Fishing guide Tom Caprio doesn’t bring his own rod when he goes fishing — well, he’s not really fishing. His job is to make sure other people catch fish.

Caprio, 55, guides fly-fishing tours for Colorado Fly Fishing Adventures and founded Mountain Escapes, a mountain adventure tour business in Colorado and New Mexico.

During the winter, Caprio teaches ski lessons. He began guiding fly-fishing tours six years ago.

For this trip to a river in a private ranch 10 miles west of Bailey, he lends two rods to his clients, John Scialdone and his grandson Jake Scialdone.

Caprio leads John and Jake to a rocky bank. Armed with a 20-inch net tucked at his side, four fly-fishing rods, knee pads, and a backpack full of water and first-aid equipment, he almost looks like he’s ready for war.

Caprio gives a crash course on tension casting, a fly-fishing technique where the angler casts his or her rod upstream and slowly reels in the line as the fly floats downstream. The more well-known false-casting technique, where the user whips the line back and forth several times before landing it in the water, is used more when fish are rising toward the surface, he explained.

“This job is part photographer, part guide … part baby sitter,” he said with a laugh as he freed a hook from his palm. “Part getting hooks out my hand.”

All day Caprio changes flies, untangles lines and provides advice to John and Jake. But he doesn’t seem to mind.

“You’re in pretty places,” he said. “And it’s very in the moment. When you are out here, you can forget about the other stuff.”