Speaker 1: You won't be able to find a bottle of cocoa
Speaker 1: butter from the Olympic Peninsula of Portland after this. Dude,
Speaker 1: I'm not messing with power lines, like, not even for
Speaker 1: a horse leather swim bait. I'm not doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously it didn't pay too much attention because it hasn't
Speaker 1: worked out too wealthy now with the thrift shop equipment right,
Speaker 1: it appears they're like a shipload of casual fish dabblers
Speaker 1: in Vegas apparently, and the vast majority of them cannot
Speaker 1: cast Good Morning, degenerate anglers, and welcome to Ben the
Speaker 1: Fishing podcast that cannot eat at Cheat Cheese without pretending
Speaker 1: it's someone's birthday so we can get another sombrero. I'm
Speaker 1: Joe Surmelli a Miles Nulty, and I have never once
Speaker 1: in my life eaten the cheat cheese, but I did
Speaker 1: just I saw you put this in and I was like,
Speaker 1: I never did that, but I did. I did. Just
Speaker 1: now do a Google search so I could know what
Speaker 1: the hell we're talking about. And cheat cheese has not
Speaker 1: existed in this country for fifteen years now. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know that, so it looks like I
Speaker 1: never will get to eat it one. I also have
Speaker 1: no idea where it is you're going with this cheechee thing. Wait,
Speaker 1: they're all gone, Like they've been gone around where I
Speaker 1: live for a long time. But they're all gone. There's
Speaker 1: no cheechee left in the in the United States, bankrupt
Speaker 1: gone in two thousand four, though apparently you can still
Speaker 1: find them in Austria, the United Arab Emirates, and Quait
Speaker 1: if you're really needing to fix I can't believe it
Speaker 1: was two thousand four. Was the last time I hated
Speaker 1: a cheechee? Man? That's depressing that. You also just kind
Speaker 1: of messed up my whole plan, like throwing this this
Speaker 1: bummer news about chee cheese. Um, like the very loose
Speaker 1: theme I was going forward. This episode is frivolous celebration,
Speaker 1: you know, like like some of us used to do
Speaker 1: that a crappy Mexican restaurant chains. Um. Because it's not spring,
Speaker 1: so we're clear, but it is now at least officially March.
Speaker 1: And that's at least a step in the right direction
Speaker 1: for me. The end of February is worth celebrating eating
Speaker 1: uh in my opinion. And this episode it's like, um,
Speaker 1: the lame office party you get like right before you
Speaker 1: get married, you know what I mean. Like it's kind
Speaker 1: of awkward and everyone encircles you in the common area
Speaker 1: and you toast with a plastic cup of champagne and
Speaker 1: really really bad. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It's it's strange,
Speaker 1: but it gets you away from from reality for a minute.
Speaker 1: But you do still have like TPS reports to finish
Speaker 1: before you dip for two weeks and have the real party.
Speaker 1: So like that's where we are in terms of the
Speaker 1: show today, as well as like spring, like it's March,
Speaker 1: like it's not spring. We're getting there, um and look
Speaker 1: for the record, right listen. We love ice fishing. Ice
Speaker 1: fishing is awesome. In fact, late march ice is some
Speaker 1: of the best ice. We know this. But I'm just
Speaker 1: tired of talking about it. And i want my open water.
Speaker 1: That's what I want. Yep, yep, no, that's fair. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm also sick, like I do have some open water,
Speaker 1: but I'm sick of of when I go find it,
Speaker 1: having to dodge arrant chunks of shelf ice that always
Speaker 1: drift just below the surface and you can't really see them,
Speaker 1: and they're always threatening to take you out at the knees,
Speaker 1: or at least that's that's my experience. So uh, in
Speaker 1: honor of of the impending reality that we hope will
Speaker 1: be spring, Yes, that's right, yes, right, ghost of Rick James,
Speaker 1: and we are ringing in the almost kind of soon
Speaker 1: to be spring, we all hope by giving one of
Speaker 1: you some really cool ship to throw. That's right. You
Speaker 1: need to listen up, you need to pay attention right now,
Speaker 1: do not fast forward. Uh you know how we've been
Speaker 1: monitoring those degenerate Angler and Bent podcast hashtags on the
Speaker 1: Graham right, So for exactly one week, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: more up for grabs than stickers for using those. Okay,
Speaker 1: our buddy Brent Hashimoto of Hashimoto Concepts has graciously donated
Speaker 1: four packs of his amazing handboard soft plastic swim baits
Speaker 1: plus one of his h C four hard swim baits,
Speaker 1: to be given to the hashtagger of our choosing. So sweet,
Speaker 1: you guys are also lucky, That's what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: And and that alone is cool, but even better, the
Speaker 1: winner gets to have the paint job on the hard
Speaker 1: bait done to speck. So if you want a blue gill,
Speaker 1: that looks like it just snooted a cloud cheeto dust.
Speaker 1: You got it. You can have that, or maybe you
Speaker 1: can I don't know. Maybe you prefer a swim bait
Speaker 1: somehow themed around the four classic movie Break into Electric Boogaloo.
Speaker 1: What that actually was my favorite movie when I was
Speaker 1: five years older and uh yeah, yeah, I competed in
Speaker 1: the first grade talent show as a breakdanswer. But whatever
Speaker 1: your fetish happens to be, whatever you're into, Brent will
Speaker 1: turn it into a lure just for you. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I want you to win. We can do a Boogaloo laure. Um.
Speaker 1: You've got between right now on March five and when
Speaker 1: the next episode of Bent drops on Friday, March twelve.
Speaker 1: To qualify, though, the shot with the tag or tags
Speaker 1: has to be posted in that time frame, and we'll
Speaker 1: be monitoring the Degenerate Angler and Bent podcast tags and
Speaker 1: we'll post a winner on our Instagram accounts the morning
Speaker 1: of Saturday. So impress us with a fish, make us laugh,
Speaker 1: make us gasp, show us something ridiculous in your garage.
Speaker 1: Anything goes kind of almost almost almost if you if you,
Speaker 1: if you regularly listen to the show, you know what
Speaker 1: We don't want to see, but do surprise us. That's
Speaker 1: always good. And I just want to say huge thanks
Speaker 1: again to Brent for offering his talents. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to scope out his work, and I really do
Speaker 1: recommend that you do that, check him out at at
Speaker 1: Hashimoto Concepts. This stuff is super fishy, but also it's
Speaker 1: just it's just pretty well made. It's just nice to
Speaker 1: look at. You know, it's gorgeous. And and perhaps you're
Speaker 1: one of those people who doesn't really fish lures. That's cool,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Maybe maybe don't take anything this week. If
Speaker 1: that's you, I disagree, I disagree with me. You can
Speaker 1: still appreciate one of those beautiful lures even if you
Speaker 1: are one of those live bait disciples. And and you
Speaker 1: just have every intention of rolling right on through hard
Speaker 1: water into open water with your bucket of minnows. No
Speaker 1: judgment here. We have you covered two in this week's
Speaker 1: installment of Finn Clips, where we tell you everything about
Speaker 1: a fish you never knew you cared about. Joe is
Speaker 1: going to shine some light on the fat head minnow.
Speaker 1: And sure we've all probably stabbed, decapitated, jig trolled, and
Speaker 1: suffocated dozens, if not hundreds of them, But what do
Speaker 1: you really know about him? Have you really taken the
Speaker 1: time to appreciate this ubiquitous bait fish. How much thought
Speaker 1: do you give to the bait in your bucket? Probably
Speaker 1: not much, right, I mean, you can't wait to throw
Speaker 1: a shot of that football yellow perch on Instagram dropping
Speaker 1: yet another comment about the Gorgeah city of the vibrant
Speaker 1: golds and oranges. You change your profile picture to you
Speaker 1: holding a slab croppy, but never is there social media
Speaker 1: thanks and praise given to the live bait that may
Speaker 1: have caught it. So today I'm shining the spotlight on
Speaker 1: the fat head minnows swimming in your flow troll. And
Speaker 1: even though you won't treat the next dozen you buy
Speaker 1: any differently, you're gonna look at them differently while you're
Speaker 1: impelling them on a hook. Fat Head minnows are members
Speaker 1: of the Suprnidae family. Sound familiar, of course not, you
Speaker 1: don't know Latin, but you are familiar with other members
Speaker 1: of this family, like the common carp and perhaps the barball.
Speaker 1: This family also includes true minnows and seeing many people
Speaker 1: just refer to any tiny bait fish as a minnow,
Speaker 1: but that's not accurate. Mud minnows, as an example, aren't
Speaker 1: minnows at all. They're killie fish. Glass minnows aren't minnows either,
Speaker 1: that's just to catch all term for anchovies and silver sides.
Speaker 1: But fat heads are the real deal. Directly related to
Speaker 1: the monstrous Colorado pike minnow, the largest true minnow that
Speaker 1: swims in US water. The fat heads natural range is
Speaker 1: pretty massive, stretching from Chihuahua, Mexico, as far north as
Speaker 1: Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. It also extends
Speaker 1: all the way east to the U. S Coast and
Speaker 1: Canadian Maritimes. Of course, these days, fat headed minnows are everywhere,
Speaker 1: including Pacific Coast bodies of water and drainages from transportation.
