Speaker 1: I love fishing, and I want to share my interest
Speaker 1: with that is, but I also don't want to be
Speaker 1: a d bag about it. Step one, insert your favorite
Speaker 1: and tasty as bait into our copper protected spring bowl.
Speaker 1: He started asking me about sasquatch and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is really strange. I've heard there's Assenko shortage,
Speaker 1: so all those people probably none of them had a
Speaker 1: foreign troop bier Senko, Good morning to generate anglers. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Bend, the fishing podcast that's connected by contradictions, nourished
Speaker 1: by non sequiturs, booied by buffoonery, and flourishes on flotsam.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe SURMELI mild wealthy, and I can't believe Joe
Speaker 1: actually read that intro. You know, I really should have
Speaker 1: vetted that before we started recording, but I was busy
Speaker 1: this morning. Oh well, now you know, and knowing is
Speaker 1: half the bat battle literations aside, this episode really is
Speaker 1: like a hodgepodge of oddities, much like what you might
Speaker 1: find lodged in the rocks and logs and weed beds
Speaker 1: if you did some snorkeling at your local lakes this summer,
Speaker 1: which I recommend if you've never done that. And it
Speaker 1: got me thinking about a conversation that that we've had
Speaker 1: on and off over the past year between the two
Speaker 1: of us and and also with our buddy Ryan Callahan,
Speaker 1: about the things we throw in the water. And when
Speaker 1: I say we, I don't mean I don't mean the collective, we,
Speaker 1: the the editorial we. I'm not talking about society in
Speaker 1: general and pollution. I'm I mean you and me, anglers,
Speaker 1: people who fish. We got we got this email recently
Speaker 1: from a listener named Jason Keller, who sent us photos
Speaker 1: of a chunk of tire. Rubber tire, yeah, stomach yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think Jason summed up the situation pretty eloquently
Speaker 1: in his message. He out while I was both surprised
Speaker 1: and slightly disturbed to find what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: rubber tire inside a lake trout stomach, it dawned on
Speaker 1: me that I have spent literally my entire life attempting
Speaker 1: to force feed numerous types of aquatic animals every kind
Speaker 1: of plastic, metal or rubber bait that I could think of.
Speaker 1: I could not even begin to count how many plastic
Speaker 1: imitation eggs, swim baits, twister tails, flukes, or other various
Speaker 1: types of imitation bait I have left snagged in the
Speaker 1: rocks or broken off in some fish's mouth. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And I you know, I think that's a perspective that
Speaker 1: anglers we just don't often think about. And I know,
Speaker 1: for me personally, right if I break off on a
Speaker 1: rock pile or whatever, my first thought is just like, God,
Speaker 1: damn it, that was a perfectly good paddle tail. And
Speaker 1: inevitably it's like I've only got two left in bone white,
Speaker 1: which is all that's working today, and it's it's very selfish,
Speaker 1: it's a very selfish reaction. Um, but I rarely give
Speaker 1: much ought to what happens to those rigs once once
Speaker 1: I break them off. I'm just being completely honest, you know,
Speaker 1: Like that's what we've been discussing. That's that's what this
Speaker 1: is all about, right, And I'll say this, even if
Speaker 1: even if I've got a ton of say I've got
Speaker 1: a ton of whatever, but I've got a ton of
Speaker 1: the bone white battle tails that are working and I
Speaker 1: break one off, I'm still annoyed. But I'm annoyed that
Speaker 1: now I have to spend valuable time that I could
Speaker 1: be fishing on re rigging. I'm not thinking about the
Speaker 1: thing that that is now sitting at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the lake. Yes, no, you're exactly right. And we've had
Speaker 1: multiple conversations on this show about removing lures in line
Speaker 1: from trees. Um. We've even talked about there was the
Speaker 1: kid in in Vegas who's got his own like a
Speaker 1: little cottage industry going harvesting the fruits of other anglers,
Speaker 1: misfortunately laziness. Um. But we really haven't gone into the depths,
Speaker 1: so to speak, you know, and for good reason, I think, right,
Speaker 1: because because in many ways this is like, this is
Speaker 1: like one of those dirty little secrets for anglers who
Speaker 1: care about conservation, that the thing that we want to
Speaker 1: hide and don't want to think of, right, Like, it's
Speaker 1: it's a grown up version of whatever illicit things used
Speaker 1: to have hidden under your mattress or at the back
Speaker 1: of your closet when you were a teenager. Right yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the kids, the kids, they just have to
Speaker 1: worry about what's in their browser history, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's which is which is a shame because like,
Speaker 1: like our sons are not gonna hide anything under the radiator,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, in their room. They might,
Speaker 1: but it might be different things. I don't know. But
Speaker 1: and those kids, you're the browser history things true, But
Speaker 1: I would venture to guess that those kids today are
Speaker 1: probably just as worried about getting found out even digitally,
Speaker 1: we were. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna stick with
Speaker 1: my analogy. I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say shame is universal,
Speaker 1: and as we get older, the things that shame us,
Speaker 1: they just shift, don't go away. We're still we're still
Speaker 1: dealing with it. I'm I will admit I'm the guy.
Speaker 1: I'm that guy who usually picks up at least a
Speaker 1: few pieces of trash when I go fishing, like like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a can and a bottle in some plastic, and
Speaker 1: I get to feel all proud of myself about it.
Speaker 1: But only I only get to do that, that that
Speaker 1: high and mighty thing, because I can't see all the
Speaker 1: trash that I personally leave behind, because my litter is underwater.
Speaker 1: It's out of sight, out of mind. So I can
Speaker 1: like hold my little old half rotten can and be like,
Speaker 1: I'm a great person, but I'm still leaving all kinds
Speaker 1: of unnatural materials where they don't belong and as they
Speaker 1: get older, I'm thinking more and more about that. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. We'll take a quick pause from from
Speaker 1: from your little trip down Shame Lane. Okay, to remind
Speaker 1: all of you that this podcast is fully outfitted by
Speaker 1: thirteen fishing makers of fine rods, reels and tackle. Indeed,
Speaker 1: indeed it is and and one of the ways bringing
Speaker 1: this back. One of the ways I tried to avoid
Speaker 1: that shame lately is by fishing their jabber Jah square
Speaker 1: bill crank bits. In addition to being very loud and noisy,
Speaker 1: which is cool, another benefit of the square bill design
Speaker 1: is that it deflects off the stumps and rocks and
Speaker 1: logs another cover, so you can you can wrote where
Speaker 1: the fish are with less chance of getting snagged. I've
Speaker 1: been hitting up a few of the secret lakes here lately,
Speaker 1: and I can report the Smalley's approve. Yeah. Like, to
Speaker 1: be honest, I've never been like a huge crank baits guy,
Speaker 1: but those are good. I like those. And best of all,
Speaker 1: even if you do break one off, okay, you won't
Speaker 1: also break the bank replacing it. So even if you
Speaker 1: share miles personal issues with losing lures, you only have
Speaker 1: to deal with with one layer of self hatred. Self
Speaker 1: self hatred might be a little extreme. I'm not like,
Speaker 1: I'm not like carrying a leather strap with me and
Speaker 1: and marking my back with self lash switch. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: thinking about thinking about all of this right, thinking about
Speaker 1: this stuff, it hasn't stopped me from fishing, right, it hasn't.
Speaker 1: It's not like I'm like, I'm so stuck with this
Speaker 1: issue that I can't fish anymore, or that I'm not
Speaker 1: willing to make a cast and a deep cover where
Speaker 1: where the fish ar because I might lose a lure.
Speaker 1: I still play the risk reward game, but I am
Speaker 1: I am more likely to go in after a lure
Speaker 1: then I used to be, even if it's like a
Speaker 1: shitty cheap lure, I don't. I'm not like, well that's
Speaker 1: a cheap one. I'll break it off anymore. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave that there, or or I'll
Speaker 1: get right on top of it and use one of
Speaker 1: those goofy lure extracting poles no time out, like, and
Speaker 1: that will totally blow a spot. Right. If you do that,
Speaker 1: you're giving up a spot. But I do that more
Speaker 1: than I used to have. Have you ever used one
Speaker 1: of those pole lure extractors. I've never tried one of
Speaker 1: the ones that that's a pole, but I have tried
Speaker 1: um those those kind and there's all different variations UM
Speaker 1: that you slide down your line, you pull your line time.
Speaker 1: I've never got those because if it doesn't work, then
Speaker 1: then you lose the love the extractor to right, that's correct,
Speaker 1: And I would say the ones I had worked about
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the time, and then I just get
Speaker 1: that snag too, and then I would lose uh that
Speaker 1: thing plus the lord. So ye, not something I've had
Speaker 1: on hand. Don't really leaving them like, I don't really
Speaker 1: think they work, but I do think and I do
Speaker 1: think you're concerned is a little misplaced because if if
Speaker 1: I'm being honest, I don't really think hard baits are
Speaker 1: like the big issue. Really. It's soft plastics and lead
Speaker 1: jigheads that are the things I personally think about. Um
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, right, just last week I joined
Speaker 1: a buddy of mine who invited me to partake in
Speaker 1: kind of like a hush hush catfish deal a jig
Speaker 1: bite for flatheads, which I was very fascinated with, and
Speaker 1: the fishing was kind of off that night, which doesn't
Speaker 1: bother me in the least because that's fishing. Um. But
Speaker 1: this spot was shallow and rocky and and super jagged
Speaker 1: rock to like flat crisscross boulder, really jagged rock. And
Speaker 1: I busted off easily twelve jigs in an hour and
Speaker 1: a half, right, and it was it was mad Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was maddening that you were talking about, um how
Speaker 1: you just also pissed when you lose something because now
Speaker 1: you have to retie. So this would be like you
Speaker 1: need a long shock leader and like a really strong
Speaker 1: braid to to lead or not. So I I was
Speaker 1: just absolutely frustrated and maddened. But I started thinking about
Speaker 1: how much lead and plastic must just be in this
Speaker 1: one little niche area in this river, and it's gotta
Speaker 1: be and a half dude, I think I think the
Speaker 1: most retreat because we don't have to go on all
Speaker 1: the details. But you needed like a three quarter or
Speaker 1: one ounce to cast where you needed a cast and
Speaker 1: get where you needed to get for these fish sitting
Speaker 1: on the bottom. So you couldn't throw like a little
Speaker 1: twister tail. It's a big gas flathead. You need a
Speaker 1: strong hook. They're gonna respond to a big plastic twitching
Speaker 1: on the bottom um. And I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was the spot I was in or what it was,
Speaker 1: but I think ten retrieves was the most I got
Speaker 1: out of a lure before I was hopelessly was everybody
Speaker 1: around you? Yes, yes, it's just like you know, kind
Speaker 1: of comes with the territory um. But but contrary because
Speaker 1: I've heard people say this, contrary to what some people think,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of soft plastics don't buy O D grade.
Speaker 1: There's biodegradable ones out there. You have to opt into that.
