The show
Two guys, one river, occasional facts.
Risers & Lies is a video podcast about dry-fly fishing on Colorado trout water — which water, exactly, stays between us and the fish. Every other week, two close friends sit down over a beer (and sometimes a cigar) and talk rising fish: the hatches, the drifts, the refusals, and the stories that get a little better every time we tell them.
We take the craft seriously and ourselves much less so. Neither of us is a guide or a certified anything — we're lifelong students of this water, and the river does the teaching. When we want real authority, we bring it on: guides, fly tyers, and shop owners who fish it more days a year than we get to dream about.
The studio
Episodes are recorded in person at a Colorado fly-shop studio — surrounded by rod racks and fly bins, which keeps the conversation honest-ish — and out on the river, where it belongs. Video first: full episodes on YouTube and Spotify, audio everywhere you listen, and clips where the algorithm lives.
Renato Vanzella
Half the lies
Renato came to fly fishing the honest way — badly, and in public — and never left. He carries some 300 fly boxes and will cast every last one of them at a single rising fish. Every refusal is personal, and the trout know him by name. They do — they warn each other.
Cole Atchley
The other half
Cole is the one who actually lands fish while Renato is still retying. Beard, cigar, dries or nothing — he'll fish a size 24 dry to fish that aren't rising and win the argument. He measures fish in "honest inches," a unit he invented and refuses to define.