Speaker 1: Thanks to their popularity as a bait fish, but also
Speaker 1: because they are some extremely tough little bastards. Fat headed
Speaker 1: minnows can pretty much handle any curveball Mother Nature throws
Speaker 1: at them. They can survive in water with extremely low
Speaker 1: oxygen levels. They can thrive in extremely dirty or turbid water.
Speaker 1: They can withstand high levels of acidity, and all this toughness,
Speaker 1: of course makes them a great bait fish, because if
Speaker 1: your bubbler dies while you're enjoying the moon's over Miami
Speaker 1: at Denny's, or you're looking for action in that sewage
Speaker 1: filled pond behind that Denny's. These little swimmers are gonna
Speaker 1: go strong and perform well. But that toughness actually has
Speaker 1: greater value than just helping you secure fish fry fodder.
Speaker 1: The fat head minnow is used by biologists as an
Speaker 1: indicator species. Think of it as an aquatic canary in
Speaker 1: the coal mine. Essentially, fat heads can handle so much
Speaker 1: more chemical exposure than other species that if the fat
Speaker 1: head population is getting distressed in a particular waterway known
Speaker 1: to have any sort of toxicity issues, it's a signed
Speaker 1: to biologists that things are getting really bad. In fact,
Speaker 1: the e p A Guidelines outline the use of fat
Speaker 1: heads for the evaluation of acute and chronic toxicity of
Speaker 1: samples or chemical species invertebrate animals. And speaking of chemicals,
Speaker 1: how about this. Fat heads also have something called epidermal
Speaker 1: club cells that secrete an alarm substance. Anytime those shallow
Speaker 1: lying cells are damaged, such as when a predator species
Speaker 1: bites or eats a fat head, that alarm juice flows,
Speaker 1: signaling all the other fat heads in the immediate area
Speaker 1: to swim away or hide. Furthermore, let's say there's a
Speaker 1: I don't know pickerel that just muched a bunch of
Speaker 1: fat heads. That pickerel is now coated with that alarm
Speaker 1: substance too, So now the fat heads will recognize that
Speaker 1: particular fish as a threat, hopefully before it gets the
Speaker 1: chance to eat any more of them. Most good bait
Speaker 1: shops sell fat head minnows these days. But what if
Speaker 1: you don't have a good bait shop close to home. Well,
Speaker 1: perhaps you have a pet smart You know those little
Speaker 1: pinkish orange fish they call rosie reds that they sell
Speaker 1: his feeders super cheap. Those are fat head minnows genetically
Speaker 1: identical to the bait shop variety. Now, while that coloration
Speaker 1: trait can occur naturally, it was actually an Arkansas bait
Speaker 1: fish farm that figured out how to make it dominant,
Speaker 1: sending billions of bright orange fat heads off to death
Speaker 1: by aquarium cyclid across the country. Now, it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that before using Rosie's, check your local bait regulations. While
Speaker 1: unlike goldfish, Rosie's are fair game in most places, some
Speaker 1: states are even specific counties outlaw them same time. I've
Speaker 1: also been in many bait shops that sell bright rosie's
Speaker 1: right alongside the natural color fat heads. And I've even
Speaker 1: known a few croppy and stocker trout fellers that swore
Speaker 1: them orange ones out fish them natural ones tend to one.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that pet shop rosies aren't usually
Speaker 1: as hardy as bait shop fat heads, mainly because good
Speaker 1: bait shops actually care about their bait and keep their
Speaker 1: minnows and chilled water, whereas pet store rosies tend to
Speaker 1: swim in room temperature or even heated water. Now, both
Speaker 1: those water temperatures hot and cold are perfectly acceptable to
Speaker 1: the fat heads. But don't be shocked if you take
Speaker 1: pet store roses out to the pond in winter, only
Speaker 1: for them to be shocked to death when you send
Speaker 1: them down thereby not dancing around on that hook long
Speaker 1: enough for you to achieve instant glory or to produce
Speaker 1: anything to dredge through that house. Ultry seafood breader burning
Speaker 1: a hole in the pantry back at the ranch. Who
Speaker 1: knew that the tiny little little fat heads that you
Speaker 1: see in every in every aerated bait shop were so
Speaker 1: environmentally significant I'd say that I didn't know, and dude,
Speaker 1: that that alarm response. That's fascinating. It's fascinating. It's also
Speaker 1: if you think about it too much, they'll If you
Speaker 1: overthink about it, it's kind of depressing because, like, imagine
Speaker 1: two fat heads rigged up and dangling close together, and
Speaker 1: and one one just catches a whiff of the other
Speaker 1: one's alarm juice is like, oh no, I should, I
Speaker 1: should really get the hell out of here. But I
Speaker 1: got this. I got this hook stuck in my face,
Speaker 1: So I guess. I guess I'm just gonna get eaten too.
Speaker 1: I'm done. That's morbid, and that would suck. I will
Speaker 1: admit that I got I got kind of lost research
Speaker 1: in that one. And we we don't give enough thought
Speaker 1: to our live baits, like it's good to take a
Speaker 1: deep dive and what's in your bait bucket? You're that
Speaker 1: You're right, that is true in general, but in this
Speaker 1: particular episode, right now, this week, that is not true,
Speaker 1: because you're bringing in the bait fish by the bucket
Speaker 1: for this one. If I'm not mistaken. You recently attended
Speaker 1: the the annual Bunker Symposium and Chili cook Off in
Speaker 1: Atlantic City. Did you not? Didn't that happen? I didn't
Speaker 1: think I did. Yes, and we'll go from tiny sweetwater
Speaker 1: bait fish to foot long salty bait fish. In fact,
Speaker 1: in other good news, uh, striper season just open in
Speaker 1: Jersey March one, so this is good timing anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Every year, the greatest serf chunkers in Jersey meet at
Speaker 1: the Atlantic City Marriott, or to be more specific, the
Speaker 1: loading dock behind the Atlantic City Mariott to discuss the
Speaker 1: state of man Haden, or what we call bunker around here.
Speaker 1: And it's a it's a really great event and usually
Speaker 1: runs until ten ten thirty or whenever security kicks everyone
Speaker 1: off the property. Um. Anyway, it would take me forever
Speaker 1: to go through all the meeting minutes, but I did
Speaker 1: get a chance to sit down in person with frequent
Speaker 1: Bent contributor and surfcasting legend Bob the Garbage Man Britana
Speaker 1: on a newski. I want the minutes please. I think
Speaker 1: whatever the hell those were would be highly entertaining. But
Speaker 1: you know, since you're not gonna give us those, I
Speaker 1: can only imagine that that. I'm sure Bob waxed eloquently
Speaker 1: on on. I don't know, Bunker Biomass concert Asian efforts
Speaker 1: or something. Didn't he No, no, not at all. He
Speaker 1: refused to discuss anything related to that on record, but
Speaker 1: I did get him to commit to recording a trivia
Speaker 1: segment with me. You gotta be highly skilled for these shows.
Speaker 1: You understand that. If I under are you well versed?
Speaker 1: They are? You very smart man. All right, Today on Trivia,
Speaker 1: we have an incredibly special guest. I am actually sitting
Speaker 1: face to face special. You broke out all this Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse equipment from the thrift shop for me. You don't
Speaker 1: like the equipment, This is garbage. I've seen better ship
Speaker 1: of karaoke night. Okay, As I was saying, I am
Speaker 1: sitting face to face in Atlantic City, New Jersey with
Speaker 1: legendary striper chunk and expert Bob Brittana Ananuski, who is
Speaker 1: better known up and down the entire striper coast as
Speaker 1: Bob the garbage Man. And it is such an honor
Speaker 1: to have you here. I feel very much like I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in the presence of pure greatness. Well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you the same. You don't
Speaker 1: look like you fished a day in your life. A Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's not accurate. But for for what it is worth,
Speaker 1: having grown up surfishing in New Jersey, I still, despite
Speaker 1: that comment, Bob would say that you were one of
Speaker 1: my childhood idols. Yeah. Obviously it didn't pay too much
Speaker 1: attention because it hasn't worked out too wealthy and now
Speaker 1: with your thrift shop equipment right right, anyway, for better
Speaker 1: or worse, you have been catching trophy stripers up and
Speaker 1: down the entire coast, and you have shared the beaches
Speaker 1: with many legendary surfcasters over the years. That correct, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to call them that, But most of
Speaker 1: those guys, you know it was complete bums. Okay, regardless,
Speaker 1: I've got a question for you today that sort of
Speaker 1: ties into that vast network of notable anglers that you
Speaker 1: fish with. Hold on a second, just to reiterate whether
Speaker 1: I get your question right or wrong. You're still giving
Speaker 1: me a ride over to the bus depot like you promised, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the deal. That the bus is leaving in forty minutes.
Speaker 1: I will honor that deal, and I understand your time
Speaker 1: is in then let's get on with it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. Here's your question. In September Night two,
Speaker 1: al McReynolds, Jesus Christ, Yeah, go ahead. Al McReynolds caught
Speaker 1: us seventy eight point eight pounds striped bass off the
Speaker 1: Jetty Vermont Avenue right here in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: That stood as the all tackle world record for almost
Speaker 1: thirty years. Please tell me. The question is do I
Speaker 1: think he really called it? That is not the question
Speaker 1: when I was actually gonna because he didn't. What I
Speaker 1: was actually gonna ask is who held the record before McReynolds.
