Speaker 1: Fly fishing for tarpin might be the most egregious example
Speaker 1: of fishing excess on the planet. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys know the science behind a maxicab rocking
Speaker 1: to the top two quickly can be dangerous, just as
Speaker 1: the Greek dude with the wax wings or the kids
Speaker 1: and crisscross. But lets you figure all that out, then
Speaker 1: you can just sit back with the beer. Good morning,
Speaker 1: degenerate anglers. Welcome to Bent, the fishing podcast that will
Speaker 1: not judge you for eating two of the three sandwiches
Speaker 1: you packed for lunch before eight am. I'm Joe Surmeli
Speaker 1: Miles Nulty, and yeah, why does that happen? Like why
Speaker 1: are you always starving at five am on a fishing trip?
Speaker 1: Like clackwork dude. People are like, why you three sandwiches?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, because I'm gonna eat two of them
Speaker 1: before we break the inlet. It always happens. I mean,
Speaker 1: I also think that disgustingly delicious roads necks are a
Speaker 1: mandatory thing to bring on any good fishing trip. Gotta
Speaker 1: have them, absolutely. I personally am a seven eleven, go
Speaker 1: go to Kato kind of guy. I always say to Kato,
Speaker 1: give me to Takato is the filly cheese steak one
Speaker 1: and they're rolling right next to the hot dog on
Speaker 1: the spinny thing there, so they getting used with some
Speaker 1: of that weener essence, you know. And I also, you
Speaker 1: know what als I love is bacon jerky, which is
Speaker 1: stupid because it's it's just a bag of bacon. There's
Speaker 1: really no jerky. You know. How about you? What what
Speaker 1: what do you? What do you grab? Oh man? I'm
Speaker 1: I am drawn to that greasy hot case like a
Speaker 1: moth to a mile cardial and barks and flame, dude.
Speaker 1: And and for as much as I love a halopenio
Speaker 1: corn dog that's been roasted lovingly under a heat lamp
Speaker 1: for thirty six hours, I'm not willing to compromise when
Speaker 1: it comes to coffee. I mean, all right, okay, I
Speaker 1: am willing to compromise if I have to, Like, if
Speaker 1: I don't have other options, I will swig down some
Speaker 1: thin bitter brew just for the caffeine, but I won't
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Well, thankfully, Miles, you don't have to, because,
Speaker 1: as a reminder, this podcast is in fact entirely fueled
Speaker 1: by Black Rifle coffee, and they have you covered. No
Speaker 1: matter what your coffee needs, whether you're indulging in a
Speaker 1: nice boogie pour over on a lazy Sunday morning or
Speaker 1: mixing up a quick dose of the instant before sprinting
Speaker 1: out the door on a Tuesday. Black Rifle will keep
Speaker 1: you flush with brew that's not only caffeinated, but very tasty,
Speaker 1: that is accurate, and with their coffee club, you can
Speaker 1: just sign up for what you want and they'll make
Speaker 1: sure you never run out. Go to Black Rifle Coffee
Speaker 1: dot com slash meat Eater to scratch your every last
Speaker 1: java itch today. Use the code mediator at check out,
Speaker 1: and they'll even take off your order. Did you say
Speaker 1: java itch? That's that's some ship that might require a
Speaker 1: low traman. Dude, did you add? Did you really write
Speaker 1: that thinking that will help us sell coffee? Man? Come on,
Speaker 1: it's a play on a common idiom. All right, you're
Speaker 1: the only one thinking about down south rash. The rest
Speaker 1: of us are. Yeah, no, the rest most of us.
Speaker 1: Most people don't have their head. They're we're just kicking back,
Speaker 1: enjoying our delicious coffee, and we do not appreciate your
Speaker 1: filthy interjections. Anyway. That's that's probably enough. Of that. We're
Speaker 1: supposedly here to talk about fishing, but I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the set list here in front of me, and uh,
Speaker 1: it actually seems like we're gonna stick with fungal infections
Speaker 1: metaphorically speaking, at least for the next few minutes, because
Speaker 1: we are leading off this week's show with my least
Speaker 1: favorite segment of all time, fungal infections. That was well
Speaker 1: put that I like that, But Myles is right. He's back,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Lance V. And look, okay,
Speaker 1: we know that he can be kind of grading, all right,
Speaker 1: we get it. We we know that lance is not
Speaker 1: what anyone imagines when they, I don't know, say, say,
Speaker 1: gaze into the face of their newborn child and picture
Speaker 1: a successful, prosperous and productive future. But look, he is
Speaker 1: a reality, like it or not. Internet culture is alive
Speaker 1: and well, and fishing is not immune. And in fact,
Speaker 1: as listener Mike Mancini put it, this is a quote. Now,
Speaker 1: I am humbly requesting that you keep Lance V. I
Speaker 1: hate that guy. He's the absolute worst, and he's the
Speaker 1: perfect embodiment of what y'all are not. I love in
Speaker 1: all caps to hate in all caps that guy and
Speaker 1: he needs to stay Mike. This trolling with Lance is
Speaker 1: for you, buddy, the land, to the boats, to the lake,
Speaker 1: to the seed being up the n on nets. But
Speaker 1: your boy lands. What's happening, Qualified captains, it's your favorite
Speaker 1: Internet fishing guru, Lance Vie, here to aid you in
Speaker 1: continuing education about killing it as an online angler. This
Speaker 1: week we have a deep question from Josh why who
Speaker 1: writes guys come on this? Lance v guy is a
Speaker 1: freaking chuckle head. But if he had to pick just
Speaker 1: one Instagram filter, what would it be? I have to
Speaker 1: be honest, Josh, I didn't want to answer this question.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, this information is so powerful that it
Speaker 1: could shave years off your pursuit of at greatness and
Speaker 1: rocking to the top two quickly can be dangerous, just
Speaker 1: as the Greek dude with the wax wings or the
Speaker 1: kids and Criss Cross who spent decades in therapy to
Speaker 1: overcome their desire to wear their pants backwards hashtag Daddy Mac.
Speaker 1: But I decided to go for it, so brace yourselves.
Speaker 1: The answer is half a Listen. I know that was
Speaker 1: a lot to take in. Many of you are probably
Speaker 1: in shock right now. Don't torch yourself for all the
Speaker 1: mediocre fish photos you posted using Ludwig or Perpetua. Those
Speaker 1: wasted opportunities to grow your social media presence. You didn't know.
Speaker 1: You were so sure using Nashville on that tight shot
Speaker 1: of a bass pro brand crank bait would take your
Speaker 1: posts from worthless to art that your ten followers would say,
Speaker 1: my god, it's breathtaking. You were absolutely positive the slightly
Speaker 1: washed out look of the lark was perfect for another
Speaker 1: sun rise over the Paylake photo, and you were so wrong.
Speaker 1: But I'm here to tell you it's okay. We all
Speaker 1: make mistakes. Hashtag here with me. Haf A is the answer.
Speaker 1: It's always been the answer, and you need not understand why.
Speaker 1: The details come with similar consequences to figuring out who
Speaker 1: killed JFK or weather Vanilla Ice knowingly sampled that Queen
Speaker 1: song in Ice Ice Baby, listen, I've already told you
Speaker 1: too much, and I feared divulging for the information about
Speaker 1: the powers of half a could lead to issues regarding
Speaker 1: my personal safety or worse, a loss of sponsorship opportunities
Speaker 1: with hashtag Nights of Columbus. Josh, You're welcome, but I
Speaker 1: want to make it clear. I take no responsibility for
Speaker 1: how you or anyone else uses this information hashtag risk
Speaker 1: fact there. M M, well, that's actually gave me something
Speaker 1: to think about this time. You like, he really found
Speaker 1: a soulful place this week. I feel like we discovered
Speaker 1: some some hidden well spring of depth that none of
Speaker 1: us ever knew existed in in young Lance there. It's
Speaker 1: it's almost like it's almost like we're trying to hint
Speaker 1: at a more interesting and significant character so we can
Speaker 1: disappoint everyone for our own amusement in a subsequent episode,
Speaker 1: or or maybe Lance will surprise all of us with
Speaker 1: his development over time. It's like a slow process. You'll
Speaker 1: you'll just have to keep tuning in to see what happens.
