Speaker 1: This is me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear. Listening to Hunt
Speaker 1: E podcast, you can't predict anything presented by First Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to
Speaker 1: technical outerwear. For every hunt, first Light, go farther, stay longer. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: right off top. You know that here at Meat do
Speaker 1: we take calendars, real serious print calendars. And our second
Speaker 1: ever calendar is available now. So are are do they
Speaker 1: call your freshman effort? Is that what you call it?
Speaker 1: Like your first album when you're rock band? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds very sophomore album is your second one nos debut
Speaker 1: And then so our debut calendar was funked up old
Speaker 1: dear stands and that was so much fun. This year
Speaker 1: we're doing up old tax army. We got a lot
Speaker 1: of it. Kind of went different this year. You can't
Speaker 1: really mail a deer stand in no, especially the big
Speaker 1: permanent ones, you know, but this year we how many
Speaker 1: did you dig through steth? I think liked or soissions
Speaker 1: We got a lot out of there. But then we
Speaker 1: did something that I thought we should do the whole time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the suits kept the suits kept trying to prevent
Speaker 1: me from doing it. Well, I kept being like, why
Speaker 1: don't we have the ones that were it's a great
Speaker 1: specimen of fun up old tax army that the photos
Speaker 1: not that great. Have him mail us the item and
Speaker 1: You're like, you can't crate up all that, you can't
Speaker 1: create up all that. Well, we're gonna start creating it
Speaker 1: all shipping crates of right. You kind of got your
Speaker 1: way though, Well, yeah, and no, it's great. It took
Speaker 1: a while, and I had I made a commise. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, if the word crate is so offensive,
Speaker 1: we'll but we'll have stuff that fits in what would
Speaker 1: be called a box. So we had stuff boxed and
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I'll never say the word crate.
Speaker 1: I didn't introduce the word create anyways, someone else introduced
Speaker 1: the word crate woman, and I'm like, we should have
Speaker 1: him sending that s up in the next nit. Now
Speaker 1: they're going to create the boxed some of our favorites.
Speaker 1: And Seth like, we have a little We had a
Speaker 1: great beaver. Yeah, the who's for whatever he'son missing his hands,
Speaker 1: He's fucked the whole tax SERVI. He's missing his hands,
Speaker 1: and Seth took him out and set him next to
Speaker 1: a beaver chew tree and photographed him. We have like
Speaker 1: a mink and his natural habitat, but if you look
Speaker 1: at it's like just something not right with that mink
Speaker 1: under a bridge right where you catch him. Yep, it's
Speaker 1: a great calendar. Seth did the cover photo. What else
Speaker 1: we had a squirrel I'd set up in a tree
Speaker 1: and to picture just where you find them, not sitting
Speaker 1: in some guy's yard. It's a bad squirrel, funked up
Speaker 1: old taxidermy in its uh place in nature. Yeah, someone
Speaker 1: would be kind of hard to do. I think it's
Speaker 1: our sophomore talent. As things go, a sophomore effort doesn't
Speaker 1: do as well as the debut, no matter how many
Speaker 1: people watched Godfather too right, ain't as much as they
Speaker 1: watch Godfather. I think this one will perform. Oh it'll
Speaker 1: do good. Yeah, it'll do good. I was just setting
Speaker 1: that up as a challenge for listeners to feel like
Speaker 1: they should go buy it to prove me wrong. That
Speaker 1: might not be effective, maybe not if you. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing, it's more relatable. More people in this world
Speaker 1: owned funked up old taxidermy, then old fund up old deerstand. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I learned going through all those photos is there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fund up old taxidermy in this world.
Speaker 1: And just being in bars and whatnot working on this
Speaker 1: project made me like recognize, appreciate it more. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a little I wrote a little intro and there's
Speaker 1: a little essay in there about the stuff the material.
Speaker 1: So that's available now. Um. As they point out in
Speaker 1: the description, it covers all twelve months, as calendars do.
Speaker 1: Covers all twelve months of the year, all three and
Speaker 1: sixty five days. We didn't well, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of your calendars they'll get to late December, they'll peter off.
Speaker 1: This one sticks it out to the bitter end, sticks
Speaker 1: it out to the thirty first, just in case you have,
Speaker 1: you know, something going on. They get bored and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it's like they fade out. You know
Speaker 1: this one, you can stick six with you until New
Speaker 1: Year's even calendar funked up old tax during the available
Speaker 1: now wonderful photography seth Photography dominates the calendar. Thank you
Speaker 1: dominates the calendar. So I'll check it out now. The
Speaker 1: meat Eater Dot com and I think there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of things like last year we did stuff
Speaker 1: you know, you bought certain like would we ship it
Speaker 1: with certain items and all that. One thing I like
Speaker 1: about the calendar. The last thing I'll say about it
Speaker 1: is last year, if you looked at how many orders
Speaker 1: there were for the calendar, there were more calendars sold
Speaker 1: than orders, which means people wanted multiple calendars. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're buying good, I either steth. Okay, So so take
Speaker 1: a minute and buy that calendar. Uh, we'll wait for you. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now that you've got your calendar, I want to point
Speaker 1: out something here we have. If you subscribe to the show,
Speaker 1: you know this um, this show releases every week, right
Speaker 1: and then and then you know everyone, every Monday, this
Speaker 1: show releases. You leten do it on Mondays. On Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: you get to listen to the trivia show. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do a whole special episode, so it's not in the
Speaker 1: normal Monday cadence. We're doing a whole special drop of
Speaker 1: the Meat Eater podcast. And if you want to get married,
Speaker 1: I want to stay married. Any of this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and you like to hunting fish, you have to listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast because it will be a bunch of
Speaker 1: the people you know from this show in with their
Speaker 1: spouses to talk about. There are particular bits of advice
Speaker 1: or pain points that come from, you know, the lifestyle.
Speaker 1: So if you wake up one day and you're wondering
Speaker 1: why you see this mysterious drop of the Meat Eater
Speaker 1: podcast on an unexpected day, that's what that is. Gather
Speaker 1: around your you know, your loved ones, especially if you're
Speaker 1: married to one and listening. This gives me occasion to
Speaker 1: quote my favorite quote, which I like to quote at
Speaker 1: least every two weeks on this show, and it's from
Speaker 1: my friend Pat Durkin, who said of his area in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: if you're not a deer hunter, you sleep with one.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, for all those people getting slept with
Speaker 1: two and in all right, where are we at? All right?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna set the scene. Here we are. We're in
Speaker 1: the Bahamas, and we're departing from a small island with
Speaker 1: you know, like a few permanent residents and a bunch
Speaker 1: of vacation homes and and things on them, but just
Speaker 1: like a small remote island. We're headed out to go
Speaker 1: do some spear fishing. We're in a like a pretty
Speaker 1: souped up forty ft boats got twin outboards triple what
Speaker 1: am I saying? Triple outboards on it? And we're headed out.