Speaker 1: And I've got some multiple choice for you. Was it
Speaker 1: a Tony Stets Jeff the Janita, But before him it
Speaker 1: was actually stand the Bookkeeper, and before that Hobby of
Speaker 1: the Russian and gas station Billy broke it twice each
Speaker 1: in the same night. All right, that's not not according
Speaker 1: to my research. And I'll also add two nights after
Speaker 1: Alan Reynolds didn't catch that bass, my friend Audi Meldoff
Speaker 1: caught a seventy nine in the exact same place. Huh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm kind of basing. I was kind
Speaker 1: of based in my choices off the official I g
Speaker 1: F record, And that's fine. But the bus is leaving
Speaker 1: in forty minutes. Are we done here? And just like that,
Speaker 1: strayper fishing history has been rewritten. Did you uh? Did
Speaker 1: you get him to the bus station on time? At least? No?
Speaker 1: He changed his mind. He decided he'd rather me give
Speaker 1: him a ride to a board it up nail salon
Speaker 1: in a completely abandoned shopping center. It just left him
Speaker 1: there and didn't ask any questions. You know, that's just
Speaker 1: that's just generally wise. You probably don't want to know
Speaker 1: the answers. But uh, you know what we're gonna We're
Speaker 1: gonna move on from that and hopefully we managed to
Speaker 1: cobble together some answers that you do want to hear.
Speaker 1: Two questions you hadn't thought about, because it's time for
Speaker 1: fish news. Fish news. That escalated quickly, all right. I
Speaker 1: positively have to give a shout out at the top
Speaker 1: here to listener Ryan Motley. Now you may recall, uh
Speaker 1: that I said not long ago it was my belief
Speaker 1: that getting lucky the night before a fishing trip in
Speaker 1: the bedroom was good luck. You're pleasuring yourself the night
Speaker 1: before a fishing trip was bad luck. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: your contribution to our fishing Superstitions episode do you have Well,
Speaker 1: I might have some good news for you guys. Okay,
Speaker 1: to see, Ryan has been trying to catch himself his
Speaker 1: first wild Oregon steelhead, and when he heard my theory,
Speaker 1: he decided to put it to the test. And according
Speaker 1: to him, he even got his fiance on board with this,
Speaker 1: like he would give her notice in the days ahead
Speaker 1: of a steelhead pursuit, and she was game, like, she
Speaker 1: was down, like let's see if the works right. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but he just he just kept scratching like it was
Speaker 1: not it was not working despite his and her efforts.
Speaker 1: So then his fiancee goes out of town he wants
Speaker 1: to fish. So, as he put it, he had a
Speaker 1: date with his right hand in the name of science,
Speaker 1: and next day, bang, wild steelhead. That's his first one.
Speaker 1: So it turns out you're wrong. Basically, this is a
Speaker 1: correction that you're not giving us right here. It is
Speaker 1: not because to me, it's very obvious what's happening here. Okay,
Speaker 1: all Ryan has really proven is that my my theory
Speaker 1: is reversed on the west coast. It's like a flip.
Speaker 1: So my way works on the east side, his way
Speaker 1: works on the west and I mean considering we're talking
Speaker 1: wild steel here, which we all know isn't easy to
Speaker 1: catch anymore. Every Walgreens and Oregan is selling out a
Speaker 1: cocoa butter today. You know it. You won't be able
Speaker 1: to find a bottle of cocoa butter from the Olympic
Speaker 1: Peninsula in Portland after this. And I also have Ryan,
Speaker 1: I mean thanks. However, I also have to say kind
Speaker 1: of like shame on you, because dude, if your fiance
Speaker 1: was willing to get busy every time you wanted to
Speaker 1: go fishing, why why would you ruin that? Like? Why
Speaker 1: why would you why would you make that? Why would
Speaker 1: you say all this and ruin that? I think I
Speaker 1: think he's making a questionable choice there. I agree with
Speaker 1: because to make it worse, he even wrote in the email,
Speaker 1: and I'm quoting here, now that I've discovered my new
Speaker 1: found luck, I'm questioning whether the wedding even needs to happen. Dude, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I appreciate no, No, that's it best. The one thing
Speaker 1: we agree on is disagreeing with that. So best to
Speaker 1: luck to you, Ryan. But but thanks for that, Thanks
Speaker 1: for doing that in the name of science. We all
Speaker 1: we all appreciate it. I think more science, more, more
Speaker 1: research is needed on this particular topic. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't buy Joe's conclusion that it's a left coast right
Speaker 1: coast polarity thing. I think that's just Joe's unwillingness to
Speaker 1: admit when he's wrong. But I, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: and am totally capable of admitting my faults. And when
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, I smell a correction. Yeah, the one's dumb too.
Speaker 1: I uh So last week I talked about the the
Speaker 1: coal mining situation over there up there in Canada, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think I got most of the information, Like the
Speaker 1: hard stuff I got right, but the easy stuff I
Speaker 1: screwed up. So I completely mispronounced the name of the
Speaker 1: town around which all of this is circling. It's it's more.
Speaker 1: I know it's called left Bridge, but I called it
Speaker 1: Lethridge for some reason that I don't know. And and
Speaker 1: some of are very pit some of are very polite.
Speaker 1: Neighbors from the north wrote in very nicely correcting me.
Speaker 1: I mean if I had if I had done that
Speaker 1: work like something in Jersey, I would have got hate mail.
Speaker 1: But but no, they're like, thanks so much. It was
Speaker 1: really great. You know, it's actually so thank you for that.
Speaker 1: And I apologized for screwing up the basics, but hopefully
Speaker 1: I didn't mess up any of the big stuff. With
Speaker 1: that out of the way, the housekeeping done, we are
Speaker 1: now going to move on to fish news. And you
Speaker 1: will remember that this is a competition. Neither Joe or
Speaker 1: myself know what the other one is bringing the table,
Speaker 1: and we were trying to compete for the heart and
Speaker 1: the mind and uh and and really the love filled
Speaker 1: the engineer. We're trying to make him, make him love
Speaker 1: us with our stories. So with that, it's it's your
Speaker 1: week to lead off? Man, what do you what? Do
Speaker 1: you got something good? I think I have some good
Speaker 1: things here. Um one is, one is poignant, and one
Speaker 1: is completely stupid. So we'll start with poigning perfect and
Speaker 1: we're gonna head over to Maine for a little lake
Speaker 1: trout kerfuffle. That's causing quite a stir And oh no,
Speaker 1: have we we've done it again? Oh man, we had
Speaker 1: a good run. We did have a good run. We
Speaker 1: did ship. We've crossed swords. I'm actually disappointed it wasn't
Speaker 1: your leadoff, because then I would have been like, well,
Speaker 1: at least I don't have to do two stories this week. Alright, alright, alright, well, okay,
Speaker 1: at least we can both talk about it. It's it's
Speaker 1: bound to happen time to time. Bring it on. I
Speaker 1: was worried. I was worried about this, and so um
Speaker 1: we fat first found this story a little over a
Speaker 1: week ago, and since the original drop, there have been
Speaker 1: follow ups and all of this, at least from my sources,
Speaker 1: are coming from the Bangor Daily News. UH. And a
Speaker 1: few weekends ago, the annual Sebago Lake Fishing Derby took place,
Speaker 1: and this is an event that draws a lot of
Speaker 1: anglers onto the ice. And a few days after the tournament,
Speaker 1: local resident Kirk Christensen went out on the ice and
Speaker 1: discovered piles of dead lake trout UH, frozen on the
Speaker 1: ice around where where holes had obviously been drilled during
Speaker 1: the tourney. And according to the story, he found more
Speaker 1: than a hundred fish left behind on the ice and
Speaker 1: naturally this infuriated him and he viewed at his wanton
Speaker 1: waste and he speculates that during the tournament, this angler
Speaker 1: or a group of anglers was just looking for big
Speaker 1: fish to weigh in and discarding everything else. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: just hearing all that, you're kind of like, oh, what
Speaker 1: a bunch of s clowns. But there is a little
Speaker 1: bit more to this, Okay, So this is this is
Speaker 1: from the story. Technically, lake out are an invasive species.
Speaker 1: Their non native to Tobago. The States stocked them there
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and now they compete with native
Speaker 1: landlocked salmon for food, especially smell. Earlier this month, the
Speaker 1: Fisheries and Wildlife Department encouraged anglers to keep as many
Speaker 1: lake trout as they want. Um. And here's a quote
Speaker 1: I find interesting from Mark Laddie, a spokesman for Maine's
Speaker 1: Wildlife Department, says, while a catch and release message was important,
Speaker 1: several decades ago, we saw more fishing pressure and higher
Speaker 1: harvest rates by anglers. Present day fisheries rely on harvest
Speaker 1: by anglers to maintain healthy fish populations and to achieve
Speaker 1: size quality management goals. The derby is part of the
Speaker 1: effort to remove trout from Tobago. Lotty said, so we
Speaker 1: can have healthy salmon populations. Now, if you missed it,
Speaker 1: what what he basically just said, they're in a nutshell?