Speaker 1: You have to opt into that, right, it's not the Yeah,
Speaker 1: the regular ones remain intact in the water for for
Speaker 1: years before breaking down into microplastics. And while fish, I
Speaker 1: don't know, they're probably not gonna eat like a lifeless
Speaker 1: spinner bait or crank bait that's wedged in the rocks, right,
Speaker 1: but no, they very well might eat a sanko or
Speaker 1: like a torn up creature that's that's quivering down on
Speaker 1: the bottom. You know, the current move that around. They
Speaker 1: totally actually make it twitch and the like. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's why we purchased them. So, you know, just saying no,
Speaker 1: that definitely happens that. That's that's the thing that that
Speaker 1: that absolutely happens that I'm not I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: on this. I've read about it some, but from what
Speaker 1: I can tell, it seems like it's heartening. Back to
Speaker 1: the first story of the email, it seems like lakers,
Speaker 1: especially like to munch posted out soft plastics, and it's
Speaker 1: probably just because they eat almost anything and they're usually
Speaker 1: cruising around the bottom. But they're not the only ones.
Speaker 1: All kinds of fish have been doc commented eating cast
Speaker 1: off soft plastics. I've read a couple of studies over
Speaker 1: the years about this, and and some of them show
Speaker 1: them those those soft plastics right as they stay in
Speaker 1: the water, they swell up the absorb water, and they
Speaker 1: can swell up so much that they can they can
Speaker 1: actually block fish is digestive tracks, so effectively preventing that
Speaker 1: fish from eating anymore, which is a bad deal. Um,
Speaker 1: so I'm with you. I couldn't agree with you more
Speaker 1: on the soft plastics point. I mean, I hope everybody
Speaker 1: out there already knows. Don't just toss your used soft
Speaker 1: plastics over the side into the water. I know that
Speaker 1: used to be common, but we don't do that anymore,
Speaker 1: and there's there's a good reason, and if you're still
Speaker 1: doing it, please stop. But the the other thing is
Speaker 1: I actually fish, actually fish soft plastic less than I
Speaker 1: used to because of things about this, I still use them.
Speaker 1: It's not like I'm against them. I'm not anti. I
Speaker 1: don't refuse to use them. They're just not my go to.
Speaker 1: If I can get away with something else I do.
Speaker 1: And when and when I fished them, I'm I make
Speaker 1: a couple of changes, like slate changes. I'm quicker to
Speaker 1: to swap out a body if it's starting to get
Speaker 1: shoot up, right, if it's like I don't I used
Speaker 1: to fish the until they fell off, and I don't
Speaker 1: do that anymore, right, And and the other thing I
Speaker 1: do if I if i'm if I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: wacky rig. I used to think using the O rings
Speaker 1: was stupid and kind of lame, and then I realized
Speaker 1: that you do that because you don't tear up the
Speaker 1: bait and you lose a lot fewer of them. And
Speaker 1: when you use the O rig you just toss out
Speaker 1: less senko. So they're not perfect solutions, but those are
Speaker 1: those are the things that I'm doing to minimize the
Speaker 1: opportunities for my baits to turn into underwater ship and
Speaker 1: I genuinely command all of that, and and similarly, I
Speaker 1: try to avoid losing too many baits. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, soft plastics are my go to, like there,
Speaker 1: there's there's, there's there's no there's no way around that.
Speaker 1: And maybe it makes me like a bad person. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but it's just a fact and just off
Speaker 1: top of my head, like I can't think of anything
Speaker 1: I target, with the exception of maybe like tuna, where
Speaker 1: I could be just as effective if I took soft
Speaker 1: plastics out of the repertoire entirely. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: just that's just how it is. Rubbing is racing, as
Speaker 1: Days of Thunder taught us, and and we're gonna lose them,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna lose some um But as Myles mentioned
Speaker 1: this episode, it's it's gonna be kind of like strapping
Speaker 1: on a mask and scouring the bottom of your local
Speaker 1: city pond. Never know what you're gonna get. And first off,
Speaker 1: we've got smooth Moves where we invite Guide's charter captain,
Speaker 1: shop rats and anyone who makes their living in the
Speaker 1: fishing industry to tell us stories of the most ridiculous
Speaker 1: shit they've experienced on the water. And this week we're
Speaker 1: talking to a mostly retired guide, Joe will Our, about
Speaker 1: a guide trip he ran in Washington that he wishes
Speaker 1: he could forget. Why all right? Today on Smooth Moves,
Speaker 1: we are joined by Joe Willour. Joe, thanks for taking
Speaker 1: time to be here today. Thanks for having me. It's
Speaker 1: great to talk to you guys. Yeah. Man, I I
Speaker 1: don't think we've ever like actually physically met, but we
Speaker 1: run in a lot of the same circles. Like I've
Speaker 1: heard your name just scattered around the guide grape behind
Speaker 1: for I don't know, like ten years or so something
Speaker 1: like that. And and I think I got this right.
Speaker 1: You're from Washington and and that's where that's the area
Speaker 1: where you started your guide career, right, Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 1: I was really fortunate it uh help me go through college,
Speaker 1: best best college job ever, And then finished up school
Speaker 1: and kept guiding because it's still the best job ever,
Speaker 1: and transitioned out of it a few years ago when
Speaker 1: we found out we're having kids, but still keep a
Speaker 1: little bit of a toe in it because it's uh
Speaker 1: as addicting a thing as I've ever found in my life. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: like you're well, now you're in You're in twin Bridges, right,
Speaker 1: You've been in twin Bridges for how long? A dozen years?
Speaker 1: Dozen years? So you're like a unicorn. Seriously, dude, you
Speaker 1: are because you you came you like you came out
Speaker 1: of the fishing industry and you turned into a productive,
Speaker 1: healthy member of society as the executive director for the
Speaker 1: Beaute Local Development Corporation. Like, congratulations, man, nobody nobody does that.
Speaker 1: Thank you. You know, there's a couple there's a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons behind that, and one, uh is my good
Speaker 1: friend Casey Dudley. Him and I would always joke, if
Speaker 1: you want to get to the front of the boat,
Speaker 1: you've got to get out of the middle. And I
Speaker 1: always uh, I mean, I love guiding, but I also
Speaker 1: love the idea of standing in the front and casting
Speaker 1: uh equally as much, honestly, Like I love being able
Speaker 1: to show people the rivers and the cool places we
Speaker 1: get to hang out, but I also love the concept
Speaker 1: of going somewhere I haven't been and actually having the
Speaker 1: rod in my hand. And then from the guiding world,
Speaker 1: they had a really good mentor who really pushed me.
Speaker 1: And he's like, you know, as a fishing guide, you
Speaker 1: have these unbelievable communication skills, Like you've sat in the
Speaker 1: middle of a drift boat and told ceo s from
Speaker 1: companies around the world what to do all day long
Speaker 1: for most of your adult life. Like, that's a fantastic
Speaker 1: skill set for the professional world. So if you can
Speaker 1: find a place to put that to use, you're gonna
Speaker 1: kick ass. And I've been very fortunate to have some
Speaker 1: opportunities to go do that. I was gonna say, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, Miles, like you come on, man like you,
Speaker 1: You've you've landed well too. As a former guy. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm still in the industry. I didn't I didn't get
Speaker 1: out of But I think I think the way you
Speaker 1: put that is well, said Joe, because like I think
Speaker 1: a lot of guides, all guys, for the most part,
Speaker 1: I had that experience you're talking about, but not all
Speaker 1: that many can articulate it that way and frame it
Speaker 1: that ways and then be able to leverage it into
Speaker 1: something else. So I'd say kudos to that. And the story, whatever,
Speaker 1: this story is. The real reason we've got you here
Speaker 1: is that a mutual friend of ours, Josh Mills. Uh
Speaker 1: he told me. He called me. I was like, ah, well,
Speaker 1: I always got this guy's story would be perfect show.
Speaker 1: And I have not heard. I have not heard the
Speaker 1: whole story. I just got a couple of snippets and
Speaker 1: and I would describe them as tantalizing. So let's just
Speaker 1: do this, man, let's jump in. What do you got
Speaker 1: for the smooth moves? Absolutely? And I want to preface
Speaker 1: it with, as a fishing guy, it's always fun to
Speaker 1: be able to dunk on clients. Like, you know, you
Speaker 1: finish your guide day, you sit around and you drink
Speaker 1: a beer these days of white cloth, which kind of
Speaker 1: fractures my brain, and uh, you know, you talk some
Speaker 1: trash about them. You know, they're going over to the
Speaker 1: bar and they're talking trash about you. Like, man, my
Speaker 1: guide was so hung over this morning. I don't think
Speaker 1: he gave a crap about us catching any fish. So
Speaker 1: it's definitely a mutual thing. But before I dunk on
Speaker 1: this guest, um, I will preface it with I've ran
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand guide trips. The number of clients
Speaker 1: that I would not fish with out of fifteen years
Speaker 1: of guiding is three. I mean, that's it. So the
Speaker 1: folks we get a fish with are fantastic. I've made
Speaker 1: lifelong friends. I've got a tattoo from a fly that
Speaker 1: a client of mine recommended. But there's also a couple
Speaker 1: that definitely deserve to be featured in this And so
Speaker 1: for this story, it goes back to my days on
Speaker 1: the Acama. And if you're familiar with the Akama, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a great fishery, but compared to some of
Speaker 1: the other Western rivers, I mean, it's not the Green
Speaker 1: with ten thousand trout per mile. It's not Upper Madison
Speaker 1: with two foot ground trout swimming around. It's a great river,
Speaker 1: it's a fantastic dry fly river, but it's just not
Speaker 1: it's not the same thing as some of these other
Speaker 1: rivers that fortunately get a fish now. And with this gentleman,
Speaker 1: I knew it was going to be an interesting day
Speaker 1: when he hopped in my truck. The first things out
Speaker 1: of his mouth, and I was driving an old F
Speaker 1: one fifty at the time, was man, this F one
Speaker 1: fifties and and piece of ship. You need to get
Speaker 1: a GMC. And it's like, okay, this is weird. Um
Speaker 1: it's a pick up. It's better than my old explorer
Speaker 1: I had two months ago that blew up on the
Speaker 1: side of the river and I lost my transmission. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's a truck. I don't give a crap. And
Speaker 1: we're going down into the Achma Canyon, which is a
Speaker 1: gorgeous piece of water, and we hadn't even made it
Speaker 1: about a mile from the shop, and he goes, Man,
Speaker 1: this Eastern Washington's the ugliest from piece of shit I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. It's full of nothing. But hillis in rednecks.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is where I grew up, and so
Speaker 1: that I I don't even know that it was strike
Speaker 1: too at that point, but it was like, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be an interesting two days. Um. But I mean
Speaker 1: at the time, you know, I was guiding full time.
Speaker 1: I wasn't in a position to turn away a dime.
