Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining
Speaker 2: and just in general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while.
Speaker 2: As I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country
Speaker 2: Life is presented by Case Knives from the Store More
Speaker 2: Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 2: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 2: grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some
Speaker 2: stories to share, bank poles, flatheads, and Bradley Smith. This
Speaker 2: week I'm headed to Louisiana with my friend Bradley Smith,
Speaker 2: a generational outdoorsman who's keeping the old ways alive. Poop nets,
Speaker 2: bank poles, and the kind of hard earned knowledge it
Speaker 2: only comes from time spent on the water. This episode,
Speaker 2: it was about friendship. It's about tradition and learning the
Speaker 2: details of where and why.
Speaker 1: I joined me at the fire. Let's get started.
Speaker 2: It was an email link from my brother Tim. He
Speaker 2: called me before I had a chance to look at
Speaker 2: it and said, did you see that email I sent you? No, Well,
Speaker 2: look at it and call me back. Good day, and
Speaker 2: he hung up. I don't remember what I was in
Speaker 2: the middle of, but before I could finish whatever it was,
Speaker 2: He called me back. You watch it yet, Tim, I'm busy,
Speaker 2: watch it asap. Good day, He hung up again. The
Speaker 2: love of humanity, What could this video be? I figured
Speaker 2: it wasn't some average link to someone's moronic, self induced buffoonery,
Speaker 2: the kind we normally send back and forth. So whatever
Speaker 2: I was working on, I stopped and I checked my email.
Speaker 2: Well three minutes into the footage from the link he
Speaker 2: sent me, I could see this was about to cost
Speaker 2: me some money. I didn't know how much, but I
Speaker 2: couldn't wait to get it unstove. Bradley Smith started filming
Speaker 2: his outdoor pursuits for YouTube around twenty twenty at the
Speaker 2: encouragement of family and friends. He'd been at it and
Speaker 2: posting them for the world to witness for four years.
Speaker 2: When Tim ran across the content, he sent me, Reeve
Speaker 2: was going to provide you with a link in the
Speaker 2: show description to take you right to his channel. But
Speaker 2: Bradley was fishing in North Louisiana using a type of
Speaker 2: net that.
Speaker 1: Neither of us were familiar with. The hoopnet.
Speaker 2: Fishing where we grew up wasn't uncommon by any means.
Speaker 2: While the numbers have declined over the years. I couldn't
Speaker 2: name all the folks who were doing it when I
Speaker 2: graduated from high school in nineteen eighty four, and that
Speaker 2: was from a town of barely.
Speaker 1: Seven thousand people.
Speaker 2: That year in Arkansas, there were over thirty eight hundred
Speaker 2: commercial licenses sold. There are only one hundred and two
Speaker 2: commercial licenses that are active now in the natural state
Speaker 2: as of the latest data. It is a disappearing way
Speaker 2: of life in a lot of places, places where catfish
Speaker 2: and buffalo markets rule supreme. And that way of life
Speaker 2: was as common in the Delta and Gulf Coastal Plain
Speaker 2: where I'm from as farming or work in construction. For some,
Speaker 2: it was a way of life. For others, it was
Speaker 2: a way to supplement their income. For me and Tim,
Speaker 2: it is just another way to experience the outdoors the
Speaker 2: way our family did. As my daughter Bailey calls it
Speaker 2: back then. Coincidentally, she also refers to the time period
Speaker 2: of my birth in the same style, but adds an
Speaker 2: emphasis to the word way before the back then and
Speaker 2: her poorly failed at verbial phrase modifying when I was
Speaker 2: born while throwing shade on me. You see, I can
Speaker 2: talk cool anyway I have my great grandfather's net needle.
