Flylab Interview: Tim Patterson

Flylab Interview: Tim Patterson

Tim and Heather Patterson own and operate RIGS Fly Shop & Guide Service in Ridgway, CO. For over twenty-five years, they have been a respected outfitter in southwest Colorado, offering guided fly-fishing trips on the Uncompahgre, San Miguel, High Country Cimarron, Black Canyon/Curecanti National Recreation Area and the lower Gunnison River/Gunnison Gorge Wilderness National Conservation Area.

As a family-owned business, they emphasize a team-oriented culture that fosters professionalism, expertise and a deep passion for fly fishing. Their guide team is highly trained, particularly in float fishing on technical rivers, ensuring “safe, educational and unforgettable experiences on the water.” They also take pride in comprehensive guide training, resource stewardship and a deep connection to public lands.

Can you talk about your origin story?

RIGS Fly Shop & Guide Service, started in 2001 as Ridgway Independent Guide Service. I’m not going to tell you I was born with a fly rod in my hand, but I’ve been fishing all my life. I grew up around fishing, hunting and the outdoors, and I had a lot of early experience in guiding and outfitting, well before I could legally drink a beer. I started raft guiding in my teens as a whitewater guide in places like the Arkansas River, Colorado River, Salt River and Grand Canyon with a couple year stint abroad in Guatemala.

I spent eight summers guiding raft trips on the Arkansas river primarily, and our days would end early, so there was plenty of daylight to go fishing in the afternoon until dark. The owner of the company was kind enough to let us borrow a boat to float fish after work whenever we wanted, and we took full advantage of honing our float-fishing skills and eventually convinced them we should start offering float-fishing trips too. In addition, the outfitter I worked for had some limited launch dates in the Gunnison Gorge, which exposed me to some next-level float fishing, and I started to run that trip for them. 

I was spending my winters in Arizona while cutting my teeth to become a full-time Grand Canyon River guide, but realized I missed the mountain waters and more readily available fly-fishing opportunities in Colorado. Since I was already familiar with Colorado waters and loved the Southwestern U.S., I decided to merge the two and started working as a full-time guide in the Gunnison Gorge and moved to Ridgway in 1998. While living in Ridgway and picking up guide work in the Gorge and around Telluride, I always thought, “Why not Ridgway?” What a great central location to access a ton of diverse waters.

There was this point in my guiding career where I realized I wanted to run my own operation and do it a little differently. I think people either have the entrepreneurial desire or they don’t. It was what I was raised around and started to make sense after twelve years of guiding for other outfitters. Technical whitewater and guided fly fishing was already my focus, which was a big impetus for pursing the Gunnison Gorge and wilderness experiences as a business. Fishing has always been a passion that I did after work as a raft guide. It all came together when we started building our business around technical floating and fishing. 

It’s a funny thing going from guiding and a certain independence to suddenly being responsible for a bunch of other guides and their needs, wants and livelihoods. Let alone learning how to dive into the retail side of the business. There were certain things I knew I wanted to do, some took time to develop and others I had to learn the hard way. It’s hard to believe we’re about ready to hit our 25-year anniversary.

Talk about the unique challenges of building an outfitting business on technical whitewater–these aren’t lazy, afternoon floats.

The Colorado, Arkansas and Gunnison are rivers with real consequences. It’s a different kind of trip, and a lot of times, safety precedes the fishing itself and it’s a big part of how we think about the business. I’d rather teach a proficient raft guide who likes to fish how to be a fishing guide versus the other way around. I think it’s an easier barrier to entry, because there’s a lot of technical appreciation for whitewater that is a foundation for being in a place like the Gunnison Gorge. Being a great angler and then walking in and trying to learn the discipline of navigating a technical river successfully–they’re two completely different disciplines, and one is a little more consequential than the other. We were also a rafting company from the start, so we engaged our guides differently, and they encountered and built a lot of knowledge around all sorts of non-fishing situations. It’s a different appreciation for sure.

How have you found your guides?

Since the beginning of the business, we’ve run whitewater and fly-fishing guide state certifications courses in Colorado. I was qualified to instruct whitewater from the inception of the company–that was my strong suit. Being on the Western Slope, and knowing I wanted to be in the Gunnison Gorge, I was able to take a strong lead on whitewater training, whether that was from the “ground up” (no whitewater experience) or with fishing guides that have some boating experience. And we still take some people through the entire progression of boating whitewater to eventually guided float fishing. End of the day, that’s how we find most of our people–we’ve trained them, either a little or a lot depending on how long they have been with us.