Speaker 1: Everything around here is pretty shallow, you know. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of water ranging from you know, three ft deep
Speaker 1: to sixties seventy ft deep in this area, with a
Speaker 1: lot of reefs, um, sandy shallowerias, you know which which
Speaker 1: which flats fishermen will call flats, a lot of those
Speaker 1: around here. But we're gonna be going out into kind
Speaker 1: of that mid depth water and we're gonna be looking
Speaker 1: for were whole hunting for grouper in the reefs. We're
Speaker 1: looking for hog fish um, which I've never gotten before.
Speaker 1: We're gonna keep our eyes open for conk so to
Speaker 1: die for conqu's a big salt water snail that lays
Speaker 1: on the bottom, and also checking the ledges and holes
Speaker 1: and whatnot for spiny lobster, so a clawless lobster. And
Speaker 1: what's cool about the Bahamas is you can spear form.
Speaker 1: Now you are not allowed to use a spear gun here,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna be using slings, you know, nothing with
Speaker 1: a trigger mechanism. So we're gonna use the thing that
Speaker 1: people who aren't from a Hawaii call a Hawaiian sling,
Speaker 1: and people who are from Hawaii will generally call a
Speaker 1: three prong or a poll spear. We're using those. But
Speaker 1: like I said, you can actually shoot lobster with him.
Speaker 1: In a lot of places you can only hand grab lobsters,
Speaker 1: but you can shoot him here, which makes it easier.
Speaker 1: So we're keeping eyes off for all this stuff. And
Speaker 1: there's also a chance of like various plagic fish coming
Speaker 1: through and joined by some people you should be familiar with, Uh,
Speaker 1: Kimmy Werner, who I do a lot of stuff with
Speaker 1: and she's been on the show of Mediather, been in
Speaker 1: the podcast before. And Cameron kirk Connell. If that name
Speaker 1: rings the belts, because Cameron told a great story at
Speaker 1: the end of a recent podcast episode which was a
Speaker 1: teaser for our meters camp fire stories. Narrowness is more
Speaker 1: close calls he's the guy that saved his friend's life
Speaker 1: by shooting him. If you want to know what I mean,
Speaker 1: you gotta go in and listen to that story. There
Speaker 1: it goes Steve Man. That water feels good, all right, Cam, Steve,
Speaker 1: Kimmy and parent are in the water. I think they
Speaker 1: see something. They're still at the surface. Cam just shout
Speaker 1: to Steve and said that there are two hugs. It
Speaker 1: looks like Jimmy got something sweet. What kind of fish
Speaker 1: is that fish? Can we got a hog fish? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: look at that thing Karen's holding. Tell me so, this
Speaker 1: is my very very first hog fish. Apparently she's a
Speaker 1: female and actually missed my first shot, but me and
Speaker 1: both missed. And then I think I'm getting the hang
Speaker 1: of it a little more. Now. Look at how delicious
Speaker 1: and beautiful she looks. You want to describing it? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's like this quarrel corn colored, beautiful fish
Speaker 1: with like a spangled face, such an interesting nose, crazy
Speaker 1: shirt tea. And these streamers, these fins that are like
Speaker 1: absolute streamers, just like any other fish I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: so clear. Thank you. Steve's pulling the boat in when
Speaker 1: you come back with conk, have our vessel in it?
Speaker 1: Of eight count was very well developed. What do you
Speaker 1: call them? Fair? Beautiful? And they were in high current.
Speaker 1: That might be one way to explain. Remember how years
Speaker 1: were very covered in like a little dirty. These are
Speaker 1: like polished. Man, He's like, get ready for the gift shop.
Speaker 1: Ready for a key West gift shop shell shop. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're getting in the water we're at we have uh,
Speaker 1: we're being approached by warmer, dirty water, water from the
Speaker 1: flats and the dropping tide. We got a dropping tide
Speaker 1: all day. Unfortunately we're on a bit of a flat
Speaker 1: and were where it drops off. So we're sandwich between
Speaker 1: a like a tideline, an allege, an allege that drops
Speaker 1: from and it's going to force every fish in the
Speaker 1: Bahamas into this little pocket. And what are you hoping
Speaker 1: a spirit there, bunch of fish? Hog? No, a hog
Speaker 1: fill because yesterday yesterday, I well, yeah, I mean you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do, I blew, I blew molten too good to
Speaker 1: give hand me down hand Me's what am I trying
Speaker 1: to say? Give me? I blew two gimmes yesterday layoffs.
Speaker 1: So the other thing about this tideline coming is on
Speaker 1: the flats is so much food, shrimp, crabs of stuff.
Speaker 1: So as this comes, there's a lot of fish feeding
Speaker 1: on that drop. So we're gonna use the float lines
Speaker 1: here with the poll spears that way, with this a
Speaker 1: little bit deeper water. It goes from like thirty five
Speaker 1: to about sixty. We can shoot the plagics that are
Speaker 1: coming by. You should see big yellow jack's here and
Speaker 1: Max and also the bottom fish. Like you can shoot
Speaker 1: those bottom fish and keep pressure on them heading up
Speaker 1: to the surface, because if not, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: a tough die for anybody, you think, like chasing a fish,
Speaker 1: and even a small hog fish wraps around one little
Speaker 1: thing and you're attached to the bottom. Okay, I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in the boat with Captain Brandon Um and they're all
Speaker 1: in the water filming, and he's telling you what people,
Speaker 1: this is happening, sir. Right now, Cameron's following a big
Speaker 1: block right now, I'm assuming just he's swimming faster than
Speaker 1: everybody else, splashing on the surface, which sometimes will cause
Speaker 1: him though shoot off into hole if they feel really threatened.
Speaker 1: But right now he's just swimming and most likely swimming
Speaker 1: back to where you get his hole is now. It
Speaker 1: might be in fifty water, it might be in water.
Speaker 1: He's don't really he's not really showing no signs of
Speaker 1: slowing down. But it like that. See what he's doing now,
Speaker 1: he's trying to see He's just he just dove down.
Speaker 1: He's going down to try and chase him into hold,
Speaker 1: because the closer you get to them, the more threatened
Speaker 1: they feel, especially after that already started to swim away
Speaker 1: from you. So they're really kind of teaming up. Everyone's
Speaker 1: almost got a roll, right, yes, So like stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you want to keep an eye on him. Like if
Speaker 1: one person goes down to try run him, he could
Speaker 1: go in a hole and shoot a totally different direction.
Speaker 1: So it's always going to have multiple eyes in the water.
Speaker 1: See like how he's coming back towards as now he's
Speaker 1: swimming them in a big circle. He probably doesn't want
Speaker 1: to go. Oh, he's like splashing about. He's causing a
Speaker 1: lot of ripple. And first he was going out towards
Speaker 1: the deeper water. Now he's coming back in. He's gonna
Speaker 1: probably keep going around in a circle until they get
Speaker 1: there and until he gets tired or he feels safe
Speaker 1: enough in a certain hole. But he's going to go in.
Speaker 1: But most of the time they will ah they're going
Speaker 1: the hole, or they'll swimming until you tie it and
Speaker 1: you just give up. That's all that's all they do.
Speaker 1: Cam swimming real fast, okay, yeah, real caton mouse. You
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta keep up with that that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 1: Because the big group was like that, they could outswume you.
