Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Sculpting a realistic trout in glass takes 30 to 50 hours of hands-on work spread across three to four weeks, including up to five days of annealing from about 1,000 degrees down to room temperature. The most dangerous moment comes near 900 degrees, when the glass contracts and pieces can still crack after everything else has gone right.
Martin Gerdin is a glass artist with 18 years of experience sculpting trout and saltwater species in glass, based in Colorado's Roaring Fork valley.
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How long does it take to make a glass trout?
A commissioned glass trout takes three to four weeks from the start of the build to shipping, and roughly 30 to 50 hours of actual hands-on work depending on how complicated the colors are. Fins and eyes are made in advance, then the whole team assembles the fish in a single session. The piece then anneals for as long as five days, cooling from about 1,000 degrees to room temperature - and near 900 degrees, when the molecules contract, a finished fish can still be lost.
How unpredictable is glass as a material?
Glass often does the opposite of what the artist is trying to make it do, because the colors are metal oxides that absorb heat at different rates. One recent piece was built as a lake trout - still recognizable by its dorsal fin - but a chemical reaction erased the spots that had been laid in and turned the gray to purple. A cutthroat sculpture built to the dimensions of a world-record fish, the size of a middle schooler and assembled by a team of ten, snapped cleanly in half at the very end of the build.
How did fly fishing start for a glass artist?
Fly fishing came late and abruptly, three years ago, after getting sober in a small Colorado town where the other eight men in the house all owned fly rods and nothing was open. The first trip was a February drive through a snowstorm to the flats of the Frying Pan, and the fish landed that day was a cutbow over 22 inches, in water shallower than the fish was tall. Until that point the assumption was that a trout was a 14 or 15 inch stocked rainbow.
What makes the Roaring Fork valley such varied water?
The Roaring Fork valley stacks several completely different fisheries within a short drive. The Roaring Fork itself is a classic freestone coming off high country; the Frying Pan is a small-bug, crystal-clear tailwater; and the Colorado River downstream offers wide, deep, big-fish water. The valley floor sits around 7,000 feet, which puts 11,000-foot alpine lakes within reach as well - and fishing all of it, ten hours a day for eleven months, is what replaced having a single mentor and a single method.
How do you find alpine lakes with native cutthroat?
The alpine lakes worth finding are the ones with the least written about them online. The search starts on Google Earth with a forest service road known to climb high, works out to the point where a truck can no longer go, and then looks in a roughly ten-mile radius for lakes reachable only on foot. Many high lakes held no fish at all naturally and were stocked with cutthroat, which has ended up preserving genetics that get outcompeted downstream - so a trip that produces three 10 to 12 inch cutthroat can matter more than a 20-inch rainbow somewhere accessible.
What does aggressive invasive control look like on a fishery?
Wyoming's approach is unusually aggressive and unusually effective: managers microchip captured rainbow and brown trout, release them again, and tell the public that a tagged brown in that river is worth thousands of dollars to whoever brings it in. It sounds absurd said out loud, but the visible result on a trip through the Jackson Hole area was a river holding fine-spotted Snake River cutthroat lower down, Yellowstone cutthroat higher up, and whitefish throughout - with no non-native fish caught at all.
How do you read an alpine lake you have never fished?
The first step at an unfamiliar alpine lake is not casting. Find a vantage point, sit, and watch what the fish are already doing - whether they are working chironomids, whether a rise comes every few minutes, where they are cruising. Then work out what they are eating by using a ball cap to catch whatever is blowing low over the water and checking the grass for beetles or grasshoppers. Barometric pressure gets factored in too: on a high-pressure day the swim bladder is compressed, fish are uncomfortable, and they will not move as far for a fly.
Key takeaways
- Expect a commissioned glass trout to take three to four weeks and 30 to 50 hours of work, plus up to five days of annealing.
- Search for alpine lakes by tracing forest service roads to where vehicles stop, then scanning a ten-mile radius for water you have to walk to.
- The less information a high lake has online, the better the fishing tends to be.
- Sit and observe an unfamiliar lake before casting - identify what fish are eating, then match what they were already doing before you arrived.
- Use a ball cap to catch insects blowing over the water and check streamside grass for beetles and hoppers.
- On high-barometric-pressure days, expect fish to move a shorter distance for a fly and fish tighter to them.
- Test your tippet deliberately on fish you are willing to lose - knowing how much pressure 6X will take makes you calmer on the fish that counts.