Speaker 2: It's hand carved from a single piece of hickory, a
Speaker 2: tool used to tie knots and twine and fashion it
Speaker 2: into a net. I am a show enough rookie at it,
Speaker 2: but I bet he wasn't. And I know my good
Speaker 2: friend Bradley ain't. I've watched him tie them on his
Speaker 2: channel more than once. As a matter of fact, I
Speaker 2: learned to tie that net knot by watching him. My
Speaker 2: great grandfather passed away before I was born, and had
Speaker 2: it not been for Tim stumbling upon Bradley's YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: that skill could have been lost on our generation. I
Speaker 2: reached out to Bradley the way folks do these days,
Speaker 2: through his Facebook page, and I carpet bombed his inbox
Speaker 2: with question after question, all of which he dutifully answered.
Speaker 2: It is a goal of mine to build and tie
Speaker 2: my own net with my grandpa's needle. But that's a
Speaker 2: project for another day. But I needed to know where
Speaker 2: to get those nets that he was using. I needed
Speaker 2: to know quick fast, and in a hurry. Bradley gave
Speaker 2: me the info and in a matter of a few weeks,
Speaker 2: mister Stan Smith down near farm of a Louisiana had
Speaker 2: made Tim and I three wire nets. It was June
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four when we rolled into mister Stan's yard,
Speaker 2: just a couple of boys from Arkansas.
Speaker 1: So when we left we were a commercial.
Speaker 2: Fisher, not really, but we had the nets and the licenses.
Speaker 1: The only thing we needed to add.
Speaker 2: Was fish to the nets, and we did literally on
Speaker 2: the first set we ever made. A few days later,
Speaker 2: we set our nets out in the areas where we
Speaker 2: knew catfish to feed small eddies of current that naturally
Speaker 2: gathered food, and all the good is that catfish liked
Speaker 2: gnaw on. Then we left and we left him to
Speaker 2: sit on the bottom of the Arkansas River. After a
Speaker 2: few sleepless nights, we returned to check our nets and
Speaker 2: were astonished at how many fish we'd caught on our
Speaker 2: very first attempt. All three nets were heavy with channel catfish,
Speaker 2: which is the most abundant and widespread catfish in the
Speaker 2: Arkansas River. Our first attempt had us hooked pun intended.
Speaker 2: I sent Bradley pictures in a couple of videos of
Speaker 2: our hall as soon as we got back home, and
Speaker 2: he invited us to come and go fishing with him,
Speaker 2: and we vowed to set up a time. It only
Speaker 2: took two years for it all to come together. It
Speaker 2: was early June of this year when we got serious
Speaker 2: about planning the trip. We'd kept up communicating through texts
Speaker 2: and social media since I first started harassing him back.
Speaker 1: In late May of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: I was also watching Bradley's weekly Sunday morning drops on
Speaker 2: his and his wife Daniel's God's Country Hunting and Fishing
Speaker 2: YouTube channel. Danielle is the real star of that show,
Speaker 2: and Bradley will be the first to tell you, but
Speaker 2: don't take my word for it by itself.
Speaker 1: Go watch it.
Speaker 2: There's a video on there now mineing Bradley's trip, a
Speaker 2: kind of behind the scenes look into my trip with
Speaker 2: him showing Danielle and my friend and cameraman David McDaniels,
Speaker 2: who was filming some bonus content for this country Life.
Speaker 2: Bradley had some regular hoop nets already soaking in the
Speaker 2: tepid waters of the Washington River, where he lives and
Speaker 2: grew up fishing in Louisiana. Isn't that far from where
Speaker 2: I did On on Axe, I ran a line from
Speaker 2: my dad's boat ramp on the Selectane river to the
Speaker 2: one we'd be using that Bradley frequency near his home,
Speaker 2: and that it was less than sixty eight miles as
Speaker 2: the crow flies from my spot to his. To draw
Speaker 2: the similarities even closer. The Saline and Washington Rivers converge
Speaker 2: in Arkansas north.
Speaker 1: Of the state line.
