Speaker 1: Can I just sad? You know what's worse than muskie
Speaker 1: fishing all day and not catching any muskies? Uh? Must
Speaker 1: fishing all night catching which I've done a bunch of folks,
Speaker 1: you know, sitting in like some taco bellboard room being like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get in on this sea boot salad market.
Speaker 1: Is this an X files or a real story? I've
Speaker 1: heard this before. I think it was squids though, or
Speaker 1: like jelly like blobs people say to me all the time. Lands.
Speaker 1: Your content cheers me up faster than the prozac guy
Speaker 1: swipe from my aunt Rudi's Linnen closet. Good morning, degenerate anglers,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Bent the Fishing podcast that has a
Speaker 1: question for you today. How do you feel about making
Speaker 1: a change? We fear change now I too fear change,
Speaker 1: but it is part of life. And it's with a
Speaker 1: sad heart that I have to inform you that this
Speaker 1: will be ailes Nulty's last show. Boo boo this man, Yes,
Speaker 1: this man, I deserve it. Sadly, Joe speaks the truth.
Speaker 1: While I can't think of anything more appropriate to start
Speaker 1: my send off episode than a Wayne's World clip. In fact,
Speaker 1: the same, the fact that this will be my last
Speaker 1: episode as co host of this strange and layered show
Speaker 1: leaves me. I mean, I'll be honest, I feel sad.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling sad. I know I'm the depressing guy on
Speaker 1: this show. Like that's kind of my beat. But this
Speaker 1: one is, this is this is gonna be hard for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well me too. And look, we know this is abrupt
Speaker 1: right to to you the listen to you all, but
Speaker 1: but this is also it's also kind of life, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's just how shit happens. It's where you get
Speaker 1: six months of bailout notice from anybody in any gig. Um.
Speaker 1: But while the thought of you leaving like gives me
Speaker 1: the bubble guts, you're leaving meat eater for a cool
Speaker 1: gig and I am, I am truly happy for you. Um.
Speaker 1: And as I recall, you're taking over is what the
Speaker 1: creative director of Salt life. And while I guiding on
Speaker 1: the side, you're close, You're actually really close. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spearhead a new spinoff that we're calling Soggy Sock Life.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be big, real big. It's huge.
Speaker 1: It's good no for all the for all the time
Speaker 1: that you have invested in the show and listening to
Speaker 1: me drown on about fish kills and conservation efforts, you
Speaker 1: all deserve to know why one of the hosts is
Speaker 1: abandoning his post. The fact is that both Joe and
Speaker 1: I married women who are smarter and more successful than
Speaker 1: we are. Absolutely, it's one of the many things we
Speaker 1: have in common. And why as pissed as he is,
Speaker 1: and I know you were pissed, I also know that
Speaker 1: you can relate to my decision. Joe. My wife. My
Speaker 1: wife was recently awarded a fellowship based in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: and as supportive as she has been of my I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it a career. This is
Speaker 1: a huge This is a huge opportunity for her and
Speaker 1: for her career, and it means that our family gets
Speaker 1: to move there eventually, assuming anyone's ever allowed to travel
Speaker 1: to New Zealand. Again. Yeah, well, I know you got
Speaker 1: that hurdle will get over. But like New Zealand, dude,
Speaker 1: isn't that they're a huge trout that you catch once
Speaker 1: a month. Isn't that how it works there? They're like
Speaker 1: really hard that I've heard that. Yeah, anyway, it is.
Speaker 1: It is true. I am pissed at you, but I
Speaker 1: also know that your wife is smarter than you. We
Speaker 1: can at least agree on those two points. But the
Speaker 1: real question remains, right, what happens to Bent? And the
Speaker 1: answer is nothing. Ben isn't going away. Bent presses on.
Speaker 1: But because I'm a believer in honesty and transparency with
Speaker 1: our valued listeners, I want to tell you straight up,
Speaker 1: ship might get a little jankie around here for a while. Okay,
Speaker 1: just be just gonna like, where where have we been
Speaker 1: for the past year? We work really hard to come
Speaker 1: across this jankie. Actually a lot goes in and we do,
Speaker 1: so much goes into the jak oh. I have put
Speaker 1: Joe in a very unenviable position. Um, sorry, man, you're
Speaker 1: you're You're gonna scramble a bit. It's happened before. But
Speaker 1: if anyone can pull it off and keep the show going,
Speaker 1: it's you. As you know, I feel I feel conflict,
Speaker 1: I feel some shame, I feel guilt, I feel sadness.
Speaker 1: But you know New Zealand man, Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I take New Zealand over myself any day of the week, right,
Speaker 1: So I ain't mad at Jeremy. You know that but
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is this is kind of
Speaker 1: a two man gig and we love it and we've
Speaker 1: been having just an absolute blast putting this together. But
Speaker 1: to do what we do takes discipline, right. You have
Speaker 1: to be each other's wingman to crank out these segments
Speaker 1: and stay on top of your ship. So you know,
Speaker 1: like when when Goose objects into the canopy, like Maverick
Speaker 1: might need a minute to get her flying straight and
Speaker 1: true again. Just you know, he's got to compose himself.
Speaker 1: He's gonna tell Meg Ryan, he's got to make peace
Speaker 1: with ice man decide if Cougar is good enough to
Speaker 1: have more than two lines a month. It's a freaking
Speaker 1: process anyway, you hate it, is what I've done. How
Speaker 1: in the hell did Anthony Edwards get Meg Ryan? That
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. Like whoever cast that was out
Speaker 1: of their frigging mind. And Meg Ryan, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: how you tortured my young self? Thank you for everything?
Speaker 1: Who I see, who am I going to have to
Speaker 1: talk Meg Ryan with? Because she was super good looking
Speaker 1: and Joe verst about you know what I mean? And
Speaker 1: like she was so witty and smart in in when
Speaker 1: Harry met Sally like she was. She was all the things,
Speaker 1: all the things. Um. Anyway, man, I'm sorry for bailing.
Speaker 1: I don't know who you're gonna find a talk Meg
Speaker 1: Ryan with you, but I'm sure you'll find somebody. I
Speaker 1: don't envy you, but you're you're to be okay, Man.
Speaker 1: I believe in the show. I believe in the concept
Speaker 1: most of all, I believe in you, and I know
Speaker 1: you have a plan. Yeah, sort of, sort of. We're
Speaker 1: We're lucky that we have so many regular contributors to
Speaker 1: lean on, right, people, you guys have come to know
Speaker 1: and enjoy on the show. Um, so some guest hosts
Speaker 1: might be in order for a while. I'm still working
Speaker 1: out the bugs of this whole mess you've created. Um,
Speaker 1: But what I can tell you guys is that while
Speaker 1: I can't promise some things won't be a little different,
Speaker 1: at least for a bit, I'm gonna do my best
Speaker 1: to maintain the core values and ethos of the Bent Podcast.
Speaker 1: And no joke, I could actually use your input, right,
Speaker 1: You guys have never been shy about telling us what
Speaker 1: you like and don't like on this on this show,
Speaker 1: so this is sort of a semi blank canvas right,
Speaker 1: I'd like to have a full time co host. I
Speaker 1: think that's the long term goal. But your shoes are
Speaker 1: big shoes to fill, no joke, like, that's that's the truth. Uh,
Speaker 1: This show, like I said, takes work, dedication requires the
Speaker 1: right person. But hey, at the same time, you guys
Speaker 1: all tell me, like Bob the garbage man should just
Speaker 1: be the co host or maybe someone else filling in
Speaker 1: a temporary slot just really resonates, shout it out like
Speaker 1: you might kind of sort of have some sway, is
Speaker 1: what I'm saying here. You've always kind of had some sway.
Speaker 1: You've always sort of kind of had some sway, and
Speaker 1: that continues even with the big change. The other thing
Speaker 1: is Joe and I don't we don't know every We
Speaker 1: do a lot of people. We don't know everybody, and
Speaker 1: we definitely don't listen to every fishing podcast out there. Right,
Speaker 1: we have talked about some folks, we have discussed this. Uh,
Speaker 1: we we've kicked around ideas for who might be able
Speaker 1: to hang full time. But they're very well could be
Speaker 1: someone else that you listeners I think might be perfect.
Speaker 1: And if so, email their name, address, and social Security
Speaker 1: number to the Bent Email let Joe know, so he
Speaker 1: can run a background check and make sure they have
Speaker 1: the minimum number of misdemeanors on their record. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, though, I am gonna have to ask you
Speaker 1: to please turn in all your thirteen Fishing deans and
Speaker 1: turos though, because I'm not I'm not even sure donkey
Speaker 1: saw us is legal in New Zealand. But regardless, I
Speaker 1: kind of need those because thirteen Fishing is still kind
Speaker 1: of our sponsor, and now I kind of can't lean
Speaker 1: on you to tell us how many gold eyes you're
Speaker 1: whacking on their coconut crab, which sounds tropical but it's
Speaker 1: actually a super sweet, little soft plastic design for ice fish.
Speaker 1: It's a good one, and you I'm keeping the coconut crabs. Okay,
Speaker 1: We'll work something out. You can have the big squirms
Speaker 1: every other weekend or something. We'll we'll work a deal,
Speaker 1: but you're not taking my coconut crabs anyway. Enough sad
Speaker 1: sack ship. Let's get back to doing what we do best.
Speaker 1: One last time. You probably have questions. I know Joe
Speaker 1: has been questioning himself while losing sleep at night. I
Speaker 1: know I have been questioning every single life choice I've
Speaker 1: ever made while not even trying to pretend to sleep
Speaker 1: at night. But the show must go on, and here
Speaker 1: we go. Recently we both sat down to fire some
Speaker 1: questions at our buddy and culinary rock star brad Leyone.
Speaker 1: Let's do trivia. You gotta be highly skilled for these shows.
Speaker 1: You understand that you well versed? Day are you very smart? Man?
Speaker 1: All right back with us today, chef extraordinary Buddy brad
Speaker 1: Leone to play trivia. How are you my friend? Good?
Speaker 1: Thank you boys, thanks for having me once again. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: right on, right on. So we're gonna do We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a tribute today. You've been on before for covering Water,
Speaker 1: which is our rapid fire peppering of questions, um segment.
