Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You Can't
Speaker 1: predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the
Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where
Speaker 1: you stand with on X. Okay, yanni, Uh, since you're
Speaker 1: not like the you know you're not a co host anymore, Um,
Speaker 1: because your eyes gone. What I want to do is
Speaker 1: go back to the thing we used to do when
Speaker 1: you were kind of up and comer. You can just
Speaker 1: call me a very experienced guest. Yeah, very seasoned guest.
Speaker 1: Well i'd like you to do is um do like
Speaker 1: we do where like if I have a heart attack,
Speaker 1: but here like I because around the ice. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: do that. All of a sudden, Um, the ice beneath
Speaker 1: me shattered and I vanished from sight, and the current
Speaker 1: carried me under the good ice and there was no
Speaker 1: possible way out for me. We're just like and here
Speaker 1: you are. You all of a sudden realized that, um,
Speaker 1: you need to introl the show. I gotta jump in,
Speaker 1: you gotta jump in. Carry the flag. So let's hear it,
Speaker 1: so like like, you gotta set everything up right, you
Speaker 1: gotta make listeners feel like they're here. Morning, folks. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you can join us today on Hunting and Fishing
Speaker 1: with Yanni. Steve's gone, he floated underneath the ice. That's
Speaker 1: what you're gonna call the show now, Yeah, Hunting and
Speaker 1: Fishing with Yannie, Like, yeah, Jimmy Miller came up with
Speaker 1: that years ago. He's what do they call that? A
Speaker 1: voyeur something? No warriors when you get your jolly's off
Speaker 1: of what someone else is doing. Well, what do you
Speaker 1: call when you can see into the future? Clairvoyant? Clairvoyant? Oh,
Speaker 1: I just figured with a name like that, he was
Speaker 1: some kind of marketing whiz somewhere jim Miller. Where the
Speaker 1: story we tell about Jimmy Miller which told me to
Speaker 1: be sharing many times that Jimmy Miller wants found a
Speaker 1: buck all tangled up in the twine used to bind
Speaker 1: hay bales, and he freed it and then the buck
Speaker 1: kicked his as. Yeah. So anyways, today on Hunting and
Speaker 1: Fishing with Johnnie, I'm joined by my friends Rody Henderson, Hello,
Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan, Miles and Nolty and Phil the podcast engineer
Speaker 1: Taylor he um, should we have a little moment, you know,
Speaker 1: of silence for it for Steve at least the toast.
Speaker 1: I would, I would. I would really like uh to
Speaker 1: do that kind of thing people do when um, when
Speaker 1: everybody shares a word. Oh, just go around and everybody
Speaker 1: says sharing memory or something. That would be that would
Speaker 1: be it would be great. Yeah. Yeah, Well, being is
Speaker 1: how I'm more into the logistics of things. I think
Speaker 1: we gotta figure out how we'd tell the fam and
Speaker 1: then also figure out if we're just gonna keep borrowing
Speaker 1: and stuff like he's still here, just divvy it up
Speaker 1: and take it, or divvy it up and take it. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I'll start uh yeah, but also generous. We fish out
Speaker 1: of the day, well at least until the bite slows down.
Speaker 1: He would want Yeah, he would want that. He'd give
Speaker 1: you the shirt off his back. I learned something. So
Speaker 1: we're here ice fishing and bows in Montana. It's uh,
Speaker 1: super sunny out, so bright and sunny out that we
Speaker 1: decided to erect a nice eskimo. What's this? What's this
Speaker 1: pop up thing called the fat fish? Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: it's like a like I don't remember the numbers. It's
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't fit this thing in a trailer part.
Speaker 1: It's a very get a double wide lot. Well, Cal
Speaker 1: and I lived in it for a few days. It
Speaker 1: was very comfortable. Tell me about that. We just came
Speaker 1: back last week. We went on a little high mountain
Speaker 1: ice fishing trip, chasing around bourbon and brick trout and
Speaker 1: whatever else we could find, and we we just put
Speaker 1: the tent up and slept in it. It's big, it's
Speaker 1: insulated head tons of room for gear cots. If you
Speaker 1: just heard Brody do a very faint um, think that
Speaker 1: it was, but Brody does. Um. Oh, that's because when
Speaker 1: you're guiding and someone it's you gotta be quiet. Oh
Speaker 1: you can't be like, oh you can. That's that's that's it.
Speaker 1: Never mind. Um go on, Yeah, I'm still on the ice.
Speaker 1: You're still under the ice? How where where do you want?
Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared for this. This is you're about done.
Speaker 1: I'm busting up through the ice. Okay, Hey, Steve, I'm
Speaker 1: real quick. You're still not biting real quick? Um. A trifecta, well, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a trifecta. Finger stories. It just came in oh oh,
Speaker 1: something about people getting their fingers chopped off all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: The inspired a guy go on Instagram. I just put
Speaker 1: it up. It'll be old now, so screw by the
Speaker 1: time you hear to scroll way ass down. Uh, you'll
Speaker 1: see a great picture. A guy to send us a
Speaker 1: picture of UM snagged his old man so hard on
Speaker 1: a bad cast with a big saltwater fly. He snagged
Speaker 1: him so hard, did he? Uh? He bust it off
Speaker 1: forty pound tip on the on the forward stroke, and
Speaker 1: it was a great picture of half his old man's
Speaker 1: face with his giant hood just an inch below his eye.
Speaker 1: I posted on Instagram at Stephen Ronella. But a trifecta
Speaker 1: good finger stories came in. Guy wrote in uh oh,
Speaker 1: that might be the fish of the day there. My
Speaker 1: father is an electrician and was wearing his gold wedding
Speaker 1: band at work. That's a good conductor. Um. You know
Speaker 1: when people like to do things about like how we
Speaker 1: won World War two, like we couldn't have won World
Speaker 1: War two without beaute Montana. Yeah, because yeah, well you
Speaker 1: stole my thing. Well, there's a version that we couldn't
Speaker 1: have won World War two without the hydro electric Damns
Speaker 1: on the Columbia because smelting aluminum um requires so much electricity,
Speaker 1: requires so much energy, that we were able to out
Speaker 1: our the crowds. Mhm. Still calling him the crowds. Huh yeah,
Speaker 1: for another generation. I might have my children's children retire
Speaker 1: the anger, you know, my kids, when my kids have kids,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have him go to Yanni solds this party
Speaker 1: and chop into the log their anger at the Germans
Speaker 1: having fired upon their great great grandfather. And it'll be
Speaker 1: gone after and then the family um, the family animosity
Speaker 1: towards the German army, we'll be over. Uh. They shot
Speaker 1: a hole right through my dad's rain Poncho Brody scared
Speaker 1: ship out of them. I get it. I got it.
Speaker 1: And I could tell you some more horrible stories. Uh.
Speaker 1: He made me lose, betraying thought things that won the war.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. There's an argument that our hydro electric projects
Speaker 1: along the Columbia UM I don't know where it is articulated,
Speaker 1: was like we were able to produce aircraft and at
Speaker 1: such like an astonishing rate because we had such an
Speaker 1: ample supply of electricity from hydro electric projects. I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you this is a fact. I'm telling you this
Speaker 1: the theory I heard another one Cal explained the one
Speaker 1: you were given. Well, uh, beaut was uh producing more
Speaker 1: copper than any other place in the world at that time.
Speaker 1: And and are all of our a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: for fitting out chips and everything else, but also brass
Speaker 1: for shell casings. And I heard wiring that like the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, all that stuff was gold wiring. Oh wow, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a great there's a guy. Uh, Ed, there's a
Speaker 1: right if everyone to read a story about all this.
Speaker 1: Ed Dobbs has a long article about beaute in the
Speaker 1: in the metal mining and butte called pennies from hell. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a good explanation of what we're talking about anyhow.
Speaker 1: But why was I talking about that? Though? Somehow I'm
Speaker 1: figuring this power plant or the damn has to do
Speaker 1: with someone losing a finger. Oh it does. God, thing
Speaker 1: I was saying that gold is a good conductor is
Speaker 1: what I was trying to get at, because about the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project and how they use gold wiring. So guy,
Speaker 1: his old man's an electrician, he's got his gold wedding
Speaker 1: ring on it. Work does all makes sense? Now? He
Speaker 1: got to energize wire in contact with his wedding band
Speaker 1: on one side and the ground wire on the other side.
Speaker 1: Melted the wedding band into his finger and had to
Speaker 1: have it surgically removed. Now he just has the scar
Speaker 1: ring and doesn't need to wear a wedding ring anymore.
Speaker 1: He's scarred into like marriage. Uh, scarred into marriage, scarred
Speaker 1: out of marriage. I mean you see guys do their
Speaker 1: gals tattoo the ring on similar concept? Another guy? Uh right,
Speaker 1: so north Uh, same guy? So the man, the man
Speaker 1: that did this to his finger. Okay, he gets in
Speaker 1: his head to make a jewelry box for his wife
Speaker 1: for Mother's Day using some locally sourced Russian olive from
Speaker 1: along the Yellowstone River. M hmm, that's cool. Probably some
Speaker 1: squirrels around there too, loses the whole damn finger on
Speaker 1: the router couldn't find the finger in A week later,
Speaker 1: they found it stuck to a window in the shop.
Speaker 1: WHOA last place you looked? Last place she looked? Um? Right? Oh,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Oh. I was making a bunch of foe
Speaker 1: sighting for the first light Trade show booth, and I
Speaker 1: had to drive it all down to Salt Lake City
Speaker 1: and and was on a real tight schedule, and I
Speaker 1: had to go came up a little short, so I
Speaker 1: swung by the wood shop that I was borrowing and
Speaker 1: was zipping. You know, I was basically making veneers, right,
Speaker 1: which just take the fancy looking face off aboard and
Speaker 1: cut it real thin. And then you just take that
Speaker 1: so it's not structural or anything, it's just ornamental. Um
Speaker 1: and and put my thumb right into the end of
Speaker 1: the blade on the table saw. But you still have it,
Speaker 1: still have it. But I'll tell you, um, immediate recognition
Speaker 1: of the whole situation, right Kelly might explain to people
Speaker 1: how you're fishing and why effectively. Yeah, no, I give up.
Speaker 1: You're right. That's why earlier I thought you were wrong.
Speaker 1: You didn't invent this, But I just dropped his fish
Speaker 1: as the whole explain your explain your approach, cal Then
Speaker 1: I got one letter, the last of our trifecta finger story.
Speaker 1: So the the approach is basically just using the rod
Speaker 1: and real dead um, dole out enough line and keep
Speaker 1: the line organized and out of the way, and then
Speaker 1: I just hold onto the mono filament and jake with
Speaker 1: my fingertip. Um. I'm over here just doing it like
Speaker 1: the old timers with the pole. But the reason being
Speaker 1: is like, I'm just not a good I don't have
Speaker 1: the feel that you Midwest folks do for perch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that. Uh. Here's the final one, final
Speaker 1: finger story. I like this couple. It's a couple and
Speaker 1: for Valentine's weekend, they're going wolf Fund okay and uh
Speaker 1: a little Valentine's trip. But as they're loading up the uh.
Speaker 1: As they're loading up aside by side into an enclosed trailer,
Speaker 1: the dad has the mom guiding the winch line. Oh right.
Speaker 1: At the first knockle oh, he says, happy Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1: Do you remember that one forever? Uh, Here's what I've
Speaker 1: been wanting talk about for a long time. A guy
Speaker 1: from in the U. S. Marines. This is this is
Speaker 1: like you pay. Like most of stuff we talked about,
Speaker 1: you just ignore, but don't ignore this. The guy in
Speaker 1: the marine says he's watching our show Meat Eater on Netflix,
Speaker 1: and he notices that when I am scanning my surroundings,
Speaker 1: I scan left to right, which is true. And he's
Speaker 1: not talking about through binoculars. He's just talking. He just
Speaker 1: walked up onto a little rise and he stopped you
Speaker 1: take a look around. He said that we get used
Speaker 1: to this because in our culture, not all culture like
Speaker 1: Jap In Japan, like you start at the back of
Speaker 1: what we'd call like the back of the book and
Speaker 1: read it right the wrong way. Um here right we read.
Speaker 1: We do a lot of uh, left or right. He's
Speaker 1: saying that in the Marine Corps, they are taught to
Speaker 1: scan right to left. Does it make stuff jump out?
Speaker 1: Because it makes things jump out. I've been doing it.
Speaker 1: It is not the same like because you're so used
Speaker 1: to going and just moving too fast, you go to
Speaker 1: like I just started looking out my window because I
Speaker 1: scanned the hill behind my house all the time, and
Speaker 1: I scanned it left or right, and I started doing
Speaker 1: it right left. It's a different experience, man, you experience
Speaker 1: everything differently trying to look right to left. I think
Speaker 1: it's a guy. I need to do both ways because
Speaker 1: it's different, Like your eye hits different ship going right
Speaker 1: to left. It's a good tip, hot tip. Last last story,
Speaker 1: the finger losing stories. Lad to you if people who
Speaker 1: regular listeners have been following UM lead you a lot
Speaker 1: of nipple losing stories. Uh nipple ripping? Is anybody actually
Speaker 1: lost in this guy did feeding a horse. Oh as
Speaker 1: a kid holding a bunch of hay for a horse.
Speaker 1: The horse got a gro and irritated took the nipple off.
Speaker 1: That's terrible. I'll bounce for my mom's horse. Bit right
Speaker 1: through my jeans. One time, he says he gets fans.
Speaker 1: Get everything back. It's a guy telling us about his
Speaker 1: buddy that has happened to him. But he says he
Speaker 1: gets fanom nipple syndrome now and he gets within a
Speaker 1: hundred feet of a horse and his good nipple starts
Speaker 1: to twitch. You think of that, I'm gonna close out
Speaker 1: a horse coming. I'm gonna how do you know? I'm
Speaker 1: gonna close out this round with what I think might
Speaker 1: be a bogus finger losing story. Guy. The guy says
Speaker 1: they used to always sneak into us to a swimming
Speaker 1: pool they weren't supposed to swim into, and one day
Speaker 1: they get busted, so they run out of the pool
Speaker 1: and jump the fence and his buddy loses his finger
Speaker 1: jumping the fence. Then later they go back to find
Speaker 1: it and check this out. This is I have a
Speaker 1: hard time believing this is why we might be tied
Speaker 1: up and finger losing stories because it might be that
Speaker 1: it's just entered the bullshit, he says, they go back
Speaker 1: and find a different finger. I mean, is they're like, yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Then? Do you be like, well,
Speaker 1: put it anyway? It's a finger. That's what I've got.
Speaker 1: Cal uh a woman sent Have you seen this box
Speaker 1: that we just got in the mail? We got a
Speaker 1: box full of a bunch of kinds of baby hand
Speaker 1: sanitizing wipes and ziplock bags that are marked one says
Speaker 1: Ryan and one says Steve. And it was at uh
Speaker 1: watcher of the show remarking on how filthy we seem
Speaker 1: to be all the time and our filthy food handling techniques,
Speaker 1: and thought that we would uh be wise to start
Speaker 1: carrying these labeled bags full of these wipes, thank you,
Speaker 1: you know, which got me thinking. I had a note
Speaker 1: for a long time to talk about a thing like
Speaker 1: we used what a lot a lot of wet wipes
Speaker 1: uh in in in place of toilet paper in addition
Speaker 1: to toilet paper backpacking, and um, I made a note
Speaker 1: to talk about this when you get a cold morning
Speaker 1: and you got a frozen one? Yeah, how much that?