Speaker 1: I mean, full time fishing guide. It's like, yeah, great,
Speaker 1: I've got four months to make money and then hopefully
Speaker 1: find something to do in the winter that I can
Speaker 1: pay rent. We get down to the river and we
Speaker 1: launch and there's a big blueing hats blowing up and
Speaker 1: fishing is pretty easy, which the ep mud I was
Speaker 1: fortunate to learn there. It's a challenging river. It makes
Speaker 1: fishing around here in Montana really easy because when you're
Speaker 1: trying to catch one of a thousand trout a mile
Speaker 1: and then you go to four thousand trout a mile,
Speaker 1: it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Touches a couple
Speaker 1: of fish right away, and he goes, man, this river
Speaker 1: is just like the green full of dumb f and trout,
Speaker 1: It's like and so at that point it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I need this money, but this is gonna be pain
Speaker 1: and fished all day whatever, you know, caught some fish,
Speaker 1: not worried about it. And then the next day is
Speaker 1: where it really got weird. And we're floating along and
Speaker 1: the river blows out from under us, and every river
Speaker 1: in the state blew out that week, I mean Seattle
Speaker 1: to Pullman, everything was toast. And so I've got two
Speaker 1: hours to row out with this guy and he makes
Speaker 1: he honestly, he makes really unsavory comments about some more
Speaker 1: things and what really put it over the edge for me,
Speaker 1: and the only reason I would ever dream about fishing
Speaker 1: with him again. At the time, I would go guide
Speaker 1: in the winter and the Washington's Olympic Peninsula, which I'm
Speaker 1: not a Sasquatch believer. I'll throw that out there. There's
Speaker 1: one is a sass. If one is a Sasquatch believer,
Speaker 1: he probably lives near Forks with the vampires. And he
Speaker 1: started asking me about sasquatch and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is really strange. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a seventy year old man that's asking me about bidfoot.
Speaker 1: And so at that point, it's like, you know, you've
Speaker 1: dunked on my state, You've dunked on my truck, You've
Speaker 1: until my river. I don't really care that much anymore, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: and I just fed into it a little bit and
Speaker 1: he's like, so you've spent some time out there, right.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh yeah. You know. It's like have
Speaker 1: you ever seen him? And I was like, well, gosh,
Speaker 1: We're floating the whole canyon one day and the shape
Speaker 1: just kind of appeared out of the woods and I
Speaker 1: never saw him. And he's like, oh, do you practice
Speaker 1: yoga and you can't see me. I'm I'm six ft
Speaker 1: five and two pounds. No one in my life has
Speaker 1: ever mistaken me for doing yoga. And uh, it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: those the folks that do yoga have higher alpha brain
Speaker 1: wave counts and they have a higher probability of seeing sasquatch.
Speaker 1: Definitely one of the weirder guide trips I ever put on.
Speaker 1: And uh one, I mean this was yeah, years ago.
Speaker 1: One I'll never ever ever forget. So I don't believe
Speaker 1: in sasquatch, but now I have to know, like this guy,
Speaker 1: had he seen him, if he was that into it?
Speaker 1: Like was he one of those Sasquatch dudes that's looking
Speaker 1: You know, I tried to block a lot of that
Speaker 1: day out of my marine, and so I don't specifically
Speaker 1: remember that, but it wouldn't be surprising to me if
Speaker 1: he was, yeah, on the Sasquat safari at some point.
Speaker 1: What I'm curious about is like, did you ever get
Speaker 1: any information on what he meant by alpha brain waves
Speaker 1: and how alpha brain waves impact your ability to see it?
Speaker 1: Sounds like acid trip stuff like take this and you'll
Speaker 1: ride the snake. It's like Alpa like even harkening back
Speaker 1: to this, once we go into details, there's definitely some
Speaker 1: PTSD there. It's like I said at the beginning, I
Speaker 1: I've ring a ton of guide trips and it's all
Speaker 1: really cool folks. I mean, the folks like this are
Speaker 1: the vast exception, and I've done a pretty good job
Speaker 1: compartmentalizing that and vacating most memories other than just the
Speaker 1: batshit crazy stuff that I heard. Fair enough, man, fair enough, well,
Speaker 1: I think I think the takeaway on this one, if
Speaker 1: if there is one, is that alpha wave will help
Speaker 1: you see sasquatch, and you should all do yoga if
Speaker 1: you're hoping to get there. And uh, if you wanta
Speaker 1: have a good day with your guide, probably don't shoot
Speaker 1: on his truck, his river, and his state all at
Speaker 1: the beginning of it. That's that. That's good advice right there,
Speaker 1: A good start, Alpha waves, bigfoot, that damn Sam Squatch,
Speaker 1: Sam squadch, he's going my jerky Uh. I will say
Speaker 1: that my years of guiding reinforced for me that you
Speaker 1: don't actually have to be smart to get rich, Like
Speaker 1: the phrase more money than sense came to mind from
Speaker 1: time to time, like Joe was very careful to point
Speaker 1: out many I would say. I would say the vast
Speaker 1: majority of the people I guided are highly intelligent humans,
Speaker 1: great people, but not all. And I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: claiming to be the smartest guy on the planet. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely not, but there were definitely days where I was
Speaker 1: sitting there being like, you are so much more wealthy
Speaker 1: than I am, and I know I'm so much smarter
Speaker 1: than you. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: Why don't we give you an opportunity to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: intellect you're so certain of? Uh? In the weekly battle
Speaker 1: of wits we call fish news Fish that escalated quickly.
Speaker 1: We got a fun little announcement to share with you
Speaker 1: guys before we getting the news here. By now, I'm
Speaker 1: sure most of you are familiar with the fish eating
Speaker 1: fish eating fish. That's what we call it. Fish graphic
Speaker 1: drawn by our good buddy Mike suit Off for the
Speaker 1: Meat Eater fishing sticker. That's the first place you saw it.
Speaker 1: I know some of you have that sticker. Some of
Speaker 1: you've gotten it from us because we've been sending a
Speaker 1: bunch out in our bent sticker packs. That graphic is
Speaker 1: also on the header of our Fishing Weekly newsletter, and
Speaker 1: guess what, it's now on T shirts and hoodies at
Speaker 1: the Meat Eater's store. We're excited being I am, I'm excited,
Speaker 1: and I hope everybody else like they're slick man. And
Speaker 1: I mean, I do love T shirts and hoodies in general,
Speaker 1: but you gotta be careful, like your T shooting hoodie
Speaker 1: has to represent you, and I feel like this one
Speaker 1: very much represents both of us, and I think it
Speaker 1: represents a lot of you out there. I think what
Speaker 1: you see, you're gonna say, yeah, that's me. And there's
Speaker 1: a strong chance that we're gonna be giving some of
Speaker 1: these away as you know giveaway items in the near future.
Speaker 1: Also a strong chance you guys will be able to
Speaker 1: snag some official Degenerate Angler gear from the Meteor Store
Speaker 1: in the near future. That stuff is not there yet,
Speaker 1: but the fish eating fish eating fishing fish it's up.
Speaker 1: You can buy it now. Yeah, And if you can't
Speaker 1: find it, just you just search fish eating fish eating
Speaker 1: fish in Google. Maybe Russian nesting doll fish. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you might find it that way. LRD knows what else
Speaker 1: you'll find if you search that, But anyway, you know, no,
Speaker 1: the the Degenerate Angler stuff is in the works. But
Speaker 1: in the meantime, be the his person at the ramp
Speaker 1: rocking that killer pseudo graphic ID area. And until we
Speaker 1: have some degenerate Angler gear in the store. Of course,
Speaker 1: you can still snag free stickers from us by either
Speaker 1: using those Degenerate Angler and Bent podcast hashtags or getting
Speaker 1: a shout out on this show, Speaking of which, I
Speaker 1: have a few very quick shoutouts before we move on here.
Speaker 1: First one goes out to Dan Jones, who wrote in
Speaker 1: to just say we missed some low hanging fruit in
Speaker 1: that mean mouth bass story, and he's like, why wouldn't
Speaker 1: why wouldn't that just be called a medium mouth bass?
Speaker 1: Which I thought was was brilliant. He nailed it. That
Speaker 1: was a good one. That was like perfect dead humor
Speaker 1: for both Yes, exactly, sticker sticker pack for Dan um
Speaker 1: and then Mitch McGee he d m me and he
Speaker 1: says question for you and Miles, how do I show
Speaker 1: and tell people that I love to fish in a
Speaker 1: way that the Bent Podcast wouldn't make fun of. Examples
Speaker 1: of things to made fun of, Salt Life stickers, any
Speaker 1: fishing brand sticker on my truck, driving a Subaru rod
Speaker 1: Vaults exclusively wearing Salty Crew merch. I love fishing, and
Speaker 1: I want to share my interest with others, but I
Speaker 1: also don't want to be a d bag about it, dude.
Speaker 1: Possibly one of my favorite questions, Um, you might well,
Speaker 1: now you're gonna have bent stickers, so those are approved.
Speaker 1: Put that you can put those in your truck. You
Speaker 1: might want to pick up fish eating eating fish t
Speaker 1: shirt that's approved. Because my real, my real answer to
Speaker 1: Mitch was just like, dude, don't listen to us. Who
Speaker 1: are we? What do we know? You be here? Okay
Speaker 1: you want to with a rod vault on it? Go
Speaker 1: for right ahead? Um, and the final one, I gotta
Speaker 1: I got a quick note from James Miles and his
Speaker 1: daughter Nora in just turned five and she's apparently a
Speaker 1: big fan of the show and asked if I would
Speaker 1: give her a birthday shout out. He says, she's mainly
Speaker 1: into the music. Also some of the stories, most of
Speaker 1: them are over her head, and she's really into the
Speaker 1: sound bites that Phil adds she's a big Phil fan.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Happy birthday, Noor. And speaking of Phil,
Speaker 1: Phil is the guy who gets to judge our news
Speaker 1: stories when this is all over. Remember this is a competition.
Speaker 1: Miles and I do not know which news stories the
Speaker 1: other guy is bringing to the table. It's always an
Speaker 1: advantage to be the leadoff, and that is you this week, sir,
Speaker 1: What do you get? And this week especially was a
Speaker 1: big advantage for the leadoff. I think we both know
Speaker 1: this because he assumed what I was gonna lead with,
Speaker 1: even though we haven't. We haven't discussed it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lead with the elephants, or rather the whale
Speaker 1: in the fish news room this week. That's why I
Speaker 1: didn't do it, because I wasn't the lead off. We
Speaker 1: have been inundated so many people. I think half the
Speaker 1: people who listened to this show have already sent the story.
