeth under the guidance of someone willing to take the time and teach me. At the time, this was really neat, but more importantly, it helped build a foundation for my future in the sport. And of course, when you’re 18 or 19 years old, you start to think, “I’m ready to guide. I can do it.” But the outfitter who hired me in the first place said, “You’re not even close to being ready to guide. But I’ll teach you, and I can get you there.” And that was an awesome apprenticeship. I learned a ton.

During my college years and after graduation, I guided for a number of different outfitters across the Rockies, and that eventually opened up an opportunity to become a sales representative in the northern Rockies. I started repping for a number of different manufacturers over the years (Scott, Ross, and several others) and traveled the West. I absolutely loved that job, and there was no greater occupation for a 20-something single dude addicted to fishing. Repping eventually led to a sales manager opportunity at a company that was acquired by Scientific Anglers, who at the time was owned by 3M. Part of the buy-sell agreement was that I would stay with Scientific Anglers, move to St. Paul, MN and become the national sales manager for Scientific Anglers. Working as a rep and guide for those years, I always envisioned my journey would allow me to avoid the mega-corporate path, but there I was–in a cubicle at 3M corporate headquarters. It was a great job with a great company, but immediately I was thinking to myself, “This is not where I want to be.”

During those years, I had been traveling and fishing a lot in the saltwater, especially in Belize and the Bahamas. One of my really good buddies at the time was a guy named Logan Gentry, who had recently purchased El Pescador Lodge from the original owners and founders. Logan and I were close friends, and I was spending a good amount of time down in Belize, hanging out and fishing as much as I could. I was learning about the fishery and the country in general, and that started taking on a life of its own. Within a short period of time I began getting a lot of phone calls from friends and contacts saying, “Hey, I understand you fish Belize regularly. You know the guides. You know the seasons. Can you help me plan a trip? Where should I stay? Where should I go? Who should I fish with?”

I didn’t really start my next chapter by saying, “Hey, I’m going to jump into the travel business,” because at the time, it was a pretty crowded space. You still had Kaufman’s, which was a huge player, and obviously, The Fly Shop and Frontiers were very much in the game. A lot of these big players had been at it for a long time. And at first glance, I said, “Boy, this is a crowded space. I’m one person. There’s no opportunity here to become a booking agent and do it on the level I would want.” But eventually, I started thinking more about it, and I realized there might be an opportunity, if I were to go about things a little differently–focus more on certain elements of customer service, direct attention to the customers and build out personalized, one-on-one relationships. And that’s how Yellow Dog started–a one-man, one dog operation with a handful of clients who believed in our brand and mission. I started small, and in the beginning, the company’s only destinations were a handful of lodges in Belize.

After I had resigned from my job at Scientific Anglers and jumped into worldwide travel full time (which was exclusively international travel), the events of 9/11 unfolded. The whole world shut down, and for a year, no one was going anywhere. And I thought, “Oh my God, I’ve made a terrible mistake. This timing is really bad.” But, actually, that year of little-to-no traffic allowed me to get my legs under me and build the company in a thoughtful and balanced way. And, eventually, when the world did reopen and everyone started traveling again, Yellow Dog was ready to grow and expand. Looking back on those early days, where all I had was a little trifold brochure with four lodges in Belize, I am appreciative of our success and how far we’ve come. I’ve made mistakes and learned some hard lessons over the years, but if I could do it all again, I probably wouldn’t change much. The journey and the evolution and the build-out of the company taught me all sorts of things that have come in handy over the past 25 years.

Would you say that the COVID shutdown, in a similar way, was equally as traumatic from a business perspective? At a minimum, like everyone, you had to become way more digitally activated.

I’m not familiar with COVID. Did something happen?

Seriously, I don’t even like talking about that year. The pandemic was the most disastrous scenario you could possibly script for a company like Yellow Dog, because at that time, all we did was travel. Not only that, but we were like 96% international travel, and far-off, exotic destinations were pretty much our entire platform. And we had become fairly big by the time 2020 rolled around. I remember, Andrew, in January of 2020 sitting back (we had just put out our 20th anniversary travel guide) and thinking how proud of things I was–we had done it. We had become the biggest booking agent and travel company in all of fly fishing. We had this amazing team of professionals working for Yellow Dog, we had built great relationships with all of these lodges and we had a huge book of amazing clients. We were on top of the world.

Ninety days later, the entire world shut down. I remember sitting in my home office staring at a screen and thinking, “Holy shit, we are the biggest thing in fishing travel, and I have a massive problem here.” We had, at the time, thousands of trips on the books and every one of those trips was cancelled. Everything came to a screeching halt. This was before the PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) stimulus money came out for small businesses like us to survive, which meant that, initially, we had to lay everyone off. Pretty much the entire team. And I remember sitting there thinking, “I don’t know how we can survive this–it’s too big of a mountain and too many cancellations to deal with.”