Speaker 1: And we're talking how big. I don't know. I could
Speaker 1: be anywhere from what to what a man to be
Speaker 1: all what I would call a big what I call
Speaker 1: big as a sixty seventy bond, fifty six seventy bonds,
Speaker 1: that's a big one, and you get over seventy that's
Speaker 1: a month. We did sprint marathon. We did the fish
Speaker 1: equivalent of tracking a bish. That's a lot like shooting
Speaker 1: a tracking him and then he jumps up and he
Speaker 1: runs again and you gotta wait. But in this case
Speaker 1: we have to like sprint, swim for a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred yards between each time rest up, and every time
Speaker 1: he went deeper too. It was like fifty sixty back
Speaker 1: into fifty. And every time we went down and had
Speaker 1: a chance, like we had one little thing off for
Speaker 1: one of us spooked him or something, and he'd do
Speaker 1: it again. The more you follow him, the more you
Speaker 1: want someone to shoot him. He gets bigger and bigger.
Speaker 1: It's real personal. I'm thinking the goods was and for
Speaker 1: me it was so importing to have you guys sprinting
Speaker 1: because I come up from those deeper dives, barely wiped out,
Speaker 1: and just like have the assurance I can swim slow,
Speaker 1: breathe out, recover, I get ready while you guys are
Speaker 1: checking it. Steve and I were swimming as hard as
Speaker 1: could chasing it, and Kimmy would just like take your dime,
Speaker 1: come up rolling gaging multiple times, like every one of
Speaker 1: us was like fin deep in the holes. Like I
Speaker 1: don't know how many videos we have of it, but
Speaker 1: at one point you were getting somebody's fish out of
Speaker 1: a hole and I had you by the belt and
Speaker 1: pulled you out because you're so far in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I kept trying to back out on my own
Speaker 1: and go up and I wasn't out yet. And finally
Speaker 1: I just felt you talking about like like the hole
Speaker 1: as being like a little like a cave. Like Okay,
Speaker 1: basically a lot of the hunting we're doing today, we're
Speaker 1: going down. We're looking at these ledges that look like
Speaker 1: this little ledges. But the minute you get down there,
Speaker 1: you can actually something will lure you to creeping further
Speaker 1: and further in, and you can actually get pretty deep
Speaker 1: within those some emergence, you know, the holes the size
Speaker 1: of a tent some are like flat and deep. Sorry
Speaker 1: on a child. What are you holding, Steve, I'm holding
Speaker 1: two yellow yellow? What yellow? Finn, Drew Ber, what's your
Speaker 1: I don't know. Over ten pounds? How long is that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's longer than your arm, bigger than your arm? Yeah,
Speaker 1: time pound fish can We caught a ginormous huge hog
Speaker 1: fish first, one fish. I feel absolutely elated like that
Speaker 1: about the fact that I missed him before you got him.
Speaker 1: I mean that I feel like that tarnish dumber made
Speaker 1: him cool because I actually I missed one first and
Speaker 1: then you missed, and so it made me feel better.
Speaker 1: But they didn't make the victory that much sweeter for sure.
Speaker 1: But man, it's such cool thing. They really are. This
Speaker 1: later looks like an alien. It's cool to have. Like
Speaker 1: when you look at all these fish up close, all
Speaker 1: the different details on him, like stuff that you don't
Speaker 1: think about when they're far away, but like all this
Speaker 1: like paint. It looks like he's got painted up on
Speaker 1: his forehead. It's like pink yellow, these little blue lines.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine recently pointed out an irony of
Speaker 1: sort of an irony of duck hunting, or he's like
Speaker 1: you don't really get to see what they really look like.
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate their beauty till you kill one,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you get then you get in
Speaker 1: your hands. You're like, holy shit, man, you know that's
Speaker 1: the only way to really really study them hands. And
Speaker 1: that's what that looks worth. They're like colors before they
Speaker 1: all fade away and change. I just can't even believe
Speaker 1: it's cooler we're looking at. Yeah, that's what one sixty
Speaker 1: and it's full to the top. Yeah, welcome to the
Speaker 1: fish market, all right, everybody. Uh so join the day
Speaker 1: by me of course, mean asshole Kimmy Werner. Huh, but
Speaker 1: that's not a good answer. Touching well listen, man, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you yeah, he's real, super sensitive. My wife
Speaker 1: wrote me a mean email. I did see the email. Really,
Speaker 1: she singing an email. It was brutal. She's down on me,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate it. But it's just basically because you
Speaker 1: asked Jimmy for her opinion and my wife wrote me
Speaker 1: an me, an email. You know what. I'm still mad
Speaker 1: at my wife. But how she wouldn't change her name
Speaker 1: to my name. But Jimmy was saying when she met
Speaker 1: she met Katie just randomly, and Katie introduced herself as
Speaker 1: Katie Ronella. Uh. Probably because she knew that we knew
Speaker 1: each other. You knew it would ring a bell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's cute. Uh. Brandon Aubrey first time on the show.
Speaker 1: Ye go ahead and say, go and tell people where
Speaker 1: you're from. So I'm I'm from the Obama's what the
Speaker 1: islands called Abacote. It's got a small keys off of
Speaker 1: it called green Turtle Key. That's why I'm OBRIGENNI from.
Speaker 1: That's where you're brought up. That's why I was brought up.
Speaker 1: A long line of commercial, long line of commercial fisherman. Yes,
Speaker 1: got it, my father, my ground thought and Karen and
Speaker 1: then parent James, parent James, Yes, sir, here, I am
Speaker 1: damn it. Uh So, when I was going through the names,
Speaker 1: Cameron Kirkconnell might ring a bell to y'all because he's
Speaker 1: kind of long story. I became acquainted with Cameron because
Speaker 1: Cameron was a part of our Campfire Stories audio book
Speaker 1: number two and which was Narrow Misss and more close Calls,
Speaker 1: and in keeping with tradition, when we came out with
Speaker 1: that audio series, we uh we teased y'all titilated y'all
Speaker 1: by playing like one of our favorite joints off it.
Speaker 1: You get that reference as they call a song a
Speaker 1: track on on contemporary albums. He called joint one of
Speaker 1: the joints off that One of the joints off that
Speaker 1: album was Cameron kirk Connell talking about the time he
Speaker 1: saved his body and you know, and many of you
Speaker 1: have heard this story now time he saved his body
Speaker 1: spear fishing by shooting him in the finn shooting him
Speaker 1: in the flipper what we used to call him we
Speaker 1: were kids. Uh. So we're gonna hear a little more
Speaker 1: because that's like, there's a couple more I want to
Speaker 1: get a couple more questions into him about the back
Speaker 1: story and and this is also in keeping the tradition, Crint,
Speaker 1: because with number one, one of our favorite stories, they're
Speaker 1: all great. One of the favorite stories was Sam Lowry's
Speaker 1: story about the sociopathic Elk Poacher, and then he later
Speaker 1: came on the show and gave us a little story.
Speaker 1: So we're in keeping with tradition here. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: hear a little more from Cameron on that and a
Speaker 1: little bit about his career, which is a which is
Speaker 1: a very interesting um knee. She's carved off for himself
Speaker 1: and this and this uh global life that he lives.
Speaker 1: But uh companies, we got hit off right off the bat.