Speaker 1: This is more. We're gonna do bar room style today,
Speaker 1: like this is multiple choice, um, you know, barroom trivial
Speaker 1: pursuits style where we get really thoughtful. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: beauty of our trivia there's there's there's nothing. You can't
Speaker 1: win anything. We don't have any prizes. I never win
Speaker 1: any anything, guys, so don't worry about that. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of people have come on and been like,
Speaker 1: I'm terrible of this, and they they a sar. So
Speaker 1: I always try and do my best when I'm in
Speaker 1: charge of tribute to like really tailor these questions to
Speaker 1: the people that we have on. So I'm definitely going
Speaker 1: more more culinary, but sticking to fish here. So, um,
Speaker 1: we'll fire him up, man, We'll see, We'll see how
Speaker 1: you do. We'll see how how I did and how
Speaker 1: we So if you're ready, here's question number one. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we've talked on this very show before about fugu,
Speaker 1: which some of our listeners will recall, is the puffer
Speaker 1: fish which contains a shipload of poisonous tetrodotoxin which can
Speaker 1: seriously mess you up, if not kill you, which is
Speaker 1: why only master chefs in Japan are allowed to clean
Speaker 1: and prepare this delicacy. Okay, So, however, after a five
Speaker 1: year battle with the Food and Drug Administration, Renown New
Speaker 1: York City chef Nobyashu Karaka was granted permission to import
Speaker 1: fugu to serve at his restaurant. Since then, how many
Speaker 1: other restaurants in the United States have been granted permission
Speaker 1: by the f d A to serve FuGO. Is it
Speaker 1: a zero, B, sixteen C or D four? That's a good,
Speaker 1: great question, Joe, thank you, thank you, good job. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm blushing. You got Sometimes my questions are terrible.
Speaker 1: Think my gut answer wants to be zero, but I
Speaker 1: feel like maybe it's too obvious, but it's very U
Speaker 1: s d A. Uh. It's either zero or like sixteen
Speaker 1: or something like you said, let's go let's go zero. Man,
Speaker 1: you were better off with the sixteen the answer at
Speaker 1: last count, including his restaurant their seventeen restaurants United States
Speaker 1: that can serve fugu and interestingly twelve of the seventeen
Speaker 1: or New York City. Alright, blew it? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? It was either like shut it down or
Speaker 1: like listen, we like making money to you know, and
Speaker 1: like I should have went with the money. I assume.
Speaker 1: I assume obviously you've probably never prepared it. But have
Speaker 1: you eaten it? No? I have neither. Would you like
Speaker 1: is that interest you or is that like a tasting
Speaker 1: it or preparing it? Tasting it? Yeah? I would taste it.
Speaker 1: You just have to really trust dude who's given it
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah. I would have to go somewhere where
Speaker 1: it was like you know, I was whoever brought me
Speaker 1: there was like yeah, listen, like this is like chef
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and like this is like this is
Speaker 1: legit like and then he was like hey, like it
Speaker 1: was like Indonedian there, and like you know, it was
Speaker 1: like everyone was on board with that, his credentials, his
Speaker 1: official food cutting Garden Circle. Okay, fu yeah, your Betty's
Speaker 1: Backyard d I y food. You're like, yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: good man, I got it. What's the YouTube video? I
Speaker 1: totally got It's funny you bring up seven eleven fougu though,
Speaker 1: because it'll lead right into my next question, which the
Speaker 1: product of this one could also make you very sick.
Speaker 1: And I know when I had you one before. I
Speaker 1: know you're not a big fast food guy. But think
Speaker 1: of this more as a pop culture question and a
Speaker 1: fast food guy because people love to talk about discontinued
Speaker 1: fast food, like the Wapparrito and the Wendy's Superbar. Like
Speaker 1: what you don't, guys remember the Wapparrito? Who made it?
Speaker 1: The burger King Burrito, the burger King Brito? When did
Speaker 1: this happen? Look this ship up online. There was McDonald's,
Speaker 1: p Pizza, Wendy's Super there was all. There's all kinds
Speaker 1: of fast foods that have come and gone. Spaghetti they
Speaker 1: did spaghetti for This is a real thing. This is
Speaker 1: a real thing, but so so because no, that's the
Speaker 1: I wasn't born for the spaghetti. I never had an opperrito.
Speaker 1: I passed on the Burger King yumbo. But anyway, we
Speaker 1: have to keep this semi fishy. So here's the question.
Speaker 1: Tell me which of the following is not is not
Speaker 1: a legitimate discontinued fast food item? So one of these
Speaker 1: is fake? Is it a Taco bells seafood salad? Be
Speaker 1: the McDonald's mc Lobster, c KFC's fish Snacker or d
Speaker 1: Sonics Cajun crab Tots. Dude, it's got to be the
Speaker 1: fish shall come on? Do you think do you think
Speaker 1: that's the fake one? Sad? If that's not fake? And
Speaker 1: I about like I've done with them, like, so that's
Speaker 1: your answer talking about product that is totally legit though,
Speaker 1: that's a real one. To let me get sad salad
Speaker 1: in what country? The United States of America? I actually
Speaker 1: have backstory. But before we get to the backstory, miles
Speaker 1: any on the fake one, what's the fake one? Tell
Speaker 1: me it's the Sonic crab Tots. That's the fake one.
Speaker 1: That's the one that's pretty good though. I thought that
Speaker 1: was good. That was good. That's their best that they're
Speaker 1: that's probably the best idea of all. Like, hey, bro,
Speaker 1: you can have it, like if you want to, you
Speaker 1: have the power to go to Sonic and be like
Speaker 1: I want to do brad Leyonis Cajun Crab Tots signature series.
Speaker 1: Now I just want to find these. So here's a
Speaker 1: little So here's uh that I don't know. It was
Speaker 1: a very short right up, But here's a quick backstory.
Speaker 1: H The Taco Bell seafood salad went out very fast
Speaker 1: because a whole shipload of people got food poisoning from that. Okay, Uh.
Speaker 1: The McDonald's mclobster that was available in Canada and it
Speaker 1: claimed to be fresh caught main lobster, but it was
Speaker 1: so dirt cheap that it made people skeptical. It's like,
Speaker 1: how can you possibly be serving me fresh lobster on
Speaker 1: a bun for like four dollars? So that didn't last
Speaker 1: in My favorite, the KFC Fishnacker, was created a boost
Speaker 1: sales for Catholics during Lent and when it was released
Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's. The CEO famously asked the
Speaker 1: Pope to bless the sandwich, and the request was denied.
Speaker 1: The Pope was like, I'm not blessing the KFC fish.
Speaker 1: Snecker sprised, what what what part? What are the what
Speaker 1: are those things? So many of those things could have
Speaker 1: surprised you. Which of those layers did you fund? Surprising
Speaker 1: the Pope? I would have I would have thought he
Speaker 1: would have been like, yeah, I support this ship. I
Speaker 1: want more people to be Catholic, so yeah, whatever it
Speaker 1: takes KFC. He wouldn't even accept the sandwich. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: even like try the sandwich, not a little blessed. But
Speaker 1: I did. So this was this was a fun trivia.
Speaker 1: This was good. And my challenge to you, Brad would
Speaker 1: be you need you need to research that and like
Speaker 1: figure out what it was and then make a good
Speaker 1: version of that for us. Like I just can't get
Speaker 1: over the seafood salad from Taco Bell, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of people couldn't get over it. That's why they threw
Speaker 1: it back up and ship it back out after they
Speaker 1: ate it. And that went away. Man, I mean two
Speaker 1: things Taco Bell is known to do well seafood and salads. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, man, I'm just blown away like a
Speaker 1: bunch of folks, you know, probably men, probably white guys,
Speaker 1: sitting in like some Taco Bell board room, being like,
Speaker 1: we're going to get in on this seafood salad market,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's just that's that's that's wild, that's wild.
Speaker 1: I should have known. I'm terrible. I told you I
Speaker 1: don't want anything. Not so long ago I mentioned I
Speaker 1: have not eaten Taco Bell and fifteen years. Remember this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the regular like on menu food does not really appeal
Speaker 1: to me in any way. So Taco Bells seafood salad
Speaker 1: that that's actually nauseating to me, the thought of it.
Speaker 1: I know it is, but it's about to get a
Speaker 1: lot worse. Like you think you're nauseous. Now just wait,
Speaker 1: because I might have tipped off a certain contributor about
Speaker 1: your upcoming departure, and while I didn't ask him to
Speaker 1: record anything for the occasion, he kind of insisted. And
Speaker 1: at this point I can't afford to lose any more contributors,
Speaker 1: so I need to keep this person happy, That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Of course you are, of course you are,
Speaker 1: and I I don't believe for a second, because I
Speaker 1: know who this is. I'm sure I do. I don't
Speaker 1: believe for a second that you didn't know you insisted
Speaker 1: on him recording something for this. Yes you did, Yes
Speaker 1: you did. You're getting back at me, and and it's
Speaker 1: my last day and you know aren't. Last day is
Speaker 1: supposed to be kind of like a cruise easy day.
Speaker 1: Is that we're supposed to do. No, No, I will
Speaker 1: not make this easy on you. We remain friends always,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna make this like a fun cherry sendoff.
Speaker 1: I'm happy for you and all, but also, like Hugh Man,
Speaker 1: just you know that's fair, That's that's fair, and I
Speaker 1: get it. But come, you couldn't just like just have
Speaker 1: Bob break me for a while and you can come
Speaker 1: in and yellow yell at Niles. You have to make
Speaker 1: me suffer through the worst part of the show. The
Speaker 1: worst thing we've ever done is like, this is like
Speaker 1: asking the custodian to toilet duck the men's room one
Speaker 1: last time on the way out. Can't we just awkwardly
Speaker 1: stand around the break room with cupcakes and lukewarm beers
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes and have Steve tell everyone to get
Speaker 1: back to work and call it good like everybody else.
Speaker 1: Consider this the awkward break room farewell address delivered by
Speaker 1: none other than Mr Lance V. To the boats, to
Speaker 1: the like, to the sea, getting up the net. Job
Speaker 1: all lad, what's up as clowns. It's me, the Internet's
Speaker 1: most significant celebrity Angler Lance Fee. I know you've been
Speaker 1: dying for my next segment because you just can't absorb
Speaker 1: enough of my truth nuggets into that dollar store kitchen
Speaker 1: sponge you call a brain. But this time it's not
Speaker 1: about me. I'm here to give a proper send off
Speaker 1: to my biggest fan of supporter, Miles Nulty, since he's
Speaker 1: walking away from this hot garbage from what I assume
Speaker 1: will be just another pile of trash. But don't worry,
Speaker 1: because there's still a lesson to be learned from my
Speaker 1: top three reasons this shitty show will be less shitty
Speaker 1: with Miles gone. Hashtag I've been waiting for this hashtag
Speaker 1: Who's the loser now? Nw merrow one oh insta hate.