At that point, there were just a couple of us left. Everybody else was gone, because we couldn’t pay anybody. Those were super dark days. But luckily, we were able to come up with a plan, and we were able to hire back the majority of our team when that first PPP round came out. I will say that there’s been a lot of talk about the downside of the PPP program, and knowing what we know now, there was a ton of fraud that stemmed from the rapid giveaway of mass amounts of cash. Plenty of people gamed the system. But I will tell you, that for a business like ours, when that relief came, it literally saved us and kept us in business. We took the PPP money that we were eligible for and 100% of that went straight to payroll to bring our team back on board.

During those first months of the shut-down our team would start every day with a Zoom call–the Brady Bunch checkerboard–and we would start going down our endless list of canceled and disrupted trips. It was truly a worst-case scenario. And I remember every morning our mantra became, “All right, guys, time to go eat the elephant.” Because how exactly do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

At first, all of our clients were saying, “Hey, I get it. The world’s closed down. I can’t go on my trip, so just send my money back.” Well, that was not going to happen, because 100% of the deposits that were paid were used to secure dates and future reservations. (This is the way it works in the booking business–every deposit is immediately sent out to the lodges to lock in dates and secure reservations.) Which meant that with every one of these trips, the money was gone. The lodges had that money, and they were, obviously, not in a position to return anything. Now, our job as the agent was to protect each and every reservation. “You will have a trip. We don’t know when it will be, because the world’s not open yet, but we will look out for your interests, and we’ll make sure your trip credit is 100% protected.”

When we had that conversation with 80% of the people, they got it. They basically said, “Great. Okay, thank you. You’re looking out for us. We understand how it works, and we understand that this is bigger than any of us.” The next 10% were a bit more difficult. They’re initial mindset was, “So what? We don’t care. Just send us our money.” Those were the people that we had to spend a lot of time with. We had to convince them that their trips were protected, assure them their reservation was going to be honored and convince them we were going to take care of them. The next 5% were even more upset, but over time, we won those people over. And then there was the small number of people that were absolutely horrible and didn’t give a shit about the lodges or the guides or the future of the travel infrastructure. They were, for lack of a better term, completely selfish individuals who were angry and freaked out by everything that was going on. I understood that they were upset, but they weren’t accepting anything short of a full refund.

My frustration centered around the future of what we all love and value. Because, for me, the main thought should have been, “We all need this infrastructure to be here when this thing ends. We need the lodges to survive and exist. We need the guides to survive. We need the outfitters. We need the booking agents. We all want to be here when this thing ends and the world reopens, because this is something we all love to do.”

In the end, I would say this about the COVID time period: We saw the very best of people, and we also saw the very worst. Luckily for us, the worst was a small percentage. But looking back at 2020, my main takeaways–the stories I remember most–were the instances of unbelievable patience and generosity. There were dozens of times in the early months of the pandemic when we had customers call us and say, “Hey, I book my trip to this particular lodge every year. I’ve done it for eight years. My guide is always Cesar or Julio or Gorge or whoever it was.” Then they’d say, “I love him. We’ve become great friends. I am just so sad I can’t fish with him this year, and I know he’s got to be hurting. Every year I tip him $600 at the end of the week, so I’m going to send you $600. Can you please make sure it gets to the guide and his family?” We had so many people do that. I found this to be so unbelievable and incredibly touching–these acts of generosity and kindness that we saw over and over again from anglers. That’s what I remember most about those challenging days. From a business and operations side, I also have to say that it was like going back and getting my PhD in business disaster management. Some difficult times for sure, but we emerged, as a company and team, so much stronger on the back end of that experience.

Did the COVID experience force you guys to become more digitally integrated? You’ve done a great job of melding the travel business, ecommerce and brand all together pretty seamlessly.

Well, we’ve put a lot into our digital presence and our online platforms, because it’s a process and progression that is never complete or finished. It’s a constant state of evolution. We spend a lot of money building and maintaining the brand, and we commit a lot of resources, but that’s what it takes to do it well and do it right. It also takes a significant amount of infrastructure to create the efficiencies and delivery mechanisms to deal with a larger volume of business from the travel booking and ecommerce perspectives.

Every fly-fishing guide, writer, fly shop or travel business is a media brand today, whether they want to believe that or not. Now, to the extent you lean into this reality and allocate resources, I guess that’s an individual or business decision, but the digital world isn’t stopping for anyone. So, I think you guys have been smart and you’re one of the few big shops that strategically envisions themselves as a media brand. Your website isn’t just a “home,” “about” and “contact” page grafted to a Shopify site. You’re saying, “Okay, how do we provide information about flies, destinations, gear and a full brand and ecommerce solution?” Maybe you feel like you’re giving a lot away, but the people on your site or the ones at the shows, you’re going to win them over eventually.

