Flylab Interview: Joe Dilschneider

Flylab Interview: Joe Dilschneider

Joe Dilschneider is the owner and operator of Trout Stalkers guide service and the Madison River Fishing Company in Ennis, Montana. The Madison River, flanked by the Madison Range to the east and the Gravelly Range and Tobacco Root Mountains to the west, runs through the heart of Ennis and is one of south-central Montana’s most iconic freestone rivers and fly-fishing destinations. Captain Joe has been a Montana outfitter for 31 years, as well as spending 10 seasons guiding saltwater anglers in the Florida Keys. He also specializes in trips on the Big Hole, Beaverhead, Ruby, Jefferson, Yellowstone, Missouri and many other rivers, but the Madison River and Ennis are home.

Can you talk about the legacy of the Madison River Fishing Company?

The Madison River Fishing Company was founded by Tom DiMeola and his wife Nancy in 1984, here in Ennis, Montana. He had a few different partners here and there over the years, but he was the main man. I showed up in the winter of 1994 and started building my outfitting business, which was Montana Trout Stalkers at the time. Pretty quickly, Ennis and the Madison River became my home base and a lot of my friends were also connected to The Fishing Company.  

Over about a 10-year period, I became one of their better customers, because I was having all of our guests and clients meet us at the shop in the mornings before trips. They would grab their licenses and flies, and then we’d head out to the river. So, I was a part of the family, so to speak, at the Madison River Fishing Company for a long time before I opened my own shop down the street and before, ultimately, I ended up buying the Fishing Company.

Are you still actively guiding the Madison River?

I still guide a lot. Just this week I’ve been on the river for the last five days and still love it, but I don’t guide at the breakneck pace I once did. I went to the University of Colorado and moved up to the mountains after that. Breckenridge, Colorado–that’s where I got my first guiding gig in ‘91. I did a couple seasons there and now, this is my 31st year in Ennis. Thirty-three years as a professional fishing guide and still going strong. Never going to quit…

What drew you to the Madison Valley?

I traveled west a few times when I was young with my father on fishing trips–we were from Missouri–so, I was enamored with the mountains. During college, I came up here with a friend, just screwing around. We went to Yellowstone and discovered Ennis and had a couple “banger nights” in town and days on the river, and I loved it. I came back a few years later, on a short hiatus from my Colorado life and I never left…

Do you have a favorite time of year?

I would say right now, springtime, or the late winter. As a local and someone who can fish a lot, we get going in February and March with some warm spells and the fishing can be pretty good. When we get daytime highs in the 40s or low 50s, this river can turn on. Once it starts warming up, we’re out there. And every month it gradually improves, but predictably by mid-April, the valley is thawing out. Generally, that’s the unofficial-official start of the guiding season.

Then we go through runoff in late May and early June, which I really like too. It’s a beautiful time of year with nobody around. You can fish this river in high water and do pretty well if you’re willing to adapt. That gives way to the Salmonfly hatch in late June and early July, in a way the whole spring is a build up to that. The big stoneflies are the crescendo. “The Hatch”–as the old-timers around here call it. It’s extremely important for the fish, birds, anglers and our business. When that’s over, sometime in early to mid-July, I back off on the guiding somewhat and focus more on planning and running the business as we move into fall. So for me, it’s spring through the first part of summer that’s my favorite time, because it’s all happening and I’m on the river a lot…

What’s changed since 1994? and what will always stay the same?

The most obvious thing that’s changed is the number of people on the river–there are tons more anglers here and more people that have discovered fly fishing, generally. I think it’s been a growth sport, probably like most outdoor activities. Golf, mountain biking, pickle ball, name it–any sort of outdoor recreational activity has experienced an uptick over the last 20 to 30 years. Fishing is no exception. And the Madison is definitely busier than it used to be with guides and do-it-yourself anglers.

So, that’s the most notable thing that’s changed. However, having said that, the river itself hasn’t really changed in 50 million years. Truthfully, it just flows in the same channel, and trout populations are cyclical by nature. There are factors that impact the fish populations year-over-year, but it’s still a fabulous fishery and super resilient, meaning it puts up with all the fishing pressure and still produces on a regular basis. Hopefully, it will remain vibrant and healthy for generations to come–that would be my hope.