Speaker 1: The fact is your Instagram account is your resume these days.
Speaker 1: This has been proven by scientists like Elon Musk and
Speaker 1: every person then hosts a show on the Vice Network.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for Miles, is education stopped at MySpace Community College.
Speaker 1: He hates social media, but now the joke's on him
Speaker 1: because his weak ass social resume isn't going to impress
Speaker 1: anyone beyond the night manager at Chili's hashtag Hi, my
Speaker 1: name is Miles? Can I start you guys off with
Speaker 1: a blooming onion number? Does deep sigh? No one likes
Speaker 1: people with deep voices. People with deep voices only conjure
Speaker 1: bad memories of my mom's boyfriend when I was in
Speaker 1: the third grade and guidance counselors that say ship like
Speaker 1: why don't you come back when you decide that you care?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's a coincidence that the Google squad
Speaker 1: kicks members out when they hit puber day, It's not.
Speaker 1: I could be nice and tell Miles which vocal coats
Speaker 1: me and John be used to keep our voices at
Speaker 1: the same octave as Justin Bieber's, But I won't. Hashtag
Speaker 1: you should have been nicer to me, asshole Numero trace
Speaker 1: a reno death blows. People say to me all the time.
Speaker 1: Lance your content cheers me up faster than the prozac
Speaker 1: guy swiped from my aunt Trudy's linen closet. Of course
Speaker 1: it does. People want to see me grinning in my
Speaker 1: hashtag goocchiese while hogs are getting roped, toads are getting jacked,
Speaker 1: and donkeys are getting punched. But you can't jack a
Speaker 1: dead toad, now, can you. Miles interest During pretty much
Speaker 1: every stupid news segment, while Myles was drabbing on about
Speaker 1: hashtag red tied and hashtags saved the whatever, the entreaties
Speaker 1: of the world were wondering why there's old off bottles
Speaker 1: suddenly felt lighter, So that's it. Hashtag by Felicia in
Speaker 1: case and of you are wondering, Yes, I'm in talks
Speaker 1: with Beat Meters to become the new full time co host,
Speaker 1: but only if they're willing to change the name to
Speaker 1: ben over by lands Fade. But really, they'd have to
Speaker 1: sell a lot more lemon pepper and telescopes to ever
Speaker 1: afford me. Hashtags by say, I'm not going to miss him.
Speaker 1: Now that the power is unilaterally in your hands, I
Speaker 1: one last time implore you to finally, once and for all,
Speaker 1: fire that mother. It's not your call, though, Nulty, you
Speaker 1: gave up those rights and privileges the day you put
Speaker 1: in your notice. Um, I might just make him co
Speaker 1: host out of spite. Um. And you know what else,
Speaker 1: I'm going to throw down with you one last time
Speaker 1: in that weekly dead fish laden segment we call fish
Speaker 1: News fish News. That escalated quickly. So this is it.
Speaker 1: It is it, It is it, This is it. This
Speaker 1: is the right here right now, both cheeks, both lips,
Speaker 1: the final you versus me monoa mono fish news battle.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I haven't prepared any better than
Speaker 1: I normally would have. No, No, that's not true. That's
Speaker 1: not true. No, that's what I'm saying. I think I
Speaker 1: think we need to go into this with a different attitude.
Speaker 1: Here's what I'm picturing. It's you and me and we're
Speaker 1: like face to face in the center of the dirt
Speaker 1: circle of a Roman. I will see him right the winner.
Speaker 1: We'll walk away bloodied but victorious, and the loser feeds
Speaker 1: the lions. That's what I want you to picture right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: the stakes are high, is what I'm saying. This really
Speaker 1: matters this. I think Phil is actually gonna listen to
Speaker 1: it for once. He may listen to it this time. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so clearly this is still a competition. Obviously to the
Speaker 1: bitter end, we do not know which news stories the
Speaker 1: other person has has brought to the table. So um man,
Speaker 1: it's your last one and it's also your lead is
Speaker 1: done here still the chocolate to our cheese to reference
Speaker 1: a ween, Altu will pass judgment on both of us
Speaker 1: together one last time, take it away, and the loser
Speaker 1: will shed a tear for Eddie. Alright, So I I
Speaker 1: am going to shamelessly pander this time because the stakes
Speaker 1: are so I'm a pander to the masses and hope
Speaker 1: that Phil takes mercy on me. Right. Record stories are
Speaker 1: two phishing podcasts as a Grip and Grins are to Instagram. Right,
Speaker 1: And because I have not done a record round up
Speaker 1: in many months, I will begin there. I have three
Speaker 1: recently certified fish records to tell you about, two of
Speaker 1: which involve estock specimens in Minnesota that were released. We
Speaker 1: try to we try to balance harvest and and and release.
Speaker 1: On the show I Fish, You Eat Fish. We both
Speaker 1: kill fish, but we're thoughtful about it. We're thoughtful about
Speaker 1: what we kill and what we release. Generally speaking, releasing
Speaker 1: large mature fish benefits the broader population and that's especially
Speaker 1: true for slow growing apex predators like pike and muskie.
Speaker 1: This summer, Minnesota broke or met the state catch and
Speaker 1: release records for both of these species, and though totally anecdotal,
Speaker 1: I think this suggests that management efforts and catch and
Speaker 1: release ethics for these fish is working. Well. Sure, that's
Speaker 1: that's the general trend, and we're seeing a bear out.
Speaker 1: So if you like big toothy fish and live in
Speaker 1: the Gopher State, you're living the good old days. Enjoy them.
Speaker 1: Brecon Koballecki is definitely living his good old days. But
Speaker 1: since he's only fifteen years old, he probably doesn't know
Speaker 1: that yet. He doesn't know what a good day is yet.
Speaker 1: He's yet not yet. On June, Brecon caught a forty
Speaker 1: six and a quarter inch northern pike. Now just take
Speaker 1: a second and let that sink in. A fifteen year
Speaker 1: old caught a northern pike over forty six inches in
Speaker 1: the lower forty eight states this year. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say that I've done forty six but I had to
Speaker 1: go to the Tippity Top of Saskatchewan to do it.
Speaker 1: So that's impressive exactly. And as I peer out my
Speaker 1: window through wildfire smokes so thick that I can't see
Speaker 1: the nearby mountains, causing air quality so bad that my
Speaker 1: kid isn't supposed to play outside. I'm smiling. It may
Speaker 1: look like it may look and feel like the dust
Speaker 1: cloud kicked up by the four horsemen is growing thick
Speaker 1: enough to obscure the sun itself. But all cannot be
Speaker 1: lost if pike like that still swim in our waters.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, a thirty inch pike in
Speaker 1: that latitude was a cause for celebration. Brecon's fish could
Speaker 1: eat a thirty inch pike, and best of all, she's
Speaker 1: still swimming alright. So Brecon and his dad were on
Speaker 1: vacation in Elie, Minnesota, and they had hired a guide
Speaker 1: for the day to take them fishing. Their day was
Speaker 1: nearly over, and with just ten minutes left before heading
Speaker 1: back to the dock, they hooked up on the pike
Speaker 1: while trolling. The fish bests the previous record by exactly
Speaker 1: one inch. While there are some aspects of the story
Speaker 1: that feel reminiscent of your your recent reporting on Michigan's
Speaker 1: new record Chinook, namely that it was caught by a
Speaker 1: teenager while trolling. The kid who caught. This fish does
Speaker 1: not seem like a disinterested gen Z meat puppet with
Speaker 1: no appreciation for what just happened to him. You are
Speaker 1: bringing it, Breckon told local reporters, quote, the whole experience
Speaker 1: went by in a flash. But it was the experience
Speaker 1: of a lifetime. I'll never forget. And even though he
Speaker 1: was just speaking in platitudes because he was talking to reporters,
Speaker 1: I don't care. Congratulations Breckon, Yeah, man, that's a that's
Speaker 1: an insane fish for the lower fore and and and
Speaker 1: don't expect that to ever happen again. Just down the
Speaker 1: road from Elis Lake for a million, which has a
Speaker 1: very well earned reputation for growing huge muskies, which is
Speaker 1: why Todd Kirby went fishing there with a few friends,
Speaker 1: just ahead of an incoming front and had one of
Speaker 1: those nights that make other musky anglers seethed with jealousy.
Speaker 1: He told local reporters quote, that Friday night, we were
Speaker 1: up against the weather. There was a huge storm front
Speaker 1: moving through, creating extremely unstable conditions. The humidity was high
Speaker 1: and storm clouds were building. It was one of those
Speaker 1: nights that the fish seemed to be super active. Our
Speaker 1: boat had multiple chases, one resulting in a forty eight
Speaker 1: inch fish in the net at that time, my personal best.
Speaker 1: At ten thirty, his lure got hit again and he
Speaker 1: broke his personal best for the second time in just
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. In spectacular fashion. The fish taped
Speaker 1: out at fifty seven and a quarter inches, tying the
Speaker 1: standing catch and release muskie record for Minnesota, which was
Speaker 1: also set on Lake for a Million in two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: We are all very happy for Todd. Actually that's not true.
Speaker 1: We all kind of hate Todd, but we are happy
Speaker 1: to know that trophy pike and muskie are alive and
Speaker 1: well in Minnesota. Can I just can I just sad?
Speaker 1: You know what's worse than musky fishing all day and
Speaker 1: not catching any muskies? Uh, musky fishing all night and
Speaker 1: not catching which I've done. I've done. I've gone out
Speaker 1: there specifically to be like, oh, nighttime, musty fishing. I
Speaker 1: love night fishing. That was awful. That was awful because
Speaker 1: like everything else goes to bed, like so you're not
Speaker 1: there's no bycatcher, and it's like this is terrible. I
Speaker 1: am cold and we've eaten all the jerky hours ago.