Speaker 1: What I like to do is I take to have
Speaker 1: frozen one out and I actually tuck it against my
Speaker 1: skin on my shoulder up. That's the first thing I do.
Speaker 1: Then I pulled my pants down and you know, no,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta think ahead. Then I had that
Speaker 1: sucker and it is wet and warm. That's a hot tip, man,
Speaker 1: That's better than scanning all that left it right. I'm
Speaker 1: not not a traditional uh baby wipe you user, you know,
Speaker 1: you know it's I always get disgrunt told with extra
Speaker 1: stuff and what is extra stuff? And what's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but what about extra stuff on your butt? Well? Uh,
Speaker 1: Miles and nys uh. Like that last ice fishing trip,
Speaker 1: I was having a bit of what they call monkey
Speaker 1: butt your jap ass, Yeah, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of later like, I don't like calling it monkey butt,
Speaker 1: but um but hold on now, Well you might not
Speaker 1: be talking about two different things, but I feel like
Speaker 1: monkey chap has this to do more with like the
Speaker 1: the outer meat in the chaffing and then where your
Speaker 1: butt cheeks. But it can happen from having a poopy bottom,
Speaker 1: I think, and not to me, but I've heard from
Speaker 1: reliable people. Well, even if it's not that, I feel
Speaker 1: like the solution, though, clarify, is to get get again,
Speaker 1: talk about what the problem is exactly. Oh, just like
Speaker 1: a chap butt cheeks where they rubbed cheeks. We're talking cheeks. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's a friction sitch here. Spinster is fine. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think people's spinsters have anything to do with chaps,
Speaker 1: but I think, oh, but sometimes I've had an irritated
Speaker 1: spinster from I'm sorry, how are you think the word
Speaker 1: you're looking at we're talking about hold his heroes. It's
Speaker 1: like talking to the who's the guy Colonel Clake? The
Speaker 1: way it's a tough one. I'm gonna take a shot
Speaker 1: at it. Uh, spin spinters, there's no season. I just
Speaker 1: call it one of my orfic So. We had wickedly
Speaker 1: lower temperatures, right, and um, all we know is like
Speaker 1: in Town, the one night hit thirty six below in Town.
Speaker 1: I think we had a bit of an inversion so
Speaker 1: it was warmer. But also we had a bottle of
Speaker 1: bourbon freeze up there, so that's when you know you're fishing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bourbon freezes, and I've never seen that happen. We
Speaker 1: woke up in the morning and the bottle was frozen
Speaker 1: solid and I did a little extra research on that,
Speaker 1: and it seems like most folks agree that, um, somewhere
Speaker 1: in that negative fourteen a negative eighteen range is what
Speaker 1: it takes to freeze a bottle of eight proof whiskey.
Speaker 1: I said bourbon first, but you know whiskey anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: So I went out to one of our ice fishing
Speaker 1: holes that we hadn't been using and just punched a
Speaker 1: hole through that and gave myself a good, good cleaning
Speaker 1: out there on the ice and really totally fine, even
Speaker 1: at you know whatever, negative four teen to eighteen to twenty,
Speaker 1: it's totally fine, like, and I didn't walk away from
Speaker 1: that being like, man, I wish I had baby wipes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with you, baby wipes spring up, but there's a
Speaker 1: disposal issue, yes, with baby wipes. And what I like
Speaker 1: is I like these single use wet ones. Granted I
Speaker 1: don't use them every time, the single use wet ones,
Speaker 1: because what I'll do is I just do like though, uh,
Speaker 1: it's just a light touch up, a light check, a
Speaker 1: quick check at the end with a wet wipe. Then
Speaker 1: I just tuck it back into its little baggy. Okay,
Speaker 1: got you? But or you can dry it out if
Speaker 1: you got time, you dry it out in the sun
Speaker 1: and you can burn it. Yeah. I don't have any babies,
Speaker 1: cal I think if you had a couple of laying around,
Speaker 1: you'd use the wet wipes. I'm gonna advocate for wet
Speaker 1: wipes beyond just just the be hole though. Like when
Speaker 1: I was when we were guiding a wilderness cab in
Speaker 1: Alaska and you didn't get to bathe very often, Like
Speaker 1: taking one of those the end of the day and
Speaker 1: just kind of hitting up the necessary areas with a
Speaker 1: quick once over really kept you going and kept you
Speaker 1: fresh enough for like however long you had to be
Speaker 1: out there. It was. It was kind of a lifesaver.
Speaker 1: You ever see the giant ones called like shower in
Speaker 1: a bag, it's an ample. It's like an ample sized
Speaker 1: wet white for doing a wipe down at night. You
Speaker 1: feel good sometimes you know, it's amazing, like you need
Speaker 1: nicely done, nice man. That's the howie Jake, uh yep, yep,
Speaker 1: y honest tell everybody about about your People have been
Speaker 1: asking like how you got kind of like equit being
Speaker 1: on the show and everything. You threw that one back too.
Speaker 1: I thought that was a big one that's a fat perch.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there, we haven't pulled one out of the ice.
Speaker 1: It isn't a big pregnant female. You know. They're a
Speaker 1: free cast spawner. Oh they are. I thought they did so.
Speaker 1: No nests. No, they like to go off wind points
Speaker 1: and stuff, and free cast spawn Let's try to blue
Speaker 1: bluegill being a bluegill being a nest spawner, bed spawner.
Speaker 1: Let's try to keep eggs eggs and see if we
Speaker 1: can't cure them. Have you ever done that? We fry them,
Speaker 1: but you know I've fried him and I've poached him.
Speaker 1: I have not tried curing perch eggs yet. Well it's
Speaker 1: very simple to do so it wouldn't take but minutes
Speaker 1: to try it. So Miles, you're actually being humane over
Speaker 1: there and and dispatching your fish. That is what I do.
Speaker 1: I know not everybody agrees, but I don't think you
Speaker 1: can disagree with it. I think it'd be more like
Speaker 1: whether you take the time every time. I think I
Speaker 1: think that's a better way of putting it. Uh yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: let's say a big thing grab. We talked about four,
Speaker 1: but big thing grabs you brooties on big thing nice
Speaker 1: perch a big thing, grabs you and drags you under water,
Speaker 1: has no intention of letting you go. Would you rather
Speaker 1: it drove a big spike through your head or the
Speaker 1: wait until you uh, you know, died. I'll take the
Speaker 1: spike through the head. Yeah, you've been gone a lot, mum.
Speaker 1: Can you tell people what you've been like? The project
Speaker 1: we've been working on. We've been working on project called
Speaker 1: the tentatively called the fur Hat Ice Fish Tour. Is
Speaker 1: there to keep hearing that there might be a different title,
Speaker 1: I like, there's no. I don't think who did you
Speaker 1: hear that from? Miles was involved in one of the conversations.
Speaker 1: What do you guys think about calling it? No? No No, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's just that we're kind of separating out some
Speaker 1: episodes into the tour part, coming to the local part.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be fur hat ice fishing, no questions. The
Speaker 1: ones that I worked on hat, yeah, the ones that
Speaker 1: we went on were you know, when we were traveling
Speaker 1: around that's the fur hat ice Tour. Yeah. Because I
Speaker 1: made it a point to packground not only my for
Speaker 1: beaver fur hat, but also Steve's dad's uh coon skin
Speaker 1: fur hat, and then Steve's beaver fur hat and uh
Speaker 1: a lot of the guests that we uh speared and
Speaker 1: fished with for him. We're quite excited about it. And listen, man,
Speaker 1: those hats are no jo, They're amazing. Dude, Cal warm
Speaker 1: a f cal and I I slept. I was told
Speaker 1: on Instagram that I moved farther away from being a
Speaker 1: boomer by using a F in my post the other day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess that's like a real hip thing to do, anyhoy.
Speaker 1: Uh So yeah, so Miles and I Miles have been
Speaker 1: producing this content and we took a couple of videographers
Speaker 1: with us. I want to right now formally put to
Speaker 1: rest any notion of this not being the fur hat
Speaker 1: ice tour. Okay, chief creative officer speaking, um and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: We went to uh Minnesota first and we fished unnamed
Speaker 1: or speared and unnamed lake very the very very first
Speaker 1: thing with Mark Norquist. Not that it's unnamed. You just
Speaker 1: don't want to get into it. Yeah, it has a name.
Speaker 1: It has a name, but he asked us to keep it.
Speaker 1: I got you keep his spot quiet. And uh we
Speaker 1: spirit some pike and some whitefish. Uh. And then Chef
Speaker 1: Lucas Leaf Uh cooked us up some delicious whitefish cakes
Speaker 1: and uh what else some fried pike. It was really good, delicious.
Speaker 1: You know, years ago we did some white fish spearing
Speaker 1: on Whitefish Bay. Hm. You know on the record the
Speaker 1: Adaman Fitzgerald, he says how they would have made Whitefish
Speaker 1: Bay had they put fifty more What does Gordon say?
Speaker 1: Does he say fifteen more miles hinder? The searchers all
Speaker 1: say they'd have made white Fish Bay if they'd put
Speaker 1: fifteen more miles behind her? Yeah, that sounds anyways in
Speaker 1: that bay? What what what happened with your fish? Uh?
Speaker 1: And the spirit at bay? And uh? Did you guys
Speaker 1: line the bottom with anything for for visibility? No? Because
Speaker 1: it turns out that and and everywhere we have speared
Speaker 1: as had the same rule. You can't really do that.
Speaker 1: You can't lay down anything that you can't retrieve it's
Speaker 1: organic matter. That's a good rule. Because we were just
Speaker 1: kind of like younger and not didn't really think things
Speaker 1: through as much. We would sliced potatoes very thin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then drop sliced potatoes down the whole to where
Speaker 1: you got a nice white bed on the floor wild
Speaker 1: so you can see the fish pass over it because
Speaker 1: it was deep, murky water and you'd have those taters
Speaker 1: down there. But what's funny about it is there a current.
Speaker 1: So you guys have some dude outside the hut drill
Speaker 1: a hole and the current would vary. So some guy
Speaker 1: outside the hut would drill a hole and fired down
Speaker 1: the potato slice and you yell out like a little
Speaker 1: farther and they gotta go and drill another hole and
Speaker 1: drop tato slice and you're staring down your hole and
Speaker 1: try to see that if also when he's out on
Speaker 1: bull's eye, it's like live ammo. You know. Then you
Speaker 1: start firing in tat slices because they're they're bombing in
Speaker 1: at the right spot. But my brother Danny, he really
Speaker 1: kind of pioneered this for our group of friends. And
Speaker 1: uh but man, you'd fish all you well, you like
Speaker 1: drinking fish all day to get a handful of these fish.
Speaker 1: But man, was it fun. And then you're shandy. You
Speaker 1: had to have your name on your shane. Remember one
Speaker 1: year they had their name on the shanty. But this
Speaker 1: thing froze in like wood and it throws into a degree.
Speaker 1: You weren't getting it off, so they tried to just
Speaker 1: leave it begin being young and dumb, they tried to
Speaker 1: just leave it, and then they got a note us
Speaker 1: like get your shanny, and they came out and had
Speaker 1: to burn that son of a bit out of the ice.
Speaker 1: There was no getting it out of the ice, which
Speaker 1: is also illegal most places. So I wonder if there's
Speaker 1: like a middle ground there where you could be like, well,
Speaker 1: I put a bunch of pontoons. I fixed a bunch
Speaker 1: of pontoons to the shannon and tied it to the beach,
Speaker 1: waiting for it to float. All right, So I'm sorry, guys, No,
Speaker 1: that was a good divergence. And I've never I've never
Speaker 1: done I mean, I've done open water ocean spear fishing before,
Speaker 1: but I've never done ice spearing before. The difference being
Speaker 1: that you're throwing a spear through a hole in the ice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really but it's a it's a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. I didn't know how I was gonna
Speaker 1: feel about it. You know, there's a lot of sitting
Speaker 1: and waiting, and I didn't know how that was gonna go.
Speaker 1: But man, I I don't know about you, Johnny, but
Speaker 1: I thought that was that was great. I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: like a final wrap up thought comparing general ice fishing,
Speaker 1: like what we're doing now to spe Oh no, I
Speaker 1: haven't got it. You haven't even started yet. I know
Speaker 1: I have a lot to go through. Because you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the sturgeon. Yeah, so, uh yeah, we
Speaker 1: speared there and then we went over to Lake Winning
Speaker 1: Bank explained the process. You want to get deep here.
Speaker 1: I wanted to. I want you to tell people about
Speaker 1: because you've engaged in three kinds of spearing, northern spearing,
Speaker 1: white fish spearing, sturgeon sparing. True, but the white fish
Speaker 1: and the northern sparing was through the same hole. And no,
Speaker 1: but they're not drawn to the same thing they are. Yes,
Speaker 1: we were using the same decoys. Oh, you know, we
Speaker 1: used to use the lure men. Sorry, In amongst the
Speaker 1: tator slices, we're a lot of boiled the smallest macaroni
Speaker 1: you could find boiled. And you felt like that was
Speaker 1: chilling him. You do I feel like it eating the macaroni? Yes,
Speaker 1: I bet they were taking them for a little grubs
Speaker 1: that look just like CM knows in and he's picked
Speaker 1: the macaroni that landed off target and watch him and
Speaker 1: the son's bitches to be down there eating maxi. So
Speaker 1: why were you were you spearing him because that was
Speaker 1: the only legal method of take Why weren't you fishing
Speaker 1: with macaroni? Uh? These were a species of whitefish called
Speaker 1: monominee and they have a they have a mouth that
Speaker 1: would make like the pupil of your eye look big too.
Speaker 1: But they would go down and kind of it's just
Speaker 1: like very hard to hook. Uh. And it was deep
Speaker 1: and you didn't throw the spear. It was a very
Speaker 1: heavy weighted spear with very fine needles, many needles, probably
Speaker 1: like twenty needles across. We used to make our own.
Speaker 1: We made some of her own. Uh. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a fan blade that you could propel that you
Speaker 1: couldn't like you know that white Some of those white
Speaker 1: fish spears have like a what's the word I'm looking
Speaker 1: for plane, like the even plane them like you could
Speaker 1: shoot off at an angle. This you would have to
Speaker 1: hold over it directly over the fish eyeball down it
Speaker 1: and just open your fingers and let it fall. And
Speaker 1: it was waited like you take a pipe and fill
Speaker 1: the pipe of lead, and out of that pipe with
Speaker 1: all these needles and drop it on them them the
Speaker 1: bottom but small little fish, but there's no way they'd
Speaker 1: come into the same lure you'd use for a northern.