Speaker 1: Was that back in the day people fish for food,
Speaker 1: and today they don't do that nearly enough, and sort
Speaker 1: of the adoptive hardcore catch and release mentality, at least
Speaker 1: at this Kular lake has has ended up hurting the
Speaker 1: native salmon population because the lakers are so much more aggressive.
Speaker 1: And what what Lotti also said in the original story
Speaker 1: is that while he understands, you know, seeing these fishes
Speaker 1: not he says it's not ideal, but in a year
Speaker 1: with good ice, anglers can catch upwards of ten thousand
Speaker 1: lake trout at Tobago in a single year, So a
Speaker 1: hundred fish on the ice doesn't amount too much. It's
Speaker 1: just a fraction, he says. Uh. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we agree on this. I don't condone
Speaker 1: leaving a hundred dead lakers on the ice, but I
Speaker 1: see parallels here with other things, namely snakeheads in Asian
Speaker 1: carp and when the message you're sending is kill them
Speaker 1: all because you're helping, uh, certain people are going to
Speaker 1: cling to that very very tightly. Um. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I found dead
Speaker 1: snakeheads that have been whacked in the head or stabbed
Speaker 1: and just thrown up onto the bank. Down here, so
Speaker 1: you catch them, you don't want to eat them, but
Speaker 1: the state is telling you to kill them all. So
Speaker 1: as far as you're concerned, you're you're doing a service
Speaker 1: and kill as many as you can. But the sad
Speaker 1: thing here is the organization you're going to get there? Okay? Good?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, right there, I'm okay, I don't worry.
Speaker 1: Do you do you want to split this one up?
Speaker 1: Do you want to take over from here? Can? I can? So? There?
Speaker 1: There are a couple of elements there there. There's also
Speaker 1: I also want to bring in. Right. You mentioned that
Speaker 1: this was initially reported on in the Banker Daily News, Right,
Speaker 1: and then there was a follow up op ed that
Speaker 1: was written, yes, right, and uh and and I feel
Speaker 1: like I feel like I want to I want to
Speaker 1: drop a quote in from that op ed because I
Speaker 1: think it's it's important to think about this. So so
Speaker 1: John Holioke wrote in an op ed, and I'm just
Speaker 1: going to quote him, and this is in reference to
Speaker 1: leaving those those piles of fish on the ice. He said,
Speaker 1: when anglers act like this and show such disregard for
Speaker 1: the species they're targeting, and they cast a cloud over
Speaker 1: all of us who enjoy spending a day on the water.
Speaker 1: Many of us love ice fishing, but there are plenty
Speaker 1: of others who would rather see us all go away. Why.
Speaker 1: Fisheries conservationists will tell you that ice anglers have the
Speaker 1: reputation of being game hogs and killing way too many fish.
Speaker 1: Lake dwellers who live on the shores year round will
Speaker 1: tell you that many ice anglers are slops, leaving beer cans, trash,
Speaker 1: and human waste on the ice when their day of
Speaker 1: fishing is done. Now, I don't totally agree with everything
Speaker 1: that Holo growth there, but I think his central point
Speaker 1: is really important to this story, right, And so you know,
Speaker 1: to what you said, they were being asked to remove
Speaker 1: lots of lake trout from this system, but leaving piles
Speaker 1: of dead fish on the ice just feeds negative stereotypes
Speaker 1: about all anglers and and particularly about ice anglers. So
Speaker 1: there's an optics thing here at play. It is, And
Speaker 1: I'm actually, I know we crossed swords here, but I'm
Speaker 1: enjoying this because I was going to get there too,
Speaker 1: and I read his story and I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he was even talking about how it's common to here
Speaker 1: guys say, well, the eagles got to eat, Like we
Speaker 1: just leave them out here for the eagles. There's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of excuses flying around as to why you
Speaker 1: would do that. But the problem is, according to to
Speaker 1: the story, there is no wanting waste law for fish
Speaker 1: in Maine. So it's kind of like, from the state's perspective,
Speaker 1: it's like, this doesn't look good, But I also can't
Speaker 1: get you for anything because I told you to kill
Speaker 1: all these and there's so, yeah, they didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: They didn't do anything wrong legally speaking. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: pure optics. Now, I'm sure we would have both gotten here.
Speaker 1: But if there's one sort of sad thing about this
Speaker 1: before you, before you get into that, I'm setting you
Speaker 1: I promise, I'm setting you up for it. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to steal your thunder on it because we totally agree.
Speaker 1: But here here, like I feel like we have to
Speaker 1: put ourselves in the position of those anglers. Right, So
Speaker 1: you're out there, you're being told by the management agency
Speaker 1: kill all the lake trout you can under twenty six inches,
Speaker 1: help us out, help us manage this population. You hear that,
Speaker 1: and you have a banner daid, you get a hundred
Speaker 1: fish whatever a hundred plus fish. I can kind of
Speaker 1: understand maybe you don't want to clean a hundred fish,
Speaker 1: a hundred small lakers. I can understand that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I condone wasting them. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I personally could bring myself to do that. I'd have
Speaker 1: to be in the situation to really know. I could
Speaker 1: not have. I don't think I could, but like so,
Speaker 1: but I understand that tension of being like, man, I
Speaker 1: want to be fishing and I'm catching these fish, and
Speaker 1: they're asking me to pull them out. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if I want to clean all these but at
Speaker 1: the very least take them home, like, just dispose of
Speaker 1: them quietly, don't don't feed into this perception of anglers
Speaker 1: as as a problem. Right, And so, up until that
Speaker 1: moment I was, I was kind of like understand, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have definitelyly wouldn't have done what these folks did,
Speaker 1: but I could kind of understand it. But there's one
Speaker 1: more wrinkle of this story. One hundred percent convinced is
Speaker 1: me that whomever did this are just complete and total assets,
Speaker 1: no doubt in my mind. Yes, yes that, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad I waited the sad thing that I was just
Speaker 1: set up for is that the organization running the tournament
Speaker 1: was fully aware that the state was promoting the taking
Speaker 1: of as many lakers as you wanted. So they were
Speaker 1: set up to take donations of all unwanted lake trout,
Speaker 1: and they had worked out a deal with a local
Speaker 1: process and plant to clean them and freeze them, and
Speaker 1: all of that lake trout was being donated to local
Speaker 1: food pantries. So now like, at minimum, say what you
Speaker 1: want about these guys, that's extremely lazy and selfish, Like
Speaker 1: you want to kill three wheelbarrows full have at it,
Speaker 1: But like, holy shit, the tournament is giving you the
Speaker 1: out for your extra fish. All you had to do
Speaker 1: was get them over there. All you can't even be
Speaker 1: bothered to drag the fish across the ice, Are you serious? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like to one just do the right thing and for
Speaker 1: another donate fish that are going to be used to
Speaker 1: feed people who need food. Like what's wrong with you? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you just took that one element out, you
Speaker 1: could you could sort of formulate some weak argument. But
Speaker 1: with that, they're like, there's no excuse for that, And
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know if you dug in
Speaker 1: any of the social commentary on this, but a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's surprisingly mixed. I mean, you have a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are just straight out appalled, but there's there's
Speaker 1: also some who are like, uh, yeah, deal with it.
Speaker 1: That's what the state wants. They want them all dead.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a lot of them mixed. It's a
Speaker 1: lot more mixed then you think. You know that that
Speaker 1: guy who initially you know, broke the story, Christiansen, he
Speaker 1: is the one who put it up on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: you would I would have thought that the people would
Speaker 1: come to them like yeah, man, that's that's that's rough.
Speaker 1: But a lot of yeah, like you're you're, you're, you're
Speaker 1: you're talking to deaf ears here. That's what they want,
Speaker 1: that's what they encourage. So I mean, we don't certainly
Speaker 1: have an answer here, but it's like this weird conundrum
Speaker 1: and sort of just speaks to mixed messaging. And like
Speaker 1: I said, I've seen that with snakeheads. When you tell somebody,
Speaker 1: and in some cases with those it was by law,
Speaker 1: like if you catch that, you kill that. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to convert everyone to eating them. I know how
Speaker 1: delicious they are, most people don't if they catch one.
Speaker 1: It's dead on the bank. I see it all the time.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of what you asked for, so it's weird. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, hey, we we had to cross over again eventually,
Speaker 1: and it was good. That story was too good. I
Speaker 1: was actually glad to tag team that one with you,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I think that that turned out pretty well.
Speaker 1: My transition is that is that I'm going to kind
Speaker 1: of keep us on the topic of of dead freshwater
Speaker 1: fish cats. That's that's my My transition here at least
Speaker 1: is the transition too much here we're like dead fish
Speaker 1: fish about that? What do you got on dead fish
Speaker 1: this week? And you know what that to your point,
Speaker 1: this isn't the best, Like, hey, it's Fredda and we're
Speaker 1: trying to have a good time story. But h yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still worth talking about. I'm I'm I'm not apologizing
Speaker 1: for it, but it's it's not the it's not the
Speaker 1: biggest I have one of those. Don't worry. At least
Speaker 1: we're ending on a sad note. Um So, a consortium
Speaker 1: of sixteen different conservation groups publish a report last week
Speaker 1: titled World's Forgotten Fishes and this one's uh, it's a bummer, man,
Speaker 1: it's a bummer. It also got me thinking differently about fish. Usually,
Speaker 1: when when we hear about fish stocks, like on a
Speaker 1: planetary scale, it's it's oceanic species that dominate the conversation.