Speaker 1: Because as long as you guys keep sending questions to
Speaker 1: Bent at the mediator dot com for Lance will keep
Speaker 1: passing them onto him, and he'll keep answering them a
Speaker 1: week or two after his deadline passes. That's how he rolls. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: and uh. While I have been begrudgingly forced into recognizing
Speaker 1: the power and influence of twenty one century media, I
Speaker 1: have not given up on what I will always consider
Speaker 1: the nucleus of fishing culture. That is to say, skillful
Speaker 1: and well crafted writing. Yeah, real writing, as in words
Speaker 1: on printed paper, things we used to do in former lives.
Speaker 1: You and I both every so often we bring you
Speaker 1: our book recommendations, and this week Miles as viewing a
Speaker 1: brand spanking new title ten by one of our favorite authors,
Speaker 1: who also happens to be a buddy of ours as well,
Speaker 1: it's time for freaking philistines. What's it's a guy who
Speaker 1: doesn't care about books or interesting films and things, and
Speaker 1: unfas team. From a purely logical standpoint, sport fishing is stupid, pointless.
Speaker 1: We all know it. Even those of us who eat
Speaker 1: our catch occasionally or often will admit that's not the
Speaker 1: reason we fish. Fresh flesh is at best a bonus,
Speaker 1: at worst a justification. Fishing for sport is arguably hedonistic, cruel, narcissistic, selfish, sadistic,
Speaker 1: and foolish. It can also be miserable, boring, excruciating, interminable
Speaker 1: and obnoxious, but hot, damn when it's good, it's so good.
Speaker 1: I'm going to assume that if you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: you know exactly what I mean. Because fishing attracts obsessives.
Speaker 1: It's a spectrum, of course, but every serious angler I've
Speaker 1: ever known skews toward compulsion. Monty Burke is obsessed with obsessives.
Speaker 1: He's built a career writing about them, and his latest book,
Speaker 1: Lords of the Fly, Madness, Obsession and the Hunt for
Speaker 1: the World Record Tarpan, continues the trend. This book profiles
Speaker 1: the rarefied subculture of individuals who have spent some or
Speaker 1: in certain cases, the vast majority of their lives trying
Speaker 1: to catch record Tarpan. If there are any heroes in
Speaker 1: this story, however, they don't carry fishing rods or i
Speaker 1: g f A certificates. The conquesting anglers are portrayed as
Speaker 1: what I would assume them to be, wealthy, entitled jerk
Speaker 1: offs who don't respect the fish, the place, or each other.
Speaker 1: The rootless guides who take those anglers fishing generally come
Speaker 1: off as arrogant, unscrupulous, and bitter. Just about every character
Speaker 1: in this book strikes as a deeply flawed human. If
Speaker 1: there's a hero in this story, it's a tragic one.
Speaker 1: The vanquished utopia that was the homelessauce of Florida. Tarpin
Speaker 1: Fishery of the nineteen seventies and eighties. Burke describes it
Speaker 1: almost as if it were the garden and the anglers
Speaker 1: who indulged in its fruits, the men who precipitated the fall.
Speaker 1: He writes, the stories from on the water were stupendous,
Speaker 1: almost too hard to believe, but also an aggregate too
Speaker 1: hard to ignore. On the Oklahoma Flat one day, Perez
Speaker 1: held the boat steady for Robinson as fish came at
Speaker 1: the boat from every direction. The tarpin began to form
Speaker 1: a daisy chain, and we were somehow in the center
Speaker 1: of it, says Robinson. It was thirty ft wide and
Speaker 1: fifteen feet deep with fish from the top of the
Speaker 1: water to the ocean floor. You could see flashes. It
Speaker 1: was solid tarpan. Chitam and Lopez arrived one morning at
Speaker 1: the Black Rock and had it to themselves. Hold on,
Speaker 1: Shitam said, just take your time. There's more fish here
Speaker 1: than night. Count Shitaman Lopez two were in the middle
Speaker 1: of a daisy chain. It turned out one comprised of
Speaker 1: some two thousand fish. Lopez hooked five fish and under
Speaker 1: two hours. Over the next ten days he jumped more
Speaker 1: than two hundred fish. He got sixty one of those
Speaker 1: to the boat. It wasn't just the numbers of fish, though.
Speaker 1: There were stories every day of massive fish seen but
Speaker 1: not hooked, or hooked but not landed, fish well over
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds. Everyone had a story, and those stories
Speaker 1: of the monsters never to be caught, but only seen
Speaker 1: or hooked, only to be lost, they were told with
Speaker 1: more relish, more vigor, and more feeling than the stories
Speaker 1: of the fish that were caught, even the ones that
Speaker 1: became world records. It makes sense in angling, as in life.
Speaker 1: It is the ones that get away, that haunt our dreams,
Speaker 1: that push us over the brink into a lustful madness.
Speaker 1: And Homas Sassa was the first place in these anglers
Speaker 1: lives where hot damn, those dreams just might come true.
Speaker 1: The book's narrative wends its way through a dozen different characters.
Speaker 1: All the famous names of saltwater fly fishing appear, apt
Speaker 1: cray palette huff records are created, then shattered, along with
Speaker 1: new line classes, new tackle, new boats. The fishing world
Speaker 1: descends upon this place where the tarpon are huge and plentiful.
Speaker 1: They take what they can as quickly as they can,
Speaker 1: and the place is left diminished. Some might say, decimated,
Speaker 1: and we absorb it all through Burke's deft and tactful voice.
Speaker 1: He remains a journalist in the best sense of that word,
Speaker 1: presenting the people, fish and events as factually as he can,
Speaker 1: except when he doesn't, diving into engrossing interludes and anecdotes
Speaker 1: that skillfully tip his hand as an obsessed angler himself,
Speaker 1: one who, like most everyone reading, missed the party and
Speaker 1: knows that any sense of moral superiority he might feel
Speaker 1: only comes from the fact that he wasn't lucky enough
Speaker 1: to be among the offenders. One of the aspects that
Speaker 1: makes this book so compelling is that honesty outside the
Speaker 1: billfish tournament scene. Fly fishing for tarpin might be the
Speaker 1: most egregious example of fishing excess on the planet. No
Speaker 1: one in this country eats tarpin. Fly tackle is probably
Speaker 1: the least effective method of catching one, and a good
Speaker 1: guide charges eight hundred bucks a day, and the most stupid, pointless,
Speaker 1: and obsessive offshoot of tarpin fly fishing culture is record chasing.
Speaker 1: People spend entire lives and fortunes trying to catch one
Speaker 1: fish whose gravitational pull can be measured as slightly greater
Speaker 1: than another. They don't care about any other fish they
Speaker 1: might catch. They don't even enjoy the experience of catching
Speaker 1: a record. The fish don't actually matter. They just represent
Speaker 1: challenge measurable benchmarks of validation. Lords of the Fly does
Speaker 1: not shy away from any of that. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: power lies and recognized thing that while this form of
Speaker 1: fishing might seem reprehensible, it's really just the inherent nature
Speaker 1: of sport fishing pushed to its furthest and perhaps ugliest extreme.
Speaker 1: So I have a confession, man, I have not read
Speaker 1: Lords of the Fly yet, but not because I'm uninterested.
Speaker 1: That it sounds thoroughly enjoyable. It's good I haven't read
Speaker 1: it because you have been promising to send me your
Speaker 1: copy for over two weeks. Now. I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: like the mail is slow, right, I get it, but
Speaker 1: it ain't that slow. So until that happens, I'll just
Speaker 1: have to sit here and reread Manti's Soubelly again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Look, it's the book is sitting on my desk.