In Colorado, every guide has to complete the state certification standard; you have to have 50-hours of training with a certified guide instructor aboard the vessel and document that. For us, that takes about a week and that gives you, “our blessing to guide in the state.” But does that mean you get to walk out of that course and, poof, you’re a boat guide or float-fishing guide? No. It’s a progression. There’s a lot of personal time and investment that has to happen from there. And then with the state standard in Colorado, there are triggers for competency. It starts with a minimum qualification, which is what we provide in our course. Then you have to build and accumulate miles on the river and document them on a river log to be out there on your own commercially. The next trigger is becoming a trip leader, where you can commercially lead people or lead groups, which is a prerequisite for us and any guide in the Gunnison Gorge. The guides can build their boating mileage commercially, and personally, (you can actually use 250 personal miles and 250 commercial miles), but every guide has to reach 500 river miles to be a trip leader.

Now, it’s also a big step in our trips to go from a place like drift boating on the lower Gunnison to the wilderness section of the Gunnison Gorge–it’s a huge skillset leap. So, how do you get from that point to the other with a new guide? Well, we continue to reinvest in training, sending them on training trips with senior guides, so they can build up their whitewater competency. And then we ask a lot of them on their own–to experience rivers and challenge themselves. It doesn’t always have to be with a fly rod in hand, right? Some of the best whitewater is when no fly fishing is really possible, because the river volume is too high. Time on the water and time on technical water. Certainly, there are really experienced guides that come to us as well that we’ll hire, but it’s a rarity to have people walk in that have both those disciplines nailed.

It’s a complex set of challenges–being a fishing guide and competent in whitewater. We have to be mindful of that, because there’s a real safety element to these technical canyon trips. On top of that, the wilderness setting that we operate in, the Gunnison Gorge, is a unique challenge, remote and consequential.

We like to go the extra mile with our guides and require Swiftwater Rescue and encourage Advanced First-Aid training for all of our Gunnison Gorge guides. I know we’re off on a tangent, but managing whitewater and these remote environments is a big theme for us. It’s part of my story. It’s part of our history. It’s part of something that I think, as an outfitter, makes us different–our background in technical boating and our training program. There aren’t a lot of outfitters like us in the state.

We all have a strong appreciation for the power of the river, because when things go wrong, it’s already too late, right? So, how can we control that on the front end with training and experience. That’s not a requirement imposed upon us by the state, but it’s an internal policy. We want our people to know their stuff. So, when things go wrong, they’re of use. The “deer in the headlights” syndrome is real, especially in whitewater where you’re overwhelmed by the situation. So, trying to avoid it, it’s the best policy.

There’s a saying in the whitewater world about boaters and boating incidents–there are two types of people: boaters who have had an incident and those that will. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. It’s more about how you control the situation.

I was on the west slope for a while and know Tony Fotopulos from Alpine Angling in Carbondale–the way they’d train all their young guys was to go down to the Colorado at runoff and make them jump off the South Canyon Bridge. Just get in there and figure it out. It’s not a matter of if you’re going to dump your boat, it’s a matter of when. You have to have your wits about you.

Right. As a float-fishing guide, you’ll have to rescue more people than just yourself. There’s only one way to get that experiential knowledge. How does the boat respond? How does the client respond? How do you anticipate what’s coming and forecast ahead and formulate your best plan, which usually doesn’t happen the way you anticipate. Plan A ends up being plan B pretty quickly–how can you adapt?

For us, this mindset is a cultural thing we’re trying to carry forward. Our training and safety philosophies truly “bleed” into real life scenarios–how we run our business, create an employee culture and how we look for guides. How do we develop and mentor others? That’s a real marker for success in a career–you want to be sharing knowledge and teaching others. All our staff are employees of the shop and exclusive to the shop. We don’t hire independent contractors to guide for us. Our guides are fully committed to our program, philosophy and standards. It’s collaborative, right? They have to be willing to believe in what we believe in.

There’s, obviously, a lot of lip service being paid to river and guide communities in this sport that doesn’t feel that real, but what you’re building (and have built) seems different.