Speaker 1: We're in the Bahamas, do we know? Go ahead, Cameron,
Speaker 1: explain where we are. We're in the Bahamas. There you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's more exact than saying the Atlantic or Caribbean surrounded
Speaker 1: by a lot of shallow water, which is in proximity
Speaker 1: to some extremely deep water, which makes it a very
Speaker 1: verdant environment around here, like a like a life rich environment. Yep.
Speaker 1: That that having that shallow water in the proximity to
Speaker 1: deep water, but a large area of connecting shallow water
Speaker 1: creates a a nursery, you know, an ecosystem that you
Speaker 1: know can constantly you know, resupply itself. You know, we
Speaker 1: had talked about it kind of on the way over here. Initially,
Speaker 1: you know, as a kid, I thought, I need to
Speaker 1: go to the most remote islands that are out there
Speaker 1: by themselves, because that's got to be the best spot.
Speaker 1: But it's such a finite area of like divable and
Speaker 1: fish double bottom before it drops off to infinity. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty small group of fish that's going to live there.
Speaker 1: So come to find out that a lot of these
Speaker 1: areas that are just connected for a hundred miles by
Speaker 1: five or ten or twenty ft of water, those are
Speaker 1: by far the best because they just have that gigantic
Speaker 1: area to grow more fish. And you just, you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty wild to to see, you know, a spot
Speaker 1: like this. You think, holy cow, there's so many people
Speaker 1: coming here. But you're talking to hold up. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just holds up, you know, Yeah, because I just need
Speaker 1: to keep in tradition and set the scene. You're all
Speaker 1: about the scene. Set people need to know, you know
Speaker 1: where we are. Can I get into our needs now?
Speaker 1: This is a sensitive issue. Speaking to my wife, she
Speaker 1: told me just to drop it, but I can't drop it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had a fish heist in our office. In our office,
Speaker 1: we had a fish heist. We came home with a
Speaker 1: bunch of fish. One of the coolers of fish. It
Speaker 1: was a styrofoam cooler we had like we brought some
Speaker 1: soft sided coolers filled our soft sided coolers up in
Speaker 1: Louisiana had extra fish. A dude and dude next door
Speaker 1: gave us one of them thick styrofoam coolers. Chester. I
Speaker 1: know this for a fact. Chester loaded all that fish
Speaker 1: into the star foam cooler, taped it up, got back
Speaker 1: to the office and went into the freezer by my
Speaker 1: office and placed that cooler in the freezer. Had kobia
Speaker 1: had um a thing that I've seen what seems to
Speaker 1: me would be of low interest. Which is which? Which
Speaker 1: is my Barracouta flats and had a bunch of snapper flats. Later,
Speaker 1: I go to get it with my neighbor, pottery Pat,
Speaker 1: and we go down and I'm like, I gotta stop
Speaker 1: in here and grab my fish. A couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks, A couple of weeks go by.
Speaker 1: I go in there. It's like a Sunday. We go
Speaker 1: down there. It's not in there. I go check the
Speaker 1: other freezer, it's not in there. I go check the
Speaker 1: freezer in the lunch room area. It's not in there.
Speaker 1: We put out all company, where's the fish? That's stupid.
Speaker 1: I'm not on it, but slack I don't use it.
Speaker 1: So put out of all companies. I offered twenty reward
Speaker 1: another company. My wife's enough already with a stupid fish.
Speaker 1: If it was missing electronics, right, if it was missing electronics.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't just wouldn't just sweep it under the rug.
Speaker 1: And it's like if someone took it by accident, someone
Speaker 1: took it by accident accident, yeah, or like there's all
Speaker 1: this free or if I like stuff around, wasn't thinking
Speaker 1: and gave it to him, they'd be like, dude, you
Speaker 1: gave me that fish. But it's not true. No one
Speaker 1: will come forward. So Steve wants another part of the
Speaker 1: story because then after you put out the all company emails,
Speaker 1: didn't the cooler we found the cooler with the dang
Speaker 1: talon in one of our one of our equipment guys
Speaker 1: who manages equipment um and many other things, says, oh,
Speaker 1: I found that cooler with a towel in it. Empty
Speaker 1: cooler with a towel in it in like the cardboard
Speaker 1: box area. No one will come forward. So what we're
Speaker 1: trying to find is we're trying to find a polygraph
Speaker 1: examiner who can come into the studio. But in Montana,
Speaker 1: polygraphs are not admissible. We've done a little bit of
Speaker 1: research actually, so it's not like we don't have a
Speaker 1: shipload of polygraph examiners running around because polygraph evidence isn't
Speaker 1: admissible in court in Montana, but they use it on
Speaker 1: sex offenders. So we need someone that's got the damn
Speaker 1: polygraph machine knows how to run it. They're gonna come
Speaker 1: into the studio and we're gonna start with Chester and
Speaker 1: work out from there and polygraph exam as part of
Speaker 1: a podcast episode. I'll just say this as a disclaimer.
Speaker 1: It probably is illegal to force our colleagues to take
Speaker 1: a polygraph test. So we're gonna ask them to step
Speaker 1: forward and if they won't do it, and I'd be like, also,
Speaker 1: where's the fish. If someone's like, I'm not doing app
Speaker 1: like they give me the fish bag, Because if you
Speaker 1: won't do it, that's the best way. It's like coming
Speaker 1: to do a polygraph. I'm not doing a polygraph. Then
Speaker 1: you know they're guilty. It's like, what do they do
Speaker 1: with the Baracuda plays? The other way I'm gonna catch them.
Speaker 1: The other way i'm gonna catch him is I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start talking about man, I've never tried barracuda, and someone's
Speaker 1: gonna be like, I'm like, how would you go? And
Speaker 1: then I'll know they stole the fish? Said guys, Stay tuned.
Speaker 1: Part two of the saga, Yeah, you and your machine
Speaker 1: will just come to the office. CRD will fly you
Speaker 1: out with your machine. I don't know, they look like
Speaker 1: it really looks some people up. I'm looking set up.
Speaker 1: I'm hooking Chester up, and I'm just gonna start hooking
Speaker 1: random people up from the office. Kylie sent out that
Speaker 1: she's my lead suspect because because she's the one that's
Speaker 1: so hot to find the person. It's like us, like
Speaker 1: ston't smelled her first, you know what I mean, she
Speaker 1: is truly the last person ever. So, oh, here's the
Speaker 1: other big need. And this is more complicated than Spencer's
Speaker 1: being a pain in my ass right now about it.