Speaker 1: But good for him. That to hell of a fish,
Speaker 1: so someone's got to do it kind of you, And yeah,
Speaker 1: good for him. And we also have to appreciate that
Speaker 1: Todd's fish was caught casting, not trolling. Let's give him
Speaker 1: that to dude. There you go. Yep. But probably my
Speaker 1: favorite part of this story was Todd's description of the
Speaker 1: fight to the media. He said, quote, I compare it
Speaker 1: to really get a large moving log. After a few
Speaker 1: dark splashes, she was in the net. Now. I don't
Speaker 1: know this. This might support your theory that fish don't
Speaker 1: fight as well at night. Uh, But either way, I
Speaker 1: love the fact that Todd was honest, right, he didn't
Speaker 1: try to invent some heroic Hemingway esque battle to play
Speaker 1: up his trophy. When the media asked him, he was like, yep,
Speaker 1: it just came in like a long that's what happened. Well, dude,
Speaker 1: And you know what, I of him a lot of
Speaker 1: credit for saying that, because and this is not taken
Speaker 1: away anything from musky dudes, because I appreciate what you
Speaker 1: all do. But you don't catch a muskie for the
Speaker 1: drag ripping fight, right you, Like most guys, it's heavy gear.
Speaker 1: You want that fish in the bag right away. It's
Speaker 1: the eat, right It's like the figure eight and the
Speaker 1: boatside eat and the swipe and all that. But he's like,
Speaker 1: I've never caught a musky at night, as I've just
Speaker 1: told you. But that is truly no bullshit. Like I
Speaker 1: love mouson for browns. You know, um, they don't they
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're just like super confused and
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on because it's dark when they
Speaker 1: get stuck. But they do not fight nearly as well
Speaker 1: at night. I don't fight nearly as well night either.
Speaker 1: Well you got you got a good point. But good
Speaker 1: on him for not making that out to be some
Speaker 1: epic battle because they get it. And all. This brings
Speaker 1: me to the final record in this week's record roundup,
Speaker 1: which was caught by Dr Bob Timpson off the coast
Speaker 1: of North Carolina and also didn't put up much of
Speaker 1: a fight. Dr Timpson and some friends were grouper fishing
Speaker 1: with local guide Captain Hiroke Tilma in two hundred fift
Speaker 1: of water, and while all his buddies were catching grouper,
Speaker 1: Dr Timpson was getting hosed over the course of the morning.
Speaker 1: He had only brought in a greater soap fish and
Speaker 1: a spotted scorpion fish. Now, I for one would have
Speaker 1: been pretty pumped about the scorpion fish, but he was not,
Speaker 1: and I get it. They were after grouper. Apparently Dr
Speaker 1: Timpson was getting frustrated about his inability to catch the
Speaker 1: target species and decided to change tactics. One of the grouper,
Speaker 1: caught by another angler on the boat, coughed up a
Speaker 1: relatively intact crab after coming over the rail, and Timpson
Speaker 1: snatched the crab off the deck, put it on his
Speaker 1: hook and dropped it down, figuring the crab had already
Speaker 1: been munched by a grouper and might improve his chances,
Speaker 1: and he was right kind of. The crab got eaten
Speaker 1: soon after hitting bottom and Timpson had a fish on
Speaker 1: the line, but once again it wasn't a grouper. The
Speaker 1: bright orange, topical looking specimen came to the service pretty
Speaker 1: quickly and no one in the boat, including the captain,
Speaker 1: had any idea what it was. They initially guessed it
Speaker 1: to be a parrot fish, which is technically possible in
Speaker 1: north I looked it up. They have been seen as
Speaker 1: far north as Maryland, but highly unlikely. Carl there's not
Speaker 1: a whole ton of car all up there exactly. So
Speaker 1: they kept it, and when they got back into service,
Speaker 1: they did a quick Google search and identified it as
Speaker 1: a Spanish hog fish, at which point they also realized
Speaker 1: that the fish they had on board was far larger
Speaker 1: than any of the examples they saw on the internet.
Speaker 1: Happy happy accident. Ye. In fact, they discovered the world
Speaker 1: record for Spanish hog fish weighed just one pound eight ounces.
Speaker 1: When they finally got to a certified scale, the fish
Speaker 1: that Dr Timpson had only recently bemoaned as unwanted bycatch
Speaker 1: that fought like a discarded prophylactic shattered the world record
Speaker 1: for Spanish hog fish by more than a pound. Wow,
Speaker 1: good for him, Good for him. As great as that is,
Speaker 1: it's also like, if not for the Internet, they never
Speaker 1: it never would have been no be like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and they just have eaten it and gone on with
Speaker 1: their lives. Well okay, well that was a terrific round up.
Speaker 1: Good for him. Um, that's something. I have to google
Speaker 1: the fish because I can't even picture what it looks like.
Speaker 1: I don't even know it does. I mean, it looks like,
Speaker 1: you know, how the hog fish have those big lips
Speaker 1: and like the yish, it looks like a hog fish,
Speaker 1: but but more brightly colored and smaller. I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's as tasty, because hog fish is freaking assumes so Like,
Speaker 1: that's the problem with hog fish is that when I
Speaker 1: order it in Florida, I just always assume it's not
Speaker 1: actually hog fish because I don't trust anybody. But man,
Speaker 1: when I've gotten it, like in person, in the flesh,
Speaker 1: did hog fish so fantastic? Anyway? You know what else
Speaker 1: is delicious? Snakeheads? As I've said a billion d in
Speaker 1: one time. Um, but the person in this story uh
Speaker 1: is not going to uh ever learn that. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I was not going to do the Massachusetts snakehead story,
Speaker 1: even though a bunch of you guys forwarded along. And
Speaker 1: here's why. Right, the first story I read was in
Speaker 1: the Miami Herald, and it literally could have been cut
Speaker 1: and pasted from every single story of a snakehead showing
Speaker 1: up in a new place. Right. The summary of that
Speaker 1: is basically so and so caught one here. Now here's
Speaker 1: paragraph after paragraph of the same outdated and overhyped facts
Speaker 1: that have been written for twenty years, and its rounded
Speaker 1: out nicely Yeah, it rounded out nicely with you know,
Speaker 1: vague quotes from studies and surveys that also happened twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. So I didn't really think there was that
Speaker 1: much for me to say. But the story on Boston
Speaker 1: dot Com took a much deeper dive into the angler
Speaker 1: and his personal experience with this fish, and I started
Speaker 1: reading that and chuckling, and I was like, Okay, here
Speaker 1: we go. I can run with this. So that angler
Speaker 1: is Michael Powell, and the snakehead was called in August
Speaker 1: in Reservoir Pond in Canton, Massachusetts, which is a Boston
Speaker 1: suburb and also noteworthy because the snakehead like rarely, if ever,
Speaker 1: for all I I know, just kind of shows up
Speaker 1: like in in in the pond next to the cornfield
Speaker 1: in Iowa, you know what I mean. It's always always
Speaker 1: around an urban center. UM authorities believed this one was
Speaker 1: a pet that was released after getting too big for
Speaker 1: its tank, which is one of the most common ways
Speaker 1: that these fish end up everywhere that they are now.
Speaker 1: Powell was fishing for bass that day and throwing a
Speaker 1: hollow body mouse, so that all checks out definitely something
Speaker 1: a a snack would chew. UM so here's what he
Speaker 1: had to say about the hookup. I fished my whole life,
Speaker 1: so I kind of knew what to do, and I
Speaker 1: knew it wasn't a fish that was part of this area.
Speaker 1: As soon as I got it on the boat, I said,
Speaker 1: holy shit, this is a snakehead fish. Now moving on
Speaker 1: to the specs the snakehead. This is from the story.
Speaker 1: The snakehead was five pounds and thirty inches long. Negative,
Speaker 1: it was neither of those things. And that is a
Speaker 1: classic case of a reporter. I feel like asking an
Speaker 1: angler how big it was after the fact, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, and it's like, oh, you know, like
Speaker 1: five pounds probably thirty inches, right, So this one might
Speaker 1: weigh three pounds at best, it might measure twenty two inches.
Speaker 1: And remember I've caught I've caught a lot of them,
Speaker 1: so I have a pretty decent eye for them. I
Speaker 1: caught to fish over thirty inches this summer, and like
Speaker 1: that length is dream status if you're into snakeheads. Those
Speaker 1: fish were nine and a half and eleven pounds. So
Speaker 1: the measurements are are are just inaccurate. Okay, It's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty it's pretty small snakehead. Mike um now, and
Speaker 1: in the story, Powell says he's been quote to the
Speaker 1: to the bottom of YouTube and back when it comes
Speaker 1: to fishing videos, so he was familiar with the type
Speaker 1: of fish and new to call the authorities immediately. But then,
Speaker 1: the story says Powell believed he'd caught a brown snakehead fish,
Speaker 1: which has not yet been identified in the US. Do
Speaker 1: you know why, because there's no such thing, no such
Speaker 1: thing as a brown snakehead fish. I googled it though,
Speaker 1: just to make sure I didn't miss something, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Just make sure I didn't look stupid.
Speaker 1: But when you google brown snakehead fish, you only get
Speaker 1: one return, and that would be this story about Michael Powell's.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a great northern snakehead. It's in
Speaker 1: a darker phase. It's that's fine. Um fun facts. This
Speaker 1: is not the first snake had caught in Massachusetts. This
Speaker 1: makes number five since two thousand two. But it seems
Speaker 1: like in all cases they were dealing with a loner
Speaker 1: adult fish, and there's been no evidence of reproduction in
Speaker 1: the wild up there, right. So Powell reported this to
Speaker 1: the proper authorities, and they asked him to keep the
Speaker 1: fish alive for them, but they couldn't get there to
Speaker 1: collect it until the next day. So Powell says, I
Speaker 1: don't really have an aquarium I can stick in't. So
Speaker 1: what I did is I dragged one of my buddies
Speaker 1: boats on land and filled it with water and we
Speaker 1: put him in there. I put some plywood over it,
Speaker 1: and then cinder blocks over the plywood, made sure it
Speaker 1: didn't get out, because they're known for getting out of
Speaker 1: aquariums and crawling around. So this all this all ties
Speaker 1: back to just like the overhead yeah right, um. And
Speaker 1: then the final quote, which sounds like it was given
Speaker 1: to a TV reporter, Powell says, did you see the
Speaker 1: teeth on that thing? Try catching it. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what the hell to do with it, and I fished
Speaker 1: my whole life. We had it out of the water
Speaker 1: for two hours while I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what to put it in. And as soon as you
Speaker 1: put it in the water, it let out a giant
Speaker 1: gulp of air and started breathing through its skills. Again,
Speaker 1: I said, that's it. I don't want to see it anymore.