Every guide and every business owner has to do what feels right to them and try to remember we are all human with flaws. Certain personalities can affect a culture. It can transform an amazing group of people into a “hyper competitive,” ready to throw each other under the bus kind of mentality. We have worked to weed and train that out. Guides should be focused on protecting the resources and looking out for each other, especially on the river and float fishing. Success actually looks completely different when you’re at the top of your game–you’re a mentor and encouraging others to raise their game. 

Our seasoned guides that have their guide instructor status, they’re the ones who teach our courses exclusively. I’m out there very little these days. I’ve trained these guides, they have the river miles; they speak with an ethos we trust. The amount of training happening? This is how I measure our success as a business.   

Focusing on having employee guides versus independent contractors has also allowed us to standardize, hone and control our programs and message. Getting the right team together, who understands and appreciates we want their input is an amazing feeling. We can focus on the culture and create an expectation when clients come to us, no matter what guide they go out with. They’re going to trust that we’ve selected a well-trained, competent and fun guide they feel comfortable spending the day with. 

We feel we can, hopefully, control the message a little more and provide some consistency and a feeling that teamwork is contagious. I measure the ratio of returning guides to this formula and it’s pretty high. That feels like a success to me when our guides are buying into the philosophies and team messaging and are coming back, because they like working for us.

Can you talk about the teamwork involved in putting together a Gunnison Gorge trip.

Because the Gunnison Gorge is so unique in its remote nature and the required support systems, it’s been about 10 years where we’re committed to one version of the trip, which is a three-day, all-inclusive deluxe format. We feel like it’s pretty refined at this point. We have an amazing in-house team and operations manager that has our systems pretty dialed, ensuring we consistently have everything we need.

All of our equipment is set up in advance, so when you show up to the river, we’re ready to launch boats and go fishing. We don’t want guides rigging boats for hours, while people wait. We reinvest in the quality of our equipment, and we help ensure that the guides have good equipment on the river, but they play a role in that too. When they get off the river, if they can’t report to us what’s going on, we can’t improve it or fix it. 

So, it’s very collaborative. We have an amazing in-house team that prepares everything for the guides, for that trip. We’ve built many service layers. You first have to secure the client and that requires talking to a reservationist who has the ability to articulate the trip and experience. Then we have an operations manager and all of his assistants that are maintaining the gear and putting the gear in, which is super systematic. On a standard day trip, if some important piece of equipment is missing, you might be able to mitigate that at the put-in, but the put-in for the Gunnison Gorge is seven miles of dirt road and a little-over-a-mile hike down to the river. Someone can’t really meet you halfway down and get you something. When things go wrong, the team has to be able to adjust in the field.

We have all these collaborative internal support pieces and then we also have external service providers–we have to work with the government agencies, horse packers, support at the takeouts, all sorts of different needs colliding into one offering. We tend to be hyper-communicative with our staff and anyone that we work with. And it’s taken all of 25 years, at least, to get to this point where we feel really comfortable, but it’s going to take another 25 to get close to perfection. But that’s our theme. There’s no endgame. It’s always evolving. There’s always a level of refinement that we do every year, trying to figure out how we can be better. We take great pride in our product.

This is an interesting theme, because it tracks with the process of becoming a fly fisherman. Great anglers understand it’s a lifelong process. There’s no concept of being the best. You’re simply learning over and over and over… 

If there’s one thing fly fishing teaches us it’s the concept that, look, I thought I knew something and actually I don’t. Now I have to adjust my learning to some new concept that may negate what I knew before.

I don’t know where I’ve read it, but I’ve always enjoyed the progression of the angler. First, it’s how many fish can I catch? Then, can I catch a big fish? And finally, I don’t care if I catch a fish at all. I just love being out there. Maybe towards the end I’m taking pictures, and I don’t even fish.

I remember when we did our first fly-fishing book, Castwork, one of the things that struck me when interviewing all these guides at the top of their game was a baseline level of humility. Even though you’re spending 300 days a year on the Bighorn, you still know very little about the natural system, even after 25 years.

Exactly, not to get too existential or anything, but it says something when those that know a lot, always doubt their knowledge, because they know how much they don’t know. And those that know a little are completely confident that they know everything they need to know. The Dunning-Kruger effect always brings it back. How does a person that literally knows more about a resource and subject not get lost in the ego of accomplishment? Fishing has a lot to teach us and that is why we are drawn to it. It never stops; we are all at different stages of figuring it out. 