Speaker 2: We were more or less growing up on the same water,
Speaker 2: albeit the decades in which we were first introduced to
Speaker 2: it were a little different. I made the drive down
Speaker 2: on the first afternoon and met Bradley at his new
Speaker 2: river camp location. This would be our headquarters for the
Speaker 2: next two nights of fishing. We were targeting flathead catfish,
Speaker 2: but not with nets. Our plan was to catch them
Speaker 2: using bank poles. Now I've talked about them before on here,
Speaker 2: but if you're I'm not familiar with them, the easiest
Speaker 2: way to describe it is is taking a fishing pole
Speaker 2: that you just job one end of it in the
Speaker 2: bank and tie a hook to the other end, bait
Speaker 2: it and drop it into water. And there's obviously more
Speaker 2: to it than that, but that will put a picture
Speaker 2: in your mind of what we were doing. Targeting flatheads
Speaker 2: is way more involved than just chunking bait out in
Speaker 2: the water.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I've talked about catching them before, so I'm not going
Speaker 2: to go into a lot of detail this time, but
Speaker 2: I will say they prefer live bait. Bluegill brim is
Speaker 2: a favorite of theirs. Blue gill brim is a favorite
Speaker 2: of mine. It is the favorite of mine, Following behind
Speaker 2: us everything else that swims, walks, or flies, everything, every
Speaker 2: reading thing. So why would I bait a hook with
Speaker 2: something that tastes great to catch something that tastes good?
Speaker 2: That is a question I kept asking myself and stating
Speaker 2: out loud to Bradley and anyone with an earshot as
Speaker 2: he ran a ten out mustad circle hook through the
Speaker 2: tenderloins of Lapomas macrocyris. That's the scientific name for what
Speaker 2: I can only imagine would be what an angel tasted like,
Speaker 2: should I ever have the opportunity to take a bite
Speaker 2: out of one as it flew by. But after he
Speaker 2: hooked a baitfish just below the dorsal fen and turned
Speaker 2: it loose to swim near the bottom of the river,
Speaker 2: my excitement level started to build as I thought about
Speaker 2: the possibilities of what we could catch. I've watched several
Speaker 2: videos with Bradley on his channel and using these bank poles.
Speaker 2: One of them is with a longtime friend of mine
Speaker 2: and his son from back home. Jeff Chester and his
Speaker 2: son Dusty are no strangers to catching fish or catching
Speaker 2: big fish. When I heard they'd started Opolus's bank Poles,
Speaker 2: I wasn't surprise. Also just talked to Dusty and he
Speaker 2: reported that they just sold out of all the inventory
Speaker 2: they had and they're looking to be back in stock
Speaker 2: this winter, which is in plenty of time to get
Speaker 2: ready for primetime bank pole fishing next spring.
Speaker 1: Jeff is a national champion boat fisherman and.
Speaker 2: A highly decorated veteran of gathering his vittals from the
Speaker 2: Good Lord's Grocery Store makes it easy to see how
Speaker 2: his son Dusty got so good at Anyway, they have
Speaker 2: a website where you can order the same poles we
Speaker 2: were using, and Bradley's are just like the ones I
Speaker 2: got it from them a couple of years ago. Reeve
Speaker 2: was going to put a link in the show description
Speaker 2: for that too, so be sure to save.
Speaker 1: It and check it out later this year.
Speaker 2: Now, Bradley had fish for about an hour and had
Speaker 2: an ice chest full of big old grim when we
Speaker 2: got there Bradley's an industrial electrician by trade. The folks
Speaker 2: like him are hard to put in a single category.
Speaker 1: He's smart, really smart.
Speaker 2: Bradley first saw the light of day in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: when the average gallon of gas would cost you sixty
Speaker 2: five cents. A case many trapper would set you back
Speaker 2: fifteen dollars, and the number one song for the whole
Speaker 2: year was Mama's Don't let your babies grow up to
Speaker 2: be cowboys by whaling and Willie I could go for
Speaker 2: another dose of all of that right about now, But
Speaker 2: that in Farm of the Louisiana, the Smith's welcomed baby
Speaker 2: Bradley into the fold, a self described family of folks
Speaker 2: living on the edge of the law, just doing what
Speaker 2: they needed to do to survive, just like everyone else.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Bradley is a stickler for abiden by game laws and
Speaker 2: watched me like a hawk. Not not that I'm prone
Speaker 2: to intentionally messing up by any means, but being a
Speaker 2: non resident makes it easier if you're not paying attention
Speaker 2: to any any differences there may be between state game laws,
Speaker 2: regardless of how similar the activity may be. The first
Speaker 2: evening we badeed up sixteen bank poles from a live
Speaker 2: well Bradley had built, leaving us twenty four brim to
Speaker 2: rebait through the night should we happen to catch any fish.