Speaker 1: So you're picking up fishing taters at the same time
Speaker 1: fishing taters. It's funny you mentioned that because you're right
Speaker 1: now and then you would get a tater. You could
Speaker 1: get a tater on your thing. I'm like, I'm like
Speaker 1: a poser. Danny and and our friend Matt Rolls were
Speaker 1: they were like the guys that they pioneered it. I
Speaker 1: just would go up and visit them and and I'd
Speaker 1: go out there and you know, basically be like mooching
Speaker 1: off them, like their ship, their spot there, no how
Speaker 1: and I'd be it sounds fun right, Yeah, we wanted
Speaker 1: to do that. Like I said, when we were spearing
Speaker 1: for the pike and whitefish, were not allowed to put
Speaker 1: anything down that you couldn't retrieve, and the water was
Speaker 1: pretty clear. We were only spearing probably five six ft
Speaker 1: right um where you could really see the whole bottom,
Speaker 1: which was sweet because when the perch came in. Of
Speaker 1: course they did that when we didn't have a rod ready,
Speaker 1: and then the next day we had a rod ready,
Speaker 1: the perch didn't come in, but you could just sit
Speaker 1: there and watch them hanging out doing their thing, and
Speaker 1: you know it's nice you just watching watching the the
Speaker 1: plant life down there moving around the current. When you're
Speaker 1: just staring into a hole that where there's no bottom,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit tougher. You know, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: quite have that slow TV field because you're you're fishing
Speaker 1: northeast in such deep water slow I mean sorry, shallow
Speaker 1: where we could see the bottom very well, so we
Speaker 1: didn't need staring into a hole with no bottom. Well
Speaker 1: that comes later. That that's the sturgeon. Can you do it?
Speaker 1: Can you discuss this form in a way that it's outlined,
Speaker 1: like what the how we moved through the tour? Is
Speaker 1: that what you're asking? No, I want to outline by fish,
Speaker 1: So picture like Roman numeral one, yeah, and under that
Speaker 1: is what I'm also like fishing, so I might not
Speaker 1: miss something. But what are we on right now? We're
Speaker 1: still on pike and whitefish at the at the first stop. Okay,
Speaker 1: But but I don't want to talk about them in
Speaker 1: the same way. But well it's hard not to because
Speaker 1: we were doing the exact same thing. One would just
Speaker 1: show up or the other one. We literally changed nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing same speeds, same decoy, same whole, same everything I
Speaker 1: do it. Um. Yeah, so well, if you really want
Speaker 1: to start a step one, we went out there, we
Speaker 1: drilled a hole. We drilled, drilled, and then peeked down
Speaker 1: into that hole with the jacket over are our heads
Speaker 1: to check for clarity and for depth. And when Mark
Speaker 1: felt like we had both of those nails, and what
Speaker 1: did he like? Uh again that you know? I think
Speaker 1: he was looking at five to six ft of depth
Speaker 1: and looking for just good clarity so that we could
Speaker 1: see fish coming through and a hole in the weeds
Speaker 1: that were looking And you want, you want to have
Speaker 1: a sandy spot in the weeds that you can look at,
Speaker 1: um for visibility. Yeah, not that you couldn't clear some
Speaker 1: some plant matter out of the way once you drilled
Speaker 1: your spirit hole. But then it would, you know, muck
Speaker 1: it all up. It would take a while to settle out.
Speaker 1: So it's better just to find a hole for better visibility.
Speaker 1: I'm realizing how much I missed you just hear you
Speaker 1: explain this. Um. Oh thanks, that's nice. Um. Then we
Speaker 1: drilled I think six holes kind of like what we
Speaker 1: have here right in front of us. UM in a
Speaker 1: rough three by four ft um pattern and then connected
Speaker 1: those drilled holes by using a hand powered saw that
Speaker 1: was specifically made for um cutting ice. Is it like
Speaker 1: my ice saw? I don't know if I've seen your saw,
Speaker 1: but like a you know, solid three foot blade folding folds.
Speaker 1: Was it blue blade? Yeah? It was to have a
Speaker 1: pin that. Yeah. You know, we used two different manual now,
Speaker 1: one of them was that blue one. And the teeth
Speaker 1: the teeth very far apart on it. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: cuts surprisingly well. I was, I was shut out. I
Speaker 1: bought one for beaver trapping, but just never used it.
Speaker 1: I used the acts and stuff. So we cut a
Speaker 1: hole and here we removed I say here because later
Speaker 1: when we did some surgeons fishing, we also cut a
Speaker 1: hole and we did something different with the ice um
Speaker 1: that we cut there, but here we removed it, put
Speaker 1: screws in it and pull it out. You know, it
Speaker 1: kind of broke apart. And so uh, he just had
Speaker 1: these giant tongs, giant metal tongs that you could grab
Speaker 1: these big chunks with and yank yank them out ice tonks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh it works pretty slick. And I think it's
Speaker 1: additive when I tell you little things that I think of.
Speaker 1: I think that it's uh, it's just part of the deal.
Speaker 1: And my sister in law's ranch they still have they
Speaker 1: have a pond that was made for their ranch. Is
Speaker 1: some old ass ranch. Yeah, I've walked across that. They
Speaker 1: still have a pond called the ice pond, and they
Speaker 1: still have the ice house. That's awesome next to the pond.
Speaker 1: And the pond was made for the purpose of like
Speaker 1: it would freeze, you would cut ice and drag it
Speaker 1: into the ice house for the summer. That's really still
Speaker 1: sitting there. That's amazing. Go on, Um, So we remove
Speaker 1: the ice and then we set up a dark house.
Speaker 1: Very important when you're spearing that the inside of your
Speaker 1: shelter is black dark. It's colored dark. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: not all of them are, but I thinking helps because
Speaker 1: what you're trying to do is limit the reflection, any
Speaker 1: sort of reflection onto that open piece of water that
Speaker 1: you've just created. So you also throw snow all around
Speaker 1: the edges so you're not letting in any you know,
Speaker 1: light coming. The only light you want is the stuff
Speaker 1: that's going through the ice outside of your shanty or
Speaker 1: pop up tent and then coming up through the hole.
Speaker 1: I just thought of something. Tell me. Uh, this guy
Speaker 1: rode in and his body had his fish finder down,
Speaker 1: and the guy was fiddling around his own hole next
Speaker 1: to him, and his body's like, sees something, you can't
Speaker 1: tell what it is. When he sees something dropping m hm,
Speaker 1: and they think it's like a fish. They can't tell
Speaker 1: what the fish is doing, like the fishes at the
Speaker 1: surface but drop down. And later the other guy realizes
Speaker 1: his phone was gone, the heat on on his flash
Speaker 1: er he'd watched. The guys were go on, I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just gonna keep my thoughts. That's too bad.
Speaker 1: We don't believe you. I'll make a bet. No I woke.
Speaker 1: It's so annoying. Gone. Um. So there we were inside
Speaker 1: of our blacked out I sent miles were using an
Speaker 1: Eskimo I sent similar to this one. Weren't we exactly
Speaker 1: like this one? One time I was out ice fishing.
Speaker 1: I'm joking and uh, I'm trying to think. Well, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so the decoys, the decoys are a huge part of spearing,
Speaker 1: and Mark had decoys from maybe even as a grandfather,
Speaker 1: from grandpa, and just like they hit it in a
Speaker 1: really cool old school briefcase. Yeah, the briefcase was a hundred.
Speaker 1: The briefcase was as cool as the decoys that were inside,
Speaker 1: Like a legit briefcase. Yeah, yeah, like you know how
Speaker 1: it is. It's like random briefcase laying around nobody's using.
Speaker 1: Let's put the decoys in there, and so it was
Speaker 1: handed down. I think he said that he had he
Speaker 1: had a sort of share it with his brothers, but
Speaker 1: he he was the keeper of the briefcase. Pretty funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just dug a briefcase out of the dumpster there
Speaker 1: at my condo complex. I don't know what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do with it. I just didn't feel like it should
Speaker 1: have got thrown away someone else. You found Cal's story.
Speaker 1: I want everybody to know. This is something Cal thought of,
Speaker 1: not me, but it got me thinking about what he
Speaker 1: was already telling me yesterday. Go ahead, Kel, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're going on, but I found two pairs
Speaker 1: of boots in there too, what I'm talking about, And
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like either one of one brand spanking new,
Speaker 1: the other one spanking new ditch diggers. Yeah yeah, irrigation boots.
Speaker 1: And then the other set is like a nice pair
Speaker 1: of ropers that just need a little bit of love,
Speaker 1: but the souls like leather soles and totally in good shape.
Speaker 1: So then Cal's got to go hunting around for a home.
Speaker 1: And those the ropers that you left at my house,
Speaker 1: those are the ropers I left at your house. Yes,
Speaker 1: what a mystery. I've been asking everybody, and he's like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Like, yeah, there's a pair
Speaker 1: of boots out there with heels on him, laces done.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew, Well, I asked, I asked your wife if
Speaker 1: if she, I was like, I don't want to leave
Speaker 1: these with you. If they just turn into something that
Speaker 1: then you have to go take the goodwill, right. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: I got this neighbor who keeps like, if you want,
Speaker 1: there's a government building right next door that's got a
Speaker 1: recycling dumpster for cardboard. And this dude like just the
Speaker 1: amount of cardboard that is in the dumpster like clogs
Speaker 1: the whole dumpster with cardboard that is totally recyclable, which
Speaker 1: ticks me off. And then he's always throwing away brand
Speaker 1: new stuff. So I'm always every time it makes me
Speaker 1: not want to go to the trash is every time
Speaker 1: I go to the dumpster, I'm climbing in the damn thing,
Speaker 1: pulling stuff out, saving the world cattle. Yeah go and
Speaker 1: uh yeah. The decoy with the pike and the white fish.
Speaker 1: We had a decoy stick which had line just between
Speaker 1: like two small nails that were pounded into the stick.
Speaker 1: Line wrapped around it, so you could just length of
Speaker 1: the line down your decoy and one guy if you
Speaker 1: if your spear with two guys, one guy sits there
Speaker 1: and and uh works the decoy stick. And the decoys
Speaker 1: have fins on them that aren't there just for looks,
Speaker 1: but actually you can tweak them. They're usually like alluminum,
Speaker 1: so you can adjust them, and how how much the
Speaker 1: decoy um sort of planes out, and how wide of
Speaker 1: a circle it makes when you drop it, so you
Speaker 1: can sort of, you know, jake it fast, jake it slow,
Speaker 1: and then just let it glide. And some of them,
Speaker 1: if you bring to the top of the hole, they'll
Speaker 1: glide for I don't know, ten seconds before it quits moving.
Speaker 1: Were these guys not into the Are they not into
Speaker 1: that little real there's a real you hang from your know,
Speaker 1: some guys will do the pulley system. None of the
Speaker 1: people we were with did they go direct Rod yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty. It's not even calling a rod
Speaker 1: is not it's a stick jiggin pole. It's just like
Speaker 1: a stick you pick up off the ground, a couple
Speaker 1: of nails pound. It looks more like Harry Potter's wand
Speaker 1: than a fish and pole. Do you guys get the impression? Though?
Speaker 1: The actual look of the decoy is a factor or
Speaker 1: is it just something about the size? I think for
Speaker 1: pike it matters, but for none of the others. My
Speaker 1: limited knowledge which is granted, very very small, but it
Speaker 1: seemed to me the pike we're going to be keyed
Speaker 1: into something because they were the only ones that we
Speaker 1: were spearing that are predatory fish. Yeah, and when they
Speaker 1: came in, some of them came in hot, you know,
Speaker 1: and like looking like they're gonna smash your decoy. I
Speaker 1: don't think we actually ever had one want to actually
Speaker 1: eat it, actually eat it. Okay, But well those guys
Speaker 1: like say, ah, this white and red decoy is not working.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try the green and yellow one for sure.
Speaker 1: It ain't no use. It ain't no use. The red
Speaker 1: and white was actually the hot call was and is
Speaker 1: this stuff that we can look forward to on some footage,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see it, and then it's so far below
Speaker 1: the ice. Do you want to work that because you
Speaker 1: want to bring them up right, you want to bring
Speaker 1: him up into spear range. Well, the bottom was only
Speaker 1: six ft away, and I speared fish from the bottom
Speaker 1: all the way up to probably two ft below the surface.
Speaker 1: When we used to set tip ups, like if we're
Speaker 1: setting tip ups and tw water, we and this is
Speaker 1: in Michian where you can use live bait, h if
Speaker 1: you're in water, we would we would hang that suckermento
Speaker 1: six ft off the bottom, thinking that he just has
Speaker 1: better chance of seeing it from way the hell off
Speaker 1: rather than it being down high and long. You're like,
Speaker 1: you're imagine him cruising long on the bottom and seeing
Speaker 1: that black suckermento against the white ice. That was always
Speaker 1: the logic, right, Yeah. Then it might be that he's
Speaker 1: reluctant to then leave his little zone maybe, but that
Speaker 1: was a thinking I like that. Yeah, I will say
Speaker 1: I picked up one tip from my own mistake with
Speaker 1: with pike spearing, and uh, and that is when you
Speaker 1: see one coming in, because sometimes you can see him
Speaker 1: a ways away and the one of the only really
Speaker 1: what I think was really big pike that I saw
Speaker 1: coming in. I got a little too excited, spooked him
Speaker 1: and I was like bike guys pike and that things
Speaker 1: blew out. Yeah, he didn't even come to the hall spooked,
Speaker 1: like turned and blew out and coming from a ways
Speaker 1: because of electronics or because my naked eye. Because the
Speaker 1: whole salt. Right, So you got a three by four
Speaker 1: ft hole, and um, you could were your cal i
Speaker 1: sitting are sitting opposite of each other right now here
Speaker 1: in this hut. And so if we had a hole
Speaker 1: cut here underneath us, I could probably see well passed
Speaker 1: underneath your butt. Okay, especially if a fish was two
Speaker 1: or three ft below the ice and you could see
Speaker 1: the same thing underneath my butt. Did you take that
Speaker 1: saw and angle cut your edge so you get even
Speaker 1: better visibility? You know, we had a shallow ice there. Um,
Speaker 1: but in a later spearing story we do angle cut it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good trick. It's it's it's a good trick,
Speaker 1: but it's freaking creepy. When you're sitting there, it looks
Speaker 1: it looks like there's no ice. It's it's a trip.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so we uh jake, they will decoy around
Speaker 1: and uh. And the thing with decoys is is that
Speaker 1: you can have the one that looks like a fish, redhead,
Speaker 1: white body, chart, shrews, whatever. And then the next thing
Speaker 1: the guys like, yeah, but you know what my favorite
Speaker 1: is is this golf ball. And he's got a golf
Speaker 1: ball with an islet sticking out of it, and he
Speaker 1: ties that thing on and sits there, and after ten minutes,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm sorry, but let's go back to the
Speaker 1: fish with the redhead. Um. They got all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff that they'll put down there, and it's illegal to
Speaker 1: hang a sucker down in there anymore. They changed the
Speaker 1: law in Minnesota. We just found this out that you
Speaker 1: can now we had at one point we had suckers
Speaker 1: on harnesses swimming around down there. Didn't do us any good,
Speaker 1: but we tried it. That rule has changed, did he
Speaker 1: do you remember when he said it changed in the
Speaker 1: last five years. I want to say, like like like
Speaker 1: a fourteen age sucker. No, we were fishing smaller than
Speaker 1: they were, more like four inch suckers. And when you
Speaker 1: say harness, it's like a set of hooks, right, You're
Speaker 1: not like a little handmade little chest harnesses for like
Speaker 1: seeing people with their dogs these days. No, it was
Speaker 1: not hooked. There were no hooks in that that fish
Speaker 1: at all. What purely harnessed? Can you guys explain why
Speaker 1: people would choose to spear rather like kind of as
Speaker 1: Steve earlier, but like why were why were you spearing
Speaker 1: instead of fishing? I think a lot of times it's
Speaker 1: way more productive. Well, that's my question. Why we're sitting
Speaker 1: here with gigs right now? You know, many paying fish,
Speaker 1: we'd have not many ship because they're down there staring
Speaker 1: at it. We don't have a camera down by guarante
Speaker 1: either down there staring at it. I think there are
Speaker 1: a couple of answers that question. One is a lot
Speaker 1: of people get into the historic nature of it, right.