Speaker 1: But this report focuses on the global status of freshwater fishes,
Speaker 1: and it's both truly fascinating and its compilation of information
Speaker 1: about various freshwater fish around the globe and their importance,
Speaker 1: as well as deeply, deeply depressing. So we'll we'll go
Speaker 1: with the bad news first. I'm prepared to be deeply depressed.
Speaker 1: There you go. You're I you were war. Freshwater fish
Speaker 1: are in far worse shape as a whole than I
Speaker 1: and probably most of us realize. Eight species of freshwater
Speaker 1: fish have already been declared extinct. And for the record,
Speaker 1: this isn't like an over there, somewhere else problems. One
Speaker 1: quarter of the extinct freshwater species used to live right
Speaker 1: here in the US. And it's also not like a
Speaker 1: back in the day problem, like, well, we did terrible
Speaker 1: things before, but now we fixed them. No, No, No,
Speaker 1: sixteen fish when extinct. Last year, thirty percent of all
Speaker 1: freshwater species on the planet are currently facing risk of extinction.
Speaker 1: Think about that for just one second. That's nearly one
Speaker 1: third of all the things that swim in fresh water
Speaker 1: at risk extinction. Populations of migratory freshwater fish have fallen
Speaker 1: seventy six percent since nineteen seventy and big fish, the
Speaker 1: ones that grow over seventy sounds and are sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as megafish, are at six percent of their historic populations.
Speaker 1: So apologies to fill here because I'm about to make
Speaker 1: some extra work for him, but I just gotta state
Speaker 1: this plainly. That's stub Yeah, I'm kind of like my
Speaker 1: jaws hanging. Yeah, this is not good, this is this
Speaker 1: is terrible. I warned you. I'm also formulating questions, but
Speaker 1: you have more to get through. The primary takeaways from
Speaker 1: this report are obviously pretty damn concerning, but I also
Speaker 1: learned a bunch of really interesting information about freshwater fishes
Speaker 1: that I just never knew before. For example, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that fresh water makes up just one percent of
Speaker 1: the world's aquatic habitat, more than half of global fish
Speaker 1: species live in fresh water. Yeah, of the water on
Speaker 1: Earth of saltwater, but the majority of the bile diversity
Speaker 1: is found in that other one percent. I did not
Speaker 1: know that really damn Yeah. There are more than eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand different kinds of fish that live in fresh water
Speaker 1: for at least part of their lives. Mean that fresh
Speaker 1: water fish make up almost a quarter of the world's
Speaker 1: vertebrate species. And and that's just the ones we know about.
Speaker 1: We're still finding all kinds of new freshwater fishes. Good
Speaker 1: news for you, Joe. Last year, a new snakehead was identified,
Speaker 1: the dragon snakehead. Bad news. They live in underground caves
Speaker 1: in southern India, so I don't think it would be
Speaker 1: casting frogs at the many times I saw those I
Speaker 1: saw don't get here. Eventually give it a couple of years.
Speaker 1: All right. Over the past decade, an average of two
Speaker 1: new species of freshwater fish have been identified every week.
Speaker 1: To fish a week, okay, but isn't that sort of
Speaker 1: canceling out. It's like one a week goes extinct, but
Speaker 1: we find two new ones. I don't think that's actually
Speaker 1: I think we're okay. Actually we're better. We're better than
Speaker 1: good with that information. That's how I absorbed news pieces,
Speaker 1: which is why you're so much better at this than me.
Speaker 1: Good news is we find too, I'm finding more. They're
Speaker 1: not being created. They're not like making two new ones
Speaker 1: a week. We're just finding them other fun facts. Maybe
Speaker 1: you new this, I didn't. There are five types of
Speaker 1: freshwater sharks, one in Australia, one in New Guinea, one
Speaker 1: in me and mar one in Borneo, and one in India. Nope,
Speaker 1: I only knew they were freshwater sharks. I was not
Speaker 1: clued into the amount five different kinds, and and and
Speaker 1: researchers actually know hardly anything about them except you know
Speaker 1: that they're critically endangered. That's about all we know, right, so,
Speaker 1: and and and the other piece that I took away
Speaker 1: from this is again, most time when we think about
Speaker 1: fisheries on the global scale, and we think about commercial
Speaker 1: fish harvest or the importance of fish in feeding people,
Speaker 1: we talked about the ocean. Yeah, but without freshwater fish
Speaker 1: is a food source, hundreds of millions of people would
Speaker 1: go hungry. This isn't just like a there there's an
Speaker 1: element to this that is truly impacting communities. So I'm
Speaker 1: just providing you with the highlights of this this conservation report.
Speaker 1: And you probably know this. Conservation reports are are just
Speaker 1: strange documents. And I know that because I've helped write
Speaker 1: a couple They have to do this this very tenuous
Speaker 1: balancing act where they describe the situation in hands as
Speaker 1: dire enough that it needs to be addressed immediately, but
Speaker 1: not so dire that everyone reading it will just give
Speaker 1: up and figure the whole things lost cause, So why
Speaker 1: bother doing in the first place. Yeah, these reports need
Speaker 1: to provide solutions that seem realistic and grounded in research,
Speaker 1: but not so complicated or detailed that the average smoke
Speaker 1: can't understand what they're talking about through like a handful
Speaker 1: of simple bullet points. They've got a this is a
Speaker 1: series is balancing act. I like a good bullet point exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm not judging there's nothing wrong with that that. Yes,
Speaker 1: reading the actual New York Times, I don't have time.
Speaker 1: And when you dig intose bullet point solutions on these
Speaker 1: conservation reports, that's where you usually find the bias of
Speaker 1: the sponsoring organizations. That's where that's that that starts to
Speaker 1: creep in, right, And that's one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: parts about this particular report. The primary organization responsible putting
Speaker 1: this together was the World Wildlife Fund. W WF is
Speaker 1: not back Country Hunters and Anglers or the Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: Conservation Partnership or American Sport Fishing Association or any of
Speaker 1: the conservation groups the champion anglers as parts of the solution,
Speaker 1: but in this report they did m hmm. The report
Speaker 1: spends an entire section giving props to anglers. It explains
Speaker 1: how recreational fishing generates a hundred billion dollars every year
Speaker 1: and how much of that money goes in the local
Speaker 1: economies who are the stewards of our freshwater resources. It
Speaker 1: tells little stories, right, because again it's all about storytelling
Speaker 1: getting people engaged. So it tells a story about the
Speaker 1: hump backed mass here which has been drawing tourist anglers
Speaker 1: and their money to India for the past fifty years,
Speaker 1: and how the income generated from those traveling anglers has
Speaker 1: transformed former poachers into fishing guides, the same people who
Speaker 1: were once decimating this fish population order to survive or
Speaker 1: now incentivized to protect them in order to make a living.
Speaker 1: And the report explains how similar cases are playing out
Speaker 1: in sensitive freshwater ecosystems all over the world. Right. The
Speaker 1: fact that anglers are important stewards of fisheries, or that
Speaker 1: angling is a net positive to fish populations is not
Speaker 1: news to anyone listening to this podcast, but for us
Speaker 1: to be explicitly recognized in this particular report marks a
Speaker 1: change in how the more mainstream conservation groups are talking
Speaker 1: about anglers. They really used to look at us as
Speaker 1: the enemies, right, we were the sadists who are out
Speaker 1: to torture innocent creatures for fun. And but I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: it seems like they've finally come around. Like I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna hold my breath for a sponsorship call
Speaker 1: from Peter, but I'm I'm really happy to see that
Speaker 1: we're getting our due from WWF at least, like it
Speaker 1: feels like a turning point to me. I think that's great, man,
Speaker 1: and I agree with what you're saying, like to have
Speaker 1: that recognizing that that what we do is is more
Speaker 1: beneficial than harmful is terrific. But the thing that that
Speaker 1: has stuck with me from the early part of this report,
Speaker 1: you said, sixteen fish freshwater fish went extinct in our
Speaker 1: country last year. No no, no, no, no no no, sorry,
Speaker 1: of the eight fish that have been declared extinct, right,
Speaker 1: sixteen went extinct last year. That's what I said. Sure,
Speaker 1: that's what she said, because I thought you said they
Speaker 1: were they were they were in America. No, I said
Speaker 1: a quarter of them were in America. And maybe I
Speaker 1: misspoke of the E D fish almost twenty Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I said it right. A quarter of the extinct freshwater
Speaker 1: species used to live in the US sixteen one extinct
Speaker 1: last year. You're you're conflating two different things. Okays, it
Speaker 1: seems like math, understand. Let me let me break down simply.