As we have gotten older, we have been working harder to incorporate more resource protection in our trips along the way, teaching an appreciation for the environment and a deeper respect for the people we work with. You need to share and collaborate and be the bigger person. As we mature, we all learn this stuff. Thinking this way certainly wasn’t at the top of my mind when I first started as a guide, but you cut some corners and see the results and realize doing something halfway is not the best way to accomplish anything. Now it’s more about, let’s try to do this right. Let’s do this in a sound way, so we not only can say, hey, we are these people, but more importantly, we’re actually living it.

Everybody comes from different walks of life or shows up with different expectations when they book a guide trip. We try to learn about them and pair the right guide accordingly. Some people don’t care if the guide says a word. They just want as many shots at big fish as they can get. And other people are there to learn something new or say they tried it. How do I handle this person? Maybe they’re going through something or they’re brand new to fly fishing and don’t want to be overwhelmed. So, there’s a lot of matchmaking. We’ve had to step back from teaching a lot of the hard core elements of fishing and think about social interactions and different teaching philosophies.

Some people might be kinesthetic learners, while others absorb information in a different way. How do you adapt your strategies of teaching to different learning styles? I’ve seen plenty of successful trips where the message at the end of the day wasn’t, “We crushed it.” Rather, “It was unbelievable, I had the best time just being out there. The fishing might have been slow, but it didn’t matter. The experience was exactly what I was looking for.”

I think that is what attracted us to you guys at Flylab–this reciprocal sentiment that fishing is not always just about big fish and numbers and hardcore this or that. Who’s the best? Does it matter? It is more important to hear about what people are doing and how they are thinking. What policies are affecting what we love or value. How can I learn more or participate in a positive way.

For the last 10 years we’ve also been hosting saltwater destination trips–chasing permit, tarpon and golden dorado. Species like permit take patience, skill, timing and then a bunch of luck. It’s more like hunting than fishing, and to me, those limited opportunities make it even more special. I love that mentality–that’s the experience.

What are your biggest challenges today with the business?

Well, you can’t just close the shop whenever you want, because you want to go fishing. Customers have expectations. You are open from this time to that time. They expect you to be open then, because they want what they want when they want it.

But seriously, it’s always progressing and developing something that is better. I feel like that’s true of any business. I’m sure in any business if you find yourself being complacent and happy with where you’re at in your development or feel it’s okay to take your foot off the gas, then you’ll likely miss something. You have to constantly be driving the wedge and figuring out how to be better.

We’re also pretty concerned about the attempted takeovers of public lands and the potential privatization. Obviously, it could be extremely detrimental for everyone, especially in a state like Colorado where private landowners can own the river bottom. Our entire system of permitting and protection relies on these agencies and their management and oversight. Together, we work on a sustainable model and developing a permit program around use, carrying capacity and monitoring to achieve a balance. If you throw all that out the window, what are you left with?

It’s extra concerning when public access is a part of our business model. We’ve always been focused on running guide trips in places people can return to on their own. Whatever fly-fishing journey someone is on, they can rely on us to gain information, try it out themselves, come back when they want to refine things. We’re rarely going to take them somewhere that they can never go again, unless they hire us. It’s important to have the freedom to go to the same place that you were taught on.

What will the next 10 years look like?

We’ll have to think outside the box and think about our offerings differently. Maybe it’s more stillwater locations, backcountry trips or destination travel or different species. New ways to engage people and expand what they know about fly fishing. 

From a retail perspective, I think we’ve all seen this big attrition from big box stores or vendors selling direct. The only thing we’re left with is curating a selection that’s unique to our region, real-time information and how we communicate.

And that’s the true value in the fly shop now, a lot more than, “Do you carry the same reel that everybody else has?” Well, sure we may carry those items, but through feedback and developing our selection, we hope we’re providing a retail experience that works best for being here in this region and where we fish and guide.

The world presents a lot of challenges, but all you can do is move your project forward.

We’re excited about the future. We don’t know what the future will be. But we want to build a program and an asset that holds value over time.

Years from now, we would love to see the brand be here longer than we are.

That would mean we did it the right way.

Gunnison Gorge Float Fishing (Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area) is an experience you will never forget…