Speaker 1: But for the other half, here's the biggest watery, fishy
Speaker 1: story of the week. Michael Packard, a fifty six year
Speaker 1: old commercial lobster diver from Massachusetts, was diving in forty
Speaker 1: five ft of water off the coast of Provincetown last
Speaker 1: week when he felt quote this huge bump and then
Speaker 1: everything went dark. And everything went dark because Packard was
Speaker 1: inside the mouth of a humpback. Well, now, if you're
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the ocean and you feel an
Speaker 1: immense force crash into you and then everything goes dark,
Speaker 1: what would you assume had happened? Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was swallowed by a shark, isn't that I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know I got hit by a boat
Speaker 1: or a submarine. See, I would I would assume I
Speaker 1: got munched by a shark like that would be whether
Speaker 1: I don't like something slams into me to the bottom
Speaker 1: and and things go black. I think I just got
Speaker 1: chewed by a shark and I'm dead. That's what maybe maybe,
Speaker 1: like the average person would think that, because I'm a
Speaker 1: shark guy and also large, like it would take a
Speaker 1: full on negladon to just like make me disappear in
Speaker 1: one bite. It's even a great white like. So, I
Speaker 1: see what you're saying. But I don't know. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have thought that. Well, maybe you're just more of a
Speaker 1: shark expert than the rest of us. But but and
Speaker 1: Packard would agree with me. He thought he got hit
Speaker 1: by a shark. But then he told w be Z
Speaker 1: TV quote. Then I felt around and I realized there
Speaker 1: was no teeth, and then I had felt really no
Speaker 1: great pain, and then I realized, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: in a whale's mouth and he's trying to swallow here.
Speaker 1: This is really nice. Now, for the record, the whale
Speaker 1: was almost certainly not trying to swallow him, but we'll
Speaker 1: cover that in a minute. Packard. Baggard wrote on Facebook
Speaker 1: that he thinks he was inside the whale's mouth for
Speaker 1: thirty to forty seconds before the whale rose to the
Speaker 1: surface and spit him out. Now this sounds insane. The
Speaker 1: whole story, I mean to me, seems utterly implausible. Whales
Speaker 1: don't eat people. Whales are pretty aware of what's going
Speaker 1: on around them. The idea that a whale would just
Speaker 1: like gobble up a scuba diver is frankly ludicrous. But
Speaker 1: this story has witnesses. Commercial divers work in pairs like
Speaker 1: with it. There there's a diver and then there's a
Speaker 1: crewman that stays on the boat top side and and
Speaker 1: tracks the diver's bubbles so you can help out something
Speaker 1: goes wrong. Packridge crewman, a guy named Josiah Mayo, was
Speaker 1: doing just that and then all of a sudden, a
Speaker 1: whale breached right in front of him and spit out
Speaker 1: his coworker. And that's got to be crazy. A charter
Speaker 1: boat captain named Joe Francis was working in the area
Speaker 1: and also witnessed the incident. Before rushing over to help.
Speaker 1: He told w b Z TV quote, I saw him
Speaker 1: might come flying out of the water feet first with
Speaker 1: his flippers on and land back in the water. I
Speaker 1: jumped aboard the boat. We got him up, got his
Speaker 1: tank off, got him on the deck and calmed him down,
Speaker 1: and he goes Joe. I was in the mouth of
Speaker 1: a whale. Packard was immediately rushed to Cape Cod Hospital,
Speaker 1: where he was treated for soft tissue damage, before limping
Speaker 1: out on his own power later that day. Knowing as
Speaker 1: we all do, that whales don't eat people, what the
Speaker 1: hell happened? In Ker, executive director of the group Ocean Alliance,
Speaker 1: explained that humpback whales employ a strategy called lunge feeding,
Speaker 1: in which they identify a school of fish, accelerate, quickly
Speaker 1: open their mouths and quote, taken ten SUV's worth of
Speaker 1: water and fish and then everything else. Though as we said,
Speaker 1: hump ACKs are usually pretty aware of their surroundings. It
Speaker 1: appears that this may have been a juvenile or subadult whale,
Speaker 1: like a teenager. And if whale teams or anything like
Speaker 1: human teams, they're feeding behaviors maybe somewhat more reckless and
Speaker 1: indiscriminate than their elders. Either way, researchers think that there's
Speaker 1: like a one in a million accident where the diver
Speaker 1: just happened to be in the wrong place at the
Speaker 1: wrong time, and the whale just got him by mistake.
Speaker 1: Humpbacks have very small esopha guy, which is good for
Speaker 1: this guy, because there's no way the whale goes swallowed
Speaker 1: packard even if it wanted to. They do, however, have
Speaker 1: very powerful mouths and jaws, so the whale could have
Speaker 1: easily crushed the diver, likely breaking his neck and her back.
Speaker 1: But that's not what it did. Instead, like it sucked
Speaker 1: him up and went, oh, ship, this isn't what I
Speaker 1: meant to have. I don't want this, and then like
Speaker 1: rushed to the service where it shook its head and
Speaker 1: then potentially used its tongue to eject packard skyward. That's
Speaker 1: the theory. Now, in several of the stories I read,
Speaker 1: people would come up with some kind of analogy for
Speaker 1: how the whale was trying to get rid of and
Speaker 1: react to a foreign object in his mouth, like one
Speaker 1: compared to to a biker getting a bug in their mouth,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's not the analogy that I thought of,
Speaker 1: like when I heard the story analogy pot in my head,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't that. I thought of a fish with
Speaker 1: a plug in its mouth coming to the surface and
Speaker 1: trying to shake it loose. Like that's the image that
Speaker 1: I have in my head, but in a much larger
Speaker 1: scale and with a person, not a plug. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if there's any useful insight to be gleaned here,
Speaker 1: but I think Packard's the only person I can think
Speaker 1: of who's like been the lure that the fish was
Speaker 1: trying to throw, you know what I mean, Like he's
Speaker 1: been the lure. Other people have come close, but this
Speaker 1: is the only one I know of where he ended
Speaker 1: up in there fully enclosed. I have no clue if
Speaker 1: experienced like endows him with youthful wisdom that we English
Speaker 1: can use. I don't know, but I would like to think, right,
Speaker 1: I'd like to think he's like, guys, I've been the bait.
Speaker 1: Here's what I know now, Like I don't. He didn't
Speaker 1: do that. He didn't give that any of you that
Speaker 1: that That's what I hope. Last point on this, this
Speaker 1: dude seems to be one of those people to whom
Speaker 1: crazy shit just happens and he survives. Twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: he was in a plane crash in the Costa Rican jungle,
Speaker 1: in which he sustained massive facial lacerations and multiple broken
Speaker 1: bones in his arms and legs. He survived for two
Speaker 1: days in the jungle before being rescued, and the doctor
Speaker 1: said he would not have made it through another night.
Speaker 1: So this dude sounds like the kind of guy they
Speaker 1: would make a movie about. And he actually told the
Speaker 1: New York Post that if they do make a film
Speaker 1: about his life, he'd like to be played by Nick Well. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, we had we had to touch on that
Speaker 1: when a few you thoughts like I see humpbacks of
Speaker 1: fair amount off Jersey during the striper season because they
Speaker 1: come right in on the bunker schools and that that
Speaker 1: that feeding style. It's no joke, man, And people have
Speaker 1: hooked them by mistake, because they'll hook a striper and
Speaker 1: the bunker and they're fighting it and whale just come
Speaker 1: up and take the whole school one shot, just like
Speaker 1: like a metric ton one shot. And if if if
Speaker 1: your your fishes in the middle of it, it's going
Speaker 1: down too. And like I said, I don't know of
Speaker 1: anybody who's been fully engulfed, But man, I know plenty
Speaker 1: of kayakers who've had some scares. I've had some scares
Speaker 1: on larger boats. I mean it's like a very imposing thing.
Speaker 1: They come up straight vertical like that, and like there's
Speaker 1: there's no stopping them. But it I'm not surprised, you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't surprised when I read that it was a
Speaker 1: juvenile because most sort of whale follies and foibles, that's
Speaker 1: the case, Like they breach all the time, and it's
Speaker 1: like you're breaching in a fleet of boats. How are
Speaker 1: you not hitting them? But the big ones, like they
Speaker 1: they understand their spatial deal. It happens every once in
Speaker 1: a while, one will come down and clips somebody's about
Speaker 1: and it's always a juvenile. So like they're still they're
Speaker 1: still learning, you know what I mean. When when when
Speaker 1: you were a teenager, did you bump your head on
Speaker 1: shipped constantly? Because I know I did, so it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense to me. My space didn't actually solidify until
Speaker 1: I was like I didn't butt my head, but I
Speaker 1: would like, you know, be in reverse when I thought
Speaker 1: I was in drive, like go over parking cones like
Speaker 1: jump over the concrete parking. I didn't almost hit a
Speaker 1: lady at the best Buy like the first week I
Speaker 1: had my license. As you know, we don't need to
Speaker 1: get off on that. I'm an excellent driver now, but
Speaker 1: I feel I feel for the juvenile whales. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking about it. I I I
Speaker 1: poked fun it at the shark thing, knowing that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think it was a shark, but dude, great whites,
Speaker 1: cape cod, hand and glove, Like there's there's great whites
Speaker 1: all over up there. So now that I think about it,
Speaker 1: considering where he was in the world, Yeah, like they
Speaker 1: like they tracked them up there all the time. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad that worked out. What a story, What
Speaker 1: an American, what a tough man, Like if you can
Speaker 1: survive in the jungle after a plane crash, this was
Speaker 1: like no big deal. Thirty seconds in a whale. I've
Speaker 1: got a problem. I'm walking home to night and going
Speaker 1: to Chili's. Um. I know, no good transition whatsoever. I've
Speaker 1: been trying to think of it. I don't have it.
Speaker 1: We've been I feel like we've been sucking on transitions
Speaker 1: in general. Lately and sort of copying out and just
Speaker 1: being I still working it. Okay, all right, fair enough.
Speaker 1: So the only thing I got, which is totally lame,
Speaker 1: is like we had a feud between whale and man.
Speaker 1: Here's another odd feud film. Feel free to cut that
Speaker 1: because that was a ship or don't whatever. Anyway, weird
Speaker 1: feud I found documented on Syracuse dot com. And according
Speaker 1: to this story, um, and I actually did know this.