Speaker 1: Spirit has been around for a long time. It's it's
Speaker 1: a tradition. You know, Mark, who we were experiing with,
Speaker 1: was taught by his grandfather, who was taught by who
Speaker 1: knows before him, and for him there's a sense of
Speaker 1: nostalgia and pride in continuing that tradition. So I think
Speaker 1: I think for some folks that's part of it. Um
Speaker 1: with the white fish and the pike, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I think we probably would have done better just standard fishing.
Speaker 1: But it's so much fun. It's so interactive and engaging
Speaker 1: because you're just looking into this hole and you can
Speaker 1: see him coming in. If you're not like me and
Speaker 1: get all excited and spooked fish, they actually come in
Speaker 1: and you can spire him. That to me was it's
Speaker 1: a different way of fishing, and I found it to
Speaker 1: be differently satisfying. And then we haven't got there yet.
Speaker 1: Yeahn he hasn't got there yet. But when you get
Speaker 1: to the sturgeon, you're not allowed to fish for them
Speaker 1: with line, So that's the only way that you can
Speaker 1: take one of those fish. Okay, briefcases out you're jigging
Speaker 1: the golf ball. You go back to the red and
Speaker 1: white fish. Um. Yeah. And then eventually, sorry Brodie, eventually
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think what the first fish was it
Speaker 1: came in. Was it a white fish or a pike?
Speaker 1: To remember. But it's tricky because you're you need to
Speaker 1: make sure you know there's other fish swimming around in
Speaker 1: these lakes that you can't spear, you know, and if
Speaker 1: he's at the bottom, you'll be like, Okay, you gotta
Speaker 1: know for sure what you're what you're throwing a spear act.
Speaker 1: There's no catching release, you know, with the old spirit
Speaker 1: giant barbs on it um. So either way, I don't
Speaker 1: I can't remember as a pike or or a white fish.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I got really lucky. I think I ended
Speaker 1: up spearing two of each and then I only missed one.
Speaker 1: I had a four out of five hit ratio over
Speaker 1: the course of two days. Yeah, big whitefish. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: both like, uh, I don't know, it's the twenty three pounders.
Speaker 1: Maybe sounds a bitch. Really, Yeah, those are nice whitefish man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Just so folks know, these are not Mountain whitefish.
Speaker 1: These are Great Lakes whitefish, Lake Superior whitefish, right, because
Speaker 1: they're like you call him like Lake white Wish and
Speaker 1: then people get confused. But yeah, lake whitefish. That should
Speaker 1: say Great Lakes because they're all over the damn place
Speaker 1: in Alaska. I think I think they're just Lake white Wish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're up here in Flathead Lake. But the ones not native.
Speaker 1: They call Lake Superior whitefish because there's both, right, there's
Speaker 1: mountain white fish and ye in those cays. So what
Speaker 1: happens Jonas, Now when you go to hawk the spear.
Speaker 1: Is it a jab? Is it like? Uh, like you're
Speaker 1: hawking it. It depends on what what your targets doing.
Speaker 1: Because if he just comes in and then he knows
Speaker 1: the dcoins just sitting there and like Miles said, they
Speaker 1: were spooky and so um, you're holding you know, you
Speaker 1: have your one prong of the spear just stuck in
Speaker 1: on the far side of the ice hole, and so
Speaker 1: when you see the fish comment, you just slowly grab
Speaker 1: it and kind of get it ready the head and
Speaker 1: the heads into the heads below the water so you
Speaker 1: don't get the refraction. Yeah, and uh yeah, if he
Speaker 1: just came in and sitting there looking at the decoy,
Speaker 1: you just slowly moved right on the top of him
Speaker 1: and you can just drop it. But we had other fish,
Speaker 1: like the white fish. Really whether or not they came
Speaker 1: to the decoy hard to say, but they're pretty much
Speaker 1: just swimming through the hole. So it's like, there he is,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna throw because you're you're almost having to
Speaker 1: lead him a little bit. So I might be right
Speaker 1: and that that that white fish doesn't give a shit
Speaker 1: about that big decoy. Absolutely, I saw nothing. I was
Speaker 1: trying to I was trying to like you saw me
Speaker 1: trying to like milk it out of your honest, but
Speaker 1: we it's hard to say. I don't think we know
Speaker 1: enough to know that. I never saw a white fish
Speaker 1: that was clearly locked into a decoy. But maybe they
Speaker 1: might have been somewhat interested here that that brought them
Speaker 1: to the general area. I don't know. Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have only speared for whitefish two days. So once
Speaker 1: I've got a hundred days under my belt, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a better answer. You know, I got you watching
Speaker 1: through the ice with a camera. You can lower big
Speaker 1: stuff down. Little teeny fish that have no they can't
Speaker 1: have any notion that they're gonna eat it, are still
Speaker 1: like what the hell's that? Can? They approach it like
Speaker 1: out of curiosity? They're not like zooming in. Did I
Speaker 1: come by and like what the hell is that? And
Speaker 1: then just swim off curiosity satisfied. That's something different. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know you're swimming around down there, everything looks more
Speaker 1: or less the same. You see something different, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna check it out. I've been living in this pond
Speaker 1: for a year. I've never seen that. See. Um. The
Speaker 1: thing about the spearing, though, that. Uh, And this is
Speaker 1: true for both the sturgeon spearing and this white fishing pike,
Speaker 1: is that you really get this feeling much the same
Speaker 1: way you do when you're fishing through an eight inch
Speaker 1: hole and you look out on the expanse of a
Speaker 1: giant frozen lake and you're like, man, we're really hoping
Speaker 1: these fish swim through this twelve square feet you know,
Speaker 1: and not all that other stuff. So you're like, hundreds,
Speaker 1: why not have something down there that may attract a fish,
Speaker 1: you know? Yeah, yeah, but uh, yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for any missing any like interesting details about
Speaker 1: the you know, one thing and that that was different
Speaker 1: than than what we did later was the the replacement
Speaker 1: of the ice back into the hole and then setting
Speaker 1: up all the sticks to freeze into the ice just
Speaker 1: from in there, which you know, seems super obvious, but
Speaker 1: I've never done it before, and I hadn't thought of
Speaker 1: that until we got out there and Mark started cutting
Speaker 1: brush on the way out. Yeah, where I grew up,
Speaker 1: you put your Christmas tree down in there, because then
Speaker 1: when the ice melts, and this is illegal, but then
Speaker 1: when the ice melts, depending where you are, when the
Speaker 1: ice melts, the tree falls in, and then it supposed
Speaker 1: it's great for croppies. Well, we used to. We had
Speaker 1: Christmas tree sunk and you would catch croppies in the
Speaker 1: spring off those Christmas trees. Yeah, this is a separate conversation.
Speaker 1: But the reason that became illegal is because a lot
Speaker 1: of d n R bowed just for going. This is
Speaker 1: changing the pH of the lakes in a really negative way.
Speaker 1: Everybody dunk in their Christmas trees. I'm not advocating. I'm
Speaker 1: just telling you when we were young, like in high
Speaker 1: school and whatnot. Uh, we lived divorced from any divorced
Speaker 1: from knowledge. Just people. Old people did stuff and then
Speaker 1: they told you to do it, or you just did
Speaker 1: it too, know that was what you did. Red squirrels
Speaker 1: eat the nuts off fox squirrels. It's just just what happened.
Speaker 1: It's just wait, how how things are. So it's not you.
Speaker 1: You put your tree out of the ice, damn it,
Speaker 1: and so does not do they're comie. When we were
Speaker 1: done with Mark and spearing pike and whitefish, Lucas made
Speaker 1: us some nice like I was saying saying earlier, some
Speaker 1: white fish cakes delicious. So he cooked and then formed
Speaker 1: his patty or formed his patty with raw fish. Raw fish?
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, how do you? How do he mince it
Speaker 1: hand mints? Right? No, he cooked him first and then
Speaker 1: cooked him just till they were flaking, and then made
Speaker 1: his patties and then quick fry very large chunky pieces
Speaker 1: of flesh in there. You know, it wasn't all super
Speaker 1: shredded like a crab cake. Almost. Oh yeah, very much,
Speaker 1: because I was I got a whole mass at karp
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about just running through. The highly
Speaker 1: recommend food processor works good because the bones when you
Speaker 1: food process it the bones, you're cutting the bones up
Speaker 1: enough or you don't need to worry about it. What
Speaker 1: my folks used to do with suckers is they didn't
Speaker 1: do this a lot, but they now and then do
Speaker 1: it is caught up the socker, not worry about the
Speaker 1: bones and pressure pressure can it. Yeah, pressure cooking in
Speaker 1: jars and then put the jars on the canning shelf.
Speaker 1: And then anytime you're just go and take that socker
Speaker 1: meat out and the bones would have dissolved, and then
Speaker 1: you make fish cakes with them. Got it? Because the
Speaker 1: pressure cooker just zap the bone, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: shoot me a good fish. I mean, I can whip
Speaker 1: something up. But bomber recipe for going to have one
Speaker 1: up on the website very soon from Lucas Leaf. We
Speaker 1: got one coming. That's a tip. A hot tip on
Speaker 1: fish cakes is um just you can just cook your fish.
Speaker 1: Just bake the flame, let it cool, shred it up.
Speaker 1: It's picking bones is easier once it's cooked. Shread it up.
Speaker 1: Make a fish cake good used for leftover fish too.
Speaker 1: I got one other tip from Lucas on that that
Speaker 1: I really liked, and that was just frying batter, which
Speaker 1: was just cheese. It's put through a blender. Cheese. It's
Speaker 1: pancake mix. Crucial ease pancake mix that you still have
Speaker 1: to add egg and milk and whatever, maybe oil, whatever
Speaker 1: else goes into pancake mix. Not the stuff is just
Speaker 1: just add water. That very important to him and I
Speaker 1: tried it. It came out good. I tell you gotta
Speaker 1: have a good food processor blender for the cheese. It's
Speaker 1: because you've gotta get super fine. You gotta get just
Speaker 1: as fine as the pancake mix. Otherwise, you know, when
Speaker 1: you batter in it, you end up the big chunks
Speaker 1: come out first, and then you're just starting to work
Speaker 1: with a finer and finer mix. But yeah, tell me
Speaker 1: about tell me some more efficient delicious. We headed over
Speaker 1: to uh old Lake Winnebago, uh Milax, which means thousand Lakes, Mhma,
Speaker 1: thousand Lakes. I think, just oh, I'm sorry, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got you now mile Ax, and uh I meant a
Speaker 1: lot of very kind Midwesterners. I mean, I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about hospitality and just politeness and um, but you're
Speaker 1: from the Midwest, I know. But growing up there, how
Speaker 1: how you can't you can't you can't. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: judge because yeah, you're that's your home place, and all
Speaker 1: you hear about is Southern hospitality. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: like really dog on Southerners. I think they're they're pretty hospitable.
Speaker 1: But I'm married into the South and I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the hospitality down there. But now, I mean we're living
Speaker 1: out west for two decades and then going back to
Speaker 1: Minnesota and Wisconsin blown away, Like I feel like they're
Speaker 1: people will actually invite you into their house a stranger
Speaker 1: and give you like a place to eat and sleep,
Speaker 1: like just very very nice. I just want to give
Speaker 1: a plug for the old Midwest. So yeah, we went
Speaker 1: over to Middle Axe and where the plan was to go.
Speaker 1: Whileye fishing with Mandy yer You know you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to generalize. It's bad to generalize negatively, but general shouldn't
Speaker 1: it be bad to generalize positively? I mean, no one
Speaker 1: people are gonna get less pissed about it. But your
Speaker 1: point is valid at generalized positively, I think it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, that just makes people feel good. The problem
Speaker 1: with generalizing negatively is that it makes people feel shitty.
Speaker 1: Where so we got Mandy Yerke generalizing super nice people.
Speaker 1: They're super nice people and Mandy Yorke was gonna take
Speaker 1: h take us fishing for Wally. Tell me about this individual,
Speaker 1: Mandy Yerke. Uh, Mandy is remember her actual title for
Speaker 1: the Minnesota DNR. She's like a habitat planning director. She
Speaker 1: basically works on on all all manner of habitat projects.
Speaker 1: And I think she even I mean like dumping Christmas
Speaker 1: trees in. I mean it could be. It could be
Speaker 1: like a brand new um even though it's not like
Speaker 1: what you think of while life habitat, but it's it's
Speaker 1: part of land that Minnesota and our manages. But she
Speaker 1: might work on a new campground one day, infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: then it could be you know, getting a piece of
Speaker 1: land is just gonna be used for um, grouse habitat
Speaker 1: or something. Right. That's sound about right. That good job explaining, Mandy.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm doing doing your justice here. And then
Speaker 1: on the side she is a very very busy angler,
Speaker 1: professional bass angler, and then a recreational angler of just
Speaker 1: about everything. Um. And that's just now She's got a
Speaker 1: great story. I can go on for a long time.
Speaker 1: Just very quickly. She grew up in a family that
Speaker 1: owned a fishing lodge on Devil's Lake in North Dakota,
Speaker 1: and Um, out of her whole family, she was cow.
Speaker 1: You got there an old boot, uh maybe edge of
Speaker 1: the whole something cal snagged up. Um. She had brothers
Speaker 1: and a sister. Nobody took to the hunting fishing like
Speaker 1: she did, and at a young age they knew that
Speaker 1: she liked it so much that her dad just started
Speaker 1: sending her off to other outfits to learn how to
Speaker 1: be a duck hunter or a duck hunting guy, how
Speaker 1: to be an elk hunter or an elk hunting guy,
Speaker 1: And so very early on in her childhood, she was
Speaker 1: getting shipped all over the place to basically learn any
Speaker 1: and all different kinds of hunting and fishing, but she
Speaker 1: never went the guiding route. Yeah, so after she got
Speaker 1: that dialed in, she she did some guide for a
Speaker 1: while and then I don't know really what took her
Speaker 1: out of it, but uh, like I said, now she
Speaker 1: works in Minnesota, DNR. It seems to be very happy. Ah. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: she took us out ice fishing on Malax and Milax
Speaker 1: is a giant. Oh missed him. I did too. That's weird.
Speaker 1: The school came in and I'm out of the game
Speaker 1: over here messing with my setup. Uh. It took out
Speaker 1: on milax. Relax is interesting because it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of controversy going on around their fishery. They have an
Speaker 1: excellent fishery, Like when it's when the fisher biting, which
Speaker 1: they really weren't when we were there, but when they
Speaker 1: were three days prior, they can catch trophy size. While
Speaker 1: I almost one after another, that's fair safe from my understanding.