Speaker 2: Bradley's live well consisted of an oxygen bottle, a regulator
Speaker 2: holes in a stone bubbler that works way better than
Speaker 2: anything I've purchased ready made to do the same thing.
Speaker 2: Bait is the critical component of the operation, and as
Speaker 2: water temperatures start to rise later in the summer, it
Speaker 2: gets more difficult to keep them alive. That's why Bradley
Speaker 2: had a three hundred dollars bottle of oxygen fixed up
Speaker 2: to pump air into the roto molded ice chest he
Speaker 2: converted into a live well. Ideally, catching brim from the
Speaker 2: same water you're chasing flatheads is is what you want
Speaker 2: to do. But everyone I've talked to has had a
Speaker 2: slower year than normal trying to find the brown beds
Speaker 2: in the river back home, and Bradley said they've had
Speaker 2: to deal with this as well on the washitall so
Speaker 2: he and his son Dalan fish for less than an
Speaker 2: hour to both the forty that we were about to
Speaker 2: use from over on Lake Darbone. Less than twenty miles away.
Speaker 2: For all you folks that just sat back and gaps
Speaker 2: that I'd used the name of the lake where Bradley
Speaker 2: was fishing, get your drawers out of a knot and
Speaker 2: realize he's showing video and naming that lake in his
Speaker 2: content that has literally millions of views. Also, I specifically
Speaker 2: asked him how much he wanted me to share. That
Speaker 2: lake is fifteen miles long and three miles wide at
Speaker 2: its widest point, So look for something else to be
Speaker 2: mad about. Anyway, Keeping those bait fish alive is priority
Speaker 2: numero uno, and we couldn't have done that without the
Speaker 2: investment of equipment and trial and error experience. Bradley's been
Speaker 2: collecting data on all his life. Being the son of
Speaker 2: a commercial fisherman teaches you more than how to catch fish.
Speaker 2: You learn the best ways to utilize the resource with
Speaker 2: as little waste as possible. If you're wasting the resource,
Speaker 2: you're losing money, which defeats the reason you're out there
Speaker 2: to begin with.
Speaker 1: But not only that.
Speaker 2: When you're raised to protect and cherish the things that
Speaker 2: the Good Lord has given you to provide for your family,
Speaker 2: it takes on a whole other level of importance. Wasting
Speaker 2: any of it is not an option. The poles were
Speaker 2: all baited an hour after dark, and we pulled up
Speaker 2: on a sandbar and it turned out the lights and
Speaker 2: visited for a while. The dichotomy between the river I've
Speaker 2: been on a couple of weeks before in northern Saskatchewan
Speaker 2: in the Washita River in northern Louisiana was a sharp contrast,
Speaker 2: mostly in insects, and for whatever reason, the mosquitoes were
Speaker 2: way worse in Canada than they were in Louisiana, and
Speaker 2: I'd have lost money on that bed regardless. After thirty
Speaker 2: minutes or so, we decided to go back down the
Speaker 2: river two miles where we placed the first pole before
Speaker 2: we worked our way up.
Speaker 1: River checking the rest.
Speaker 2: The excitement of seeing that first pole start to bob
Speaker 2: up and down as the fish on the other end
Speaker 2: of the line reacted to the sound of the motor
Speaker 2: was beyond a measurable The first one was a big
Speaker 2: flathead and we would repeat that scenario nine more times
Speaker 2: until we called it a night and climbed into our
Speaker 2: bucks in Bradley's camping around two am. After rebating the
Speaker 2: lines and icing down one hundred and twenty five quarter
Speaker 2: ice chest full of fish and three big blue cats
Speaker 2: had been hooked along with the flatheads, but they were
Speaker 2: all released back into the river. We were up early
Speaker 2: and paused only long enough to get some coffee made
Speaker 2: before we went back to the river to check the lines.