Speaker 1: We bought that punt gun. We bought a punt gun
Speaker 1: at auction for not a small amount of money. Uh,
Speaker 1: to the point where it's like a little bit controversial
Speaker 1: in the office. Is the punt gun? Um, what we're
Speaker 1: really having a hard time finding is we're having a
Speaker 1: hard time finding shells for it. Someone that can make
Speaker 1: the shells for it. So I think when we estimated
Speaker 1: it out, it's a it's a Holland and Holland. It's
Speaker 1: an H and H punt gun from the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: I think we estimated it. They don't go by gauges,
Speaker 1: but it's like a two gauge huge chee. We have
Speaker 1: like one or two casings. We have one or two
Speaker 1: casings for it. There's all this stuff too, like you
Speaker 1: can't use, so we need someone that can load the
Speaker 1: shells for us. We've been checking around with some shell makers,
Speaker 1: but people it seems that people don't really want to
Speaker 1: go near it. The guy we bought it from said quote,
Speaker 1: I'm a little hesitant to just forward the info because
Speaker 1: it basically amounts to pack a whole bunch of black
Speaker 1: powder and lead shot and do a really big cartridge
Speaker 1: based on info from a guy in another country that
Speaker 1: you've never met, related to you through two other guys
Speaker 1: you've never met. So he goes on, so please check
Speaker 1: into all this all that, he says, But I know
Speaker 1: you guys are professional, so you'll figure it out. To
Speaker 1: ounces twenty DRAMs of course black powder, ten ounces a shot,
Speaker 1: two mini camera, Yeah, two ounces of course black powder.
Speaker 1: And there's something like you got to use like an
Speaker 1: old timey black powder because the integrity the barrel and
Speaker 1: it's ten ounces shot or one point five ounces of
Speaker 1: fifteen DRAMs or or one point five ounces or fifteen
Speaker 1: DRAMs of course black powder and eight ounces a shot
Speaker 1: phil case with powder, measure out shot, fill space between
Speaker 1: powder and shot, making sure no air gap overshot card
Speaker 1: wad to keep shot in place, using scotch tape to
Speaker 1: secure primer. It'll be either a thirty eight or thirty
Speaker 1: two pistol blank or you can figure out a way
Speaker 1: to rig a standard shotgun and primer in it. I
Speaker 1: gotta find a way to get him made. Someone out
Speaker 1: there has to have a whole pile of old punt
Speaker 1: gun casing or know someone who does. And well, how
Speaker 1: our safety glasses on? Please write us at meat Eater
Speaker 1: at the meat eator dot com. I'm gonna put a
Speaker 1: safety glasses and maybe like a cut and torch thing
Speaker 1: on clear you know, you know I'm talking about. That
Speaker 1: was one of the funniest things about the pandemic because
Speaker 1: you know, everybody the face shields. It look like a
Speaker 1: welder that they all said face shield on him. It's like,
Speaker 1: not many products say what you know? I mean, so
Speaker 1: a few products say what the product is. It's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: all right. Those are the two primary needs I want
Speaker 1: to follow up on one quick thing before we get
Speaker 1: back into what we're talking about, is, at one point
Speaker 1: we're discussing scrolled them injuries and I don't know where
Speaker 1: how did you rEFInd this from? You didn't rEFInd this?
Speaker 1: The guy emailed me like a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1: We hadn't heard from him since January of That's when
Speaker 1: we talked about it on the pod and he yeah, um,
Speaker 1: he just he just emailed me back out of the blue. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so I'm gonna revisit what happened, so so damn long.
Speaker 1: It was one of the better scroll of him stories
Speaker 1: that came in. He was riding horses down his family
Speaker 1: lives in West Texas, UM, but they were down in
Speaker 1: the Chiuahuan Desert of Old Mexico. He came across what
Speaker 1: he now believes was a rattlesnake, and the horse freaked out. Um.
Speaker 1: He fell off the horse and thought he was okay,
Speaker 1: but then looked. I was surprised to see that one
Speaker 1: of his testicles was actually out of it, out of
Speaker 1: the scroll, hanging on by its cord. It's like you
Speaker 1: want to talk about freeballing, okay, hanging out of his
Speaker 1: jeans and out of the scroll. They had the wherewithal
Speaker 1: to pack it. Ice still hooked to the court kind
Speaker 1: of looked like that conk you're cleaning yesterday. Packed it
Speaker 1: nice and headed for the border, got stopped by federalis.
Speaker 1: One of the kids had a air soft pistol spray
Speaker 1: painted black so it looked like a real gun. The
Speaker 1: FEDERALI see this, he says. There's lots of shouting and
Speaker 1: waving the guns. Someone notices the scroll, the testicle starts
Speaker 1: yelling vominals, fominals and waves of groups. He gets sixteen
Speaker 1: stitches in his leg and twelve stitches. They talked. They
Speaker 1: tucked the nut back in and twelve stitches to the
Speaker 1: scroll to put it back in there. Doctor said ice
Speaker 1: was the best thing that could have done. Now, he
Speaker 1: writes back in, just got to thinking about it, thinking
Speaker 1: about it, and he wanted to add some details. He
Speaker 1: wanted us to know that the cord is called the
Speaker 1: epididymus unsevered that the medical professional said it was a
Speaker 1: good move that he packed in ice, especially because it's
Speaker 1: so hot and dry down there. The main follow up
Speaker 1: possess his uncle worked in a prison for years. His
Speaker 1: uncle said that this is one of the most common
Speaker 1: self inflicted wounds that inmates used to get themselves sent
Speaker 1: to the hospital. It's called a d glove to testicle
Speaker 1: and they do it with a sharpened pencil. For what
Speaker 1: that's worth. Oh, one other thing we gott get into this.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be put bad after this. The fish
Speaker 1: heightst is just getting started. But this is gonna be
Speaker 1: put the bad. Uh. White tailed. So so as everybody
Speaker 1: knows the proper way to say, like the scientifically accepted
Speaker 1: way to say the white tailed deer, the dear we
Speaker 1: all know and love America's dear. If you're ever writing
Speaker 1: a letter to someone, you're supposed to say, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to write white dash tailed deer, not white tails. I
Speaker 1: was saying how heffle Finger is stupid for believing this,
Speaker 1: and I also, in that same conversation regular guest heffle
Speaker 1: Finger also who's set to come on pretty soon. I
Speaker 1: also said that he's nipple deep and jaguar stuff. He
Speaker 1: wrote in to say I'm also nipple deep and dear
Speaker 1: stuff he's saying. Despite anding I've said, white tailed deer
Speaker 1: isn't an old version, It isn't something from Pat's world.
Speaker 1: It is the official and correct name of that species.
Speaker 1: It is common to use the colloquial form white tail
Speaker 1: or white tails. I use that cont this heffle finger.
Speaker 1: I use that constantly to mix it up and not
Speaker 1: sounds so stiff and formal as one does using the
Speaker 1: correct full name all the time. Then he goes on
Speaker 1: to say it is uncommon among knowledgeable people to use
Speaker 1: white tailed deer or white tails. Pat goes on, this
Speaker 1: is a group email, calls me a thing that I
Speaker 1: can't repeat. On error, he says, you ignorant, it's words
Speaker 1: is not even in my vocabulary. I clearly said that
Speaker 1: white tailed deer is wrong and white tailed deer is right.