Speaker 1: We never saw it firsthand. Yeah, we saw plenty of pictures.
Speaker 1: Maybe should be in the weeds. No, I had I
Speaker 1: had a legit um it's the tightest slot limit I've
Speaker 1: ever heard of. Three a two inch slot, right, Um,
Speaker 1: what is going on? And you can only keep one now.
Speaker 1: It obviously makes for a really good fishery, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people are bummed because not too long ago
Speaker 1: you could keep six that Yeah, okay, so tight slot
Speaker 1: for a fish that people are primarily going after for
Speaker 1: food after for the fighting. No, No, they like them
Speaker 1: because they're good in the grease. Yeah, it's so to
Speaker 1: only be able to catch one is Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what percentage of fish that you're hauling out of the
Speaker 1: ice are hitting the slot? Well? For us zero zero
Speaker 1: it's tough to catch slot limit wall over there. And
Speaker 1: and I think that part of the reason we wanted
Speaker 1: to go there is that this isn't how they got
Speaker 1: to this place with such a tight slot and such
Speaker 1: a low harvest for recreational anglers. Is an interesting story
Speaker 1: and it's you know, Minnesota DNA are trying to keep
Speaker 1: the fishery really, really healthy, but at the same time
Speaker 1: keep a few people happy. It's a it's a they're
Speaker 1: on a tight rope over there. Yeah. At the same time,
Speaker 1: that lake it's changed for a lot of reasons. Um,
Speaker 1: it's become clearer than it used to be. And miles
Speaker 1: getting correct me here if i'm if I go straight
Speaker 1: with my knowledge and how ship works. But um, when
Speaker 1: the water is a little bit dirtier, and it used
Speaker 1: to be dirtier because of zebra muscles. No, well, but
Speaker 1: it was dirtier because it was actually uh, you know,
Speaker 1: not straight up sewage, but treated you know, human gray
Speaker 1: water going into the lake, which causes micronutrients. Stuff eats
Speaker 1: micro nutrients. The bigger stuff eats that. And while I
Speaker 1: like it cloudy, they they're like they're a low light predator.
Speaker 1: And yeah, zebra muscles cleaned it up. And the fat
Speaker 1: they said, no, you can't dump this water into these
Speaker 1: lakes anymore. Cleaned it up. Hurt the walleye fishery. But
Speaker 1: it's made for a great smallmouth fishery. It's made for
Speaker 1: a great pike fishery. Trophy muskie. It's got drum, trophy
Speaker 1: drum in there, talking like freshwater drum. Yeah. Obviously what
Speaker 1: they call sheep's head over there, call them gasper goose.
Speaker 1: In Texas, what are they call gasper goose? It's a
Speaker 1: Louisiana termine. Didn't missed on the eating on those, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: weird texture, like flames, look like they should be so good.
Speaker 1: The first bite you're like, it's not that bad, but
Speaker 1: just like a third you ever cut the enthusiasm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get the rocks out. My kids got a handful.
Speaker 1: The one we got to uh this summer out of
Speaker 1: river here in Montana and they were excellent. The flesh
Speaker 1: is like eating cheese kurds. It's weeks when you bite.
Speaker 1: It's that dance dance squeaky cheese, squeak man. They I'm
Speaker 1: bummed to hear that, because I was like, boy, I
Speaker 1: am gonna come back here and target. The enthusiasm does
Speaker 1: not grow as you eat the fish. Then your little
Speaker 1: kenny eat mixed like pepsi and milk, and the first
Speaker 1: city like it's good, right, but you just couldn't you
Speaker 1: know whatever finished it. Talking to a guy who knows
Speaker 1: who's a commercial fisherman in the Midwest and harvest those.
Speaker 1: He claims that he can grade the drum filets based
Speaker 1: on color and that if you find the like the
Speaker 1: pearly white ones, he claims you can't tell the difference
Speaker 1: between those and perch. He will even sell them his
Speaker 1: perch filets. Do they have any yellow to him? Then
Speaker 1: they're really only good for the smokers. That's what this
Speaker 1: guy told me. Yeah. Interesting. I was just bummed by
Speaker 1: the like the physical makeup of that fish. You look
Speaker 1: like you're gonna get a load of meat off of
Speaker 1: that thing, low yield a lot ahead. You did a
Speaker 1: great job. We caught some walley with many Um she
Speaker 1: did most of the catching. I did watch and the
Speaker 1: very interesting that I've seen now they've done all this
Speaker 1: ice fishing is just between while I on different lakes,
Speaker 1: completely different techniques, completely different like jigging strategies. Um, Mandy's
Speaker 1: jig was see maybe you can describe this. Look at
Speaker 1: my hand in my rod tip. Yeah, the old pencil.
Speaker 1: I mean it's almost just like you're you just don't
Speaker 1: have a steady hand. You got the coffee. It's like
Speaker 1: your your hands just shaking. That's I thought you were
Speaker 1: just shaky. I thought you. I thought you're demonstrating the grip.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no, just a shake. That's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're literally And but it was funny. Is that so
Speaker 1: we're using um hummingbird uh sonars that what you call
Speaker 1: that to eyes flasher, which it's not like a true
Speaker 1: vex lar flasher, because you're just you're watching like a
Speaker 1: graph like you would on your your regular fish finder. Um,
Speaker 1: but you can see your jake down there doing that
Speaker 1: little shake. When you're doing that to it and you
Speaker 1: don't want it. There's no that you're not lifting it
Speaker 1: an inch, two inches, six inches, there's none of that.
Speaker 1: It's just the shake. Good job, gal, go on, come
Speaker 1: over here. Um, so you're sitting, you're you're actually this
Speaker 1: is where ice fishing gets interesting. I wanna see what
Speaker 1: you guys all feel about it, because here we're not
Speaker 1: looking at a flasher. There's no camera down but would
Speaker 1: be too distracted. Yeah, okay, well there we're looking at
Speaker 1: a flasher. You're not really paying attention to the hole
Speaker 1: too much. You're pretty much just watching that graph, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're your Your bait depends on
Speaker 1: what colors you set up. Your bait's like a little
Speaker 1: squiggly blue line, and you're watching it shake around. Every
Speaker 1: now and then you lift it just to make sure
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking at. And the bottom is red,
Speaker 1: and every now and then again again a red line
Speaker 1: the size of a fat night crawler lifts up off,
Speaker 1: comes up out of the bottom, and that's what a
Speaker 1: wall I looks like. And it comes right underneath your
Speaker 1: little jiggly blue line and just kind of suspense right
Speaker 1: underneath it. At that point you start this sort of
Speaker 1: dance with that red line, your blue line with the
Speaker 1: red line, and it's you jake a little bit less.
Speaker 1: You stop, maybe for two or three seconds, and at
Speaker 1: this point you're waiting for the tug, but you might,
Speaker 1: you know, lift it up a little bit. The red
Speaker 1: line follows. Sometimes you get to take. If not, you
Speaker 1: drop it back down or the red line loses interest.
Speaker 1: And again red line is this wall I down there,
Speaker 1: loses interest, drops back down to the bottom. So you
Speaker 1: drop your bait back down and you're just trying to
Speaker 1: hold it, you know, inches from his nose. Just just
Speaker 1: eat me, eat me, eat me. And um, it seemed
Speaker 1: like I, like I said, I only caught maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know, three or four over the course of two days,
Speaker 1: maybe five. Um, it seemed like the bite I would
Speaker 1: jack jack jake, or shake, shake, shake, and I would
Speaker 1: just let it sit still. In three or four seconds
Speaker 1: into letting it said still, you'd feel a tug and
Speaker 1: you pull the walleye out, did not catch a single
Speaker 1: one in the slot. Manishing real hard for me, man
Speaker 1: real hard. Yeah. I think well, within the group, you know,
Speaker 1: we had some other people helping, and while we were manning,
Speaker 1: I were fishing, they'd be fishing off by themselves, and
Speaker 1: I think we end up catching a couple over the slot.
Speaker 1: Most of them were shy, most of them were eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty inch type fish. Um and uh but no
Speaker 1: nothing in nothing in the slot. I mean we got
Speaker 1: him and then we got him at twenty four. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know that's which makes sense. That's such a
Speaker 1: popular like so many people fishing. Any of those fish
Speaker 1: that are in the slot, they're coming home with people
Speaker 1: like you gotta think there's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: just avoid that lake, right, Like, well, I'm just just
Speaker 1: want to not mess with this trophy lake. And I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not like I don't know enough to criticize.
Speaker 1: I'm not criticizing the management decision there. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: for me personally, like I view walleye as waal air
Speaker 1: for eating. That's why that's why that lake is an
Speaker 1: interesting story, right because it's not that far from the
Speaker 1: twin cities. Tons of people grew up walleye fishing there
Speaker 1: and taking tons of fish out, and the the fishery
Speaker 1: has changed, and more and more people are fishing it right,
Speaker 1: and they want to make sure that they've still got
Speaker 1: a walleye fish man so said, not being critical, No, no,
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it. But to me, it's
Speaker 1: it's not a sense of like whether or not you're
Speaker 1: being critical. It's it's that this, if you're looking it
Speaker 1: at the universe of fishing stories, that one, to me
Speaker 1: is worth checking out because of all the things, folks,
Speaker 1: all the things that different things that are having to balance.
Speaker 1: They are the different user groups, the amount of anger
Speaker 1: that exists in that community toward that slot. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: are up in arms, and well, you know it's not permanent,
Speaker 1: not necessarily. No, the fishery rebounds, oh man. But if
Speaker 1: folks could have the ability I'm saying in general, you
Speaker 1: go to these fisheries or hunt areas, if folks had
Speaker 1: the ability to look beyond what they're doing that day,
Speaker 1: the world would be a much different place. I mean,
Speaker 1: my gosh. And the other thing is funny, there is, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the walleye fishery, it's still great. It's not what
Speaker 1: it used to be. But people are piste off and
Speaker 1: they have one of the best, arguably the best small
Speaker 1: mouth fisher in the country now as a result of
Speaker 1: the changes to the water clarity there right like when
Speaker 1: when it was really turbid and the walies were kicking
Speaker 1: ass because they can outcompete everything else. Now you have
Speaker 1: much clearer fishery. Small Mouth there really really good. They're
Speaker 1: not an ice fishing fish on that lake, but in
Speaker 1: the summer they are. And pike are really really good.
Speaker 1: And they heard a number of people in the Midwest
Speaker 1: tell me that that is the best trophy muskie fishery around,
Speaker 1: hands down. Period. Like you want to get musky. It's
Speaker 1: like Green Bay or there. Just changes. It's just funny
Speaker 1: to complain about. You know. I'm so piste off about this.
Speaker 1: We have great small mouth and musky. Now I'd prefer
Speaker 1: to catch either one of those fishes, just like the
Speaker 1: pace of wildlife management is never going to meet the
Speaker 1: pace of expectations will be good. T shirt, Well, I
Speaker 1: tell you what, they have them not figured out that
Speaker 1: small mouth tastes almost as good as while I either.
Speaker 1: I brought that up to a lot of them. I'm like,
Speaker 1: why don't you guys just start frying small mouth? I mean, really,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna like put some bunch of batter and
Speaker 1: seasonings on it and then fry it, eat the small mouth. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know those are those are just for catching relates.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, well, maybe you guys will learn later.
Speaker 1: I know that on the half shell gets tire something
Speaker 1: for folks, but that's man. You cook that thing on
Speaker 1: the trigger. Indirect heat is all it is. But with
Speaker 1: the skin on, scales on, skin on small mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that fat just bubbles up through the meat and
Speaker 1: you can take that hook your fingernail into that skin
Speaker 1: and just give it a little shake and that whole
Speaker 1: slides right off. The whole chunk of meat just slides
Speaker 1: onto whoever is played. Oh my gosh. It makes a
Speaker 1: guy like me who can't play anything, well, look a
Speaker 1: real guy, all right, jump into the sturge and Johnnie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much what we did with Mandy, right, try
Speaker 1: to try to catch while I and trying to understand
Speaker 1: what was going on in Molex. Yeah. So we left Minnesota,
Speaker 1: came home for a bit, then we went over to
Speaker 1: with Skans and and uh yeah, first thing we did
Speaker 1: was went to Lake Winnebago for the opener of sturgeon
Speaker 1: spearing season. Miles and I had applied for sturgeon spearing
Speaker 1: permits back in I don't know, sometime in the summer October,
Speaker 1: October October maybe, And if you apply, you get one.
Speaker 1: It's not like a draw thing. Now. Lake Winnebago is
Speaker 1: part of a chain of lakes that um, the what
Speaker 1: river that's oh Man Wolf River. Well, somebody comes the
Speaker 1: fox further on down you can correct us, um and uh,
Speaker 1: the upper Upper River Lakes have a permit, uh fishery
Speaker 1: there because as well get into your we've we had
Speaker 1: a spear, deeper, dirtier water. The Upper Upper River Lakes
Speaker 1: are clear and they're shallower and so there you're much
Speaker 1: like you just see you more sturgeon. To point to
Speaker 1: make it make sense, Lake Winnebago has about a five
Speaker 1: percent success right, the upper Lakes are closer to like
Speaker 1: fifty or sixty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, big time. It takes
Speaker 1: about seven years. Don't apply because Steve and I are
Speaker 1: starting to apply, um this year and we want to
Speaker 1: go and everybody messing us all up. Yeah, so don't apply.
Speaker 1: It's not that cool. I'm gonna make it sound cool,
Speaker 1: but it's not that cool. So, yeah, we hooked up
Speaker 1: with Jake Andrews his whole family. Uh and uh when
Speaker 1: I say his whole family then includes a bunch of cousins. Uh.
Speaker 1: They they make up for at least point five percent
Speaker 1: of sturgeon spears on Lake Winnebago. No, I'm kidding. It
Speaker 1: did seem like that though. Um. Yeah, and the and
Speaker 1: the Floyd family helped us out a whole bunch. And Uh,
Speaker 1: Jake is like the he's sort of the captain of
Speaker 1: their sturgeon spearing team, and he does a lot of
Speaker 1: the scouting, which I'll get into what that looks like,
Speaker 1: and he helps everybody get set up. Everybody else pretty
Speaker 1: much rolls in besides Buddy Brian. Bryan also is hardcore,
Speaker 1: but pretty much everybody else. I think we had seven
Speaker 1: or eight total shacks. Everybody else just rolls in for
Speaker 1: cut in day, which I'll explain a second, and then
Speaker 1: they fish for the season and then they're done. Jake's
Speaker 1: out there not year round, but once the ice comes
Speaker 1: he's thinking about surgeon, getting ready for for sturgeon spearing.
Speaker 1: Everybody just draws off his teeth. Yes, for sure. And
Speaker 1: he's very happy to be helping everybody out. He really
Speaker 1: carries that like he feels a lot of pride in
Speaker 1: anybody spearing Sturgeon from because he's put so much time
Speaker 1: and effort into it, and he feels a lot of pressure. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like the first day, he's like, as soon as someone
Speaker 1: just sees one and we can say yes, we're like
Speaker 1: we've chosen. Well, we're in a good spot. Somebody saw
Speaker 1: a surgeon. Pressure, he can relax a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: So uh, yeah, we hook up with him. So prior
Speaker 1: to us sucking up with him, his scouting um and miles.