Speaker 1: It's doing stuff that fish aren't supposed to do. Come on, man,
Speaker 1: like is it gonna haunt your dreams? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like if it were me, I'd be out
Speaker 1: there all the time wondering what if there's one, there
Speaker 1: might be more, you know what I mean? Like clearly,
Speaker 1: like I don't know. Dude's not not embracing this. So
Speaker 1: um mass DNR will study it, which, like I said,
Speaker 1: means no fish tacos for pal, which is probably smart
Speaker 1: so he doesn't worry. It'll like multiply in his stomach
Speaker 1: and he'll have snakeheads bursting from every orifice. What is
Speaker 1: it about these fish, dude? What is it? I honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know, because there there's so many invasive species around,
Speaker 1: and we talk about invasive species a lot, and we
Speaker 1: know they're a problem. I'm not saying that these fish
Speaker 1: aren't a problem, But there's something about these fish that
Speaker 1: captures the imagination of the media and people like nothing
Speaker 1: else except maybe sharks. I am convinced, um and I
Speaker 1: don't want to give too much away, but like, wait
Speaker 1: wait till the new b Side season drops later this year,
Speaker 1: Like you want to see some snakeheads ship. Like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say you have some snakehead ship, But I am.
Speaker 1: I am thoroughly convinced that it is purely media fear driven.
Speaker 1: Oh it is. But why did the media pick this
Speaker 1: one because it's called a snakehead, because it's called a
Speaker 1: snakehead as it's mean looking, because it has teeth, and
Speaker 1: we it's like we're beating a dead horse. Right. The
Speaker 1: whole walking on land thing is not inaccurate, but it
Speaker 1: is a survival mechanism. But it was sold to people
Speaker 1: so hard in those early years that these would just
Speaker 1: destroy everything. So it actually is inaccurate though, because I
Speaker 1: did a deep dive in this in preparing for the
Speaker 1: new season of Dos Boat. Right, northern snakehead can't crawl
Speaker 1: across land or live out of water for three days.
Speaker 1: There is another subspecies of snakehead they can do it,
Speaker 1: but not the northern snakead not the ones that are here.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, well three days no way. But dude, I've
Speaker 1: I've walked up on snakeheads crawling across wet grass, right,
Speaker 1: So my point it's not that they can't. The northern
Speaker 1: snakeheads can come out of water. They need to be hydrated,
Speaker 1: like it needs to be murdered. Wet grass. They can't
Speaker 1: crawl down Route one past is like, that's not gonna happen. Um.
Speaker 1: But I just think that there was so much like
Speaker 1: driven into people's heads, like media latched on. It is
Speaker 1: so hard early on that it is just stuck with
Speaker 1: too many people. And there are so many worse things
Speaker 1: in our waterways all over this country than these, I
Speaker 1: mean they. The truth is there were two separate horror
Speaker 1: films released with snakeheads as the primary fear based bad
Speaker 1: guy horror films. Look at that, there are two snakehead
Speaker 1: horror films out there. That's how obsessed we are with
Speaker 1: these fish. It doesn't make any sense. But I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: this dude doesn't seem stoked at all. Like be stoked, dude.
Speaker 1: You've caught a million bass and you've got it all
Speaker 1: afraid of it on a mouse. That's great, that's rad.
Speaker 1: That is rad. So there you go, Massachusetts snakeheads apparently
Speaker 1: they're just they're not gonna they're not gonna latch on
Speaker 1: up there in Boston. Snakeheads. They may be able to
Speaker 1: crawl for short distances on damp land, but you know
Speaker 1: what they can't do, Joe, What's that? They can't fly? No,
Speaker 1: they can't know. But my second story is about fish
Speaker 1: that can fly sort of. So for for this story,
Speaker 1: I'm going back to Lake for a Million in Minnesota,
Speaker 1: because in recent weeks an odd phenomenon has been troubling
Speaker 1: the locals. They've been finding fish in places where fish
Speaker 1: don't belong. Strange it sounds fish do on occasion fall
Speaker 1: from the sky. In fact, according to the book It's Raining,
Speaker 1: fish and spiders creatures fall from the sky about forty
Speaker 1: times a year. This occurs when tornadoes or water spouts
Speaker 1: form over large bodies of water and suck fish and
Speaker 1: water up from the surface into the storm. The storm
Speaker 1: then moves over land and drops the fish, giving the
Speaker 1: impression of fish rain. But there have been no tornadoes
Speaker 1: or water spouts anywhere near Lake for a Million recently.
Speaker 1: According to local newspaper The Timber Jay, numerous residents have
Speaker 1: reported finding fish on decks, law driveways, streets, and in
Speaker 1: the woods, sometimes nowhere near the shore of the lake itself.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of these fish are tulibies, also known
Speaker 1: as Cisco's. The one resident reported finding an eighteen inch
Speaker 1: walle in his yard. To make things even well, at
Speaker 1: least slightly stranger. Many of the fish are headless and mutilated. Oh,
Speaker 1: the obvious question is why in the name of God
Speaker 1: or fish falling from the sky. I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: I was just saying that all those record fish catches
Speaker 1: make me feel like we're not living through the initial
Speaker 1: wave of the apocalypse, But mangled fish raining down upon
Speaker 1: small Midwestern towns might force me to rethink that assessment. Thankfully.
Speaker 1: Is this an X files or a real story? I've
Speaker 1: heard this before. I think it was squids though, are
Speaker 1: like jelly like blobs looking up the timber j They
Speaker 1: did some damn good reporting, and from the timber j
Speaker 1: we know according to local gossip and science, this is
Speaker 1: an splainable event. It's not a harbinger of the end times.
Speaker 1: First we'll hit the gossip. Residents told the paper that
Speaker 1: they believe the Pissine precipitation is actually the result of raptors.
Speaker 1: When water temperatures rise on lake for million, tulabies die
Speaker 1: off in large numbers, and the eagles and osprey take
Speaker 1: advantage of the free meals. Locals think that the birds
Speaker 1: have so much food they're just scattering it around Willie
Speaker 1: Nelly all over the place. Biologists agree that eagles and
Speaker 1: osprey are the mechanism for fish transport, but the rest
Speaker 1: of that theory doesn't hold up. Matt Hennan, the d
Speaker 1: n r's local large Lake specialist, recently tested oxygen levels
Speaker 1: in lake for milion and found them fully oxygen aated
Speaker 1: down to thirty seven feet. He also said that the
Speaker 1: d n R has seen no evidence of a fish
Speaker 1: kill in recent weeks. Those fish are, however, moving into
Speaker 1: the shallows this time a year to feed on abundant
Speaker 1: zoe plankton and prepare to spawn. He also said that
Speaker 1: eagle populations around the lake are at an all time high,
Speaker 1: so his hypothesis is that the eagles, in preparation for
Speaker 1: their own upcoming seasonal change, are competing with each other
Speaker 1: for available food. They're scooping up the tulibes as they
Speaker 1: move into shallow water, but in route to a nest
Speaker 1: or tree to eat the fish, they're running into other
Speaker 1: eagles who want to steal their meal and then getting
Speaker 1: into these aerial dog fights. And then fish fall from
Speaker 1: the sky, sometimes decapitated. Once has anybody like seen one
Speaker 1: fall from the sky, like if they physically watched it?
Speaker 1: Far are you getting there? I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: that question. Actually, like what people fish on the ground,
Speaker 1: I know, yes, you're really shifting on the Timber j
Speaker 1: somebody works there and I got the story from them.
Speaker 1: They did great work. They talked to locals, they talked
Speaker 1: to the biologist. There's some good quotes in that story.
Speaker 1: Everyone subscribed to the Timber J If you live around
Speaker 1: like Familion, I don't think anybody has seen one fall
Speaker 1: from the sky. But they're in places that they had
Speaker 1: to have fallen. And there were some photos and it's
Speaker 1: clear like this thing fell down. It wasn't act all right,
Speaker 1: all right? And as interesting as I find the story,
Speaker 1: and I do you know what this makes me think of?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm stuck with. What I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: the poor person who will go to clean out their
Speaker 1: gutters in a couple of months, oh yeah, and find
Speaker 1: a fully rotten tool to be jammed in a downspout.
Speaker 1: Just the nastiest thing you could ever imagine that thinking
Speaker 1: about this is such a dad like not cool thing
Speaker 1: to say. Gutter guards best investment in my life. I
Speaker 1: can't say enough good things about my gutter guards. We
Speaker 1: could talk about him for hours. Who needs weed guards?
Speaker 1: I got gutter guards right on. Yeah, that's it. That's
Speaker 1: all I got from the guy. Ending ended on the
Speaker 1: rotten tool be jammed into a down spout. That's the
Speaker 1: image I want to leave all of you with your
Speaker 1: welcome Yeah. Okay that yeah, that that that that would
Speaker 1: not be good to take that out of there. I
Speaker 1: don't really know what kind of good follow up I
Speaker 1: have to that. I mean, it feels it seems like
Speaker 1: mystery solved. But what came into my head, It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I ended on that because I
Speaker 1: was like, how could he ever transition from a rotten
Speaker 1: tool to be jammed in a gutter to anything fish
Speaker 1: news worthy? Oh but I but I am. But I'm
Speaker 1: about to but I want to just say a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's a loose connection, but it's a little bit. It's
Speaker 1: actually nothing to do with the gutter. It's going to
Speaker 1: be more about eagles. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: But as soon as you started telling the story, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of stuff you see on those
Speaker 1: like um Paranormal of history on science Shannow. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a cold day and wherever Kentucky when started? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Seven exactly. So, Um, here's what I'll say. If the
Speaker 1: eagles run out of toolabes, they might want to head
Speaker 1: on over to the Illinois River, where things have gotten
Speaker 1: much safer to eat lately. How about that? So I alright, fair,
Speaker 1: fair four point five. You know, just keep on theme
Speaker 1: with that with Ben Anyway, pc bees, I think most
Speaker 1: of you know what they are, and in case you
Speaker 1: do not, they are poly chlorinated by phenals. PCBs were
Speaker 1: widely used as an insulator in electrical equipment and in
Speaker 1: other industrial equipment. Now PCBs are one of the leading
Speaker 1: contributors to do not eat or consumption warnings being placed
Speaker 1: on certain waterways, and as Jersey guy, I am highly
Speaker 1: familiar with these warnings. I have been eaten PCB since
Speaker 1: I was knee high to a grasshopper. Um. Matter of fact,
Speaker 1: there there's been one on the Hudson River in Raretan
Speaker 1: Bay where we filmed episode one of dost Boats season three,
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Um. The thing is, though,
Speaker 1: I think like people get nuts so about these warnings.