Speaker 1: Changing it now on one man's personal preference, long after
Speaker 1: the proper name is established in science and literature, as
Speaker 1: shown in the Deer books. I referenced earlier as a
Speaker 1: kin to Fox News calling the Democratic Party it's official name,
Speaker 1: the Democrat Party. Okay, back to cleaning bluegills from Pat,
Speaker 1: I'm done, Okay, go ahead, but then we're done. Pat
Speaker 1: used a Saturday Night Live reference and called Steve an
Speaker 1: ignorant slut. Okay, because man, when I came back from
Speaker 1: New Zealand, I had a very bad word that got
Speaker 1: into my vocabulary and speaking to my wife again, I
Speaker 1: used it one time who had not go I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know why you're being sua uh alright, So
Speaker 1: first off, Cameron, I want a little more, like a
Speaker 1: little more detail around the story you told about, uh
Speaker 1: saving the your friend. First off, explain your professional occupation,
Speaker 1: Like in the story you say like you were in
Speaker 1: were out of can't may where you were somewhere in Florida.
Speaker 1: We're on the west coast Flordia, and you were doing
Speaker 1: you were doing tarban guiding. So I worked at the time,
Speaker 1: I got a school and started working on ships. That's
Speaker 1: what I went to college for. Him, to the Merchant
Speaker 1: Marine Academy. Yeah, you're you're qualified for anything that floats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if it's not floating, we decided I don't want
Speaker 1: anything to do with it. But like you can pilot
Speaker 1: any ship, yes, or drive any whatever the hell you
Speaker 1: call it? What do you call it ships? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: I have an unlimited tonnage captain's license basically like trans
Speaker 1: oceanic stuff we're involved in. So, as you've noticed this week,
Speaker 1: I have major fomo you know, for like whatever the
Speaker 1: best thing is going on at the time. So I
Speaker 1: would work for four months at a time and travel
Speaker 1: around the world, um, you know, working on the ships.
Speaker 1: And during that time, I had unlimited resources for charts.
Speaker 1: So I would look at charts like all day long,
Speaker 1: and as the places I would go would be like,
Speaker 1: this looks like it would work because it you know,
Speaker 1: they're blah blah blah. So I would just plan the
Speaker 1: places I was gonna be for my four months off
Speaker 1: for surfing, fishing, spear fishing, and I just traveled around
Speaker 1: the world, just immersed myself in each of these places.
Speaker 1: So like a place like the West coast of Florida, Um,
Speaker 1: I had a buddy that was a Tarpen guide there.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, we knew the spear fishing was
Speaker 1: great there. He's like, you know, on our days off,
Speaker 1: we can go, you know, spear fish. I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll come mate for you make two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks a day, you know cash and get to go
Speaker 1: fish for Tarpen every day. So that's when you guys
Speaker 1: were taking you guys were like taking chartering clients to
Speaker 1: fish Tarpen correct and then on a day off. I
Speaker 1: remember like trying to smooth that out, and we were
Speaker 1: editing the the project is uh, you're like you very
Speaker 1: quickly said, I was helping people, You were helping people
Speaker 1: catch tarpen. Yeah. Yeah, So I was working as a mate,
Speaker 1: like on a charter boat there if I do like
Speaker 1: two months at a time with him. But at that
Speaker 1: same time, you were merchant marine and doing the ship work, right,
Speaker 1: So that was in you're done with that, now done
Speaker 1: with that. So that was during my four months you
Speaker 1: know vacations, because you usually you worked for four months
Speaker 1: and then you had four months off. So I knew that,
Speaker 1: you know, Indonesia was good that time of year. So
Speaker 1: I'd go to Indonesia for two or three months and like,
Speaker 1: you know, just basically go as far as I could
Speaker 1: and listen to story after story that was gonna link
Speaker 1: me to the next spot to check out, you know,
Speaker 1: and see a picture of a fish in one place
Speaker 1: and figure out where that was and go to the
Speaker 1: next one, and just just kind of grew my you know,
Speaker 1: knowledge base, you know, by traveling, traveling and like really
Speaker 1: being there, you know, not going for two or three days,
Speaker 1: but going for months and then coming back again for months.
Speaker 1: And that's how I like you know, really obviously got
Speaker 1: good at what I do now, but um yeah, fell
Speaker 1: in love with with being at the edge of the
Speaker 1: earth all the time, and and hit real quick, I
Speaker 1: know you're you got your like. You do a handful
Speaker 1: of things, but talking about your like, that's sort of
Speaker 1: like guiding into your business. So my core thing was
Speaker 1: about Um, I guess ten or twelve years ago, somebody
Speaker 1: asked me, hey, will you take me spear fishing? I
Speaker 1: was like, sure, okay, um and they said, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna charge? Was like, I don't know because there's
Speaker 1: no real spear fishing guide at the time. Long story short.
Speaker 1: Halfway through the first day, he's like, you're really good
Speaker 1: at this. This is what you need to do for work.
Speaker 1: There's a niche for this. It's okay. And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: i'll read book you. I want you to find me.
Speaker 1: Uh you know a boat in the Bahamas. Um, take
Speaker 1: my son and his buddies and you know, do a
Speaker 1: trip with them. I'm like, okay. By the time I
Speaker 1: got home from that trip, he had told too of
Speaker 1: his buddies and they called me and from there at man,
Speaker 1: it just blew up. And you know, I always you
Speaker 1: can get the boat, operate the boat. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: take care all the paperwork. Mostly what I do is
Speaker 1: I am hired to go and basically captain other people's boats,
Speaker 1: you know, around the world and mate and guide. So
Speaker 1: my core knowledge base is where and when to go
Speaker 1: and the way my mind has always worked. If I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spend my own money to be on the edge
Speaker 1: of the earth, I want to be at the best
Speaker 1: place at the right time and the right moon tied
Speaker 1: everything to have a chance to world record, and that's
Speaker 1: been one of the hardest things for me. Two shift,
Speaker 1: too is expectations for people might not be there, you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, to go and just get enough fish
Speaker 1: for dinner is what we're doing nine nine percent of
Speaker 1: the days. You know. The record thing is such a
Speaker 1: small part of it. But coming to terms with that
Speaker 1: myself has been tough because my drive is so hard,
Speaker 1: like to go and get records, and personally, I think
Speaker 1: I've had fifteen or eighteen records. I've had a bunch,
Speaker 1: but I've I've guided clients even if it's their first
Speaker 1: week ever spear fishing, to a total of like I
Speaker 1: think twenty or twenty five. It's been a bunch. So
Speaker 1: Kim and I were talking about this. What I take
Speaker 1: the most pride in now and enjoy the most is
Speaker 1: being able to convey that knowledge to other people to
Speaker 1: get them enjoy you know, what we're doing and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: So now where that's taking my business is I have
Speaker 1: myself and a couple other guys that work with me,
Speaker 1: and people hire us to take him all over the
Speaker 1: world too, you know, hunt different fish. How do you
Speaker 1: get their boats there? Usually I have connections for boats
Speaker 1: in different countries. Um and a lot of guys have
Speaker 1: have the means with these really big, badass boats that
Speaker 1: we can take all over the world. So I've got
Speaker 1: some groups that we've got stuff planned two years out,
Speaker 1: Like we know that we're gonna go to this island
Speaker 1: group in Tahiti this part of the year, and then
Speaker 1: the boat's gonna shift Fiji. Then it's gonna go to
Speaker 1: Tonga and go here, here, and here. So we plan
Speaker 1: like there are tenneries as well, like all over the
Speaker 1: world and they fly in and out. Okay, So now
Speaker 1: let's get on with the guy. The guy who pulled
Speaker 1: the bottle of the bottom. He wasn't near the bottom
Speaker 1: of deep thank God, he wouldn't hear the bottom. We're
Speaker 1: like eight foot, so that that's what happens to him,
Speaker 1: if I mean his ear drum's gotta be cooked, right,
Speaker 1: oh man. So when he came up, like Steve's got
Speaker 1: a kind of blue colored on with a it's a
Speaker 1: meat eator shirt with some muskie or something eating another
Speaker 1: fish eating another fish. That color blue on that color
Speaker 1: blue on your shirt is what he was, like, his
Speaker 1: whole face and everything. Like when Karin was c sick
Speaker 1: the other day, she was pretty green, literally turned green.