Every angler wants to fish unpressured water and relishes the idea of fishing someplace that’s untouched. We all want that, of course, but that’s not reality. There aren’t that many undiscovered, “off-the-grid” spots anymore in Montana and the Rocky Mountains, and especially with big rivers like the Madison.

I think some of us have a tendency to “psych ourselves out” about the fishing pressure on the Madison–all the negative press about being one of the busiest rivers in the state. And I feel bad for the people, honestly, who have been displaced or left this river because it’s too crowded. They’re missing out. Yes, it can be busy, but there’s still plenty of opportunity and it’s still an incredible trout stream. You just can’t get too wrapped around the axle about the number of people and what you hear.

Take this beautiful river as it is. Go check it out. And most of the time, it’s awesome.

Talk about the guide community…

There’s always been a strong community in Ennis–that’s what kept me here when I first moved. I love the river and everything, but the local community is what keeps people around–locals, ranchers, fishermen and guides. It’s a big guide community, but it’s not lovey-dovey all the time. Let’s be real. It’s competitive. There are some different teams, but we all share a common interest in this resource and its health. I believe guides are great stewards for this resource. All the fishing guides I’ve ever met want to protect their fisheries and waters. There’s strength in numbers.

You go down to the Gravel Bar or the Sportsman’s Lodge any given day and there’s definitely a group of guides or anglers in there, chewing the fat. They’re a colorful group.

Talk about your Trout Stalkers outfitting business…

Obviously, we’re based on the upper Madison, and there’s so much demand for guide services here that this is our primary location–about 90% of our trips. However, within a 100-mile drive, you’ve got the Beaverhead, Big Hole, Ruby and Jefferson Rivers to the west; the Gallatin and Yellowstone to the east; the lower Madison, upper Missouri and the Missouri below Holter Dam to the north. We guide all those waters, as well as Ennis and Hebgen Lakes.

We do run a lot of guides, and we have a lot of demand for business. With two shops on Main Street, we book a lot of trips that come in at the last minute, which is partially how our staff has developed. Unlike fishing lodges, with a fixed capacity, we don’t necessarily have a fixed capacity. We get to know all the good guides in the area, people we think are able to handle the nuances of guiding and this dynamic river and we try to fold them into our team. We also have the back-office team, who handle the phone ringing all day, as well as communications between the clients and guides–it’s a big team effort.

From a business perspective, how much technical and digital evolution has happened with guide bookings?

That’s funny. I get a lot of people cold calling and trying to sell us guide booking software and platforms to manage a recreational business like ours. Many of those platforms also manage lodging and other activities, so we continue to track the functionality and circle back every few years and analyze our tech stack, but we keep falling back on our old school protocols. 

Hey, we no longer have a paper calendar! We do it all on a Google Calendar, but no, we don’t book online. You cannot book a trip on our website or through some other third-party platform. I’ve always believed that the guide-client relationship is uniquely important and deep and there are a lot of questions and requests that come up with each client and trip. So, I feel it’s really important that we actually talk to our clients for the most part. Most of our trips originate over the telephone. We get emails and other kinds of digital communication, but at some point, we like to talk to the clients. It’s easiest to communicate that way and answer any questions they may have. I guess we’re kind of old school in that respect. 

The human connection is one of the value propositions that shops like ours can provide. And we’re not alone in this, specialty retail and fly shops especially, we have that human element that anglers require. No matter where you are in your fly-fishing growth curve, at some point you need some guidance, right? And that’s the business we’re in. That’s the business you guys (Flylab) are in too. Sharing, educating, informing, gear reviews, cutting through the noise and providing real information to people.

People need help. They need information. So that’s what insulates this industry from becoming dominated by Amazon. The telephone and human touch and the ability to get some one-on-one guidance on whether they should get this fly or that fly line–this is what sustains our business.

Talk about your e-commerce business…

Well, Ennis, MT is a one-horse town, and the sidewalks here are pretty empty November through March, so we’ve had to adapt. But interestingly, the e-commerce side of our business really began a long time ago with Tom, my predecessor. He ran one of the first mail order catalogs and was an early pioneer in e-comm too. He knew he had to sell more in the off-season to make it. It was all born out of necessity, an attempt to survive and make it through the winter.

Today, we do our best to “merchandise” our site and share all the information a consumer would want on specific products and pairings–that’s a really big focus, what I would call digital merchandising–to help people make educated, informed decisions when they’re shopping online. This, obviously, is much different than shopping in the store. But given that we’ve only got a five or six-month local retail season, the e-commerce side of the business is extremely important.