Speaker 1: You can tell Phil if we get if I get
Speaker 1: to too many details here, we're gonna cut this out.
Speaker 1: But a lot of a lot of people do this.
Speaker 1: They go out and they look, you're protecting his trade secrets.
Speaker 1: We there are certain things we can talk about and
Speaker 1: a few just a couple of things their trade secretar
Speaker 1: trade secrets. Yeah, so I think I think you got
Speaker 1: to start this. I'm sorry I interrupted. Yeah. Well, the
Speaker 1: first thing that they figure out is is it a
Speaker 1: shed or shad year? Yeah or not? Or not? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And well, there's a fish in there called the gizzard chad,
Speaker 1: which is a non native correct and it's at the
Speaker 1: northern end of its limits. So on a warm year
Speaker 1: they come up in there and they spawn and they
Speaker 1: do real well. Um, and they die off every year
Speaker 1: because the water just gets too cold for him right
Speaker 1: to get this massive shad die off a lot of years.
Speaker 1: If it's just too cold altogether, they just don't show
Speaker 1: up in that in that lake at all. Right, So
Speaker 1: if it is a shad year, all these shad um
Speaker 1: it tripped me up at first. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: hold on, how does a bottom feeder all of a
Speaker 1: sudden start eating on shad. Well, he's still eating on
Speaker 1: the bottom because he's just eating dead ones. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he never chased you never hear it Like we used
Speaker 1: to see those big shad die offs where I grew up,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of fish would get on the bottom
Speaker 1: and eat those things, catfish and all stuff. So if
Speaker 1: it isn't, if it is a shad here, then he's
Speaker 1: got his orbits endorsed guide head doing me a lot
Speaker 1: of good today. It's supposed to be doing me good
Speaker 1: if you're an endorsed guy. Um, So if it is
Speaker 1: a shad here they find the big beds shad and
Speaker 1: they're basically gonna spear over these shad beds because you
Speaker 1: can get a lot more protein out of a shad um.
Speaker 1: It probably takes I don't know, a hundred red worms,
Speaker 1: and a red worm is basically a chronomid larva, so
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe the biggest one was an inch long,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe half an inch more likely. And uh so
Speaker 1: this year it was not a shad year. So you
Speaker 1: gotta go out and find worm beds. Okay, worm beds
Speaker 1: are there there year after year, but like the the
Speaker 1: nucleus of the worm bed could change by fifty yards
Speaker 1: two hundred yards maybe fifty ft looking for density density exactly,
Speaker 1: so they got these. Jake had his own homemade contraption
Speaker 1: which basically looked like a coffee can wormometer with U
Speaker 1: with closing flaps at the bottom and uh, drill hole,
Speaker 1: drill two holes. You can you need a second hole later,
Speaker 1: drop your can down there and it's on a change.
Speaker 1: You can kind of hand the bottom with it just
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then on like the third or
Speaker 1: fourth pound, drop it in there and the old flaps
Speaker 1: are open and then you pull up the secondary chain
Speaker 1: which closes the flaps, and you basically have taken a
Speaker 1: substrate sample. This is great, man three. So what's an
Speaker 1: example of something you can't tell me? This is high level?
Speaker 1: This is like high test fishing. Yeah, but there's a
Speaker 1: lot of guys doing this, not a lot, but I
Speaker 1: think we asked and he thinks that maybe like ten
Speaker 1: ten of the surgeon spears are doing worms. And then
Speaker 1: he knows even more stuff you can't tell Yeah, and
Speaker 1: give me like like tell me pig latin. You gotta think,
Speaker 1: you gotta just think that this right here is a
Speaker 1: level that a lot of people would be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know of it. I don't want to deal with it,
Speaker 1: but it makes me curious about what is the thing
Speaker 1: he's doing? Absolutely pe in the hole? Did he take anything?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, we filmed so yeah, but like was
Speaker 1: the mud just crawling with those worms. We didn't actually
Speaker 1: get the film because he'd done all this this scouting beforehand,
Speaker 1: so when we filmed it, it was it was sort
Speaker 1: of like after the fact. We didn't get We didn't
Speaker 1: prove around until we got a real dense Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he'll basically run a grid pattern and then may and
Speaker 1: then draw it down on a piece of paper and
Speaker 1: then start writing numbers of per sample, you know, three worms,
Speaker 1: five worms, six worms, three worms, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it gets to tent. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: his threshold of good was, but I think eight or more.
Speaker 1: And so then he'll go out from that point and
Speaker 1: sort of triangulate and be like, okay, right here, there
Speaker 1: are in these five holes around it, there are more
Speaker 1: worms per scoop than everything around it, So this must
Speaker 1: be the where the money shot is. That's pretty interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like gold prospecting. Yeah for sure. Now other guys
Speaker 1: also will go out and and just literally sit in
Speaker 1: a shock watching a camera over a weren't better not
Speaker 1: waiting for a scusgeon scouting to go trail like running
Speaker 1: a trail camp. Yeah, but you can't. There's no like
Speaker 1: trail camp for under water, So you just sit there
Speaker 1: trail camera. Yeah. Um, And they like get onto one,
Speaker 1: like he's here, this is a zone. Well, I think again,
Speaker 1: you're looking for like consistency. No, you're not looking for
Speaker 1: one particular st an area. They like, yeah, you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I was in this zone and I saw three today
Speaker 1: because this is a big gass lake, huge and the
Speaker 1: density of sturgeon is not very high. There's one surgeon
Speaker 1: for every four acres of lake. Yeah yeah, so let
Speaker 1: me just like put that into perspective when you're you're hoping,
Speaker 1: just put it a quarter sturgeon for acre. It was
Speaker 1: a very weird way. They're big fish or quarter one. Um. No, ship,
Speaker 1: this is great. It was very interesting, very interesting television program,
Speaker 1: I hope so so yeah, Jake had the spot picked out.
Speaker 1: Am I missing anything else? Oide of scouting? Not that
Speaker 1: we can talk about. God Man, would I like to
Speaker 1: know the secrets? Just teasing that out there? Yeah yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but he I think I think one of the things
Speaker 1: to mention is that it's not like he just goes
Speaker 1: out and samples once to go I'm good. He'll go
Speaker 1: out day after day before work and keep checking, like
Speaker 1: is his worm bed still here? Is this still the
Speaker 1: center for months? As long as he's got good ice
Speaker 1: up until opener. I'm gonna go out on a limb
Speaker 1: and he goes out in the dark man to do this,
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna go on a limb and suggest that
Speaker 1: this man is not a skier. This man does not ski,
Speaker 1: not in fun to act. This is a true outdoors
Speaker 1: he is a he is a I don't know what
Speaker 1: you call a guy that that runs a um sugar shack,
Speaker 1: a tapper, a tapper, tapper sapper. You can just throw
Speaker 1: it into the foraging bucket though, you know, Okay, so
Speaker 1: here you are, you got your worms down there, you
Speaker 1: know you're on the worms. Yeah, so you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to put a dark house spearing shanty. Now, these shanties
Speaker 1: are specifically built just for spearing sturgeon. You do not,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could, but it sounded like
Speaker 1: these shanties are out for the two week sperience season
Speaker 1: and then they're back in your yard for the rest
Speaker 1: of the year by law. Yeah. Well again you could
Speaker 1: use you could go out there and jill holes and
Speaker 1: just ice fish through it. But I don't know why
Speaker 1: people must use different for that reason. But these are
Speaker 1: set up there, man, I forget the dimensions. He's got
Speaker 1: probably uh ten by six, twelve by six. I know
Speaker 1: that it was six wide. Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: they were all exactly same. It was right around there.
Speaker 1: They came in different shapes and they get into painting
Speaker 1: them you know, the classic one is um finishing like
Speaker 1: a in a sheet metal right riveted corners and then
Speaker 1: like a pretty plain two or three ft like spray
Speaker 1: painted or plasma cut sturgeon. And it's got to have
Speaker 1: your name and address on it. You know. There's what
Speaker 1: we saw one that looked like a Green Bay Packers helmet.
Speaker 1: We saw one that was painted as uh Pink Floyd
Speaker 1: Dark side of the Moon, so people get into it,
Speaker 1: uh that the Money's on. I feel like Money kind
Speaker 1: of ruined that album. I don't know if i'd say
Speaker 1: I go back for it. It was the radio hit
Speaker 1: um so that you can only put them out there
Speaker 1: the day before and the day before it is called
Speaker 1: cutting day because you're gonna cut in a giant hole
Speaker 1: in the ice. So we roll out there. Jake's like,
Speaker 1: I'm putting my shack right here on the money spot.
Speaker 1: You guys all make a horse shoe around me, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and I forget exactly what that was for. Maybe just
Speaker 1: the Wi Man, maybe luck, but how much maybe the
Speaker 1: way the worm bed was running. I can't remember how
Speaker 1: much of a between shacks. Yeah, what's you're spacing like?
Speaker 1: Probably fifty feet? Okay, you're not jumping, No, no, you
Speaker 1: got I mean there, you're not right on top of
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, if someone if something happens in a
Speaker 1: nearby shack, you can hear him yelling. Could you have
Speaker 1: jumped down, swam over and popped up. That would be
Speaker 1: a great trick, would be a good way to get
Speaker 1: jab the spirit? Yeah, oh my goodness and die. Oh
Speaker 1: so yeah, we um cut in day. We all pull
Speaker 1: out there. That's not a legal thing though, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't cut in and set out till
Speaker 1: the day before. So everybody's out there on cutting day, everybody.
Speaker 1: But after the season it's okay. You said that you
Speaker 1: can hang out in your shanty after the season. You
Speaker 1: can't cut your big holes. You can't have spearing holes
Speaker 1: after the season or before. Oh okay, okay, I cut
Speaker 1: the day before the season opens is what we call
Speaker 1: cutting day. You can you can start setting up for spearing,
Speaker 1: but you can have a bole four season one season ends.
Speaker 1: I'm with you now, I understand. Um. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: like a mad flooded people and Jake to protect his spot.
Speaker 1: We actually didn't go out until late afternoon because people
Speaker 1: know what he looks like. Drives. He scouts. He knows
Speaker 1: they know this group, and he doesn't want He believes
Speaker 1: that the surgeon do react a little bit to activity,
Speaker 1: especially a lot of truck activity. Um. And so he
Speaker 1: wanted he liked a spot that was quiet. Like we
Speaker 1: only had a couple of other shanties outside of our
Speaker 1: group that were like within a couple hundred yards of us.
Speaker 1: There's plenty that were four or five yards away. Um.
Speaker 1: But he wanted a quiet spot. And so we waited
Speaker 1: until pretty late in the day to go and do
Speaker 1: the cut in. So we all these shanties are on
Speaker 1: um uh, their sleds basically runners. The ones we had
Speaker 1: weren't on runners. They were actually he had full suspension.
Speaker 1: But you have them on runners, you have them on wheels,
Speaker 1: you have on a full suspension. They're all people are
Speaker 1: dragging him out there in any way they can anyway
Speaker 1: they can get them out there, if you can move
Speaker 1: a shed or shanty or shack. And and a huge
Speaker 1: variance between the really really nice ones that are you know,
Speaker 1: hooked up on tongues and have a full suspension and
Speaker 1: the other ones that looked like someone just took their
Speaker 1: plastic gardenship and there's a guy low playing that actually
Speaker 1: makes the frame and the trailer that everybody builds their
Speaker 1: custom shacks on. And it's set up in such a
Speaker 1: way that you basically unhook a couple um pins and
Speaker 1: the tongue lifts up and that lets the shock fall
Speaker 1: down onto the ice um. So yeah, you kind of
Speaker 1: you mark your spot and where you want it and
Speaker 1: uh then he bust out of chainsaw and uh cut
Speaker 1: yourself a like I said, ours was probably the biggest
Speaker 1: hole because he has the biggest hole inside of his
Speaker 1: shanty and it was six by three maybe three and
Speaker 1: a half. You had to be able to jump over it,
Speaker 1: just big enough that when you go to jump over it,
Speaker 1: you're like, pay attention, dude, you don't you know, pass
Speaker 1: me the trail mix. And at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're like, where's the safety bar to hang onto
Speaker 1: as I cross this chasm? Oh, so you take a
Speaker 1: chainsaw and cut it, and like you said, you cut
Speaker 1: at an angle. It's it's funny because you think it
Speaker 1: would have to be steeper to get that effect that
Speaker 1: you were talking about where you can just see farther
Speaker 1: and there's not an edge of the edge of ice
Speaker 1: that you're looking at. But it wasn't that steep of
Speaker 1: an angle. I mean maybe I don't know fifteen degrees,
Speaker 1: and uh it's spooky because it's spooky for me because
Speaker 1: Jake cut the first two edges. I'm like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: get it. You have to hold the chainsaw opposite handed,
Speaker 1: which will work good for you being a lefty, so
Speaker 1: that you're always keeping your air intake. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't hold us all that way up top rightow I
Speaker 1: throttle with my right hand. Okay, so it'd be opposite
Speaker 1: for you to but yeah, you hold it. I held
Speaker 1: it opposite so your air in takes up top so
Speaker 1: that and your blades always running bottom, so that because
Speaker 1: you're pushing a lot of water and you keep you
Speaker 1: want to keep your saw dry. Obviously the engine and
Speaker 1: uh so I'm cutting a second too. But to get
Speaker 1: to be able to cut and hold that the saw
Speaker 1: the proper way, I've got to be standing on the
Speaker 1: chunk that I'm cutting out of the ice for my
Speaker 1: last cut from runner. Yeah, and I think we're we're
Speaker 1: working with like eight minimum, I think up to fourteen
Speaker 1: inches of ice right in that zone. They had a
Speaker 1: really crappy year. A lot of people did not just
Speaker 1: add this in right now. Most years they have they
Speaker 1: sell about twelve thousand permits, they have ten thousand spears.
Speaker 1: This year they probably sold twelve tho permits because they
Speaker 1: have to be bought in October um and they only
Speaker 1: had five thousand spears usually five thousand shanties or no, sorry,
Speaker 1: five thousand shanties. Ten thousand spears this year or shanties.
Speaker 1: They figure about two spears per shanty. And it still
Speaker 1: seems like a lot. Yeah, it is, it is, but
Speaker 1: remember it's a huge lake, and that was because it
Speaker 1: was just not good. Yeah, so most people drag out
Speaker 1: with um trucks and the ice just wasn't of truck
Speaker 1: safety thickness, and so a lot of those people would
Speaker 1: either have to get like a TV or a side
Speaker 1: by side or a snowmobile. And if you don't have
Speaker 1: that equipment or your you know buddy doesn't have it,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get to go out sturgeon fishing in
Speaker 1: the anthropo scene. Man, Yeah, spooky. So this chunk that
Speaker 1: you're cutting out, though, I realized it has enough buoyancy
Speaker 1: that a two pound man can stand on it and
Speaker 1: and cut the last corner and nothing's gonna happen. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna wildly coyote it down to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the lake all of a sudden. Yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: bobs a little bit, but you're fine. Um. So once
Speaker 1: you kind keep when you got your rod on your
Speaker 1: leg like that, you keep thinking of getting hits. It
Speaker 1: really throws me off. I kind of watch everybody's I'll
Speaker 1: set it down. I'm gonna fish high in the water column. Ah.