Speaker 1: New York Seneca River is hailed as one of the
Speaker 1: premier carp destinations in America. It's so good, in fact,
Speaker 1: that the World carp Championships are scheduled to be held
Speaker 1: on its shores in three But there could be a
Speaker 1: monkey wrench that stops that from happening. And that monkey
Speaker 1: wrench is named Tony Crawford. Okay, so Tony Cross, Tony,
Speaker 1: Tony Big Tone. He works for Midway Lakes in King Mountain,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, which is a series of pay legs, and
Speaker 1: apparently Tony and crew have been making annual tracks to
Speaker 1: Seneca with tank trucks, catching a mess of those famous
Speaker 1: trophy carp and hauling them back to King Mountain to
Speaker 1: stock the pay legs. According yes, now, according to Ian Sorrel,
Speaker 1: president of the Carp Anglers Group of North America. He's
Speaker 1: quoted in the story saying it's been a dirty secret
Speaker 1: for a number of years. So Crawford has been doing
Speaker 1: this for a while. This is not a new thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here's a quote from the story. Paul Russell, one of
Speaker 1: the co directors of the Wild Carp Classic and a
Speaker 1: carpet fishing guide, said the Seneca has been recognized internationally
Speaker 1: as a premier carp destination. He said anglers participating in
Speaker 1: recent years in the Classic have noted a decrease in
Speaker 1: the fishing quality on the Seneca. Some have decided not
Speaker 1: to come to the Classic as a result. During the
Speaker 1: recent Classic held this pass May, Russell said, only thirty
Speaker 1: one of more than fifty teams caught enough big fish
Speaker 1: meaning fifteen pounds are greater to qualify for the Big
Speaker 1: ten category, which considers the total weight of a team's
Speaker 1: biggest ten fishing has the biggest cash payout. The bigger issue,
Speaker 1: apart from whether Crawford's actions are affecting the quality of
Speaker 1: tournament carp fishing in the river, is whether the practice
Speaker 1: could result in unintended spread of disease and invasive aquatic
Speaker 1: species from one state's waterway to another. So I certainly
Speaker 1: understand the frustration of the recreational carp fishing community here, um,
Speaker 1: and I guess they've kind of they've had enough, and
Speaker 1: they've enlisted the help of New York Assemblyman Will Barkley,
Speaker 1: who the story says is drafting legislation to get the
Speaker 1: activity under state Department of Environmental Conservation control. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, this is not a cut and dry fight,
Speaker 1: because Crawford is doing absolutely nothing illegal whatsoever. Why wildlife
Speaker 1: officials from both New York and North Carolina are like, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: I kind of don't care carp or not game fish.
Speaker 1: There are no walls saying they can't be broad across
Speaker 1: state lines, and if they're being stocked in a privately
Speaker 1: owned body of water, it's perfectly fine. There are no
Speaker 1: rules or regulations in either state governing this. So what
Speaker 1: the story doesn't tell us is exactly how many fish
Speaker 1: or pounds of fish Crawford and company are taking. And
Speaker 1: I also question, just to sort of play Devil's advocate,
Speaker 1: if this one dude and his car henchmen are really
Speaker 1: that responsible for a downturn in carpet numbers because there's
Speaker 1: no mention of bow fishing in this article. But in
Speaker 1: my experience, I think you've seen the same thing. Where
Speaker 1: there are a lot of common carp, there are bow fishermen.
Speaker 1: And just again, a quick Google search turned up plenty
Speaker 1: of hits for bow fishing on the Seneca. Um. All
Speaker 1: that said, having hung out with really really devoted carp
Speaker 1: guys like the euro guys, like I feel the pain here,
Speaker 1: Like you already are always worrying about bow fishing and
Speaker 1: how that's going to affect you know, the thing that
Speaker 1: you love to do, and then you have this guy. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mean it really just all ties back to
Speaker 1: the fact that I just don't think carp will ever
Speaker 1: achieve the status they have in Europe, Like it will
Speaker 1: just never happen here. Like it's like you're screaming at
Speaker 1: a wall if you're trying to do right by common carp.
Speaker 1: And final thought, well, I can't. I can't fully blast Crawford.
Speaker 1: I will say, like, man, there's a there's a ton
Speaker 1: of miles between between King's Mountain, North Carolina and the
Speaker 1: senetor River, Like you mean to tell me you can't
Speaker 1: find carp in that span that like fewer if any,
Speaker 1: people care about like if you would come and take
Speaker 1: them all for your pay lake, that seems odd to
Speaker 1: me to make that journey. But I thought that was
Speaker 1: interesting because it's a it's a very like I get it,
Speaker 1: it's a nasty fight, but I don't know who's winning that,
Speaker 1: if anybody. I would highly doubt that it's this guy's
Speaker 1: carpet toting operation. That's actually imp he's single bought on.
Speaker 1: I think you're spot on with with it's you know,
Speaker 1: more likely bow fishing or something else, but probably bow
Speaker 1: fishing um and which again also perfectly legal. Uh And
Speaker 1: I'm not calling that out as as something negative, but
Speaker 1: if the if the if the carp folks are looking
Speaker 1: for a reason why their numbers are going down so precipitously,
Speaker 1: I don't think you can just single out this one
Speaker 1: dude who's grabbing fish as your scapegoat. Yeah that said,
Speaker 1: I think what he's doing is kind of shady. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean cool, But I mean I'm not either. But again,
Speaker 1: you're looking at this small group of people who really
Speaker 1: like it's so hard to be a devout carp guy
Speaker 1: in this country because like everyone is against you, you know,
Speaker 1: what I mean, like, no matter how much you try,
Speaker 1: and it's similar to snake AADs, no matter how much
Speaker 1: you preach you know, the benefits and the fun, it's
Speaker 1: the average dude is against you. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's it's shady too, and I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of wrong. And again I think he could probably
Speaker 1: find carp for the pay Lake a lot closer. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, to the average guy, it's still carp you know,
Speaker 1: It's just it's just some carp man. I was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out why this bothered me so much, and
Speaker 1: I think I've just put my finger on it. They
Speaker 1: may be whatever, just carp. I like carp You like carpet,
Speaker 1: So we don't feel that way. And they may not
Speaker 1: be a game fish as a designated by management agencies,
Speaker 1: but there's still a public resource. Yeah. Those are fish
Speaker 1: that come from a public lake that are feeding upon
Speaker 1: all the things in that lake that are available to
Speaker 1: the public, that are being taken out of that public
Speaker 1: trust and privatized. And that pisses me off, Like the
Speaker 1: just the philosophical implications of that pissed me off. That
Speaker 1: to me is the antithesis of the model that we
Speaker 1: have for wildlife management and fisheries, and so that just
Speaker 1: doesn't work for me. That just that makes me angry. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope there's there's some kind of happy
Speaker 1: medium or some kind of turn of events here, because
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not in the harp scene, but
Speaker 1: if they're really thinking of having the World Championship on
Speaker 1: American soil, I mean, you gotta have a pretty damn
Speaker 1: good card fishery to attract people from across the globe
Speaker 1: to hear um. So that's that's pretty impressive in and
Speaker 1: of itself, you know it is. I think the connection
Speaker 1: that I have between this and my second story is
Speaker 1: is that it fits both of these touch on fishing
Speaker 1: tournaments that people don't know that much about and maybe
Speaker 1: attract a local interest that that the rest of the
Speaker 1: country might never heard about, but are a big deal
Speaker 1: in their their little areas. So I gotta say this
Speaker 1: next story, I came away from it scratching my head
Speaker 1: a little bit. We're gonna come out of this with
Speaker 1: with some some questions more than answers, all right, So
Speaker 1: everyone we talked to in the fishing and tackle industry
Speaker 1: right now, every everybody that we we have a conversation
Speaker 1: with is all about how popular fishing is, how how
Speaker 1: how much money they were making, how crowded the lakes
Speaker 1: and rivers are, how difficult it is to keep tackle
Speaker 1: in stock, how busy the guides are. Right, that is
Speaker 1: the hottest conversation in the fishing industry right now. But
Speaker 1: one particular shop just doesn't seem to think it's popular
Speaker 1: enough like they feel they feel the need to create
Speaker 1: this extra huge incentive to get people out fishing. Enter
Speaker 1: the story of Old Walter two point oh. Last weekend
Speaker 1: was free fishing weekend in Tennessee, meaning that anyone could
Speaker 1: fish without needing to purchase a license. To capitalize on
Speaker 1: what was already sure to be a busy couple of
Speaker 1: days on the water on the famed South Holeston Reservoir,
Speaker 1: Watson's Marine and Tackle in Bluff City, Tennessee, decided to
Speaker 1: up the ante. On June tent at around one am,
Speaker 1: watson employees caught, tagged, and released a three and a
Speaker 1: half pound small mouth that they named Old Walter two
Speaker 1: point oh. They then announced on their Facebook page that
Speaker 1: anyone who caught the fish legally and delivered it to
Speaker 1: the shop alive would win one hundred thousand dollars. Winners
Speaker 1: were required to follow all fishing game laws and catch
Speaker 1: the fish on a rod and reel, but live bait
Speaker 1: and artificial lures were both legal. According to Watson Marine Quote,
Speaker 1: this entire event was inspired by a similar contest in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties that many still look fondly back
Speaker 1: on in the great memories from the event, and hopefully
Speaker 1: that same sentiment was relayed this past weekend. That's why
Speaker 1: the fish are called Old Walter two point oh, and
Speaker 1: that all sounds kind of heartwarming. But I read a
Speaker 1: bunch of stories about this, and no one actually seems
Speaker 1: to remember the details of that original contest from forty
Speaker 1: years ago, or even the exact year that had happened.
Speaker 1: So either people don't want to talk about the details
Speaker 1: with the press because it was sketchy or not sanctioned
Speaker 1: or something I don't know, or they really don't remember
Speaker 1: what happened. So I don't quite get how this is
Speaker 1: an extension of history being relieved, But either way, this
Speaker 1: year's Old Walter event will be much better cataloged in history.
Speaker 1: What was already a crazy weekend on a popular reservoir
Speaker 1: turned into a complete mad house. Anglers flocked not just
Speaker 1: from Oliver, Tennessee, but from neighboring states and even further afield.
Speaker 1: Local local news station five reported talking to a group
Speaker 1: who came from Michigan for a crack at the hunder
Speaker 1: Grand Smally public access points were just like choked with
Speaker 1: bank anglers and and the boat ramps were exactly what
Speaker 1: you would imagine, just like hellish nightmare scenes. The good
Speaker 1: news is that I couldn't find any reports of of
Speaker 1: disasters or incidents or injuries or drownings or fist fights
Speaker 1: or anything. But the bad news, despite the thousands of
Speaker 1: hooks and lines combing South Holsted for two days straight,
Speaker 1: no one caught Old Walter. He's still out there, chilling,
Speaker 1: sitting there. In a final update to their Facebook page
Speaker 1: on Monday morning, Watson's Burned announced that Old Walter still
Speaker 1: carries a prize on his head, but now it's fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred bucks instead of a hundred grand. Oh, so it
Speaker 1: had to be caught over that weekend. Had to be
Speaker 1: caught over the weekend. Man, Man, I don't want to
Speaker 1: I don't want to, like, I don't want to speculate,
Speaker 1: But doesn't this all sound real shady, like there's like
Speaker 1: some element of shade to this. Yeah, of course they
Speaker 1: are insistent. If you look at everything they put up publicly,
Speaker 1: like this is a real thing, And after it was
Speaker 1: over they put up pictures of the fish they're calling
Speaker 1: old Walter and then releasing it say it's real. Here
Speaker 1: it is. But I think you're exactly right. All of
Speaker 1: it smacks as a little shade to me from the
Speaker 1: like some sort of origin to a contest from the
Speaker 1: eighties that no one really knows anything about two like
Speaker 1: there's a hunderground. We swear the fishes out there like
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, and I don't know. And again
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about this marina. But I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking of like the local marinas on some of the
Speaker 1: bigger lakes around here. If they offered up a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, I'd be like, you haven't made a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in that little marina in that place, like
Speaker 1: in the last Like it just seems like one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's like we're gonna, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: it to hype it up, but like they somehow know
Speaker 1: they're not going to have to pay it out or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the best of people. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: feels sketchy to me too. I think it's also possible.