Speaker 1: Sometimes like just nuts. And in most cases warnings tell
Speaker 1: you to eat fish from a contaminated area in moderation.
Speaker 1: They don't often say never if you have a catfish
Speaker 1: from the Striper Hudson once or twice the season, you're fine.
Speaker 1: Pregnant women, young girls, nursing mothers, they need to be
Speaker 1: extra cautious. But generally speaking, unless you're eating fish or
Speaker 1: shell fish from that water daily or weekly, this is
Speaker 1: not that big a deal, but people love to cling
Speaker 1: to it. So um. Spoiler alert. Episode four of dost
Speaker 1: Boats season three was filmed on the Potomac in d
Speaker 1: C with chef Kevin Gillespie and they caught blue cats
Speaker 1: and oh my god. People went nuts when they posted
Speaker 1: photos like you can't eat a fish from there, ever,
Speaker 1: it's a death sentence, and blah blah, it's not okay.
Speaker 1: They feel like these are the same people that like,
Speaker 1: you know, you'll sit behind a bus at a traffic
Speaker 1: light breeding in the exhaust and like you don't worry
Speaker 1: about that, but you're gonna worry about one catfish um.
Speaker 1: And people I think down the tenth cigarette they've been
Speaker 1: like catfish um. But people I think also forget um
Speaker 1: that a lot of the fish you purchase in the
Speaker 1: fish market probably has some level of contaminants in it too, right,
Speaker 1: So it's just anyway PCBs were banned by the Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency in nineteen seventy nine, but they were used
Speaker 1: so heavily for so long um that they've been contaminating
Speaker 1: to raise ever since. They don't just go away easily.
Speaker 1: So here we are forty two years after the band,
Speaker 1: and there may be some hope that in certain places
Speaker 1: those PCBs might finally be diluting or sort of burning
Speaker 1: out and going away. The Illinois Department of Public Health
Speaker 1: recently took the last remaining fish off the do not
Speaker 1: eat list for the Illinois River, and that would be
Speaker 1: the Channel catfish. So PCBs collecting the mud in the
Speaker 1: silton sludge and the soft bottom. Therefore, species like catfish
Speaker 1: that do most of their eating on the bottom always
Speaker 1: have higher levels of of PCBs than fish that tend
Speaker 1: to feed further up in the water column move around more.
Speaker 1: So to take them off the list of a river
Speaker 1: with an incredibly long industrial background is to me pretty significant,
Speaker 1: So from the story on Advantage news dot com, the
Speaker 1: DPH regularly monitors Illinois River for contaminants. Fish from each
Speaker 1: stretch of the two and seventy mile along Illinois River
Speaker 1: are sampled every five years, year by year as contamination
Speaker 1: levels have improved, specific types of fish have been removed
Speaker 1: from the do not Eat list. Only channel catfish from
Speaker 1: two stretches of the Illinois River in northern industrial areas
Speaker 1: remained on the list this year, and then in August,
Speaker 1: using the most current data, the DPH was finally able
Speaker 1: to clear the channel catfish from the list. So there
Speaker 1: have been some strategic cleanup efforts on the Illinois over
Speaker 1: the years. But as I understand it, we're also just
Speaker 1: seeing again that natural burnout. After forty years, these PCBs
Speaker 1: are just starting to break down. So this could be
Speaker 1: a a good sign for similar rivers and bodies of
Speaker 1: water with similar problems. And I found that a little
Speaker 1: bit uplifting. Yeah, I mean, are they burning out? Is
Speaker 1: that that they have a half life or are they
Speaker 1: half like atomic particles. I think it's a combination of both,
Speaker 1: just flushing over time and turnover in these rivers, And
Speaker 1: I mean they will they do have a half life.
Speaker 1: They will just sort of break down eventually. It just
Speaker 1: takes a really long time. So I mean we're talking
Speaker 1: about breakdown that that I mean the process started in
Speaker 1: nine nine, so it's taken a really long time. But
Speaker 1: it's a little glimmer of if you're thinking about different
Speaker 1: pollutants and the things we worry about, particularly like nuclear waste.
Speaker 1: Forty years is nothing, right, I mean, like you have
Speaker 1: like millions of years of half life on some of
Speaker 1: this stuff. So this is like kind of good news.
Speaker 1: It goes away. I mean, it's it's a long time
Speaker 1: in a single person's life span. It's not that long
Speaker 1: in terms of like the longevity of pollutants really right,
Speaker 1: Like they're not going to break ground on the on
Speaker 1: the hard rock chernobyl to at least five or something
Speaker 1: like that, you know what I mean. So, no, that's great, man.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the upliving. It's it's uplifting in a number
Speaker 1: of diferent ways. One always like to hear about rivers
Speaker 1: getting cleaned up, but also catfish anglers on the Illinois River. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every day, every day, kill them off. There's not enough
Speaker 1: hassautry seafood breader in the world, there you. So we've ended,
Speaker 1: we've ended news on an uplifting note. We're gonna, we're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get phills. Last judgment of me and Miles
Speaker 1: here together, and then we're just gonna bring somebody straight
Speaker 1: down and do one final Awkward Moments in angling. Wow, Miles,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it's your last show. Um. I normally
Speaker 1: play a kind of a stupid character when I do
Speaker 1: these Fish New segments, but I just want to get
Speaker 1: a little sincere here and say that editing Bent is
Speaker 1: honestly the highlight of my week and I'm really gonna
Speaker 1: miss you being a part of that. Um. Just good
Speaker 1: luck with your your next journey. That being said, Joe Sirmellie,
Speaker 1: you are the winner of fish News this week. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's Miles. I'm not that big of an asshole. Miles.
Speaker 1: I just want to say one more thing. You take
Speaker 1: my breath away and remember the next time you're on
Speaker 1: the highway to the danger zone. I know that I've
Speaker 1: always got that love and feeling, but it's a back
Speaker 1: of pixture, a live black So I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that Awkward Moments has been one of our
Speaker 1: personal favorite segments. Like we've we've really had a great
Speaker 1: time with it, and I promise that no matter what
Speaker 1: Bent looks like going forward, awkward Moments will not go away.
Speaker 1: Right it is. It's just it's just too much fun.
Speaker 1: And I need you guys keep sending and tagging your
Speaker 1: embarrassing shots, because if you don't, I'll have no one
Speaker 1: but myself to make fun of all the time. And
Speaker 1: while I'd never run out of things to make fun
Speaker 1: of about myself, it's just a nice break to trash
Speaker 1: someone else from time to time. So awkward rides on,
Speaker 1: you know, and as it has to, because from the
Speaker 1: very beginning we knew that we wanted to make fun
Speaker 1: of the genre of the hero shot. It's just it's
Speaker 1: so right for ridicule, and yet we all do it.
Speaker 1: We just can't help ourselves. And and this week Joe
Speaker 1: found us a gem, which is maybe, I think, maybe
Speaker 1: the perfect closer for us to do together, because while
Speaker 1: it's definitely awkward, it also kind of captures everything Bent
Speaker 1: is about in one frame. It could be it could
Speaker 1: be a Bent poster. We've said so many times that
Speaker 1: we strive to be the place where all anglers are welcome,
Speaker 1: where we're not siloed into being all fly or all
Speaker 1: salt or all bass like so many other podcasts. I know,
Speaker 1: damn well, you are going to maintain that going forward.
Speaker 1: But if you need some short term help. You might
Speaker 1: want to call Jeremy Creed, the subject of this photo.
Speaker 1: I I might want to call him, or at least
Speaker 1: if I ever need a bodyguard while fishing, I'll know
Speaker 1: who to call. Um. Look, the fact is we can
Speaker 1: spare in an entire episode dissecting this shot. But per
Speaker 1: lance V, your shift at Chili's starts in an hour
Speaker 1: or so, so we just don't have that kind of time. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is a This is a vertical photo of
Speaker 1: a shirtless Jeremy who's wearing a backpack, and he's standing
Speaker 1: in the stream, and he's holding up a decent smallmouth
Speaker 1: bass two pounds maybe decent fish, good smally right, So,
Speaker 1: working from the top down, as as sometimes we do,
Speaker 1: we'll start with Jeremy's glasses. They are wrap around frameless glasses,
Speaker 1: possibly Oakley or knockoff flea market Oakley. And they're exactly
Speaker 1: what I've described in past awkward moments as ken Griffy Jr. Sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Now in his in his mouth is a fly rod.
Speaker 1: My money is on flea market knockoffs looks like those
Speaker 1: those are not. But I I understand why Jeremy's doing
Speaker 1: the rod biting pose here. But I still don't like it.
Speaker 1: His hands are occupied. One is busy lipping that smally vertically,
Speaker 1: and the other is holding a very nice wooden landing
Speaker 1: net with a ghost bag. I applaud this, okay, He
Speaker 1: Jeremy is worried, doesn't want the fish to wiggle out
Speaker 1: of his hand and hurt itself. That's great. But while
Speaker 1: I do applaud the fish handling, I have just never
Speaker 1: cared for the rod in mouth pose. Can I interrupt
Speaker 1: for one second ask does that shot of you exist anywhere?
Speaker 1: Because I can't give him as hard of a time
Speaker 1: because there are shots of me doing that. But have
Speaker 1: you ever done that? I have done that. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I've never done it, but I have.
Speaker 1: It's been at least ten years since I've done so
Speaker 1: I feel like I can say I have learned from
Speaker 1: my past mistakes and I'm not trying to avoid it.
Speaker 1: But they exist of me? Is what I'm sure someone
Speaker 1: will find one of me and and make fun of it.
Speaker 1: And what I have to say to Jeremy in this photo,
Speaker 1: and and also to myself from my twenties, we get it.
Speaker 1: The Smalley the fish was fly caught good for you.