Speaker 1: It's right here. I'm looking at it right now, and
Speaker 1: and along it's it's actually sitting stacked up with another
Speaker 1: book that I've been promising to mail to you for
Speaker 1: eight months. I don't know nine. It's all the same,
Speaker 1: and that's all on me. But look, I have always
Speaker 1: hated going to the post office. It's never been a
Speaker 1: chore that I relish or enjoyed or did with any
Speaker 1: sort of zeal. But the thought of standing in an
Speaker 1: hour long serpentine line in the middle of winter during
Speaker 1: a massive spike in COVID cases as uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: really depressed the old motivation, you might say. No, I
Speaker 1: get that. I understand I hate the post office too,
Speaker 1: especially during COVID. But what I also hear you saying
Speaker 1: is I can expect those books to arrive what post vaccine? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, so I'll put them on on the list
Speaker 1: of all the other ship I can look forward to
Speaker 1: when the day finally comes, seeing family, traveling, drinking in
Speaker 1: places other than my basement with people other than my wife,
Speaker 1: going fishing with a whole group of buddies instead of
Speaker 1: a select few that you assume are being careful. So great, thanks, Yep,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. That is sadly true. But uh, while some
Speaker 1: aspects of our lives fuel suspended, like dinosaur DNA trapped
Speaker 1: in amber, for millions of years we press on. I'm
Speaker 1: simply saying that life finds a way. You know. I
Speaker 1: actually have a shirt with a snakehead skull on the
Speaker 1: front drawn like the Jurassic Park logo that says life
Speaker 1: finds a Way on the back. Yeah, it's It's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite t shirts. Shout out to Geek on
Speaker 1: the Water for giving me that anyway. One thing that
Speaker 1: is certainly pressed on this year is news. But we
Speaker 1: don't bring you the same horrible, divisive news you might
Speaker 1: find elsewhere here at Bent. We bring you something that
Speaker 1: just about all of us can come together on except
Speaker 1: me and Miles, of course, who are trying to vanquish
Speaker 1: each other. It's time for fish news. Fish news. That
Speaker 1: escalated quickly before we we hit fish news. A little housekeeping.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sorry. I apologize to everyone out there, but
Speaker 1: I just I have to say this seriously enough. Just stop,
Speaker 1: I'm done, all right, and and and I will explain
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. It's nothing political, it's nothing you
Speaker 1: might expect. It's all the things you know, but there's more. So.
Speaker 1: First of all, you may you hopefully didn't notice this,
Speaker 1: but when we were in the middle of recording fish news.
Speaker 1: Last week this happened. Hey dude, I'm sorry, we gotta pause.
Speaker 1: Something crazy just happened in my house and I gotta
Speaker 1: go check it out. Something Okay, I'm sorry. So what
Speaker 1: the hell was that? Well, that was the sound of
Speaker 1: my elderly neighbor mixing up the gas and brake pedals
Speaker 1: and driving her Subaru into the front of my house.
Speaker 1: This is where it's really happened. This This this happened
Speaker 1: last week. People. I so when we record this, like,
Speaker 1: we're on the computer so Miles and I can see
Speaker 1: each other, and and the part that I'll add is
Speaker 1: I couldn't hear it on my end, but you were
Speaker 1: just like something crazy just happened. But then you left
Speaker 1: and you didn't turn off your computer. So the last
Speaker 1: thing I saw was you standing in your hallway yelling
Speaker 1: at your wife, going are you kidding me? And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I should probably leave the sessions, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: last night I saw that happened. So but all right,
Speaker 1: good news on that. No one was hurt. All right,
Speaker 1: nobody got hurt. The neighbor, who's a very nice woman,
Speaker 1: she was not hurt. None of us were hurt. Everybody's fine.
Speaker 1: That that's the really good news. The other good news
Speaker 1: is that, man, I have incredible friends. By the time
Speaker 1: that the tow truck had extracted the car from my home,
Speaker 1: two of my people, one a structural engineer and the
Speaker 1: other contractor had dropped everything they were in the middle of,
Speaker 1: like the middle their work day, to come over and
Speaker 1: assess the like the structural and tear to my house
Speaker 1: and put up a temporary support wall so the whole
Speaker 1: thing didn't fall down. And just to paint a clearer picture.
Speaker 1: What do I hear banging? Yeah, I'm sorry that My
Speaker 1: buddies they show like my kid, that's fine, We're good.
Speaker 1: So the house is still standing, but it's gonna be
Speaker 1: some months before it's back to normal again around here.
Speaker 1: You can check out our Instagram pages to see photos
Speaker 1: of the carnage and and the car in my house
Speaker 1: that's at water Miles and at Joe's from Ellie. But wait,
Speaker 1: there's more. That same day, a friend of mine, a
Speaker 1: signature Unqui Fly designer fishing guide generally good human Andrew Grillos,
Speaker 1: suffered a massive stroke, which is I mean, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: It's also hard to magic because we're talking. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a guy who does ultra marathons for fun. This
Speaker 1: is not the person you're gonna expect this to happen,
Speaker 1: to write, and and look, he's in for a long haul.
Speaker 1: He's in for a lot of medical bills with his family.
Speaker 1: And and listen, we've said it before, We're gonna say
Speaker 1: it again. We anglers, we look out for our own.
Speaker 1: So I'm asking everybody out there who has the ability
Speaker 1: to help, if you can get on Instagram, look up
Speaker 1: the hashtag flies for Andrew and and and bid on
Speaker 1: something if if you're able to, there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: amazing stuff up for grabs, from fishing gear to custom
Speaker 1: art to guide trips by buddy Nick English is actually
Speaker 1: auctioning off info like intel on his secret high alpine
Speaker 1: trout lakes that he's spending. Yeah. Yeah, So a lot
Speaker 1: of good people are chipping into help out and and
Speaker 1: if you're able to, I just ask that you please
Speaker 1: do so. Like I said, has been a NonStop dumpster
Speaker 1: fire for for lots of us. But on the bright side,
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta say, man, it's really show me
Speaker 1: that we are able to come together and look out
Speaker 1: for each other when we have to. And that's that's
Speaker 1: worth something, you know, it's valuable. Yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: no matter, no matter how much I think we all
Speaker 1: feel the vibe, if nothing else one way or the other,
Speaker 1: it's almost over, almost over. We're getting there. You know
Speaker 1: what what what it looks like when it passes? We
Speaker 1: don't know, but um, you know, just based on the
Speaker 1: calendar alone, like we're all us that we're almost out
Speaker 1: of the woods. We're going to see a change. We're
Speaker 1: almost out of the woods. Anyway, housekeeping complete, let's move
Speaker 1: on to the news you can use in the fish world.
Speaker 1: Reminder that this is a competition. Miles and I do
Speaker 1: not know what stories the other guys bringing to the table,
Speaker 1: and at the end of this session are magical audio
Speaker 1: engineer Phil will declare a news winner. I believe it
Speaker 1: is my week to lead off. Okay, alright, great, so
Speaker 1: let's let's lead off with this one um, which is
Speaker 1: kind of silly, but I just couldn't leave it alone.
Speaker 1: So as if e R doctors don't see enough action
Speaker 1: in this time of COVID, an e er in Egypt
Speaker 1: got put on notice when a man stumbled in gasping
Speaker 1: for breath because, as it turned out, he had a
Speaker 1: live fish stuck in his throat. You saw this story,
Speaker 1: didn't the story? Yes, okay to step on your thunder.
Speaker 1: But as soon as you said that, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know where he's going. It's a very me kind
Speaker 1: of story. It comes it comes to us from t MS,
Speaker 1: which is the news equivalent of the Urban Dictionary, but
Speaker 1: still from the story. And when I say from the story,
Speaker 1: this is literally written like text messages like that's the
Speaker 1: kind like that's how their their their ship has written.
Speaker 1: So anyway, journalism and his finest people exactly. A guy
Speaker 1: who went fishing in Egypt got more than he bargained
Speaker 1: for when his catch for the day tried going down
Speaker 1: his gullet before he could even fry it up dot
Speaker 1: dot dot, and it almost killed him. This, this one man,
Speaker 1: This went down last week near Benny's sweep Swift, went
Speaker 1: something about ninety miles south of Cairo. When this poor
Speaker 1: fellow came stumbling into an e r down there, gasping
Speaker 1: for breath and unable to speak. He obviously obviously had
Speaker 1: something funky in his throat dash and that thing, it
Speaker 1: turned out, was a live fish. Doctors diagnosed the blockage
Speaker 1: in his windpipe after running him through an X ray
Speaker 1: and other tests, and then immediately got to work in
Speaker 1: extracting the damn thing with some tools. TMZ says, where
Speaker 1: the video I did. We'll get to the video and
Speaker 1: say there is a video, But you know the word
Speaker 1: is the guy was okay after all. But as for
Speaker 1: how this happened in the first place, bizarre, to say
Speaker 1: the least. Apparently, this dude caught this tiny fish and
Speaker 1: put it between his teeth to free up his hands
Speaker 1: so he could attend to another fish he had on
Speaker 1: the line. I'm still quoting here. This little bastard started
Speaker 1: swarming and broke free from his jaws grasp and went
Speaker 1: swimming in the dude's mouth. So I I tried to
Speaker 1: get a species I d but I came up short
Speaker 1: right this this this hard story, didn't say. But I looked,
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't find a good cross reference. It's
Speaker 1: a little silver fish with long red fins, maybe four
Speaker 1: inches long, and it kind of looks like a telapia,
Speaker 1: I think, or some kind of Yeah, who knows. I
Speaker 1: think I had all kinds of weird ship down there.