Speaker 1: Eighty freshwater fish already extinct, about a quarter about twenty
Speaker 1: of those used to live in the US sixteen total
Speaker 1: globally one extinct last year. Got you? Okay? Like, what
Speaker 1: are some of the species? And Here's why I asked that, right,
Speaker 1: because I'm racking my brain trying to like think of
Speaker 1: one for lack of a better way to put it,
Speaker 1: that matters to anglers, so like it leads me to believe, like,
Speaker 1: are these like you know, minnow and gobi type species? Like,
Speaker 1: what what are some of the recent ones that that
Speaker 1: we recognize? Does this does the piece give that? I'm
Speaker 1: just curious there aren't so many recent ones that anglers
Speaker 1: would care about in the U S. Right, A lot
Speaker 1: of the ones in the U. S. Are kind of
Speaker 1: the smaller ones, but um, some of the older ones
Speaker 1: to go extinct in the US. Did you ever know
Speaker 1: of a thing called the silver trout? Surely did not?
Speaker 1: Did not either. It was a native it was an
Speaker 1: East Coast trout species native only in North America. Gone
Speaker 1: none of us, Like, how long has that been, I've
Speaker 1: never heard of that before ever. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: long time ago. I think it was in the thirties.
Speaker 1: But the more recent one, like the big one from
Speaker 1: last year was the Chinese paddlefish going extinct. Okay, that
Speaker 1: was the big one that got news in terms of
Speaker 1: extinctions from last year. But I mean there's a whole list,
Speaker 1: right if you look at the study that lists all
Speaker 1: the A d that have gone extinct, and and a
Speaker 1: lot of them are are definitely the smaller things that
Speaker 1: the dace and the gobies and and the stuff you
Speaker 1: might not notice, but not all of them, right, And
Speaker 1: and certainly not to downplay that, I'm not saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just Dason Kobe's like whatever, man, you know, long
Speaker 1: down the Oh yeah, no, no, And you know what,
Speaker 1: what can you say? It's great to not be the
Speaker 1: bad guys in this situation. But I mean it's still
Speaker 1: a pretty depressing situation, super depressing. It's super depressing. But
Speaker 1: I will say I didn't I didn't have time to
Speaker 1: cover it all. There are those the points that lay
Speaker 1: out here are the things that we can do. All
Speaker 1: is not lost if we make some changes will be okay.
Speaker 1: I mean the big ones are pretty obvious. Stop damning
Speaker 1: rivers and uh stop using them like toilets, and you
Speaker 1: know things will get better. Well that that's wadey. That
Speaker 1: gives us a lot, a lot to think about. Um,
Speaker 1: So I'll end. I said we're gonna end with some fun.
Speaker 1: I'll end with a fish that if you saw in person,
Speaker 1: you'd want to make extinct immediately, like with a shotgun. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, instantly, Okay, And this is a this sowhere
Speaker 1: on the same page. This is a dumb story. I
Speaker 1: just can't leave it alone. But it has unlike what
Speaker 1: you've just done, it has no value. Okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: telling you that now you will not come away more
Speaker 1: enriched as an angler. But this just has to be
Speaker 1: done because several people forwarded me this story, but I
Speaker 1: have to give the shout out to listen to Matt Wagner.
Speaker 1: He sent it first, so he gets the nod, and
Speaker 1: this is making some rounds. But I'm using bro bible
Speaker 1: dot com as the source, which is obviously as credible
Speaker 1: as the Washington Post or something. All Right, so it's
Speaker 1: one of these headline deformed shark with human face looks
Speaker 1: like it came straight from your nightmares. Now I'm going
Speaker 1: to stop there for a second, because you know these headlines,
Speaker 1: this is the bullshit that's meant to grab non nature
Speaker 1: oriented people. Like remember a while back, I had a
Speaker 1: similar story. Was fish with a human face looked at
Speaker 1: me funny or whatever? The hell? It was deformed shark
Speaker 1: one at some point, yeah, yeah, And it's like I'm
Speaker 1: looking at this fish with a human face and like
Speaker 1: it's this big news weekly world news ship, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's a star gazer. What's the big is a star gazer?
Speaker 1: Like I, I like taking a practical approach to these,
Speaker 1: like it's not a big deal. And like the two
Speaker 1: mouth trout that I swear did not have two mouths,
Speaker 1: it's a little under thing mandible just got ripped out.
Speaker 1: But I don't gravitate to these, but this one's next level. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is this one's next level? So just for fun,
Speaker 1: here are the opening lines of this article, which I'm
Speaker 1: reading word for word, typos and all. Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: want to sound like an alarmist with everything that's been
Speaker 1: happening lately, but it certainly looked like the gates to
Speaker 1: Hell is leaking sea monsters again. And those gates can
Speaker 1: be found somewhere deep in the Indian Ocean. Okay, now
Speaker 1: here's now. You have no preconceived knowledge of this, right like,
Speaker 1: you do not know because you haven't seen the photo yet.
Speaker 1: Just hang on. So here's what happened. According to the story,
Speaker 1: a commercial fisherman near Roadie and now no idea where
Speaker 1: that is, uh, caught a shark in his troller net. Normally,
Speaker 1: the sharks are released alive, but by the time he
Speaker 1: got this one into the boat, it had died. So
Speaker 1: he kept it, not wanting to waste it. And when
Speaker 1: he went to clean this shark, he found that it
Speaker 1: was pregnant and inside there were three pups, two of
Speaker 1: which were completely normal, and then you had this mutant,
Speaker 1: deformed shark. And it's very easy to describe, Okay, So
Speaker 1: if you just picture like a normal baby shark, like
Speaker 1: something like a gray reef shark, like a common just
Speaker 1: shark shark, but instead of its eyes being on the
Speaker 1: side of its head, they're under its snout, just above
Speaker 1: its mouth. And did I swear we already covered this
Speaker 1: story like three months ago? No? No, Like it was
Speaker 1: the same setup. A guy in a trawler in Indonesia
Speaker 1: pulled up a shark, died, found pups inside, and one
Speaker 1: of them was like deformed to do a Cyclops. So
Speaker 1: the setup is is exactly the same. It's the same setup,
Speaker 1: which which tells me that both these stories could be
Speaker 1: largely bullshit. But this is not a Cyclops. I remember
Speaker 1: that now, And Cyclops had one eye. I remember, this
Speaker 1: is different. Bear with me, right, So so you think like, okay,
Speaker 1: it's got eyes under under its head and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's weird. Uh. And if it were swimming naturally horizontally,
Speaker 1: I guess it would just look like a baby shark
Speaker 1: with no eyes. But the photos show this thing vertically
Speaker 1: laying on its back, which gives you the illusion that
Speaker 1: this is a land creature that walks on two legs,
Speaker 1: and it's peck fins are like little arm flippers, and
Speaker 1: it is one of the creepiest, most terrifying things I
Speaker 1: have ever seen. And I'm I'm, I'm sending you the
Speaker 1: photo right now. I want your reaction to this. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that is not the same shark we covered before. No,
Speaker 1: but the story is so similar it's making me think
Speaker 1: that we're just getting sucked into fakes mutant shark like photoshops.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know if there are a lot of
Speaker 1: mutant sharks coming out in Indonesia these days. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Okay, So here's how from the story
Speaker 1: it says it's unclear if this shark came straight from
Speaker 1: our nightmares or if it looks like something that a
Speaker 1: toddler would make with Plato during Arts and Crafts time
Speaker 1: at daycare. And to me, that's accurate. Like to me,
Speaker 1: I see like a Gumby character like we never knew
Speaker 1: about because it had been like locked in a psych
Speaker 1: word for decades or something. And it's got like a
Speaker 1: hint of Casper the Friendly Ghost, and like a touch
Speaker 1: of Stay Puff marshmallow Man. But to my eye, it's
Speaker 1: pure evil. And I'll put the photo on Instagram today, Dude,
Speaker 1: it could literally be the same shark story with different
Speaker 1: photos that have been photoshot. We might have been sucked
Speaker 1: right into that. But but this is definitely like new
Speaker 1: in the news, so I believe you it's a different
Speaker 1: It's different than the cyclop shark. I just the setup
Speaker 1: is so similar that I'm like, I feel like we're
Speaker 1: getting suckered here. Maybe we are, but I don't care
Speaker 1: because when you see this photo, I implore you to
Speaker 1: imagine like you've woken up in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night and this thing is standing in the middle of
Speaker 1: your bedroom upright. It says nothing. It says nothing. It
Speaker 1: just slowly cocks its head to one side before attacking.
Speaker 1: It is terrifying, and I'm I usually explain away all
Speaker 1: these natural oddities. This one is straight up terrifying. And
Speaker 1: by the way, the guy who caught it thinks it's
Speaker 1: lucky and we'll be preserving it to keep in his bedroom.
Speaker 1: M hmm, yeah, so that's it. I definitely don't want
Speaker 1: that in my bedroom. So it's it's become he's apparently
Speaker 1: he's making money from people stopping to look at it,
Speaker 1: so I mean, good for him. It could be a
Speaker 1: better living than shark trolling over there. I don't know,
Speaker 1: no doubt, but tourism play right. Yeah, well, Phil, I
Speaker 1: guess Phil's kind of just gonna have to base this
Speaker 1: off of either are two independents, or maybe we both
Speaker 1: win because we worked so well together on the crossover.
Speaker 1: We'll see what Phil has to say and then not
Speaker 1: transition into the sale bin and we'll be looking up
Speaker 1: in the trees, stetted down on the water for this one.