Speaker 1: But news flash, you also kind of look like a
Speaker 1: tool with that graphite in your teeth. Again, this is
Speaker 1: just my opinion, and the rod bite maneuver is is
Speaker 1: actually pretty standard in fly angler gripping grins. So that's
Speaker 1: about as far as I can go there. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: ship kind of gets weird in this photo. Yeah, so far,
Speaker 1: there's nothing out of the ordinary here, right, But then
Speaker 1: protruding straight up from the center of Jeremy's lower abdomen
Speaker 1: like a bad case of morning would is a spinning roun. Okay,
Speaker 1: he's got the handle jammed into the waistband of his
Speaker 1: quick Dry fishing pants and just the way that like
Speaker 1: it's got to be tapping his naughty bits. Okay, but
Speaker 1: that's not all right. Jammed into that waistband in the
Speaker 1: same central location, same place as the rod is his
Speaker 1: cell phone and a nine millimeter pistol. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: a lot of weight. I'm not I am not sure
Speaker 1: how those nylon quick dry pants are staying up frankly,
Speaker 1: but that's also not the main concern here because there's
Speaker 1: a lot going on. You put this whole package together
Speaker 1: and it's it's like pseudo tactical. Jeremy's trying to be
Speaker 1: prepared for every possibility. May fly start hatching, Bam, He's
Speaker 1: got the fly rod deep, whip out the spinner, get
Speaker 1: him down. Should he encounter a selfie crisis, which he
Speaker 1: seems of the age that that might be a problem,
Speaker 1: he's covered. And if a bear or wolf, for yetty
Speaker 1: or homicidal maniac just happens to jump out of the bushes,
Speaker 1: the pistol is at the ready. But I said pseudo tactical,
Speaker 1: because if Jeremy was actually deep in the tactical world,
Speaker 1: he'd have like special holsters for all these things that
Speaker 1: would keep them on his waist band, on the outside
Speaker 1: or elsewhere, not jammed into his pants. Right, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have a rod, butt, camera, phone, and pistol all pointed
Speaker 1: straight at his junk and only held up by the
Speaker 1: power of wasteband and beer gut. Now, well, it's easy
Speaker 1: to crack jokes about this shot. This is this is
Speaker 1: what ties it all together. The truth is this was
Speaker 1: and kind of still is me and this shot is
Speaker 1: bent right like I was the kid in love with
Speaker 1: fly fishing, but not in love with the idea that
Speaker 1: that I might miss opportunities because I only brought a
Speaker 1: fly rod. So most of the time when I had
Speaker 1: weighed a smallmouth river or a trout stream, there was
Speaker 1: either a fly rod broken down of my backpack or
Speaker 1: a spinning rod sticking out of my backpack or waiter belt.
Speaker 1: And if there's one resounding message here on Ben, it's that,
Speaker 1: God damn it, that's okay, you can do that. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and you're right, that is That is the message.
Speaker 1: And I may, I may, I may have been a
Speaker 1: little too hard on young Jeremy. I really do applaud
Speaker 1: his preparedness in versatility. It's the firearms safety thing that's
Speaker 1: getting You can talk about that for a set. I
Speaker 1: just I hope he's getting a little more careful with
Speaker 1: how he carries a firearm. It's I'm glad he's got it.
Speaker 1: I want him to be prepared and safe. That's all great,
Speaker 1: but poor poor firearms handling is not bent. Just the
Speaker 1: fishing stuff, the fishing stuff there, and and awkwardly sticking
Speaker 1: your cell phone somewhere, No doubt that's me. And God
Speaker 1: knows I spent years awkwardly lugging every kind of fishing
Speaker 1: implement I owned. Strapped in whatever way I could to
Speaker 1: whatever second hand backpack I could afford. I did that
Speaker 1: for years. Yeah, you threw it all, and you threw
Speaker 1: it all in your jam sport and off you tell me,
Speaker 1: tell me like nine times out of ten you would
Speaker 1: regret it too, Like you'd want to go into it
Speaker 1: that way, but she'd be like trying to crawl through
Speaker 1: ship and the spinning rods caught in the trees, or
Speaker 1: like it falls out of your waiter belt and a
Speaker 1: deep hole. Like it was always it was always a disaster.
Speaker 1: But I always did that. I just wanted to leave
Speaker 1: no fish on the table because of my inability to
Speaker 1: decide on method of chasing them anyway. Do you remember,
Speaker 1: like what makes you think of an image? Do you
Speaker 1: remember the one man band? Yeah? I always kind of
Speaker 1: felt like the one man band guy who sort of
Speaker 1: had every instrument strap to be somewhere playing. It's so inefficient,
Speaker 1: it's so inefficient, but it's so great And Jeremy, we
Speaker 1: really appreciate the shot again man, such a fitting closer
Speaker 1: for Miles. Not a tag team. So please keep sending
Speaker 1: your awkward photos to Bent at the mediator dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can d m them to me directly on
Speaker 1: the instagrams. That's where this one came from. I will
Speaker 1: close with a warning, however, UM, who the hell knows
Speaker 1: who will be joining me for future roastings. Okay, And
Speaker 1: if you've been with us from the beginning, you know
Speaker 1: our cast of regulars, and some of them probably won't
Speaker 1: be as nice and eloquent about your fury as Miles.
Speaker 1: So again, we do not condone, do not condone wet
Speaker 1: waiting with a loaded nine millimeter pointed at your junk.
Speaker 1: But we did enjoy that photo very much. I feel
Speaker 1: like we've always aimed to keep you on the straight
Speaker 1: path down range with your fishing, UM, which is why
Speaker 1: we close so many shows with our end of the
Speaker 1: line segment. And I'm gonna have to come up with
Speaker 1: a lot more luras and flies and baits. I suppose
Speaker 1: now that you're leaving, UM, but I think it's only
Speaker 1: fitting that you hit one more end of the line
Speaker 1: before you dip. I appreciate that, I think I should,
Speaker 1: and I want I want to close one of the
Speaker 1: best bent and the line topics. I can come up
Speaker 1: with one that's equally literate, degenerate, functional, and fishing all inclusive.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a little unconventional, but I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Well, that's not loud enough. Technically speaking, this
Speaker 1: is an end of the line segment. But because I
Speaker 1: want to hurl one last appeal to put down your
Speaker 1: phones pick up a book at all of you, it's
Speaker 1: also a freaking philistine segment. This is my last show.
Speaker 1: I do what I want. The fly I'm featuring this
Speaker 1: week is in many ways an anti fly. It's not
Speaker 1: delicate or fussy. It's not even actually tied. The bugger duck,
Speaker 1: as it's called, requires three materials and no threat at all.
Speaker 1: It's cheaper than a gas station jighead with a twister
Speaker 1: tail and just as easy to rig. No matter how
Speaker 1: much whiskey is curdling in your consciousness, you probably have
Speaker 1: all the necessary components to make this fly in your truck.
Speaker 1: Which is actually how the fly came to be. Here's
Speaker 1: a snippet of its origin story, taken from an essay
Speaker 1: written by its inventor. I was fishing wooly boogers on
Speaker 1: the Gallatin when it came up with a full blown
Speaker 1: bugger duck. The fish were hidden like crazy. Two had
Speaker 1: broken my tip. It and in my frenzy, I had
Speaker 1: snapped off four flies in the trees behind me, so
Speaker 1: I went back to my pickup to find more, but
Speaker 1: there were none. I did have some lead wrap in
Speaker 1: my vest and a dozen number six long shank hooks
Speaker 1: and a roll of duct tape in my glove box.
Speaker 1: With a vague idea of the invention that necessity was
Speaker 1: mothering forth, I went under the bridge to take a
Speaker 1: leak and stumbled upon the moldering carcass of a coyote
Speaker 1: nod duck. I picked some of the sodden down from it,
Speaker 1: returned to the tailgated by pickup, sat down, and proceeded
Speaker 1: to tape up a true bugger duck. I tore off
Speaker 1: a little strip at duct tape, wrapped the shank of
Speaker 1: the hook in it, wrapped the duct taped shank, and
Speaker 1: lead wrapped that in more duct tape, taped on some
Speaker 1: of the soggy down for a tail, and taped on
Speaker 1: more down for the body, creating a head that looked
Speaker 1: like a silver bullet in the process. Gazing at the
Speaker 1: morbid proletarian monstrosity I had created without thread, bob and
Speaker 1: or vice, I thought not bad, and quickly taped up
Speaker 1: four more. Then I lumbered back down to the river.
Speaker 1: The bugger duck and that passage. We're both the brainchild
Speaker 1: of writer, poet, teacher, and musician Greg Keeler, and the
Speaker 1: fly is a perfect distillation of Gregg's approach to fishing, writing,
Speaker 1: and life. Bugger ducks catch fish. They are an honest
Speaker 1: to god effective pattern. But that's not why I picked
Speaker 1: this fly. I love this fly for what it represents
Speaker 1: and who it reminds me of. See. You may not
Speaker 1: know the name Greg Keiler, but if you're even vaguely
Speaker 1: familiar with the countercultural outdoor writing scene in southwest Montana
Speaker 1: during the seventies and eighties, you know the crew that
Speaker 1: Greg ran with. We're talking about Russell Chatham, Doug Peacock,
Speaker 1: Tom mcgwayne, Jim Harrison, Gary Schneider, the people who defined
Speaker 1: the genre of outdoor writing as we know it today.
Speaker 1: Richard Brodigan was one of Greg's close friends. Greg wrote
Speaker 1: a book, Waltzing with the Captain that recounts some of
Speaker 1: their adventures, but Greg never found national notoriety in the
Speaker 1: same way as his contemporary. He wrote plenty of books,
Speaker 1: some very good ones, but maintained a family in addition
Speaker 1: to his day job as a tenure track professor at
Speaker 1: Montana State University. I read Gregg's memoir trash Fish when
Speaker 1: it was published in the early two thousands and found
Speaker 1: in it exactly the tone that I felt so much
Speaker 1: fishing literature lacked. Trash Fish is the opposite of most
Speaker 1: outdoor writing, unpretentious, self deprecating, and honest. Greg is no hero,
Speaker 1: trumpeting his genius and celebrating his triumph for fish and
Speaker 1: fellow anglers. He's a confused baby boomer with an inexplicable
Speaker 1: angling obsession, stumbling through the messiness of trying to live
Speaker 1: a satisfying life. Along the way, he up often hurts
Speaker 1: the people he loves most, indulges in years of self destruction,
Speaker 1: and goes fishing a lot. The book reminds us that
Speaker 1: just about everything we do, when viewed from an appropriate
Speaker 1: angle of distance, his absurd, and yet despite the clown
Speaker 1: futility of modern life, our actions have consequences. Individual suffering matters,
Speaker 1: even if not at the macro scale of a population
Speaker 1: now pushing eight billion. I reached out to Greg before
Speaker 1: my own memoir came out in two thousand nine to
Speaker 1: ask for advice on generating an audience and being a
Speaker 1: successful writer based in Bozeman. Though at the time we'd
Speaker 1: never met, he was kind enough to write back to
Speaker 1: me with the following wisdom. He wrote, My publisher tried
Speaker 1: to get me to go out and create a groundswell
Speaker 1: for trash Fish, so I ran home and hid in
Speaker 1: my house. If there's an audience for it in this area,
Speaker 1: it's because I've lived, taught, performed my songs, and exhibited
Speaker 1: my art here for thirty five years. I've been trying
Speaker 1: to write lately, but between students meetings, magazine writing, and
Speaker 1: feeble attempts to travel. For trash Fish to transient showed
Speaker 1: at my signing and butte, I've barely had time to fart.