Speaker 1: He was. He was even more passed. I didn't know
Speaker 1: he he was blue like for all intensive purposes, I
Speaker 1: thought he was dead. And then he had blood coming
Speaker 1: out of everything. You think how hard it is to
Speaker 1: go to the bottom of your pool without equalizing your
Speaker 1: ears that pressure you feel in your ears, imagine going
Speaker 1: like when I pulled the trigger on him, I I
Speaker 1: think I was in seventy ft or eighty foot by
Speaker 1: the time I got to the surface. By the time
Speaker 1: they started pulling him up. God knows how deep he was, oh,
Speaker 1: because he would have kept sinking that he kept sinking,
Speaker 1: because you figure from the depth I was at, it
Speaker 1: would have taken. He's talk about a guy that passed
Speaker 1: out in the water and just started to sink, and
Speaker 1: you have like the this is the I think you
Speaker 1: get into this too. There's like a reflex I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I don't really know about this. You want to like,
Speaker 1: if you pass out under water, why don't you just
Speaker 1: instantly drown? Right, there's like a like a reflex probably
Speaker 1: the dates back to when you're in your mother's womb
Speaker 1: that you don't breathe. It shuts off, like you just
Speaker 1: don't breathe. Your body is doing everything and it's power
Speaker 1: to survive for you doing some dumb ship move that
Speaker 1: kept it from getting ops oxygen. Basically, it's so weird
Speaker 1: to your body just says, right, take a big old
Speaker 1: sucking a big old gold water, so you're your vocal
Speaker 1: courts close and lock down your throat so you're not
Speaker 1: taking any water in and basically you go. You're passed
Speaker 1: out unless you have your snarkle in your mouth exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the reasons we take o. If
Speaker 1: you have your snarkle in your mouth, then you pass out.
Speaker 1: It'll actually funnel water straight down your throat and you've drown. Faster,
Speaker 1: you will actually drown instead of it instead of locking up,
Speaker 1: it'll just like a straw. Before I did, I had
Speaker 1: to learn and later you're supposed to take that thing out.
Speaker 1: We're kids, man, we always kept the right in. There's
Speaker 1: a good reason to take you think about it's like whoop.
Speaker 1: You know that that pressure to because you and any
Speaker 1: there could be like an air pocket there which you
Speaker 1: think you're gonna sip air, right, and so the your
Speaker 1: body shuts down, you're you know totally, you know out basically,
Speaker 1: and you've got these sensors on your face. So when
Speaker 1: you when you come up to the surface, that's what
Speaker 1: your body is waiting for is to feel air because
Speaker 1: you're the sensors on your face can feel that you're
Speaker 1: in the water, and your body is just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to go in total survival mode. We're gonna
Speaker 1: slow down to heart, We're gonna stop breathing, We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna close or track you like we're I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: close our our vocal cords, like we're just gonna survive
Speaker 1: as long as we can until we feel air again.
Speaker 1: So if you don't feel air, eventually, your body is
Speaker 1: gonna be like, hey man, we're about to run out
Speaker 1: of all fuel all together. We gotta do a last
Speaker 1: ditch effort, and that's called terminal gap ASP and that
Speaker 1: does eventually happen. Eventually happen. So when you pull someone
Speaker 1: a drowning victim up, who like a who blacked out underwater?
Speaker 1: Now who drowned at the surface. So you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta really differentiate drowning and blackout. They're totally two. You're
Speaker 1: at the surface golden water when you're drowning, correct, So
Speaker 1: a blackout victim is way easier to deal with than
Speaker 1: than a drown But that blackout victim will eventually inhale water. Correct.
Speaker 1: And you hear about like little Timmy that fell through
Speaker 1: the ice and survived thirty minutes or whatever, age, temperature
Speaker 1: of the water, like all the conditions everything determine how
Speaker 1: long before the terminal gas exactly. So like Timmy falls
Speaker 1: through the ice or whatever, it's basically putting him in
Speaker 1: the refrigerator and slowing him down. Her name for the
Speaker 1: episode the terminal gas. Yeah, that's that's about big What
Speaker 1: about Big Conkin? Though, we need to get a bunch
Speaker 1: of Timmy might survive thirty minutes, you know, and they
Speaker 1: pull him out, and that's such a common store, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Timmy from Minnesota, the ice, uh, but like in warm
Speaker 1: water like that, realistically, you've got four or five six
Speaker 1: minutes maybe, you know, and then you're gonna do that
Speaker 1: terminal gap. And when you do that, then you're in
Speaker 1: deep ship because then you've taken a huge mouthful water
Speaker 1: and you're you're you're really in deep ship. So our
Speaker 1: goal is obviously get your get ahold of them as
Speaker 1: fast as you can, close their airway, get them safe
Speaker 1: for the surface, lay them on the back, get their
Speaker 1: mask off, blow tap and talk. So you blow across
Speaker 1: their cheeks, you tap on their face and you tell
Speaker 1: them breathe, breathe, breathe. And in the I mean ten
Speaker 1: people that I've saved and parents been there, four of them. Um,
Speaker 1: almost every one of them has come back with that
Speaker 1: first breath, that first breath across their face. They go
Speaker 1: and take a breath because your body is just like
Speaker 1: waiting for that air. As soon as they feel it,
Speaker 1: it's ready to roll again. And then they're normally like,
Speaker 1: get off me, I'm fine. Yeah. So they have you
Speaker 1: have short term amnesia when you black out, or they're
Speaker 1: crying hysterically, or they're laughing hysterically. You never know what
Speaker 1: the first time I saved someone, he was like I
Speaker 1: was also dancing. So this the he came up and
Speaker 1: how was he? Like, we didn't really get into this,
Speaker 1: like what was his sort of litany of health problems
Speaker 1: after the fact, So he went into he went in
Speaker 1: intensive care unit for like three days because they were
Speaker 1: worried about he had so much fluid in his lungs
Speaker 1: because the aviola and your lungs or whatever, they just
Speaker 1: burst and like you have all that's what all that
Speaker 1: orange foam is that you had, Like he was spitting
Speaker 1: out and all that. So he had so much fluid
Speaker 1: in his lungs. They were worried about pneumonia, you know,
Speaker 1: secondary drowning, all that kind of stuff. So try to
Speaker 1: they treat the ear problem. I don't even know when
Speaker 1: he's bleeding out his ears. Yeah, ears, I mean I
Speaker 1: want to say I remember him bleeding out of his eyes.