Speaker 1: I'll say this, we don't know how busy they are.
Speaker 1: That's a very popular part of the fishing country. Like
Speaker 1: fishing is a big deal over there, particularly bass fishing,
Speaker 1: and if they sell a lot of big bass boats
Speaker 1: and last year was probably a better year for them,
Speaker 1: very well could I'm thinking of it as like a
Speaker 1: small mom and pop place, but that might not be
Speaker 1: the case. Even still, it's like, why not just leave
Speaker 1: it a hundred thousand dollars till it's called if you
Speaker 1: have the hundred thousands? Because they got what they wanted.
Speaker 1: They got a weekend of like crazing is and people's
Speaker 1: beending money. They that that it's diminishing returns for them. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what the problem here is. I've heard there's
Speaker 1: a Senko shortage. So all those people probably none of
Speaker 1: them had a foreign troop beer Senko and and there
Speaker 1: you go, and that's what happens. Well, um, we'll monitor
Speaker 1: to see if old Walter Walter isn't that there's no,
Speaker 1: it's not Old Walter. It's old Walter Old Walter. There's
Speaker 1: no D. There's no D. There's to be a silent um. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well we'll see what happened. I would like to follow
Speaker 1: up to see if somebody actually catches it, just to
Speaker 1: prove that it's out there. I just want to know.
Speaker 1: I just want to know. Um. But okay, so I'll
Speaker 1: transition to to uh proving there here's some this is
Speaker 1: some real proof about muskies. I'm trying to set up
Speaker 1: this transition. This is proof proof about muskies. You didn't know.
Speaker 1: Data that proofs they is about muskie ship that you
Speaker 1: probably didn't know before. How's that was that smooth? I
Speaker 1: thought it was great. I'm moving on straight out of Michigan.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about a muskie named James. This is from
Speaker 1: m live dot com, your source for James. The musky
Speaker 1: plush toys on season lunch boxes. Just kidding about those,
Speaker 1: but not but not about the muskie which the Michigan
Speaker 1: DNR named James because his tag number was double O
Speaker 1: seven a good one. So old James was first tagged
Speaker 1: in the Detroit River. Is it old old James? We
Speaker 1: have Old Walter, and I'm saying Old James was first
Speaker 1: tagged in the Detroit River in the late spring of right,
Speaker 1: and by the end of that summer found his way
Speaker 1: clear across Lake Erie to Buffalo, New York. By January,
Speaker 1: James was back in the Michigan waters of Lake Erie,
Speaker 1: and in May he was only a few hundred yards
Speaker 1: from where he had been captured the year before. So
Speaker 1: that is a round trip for James of six hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty miles. And according to the story, UH James
Speaker 1: is still tagged and they monitor this through through sonar um.
Speaker 1: James has repeated this same pattern, the same movement in
Speaker 1: following years and is still providing scientists with data on
Speaker 1: these movements. How many times have they this story the
Speaker 1: story did not say. It did not give an amount
Speaker 1: of specific times it was repeated. It just said this
Speaker 1: was the first pass, and he's made similar or passes
Speaker 1: just as close in subsequent years, all the way out
Speaker 1: and all the way back. Right. So from the story,
Speaker 1: tagging and tracking of Muskie's is ongoing, with researchers hoping
Speaker 1: to use fish movement patterns to identify unique groups of fish,
Speaker 1: which according to the d NR, can inform overall estimates
Speaker 1: of populations and provide pivotal information to fisheries managers. Each
Speaker 1: fish is surgically implanted with an acoustic transmitter that emits
Speaker 1: coded pings unique to each fish and has a battery
Speaker 1: life of at least seven years. Um And says these
Speaker 1: signals can be detected by a network of listening stations
Speaker 1: throughout the Great Lakes as part of the Great Lakes
Speaker 1: Acoustic Telemetry Observation System, which I happen to know, while
Speaker 1: the story didn't go into it, they have these things
Speaker 1: planted all over the lake. They monitor all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: like they know like where all the wall eyes are
Speaker 1: right now and where. But I didn't know that they
Speaker 1: were doing this with muskies, Like I know that they've
Speaker 1: done a lot with salmon, and I know they've done
Speaker 1: a ton with walleye, and there's there's really no like
Speaker 1: huge follow up behind that other than I. I just
Speaker 1: always find these little tidbits fascinating because I think with
Speaker 1: freshwater species in particular, UM, so many people just kind
Speaker 1: of consider them home bodies, and that's not at all true.
Speaker 1: Like in so many cases, if fish have room to roam,
Speaker 1: a lot of them will for a multitude of reason.
Speaker 1: And this takes me back to that story. You come right.
Speaker 1: This was a while ago, but it's about the the
Speaker 1: near record muski in the Minnesota lake that wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to have muskies in it. There's this big mystery and
Speaker 1: all they could figure was there was this long network
Speaker 1: of these small like culverts and ditches that ran underneath roads, um,
Speaker 1: that distantly connected to musky waters and there it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of speculation, like, well, that's the
Speaker 1: only way he could have got there. A must taken
Speaker 1: them years to do it. Um. But sometimes the lens
Speaker 1: they'll go are hard to comprehend without data like this,
Speaker 1: and this is like right in front of your face,
Speaker 1: Like they tracked this muskie swy miles multiple times, um,
Speaker 1: and they they've done a bit of this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: even on like salty stripers out here. Always blows my
Speaker 1: mind too. Um. One of them spent I remember this
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, spend a ton of time
Speaker 1: in the summer, seventy miles offshore in the canyons where
Speaker 1: the tuna and the marlin are right and it's like
Speaker 1: by the book that fish should never be there, but
Speaker 1: like there it was, science says so right in your face,
Speaker 1: so I'm always it is fascinated by studies like this
Speaker 1: that just show you, like how far and wide fish
Speaker 1: will roam, So dude, And maybe it's probably not in
Speaker 1: there because you would have covered it. But I'm just curious,
Speaker 1: are there any hypotheses as to why that fish was
Speaker 1: making that trip, because usually they're going to be following baits,
Speaker 1: following cooler water, or following something that is attractive to
Speaker 1: them exactly, And no it didn't. But I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and
Speaker 1: say that if you base it around Walleye movements, I
Speaker 1: know a little bit more about that, Like if you
Speaker 1: talk to guys like Ross Robertson, like real wringers in
Speaker 1: that system, like they they follow emerald shiners, they follow,
Speaker 1: like you said, cooler temps. And while there's always like
Speaker 1: a little bit of Walleye everywhere, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: like the main bulk, the main population, they slide from
Speaker 1: one side of that lake and back again for following
Speaker 1: everything from temp to food. So I would assume the
Speaker 1: muskies moving for the same reason. And I actually, as
Speaker 1: I recall it, like the the eastern side of that basin,
Speaker 1: I think has the cooler water in the summer, like
Speaker 1: late summer, you want to be on the eastern side
Speaker 1: of that basin. So I'm sure even if it's I
Speaker 1: don't know whether the muskies are migrating per se, but
Speaker 1: like if you're a muskie and you're hungry, you can
Speaker 1: follow a bunch of small wall eyes around, right, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So it's a connected yeah or yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure it's all interconnected to just these general
Speaker 1: migrations throughout the system. And as a salty guy, that's
Speaker 1: so common, like how totally fish migrating move But I
Speaker 1: mean that may as well be the ocean. There's so
Speaker 1: much water and so much space, so it's not like, well,
Speaker 1: Cleveland's wal eyes are here and they're always here. Like
Speaker 1: those fish, it's almost like a saltwater environment the way
Speaker 1: they migrate through that system, which is why those those
Speaker 1: great lakes, like hardcore musky guys are so dialed on
Speaker 1: localized bites at certain times of you're right, like you
Speaker 1: hear about that all the time, and and where you
Speaker 1: know whether they're they're in the Fox River of Green
Speaker 1: Bay just for one period of time when when the
Speaker 1: conditions are right and it's just like saltwater. You gotta
Speaker 1: follow them where they go as they move. It's it's all,
Speaker 1: it's all, it's all the fish. I've done it with
Speaker 1: small mouths up there, and like it's super secret deal
Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to talk about. But be that as
Speaker 1: it may. It's like we fished this area where you
Speaker 1: would have a hell of a time ever catching a
Speaker 1: small mouth except for like these two weeks in November,
Speaker 1: and they're on these Volkswagen sized pieces of rubble in
Speaker 1: basically a shallow desert and they're not that Like, you
Speaker 1: won't catch a small mouth there any other time of year.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of that in the Great Lakes
Speaker 1: and it always fascinates me how salty it feels like
Speaker 1: right here, right now. So James the musky six miles,
Speaker 1: good on him. I'm sure he's strong. He might you know,
Speaker 1: you might want to let him fight musky guys instead
Speaker 1: of just ripping him to the net in two seconds.
Speaker 1: While he rolls around, let me have a little drag,
Speaker 1: let him run, don't bring him in. Green could go
Speaker 1: bed anyway. So it's got a lot to choose from.
Speaker 1: Who's gonna take the wind guy? Getting eaten by by whale.
Speaker 1: Old Walter carp few of the century, James the Muskie.
Speaker 1: We'll see what Phil has to say, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna do a little freaking Philistines right after that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're you're telling me a hundred thousand dollars if
Speaker 1: I make him the winner. M you got a deal man, Okay, ye,
Speaker 1: because he did such a good job this week, and
Speaker 1: for no other reason, Miles Nulty, you're the winner of
Speaker 1: fish News this week. No hold on one second, hello,
Speaker 1: what okay? Deals off? I Actually I just recounted the points,
Speaker 1: and um, it turns out that that Miles was actually
Speaker 1: taking truckloads of fish News points from Joe's beautiful public
Speaker 1: lakes and trucking them all the way to his stuffy
Speaker 1: private lakes, and uh listen. Not technically illegal, but not
Speaker 1: in the spirit of fish News, and therefore I have
Speaker 1: to make Joe certainly the winner of fish News this week.