Speaker 1: But as as Miles brought up there's there's a video.
Speaker 1: Did you watch the video? I chose not to. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't want need to see that, honestly, man,
Speaker 1: it was rather anticlimactic, like it's it's it's really just
Speaker 1: the dude laying there with his mouth wide open and
Speaker 1: him wincing, and a bunch of doctors who are dressed
Speaker 1: in like street clothes, like nightclubbing clothes, saying suction suction, suction, suction, suction,
Speaker 1: and then out it pops. But just completely like completely anticlimactic.
Speaker 1: But I gotta say, as bonehead as that move might be,
Speaker 1: you know, holding a fish between your teeth, like I
Speaker 1: kind of get that right, Like I I've swallowed a
Speaker 1: split shot or two. I was holding in the teeth
Speaker 1: because both hands that were needed to unsnarl a bird's nest,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. In the heat of the
Speaker 1: moment while fishing, the mouth can become a third hand um.
Speaker 1: And the only other thing that popped into my head
Speaker 1: was I would rather suffer through almost choking on a
Speaker 1: live fish having it in my throat than like deal
Speaker 1: with them when the candaru jobbers swims up the pea hole.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So that's it's a better outcome that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw the same one and and TMZ being a
Speaker 1: batch of journalism, and I just had a feeling you
Speaker 1: were going to take this one. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave that one highly of me, Like you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: Joe's trash from TMZ. Thanks, I'll be over here. It's
Speaker 1: some scientific journal I didn't I didn't get that science
Speaker 1: this time. In fact, my first story is not science
Speaker 1: at all, but it doesn't involve anybody almost choking on
Speaker 1: a fish. It does involve some some conflict and some
Speaker 1: drama around fishing though, so there there is a brew
Speaker 1: haha going on in my home state, Okay. Beach anglers
Speaker 1: and swimmers have been getting into scraps at one of
Speaker 1: Hawaii's most popular beaches, Almana Beach Park is a it's
Speaker 1: like this little oasis right in the middle of the
Speaker 1: island of wah Who's south shore, and that's that's the
Speaker 1: populated area of the Hawaiian Islands. That's that's where Honolulu,
Speaker 1: the capital city is, which is a significant city, and
Speaker 1: waiki Ki, which is a very popular and very crowded
Speaker 1: swimming and surfing beach, so fishing at Waikiki Beach has
Speaker 1: been outlawed for a long time. And if you've ever
Speaker 1: been there, like that makes perfect sense, right. It's so
Speaker 1: crowded there with so many tours and so many swimmers
Speaker 1: and surfers, it would be nearly impossible to castle line
Speaker 1: without hooking or entangling someone. And you know, tours still
Speaker 1: like that. No, it makes perfect sense. But I'm just
Speaker 1: laughing at myself thinking of like all the ass hats
Speaker 1: at the Jersey Shore or Fourth of July weekend, Like,
Speaker 1: dude's still gonna throw a mullet rig like between the
Speaker 1: swimming beach, like at the swimming beach anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 1: They're smarter Hawai. I mean, it's just been regulated there, right,
Speaker 1: And that's that's the thing. Like they live on tourism
Speaker 1: and they live on that beach, so they said no.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, I have seen some tanker
Speaker 1: bone fish cruising around Waikki Beach and it's super frustrating
Speaker 1: because they're just like so arrogant and non like you
Speaker 1: can't touch me, dude, what are you gonna do? Ye?
Speaker 1: But I mean that's a little frustrating, but again it's understandable.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to fish there. That's a bad thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: And other beaches in that same area have been seeing
Speaker 1: more and more regulations imposed on fishing because it's a
Speaker 1: popular zone. But all Mwana has always allowed anglers and
Speaker 1: it's never really been much of a problem. Right. The
Speaker 1: beach has a man made channel dug in at the
Speaker 1: parallels the whole length of the beach, so it's deep,
Speaker 1: it's sandy, it's protected from the surf, and that's why
Speaker 1: it's such a popular spot for swimmers. So in the
Speaker 1: past fishermen have just avoided that area because for one,
Speaker 1: it's crowded, and but more importantly, it's it's rarely been
Speaker 1: productive and they focus on on the rocks just to
Speaker 1: the east in an area called Magic Island. But this
Speaker 1: year with covid, Haois had beach closures and a travel
Speaker 1: band and just a general lack of activity in that channel,
Speaker 1: and so these huge schools of bait fish have moved
Speaker 1: in like big ones, and of course larger predatory fish
Speaker 1: have followed and now have all the anglers. And Dude,
Speaker 1: some of the photos I saw, it's just it looks
Speaker 1: like the whole thing is just devolved into utter chaos.
Speaker 1: It's like, so picture combat fishing, right, and your standard
Speaker 1: combat fishing. You got rods lined up, you know, four
Speaker 1: six ft apart, maybe the whole length of the beach,
Speaker 1: but then just throwing hordes of swimmers and kayakers and
Speaker 1: paddle borders all over the water where they're casting, and
Speaker 1: I guess people have started cutting lines and just like
Speaker 1: throwing lines out of their way. Fights have broken out.
Speaker 1: Several swimmers report getting snagged by hooks like it's it's ugly.
Speaker 1: So now the state DNR is trying to come up
Speaker 1: with solution, and that means regulations. Either they're going to
Speaker 1: close the beach fishing entirely, or they're gonna limit fishing
Speaker 1: into certain areas. And that looks like I mean, what
Speaker 1: that means is that south shore anglers are gonna lose
Speaker 1: more access. And it's just disappointing. Man, it's a very
Speaker 1: tangled web. But I mean, I don't want to fish there, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not my scene. I'm not gonna that's not the
Speaker 1: place I'm gonna go there. You don't want to deny
Speaker 1: somebody else if that's their spot though, what they have
Speaker 1: in their hometown, that's where they go. I just I
Speaker 1: just wish people could be a little more civil to
Speaker 1: each other and not need the state to come in
Speaker 1: and tell them like, Okay, you can fish here, but don't.
Speaker 1: Like I wish there could just be some basic communication
Speaker 1: and we can figure this out on our own. I
Speaker 1: realized that that's not how it's gonna work. But it's
Speaker 1: just like part of a general trend I think we're
Speaker 1: seeing all over the place, and it's it's disappointing, like
Speaker 1: I said, And the irony on this particular one though,
Speaker 1: is that by next year, this probably isn't gonna matter. Right,
Speaker 1: the tourist are gonna come back. All the people are
Speaker 1: gonna come back, The bait fishushed out, and the conditions
Speaker 1: are gonna go back to being what they used to be.
Speaker 1: But the rules and regulations are going to be in place.
Speaker 1: Then like that that access is going to be gone.
Speaker 1: Well that's but you just said something there, and that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of like the mental note I'm taking here.
Speaker 1: So you know, by next year, the pandemic hopefully has
Speaker 1: gone away and the big fish will will leave the
Speaker 1: area again. But if it's as chaotic as you're saying
Speaker 1: it is now, so I get it right, it was
Speaker 1: low traffic throughout the whole pandemic, big fish moving to
Speaker 1: cut eat the bait, and you know, they were a
Speaker 1: handful of dudes who got it on that first Then
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, ship. But if it's as nuts as
Speaker 1: you're saying it is now, dude, I mean, how how
Speaker 1: good can it still be? I mean, isn't that like
Speaker 1: the instant angling buzz kill like you got there? So
Speaker 1: what are they even fighting over? Like are they still
Speaker 1: ripping trivollis out of there like you know, ten a
Speaker 1: day or is it still as good as it was
Speaker 1: in the middle of the pandemic. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I would guarantee it's not, as I say, clarification people,
Speaker 1: the middle I've spoken of the pandemic as though it
Speaker 1: has past, it is still still there in the middle
Speaker 1: of the lockdown. But I mean, we saw we saw
Speaker 1: some of that around here in the in the early
Speaker 1: spring during striper season, Like things were real good and
Speaker 1: there weren't that many dudes out, and then as soon
Speaker 1: as everybody got comfortable, well then they were out and
Speaker 1: those magic bites weren't happening anymore. I think I think
Speaker 1: it's all over and and that's the thing right, We're
Speaker 1: gonna end up with a bunch of new rules out
Speaker 1: of this, and that's just too bad. Just I think
Speaker 1: it is. I think it's I think it's a loss. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll also say you never want to see access taken
Speaker 1: away from anglers and totally with that um at the
Speaker 1: same time, like, you know, I meant what I said,
Speaker 1: Like I see that in the summer with my kids
Speaker 1: on the beach. You know, it's a crowded beach, and
Speaker 1: I know the guy is really not trying to hurt anybody,
Speaker 1: but still, man, is it a great idea that to
Speaker 1: to have to circle hooks sitting out there on a
Speaker 1: you know, in an area where there's people boogieboarding, Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, why would you even want to do that?