It’s a core focus, not just during the winter, but year round, and it’s evolved into a very significant part of the business. As we evolve, we’re trying to blend the two: a real hands-on, personal approach and the ability to call us and get advice and guidance in our physical store, but also the online ability to offer anglers as much education and information about products and services. We’re developing the ability to educate customers well before and long after they get on the river.

Fly shops are not like most businesses, or any old retail business. Our customers often develop deep loyalties. We build lasting relationships with people, because we share this great passion and we’re here to foster their personal angling evolution. Our goal is to create long-term customers and friends, and build our tribe, so to speak. That’s what we do every day. One person at a time.

How long did you run the paper catalog after taking over the MRFC business?

Well, I’ve got the whole stack (right above me) of every single year the catalog was ever published, from 1984 to about three years ago.

When I took over this business, we continued the catalog. We didn’t want to rock the boat. After a couple years, we evolved from the news print to a smaller format and went to color. We knew the catalog was iconic, but this was also right in the midst of what I would consider the current rise of e-commerce, especially in this industry, and it started to make less and less sense.

It takes a ton of time and effort to create, and printing and mailing them is pretty expensive. When we analyzed the ROI of the physical mailed catalog, it was declining rapidly. We could spend those same marketing dollars online and have a much more tangible and measurable effect. We made the tough decision to discontinue the catalog a couple years ago and haven’t looked back since. People love print, but it’s expensive, and we didn’t have the resources to compete with the big sophisticated catalogers

What is the defective gene club?

I don’t remember the exact moment, but the term came to me in conversations with some friends, and I thought it was funny. I just started using that term occasionally when talking about people, and especially people on our team and people that we were interviewing to hire–were they really part of the defective gene club? 

Obviously, it’s just those of us who are obsessed with fishing, mostly fly fishing in my case, to the point where it pretty much dominates our lives in one way or another. Not all defective gene club members work in our industry–I know some doctors, lawyers and business executives too. They’re all obsessed. Yes, that was a big part of the 40th anniversary video our friend Travis Stott made for us. I think it captured the essence of our community around here. The “defective gene club” term and hashtag has now taken on a life of its own.

Can you talk about how every bend on the Madison feels like a different river…

The river starts in Yellowstone National Park, at the confluence of the Gibbon and the Firehole Rivers just inside the west entrance of the park. That’s the headwaters of the Madison and it eventually terminates in Three Forks, Montana–about a 100 miles of river. In that reach from Yellowstone to Three Forks, the river flows through about six or seven different and distinct geographic, ecological zones where the flora, stream channel and surrounding mountains all transition through these different sections. So, it does have these different and very distinct personalities, but it’s all trout infested.

The river section between Varney Bridge and Ennis is one of these transition zones, where the river becomes an alluvial stream channel that braids a lot through cottonwood lowlands, deep holes and islands. The river is great in that way with tons of diversity–it never gets boring, never gets old.

How much are the fish moving throughout the system?

I think it’s all shades of gray, as everything in the sport. There are some fish that move a lot and make migratory or spawning movements at certain times a year. And there are some fish that probably never really move much at all, staying in a very local area of the river. It’s a big system, so a number of different things are happening. The Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) has sponsored some fish tagging studies in conjunction with grad students at MSU (Montana State University) and have documented some staggering fish movements. Specimens that went from Ennis all the way up the upper Madison, through the spillway at Quake Lake and into Quake Lake–crazy stuff like that. But that doesn’t mean that all fish do that, right?

Dick Vincent was a fisheries biologist from Ennis, he grew up here and worked for FWP after college and he’s the guy who is credited with moving the state to a wild trout management policy statewide, which was started with an experiment on the Madison. He was able to put together some really compelling data (as a young fisheries biologist in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he conducted crucial studies on the Madison River that demonstrated the negative impacts of stocking hatchery trout on wild trout populations) and convince the powers that be at the FWP that they should quit stocking. And so starting in 1976, they quit stocking all Montana rivers and went to a wild trout management policy. Dick is still around today. He lives in Bozeman, and he’s a legend and hero for guys like us.

I remember some of the data was really interesting–there were these big fish movements, and they might go long distances and find barren sections of the river that might’ve been wiped out by stocking, and they would set up shop there. The fish are moving, but they’re also looking for food and habitat and no competition. Why wouldn’t they stay?