Speaker 1: I knew that Greg and I would become friends when
Speaker 1: I enrolled in the graduate program at Montana State University.
Speaker 1: Greg's office became my sanctuary. He kept me afloat while
Speaker 1: I was churning in the crowded wave pool of fragile
Speaker 1: egos and weaponized word play we call academia. Greg served
Speaker 1: on my thesis committee until two days before my final defense,
Speaker 1: his wife committed suicide in her car parked in a
Speaker 1: Bank parking lot beside a steel statutory of majestic elk.
Speaker 1: I stopped by his house, wearing a black shirt, black tie,
Speaker 1: and black cowboy boots, and carrying a venison sausage pie,
Speaker 1: as if its caloric density might fill some of his void.
Speaker 1: I left, hastily, stepping into the early May perfume of lilacs,
Speaker 1: and tried not to think about futility as I drove
Speaker 1: my truck to the fluorescent globe of the English Department
Speaker 1: conference room. Later that summer, Greg and I went carpet fishing,
Speaker 1: and I was reminded of why I loved his memoir
Speaker 1: in the first place. The cover features a portrait of
Speaker 1: a sucker with a drop of water creeping down from
Speaker 1: its stupid and terrified eye, making the fish look as
Speaker 1: though it's crying. Here's a sample taken from an early chapter.
Speaker 1: I sometimes found it difficult to understand why father chose
Speaker 1: to go fishing by himself half the time. After all,
Speaker 1: he liked to fish. I like to fish, and I
Speaker 1: was his son. But now looking back, it's not quite
Speaker 1: such a mystery. Fishing with me must have been something
Speaker 1: like bird watching with a cat. As soon as we'd
Speaker 1: pull up to a streamer lake. I'd be out of
Speaker 1: the car, dashing toward the lake, falling over boulders, spilling
Speaker 1: the tackle box, and falling in the water. Father would
Speaker 1: stand by the car trunk, muttering under his breath, knowing
Speaker 1: that nothing short of violence could stop me. Then eventually
Speaker 1: he'd come after me, picking up hooks and sinkers in
Speaker 1: my wake, and finally ragging up his own rod. Not
Speaker 1: that he was any great shakes himself. His equipment was
Speaker 1: always frayed and clogged from use and abuse. His casting
Speaker 1: reels sometimes looked like a porcupine, with all the loose
Speaker 1: ends poking out from where he had nodded the line
Speaker 1: together after cutting out backlashes. His rod was short and
Speaker 1: stubby from breaking and regluing the tips so many times,
Speaker 1: and his lures they were huge, old concoctions of metal,
Speaker 1: feathers and wood, resembling small rats or squashed pigeons. But
Speaker 1: probably if I learned anything specific about my father from
Speaker 1: the process of angling, it was how to swear. After all,
Speaker 1: when one lets one's tackle become a huge tangled wad,
Speaker 1: one has a bit of trouble turning it into anything
Speaker 1: but found art. One of my earliest vivid memories is
Speaker 1: of Father standing out on a point of rocks on
Speaker 1: Lake scan Tellus in upstate New York, silhouetted against the
Speaker 1: futius sunset, jumping up and down and screaming. I can't
Speaker 1: remember if it was over faulty equipment, lost fisher life
Speaker 1: in general. All I remember is the part when a
Speaker 1: reel got a backlash in it in father's hands. That
Speaker 1: ceased being a plain old reel and became a jacked
Speaker 1: off spool of horse reel. Once in Oklahoma, when he
Speaker 1: was pulling a stringer of small bass from a farm
Speaker 1: pond and a water moccasin had managed to work one
Speaker 1: of the bass into its gullet, it ceased being a
Speaker 1: water moccasin and became the bastard son of an elongated turd.
Speaker 1: And once when he was cleaning a channel cat and
Speaker 1: his hands slipped so that the dorsal spine went into
Speaker 1: his wrist, it ceased being a channel cat became a
Speaker 1: scumb sucking mucus drenched nail in the hand of Jesus
Speaker 1: Christ Almighty. There was also violence. If he broke the
Speaker 1: tip of a rod, Sometimes instead of replacing the tip,
Speaker 1: he would take what was left and break it again
Speaker 1: in several places. It isn't easy to break a fishing
Speaker 1: rod in several places. Sometimes one must find a couple
Speaker 1: of cinder blocks so that one may lay it between
Speaker 1: them and stomp it. Or sometimes one must just rear
Speaker 1: back and send it whoop whooping out in the middle
Speaker 1: of the river. For the most part, Father was a gentleman,
Speaker 1: but fishing was for him a sort of ventilation shaft
Speaker 1: through which raged the sound and fury of his Simian predecessors.
Speaker 1: My final recommendation to all of you is twofold. First,
Speaker 1: go read trash fish and then anything else that grabs
Speaker 1: your fancy from keeler. Then whip up a half dozen
Speaker 1: or more bugger ducks and go fishing. You won't need
Speaker 1: a recipe, but here's the suggestion. After the half rotten
Speaker 1: duck feather prototype, Greg refined the pattern a bit and
Speaker 1: substituted actual maraboo, which works well. But any supple feathers
Speaker 1: will do. And really you don't even need feathers. You
Speaker 1: can hack off a chunk of fur from your dog,
Speaker 1: or steal that lock of hair from your first child
Speaker 1: someone's been saving in a shoe box. Just find some
Speaker 1: kind of material that moves and lash it to the
Speaker 1: back of a weighted long shank took with duct tape.
Speaker 1: Cut the tape, or let's be honest here, tear it
Speaker 1: off with your teeth, lay the ragged edge down and boom,
Speaker 1: You're done. You just tie a fly or made a
Speaker 1: fly whatever. So that is it. In case you fast
Speaker 1: forwarded to this very part, Miles is leaving bent. I'm
Speaker 1: a bit of a nervous rack, but that uneasy feeling
Speaker 1: in my stomach might just be from the taco bell
Speaker 1: seafood salad. I just date, you really got to stop
Speaker 1: drowning your sorrows and experimental fast food. Joe, just just
Speaker 1: drink too much whiskey like a normal degenerate. You'll probably
Speaker 1: live longer. You're right, and I've been drinking a lot
Speaker 1: of whiskey lately. Me too. Bullshit aside, man, uh, creating
Speaker 1: the show with you every week for the past year
Speaker 1: has been one of the highlights of my career. When
Speaker 1: when we first came up with this concept, I really
Speaker 1: think you and I were the only ones who thought
Speaker 1: it had a prayer of working. And like two weeks
Speaker 1: and here we are, uh not everything we have tried
Speaker 1: has been successful, but the idea, the concept that the
Speaker 1: heart of the show has endured, and damn it, we've
Speaker 1: been willing to fail in order to make something unique. Uh.
Speaker 1: I respect, I respect a lot of things. Man. I
Speaker 1: respect your work, ethic, your wit. You take the job
Speaker 1: of making fishing media seriously without taking yourself too seriously.
Speaker 1: You understand the craft without being precious about it. No bullshit,
Speaker 1: this really is one of the most difficult decisions I've
Speaker 1: ever made in my professional life. I have no idea
Speaker 1: what the I'm gonna do Monday mornings when I can't
Speaker 1: call you up to just talk like I can't just
Speaker 1: call you to talk about whatever bullshit is on my
Speaker 1: mind under the guys of planning the following week's show,
Speaker 1: which is really my routine. Uh. And to all of you,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I'm talking about you degenerates out there who
Speaker 1: have tuned in for the past year, I want to
Speaker 1: give my sincere appreciation and thanks. Thanks for inviting me
Speaker 1: into your truck cabs and sedan's, your earbuds, your headphones.
Speaker 1: You only get so many hours, and I am grateful
Speaker 1: for the hours you chose to spend listen to me.
Speaker 1: Thanks also, to all of you who have reached out
Speaker 1: to talk about books or fishing or life or moral quandaries.
Speaker 1: Get a lot of moral quandaries. Yeah, keep those coming.
Speaker 1: Reading your emails has been one of the best parts
Speaker 1: of his job. And if you're not too piste off
Speaker 1: at me for leaving ben uh, please don't hesitate to
Speaker 1: reach out in the future to all our KEYWI listeners.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need some new fishing and drinking buddies. So
Speaker 1: if you're willing to put up with a gangly yank,
Speaker 1: please holler. I won't be monitoring the bent account anymore,
Speaker 1: but Joe will pass along messages. I hope, yes, I will.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, dude, that was That was the nicest
Speaker 1: ship that anybody has ever said about me. And I
Speaker 1: think you know this, but part of the reason I
Speaker 1: signed on with meat Eater was to work with you
Speaker 1: and make a podcast with you. So this hurts. And
Speaker 1: the best I can do, though, is like keep it
Speaker 1: going for both of us, like keep the benching moving forward. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's always weird when you do like a final
Speaker 1: thing like this, It's like you're not dying. I could
Speaker 1: still talk. We're still talk on Monday like it's like
Speaker 1: so sad for the listener, Like Myles and I are
Speaker 1: still going to hang out on occasion, He's just not
Speaker 1: gonna bring the show. Yes anyway. In regards to those emails,
Speaker 1: in addition to being miles personal ad service, the Bend
Speaker 1: Email will continue performing its normal functions, So do please
Speaker 1: keep sending your salbing items, bar nominations, awkward photos, and
Speaker 1: offers of free lords and flies intended four miles to
Speaker 1: Bent at the mediator dot com. I will be intercepting those.
Speaker 1: Keep using those degenerate Angler and Bent podcast hashtags on
Speaker 1: the Graham And speaking of the Graham, do me a
Speaker 1: solid and fire off some well wishes to my man
Speaker 1: because it's been an integral part of this show. We
Speaker 1: could not have gotten this far without the solid team
Speaker 1: work we've had over the last year, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to miss you dude. Likewise, brother and for those of
Speaker 1: you who have been here since day one, this is
Speaker 1: for you. Tight Lines its ever ever everla a Ast