Speaker 1: Like come back in the evening, get your ass up
Speaker 1: in the early morning, and fish that cutting like that's
Speaker 1: when the fishing is good anyway, you know, So I
Speaker 1: I kind of get that. But look, if those anglers
Speaker 1: are struggling now because the crowds are back up and
Speaker 1: maybe those gt s aren't aren't aren't running the cut
Speaker 1: like they were, I might have the solution for them
Speaker 1: based on this story which comes to us from Arizona's
Speaker 1: East Valley Tribune headline Walmart Mason man get chummy over
Speaker 1: his invention from the story A fishing lore of sorts
Speaker 1: made by a Mason fisherman will soon hit the shelves
Speaker 1: of Walmart after clearing a hurdle in the retail giants
Speaker 1: search for products made by Americans small business owners. Chum pods,
Speaker 1: water situble pods of chum that can be used during fishing,
Speaker 1: was created by Pierced Outdoor as a company formed by
Speaker 1: fisheries biologists and Mason native Grant Pierce. The pods are
Speaker 1: similar to laundry detergent pods and are useful for fishermen
Speaker 1: looking to save time. I assume by that they mean
Speaker 1: like not having to wait so long for a fish
Speaker 1: to eat their bait as is customary and fishing like
Speaker 1: the patients. We gotta, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta
Speaker 1: pare down on the patients, is what I'm saying here.
Speaker 1: But anyway, uh. Pierce was one of a seventy I
Speaker 1: HAVE businesses that made it from a screening process involving
Speaker 1: eight hundred small businesses from across the country that pitched
Speaker 1: their US manufactured products during very quick thirty minute one
Speaker 1: on one meetings with Walmart and Sam's Club Exacts during
Speaker 1: their first ever virtual open call for for products for
Speaker 1: for businesses. And uh, apparently this is part of something
Speaker 1: that Walmart launched in as a commitment to help boost
Speaker 1: job creation and US manufacturing through buying an additional two
Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars in products supporting American jobs by
Speaker 1: three Right, So right off the bat, I have to say,
Speaker 1: if Walmart is really holding to this initiative, right, that
Speaker 1: that's awesome, right, cool, more more American manufacturing loved. And
Speaker 1: also I have to can you know, congratulate Grant for
Speaker 1: getting selected considering the story says the most popular categories
Speaker 1: of products pitched during all these sessions were food, health
Speaker 1: and wellness, and personal care. So he got in with
Speaker 1: fishing tackle essentially um. And I looked up this chum
Speaker 1: pod and it is clearly modeled after the tide pod,
Speaker 1: which is clever, clearly, right. But what's most clever to
Speaker 1: me is, unlike a chum product that you you broadcast,
Speaker 1: Actually you you bait your hook and then you add
Speaker 1: a chum pod to the end of your hook because
Speaker 1: it's light and small, and then you cast your bait
Speaker 1: out there, and now the chum is going to dissolve
Speaker 1: right around your bait wherever it. And I'm not knocking
Speaker 1: the design at all, right, but every time I see
Speaker 1: something like this, I wonder, like, will this be the
Speaker 1: chum product that produces a shift in the consumption of
Speaker 1: such things, because Lord knows, I've seen them all, and
Speaker 1: I've gotten samples of them all over the years, and
Speaker 1: I've used most of them, and no matter how much
Speaker 1: I've wanted to believe, I just have not found anything
Speaker 1: like this that offers a very noticeable advantage. And I remember,
Speaker 1: like in saltwater you had chum aerosol sprays and there
Speaker 1: was the bait bomb you'd send down on the line.
Speaker 1: It would like explode mid depth, you know, um, And
Speaker 1: none of it ever seemed to work as well or
Speaker 1: better than just regular roll, ground up bunker or mackel chum.
Speaker 1: So I don't really see any prepackaged synthetics or or
Speaker 1: or these natural pre mixed chums really interrupting the natural
Speaker 1: chum market in saltwater. But then in in freshwater, I'm
Speaker 1: curious if you agree, like I just feel like the
Speaker 1: average dude who fishes freshwater doesn't incorporate chum or think
Speaker 1: about chumming that other than carpet exactly exactly, so, and
Speaker 1: that's that's that's one of the things I'm thinking about here.
Speaker 1: It's like, even if you don't like sit in a
Speaker 1: lawn chair for stock trout, how many of that, dude,
Speaker 1: are you flipping onto chum? And what you said about
Speaker 1: cats and carpet is true. That's where I see this
Speaker 1: stuff falter, Like it's always marketed to all types of anglers,
Speaker 1: Yet the only guys who I think would really latch
Speaker 1: on our carpon cat guys. So if you call it,
Speaker 1: you know, catfish pods or carp pods maybe, but got
Speaker 1: a bluegill on the bag. And if you need a
Speaker 1: chum to catch bluegills, like try golf, you know, figure skating.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So I look, I wish grant the best, right,
Speaker 1: I really do good on you, But like, has the
Speaker 1: consumer research really shown that that these things tear it up?
Speaker 1: Like are we itching for more easy chum options for freshwater?
Speaker 1: I mean, here's what I said there. I think they're
Speaker 1: enough hardcore cat fishing folks in this country to make
Speaker 1: a product like this work. But if it were me,
Speaker 1: and it's not. And maybe he knows something about market research.
Speaker 1: I don't because I haven't dug into it and that's
Speaker 1: not my area of expertise. But I would be focusing
Speaker 1: it on that more niche demographic and not trying to
Speaker 1: go broad. That's that's what That's what my gut would
Speaker 1: tell me to do. But again, I'm not a marketer,
Speaker 1: so what the hell do I know? Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: and neither of I. But just just looking at the website,
Speaker 1: like you see the baits that these pods are paired with,
Speaker 1: they're clearly catfish and carp baits. Many many episodes ago,
Speaker 1: we talked about that that self baiting hook yep, thing
Speaker 1: with the corn that slid down. You're talking about that,
Speaker 1: like this is useful to everyone, Yet you watch the videos,
Speaker 1: it's all pay Lake catfish. So I appreciate the sort
Speaker 1: of the innovation and the thought that goes into some
Speaker 1: of this stuff. But I mean, at the same time, man,
Speaker 1: like it's all designed for sitting on a piece of
Speaker 1: bait for a long time for a fish that is
Speaker 1: mostly feeding by smell. And you know, I go buy
Speaker 1: a half dozen shrimp if I want to go catch catfish.
Speaker 1: They work just fine. Like I don't need to chum
Speaker 1: for them. They just eat that so um again. Best
Speaker 1: of luck, man. I just over the years, it's been
Speaker 1: a lot of them. I just have not seen any
Speaker 1: of these, Like, dude, you're not gonna believe this product,
Speaker 1: this bait bomb, this chum bomb, this this that, like
Speaker 1: they all come and go. I'd say Grant's already won
Speaker 1: because he got into He's gonna make some money. He's
Speaker 1: gonna buy some good, good gamble on their part, Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: I like that's the kind of thing I like to
Speaker 1: see in terms of someone being innovative and interesting in
Speaker 1: their attempt to make a living or make some money
Speaker 1: off of the outdoor community. But the story that I'm
Speaker 1: about to drop is the exact opposite. Okay, so I've
Speaker 1: got a story about someone who I can only describe
Speaker 1: as as a despicable human, a narcissist, a complete narcissist
Speaker 1: ass hat who considers his own social media feed and
Speaker 1: personal ego trip the most valuable commodity on the planet
Speaker 1: Lance V. Even worse than Lance man. I know, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I'm not sure I should cover this
Speaker 1: story for a few reasons I'm getting more excited just
Speaker 1: keep talking. Yeah, I mean the first reason is because
Speaker 1: this has being covered. It's got pretty decent play around
Speaker 1: outdoormany already, so it might be old news for some
Speaker 1: of our listeners. Um. Second, because this this walking skid
Speaker 1: mark has just a vacuous soul that seems like it
Speaker 1: can only be filled with with public tension. And I'm
Speaker 1: worried that I'm by talking about him further, I'm only
Speaker 1: giving him what he wants. And and third, I'm just
Speaker 1: generally wary of the culture of outrage that we seem
Speaker 1: to be embracing right Like, we're defining ourselves by images
Speaker 1: and actions that we condemn publicly. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to feed into any of those three things. But all
Speaker 1: that said, I do condemn what this person is doing.