Speaker 1: What's fast? It's a guy who doesn't care about books
Speaker 1: or interesting films and things. Robert Lurke is best known
Speaker 1: as a hunting writer. His account of a nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one African Safari Horn of the Hunter is still regarded
Speaker 1: by many as the greatest African hunting book ever written. Others,
Speaker 1: myself included, contend that it's somewhat egregious derivation of Hemingway's
Speaker 1: Green Hills of Africa dulls the shine regardless of what
Speaker 1: I think. However, Rurk rose to prominence and fame when
Speaker 1: Horn of the Hunter was published in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: and remained there until he died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Speaker 1: In n style and topic weren't the only attributes were
Speaker 1: shared with, or perhaps borrowed from his favorite writer and
Speaker 1: personal hero. In my estimation, Rurk's most compelling, original, and
Speaker 1: enduring work is collected from a series that ran in
Speaker 1: Field and Stream from nineteen fifty three to nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: titled The Old Man and the Boy. The stories are
Speaker 1: written from the perspective of a grown man recounting the fishing, hunting,
Speaker 1: and practical education he received from his grandfather while growing
Speaker 1: up on the rural coast of North Carolina in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. The series is technically fiction, but clearly based
Speaker 1: on Rurk's own upbringing. He recounts his childhood through a
Speaker 1: romantic prism that throws rainbows across nearly every character an event,
Speaker 1: Even when the story's hint at darkness or ugliness, those
Speaker 1: smudges get covered by colorful sentiment. Grown men getting blind, drunk,
Speaker 1: and falling into a name fisticuffs after a failed raccoon
Speaker 1: hunt over nothing beyond ego and idiocy are recalled in
Speaker 1: a char ring in tender anecdote. When one of them
Speaker 1: misses a punch badly, falls off the porch and remains supine.
Speaker 1: His fellow combatant and brother decides to join him. They
Speaker 1: sleep off their alcohol and fury, curled together in the
Speaker 1: dirt and looking so peaceful, are joined by one of
Speaker 1: the hounds, who stretches out across their feet. But in
Speaker 1: this book, rurks rosy reflections feel more perspectivele than deceitful.
Speaker 1: Adults often see their own backstories through the fun house
Speaker 1: mirror of nostalgia. When we remember our pasts, and especially
Speaker 1: our childhoods, we almost always find the time works on
Speaker 1: memory in much the same way that water does on stones.
Speaker 1: Rurk portrays early twentieth century North Carolina as a fantasy
Speaker 1: world for a boy who liked fishing, hunting, and being outside.
Speaker 1: In each vignette, he recalls some kind of wonderful adventure
Speaker 1: chasing quail or blue fish, where the boy is ushered
Speaker 1: towards some deep wisdom through the folksy backwoods brilliance of
Speaker 1: a grandfather, the old Man. The lessons are always practical.
Speaker 1: Steward your fishing game, bring spare tackle. Don't start drinking
Speaker 1: until after you're done hunting. Sometimes they're moral. Train a dog,
Speaker 1: don't break him. Idleness is only a sin if you
Speaker 1: squander it. One can be kind without being weak. Often
Speaker 1: they're philosophical. The person who speaks the most and loudest
Speaker 1: usually knows the least, or, to quote the old Man himself,
Speaker 1: the world is full of fine, fragmentary thoughts, killed at
Speaker 1: birth by the interruptions of damned fools. Mostly, the old
Speaker 1: Man teaches the boy to slow down, shut up, and
Speaker 1: pay attention to the world around him, especially the non
Speaker 1: human life. And while the stories consistently flirt with that
Speaker 1: shadow line where poignant becomes traite, they never seem to
Speaker 1: cross it. The old Man is wise and brilliant, but
Speaker 1: also self deprecating and just flawed enough to feel like
Speaker 1: the grandfather you wish you had Being that this book
Speaker 1: is set in the South in the nineteen twenties, it
Speaker 1: reflects flawed and ignorant cultural attitudes about race and gender.
Speaker 1: To consume this book entirely without critical thought would run
Speaker 1: counter to one of the central philosophies that the Old
Speaker 1: Man espouses. People are often dead wrong in their opinions
Speaker 1: about and ways of treating other people whom they do
Speaker 1: not know. We can always do better by ourselves, our world,
Speaker 1: and our species by actually listening to and internalizing experiences
Speaker 1: that are not our own, those shot through with relic
Speaker 1: arts of racism and chauvinism. I feel relatively confident that
Speaker 1: if Rurk's characters were alive today, some of their assumptions
Speaker 1: would change, And I think anyone reading this book in
Speaker 1: the twenty one century would be wise to maintain the
Speaker 1: skepticism of dogma and questioning of other's opinions that the
Speaker 1: Old Man so often recommends to the Boy. Here's a
Speaker 1: taste of the style and pacing that should convince you
Speaker 1: why this book is a perfect summertime read. We came
Speaker 1: around a bend of the Big Creek, and the old
Speaker 1: Man told me to head her into the bank where
Speaker 1: there are a lot of lily pads and weeds, and
Speaker 1: it looked like some fairly deep pools now. Then, son,
Speaker 1: the old man said, we ain't gonna talk any because
Speaker 1: fishing is a silent sport, and a lot of conversation
Speaker 1: scares the fish and wreck the mood. What I want
Speaker 1: you to do is sit there and fish, And when
Speaker 1: the fish ain't biting, I want you to listen and
Speaker 1: look and think, think about heaven and hell and just
Speaker 1: how long is hereafter? Look around you and don't take
Speaker 1: nothing for granted. Look at everything you see, and listen
Speaker 1: to everything you hear, just like you were brand new,
Speaker 1: come for another world, and think about all those things
Speaker 1: and how they got there. Now, let's fish well, sir.
Speaker 1: When you can't talk, you got to think and look
Speaker 1: and listen, And all of a sudden I was a
Speaker 1: lonesomest boy in the world. You know anything about what
Speaker 1: it's like to be in a fresh water swamp in
Speaker 1: the south when the sun starting to drop and the
Speaker 1: noises begin, or what it smells like and feels like
Speaker 1: as it cools off from the heat of the day,
Speaker 1: and what sort of things are all around you. I
Speaker 1: got to look in at the water. It was clear
Speaker 1: and clean, but brown is your hat from the leaf dye.
Speaker 1: And when you scooped it up a handful tasted a
Speaker 1: little like the leaves smelled if you crumpled them up
Speaker 1: in your hand. And it was full of all sorts
Speaker 1: of little things. Bugs that hopped and popped, little crawlers
Speaker 1: that left a tiny wake behind them like a mink.
Speaker 1: Swimming fish swirled and rose to snap at the beginnings
Speaker 1: of the fly hatch. A big bullfrog gave a loud,
Speaker 1: croaking kurt thump and leapt into the water with a
Speaker 1: splash over on the other bank of watermarks, and slithered
Speaker 1: down the greasy earth and slipped into the water without
Speaker 1: a sound. It was so lonely in that swampy river
Speaker 1: that it made you want to cry. All the sad
Speaker 1: sounds in the world suddenly started. A dove set up
Speaker 1: that woeful whoo hoo hoo across the swamp, and another
Speaker 1: one sadder still began to answer them back. They sounded
Speaker 1: like two old widow women swapping miseries in the utter. Hush,
Speaker 1: A million noises intruded. A bittern roared, a heron squawked,
Speaker 1: a kingfisher rattled a deer snorted and barked. A bird screeched,
Speaker 1: a crow cod Somewhere deep in the swamp, there was
Speaker 1: a growl and a scream as a wildcat skittled a rabbit.
Speaker 1: A squirreled, chirred, and was answered. Leaves rustled, things fell off, Trees,
Speaker 1: bushes stirred mysteriously with the passing of unseen animals. In
Speaker 1: my brain, I looked at all of it, the trees,
Speaker 1: the grass, the moss, the bugs, the birds, the ferns,
Speaker 1: the flowers, the setting sun, the rising hatch of flies.
Speaker 1: I felt the dark creeping, and saw the first shining
Speaker 1: speck of star, and heard the mounting noises in the swamp.
Speaker 1: I felt cold in my bones from the rising yasthma
Speaker 1: of mist as the air cooled. I was so lost
Speaker 1: in what was going on in the million slivers of
Speaker 1: vibrant life that when a big fish hit I lost
Speaker 1: him out of sheer panic. I'll tell you why, man,
Speaker 1: After all these years, what's still difficult for me to
Speaker 1: to fully appreciate and understand is that my byline appeared
Speaker 1: for for so many years in the same magazine where
Speaker 1: those stories came from. You know what I mean? A
Speaker 1: lot of history. There man a lot of it. And
Speaker 1: like when we met, right when you when we met,
Speaker 1: you were the fishing editor at Field and Stream, I
Speaker 1: was the fishing editor at Gray Sporting Journal. And I
Speaker 1: think sometimes, at least the first we both felt like
Speaker 1: we were we were wearing clown shoes, right, because I'm not,
Speaker 1: but I'm not mistaken. I think we were both the
Speaker 1: youngest people to ever hold that title of those magazines
Speaker 1: pretty sure. Yeah. And and by the time you were there, right,
Speaker 1: Rurke was long dead, he was long gone, but you
Speaker 1: still got to share mast heads with some of our idols,
Speaker 1: right like Tom, Tom mcgwain, AJ McClain, David James, Duncan
Speaker 1: Pete from Jim bab Like oh yeah, oh dude, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I still think about it now, like my
Speaker 1: stuff for for years went alongside Eddie Nikins and Phil
Speaker 1: Bore Jaley, and I'm still damn proud to have been
Speaker 1: part of that magazine and just like the literary and
Speaker 1: sporting tradition behind it, you know. Yeah, I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: while you were there, Harrison was still publishing Field and Stream.
Speaker 1: I mean, these were these were for for both of us.
Speaker 1: I think those were kind of magical times. And I'll
Speaker 1: never forget the day that I was told I got
Speaker 1: that job. I blew my mind. It was one of
Speaker 1: the top five happiest days of my life without question.
Speaker 1: Me too, Me too. And look at us now, Look
Speaker 1: look where we've gotten. We get to make a podcast
Speaker 1: with with such luminaries as lands By and Scatchee Johnson, um,
Speaker 1: you know. Plus we get to we get to come
Speaker 1: the internet for fishing products where they ridicule and derision
Speaker 1: for our sale been segment. God, you know it just
Speaker 1: all paid off? Face? Why did you put the hand
Speaker 1: to pay You don't know what I'm getting? Man, What
Speaker 1: you didn't have to be so hurtful with me so angry.
Speaker 1: The original idea for this segment was for us to
Speaker 1: make jokes about used fishing gear that was for sale online.
Speaker 1: But as we've kind of gone with this, we keep
Speaker 1: finding or getting sent links to these just absolutely ludicrous
Speaker 1: manufacturer products. So Joe and I have talked about this,
Speaker 1: like off off the radio here, We've we've had conversations,
Speaker 1: and we've decided to officially open up the category a
Speaker 1: little bit right, give ourselves licensed to make fun of
Speaker 1: absolutely any worthy fishing related products, even if they're not
Speaker 1: being pawned off second hand. Yeah, because it's I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's too many not to like we
Speaker 1: have to We've already done a couple of times, but
Speaker 1: now we're officially saying that we're doing it so right.
Speaker 1: And and to be clear, we are in no way
Speaker 1: shape or for him giving up on combing Craigslist and
Speaker 1: Facebook our you know, we're just we're expanding. Okay, we're expanding.