Yeah, definitely. There also are some cool new studies–“otolith” research. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about this or are familiar, but otoliths are tiny bones that fish have in their heads, or inner ear. They take the otoliths out of the trout and use a microscopic laser to shave off layers of the bones, then they put them through a spectrometer to analyze the chemistry and composition. They’ll compare that with the water chemistry data they have from the watershed and surrounding areas. They often can determine where that fish was spawned and born. The otoliths grow throughout the fish’s life by accreting layers of calcium carbonate and a protein matrix. This process creates rings, similar to those in a tree trunk.

They can even see where that fish may have moved or spent time during its life. It’s almost like science fiction, but very cutting edge. Recently, I saw a presentation by the head FWP fisheries biologist for Region 3 of Montana, and he gave us some data and findings from otolith studies that was really cool. Something like 80%, don’t quote me on the percentage, of the brown trout in the Madison River are spawned in the tributaries of the Madison, not in the main stem of the river. Whereas the exact opposite was true for the rainbow trout–80% of them were spawned in the main stem, not in the tributaries. So that’s very dynamic information that has real world implications, if you start thinking about conservation projects and the importance of culverts and tributaries and all that.

It was just one small data point, but I think that these otolith studies can teach us a lot about trout and salmonids and maybe other species in the coming years. Information is power…

If all that brown trout spawning is happening up on the West Fork or smaller tributaries, how can you start to focus on keeping water in those places to consistently help the river turn its population over.

Exactly. Yes.

Talk about the challenges of running two businesses…

The way it evolved, as I mentioned, Trout Stalkers was my outfitting business way back in the day–all we did was book trips and guide anglers, and we weren’t in the retail game. As I got older, I realized you can’t guide forever. I had to come up with some other plan to evolve. So, I opened a Trout Stalkers retail location and then bought the Fishing Company. Now the way it works is that Trout Stalkers is our experiential brand, if you will. It’s also our guide headquarters. And we also do retail there–logo wear and that kind of thing, but we also have incredible fly selection. 

You’ll find a lot of our guides hanging out there, out on the porch. It’s right next to the Gravel Bar, so it makes for a great little guide shack and headquarters. At the Fishing Company, Tommy was not an outfitter, but he was a great retailer. Very early on he was a visionary in the online/direct mail worlds. He was one of the first guys selling fly tackle online, along with Dan Bailey’s, Kaufman’s and The Fly Shop. The fishing company has always been a provider of fly tackle for anglers worldwide. All types of fly fishing, you name it, two-hand, saltwater, blue water, fresh water, warm water, cold water, everything.

That’s one thing that makes us unique–we have these two different brands and two different physical locations, and they each fulfill their specific role in our business as a whole. The other thing I would say is that the Fishing Company has been around for 40 years. There’s only a handful of fly shops out there that have been around that long.

Maybe I’m biased, but I feel like there’s a sense of history and nostalgia here in this location, in this town and for this business. It is definitely iconic, and I’m proud to be a part of that. 

Where is the Madison River going to be in 10 years?

Two things: I would hope that this resource we all love and depend on is as great as it is today, or even better. And that’s not a foregone conclusion. You hear people everywhere talking about the “good old days,” and fisheries for the most part, are in decline worldwide. It’s not very often you hear about places that are as good as they’ve ever been. Not to be negative, but there’s a lot of truth to that. 

So, I hope that we as a community will protect our resources–ours here locally, but also throughout the west and throughout the world. That worries me a little bit. Long-term drought, things of that nature are often beyond our control and are concerning, but there’s a lot we can control. Having said that, I’m an optimist and have faith that we’re going to be okay. I don’t have any other grand visions other than that–just keep doing the best we can do.

If you want to help and learn about the Madison River, one of the best ways to do it is to come here to Ennis and hire one of us to take you floating down the river for a day. And that experience will definitely teach you a lot about this place and this river. We also have a local conservation group called the Madison River Foundation whose sole mission is to preserve, protect and enhance the Madison River for all who enjoy it. There’s also Montana Trout Unlimited and a bunch of other great organizations.

I would think that everyone in the valley wants a healthy river…

A lot of times it’s just people figuring out how to work together. But as the old saying goes, whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting…

The Defective Gene Club: For 40 years, the Madison River Fishing Company has been putting anglers on the iconic Madison River in Ennis, MT.