That’s the hope, and I think this is a philosophy that has worked well for our business. Because every brand out there today is in essence a media brand. That doesn’t mean they’re good at it, nor does it mean they’re effective at it, but like it or not, that’s the age we live in. Digital is the most significant factor that moves the needle these days. And we are trying to play on the deep end of the fishing spectrum, which is travel. Volume and success is not easy in this segment of the industry because it takes a ton of resources. It takes a massive financial commitment and, most importantly, it takes cultivating and keeping a great team of people. And none of these things are easy. But that’s the recipe to our success. It’s not a mystery. We take great care of people and care about every customer that comes our way. And we put a great deal of effort into our messaging, branding and marketing.

But at the end of the day, digital or not, we’re still at our core a hospitality business. I tell our team this all the time, whether it’s the young kids who are working a summer in the fly shop–helping people to pick flies and print fishing licenses and select leaders–all the way up to our program directors that run our foundational destination programs. They all know that, first and foremost, we are in the hospitality business. Period. You need to make people feel exceptional every step of the way.

My dad was in the ski resort business his whole life, and he ran great hotels in ski towns all throughout the West. And he was truly “Mr. Hospitality.” Everything I’ve learned about hospitality, I learned from my dad and the examples he set. He made every one of his customers feel special and they always knew that their business was appreciated. Behind his desk he had this great saying up on the wall, and I have it in our Yellow Dog offices as well. I share it with our team and it’s something I think about all the time: “People go where they’re invited, but they return to where they’re made to feel welcome.” Pretty basic, but it captures his timeless view on hospitality. We apply that to every person who walks into the fly shop and every person that gets on the phone and works with our travel team. The formula works, but you can’t slip up. You can’t take it for granted. You can’t get lazy or complacent at any point, because as soon as one customer starts to feel like they’re not special, if they’re not being welcomed, or being thanked and appreciated for their business, they’ve got a lot of other options.

We won’t take too much more of your time, but we do want to get your comment on the controversy surrounding public lands. How are we even at a point where we’re discussing the divestment of one our greatest American resources?

I think what’s to blame is that we are so overwhelmed by the chaos and craziness around us in every news cycle, that it’s very understandable when people simply want to tune out the noise. No one wants to pay attention, and I get it. But what we have in this instance is something that is so monumentally important to all of us–every single American who has any kind of connectivity to the outdoors–that we have to pay attention. A lot of people don’t realize that one of the greatest gifts we have as American citizens is the fact that these federally owned public lands belong to all of us. It is one of the most brilliant concepts that any country has introduced and then delivered for its citizens. And we are the benefactors of this incredible vision.

And this latest assault on our public lands is, frankly, terrifying, because once politicians start chipping away at this, it opens the floodgates. They might say, “Oh, we’re just going to grab a little here and there for affordable housing,” or “we’re going to take this to pay down some of the deficit.” But once this movement starts, it doesn’t stop. It’s a crack in the dam. And the second we accept the idea of selling off public lands, we’re in serious trouble, because once they’re sold, they are gone forever. You’re talking about taking our outdoor heritage. You’re talking about (for a lot of us that work in this business) damaging our livelihoods. Gates go up, access is denied and that outdoor heritage then gets sold off to the highest bidder.

And I don’t care if you are a Republican or Democrat. Maybe you support the current administration, or you hate them. No matter how you vote, if you have any type of connectivity to the outdoors and you are not outraged by the very idea of selling off these public lands, then you need to pull your head out of your ass and pay closer attention. This is a dangerous process that there is no coming back from. And everyone who considers themselves an angler or hunter or outdoorsman or camper or canoeist or hiker or whatever it is, it is time to pay attention and sound off. You need to call your elected representatives. You need to let your voice be heard. Take five minutes out of your busy day. Call your elected officials and say, “Hell no. No sale of public lands. Not one acre. Not today. Not next year. Not ever. This cannot happen.” And only if the senators get such an avalanche of feedback and calls–people saying, “Bad idea, not one acre, no way”–only then will they pay attention.

Our Montana senators have for years gone on record saying, “No sale of public lands, period.” But recently, they started saying, “Well, as long as it’s not in Montana, we might not have a problem. I’m just going to care about Montana.” Thankfully, they corrected themselves and got back on track with the recent Reconciliation Bill, but this issue will certainly raise its head again. The potential sale of public lands is always going to be seen as easy money for a lot of people that want to fund other projects, and now that the effort has officially been launched, we’re going to have problems in the years ahead. But to touch public lands in any way, shape or form opens the floodgates and starts a dangerous precedent that we will not be able to stop once it starts.

Anyone who considers themselves an angler or an outdoorsman–anyone who cares about these places–needs to pay attention and step up. Forget your party affiliation, forget who you voted for, forget which direction you lean politically. You need to sound off and speak up for public lands, because this threat is real and this is happening right now.

That’s well said. I wouldn’t add anything to your words. Let’s end the interview there. Thanks for your time.