I am headed to Jackson Hole in a couple of months to get my spiritual reset in the mountains and do a little fly fishing. Many will tell you the fishing is bad in April and May. Well just like a leader in today’s unstable market place, it is how you look at and navigate the river. The river isn’t blown out, you just might be looking at it wrong.
Most anglers look at a blown-out river and drive past it. A stockmarket on a downward trend is an opportunity to buy. A lull in capital equipment markets as CEOsprotect their capital is an opportunity for leaders to develop your people and increase engagement so you can step on the gas pedal when capital is released and your backlog swells.
It is a tough market to lead in today. John Maxwell’s Law of Navigation states that while anyone can steer a ship, a leader must chart the course with foresight, planning and experience to guide their team to success anticipating obstacles and preparing thoroughly.
📌 Pro Tip: Navigatingthe spring runoff for me is understanding that I can only control what I can
control. How I respond to the changing river conditions dictates the success my team will have.
Some leaders are timid when you need to be bold. The water is high, the color is wrong, and the whole system feels unfishable. So they wait. They check the gauge every few days, watch the river slowly drop and clear, and eventually — sometimes weeks later — head back out when conditions
look more like what they're used to. Periods of discomfort are when we grow the most. This is when agile leaders help their teams navigate the spring run off.
The anglers who understand runoff don't wait. They look atthe same river and see a window. Use the right fly for the conditions and you will enjoy the excitement of a cutthroat trout on your line. A leader who navigates the turbulent market today keeps his team engaged and finds wins when others struggle.
📌 Pro Tip: Greatservant leaders are fishers of men. High water doesn't shut down the fishing. You
always have an opportunity to influence your team. Leadership is all about influence.
High water simply reorganizes the fishing. Fish are still there,still feeding, still catchable — but they're in different places, eating different things, and responding to different presentations than they were in
February. The river hasn't shut down. It's just changed the rules, and the angler
who learns those rules fishes through April instead of sitting it out.
Team member engagement, shop backlog and productivity islike runoff. Runoff has a rhythm. Itrises and falls in response to temperature, precipitation, and snowpack — not randomly, but in predictable patterns that create fishable windows even in the heart of the worst conditions.
📌 Pro Tip Understandingthat rhythm and knowing where to look when the windows open is the difference between a productive April and a month spent checking the gauge from your
couch. Knowing how to flex production whenthe backlog swells is how you take advantage of that fishable window.
Understanding the Runoff Cycle
📌 Pro Tip: Just like tariffs and the start of the war with Iran impact a dip in confidence in
capital spending, snowmelt isn't constant. You can’t control it. Great leaders navigate
it and keep their team relaxed and engaged. You control what you can
control.
It's temperature-driven, which means the river fluctuates ona daily cycle that most anglers never track. Overnight cold slows the melt and stabilizes flows. Afternoon warming accelerates it, pushing a surge of cold, silty water downstream hours later. The blown-out river you saw at 2 PM on
Wednesday may fish well at 7 AM on Thursday before the cycle repeats.
📌 Pro Tip: Schedulingfabrication of custom capital equipment is about taking advantage of the open windows. Understanding snow melt means you stop thinking about runoff as a
binary — fishable or not — and start thinking about it as a daily schedule with
productive windows built in. The angler who checks the gauge, understands the
timing, and shows up at the right moment will consistently out-fish the one who
either gives up or blindly heads out at the worst time of day.
Window #1 — The Early Morning Lull
The best runoff fishing of the day often happens in the twohours after first light, before afternoon warming pushes a new surge of snowmelt into the system. Overnight temperatures have slowed the melt, flows are at their lowest and most stable, and water clarity is at its best for the
day. Fish that retreated to soft water during the afternoon push have had all
night to settle in and resume feeding.
📌 Pro Tip: We use early mornings every day to do our continuous improvement projects. This is where our psychological safety gives junior team members a chance to present their ideas for improvement. Just like you can put trout on your hookduring the early morning lull, you can pull your team in and increase engagement.
This window closes fast. By mid-morning, as temperaturesrise and melt accelerates, clarity drops and flows begin climbing again. The angler who arrives at the river at 9 AM wondering why the fishing is slow should have been there at 6. During runoff, early is not optional — it's the
entire strategy.
Fish the soft seams and inside bends during this window withweighted nymphs fished tight to structure. The fish are there, they've been
feeding through the night, and a well-presented fly dropped into the right zone
will find them before the daily surge muddies things up again.
Window #2 — The Clearing Event
Every multi-day runoff cycle has a clearing event — the24–72 hour stretch after peak flow when sediment drops out and visibility climbs back to 12–18 inches or more. This is the single most productive window of the entire spring season, and it's consistently underutilized because most
anglers are still waiting for the river to return to normal.
📌 Pro Tip: Weknow that there are periods when capital orders will increase – the clearing
event. You have to be ready for it.