Speaker 1: For at least attempting to bring some levity into that
Speaker 1: bummer of a fish News segment. Joe Surmelie is the
Speaker 1: winner Food waste Extinction, Nightmare Sharks. I could really go
Speaker 1: for a river horse segment right about now. There it is. Oh,
Speaker 1: we're sticking with the sail bind. Okay, okay, why did
Speaker 1: you put the hand to pay? You don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm getting? Man? What you didn't have to be so
Speaker 1: hurtful with me? So angry? All right, So we've got
Speaker 1: a slightly different spin on the sail bind this week. Normally,
Speaker 1: we use this space, as you guys know, to make
Speaker 1: fun of something Fishy posted in an online classifies for him,
Speaker 1: but thanks to a listener email, we're using it this
Speaker 1: week to basically give props to a young man's side hustle.
Speaker 1: That's what we're doing here. Oh yeah, and and deservedly
Speaker 1: so so. Listener Matt Caully emailed us to tell us
Speaker 1: about his son, Sawyer. This kid is just he is
Speaker 1: our kind of hustler. He runs totally. He runs a
Speaker 1: little lure racket on his local lakes, kind of like
Speaker 1: what you might have heard about some kids doing on
Speaker 1: golf courses, but so much cooler. Before we get into
Speaker 1: the details, though this the story has echoes of a
Speaker 1: fish News segment we did a while ago about birds
Speaker 1: getting tangled and lost fishing gear. And if you remember,
Speaker 1: we we did this whole thing where we encouraged everyone
Speaker 1: to pick up the ship you find hanging in trees
Speaker 1: when you go fishing. But I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that even the more conscientious and and frugal of us,
Speaker 1: we we tend to stick to the low hanging fruit
Speaker 1: when it comes to trees. Sadly, that's accurate. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if I spy a danglar in easy reach, I'll absolutely
Speaker 1: grab it and do my part. Um. But I I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like a schmuck for saying this, But if
Speaker 1: getting something out of a tree requires like climbing or
Speaker 1: physics equations or tools, or it's gonna take more than
Speaker 1: three minutes away from my fishing. I probably float on by,
Speaker 1: like I'm just I'm not built for for tree climbing,
Speaker 1: so it would have to be like, are really rare
Speaker 1: or spending lore Again, this is terrible too, but I'm
Speaker 1: just being honest. I'm not I'm not really like hard
Speaker 1: up for lures or flies. So even if there's a
Speaker 1: perfectly good rapple up there, I'm not risking like a
Speaker 1: fight with with Mr Gravity, who usually wins over like
Speaker 1: one more original rapple floater. It's just honest. I hear
Speaker 1: that I don't mind a little tree climbing. When I
Speaker 1: see stuff, I try and grab it, but I know
Speaker 1: I miss a bunch of stuff. The ones that get
Speaker 1: me are the power lines strung across the river. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and because those always have like the mother load cornucopia
Speaker 1: of shiny hanging things and mono spider webs. But dude,
Speaker 1: I'm not messing with power lines like, not even for
Speaker 1: a not even for a horse leather swim bait. I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that away fish under them though, right that
Speaker 1: buzzing every every power line hole in every river's fishing
Speaker 1: is it's really you're catching something under there, like a
Speaker 1: brain tumor. But anyway, go ahead, back to the top
Speaker 1: of your hand, back on track here. Matt sent us
Speaker 1: an email titled tree fishing and explained that his son
Speaker 1: Sawyer is really into retrieving lost lures from the trees
Speaker 1: around their local lakes, which sounds cute, right, Like it
Speaker 1: sounds just kind of adorable. But Matt also attached a
Speaker 1: photo of one of his kid's recent halls, and it's
Speaker 1: not cute, it's jaw dropping, like it's amazing. He claims
Speaker 1: in the email that this pile we saw a photo
Speaker 1: of represents just a couple of days effort, and no joke.
Speaker 1: There are dozens of quality baits. We're talking like hundreds
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of gear easily. And this is not
Speaker 1: a rusted out pile of gas station snell riggs. These
Speaker 1: are quality, brand name goods that look fresh out the package,
Speaker 1: like maybe thrown one time right right into a tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're pristine, right, And my question was this,
Speaker 1: how is he getting all these dates? Right? Like? These
Speaker 1: are not lures that people just walk away from, you know,
Speaker 1: if they're even remotely accessible. And then the original email,
Speaker 1: Matt mentioned Sawyer only does this in the winter and
Speaker 1: doesn't get in the water. So I assume I just
Speaker 1: naturally assumed. Okay, he's walking the tree line once these
Speaker 1: ponds and lakes freeze, right, He's he's using the ice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen people do that. Turns out that
Speaker 1: is completely incorrect because we did a little follow up
Speaker 1: and wouldn't you know what, Matt and Sawyer live in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, so there's no ice in Vegas. But fun fact,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know it, but I also don't really
Speaker 1: think about it, the leaves do still fall off the
Speaker 1: trees in the winter in Las Vegas. I know. But
Speaker 1: I honestly I thought all the trees they were plastic,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, I didn't even know
Speaker 1: that they were real. Everything else there is plastic um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So okay, so the real leaves in Vegas do fall off,
Speaker 1: and it makes the picking better and easier. So Matt writes,
Speaker 1: Sawyer amazes me with his creative ways of getting lures out.
Speaker 1: He used to use a thirty ft collapsible painters poll
Speaker 1: that he rigged with a few magnets and razors. The
Speaker 1: razor cuts the line and the hook would then stick
Speaker 1: to the magnet, but that got two on wheeldy. So
Speaker 1: now he just uses a cut piece of bamboo. This
Speaker 1: kid is mcgever. He's like, he's like mgeiver and inspector
Speaker 1: gadget that goes fishing. I'm just super impressed. And Dr
Speaker 1: Claw throw him in there. And we're not the only
Speaker 1: ones who recognize uh Sawyer's intellect because these are these
Speaker 1: are well trafficked places, right, these are They sound like
Speaker 1: urban ponds, so you know, obviously people see him doing this.
Speaker 1: You see a kid walking around with a thirty foot
Speaker 1: painters poll ridd with razors and magnets, and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so so people follow him around and then asked
Speaker 1: to buy the lures he's pulling out, and and according
Speaker 1: to again, according to Matt, so keeps most of the
Speaker 1: lures for himself because you know, he never he never
Speaker 1: knows what he's gonna need stock up. But he has
Speaker 1: sold a few back to the people who lost him.
Speaker 1: He calls it a finder's fee, which is at a
Speaker 1: boy perfect yes, yes, perfect, pure pure vegas hustle man
Speaker 1: totally yeah. Yeah, And even though I mean, Vegas isn't
Speaker 1: exactly what you'd call a superfichy town, right, but it
Speaker 1: does have a pretty big population. And uh, Matt says,
Speaker 1: Sawyer is operating at public ponds that have bass and
Speaker 1: get a winner trout stocking, which was telling because that
Speaker 1: that explains the mash up of tiny inline spinners all
Speaker 1: the way up. There's like striper's size jerk baits in
Speaker 1: a file, just an in an insane array. Um, but
Speaker 1: it appears they're like a shipload of casual fish dabblers
Speaker 1: in Vegas, apparently pounding the piss out of this water,
Speaker 1: and the vast majority of them cannot cast at all.
Speaker 1: Sawyers getting from what we can derive from that, Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't change my opinion that I have. I have
Speaker 1: no love for Vegas whatsoever. Yeah, me, They're sorry, Matt
Speaker 1: and Sawyer. It's just not my place. It's not no
Speaker 1: have friends there. I love you all, death, just not
Speaker 1: my place. But if I'm ever forced to go back,
Speaker 1: as I have in the past, I can tell you
Speaker 1: I will be skipping the casinos and I will be
Speaker 1: hollering at Matt to see if his kid will take
Speaker 1: me Tree fishing Sawyer, we did. We appreciate your moxie
Speaker 1: and your entrepreneurial spirit. We should mention I feel like
Speaker 1: we should also mention that Sawyer offered to send us
Speaker 1: some of his recent haul. You did specify note no
Speaker 1: swim baits or whopper ploppers, which is just sound those
Speaker 1: standards personal status. But I I want to respond to
Speaker 1: that here and say, no, man, you we're good. You
Speaker 1: have earned those You should keep them and be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for some sweetass stickers to boot. Well, Miles
Speaker 1: is speaking for himself. I would take the whopper ploppers
Speaker 1: if he were willing. I mean, and are pass up
Speaker 1: a whopper ploper? Uh? Yeah? Good stuff though, man, And remember,
Speaker 1: if you find something ridiculous fish or fishing related uh
Speaker 1: for sale online, be it on Facebook, offer up, Kijiji,
Speaker 1: or the dark web, shoot a link to Bent at
Speaker 1: the metator dot com. If we use your submission on
Speaker 1: the show, we'll set you up with a little Bent swag.
Speaker 1: So in that giant selection of recovered lures where pretty
Speaker 1: much all styles of bait were represented, did you happen
Speaker 1: to notice which one was missing? I did? I did.
Speaker 1: I had wanted in particular that I think was missing.