Speaker 1: And and my goal is not so much to inspire
Speaker 1: your outrage as to just get the word out about
Speaker 1: this so that no one supports this person's business. What
Speaker 1: are we talking? I was like, I feel like you
Speaker 1: know what you're what you're talking about. And I told him,
Speaker 1: like we all have, we have power in our wallets,
Speaker 1: not in like our keyboard cancelation desires so, so that's
Speaker 1: how we should do it, okay. So. David Lesh is
Speaker 1: a former professional skier whose new goal in life seems
Speaker 1: to be winning gold as an internet troll. Since he
Speaker 1: failed at skiing last July, Less started building his personal
Speaker 1: brand as a desecrator of public lands and waters when
Speaker 1: he was caught ripping his snomobile around a designated wilderness
Speaker 1: area in Colorado. And let me reiterate, it was July.
Speaker 1: There was no snow, so he was just tearing up
Speaker 1: a protected, literally protected and sensitive tundra ecosystem for kicks,
Speaker 1: and and he got caught by the executive director of
Speaker 1: the foundation that looks after that area. Uh, got fined
Speaker 1: five dollars in order to perform fifty hours of community service.
Speaker 1: After that, he rode a dirt bike unprotected grasslands, drove
Speaker 1: his snowmobile around a private ski resort while it was closed,
Speaker 1: and quote accidentally crashed his brand new plane in California's
Speaker 1: Half Moon Bay. And I say accidentally in air quotes
Speaker 1: because investigators are still looking into the suspicious circumstances surrounding
Speaker 1: the crash, because let's just happened to be in a
Speaker 1: position to skip his plane across the surface and come
Speaker 1: to a stop lightly and easily completely unharmed after the
Speaker 1: plane lost power. And he also just happened to have
Speaker 1: cameras set up to capture the whole thing and it's
Speaker 1: aftermath perfectly to create a viral video showing how badass
Speaker 1: he is before sinking a massive jet fuel, oil and
Speaker 1: other contaminants into the ocean and then ship. Starting in June,
Speaker 1: he really really embraced his image as a self interested
Speaker 1: outdoor influencer. He's the guy that the Instagram accounts Turns
Speaker 1: of Yellowstone and Insurrect were made for, and you should
Speaker 1: check those out because like, seriously, this is it's him.
Speaker 1: So first he posted a photo of himself walking and
Speaker 1: swimming in an area that's closed to protect sensitive habitat
Speaker 1: and archaeological sites. That incident earned him five federal citations.
Speaker 1: Then this October he posted another picture of himself taking
Speaker 1: a dump in the iconic Maroon Lake near Aspen. So
Speaker 1: the background paints the stunning picture of a high mountain
Speaker 1: fall landscape, but like soaring snow skiffed peaks and aspen
Speaker 1: groves glowing orange and yellow and fall colors, and its
Speaker 1: crystal clear prismatic lake and then the whole thing is
Speaker 1: ruined by Lesh butt naked hanging onto a dead faultree
Speaker 1: and drop it a deuce right in the water. And
Speaker 1: the symbolism there is just two on the nose. Man.
Speaker 1: You can't make that up. Now, I gotta say, Lesh
Speaker 1: And and many of his fans and supporters are claiming
Speaker 1: that everyone's just getting trolled and worked up over a joke.
Speaker 1: The photo was doctored and none of it actually happened.
Speaker 1: And fans he has fans like there are people who
Speaker 1: actually are like thousands of sport Yeah, And and I
Speaker 1: gotta say, it doesn't matter whether it was photoshop or not.
Speaker 1: Like the guy has built this image of coolness around
Speaker 1: disrespecting our waterways, and the impact of how those photos
Speaker 1: will influence the behaviors and attitudes of the millions of
Speaker 1: people have seen them is a whole lot more detrimental
Speaker 1: than a single turn in the lake. Last week, a
Speaker 1: judge barred Lesh from all federal public lands. That's every
Speaker 1: federally controlled public land, millions and millions of acres of
Speaker 1: public land across the country for least the duration of
Speaker 1: the federal court case against him. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a start, But I really hope that band extends for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. You and I don't have
Speaker 1: any control over that, sensing like we we we can't
Speaker 1: decide what the joke is gonna do, or how he's
Speaker 1: gonna get sentence or anything. But here's what we can control.
Speaker 1: Lesh somewhat ironically owns an outdoor clothing brand called Vertica. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I would like all of us to just make
Speaker 1: sure that we and anyone who we can convince, never
Speaker 1: gives that brand a single dollar. Let me see it again,
Speaker 1: Vertica with a K. He's made for super sportive people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't fit me anyway, So screw you. Lash.
Speaker 1: There's there's also a citizen led petition circulating right now
Speaker 1: to revoke his business license, and I signed it. I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: I even donated a few bucks to the cause. So
Speaker 1: if the last thing I will says, if you, if
Speaker 1: you're one of the people who follows this this jackass,
Speaker 1: just just stop like jerk Offs like this guy don't
Speaker 1: deserve the power and influence that they have accrued, and
Speaker 1: they won't go away until we ignore them. So I
Speaker 1: just hope, I honestly hope he loses business and I
Speaker 1: hope that that people stop paying attention to him and
Speaker 1: he just disappears. That's what I think, that's the best
Speaker 1: possible outcome. First, I don't know how I'm not up
Speaker 1: on this. I guess I'm just not really paying enough
Speaker 1: attention to the to the news here. But I gotta say,
Speaker 1: we and the odors like, there have been so many
Speaker 1: things like fish pictures and so many different things that
Speaker 1: that we've latched onto and like sort of berated guys.
Speaker 1: So to have somebody particularly go for the throat like that,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I never I never thought I would I
Speaker 1: would see such a thing like that. You are, there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as bad press, which is obviously what's
Speaker 1: going on here. So even like when we've in our
Speaker 1: industry had people ripping on dudes about holding a fish
Speaker 1: that was pulled off or red or whatever it comes,
Speaker 1: and it goes and there's arguments on both sides. But
Speaker 1: to see somebody just embrace being an outdoor jackass to
Speaker 1: this level, um, I don't know, man, what do you
Speaker 1: do with What do you do with that guy? You know? Like,
Speaker 1: like I said, I hope that you're the only way
Speaker 1: you can kick him in the stones Is by hurting
Speaker 1: his bottom line, right, Like I'm again, I fear that
Speaker 1: I'm feeding into exactly what he wants because I'm giving
Speaker 1: him more attention, which he clearly craves. But I'm doing
Speaker 1: it not because i want people to get outraged. I'm
Speaker 1: doing it because, like I want to see his businesses fail,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to see him broke. Well, I agree
Speaker 1: with that. I'd also like to see him come out
Speaker 1: and do a tuna charter with the Brooklyn v out
Speaker 1: of Brooklyn, New York and act like a jerk off
Speaker 1: on that trip eighty miles off with them boys. Well,
Speaker 1: we certainly don't support Lash. We don't want you to
Speaker 1: support Lash, but we do support fishing guy at Hillary Hutchinson,
Speaker 1: who's very awesome and a steward of the outdoors. She's
Speaker 1: the opposite, Yes, exactly. And as soon as as soon
Speaker 1: as Phil weighs in to decide who who wins the
Speaker 1: whole kitten caboodle here this week, we're gonna kick it
Speaker 1: over to a tackle hack for the ages from our
Speaker 1: friend Hillary. It's gonna make you a little uncomfortable, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna go damn. That was That was one of
Speaker 1: the smartest things I heard all week, for his story
Speaker 1: of the fish who looked around at twenty four mere
Speaker 1: seconds before he had seen enough, and for introducing the
Speaker 1: nation's youth to I'm sure what will be known as
Speaker 1: the chum Pod Challenge. Joe Sir Melie is the winner
Speaker 1: this week. Back to the Future Part two got a
Speaker 1: lot wrong about the year. There were definitely not enough
Speaker 1: pod products, not enough dishwasher pods, tied pods, chum pods.