Speaker 1: Then you take these giant UM's. Yeah, it's basically what
Speaker 1: twelve foot pole then using a fire they were They
Speaker 1: were actually like firefighting equipment poles. Yeah, with big hooks
Speaker 1: on hooks. It's got a hook and a spike. Oh
Speaker 1: that kind of yeah for poking. Yeah, kind of like holes.
Speaker 1: And so what they do because it's a big, big,
Speaker 1: gass chunk of ice, you can't just tong it and
Speaker 1: lift it out. And if you did, and by the
Speaker 1: end of a two week season, it'd be frozen solid,
Speaker 1: so you'd be caught. You'd be making you sort of
Speaker 1: have two dangers then, right, that's an open hole plus
Speaker 1: a giant chunk of ice that someone can run into
Speaker 1: and have issues with so they do what's called sinking
Speaker 1: the cake. They call that chunk of ice the cake,
Speaker 1: and they sink it. So all two or three guys
Speaker 1: are pushing down on it to get it below ice level,
Speaker 1: and then two guys get from one end and start
Speaker 1: pushing it underneath the ice. And then once that gets going,
Speaker 1: then the guys that we're pushing down all come to
Speaker 1: that end, and everybody pushes as hard as they can
Speaker 1: and try to get that one chunk of ice as
Speaker 1: far away from the whole as possible, just in case
Speaker 1: if you have a sturgeon that's near the surface, you
Speaker 1: don't want him to be coming towards your zone, your
Speaker 1: hole and then see that big chunk of ice and
Speaker 1: then cause him to veer away. I gotta avoid that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're trying to get it away from you. Um,
Speaker 1: then you pull the trailer over the top of the hole,
Speaker 1: drop it down, shovel snow all around the edges again,
Speaker 1: get the light out, and you basically open a big
Speaker 1: hatch in the middle and there you are. So you're
Speaker 1: basically sitting on ap plywood floor that's carpeted real nice,
Speaker 1: and uh, you just got a hole in the ice
Speaker 1: that looks like you're not sitting on any ice because
Speaker 1: of the angle you cut in the ice. Um. Now
Speaker 1: we were bearing in like fifteen sixteen ft of water,
Speaker 1: which on a clear year you can see all the
Speaker 1: way to the bottom. But this year you can only
Speaker 1: see about twelve ft. So bottom feeders are gonna be
Speaker 1: on the bottom. How are you gonna see them in
Speaker 1: that depth? Taters, well start because you gotta be able
Speaker 1: to retrieve them if they If it's if it would
Speaker 1: have been just a little more clear, we all would
Speaker 1: have had down crosses made out of um vinyl uh
Speaker 1: soft material like ten inch soft it. They basically just
Speaker 1: make an X and then drop that thing down in
Speaker 1: the hole that's attached to the string so you can
Speaker 1: later retrieve it. And so you're looking at a X,
Speaker 1: and even if it's kind of murky, if you get
Speaker 1: a big white X down there, it would give you
Speaker 1: some reference. And then if you saw a giant black
Speaker 1: shadow go over it, you would throw at the shadow.
Speaker 1: Too murky for that. So instead we're running can risk
Speaker 1: and the same fish camera that everybody has. You basically
Speaker 1: run down hit on mine. You don't think so well?
Speaker 1: My rod was up and now it's yeah, could have
Speaker 1: been you guys are distracting. Um. So yeah, you run
Speaker 1: a you run a camera basically between your feet, if
Speaker 1: you're sitting in the middle of the hole, you run
Speaker 1: a camera straight between your feet, straight down and then
Speaker 1: it's maybe eighteen inches off the bottom and just pointed
Speaker 1: straight out in front of you. So you're looking at
Speaker 1: depending on the water clarity, you're looking at a cone
Speaker 1: that might be go out to six ft. For us,
Speaker 1: it was so dense that we were figured we were
Speaker 1: looking maybe three to four ft. That's all you could
Speaker 1: see is a cone that went out to three three
Speaker 1: or four ft in front of your camera. And you're
Speaker 1: supposed to spear the fish off of what you're seeing
Speaker 1: on the camera. Very very difficult. So Jake had a
Speaker 1: camera down between his feet, and then between the two
Speaker 1: cameras we had a decoy. They just hung from the ceiling.
Speaker 1: There was no jigging this one. It just was stagnant
Speaker 1: there static not doing anything. Um. Sturgeon decoys were even
Speaker 1: crazier than the pike and the whitefish decoys. We went
Speaker 1: up into a gal's uh attic who's been spearing for
Speaker 1: I don't know, seventy years bowling pins, uh Bart Simpson dolls,
Speaker 1: orange Um, traffic cones, things that did look like fish.
Speaker 1: Calendars were very popular for decades that like when it
Speaker 1: would come up to be during super being station, you
Speaker 1: couldn't find a calendar in any kitchens store, thrift store, nothing.
Speaker 1: Everybody want to drop down a calendar. The latest thing
Speaker 1: that's very popular is the white coffee mug. And then
Speaker 1: gotta choose if you wanted to coffee mug suspended or
Speaker 1: actually sitting in the muck at the bottom. So again,
Speaker 1: people go people go nuts on their decoys. Is doing
Speaker 1: a good job? Is It's like, you know, like in
Speaker 1: theory you're supposed to go on vacation and come back
Speaker 1: all like reinvigorated for work. It's like that's what happened
Speaker 1: to Yanni. Oh for sure, I felt it, just tearing
Speaker 1: it a new one on we haven't been gotten to
Speaker 1: the white fish and with Pat Durkin another I don't
Speaker 1: want to burn it all up right now? Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we picked a well we're still on cutting day cameras.
Speaker 1: No you're not. You're on the coffee mugs and whatnot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'm telling you about the decoys they're using. But
Speaker 1: the camera deal. I think most people are just looking
Speaker 1: at their little six inch ten inch screen that's attached
Speaker 1: their camera. Right. Well, Jake's an electrician, pretty handy with
Speaker 1: that sort of ship, so he's got too big screens, yeah,
Speaker 1: two inches. So we're sat We sat across from each other,
Speaker 1: so my screen was directly behind his head and his
Speaker 1: screen was behind my head. So instead of staring kind
Speaker 1: of down at it with your net getting store and
Speaker 1: looking at a tenant screen, you can kind of chat
Speaker 1: with the guy at the same time you're looking on
Speaker 1: the screen behind his head, and they're thinking, man, this
Speaker 1: guy never breaks his gaze when he's talking to me,
Speaker 1: totally um, And that takes place of staring into the hole. Now,
Speaker 1: there is a chance that you could have one comes
Speaker 1: suspended through at ten ft or even six ft, and
Speaker 1: it has happened. We heard plenty of stories where the
Speaker 1: fish came through like his back rubbing the top of
Speaker 1: the ice, and like, you had to take this because
Speaker 1: our spears actually hung off of a they just had
Speaker 1: I think one side. He had an actual hook that
Speaker 1: was just barely it was bent open, so it just
Speaker 1: still had a little bit of a lip to hold
Speaker 1: the islet of the spear. Mine actually was just a
Speaker 1: just like a deck screw that was just at the
Speaker 1: right angle and that little lip of the deck screw
Speaker 1: was enough to hang it onto. Because we also heard
Speaker 1: some stories where people had the giant sitting there looking
Speaker 1: at their decoy and they couldn't get their spear off
Speaker 1: of their hook and then the fish ran swam off.
Speaker 1: You know, so you gotta be ready. It's gonna happen fast. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're sort of percent of time you're watching
Speaker 1: your screen one percent of time, and short glances you're
Speaker 1: just looking down. It was interesting too, is what Jake
Speaker 1: made clear to tell me about was that don't expect
Speaker 1: to see in this murky water. Don't expect to see
Speaker 1: a six ft sturgeon when he's down there at eight
Speaker 1: ten ft, it's gonna look like a football. But you're
Speaker 1: just seeing like the main part of the mass, and
Speaker 1: you just know that there's you know, there's three ft
Speaker 1: on either side of it or two ft on either
Speaker 1: side of the football. You know, you're just seeing the
Speaker 1: main mass because that's what's coming through. That's what your
Speaker 1: your eye can pick up. Um. So yeah, the heads
Speaker 1: of the spears, the spears are heavy. They they've come
Speaker 1: up with regulations because people were getting a little bit crazy.
Speaker 1: They're like, imagine like ad teen broad head for a turkey,
Speaker 1: which is like two big razor blades, like four intros
Speaker 1: to diameter. But they took that idea and took it
Speaker 1: to sturge and spearings. So they had these like two
Speaker 1: ft cross criss crossed, and so it's just like you're
Speaker 1: covering more service area. When you throw the spear right,
Speaker 1: you have a better chance to get a tie in him.
Speaker 1: Ours were I believe the limit was sixteen or eighteen.
Speaker 1: I think it was. Ours were a couple of inches
Speaker 1: shy of that. We probably had eight times we were
Speaker 1: working with um. The spearhead detaches from the handle, uh,
Speaker 1: so that you can fight the fish, you know, more
Speaker 1: easily because it again, you're not it's not like you
Speaker 1: just speared a five or ten pound pike. You not
Speaker 1: gotta fish that might be fifties sixty upwards, too close
Speaker 1: to two pounds you gotta Yeah, he's attached to a rope,
Speaker 1: So the rope's tied into the shanty. There might have
Speaker 1: been twenty feet of slack line. I think, you know
Speaker 1: between where it's tied off and where the in the spearhead. Um,
Speaker 1: and the times too are serious. They have um oh,
Speaker 1: what's a little toggle called flips out like a barb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like a harpoon. Yeah, I think it's in
Speaker 1: line and then when there's any back tension, it's out.
Speaker 1: It's out. And we saw a couple of them gets
Speaker 1: speared and it's like literally one time through a minimum
Speaker 1: of four inches of flesh and it's not coming That
Speaker 1: fish ain't coming off of their Plus the sturgeon is
Speaker 1: it's a that skin is like shark skin, so scale it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not coming off of there. Um. So yeah, fast
Speaker 1: forward to opening morning. Uh, you get there maybe six thirty.
Speaker 1: You can't start spear until seven Surgeon spearing goes some
Speaker 1: seven am till one every single day. Everybody's inside a house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you can't have your spears inside the house. It
Speaker 1: always open like your your trap doors are open. Your
Speaker 1: spears have to be outside the house until seven am
Speaker 1: and then at one pm the spears had to go
Speaker 1: out while you're closing everything down. Once the hole is closed,
Speaker 1: the spears can come back in. You know. Um, you
Speaker 1: used to be able to spear twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 1: shine a spotlight down in there. Yeah, and they they
Speaker 1: that actually, um proved to be a little too effective. Um.
Speaker 1: They used to have these party tents like forty ft across.
Speaker 1: They would cut giant holes and the whole thing would
Speaker 1: be lined with dudes and spears, just eating, drinking and
Speaker 1: waiting for a sturgeon to come across. I mean a
Speaker 1: thing that you could swim across, you know, and just
Speaker 1: a giant ass tent. And um, they'd run them all
Speaker 1: night long, big big light in there. Ship sounds like
Speaker 1: a good time. Um. But uh yeah, so for me
Speaker 1: opening day, so yeah, basically it's seven, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: spears in and then start watching the camera. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think it like the group started seeing some around nine.
Speaker 1: We might have had someone missed one at nine, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't long after maybe ten eleven. Am. Um, Jake's
Speaker 1: like he caught a fish on his flasher, so he
Speaker 1: was running a flasher just to be like, maybe it
Speaker 1: might give us a second heads up that a fish
Speaker 1: is coming here. But he's like, um, looks like a
Speaker 1: small fish. Looks like a small fish. And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, he sees it on his screen.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, no no, what's there. Surge and Sturgeon like
Speaker 1: get ready, you know. So we all jump up and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at my screen. I can see so in
Speaker 1: my screen, I can see a decoy and then his
Speaker 1: camera behind it, and he's seeing the decoy in my
Speaker 1: camera in his screen, and it looks like the fish
Speaker 1: has come up and is basically angled and right at
Speaker 1: the decoy, and so I see that I kind of
Speaker 1: placed my spear like parallel with the line of the
Speaker 1: decoy going down. I look up again. He's still there.
Speaker 1: And at the same time Jake and I we weren't
Speaker 1: counting or anything. It just happened both of us throw spears,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think that we corralled him because I
Speaker 1: look back up of the screen and I just see
Speaker 1: the tail swimming straight away from I mean, I can't explain.
Speaker 1: It means like the decoy was there. I knew where
Speaker 1: the fish was on the right side of the decoy.
Speaker 1: Both of us had spears on the right side, and
Speaker 1: it was either that. We also heard stories that, um,
Speaker 1: their head is so bony and you can deflate, so
Speaker 1: there's a chance we could have reflected the head, especially
Speaker 1: because he was right out of decoy, because I probably
Speaker 1: wasn't the heads eighteen inches long, and so I might
Speaker 1: have not been back far enough. But do you remember
Speaker 1: when remember in Guyana and we had that big catfish,
Speaker 1: that big banana catfish, and I cocked back with my
Speaker 1: bow and a fish arrow on there h and shot
Speaker 1: and everybody, oh, you missed, you missed, too missed. But
Speaker 1: it ricocheted off his head. A fish arrow out of
Speaker 1: a bow, no water, You aim for the head, not aim.
Speaker 1: I held it up to his head. I don't remember
Speaker 1: that a fish arrow, right, So there you go. It
Speaker 1: could happen, yea. And probably what five minutes after that,
Speaker 1: we had one swim under our shack and did a
Speaker 1: similar moment. And it's it's difficult to describe how hard
Speaker 1: it is to triangulate your position because I didn't have
Speaker 1: the big screen TVs. We just had a little ten
Speaker 1: inch Markham's. And I'm looking down at that going okay,
Speaker 1: that's what the screen says, there's the decoy should be here,
Speaker 1: and just hucking that thing and praying, and I thought
Speaker 1: I thought I nailed that first one. I was so
Speaker 1: excited because there was a bunch of tention on that line,
Speaker 1: and it was coming up kind of wiggling back and forth,
Speaker 1: like oh I got him, I got him, Bran, I
Speaker 1: got him. And what I had done was drilled three
Speaker 1: times through that soft it and it was just buried
Speaker 1: in that muck and started coming up and like I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh man, I got him. No, not even close. You
Speaker 1: can get one dislike him at home depot. It took
Speaker 1: me a good half an hour to dig those barbs
Speaker 1: out of that freaking soft it. Like I had to
Speaker 1: take the whole thing out of the shack and it
Speaker 1: took forever. So out of your out of your party. Yep.
Speaker 1: What was the hall too? Which is really really good
Speaker 1: because that weekend and I think that not weekend three days.