Speaker 1: So if you guys want to know what it is,
Speaker 1: you're in luck because in this week's end of the
Speaker 1: Line segment, Miles is going to tell you all about
Speaker 1: that one bait apparently not dangling in the trees at
Speaker 1: that kid's personal treasure trove in Vegas. Okay, it's a
Speaker 1: story of a different kind of hustle and the power
Speaker 1: of internet. Chatta. Well, that's not allowed enough, Burt. The
Speaker 1: chatter bait is perhaps the only lure in the past
Speaker 1: fifty years to define a whole new category of baits.
Speaker 1: The story of this lure demonstrates how the tackle industry
Speaker 1: has changed, but also proves that new lures don't need
Speaker 1: high tech injected mold plastics or robotic inserts to get bit.
Speaker 1: A chatter bait looks deceptively simple. It's a skirt of
Speaker 1: jig with a hexagonal metal blade attached to the eye.
Speaker 1: The brilliance behind this design only reveals itself when fished.
Speaker 1: That blade caused the jig to vibrate and wiggle. It
Speaker 1: also clacks against the jighead, producing sound and flash. So
Speaker 1: the chatter bait is like a swim jig, crankbait, spinner
Speaker 1: bait hybrid. Like all my favorite end the line stories,
Speaker 1: this one starts in a home workshop. Ronnie Davis spent
Speaker 1: his career as a research and development lab technician at
Speaker 1: a company the designed tire materials. After retirement in Davis
Speaker 1: turned his attention to bass fishing. I guess I'm different
Speaker 1: than fisherman in them in the way that when I
Speaker 1: go to the lake bass fishing, there's not about lure
Speaker 1: only end of my lay. No matter what really is,
Speaker 1: it's something I've created, are altered to the point if
Speaker 1: I'm wherever I'm fishing the fish and saying that before
Speaker 1: from anybody but me. For more than a decade, Davis
Speaker 1: tinkered with the concept that would eventually become the chatter bait.
Speaker 1: His inspiration came from an early nineteen sixties were called
Speaker 1: the Walker special hexagonal chunk of metal with a couple
Speaker 1: of trouble hooks attached. That lure didn't really take off,
Speaker 1: but Davis never forgot how its particular shape wobbled in
Speaker 1: the water. He figured that if he could find a
Speaker 1: way to incorporate it into a jig, he'd be able
Speaker 1: to impart that same movement in a more versatile and
Speaker 1: weedless bait. Ronnie Davis never considered selling his inventions. He
Speaker 1: just kind of like building stuff and wanted an edge
Speaker 1: in the local tournaments around his hometown of Rock Hills,
Speaker 1: South Carolina. Davis his son, On, however, saw commercial potential.
Speaker 1: For a couple of years, the two had friendly disagreements
Speaker 1: over bringing the lure to market. The younger Davis wanted
Speaker 1: to start selling the baits, while the older was never
Speaker 1: satisfied was always convinced that he could improve the design.
Speaker 1: In two thousand four, Ron Davis finally convinced his father
Speaker 1: that the lure was ready. Ron quit his job as
Speaker 1: a tennis pro and founded rad Baits. Their first year,
Speaker 1: the company sold only five thousand chatter baits, but Ron
Speaker 1: had confidence not just in the potential of his father's design,
Speaker 1: but in his own understanding of how the bass industry
Speaker 1: was shifting for generations. New baits got popular through phishing media.
Speaker 1: As I've talked about in previous episodes, lures like the Rappola,
Speaker 1: floating mental or the Devil's Horse gained much of their
Speaker 1: attraction in the market from rite ups and national magazines.
Speaker 1: More modern designs like rubber worms and spinner bates found
Speaker 1: their way into the psyche of anglers through Saturday morning
Speaker 1: fishing shows. Ron Davis was pressing enough to see that
Speaker 1: bass heads in the early two thousands were tuning into
Speaker 1: some thing different. On Saturdays tournament standings, Ron gave chatter
Speaker 1: baits two up and coming pros. In two thousand five.
Speaker 1: One of those anglers, Brian Thrift, won the co angler
Speaker 1: division of an FLW event using the chatter bait, but
Speaker 1: he didn't tell anybody about it. Afterward, Ron called him
Speaker 1: hat in hand and asked Thrift to please let people
Speaker 1: know what he was throwing the next time he did
Speaker 1: well with the bait. Thrift faced a dilemma. The chatter
Speaker 1: bait was a bit of a secret weapon, something he
Speaker 1: had confidence in that virtually no one else on the
Speaker 1: tour had, and as a young tournament angler trying to
Speaker 1: build a career, that's a significant advantage. But he liked
Speaker 1: in respect of the Davis's and wanted to see them succeeds,
Speaker 1: so he agreed that he would. Eight months later, Thrift
Speaker 1: fished and won his first fl W tournament as a
Speaker 1: pro on Lake Ogachobi. He caught fish over eight pounds
Speaker 1: every day of the tournament. And had several days where
Speaker 1: he caught multiple fish over eight pounds, all on chatter bait.
Speaker 1: He kept his promise to Ron and openly talked about
Speaker 1: a new lure he was using. In the next FLW event.
Speaker 1: Four of the top ten finishers we're using chatter baits.
Speaker 1: Words spread across the internet almost instantly. In a matter
Speaker 1: of days, Rad had received orders for a half million units,
Speaker 1: and they're projected annual sales went from a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: lures to two million. There was just one problem. They
Speaker 1: had no possible way of filling all those orders. So
Speaker 1: Ron contacted z Man Fishing Products, of South Carolina based
Speaker 1: company that at the time manufactured and distributed lure components.
Speaker 1: RAD Lures and z Man reached an agreement to co
Speaker 1: brand and distribute chatter Baits, allowing them to dramatically increase
Speaker 1: production capacity and fill all the incoming orders. And this
Speaker 1: is probably the spot where you expect the happily ever
Speaker 1: after to come in. But that isn't actually the end.
Speaker 1: Not really. Remember how it intro the chatter bait by
Speaker 1: talking about how simple it is. Well, that simplicity meant
Speaker 1: that just about anyone with basic tool and know how
Speaker 1: could make their own. Six months after chatter Bates became
Speaker 1: the darling of the bass tournament scene, there were seventy
Speaker 1: different knockoffs for sale, which was a problem for a
Speaker 1: bait and a brand that was just starting to take off.
Speaker 1: You remember the genius who invented the spinner bait, Yet
Speaker 1: neither do I, and and neither does anyone else, because
Speaker 1: though whoever that was may have been a hell of
Speaker 1: a lure inventor, they weren't all that business savvy. But
Speaker 1: see the Davis is they are. They filed several patent
Speaker 1: applications in two thousand four, including a patent on metal
Speaker 1: blades attached directly to the eyes of way to jakeheads.
Speaker 1: Though it took nearly five years and reported hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars that Davis's were awarded those patents, Ron spent years
Speaker 1: tracking down intellectual property infringements. Even after the Davis has
Speaker 1: sold chatter Bait to z Man in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Ron continued sending out seas and desist orders. Everyone in
Speaker 1: the business knows not to mess with chatter baits. In
Speaker 1: Rick Klun won a Bass Elite tournament using a homemade
Speaker 1: chatter Bait knockoff afterwards, he told the cameras, that's cloudy
Speaker 1: winding conditions. I say, which the face. I called it
Speaker 1: a trick, sure too, but it's just a chatter bait
Speaker 1: copy that I don't say z Man and saying the
Speaker 1: z Man, I like what they do. They make you,
Speaker 1: they see you, and they said, I wish all companies
Speaker 1: could do that and protect stuff in this business. Z
Speaker 1: Man went from being a midsized lure component maker to
Speaker 1: one of the big names and modern bass lures. The
Speaker 1: Davis has sold the chatter Bait for an undisclosed amount,
Speaker 1: but enough that ron will never have to go back
Speaker 1: to being tennis bro. His father, Ronnie, is still designing
Speaker 1: lures and still convinced that his bait, the lure that
Speaker 1: changed bass fishing completely, can be improved. There's got to
Speaker 1: be other ways to create the same type action without
Speaker 1: infringing on the original chatter bait Patton and what I've
Speaker 1: been waiting on for this this many years. Somebody's got
Speaker 1: to do it better. So that's all we got for
Speaker 1: you this week. As you continue counting down the spring,
Speaker 1: remember if you catch a record striper, don't bother submitting
Speaker 1: it to the I g F A Uh, you won't
Speaker 1: survive the apocalypse, but fat head minnows will. And all
Speaker 1: it takes to be a hustler is a bamboo stick
Speaker 1: or the foresight to patent something before you try to
Speaker 1: make a buck off it. Nice. Yes, uh, keep those
Speaker 1: sales and items, bar nomination, awkward photos, comments, critiques, and
Speaker 1: just about anything else you feel like sending coming to
Speaker 1: us at bent at the meat eater dot com. Yes,
Speaker 1: please do, and don't forget. Your use of the degenerate
Speaker 1: Angler and Bent podcast hashtags over the next week could
Speaker 1: put you on the path to pre spawn glory. With
Speaker 1: those soft baits and custom hard swim bait from Hoshmoto concepts.
Speaker 1: I'm not eligible, but I'm gonna take back my break
Speaker 1: into one earlier and say that if I one, I'd
Speaker 1: have the hardbad painted like Tigra. How about you, I'd
Speaker 1: ask for a magic eye pattern. It reveals an image
Speaker 1: of Willem to folk