Speaker 1: But I'd say the most egregious lack of foresight was
Speaker 1: that Marty McFly had the chance to go see Jaws
Speaker 1: nineteen in a real life movie theater full of people,
Speaker 1: rather than as a drop on HBO Max plus Prime.
Speaker 1: Bring on the vaccines, I can drown my self and
Speaker 1: butter flavored topping. I'm getting hats coming from inside the
Speaker 1: city the flood. Joining us today for the Tackle Hacks
Speaker 1: is our good friend Hillary Hutchinson, who's a good friend
Speaker 1: of the show and and a friend of mine. It's
Speaker 1: great to see you. How are you, Hillary? Hey, what's up?
Speaker 1: Most people probably don't know this, but uh, the first
Speaker 1: time Hillary and I actually hung out was years ago
Speaker 1: when we were both at the same lodge in Alaska,
Speaker 1: and due to weather, got completely sucked in and were
Speaker 1: unable to to leave that lodge for I think like
Speaker 1: four days. So we just we just fished the local
Speaker 1: river as much as we could and and raided the
Speaker 1: liquor cabinet at the lodge every single day until it
Speaker 1: was time to go home. Yeah, it was not terrible,
Speaker 1: and we were highly successful at both of those things
Speaker 1: in the pouring rain, pouring pouring rain, which is why
Speaker 1: you know, as you mentioned, we couldn't leave the lodge
Speaker 1: to go out to the surrounding fish or ease um.
Speaker 1: But it was awesome. I was like, they need to
Speaker 1: put that program on the brochure because we had a ball.
Speaker 1: It was so much fun, it really was. And it
Speaker 1: was like there was a weather window when we could
Speaker 1: fly in, and like we couldn't fly again until it
Speaker 1: was our day to fly out. It was just we
Speaker 1: were just stuck there on the island with tons of
Speaker 1: liquor and rainbow trout and silver salmon. So it was
Speaker 1: it was not bad. I was I was stranded oncet
Speaker 1: to weather like that, only it was somewhere where there
Speaker 1: was nowhere to walk to fish and all the dudes
Speaker 1: I was with did not drink. So that sounds like
Speaker 1: a good time you guys had that one time, but
Speaker 1: sounds like maybe you were actually on the television show
Speaker 1: Lost in some sort of purgatory and Acosta Island, Quebec. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is not my segment. You keep going. We we did.
Speaker 1: We did have have good times on that one and
Speaker 1: I remember it fondly. But we didn't actually bring you
Speaker 1: here to reminisce about Alaska fishing. We brought you here
Speaker 1: to lay a tackle hack on us. So what do
Speaker 1: you got, Well, I you know, we have a prime
Speaker 1: dry fly season here in northwest Montana. I'm on the
Speaker 1: Middle Fork in the North Fork of the Flathead and
Speaker 1: people are coming here for you know, world class of
Speaker 1: dry fly fishing, which means you have to keep the
Speaker 1: fly dry and all the regular hacks, um are the
Speaker 1: ones that you know, I have done forever and ever.
Speaker 1: Like everybody kind of uses that shammy on the inside
Speaker 1: of their shirt, but I fish the white water stretch
Speaker 1: and so I'm in and out of the water all
Speaker 1: the time. Um and uh. And then people use like
Speaker 1: their shammy for their sunglasses all the time. But again,
Speaker 1: like put that in my pocket. I'm just soaking wet
Speaker 1: all the time, so those get wet an Ambedu patches
Speaker 1: like thirty dollars, and once those things get wet, they
Speaker 1: stay wet. So I found something I think is pretty unorthodox.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen anybody else do it, and it works
Speaker 1: super good, and I suggest other people to try it.
Speaker 1: I started cutting into squares sanitary napkin like Maxi pads
Speaker 1: or pantyliners, um, the thin ones, the thin ones, and
Speaker 1: you can get them cheat and you can go to
Speaker 1: Costco miles. Why don't you go to Costco and move
Speaker 1: by like the jumbo pack of the thin pantyliners or
Speaker 1: Maxi pads, and then you cut them into squares and
Speaker 1: you don't need to get the brand name ones. You
Speaker 1: just get the cheap oh, you know, fred Meyer ones
Speaker 1: or whatever and um. And the reason I caught them
Speaker 1: into squares is so that they don't look like what
Speaker 1: they are, so you don't have like wings, and so
Speaker 1: that you know, Klaient doesn't look back and and see
Speaker 1: me like, you know, squeezing the fly with the Maxi
Speaker 1: pad and then they you know, take it back and
Speaker 1: put it in their mouth or something, you know. So um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I cut them into squares or circles or
Speaker 1: something so that you can't tell, or rectangles or something
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't look like what it is and
Speaker 1: so that it can be small and just in your hand.
Speaker 1: And UM. I have done a couple of things. One
Speaker 1: I have um double stick taped them into the inside
Speaker 1: of my jetty go box so like my big waterproof
Speaker 1: tackle box and um, so that I can just like
Speaker 1: push the fly up against it. Um. And then I
Speaker 1: have also had them in stacks, like I can have
Speaker 1: a whole stack of bomb um for the whole season,
Speaker 1: and you can reuse them because they just absorb and
Speaker 1: you just kind of keep keep them in there and
Speaker 1: keep reusing them and so um it just squeeze it
Speaker 1: on there and it just takes the water right out.
Speaker 1: So and if they get wet, it's crazy. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys know the science behind a
Speaker 1: maxi pad, but they if they get wet, all the
Speaker 1: moisture goes to like to the bottom and though the
Speaker 1: top layer of them still stays dry. And that's the
Speaker 1: whole point. Like that's why you see in the commercials
Speaker 1: they're like keep your dry all day, so keep your
Speaker 1: fly dry all day, um and so so unlike the
Speaker 1: other things like an Amado patch or or your shammy
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um, those once they get wet, they're wet.
Speaker 1: Once this gets wet, like if you keep in your
Speaker 1: pocket and you jump it up, like the bottom of
Speaker 1: it gets like heavy and kind of stays wet, but
Speaker 1: the top still works, so you still you get to
Speaker 1: continue to use it. So it's it's a good one.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds weird, and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: like fish with some of my buddies in Southwest Montana
Speaker 1: who are just like a man's man and they go
Speaker 1: by all the you know Maxie plus as as unconventional
Speaker 1: as weird as you may think that is. It is
Speaker 1: the best tackle hack we have had yet, by far,
Speaker 1: by far far, and a winner, no doubt, and I
Speaker 1: cannot wait to see the jump in sales for generic
Speaker 1: maxipads as soon as this particular episode airs. Hashtag not sponsored,
Speaker 1: I have a paid partnership. If any of those companies
Speaker 1: do want to get on with with supporting this podcast,
Speaker 1: we're welcome to entertain the always looking for advertisers. Absolutely
Speaker 1: would be amazing if you guys had the podcasts sponsored
Speaker 1: by like stay Free. I think we're gonna just call
Speaker 1: that a life goal and say thank you so much
Speaker 1: Hillary for coming on again and for dropping that nugget
Speaker 1: of wisdom on us anytime. That's what I'm here for.
Speaker 1: A brother. That's a good one, all right. So right
Speaker 1: after we recorded that, I actually rated the bathroom cabinet
Speaker 1: and stuck a couple of penny lions and my fly
Speaker 1: fishing kit. I haven't I haven't had chance to use
Speaker 1: them yet because you know, it's cold, but I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to doing it. And like actually trying that out
Speaker 1: win drive last season comes back around. You know what, how,
Speaker 1: I'll admit it, I did the same thing. Like Hillary
Speaker 1: brought the freaking fire with that tackle hack. She just
Speaker 1: put everyone else past and present tackle hackers on notice.