Speaker 1: We're giving ourselves license to make fun of new shit
Speaker 1: and use hit. As I I said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: not too long ago, I prefer to ridicule a single
Speaker 1: person over a company. Right to me, it's it's like
Speaker 1: it's no different than my preference for buying stuff from
Speaker 1: a small business instead of a large corporation. I actually
Speaker 1: I actually want to see the impact I'm having, both
Speaker 1: positive and negative. Um, but look, sometimes you gotta expand
Speaker 1: your horizons. So that's that's what we're doing. That's what
Speaker 1: we're doing. And uh and and you're helping us with
Speaker 1: this because because listener Brandon Razinski recently sent us a
Speaker 1: link to a product being sold by a phishing gear
Speaker 1: company that I somehow I'd never heard of this before.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I missed it. Judging judging by
Speaker 1: their website, yeah amazing. Judging by their website, the tackle
Speaker 1: box Shop seems like it might be a money laundering
Speaker 1: front for the Russian mob specializes in Chinese knockoff fishing gear,
Speaker 1: which may or may not have disappeared from a shipping crate.
Speaker 1: According to their website quote at the tackle box Shop,
Speaker 1: we stocked nearly all accessories including phishing lures, hooks, jigheads,
Speaker 1: weight sinkers, line stoppers, barrel swivels, free tackle boxes, and
Speaker 1: over all any and all phishing equipment you need for
Speaker 1: salt water and fresh water. I don't get the free
Speaker 1: tackle boxes, the stock of free tackle box free, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know. I don't know so much.
Speaker 1: So with a tagline like that and prices like these,
Speaker 1: you can understand why they just can't afford to hire
Speaker 1: copy editors fluent in English language. You can get yourself
Speaker 1: right now. If you go there, you can purchase for
Speaker 1: yourself an entire ten piece set of maps Agia knockoffs
Speaker 1: for American. Of course they're not. These are not advertised
Speaker 1: like you can't look up MEPs knockoffs. It won't come
Speaker 1: up there, obviously it But it's like, it is so
Speaker 1: obvious that these are just they're painted just to be
Speaker 1: exactly like aglas, but they're not. However, the tackle box
Speaker 1: shop labels them as quote feather hook sequence fishing lures,
Speaker 1: whatever the hell that is. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: I see that sea fishing all the time pop up
Speaker 1: on cheap stuff. It's always like Lord's for sea fishing,
Speaker 1: like some maps. But how is it you see? It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's irrelevant. But as look as bad as their rip
Speaker 1: off gear is, that's that's not the thing that caught
Speaker 1: our attention, because there's plenty of rip off gear out there, Okay, Like,
Speaker 1: like you got to be more creative than knocking off
Speaker 1: of maps to get on the BENT program, right, because
Speaker 1: it seems they also specialize in gimmicks that probably never
Speaker 1: should have seen the light of day. And the one
Speaker 1: we want to tell you about is called and I
Speaker 1: ship you not right, It's called the eruptive fish hook net.
Speaker 1: Now you may be wondering, what the hell is an
Speaker 1: eruptive fish hook net? How does it erupt? Do I
Speaker 1: use it to net fish hooks? That have somehow erupted
Speaker 1: into the water. You might be thinking, I need to
Speaker 1: see a photo of this understand what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So did we It didn't help us that much. Nope, Okay,
Speaker 1: the problem is at the corresponding photo of the product.
Speaker 1: It won't it won't clear up that many questions. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do. I'm gonna try here. Okay. It's a barrel
Speaker 1: swivel attached to a thin metal rod that has a
Speaker 1: copper spring like one of those sort of like pot
Speaker 1: belly stove shape weird springs loosely wound around it, and
Speaker 1: on the other end of the copper spring are neon
Speaker 1: green beads and attached to the back end of this
Speaker 1: contraption appears to be just a lot of tied up
Speaker 1: nylon mesh netting. So it's just none of it makes
Speaker 1: any sense, right You You look at the name, you
Speaker 1: don't know what the name is about. You look at
Speaker 1: the photo and you're like, what is this thing that
Speaker 1: I'm looking at? So naturally you move onto the product description,
Speaker 1: figuring that's going to clear some things up. And and
Speaker 1: in this case, it's given in in three easy to
Speaker 1: follow steps, which we will now read for you, so
Speaker 1: you can be as confused as we are. Step one,
Speaker 1: insert your favorite and tastiest bait into our copper protected
Speaker 1: spring bolb And this this step comes with photos. The
Speaker 1: photos show absolutely nothing to do with bait. No, they're
Speaker 1: just more pictures of this strange product. But this time
Speaker 1: the mesh net is untangled and just it's hanging, and
Speaker 1: there's some trees in the background for ambiance. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, yeah, okay, So here's step two. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll get there together, somewhere, we're gonna have somewhere. Step two,
Speaker 1: wait patiently for a shoal of fish to appear. That's
Speaker 1: the step. And that's the step, wait patiently for a
Speaker 1: shoal of fish, not a school um. And in this photo,
Speaker 1: the eruptive fish hook net hangs in front of a
Speaker 1: solid black background, and there's ten little tiny Atlantic salmon
Speaker 1: photos shopped around it, right, and they're just like staring
Speaker 1: blankly at the dropping net as though they too are
Speaker 1: wondering what the hell this thing is and why it's here,
Speaker 1: how it's gotten into their environment. Maybe very confused. Maybe
Speaker 1: step three will bring it all together for us. Possibly
Speaker 1: possibly not. Step three pull up on your road to
Speaker 1: release the safety bead and release the large net to
Speaker 1: tangle fish. And the photo here just shows a close
Speaker 1: up of a person sitting a lawn chair holding a
Speaker 1: spinning rod, which does nothing to alleviate my skepticism about
Speaker 1: this whole thing or my confusion as to what exactly
Speaker 1: a safety bead is and what it has to do
Speaker 1: with fishing. Okay, so I feel like I have somewhat
Speaker 1: deciphered this though. Okay, so from what we can piece together,
Speaker 1: this is kind of like a cast net designed to
Speaker 1: be used with a rotten reel, but that wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: work because if you understand cast nets, they have lead
Speaker 1: weights all around the perimeter, so that when you throw
Speaker 1: one over a shoal of fish um, the weights sink
Speaker 1: very quickly to the bottom and the fish get trapped underneath.
Speaker 1: And at Okay, then when you you pull back on
Speaker 1: the line, it's cinches the perimeter of that net close
Speaker 1: the fish can't escape. Now, this item, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like it would have any such functionality,
Speaker 1: and I don't really tell, but I think the idea,
Speaker 1: right this is, this is what I gather is that
Speaker 1: you would dangle this like you straight off a dock
Speaker 1: or a boat, because I don't think you could cast it.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't go anywhere. It weighs. It weighs zero. It's
Speaker 1: got the copper spring. What's got the copper spring? And
Speaker 1: once you fill that up with oatmeal or whatever, then
Speaker 1: you can send it flying. Right then you could heave
Speaker 1: it a mile. But I think what you would do
Speaker 1: is you would you would dangle this vertically off off
Speaker 1: a dock or a boat, and then when a shoal
Speaker 1: of fish swims over to nibble the bits of chum
Speaker 1: coming out of the copper plate chum capacitor, like you
Speaker 1: snap the rod, the net opens and falls down around them,
Speaker 1: but without any weights around the perimeter of the net.
Speaker 1: I don't see how that's post bowl or like what
Speaker 1: would you do? You have to like lower the rod
Speaker 1: around them, Like if you have only so much line up,
Speaker 1: do you open the bail and let it fall? But
Speaker 1: that wouldn't work either, because then that wouldn't work because
Speaker 1: the copper weight would go down to them. It would open.
Speaker 1: It would make the net open, not closed, I know,
Speaker 1: but just again, like that's like the best thing I
Speaker 1: can I can figure right, but really, at best, I
Speaker 1: guess you might have one or two. You know, members
Speaker 1: of the bluegill should just tangled up in the massive
Speaker 1: ball of nylon mess. Shit, that's the best. They had
Speaker 1: a couple of spines in there. You catch them, you
Speaker 1: use it once because you'll never untangle it again, and
Speaker 1: you throw it in the trash. That's what you do anyway.
Speaker 1: According to the website, this heralds and this is a
Speaker 1: quote upgraded version of fishing. Change traditional fishing methods, remove hooks,
Speaker 1: and improve safety. Just hanging on the fishing rod, you
Speaker 1: can realize safe fishing. This is that's a real sentence.
Speaker 1: They you can catch big fish without a hook. I'm sold.
Speaker 1: I mean I was confused and lost up until then.
Speaker 1: But that last that that last strong statement of positivity,
Speaker 1: just because we all want to realize safe fishing. You
Speaker 1: all want to realize it's basically when this whole podcast
Speaker 1: is just realizing safe fishing. But just hanging on the
Speaker 1: fishing rod. It's just that's all you gotta do, Just
Speaker 1: hang on it. You you didn't mention the best part
Speaker 1: because somehow the price just dropped from hurry up, hurry
Speaker 1: up and get them. Um. I assume they're actually already
Speaker 1: flooded with orders. But after this airs, they'll they'll sell
Speaker 1: out in minutes. It's the next tick on me elmo
Speaker 1: um so act now everyone, Thanks again to Brandon Rozanski
Speaker 1: for sending us the link. And if you come across
Speaker 1: ridiculous fishing related ship on sale, please send links to
Speaker 1: Bent at the Meat Eater dot com so we can
Speaker 1: keep the sail bin full. Well, we're just about to
Speaker 1: run out of oxygen on this free dive to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the mall pond. But for those of you
Speaker 1: who weren't keeping track of what we picked up along
Speaker 1: the way, we now know that anglers are just litterbugs
Speaker 1: with fancy boats and Yogi's commune with sasquatch or sam squatches.
Speaker 1: I like to say times were simpler fish here and
Speaker 1: at least slightly more racist in the thirties. And uh
Speaker 1: that new technology maybe making castnets easier to throw, but
Speaker 1: it's not improving on the original design. Please please keep
Speaker 1: those awkward photos, bar nominations, sale ban items, fish news stories,
Speaker 1: and other highly appreciated emails coming to Bent at the
Speaker 1: media dot com. And and do remember, like we said
Speaker 1: last episode, if you have any questions you want us
Speaker 1: to address on or off the show, please send them along.
Speaker 1: We don't promise we'll get to all of them, but
Speaker 1: we will do our best. Yeah, hit us up on
Speaker 1: the social media is with the hashtags Degenerate Angler and
Speaker 1: Bent Podcast. We also just ordered a whole new batch
Speaker 1: of Degenerate Angler stickers that are just waiting to get
Speaker 1: slapped on your truck or boat. And don't forget about
Speaker 1: those badass new fish threads in the Meat Eater store
Speaker 1: that that original Sublime forty ounces to Freedom hoodie you
Speaker 1: bought right after Bradley died in It's uh, It's time
Speaker 1: to retire that one.