Speaker 1: We finished Saturday, Sunday, Monday speared and I think the
Speaker 1: whole leg produced around a hundred right, Yeah, I'd have
Speaker 1: to go back and look, I've been reading the reports
Speaker 1: as they come out daily through the whole season, so
Speaker 1: my my memories muddy to be, but I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it's right around a hundred and three days and that's
Speaker 1: five thousand spears and we got to fish. I think
Speaker 1: the Jake's homework pays off and we missed I mean
Speaker 1: I missed two. Yeah, you guys, we definitely had We
Speaker 1: definitely had some other opportunities in the group. Having not
Speaker 1: been there, I'm sitting there being like I would have
Speaker 1: gotten them all here somewhere. Something didn't imagine how good
Speaker 1: you would have done something. Something to mention is that
Speaker 1: the camera use is pretty controversial because of what we're explaining.
Speaker 1: Right you're basically chucking it into the darkness hoping to
Speaker 1: get a time in there. You don't know sometimes you
Speaker 1: know what's happening down there if you're hurting them at all.
Speaker 1: The DNR has surveyed the public like two or three
Speaker 1: times about it, and it's every time it's been a
Speaker 1: third are cool with it, a third don't give a ship,
Speaker 1: and a third, uh, don't aren't into it. So they're like,
Speaker 1: until right now, it's like kind of a social problem
Speaker 1: because there's just people sort of you know, fighting about
Speaker 1: whether they should be using or not. He's like, until
Speaker 1: it becomes a biological problem and it becomes too efficient,
Speaker 1: Like it's not our problem, what's your personal take on it?
Speaker 1: Can here you are king of the king of the universe. Um,
Speaker 1: even with the cameraman. It is hard. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna let it roll. Um. He spreads people
Speaker 1: out too, because listen, there were there's like the other
Speaker 1: side of the lake because of currents um and you know,
Speaker 1: less allergy bloom or whatever. There was plenty of people
Speaker 1: that we talk to that speared surgeon in eight feet
Speaker 1: of super clear water and they could see the bottom.
Speaker 1: So you could choose to go and do that. But
Speaker 1: Jake's series like, yeah, that's fine, you're gonna see the fish.
Speaker 1: But over there, I think that there's ten percent of
Speaker 1: the fish over there then where we were fishing more water. Yes,
Speaker 1: now it spreads people out. Did you bring me a
Speaker 1: container of the caviar? Yes, how we haven't handed it
Speaker 1: over to me. Oh you, I didn't bring you a
Speaker 1: personal little uh steve container. I brought home one court
Speaker 1: and it is in the office refrigerator, and Miles and
Speaker 1: I are planning on having basically an office little parties
Speaker 1: everybody can get in. There's so much that if you
Speaker 1: want to take some of home, you will be able
Speaker 1: to hou. We'll have some crackers. Yeah, you want to
Speaker 1: keep it simple. Are you got you got your ivory spoons? No, oh,
Speaker 1: I used to have a caviar spoon, man, when I
Speaker 1: was working on my first book. I had occasion when
Speaker 1: I was working on my first book to get a
Speaker 1: caviar spoon. But we want to be we had so
Speaker 1: much whitefish can vy are like great, like you know
Speaker 1: lake whitefish caviar. We're eating it on cool ranchedritos. I
Speaker 1: mean we couldn't get through it all. Man. It was
Speaker 1: a weird like salsa. Yeah, it was just like like
Speaker 1: a too many eggs. Man. Did you you make your
Speaker 1: your tasting spoon out of you know, something highly illegal? No,
Speaker 1: I didn't do that. I wish I would. Um, I
Speaker 1: can't remember how. But as part of the book, I
Speaker 1: can't remember why. But I did order a couple of
Speaker 1: caviar spoons. Not legal ones though, like you know, like
Speaker 1: abalone shell, ivory, mother of pearl and stuff. Yeah. Did
Speaker 1: you get robbed over there? Your bait get robbed? You?
Speaker 1: I still got half of it. I'm gonna let it roll. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lot more to it, man, But you,
Speaker 1: like I said, phenomenal bit of hole like great job,
Speaker 1: good interesting day. Yeah, there's anything we need to wrap
Speaker 1: it up on. I mean we could the cultural part
Speaker 1: was awesome. Yeah, we do. You need to throw a
Speaker 1: shout out to Mary Lucia talking about the big you know,
Speaker 1: she's the decoy car. Remember the rhythmics kind of the videos.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the video well, like yeah, like Anie
Speaker 1: Lennox would be doing everything, but then that dude wold
Speaker 1: always be in the background. I feel like that's Miles,
Speaker 1: Like Yanni's like any Lennox and Miles is like that
Speaker 1: dude in the rhythmics. It was always being like in
Speaker 1: the background. Oh, I was listening to Train in Vain
Speaker 1: the other day. Is that season closed based on quota
Speaker 1: or just a date? Does it just stay open? And
Speaker 1: if you're looking at when does the Sturgeon season end,
Speaker 1: it ends in one of two ways. Okay, let me
Speaker 1: hit that. Uh, how so the season is two weeks? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's say conditions are perfect and just people are just
Speaker 1: killing him NonStop. Is that a possibility? Yes, it does happen. Again,
Speaker 1: I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think we
Speaker 1: heard of seasons that were closed in four or five days. Oh,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to ask. So they so the
Speaker 1: season doesn't necessarily run its course, it has every year
Speaker 1: for the past five years because the water clarity has
Speaker 1: been pretty bad the last five years, but before that
Speaker 1: they had consistent good years and the seasons were closing,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as DNA would set a quote
Speaker 1: limit saying based on population, it is feasible for us
Speaker 1: to take this many without hurting the spawning. And it's
Speaker 1: male female quotas both, and the female quota is the
Speaker 1: one they're really looking at. When so many females are speared,
Speaker 1: it's over got you, got you. But the last four
Speaker 1: years it's run its course two weeks, sixteen days, sixteen
Speaker 1: days a sixteen day season. Yeah, yeah, I guess that
Speaker 1: makes it three weekends probably. So when you uh, they
Speaker 1: have way in and checking stations all over the lake,
Speaker 1: not on the lake, but these uh bars, they call
Speaker 1: them supper clubs. Um. We went to Jim and Linda's
Speaker 1: and right out there in Pipe, Wisconsin, and uh crowd
Speaker 1: gathers there every day right around one pm, because usually
Speaker 1: people wait all about one if they have a fish
Speaker 1: to go and go and check it in, and uh
Speaker 1: there's a pretty big crowd gathered there. You weigh it
Speaker 1: and then the dnr um cuts it open. Check see
Speaker 1: if it's a male or a female. They then scan it.
Speaker 1: They're looking for tags. If it's if the fish is
Speaker 1: tag if they can get some data off of it, um,
Speaker 1: and then that's it. I mean, I think they you
Speaker 1: give them some of your personal information and uh, you're
Speaker 1: ready to go, and it's It was fascinating to me
Speaker 1: because sturgeon spawn and I think it's generally a six
Speaker 1: year cycle. Okay, so a female will take six years,
Speaker 1: males are shorter. Female takes six years in between spawning runs.
Speaker 1: And they'll run up river to do that UM. But
Speaker 1: they'll they'll cut it open and just by looking at
Speaker 1: the color texture the eggs, they'll call it an F one,
Speaker 1: F two, F three, F four all the way up
Speaker 1: to six, depending on how developed those eggs are. And
Speaker 1: the F six everybody wants, right, those are the really
Speaker 1: really that's the best caviar um. But they had one
Speaker 1: fish that they had tagged. It was like one of
Speaker 1: the biggest ones. They were tagged up river when she
Speaker 1: had spawned and she was she she came in at
Speaker 1: like two pounds or something, and then the next year
Speaker 1: she got speared and she had shed like sixty pounds weight.
Speaker 1: Same fish same link, just between those cycles of spawning,
Speaker 1: how long it takes for those eggs developing, how much
Speaker 1: mass they have. Are most of these guys, I get
Speaker 1: the caviar by most of these guys, they're grilling it,
Speaker 1: frying it, cubing it up, and putting cocktail sauce on it. Man,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people did not respect
Speaker 1: the meat of that fish enough. We heard a lot
Speaker 1: of people saying, oh, it's not very good. I thought
Speaker 1: it was fantastic. Everywhere we it's it's a fish that
Speaker 1: they love as much commerce conservation that's been done around it.
Speaker 1: They loved, kind of hate it because it's not like
Speaker 1: when you look at it, it's not the most appealing
Speaker 1: looking thing. It's kind of covered in a slimy mud.
Speaker 1: You know. The first thing everybody says, you guys, do
Speaker 1: sin as you get at home is pressure wash it,
Speaker 1: you know, before you start you know, fileting it or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: So that was a little bit interesting because we didn't
Speaker 1: really find anybody that was like, oh, I can't wait
Speaker 1: to put some you know, hopefully I'll get some free
Speaker 1: from sturgeon meat from my freezer. But it was sturgeon meat,
Speaker 1: and I mean habitat destruction. But it was like commercial
Speaker 1: harvested knocked them down so bad. Yeah, but that was
Speaker 1: about all about the eggs there after. Yeah, Now we
Speaker 1: did get lucky and went over to our friend Chester
Speaker 1: and Ike and Fenton Floyd's parents house, and there they
Speaker 1: invited us over for dinner. And we said, you know,
Speaker 1: dinner sounds great, and since I could spired a sturgeon,
Speaker 1: it would be awesome if we could try some sturgeon.
Speaker 1: We really want to try some sturgeon meat. And um,
Speaker 1: a few a few people have said, oh, you guys
Speaker 1: are going over the Floyd's for dinner, lucky you you know,
Speaker 1: is it Peggy? Peggy real good cook? You know we're
Speaker 1: taking okay, well, you know yeah, typical Midwest mom, you know,
Speaker 1: don't probably throw it out and be some good cooking.
Speaker 1: Well we roll in there and she's prepared six courses
Speaker 1: that would go toe to toe with any of the
Speaker 1: six courses that I could prepare, like just solid. She
Speaker 1: had smoked some and then turned it into a dip.
Speaker 1: She had I don't know what she did with the meat,
Speaker 1: probably posted or something and turned some into fish cakes. Um.
Speaker 1: She did her plain fried piece over a little salad
Speaker 1: with a little vinaigrette. It was just like her name. Um,
Speaker 1: she's happily married. Um. But she did that one specifically,
Speaker 1: She's said. As for me, I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: She might be wondering. She did specifically so that, you, um,
Speaker 1: so that we could just taste the flesh. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't covered up with sauces in this, that and
Speaker 1: anything else. You know, I'm really gonna taste for it.
Speaker 1: Um what else was there? Oh, I gotta make curvefish
Speaker 1: curry more. You know, we've had it a couple of
Speaker 1: times over the years, and for some reason, I just
Speaker 1: don't do it at home. But she made fish curry,
Speaker 1: serve it over rice, real plain and simple and just awesome.
Speaker 1: So and then a a sturgeon schnitzel really with asparagus
Speaker 1: and hollandaise, Oh, buddies, like a double red carpet gold
Speaker 1: line man. Incredible And every one of those preparations. That
Speaker 1: fish was really very Uh you know, Steaky's go down
Speaker 1: to that supper club place and through a little sampler
Speaker 1: so people stop being dumbasses about their sturgeon meat. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's one of those things. And we talked
Speaker 1: about this all the time, right, It's how you take
Speaker 1: care of your game, is what it's gonna taste like.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the tradition there is you get
Speaker 1: your fish and you paraded her round the ice to
Speaker 1: every bar, like, look what I got. Yeah, it's cold out.
Speaker 1: It's probably still not the best way to handle your fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but when you get some beautiful blue fin tune, I
Speaker 1: doubt they No, they tend to probably get it on.
Speaker 1: Do you want to get that thing iced up real
Speaker 1: quick and away from the guts? Uh quick story she
Speaker 1: didn't turn into hot dish or cast role. That's the
Speaker 1: next day. I gotta I know a guy that, uh
Speaker 1: you know they're close relative the paddlefish. Um, I know guy,
Speaker 1: it caught a paddlefish and he was it was a
Speaker 1: giant and he wanted to get it officially weighed, and
Speaker 1: he wrapped it up in a uh what he gotta
Speaker 1: sleep He was camping, so you gotta sleep bag, dunked
Speaker 1: in the river, wrapped the paddlefish up. I heard this
Speaker 1: through the tax nevers. Tax nevers telling me a guy,
Speaker 1: a guy caught a paddlefish, wrapped it up in a
Speaker 1: wet sleeping bag. Drives to the hour to him because
Speaker 1: he wants it mounted, but he doesn't need the body,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna wait on it. But the textures doesn't
Speaker 1: need the body because they just use a fire glass form.
Speaker 1: He takes that paddlefish down to the river and the
Speaker 1: same river that came out of it takes down the river.
Speaker 1: Let's go on. It swims off, no ship. That's awesome
Speaker 1: driving around, driving around a guy's trucking a wet sleeping bad.
Speaker 1: I met you, the surgeon. Even with a couple of
Speaker 1: spear holes in their tail, they could probably go to
Speaker 1: a couple of bars and hang on a fish pole,
Speaker 1: for it's basically like a big buck pole. But they
Speaker 1: haven't met these bars for the surgeon and hang out
Speaker 1: there for a few hours, and he could probably release
Speaker 1: those things and they probably swim off too. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that. I'm not saying it to contradict your observation.
Speaker 1: You have to take it care of it because, like JT.
Speaker 1: Van's aunt says, man, when you catch a fish and
Speaker 1: you treat it right towards the meal, you're sort of
Speaker 1: like setting there's like a spiritual quality to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're setting a thing into motion, you know, that you
Speaker 1: haven't touched the fish. You gill it, you wash it.
Speaker 1: It's like you're you're, you're you're putting it on a path,
Speaker 1: a path of respect. Yeah, and you're you're conceiving of
Speaker 1: that fish as food from the get go, not just
Speaker 1: something to be proud of it and show off to
Speaker 1: your buddies while you get drunk. Which nothing. No, I'm
Speaker 1: not dogging that practice in any way. I've done that
Speaker 1: many many times. But with these fish, to me, it
Speaker 1: seemed like the culture, and who knows, will change, but
Speaker 1: the culture really was more about being excited about the
Speaker 1: catch more than being excited about the consumption. And I
Speaker 1: was skeptical. I mean, I don't know where you were, Yohnnie,
Speaker 1: but I've heard so many people were like, you can't
Speaker 1: eat them. I mean, we do talk about Biggin's. Everybody
Speaker 1: else got had any rods in their hands? Miles, Yeah, great.
Speaker 1: I know we didn't cover all of the fur head
Speaker 1: Ice tour adventures will be more in the future. You
Speaker 1: brought me some caviart will not necessarily me, but you
Speaker 1: brought some caviart that I'm gonna be able to partake of. Um.
Speaker 1: Good to have you back. Sure, you'll miss more of
Speaker 1: our shows. Thanks everybody. That song you were singing earlier,
Speaker 1: changes that saw a dog run by change uh fill
Speaker 1: the engineer. I assuming you enjoyed yourself. You didn't really
Speaker 1: say much. I'm just soaking it in. I don't have
Speaker 1: much to add, but I don't want to try some
Speaker 1: sturgeon though. Good job Phil, Thanks way to bring her
Speaker 1: home all right, Thanks everybody, see him se