Speaker 1: And though we didn't actually do anything if you think
Speaker 1: about it, other than make stupid comments throughout the whole thing,
Speaker 1: I'm proud that we offered up some legit useful knowledge
Speaker 1: this week. And while we're almost out of time, we
Speaker 1: do have one more tidbit for you guys. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's time for end of the line, but this
Speaker 1: week we're gonna change things up just just a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like point counterpoint, perhaps crossfire Miles
Speaker 1: is actually gonna take the lead on a rig that
Speaker 1: truly rocked the world of fishing, and I'm gonna jump
Speaker 1: in right after him for a minute or two and
Speaker 1: tell you why the whole thing is bullshit. Well, that's
Speaker 1: not loud enough. Technically speaking, the Alabama rigs shouldn't fit
Speaker 1: this segment because it isn't a lure, bait, or fly,
Speaker 1: but we're making an exception on this one. The a
Speaker 1: rig is a spider web of spoke like aluminum arms
Speaker 1: that radiate out from a central jig head and are
Speaker 1: tipped with five or more separate lures, usually soft plastic
Speaker 1: swim baits. Those aluminum arms can also feature spinner blades
Speaker 1: in the middle of them, and the resulting morass of
Speaker 1: conglomerated fish attractors essentially allows anglers to cast and retrieve
Speaker 1: an entire school of simulated bait fish. Supposedly, and not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: they could be quite effective. I say supposedly because I
Speaker 1: myself have never fished in a rig, but their impact
Speaker 1: is hard to dispute. The Alabama rig was invented by
Speaker 1: a guy named Andy pass who claims he came up
Speaker 1: with the idea while watching tuna chase sardines on the
Speaker 1: Blue Planet documentary series. That makes for a good story,
Speaker 1: but I find it a little suspect for reasons that
Speaker 1: Joe will cover in just a minute. Whatever his inspiration,
Speaker 1: Post built a prototype of the rig in his garage
Speaker 1: in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in July two thousand eleven. In
Speaker 1: October of that same year, professional bass angler Paul Elias
Speaker 1: had one of Pasta's prototypes in the boat with him
Speaker 1: while competing in an FLW event on Lake Guntersville, Alas
Speaker 1: wasn't doing so hot at the outset. In fact, he
Speaker 1: hadn't voted a single fish when he decided to try
Speaker 1: out Passes rig, and then he caught fifteen pounds of
Speaker 1: fish in forecasts. After that, he returned to the spots
Speaker 1: where he blanked earlier in the day and landed twenty
Speaker 1: more fish. Alias won the tournament, and the A rig
Speaker 1: became the biggest controversy and bass fishing overnight. Within a
Speaker 1: year of its invention, it was banned from b a
Speaker 1: SS tournaments, and within three years it became illegal in
Speaker 1: all major bass tournament circuits, fishing one in or out
Speaker 1: of competition is now against the law in eight states.
Speaker 1: Suffice to say, lots of people got real mad at
Speaker 1: this rig, real quick. Much of the A rig hate
Speaker 1: out there gets cloaked in seemingly rational conservation arguments. Some
Speaker 1: call a rigs problematic because anglers often catch multiple fish
Speaker 1: at once, but that doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of bass anglers are releasing their catches,
Speaker 1: and even if they are keeping dinner, the bag limit
Speaker 1: doesn't change just because they're watching multiple fish at once.
Speaker 1: Another dig in the interest of fish welfare stems from
Speaker 1: claims that fish often get foul hooked by a rigs,
Speaker 1: but no one offers any evidence that foul hooked fish
Speaker 1: suffer a higher immortality rate on release. In fact, I'd
Speaker 1: argue that a wound in the flank or the back
Speaker 1: is far less detrimental than a hook deep in the
Speaker 1: mouth back near the gills, so that one doesn't work
Speaker 1: for me either. Finally, many states ban these rigs by
Speaker 1: claiming that they have too many hooks, but those same
Speaker 1: states have no issue with anglers throwing lures tipped with
Speaker 1: three separate troubles. For a total of nine barbed hook points,
Speaker 1: and if I have a math right, that's four more
Speaker 1: than on a standard A rig Let's just stop with
Speaker 1: the holier than now conservation cloak and call this what
Speaker 1: it is. People hate a riggs because their scene is
Speaker 1: too effective, which makes them feel like cheating. Anglers are competitive,
Speaker 1: so even though fishing isn't baseball, A rigg catches get
Speaker 1: snubbed like the Barry Bonds home run record. Ultimately, A
Speaker 1: rigs are like anchored putter's adhesive, football globes and laser speedos.
Speaker 1: People refuse to use them, not because they don't work,
Speaker 1: but because they think doing so diminishes the sport of fishing,
Speaker 1: and they view anglers who do use them as morally deficient.
Speaker 1: But if we can set aside that subjective sense of superiority,
Speaker 1: I think we'll all recognize that we've got to give
Speaker 1: Andy pass credit. Whether we choose the fish A riggs
Speaker 1: or not, whether we hate him or not, his invention
Speaker 1: has had a bigger impact on fishing than anything else
Speaker 1: in at least a generation. See I give Andy Poss
Speaker 1: zero credit because as far as me and every other
Speaker 1: striperman from Maine to Delaware, is concerned the a rig
Speaker 1: has existed since the nineteen fifties or sixties, maybe earlier.
Speaker 1: We're sure, okay, but we are sure they were called
Speaker 1: umbrella riggs, and I'm very sure. I hate salty umbrella
Speaker 1: riggs as much as I hate freshwater a rigs. According
Speaker 1: to my research, legend has it a skipper in Montauk,
Speaker 1: New York got the idea for the umbrella rig after
Speaker 1: watching a skipper in Nova, Scotia pull strips of beer
Speaker 1: cans on a metal bar that was likely for tuna,
Speaker 1: though not stripers. So is this all bullshit? Perhaps? But regardless,
Speaker 1: salty umbrella riggs have a wingspan of up to four
Speaker 1: feet and can feature a dozen or more rubber shads,
Speaker 1: surgical tube teasers, or light metal spoons. They were traditionally
Speaker 1: slow trolled on wire line, both to help get them
Speaker 1: deeper and to stand up to the resistance they create,
Speaker 1: especially after a big cow bass latches on. These days,
Speaker 1: guys pull umbrella riggs on a heavy braid and somehow
Speaker 1: use that to claim it's more sporting than the wire days.
Speaker 1: I frankly don't care what you pull an umbrella rig on.
Speaker 1: I find it boring as hell. Note I did not
Speaker 1: say it's ineffective, because much like the a rig, it
Speaker 1: catches a mess of fish. I also did not say
Speaker 1: there's no art to slow trolling stripers, because there is.
Speaker 1: You can't simply heave an umbrella rig overboard and kick
Speaker 1: back with a beer. You have to know how to
Speaker 1: adjust the trolling speed based on the current, how to
Speaker 1: get the rig to the proper day, and where to
Speaker 1: actually pull the thing. But once you figure all that out,
Speaker 1: then you can just sit back with a beer and
Speaker 1: wait while the boat dribbles along at an obnoxious two
Speaker 1: miles per hour. I'm sorry, but my addiction to striper's
Speaker 1: comes from the hit. I love seeing one boil on
Speaker 1: a popper. I love when my live bunker gets nervous
Speaker 1: and you know he's about to get tail thumped and inhaled.
Speaker 1: I love the dead stop when I'm reeling a shad
Speaker 1: around the tip of a jetty. Slow trolling umbrellas robs
Speaker 1: you of all that good stuff. You just wait for
Speaker 1: the broomstick to bend in half, grab the rod and
Speaker 1: steadily really in the three feet of wire or braid
Speaker 1: behind the boat. It's no fun, if you ask me,
Speaker 1: and in my opinion serves only as a means to
Speaker 1: get bass in the box, not as a means to
Speaker 1: enjoy all the sporting qualities they offer. Andy Poss just
Speaker 1: stole the classic Northeast rig, shrunk it down to a
Speaker 1: barely castable size, and called it a bass bait, inadvertently
Speaker 1: creating the only umbrella rig that cannot be fished effectively
Speaker 1: while drinking a Budweiser or Narrogansett. Well, that's all we
Speaker 1: have for you this week. For those of you looking
Speaker 1: to run this down on the A P wire, I
Speaker 1: have a problem with the Java. Itche is the answer
Speaker 1: to life's ultimate question, like an install filter version of
Speaker 1: the number forty two. And Hillary Hutchinson knows how to
Speaker 1: give your dry lies wings. If you enjoyed any of that,
Speaker 1: help us spread the word, tell your friends, tell your
Speaker 1: local tackle shop, give us some stars, and if you're
Speaker 1: feeling inspired, maybe drop us a line. Send those emails
Speaker 1: to Bent at the meat Eator dot com, unless, of course,
Speaker 1: you fish Alabama riggs, in which case just send in
Speaker 1: a miles because I don't really want to hear from
Speaker 1: you until next week. We're hoping you can find some
Speaker 1: water that's either thought enough to reel through or frozen
Speaker 1: enough to walk on, and if not, maybe just catch
Speaker 1: up on back episodes of the show and when you
Speaker 1: run out of those, look up fishing with John on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You'll thank you later