It doesn't need to return to normal to fish well. A riverrunning two feet above average with 18 inches of visibility and a falling gauge is an excellent fishing river. Flows are still high enough to push food through the system efficiently, trout have moved back into active feeding positions, and the combination of residual high water and improving clarity creates aggressive, opportunistic feeding behavior. These are often the biggest fish days of the spring.
The clearing event is also when your fly choices mattermost. Fish that have been eating whatever the current delivers in near-zero visibility are suddenly able to inspect your offering more carefully. Big,
bright attractor patterns that dominated during the peak may need to give way to slightly more natural profiles as clarity improves. Watch for the transition and adjust your box accordingly.
📌 Pro Tip: Be agile. For example, we know to be ready to shift from low end cabinets and
refurbishment projects to high end automated custom machines.
When you arrive at the river during a clearing event, scoopa handful of water and hold it up to the light. If you can see your hand clearly through 12 or more inches of water, you're in a fishable window. If the water looks like weak tea, you're close — give it another few hours. If it
looks like coffee, go find a tributary.
Window #3 — Tributaries and Side Channels
When the main river is blown out completely and no clearingevent is imminent, turn your attention to tributaries. Smaller drainages have shorter snowmelt windows, lower sediment loads, and less overall volume — whichmeans they clear dramatically faster than the main river. A tributary that was
running chocolate on Monday is often fishable by Wednesday when the main stem
is still days from clearing.
This is one of the most consistent and underappreciatedtactics in spring fishing. Tributary mouths also concentrate fish during highwater — trout move into the clearer, slower tributary flow and stage at the
confluence where oxygenated water from the smaller stream meets the main channel. These confluence zones can hold remarkable numbers of fish during the worst runoff conditions on the main river.
📌 Pro Tip: Troutlook for the right fly presentation and move to water that suits them. You have to make sure your presentationdrives more value than competitive uses of capital if you want orders.
Side channels off the main river operate on the same principle. They carry less volume, have slower velocity, and clear faster. They're also less pressured — most anglers walk right past them looking for the main channel. During runoff, a side channel running 8 inches of clarity while the main river is blown is not a consolation prize. It's the best fishing on the drainage.
Where to Find Fish During High Water
High water doesn't scatter trout randomly. It pushes them to predictable zones where they can hold without fighting the main current, and those zones are consistent enough that once you understand the pattern, you can find fish on unfamiliar water.
📌 Pro Tip Customers often retreat into their comfort zone during run off conditions. They find all sorts of reasons not to release capital. We have been in an unstable market since COVID. We can hope things will return to pre-COVID conditions but it is morelikely that manufacturing leaders will be fishing in high water. It is all about delivering value that matters.
Inside bends and seams are the starting point,but the key is precision. Look for opportunities where others may not be. Fish don't hold in the dead backwater of an eddy — they stage in the seam between
the eddy current and the main flow, where food is being delivered efficiently without requiring them to fight current to get it. The transition line between fast and slow water is where you want your fly, not the calm center of the back eddy.
📌 Pro Tip: Youhave to be willing to sacrifice and get in some fast water to find deals that
others are not in the right place to compete with you on.
Undercut banks become premium real estate inhigh water. The main current has pushed closer to the bank, undercutting the soil and creating overhead cover. Fish move tight to structure for protection
and to intercept food drifting along the bank edge. Your fly needs to be within 6–12 inches of the bank — not close, not nearby, right on it. Anything further out in high water is fishing the wrong water.
Tributary confluences are the highest-percentageholding zones during peak runoff. Where a tributary enters the main river, there's almost always a mixing zone with dramatically reduced velocity on the
downstream side. Fish stack here to intercept food washing out of the cleaner tributary while resting in the reduced current. Fish the downstream slack at every confluence you find — even tiny feeder creeks can hold surprising numbers of fish during the worst conditions.
📌 Pro Tip: The intersection of your solution’s value and the client’s pain is where you will
find fish. There are other fisherman so you have to make sure your value statements are more compelling. You have to have a better presentation than others on the river.
In high water, your casting distance shrinks and yourfootwork matters more. You're not covering broad runs — you're making precise presentations to specific zones within 15–20 feet. Move slowly along the bank, step quietly, and work each soft water zone thoroughly before moving to the
next. Fish in high water are often stacked in small areas, and a sloppy approach will spook the whole pod.
Flies That Work in High, Dirty Water. Gear changes the Game in High Water
High water fishing narrows the fly selection considerably,and that's actually a good thing. You don't need to carry everything — you need three categories covered and a few reliable patterns in each.
High water fishing is mobile fishing. You're not wading tothe middle of a run and working it from one position — you're covering bank, moving from soft water zone to soft water zone, often on both sides of the river across multiple access points. The gear you carry needs to support that mobility while keeping everything dry. April weather in the mountains doesn't ask permission before it rains.
Make sure your team has the right resources and support tofish high water!