Speaker 2: Four more flatheads and some blue cats retaliate. All the
Speaker 2: blues were released except for one that had swallowed the hook.
Speaker 1: He got it right back to Arkansas.
Speaker 2: Later that day, after cleaning fish, we ran both hoop
Speaker 2: nets Bradley had set before I got there. A few
Speaker 2: catfish were caught and released, but the star of that
Speaker 2: show for me was the buffalo. I dearly loved buffalo ribs.
Speaker 2: I've talked about them before, but I haven't conquered the
Speaker 2: challenge of catching them consistently. Actually, Tim and I have
Speaker 2: only had one catch a buffalo the on the only
Speaker 2: time we put our hoop nets out in the river,
Speaker 2: and we only caught three or four when we did.
Speaker 2: After that, we concentrated on the smaller wire nets and
Speaker 2: having fished the hoop net since, but I bought some
Speaker 2: new tags, renewed my commercial fishing license, and we're looking
Speaker 2: forward to making another run at them. When this fire
Speaker 2: in brimstone weather breaks. Later summer, I learned quite a
Speaker 2: bit about net fishing and flatheads while watching and talking
Speaker 2: to Bradley. Little things I should be paying closer attention to,
Speaker 2: like the subtle changes and the current around the smallest
Speaker 2: of points along the bank, things that I've always overlooked
Speaker 2: trying to find a bigger one. I thought the difference
Speaker 2: wasn't big enough to matter on such a small scale.
Speaker 2: Then I saw one hook that was placed perfectly in
Speaker 2: a spot catch multiple fish, while one rot beside it
Speaker 2: less than a yard away just beyond that zone.
Speaker 1: Didn't get a bite.
Speaker 2: That's the attention to details that comes from an analytical
Speaker 2: way of thinking. I watched Bradley set those hooks, but
Speaker 2: I didn't see how he caught those fish until he
Speaker 2: explained to me why he was setting them where he was.
Speaker 2: And that's how you learned the details of where and
Speaker 2: why are what matter. Until that day, I was looking
Speaker 2: for a likely spot. By paying attention, I started looking
Speaker 2: for a specific spot. I can think of a million
Speaker 2: places right now that I'm going to start setting those
Speaker 2: bank polls as soon as that it gets below a
Speaker 2: thousand degrees outside. Something else I learned by watching to
Speaker 2: talk to Bradley and his wife Danielle.
Speaker 1: The older ways are in good hands.
Speaker 2: There are more of us who rely on the tried
Speaker 2: and trusted ways of doing things out there than I thought.
Speaker 2: People enjoying are hunger for the kind of content that
Speaker 2: they produced, simple, close to the land, wholesome content that
Speaker 2: demonstrates a hard work and big reward ethic. Providing the
Speaker 2: majority of.
Speaker 1: The food for your family from nature isn't easy.
Speaker 2: I can testify to that because most of the meat
Speaker 2: and all the fish consumed in my home doesn't come
Speaker 2: from the grocery store. Preparing and packaging food to be
Speaker 2: put away properly is as big a part of the
Speaker 2: process as the hunting and fishing trips are, maybe even
Speaker 2: more so. What the Smiths are doing is not just
Speaker 2: entertainment to be enjoyed. They should be commended their efforts
Speaker 2: in allowing the rest of us to watch and learn
Speaker 2: from the lifestyle that they live. The older ways may
Speaker 2: be getting harder to find, but folks like Bradley and
Speaker 2: Danielle Smith are keeping those traditions alive, and they're far
Speaker 2: far from gone. If you enjoy simple, close to the land,
Speaker 2: honest to goodness, good content. Check out God's Country Hunting
Speaker 2: and Fishing on their YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: I think you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 2: And be sure to wait and watch for some bonus
Speaker 2: content that'll drop on from my trip down there. I
Speaker 2: think you'll enjoy it. Thank y'all so much for listening
Speaker 2: until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off.
Speaker 1: Y'all be careful, I think don