Speaker 1: I mean there was blood everywhere. Like if you if
Speaker 1: you had a picture of him right when he came
Speaker 1: up and be like that guy, there's no way, like
Speaker 1: he's got to have so much stuff going on, but
Speaker 1: and he got back in the water after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually had a samba about a year later when
Speaker 1: we were together and I grabbed him when he was soombing,
Speaker 1: you know, that's when he's like close to blacking out.
Speaker 1: I was like, Steve, his name is Steve, Steve, don't
Speaker 1: funk with me on this. It's like, don't do this
Speaker 1: ever again. You know. And he's an avid diver. Yea,
Speaker 1: I told you he's my insurance guy. Yeah, right, what
Speaker 1: are the chances of that? Yeah, I like something happened,
Speaker 1: you'll understand. Uh so you guys, you guys do a
Speaker 1: little business together. Yeah, yeah, mostly he does business for me.
Speaker 1: I guess now, did he come out of that super cautious?
Speaker 1: I think so. I think it was an eye opener.
Speaker 1: And honestly, like I've gotten so many messages over the
Speaker 1: years from like the next morning after that happened, I
Speaker 1: just wrote the story down, you know, no filter, just
Speaker 1: exactly how it happened, and um, it was most it
Speaker 1: was mostly like cathartic for me, just to kind of
Speaker 1: get it off my chest because it was so traumatic
Speaker 1: for me. But I can't tell you how many you know,
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of people's over the years have said
Speaker 1: that made me conscious enough to be watching my buddy
Speaker 1: to save their life. You know. Thank you for sharing that,
Speaker 1: because it's such a I don't want to say it's taboo,
Speaker 1: but it's like a ma cheesy, mooth thing that like
Speaker 1: people don't talk about in diving because they're usually embarrassed,
Speaker 1: you know, because like people aren't gonna think that I'm
Speaker 1: that good of a diver or whatever, but like you
Speaker 1: gotta be aware, like that's more dangerous than any shark,
Speaker 1: you know, is blacking out your own drive to not survive. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's so true. It really, It is something that when
Speaker 1: it happens, everyone just kinda keeps quiet, you know, and um,
Speaker 1: you don't want to embarrass somebody. But when when that article,
Speaker 1: because what you wrote got published in What You Skin
Speaker 1: Diver magazine, And when that came out and I read
Speaker 1: it like it, I was grateful for it, Like it
Speaker 1: definitely made me that much more careful to always like
Speaker 1: watch the person, like even after they come up, because
Speaker 1: sometimes you're so eager to die that you see them
Speaker 1: take a breath and then you go down. But it's
Speaker 1: like you got to actually wait you know, because sometimes
Speaker 1: people can come up, breathe even talk and then pass
Speaker 1: out what you were recognized by the coast Guard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what was that? So the coast Guard met us
Speaker 1: like as soon as we got him up, like I
Speaker 1: was like the Tasmanian devilill run around the boat when
Speaker 1: we got in. Um, you know, cut the anchor on
Speaker 1: and get on the radio called coast card blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So we start running in. We're like sixty miles off shore.
Speaker 1: The coast Guard met us about forty miles out, put
Speaker 1: him in the basket in the helicopter and took him in. Um.
Speaker 1: So about six months later I got a call from
Speaker 1: the Coastguard and you're like, hey, this is you know
Speaker 1: Officer so and so. Um, you know we're doing investigation
Speaker 1: into you know, this thing that happened with Steve off
Speaker 1: shore blah blah blah. And I'm like ship man and
Speaker 1: told hi. Us was like, hey man, look I've been
Speaker 1: through a lot with this, Like I didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: They're like no, no, no, no, no, Like it's actually
Speaker 1: a good thing. Um, the Coastguard wants to recognize you
Speaker 1: for uh possibly getting an award. Was like Okay, so
Speaker 1: it did this investigation. Doing a long story short, the
Speaker 1: Coastguard gives out two life saving awards, a silver and
Speaker 1: a gold, and the um they awarded me the silver
Speaker 1: life Saving Award, which is the basic premise behind it
Speaker 1: is someone that basically completely forgets about their own safety
Speaker 1: puts themselves in in total peril to save someone else. Um.
Speaker 1: And when they gave me the award, the Admiral Um,
Speaker 1: the head of the Coastguard, was there and I think
Speaker 1: you know, all the senators, can or spends and all
Speaker 1: the military people. It was a big deal. Um. He
Speaker 1: told the story, and I mean, it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to tell a story like having it on the audiobook
Speaker 1: is the best thing ever for me because I never
Speaker 1: have to tell it again. That's what you're saying. Now
Speaker 1: you can just people like you can refer people to
Speaker 1: the link because it's tough to tell. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: everybody like started standing up in there and everything. It was.
Speaker 1: It was pretty cool. But he said, in my you know,
Speaker 1: forty years of being in the Coast Guard, I've only
Speaker 1: given this award two other times and it was posthumously. Uh,
Speaker 1: like the people died saving somebody else. If So it
Speaker 1: was the the award that I would least want to
Speaker 1: have for the reason I would least want to have it,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense, you know, because it's something you
Speaker 1: never want to do and you could never plan, you know.
Speaker 1: But in all the years of spear fishing with people
Speaker 1: around the world and being in remote places, we had
Speaker 1: always said, you know, if you can't get me, or
Speaker 1: you're thinking you can't get me, shoot me, because at
Speaker 1: least you'll be rigidly attached. Because if I'm already gonna die,
Speaker 1: shoot me in the leg, you know, don't shoot me
Speaker 1: in the chest from whatever, you know, shoot me in
Speaker 1: the leg. But that was that would have been My
Speaker 1: original goal was to shoot him in the calf, but
Speaker 1: he turned. I met a guy just recently who was
Speaker 1: recovering a victim, and he was on tanks and he
Speaker 1: dove down to the base of an oil rig found
Speaker 1: the victim. I couldn't get him up, and decided to
Speaker 1: drag him over and tie him to the foot of
Speaker 1: the rig so that he wouldn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: trying to find him again later, and then tying the
Speaker 1: guy's body to the foot of the rig. He got
Speaker 1: so messed up, he wound up ape, he lost track
Speaker 1: of time, and he wound up one of those decompression
Speaker 1: chambers because he had to bomb up to the surface. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the diving thing. Honestly. I I personally think free diving,
Speaker 1: with having been trained for it, is way safer than
Speaker 1: the scuba because you can take any person off the
Speaker 1: street street, give him a scuba tank it, you know, wherever,
Speaker 1: and then go down as deep as they want, because
Speaker 1: all they gotta do is breathe, you know. Whereas free diving,
Speaker 1: your body is telling you, hey, you need to go up,
Speaker 1: you know, like you if if you have that self
Speaker 1: preservation gene you know which everybody in this room has
Speaker 1: just from spending time with you. You know, we all
Speaker 1: want to come home. We know we're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to get fish, but we all want to come home.
Speaker 1: There's people that just don't have that synapse in their brain.
Speaker 1: You know, They're they're gonna push it as hard as
Speaker 1: they can every time. And parent I call it like
Speaker 1: the the race car driver, you know, thing like if
Speaker 1: they're on a motorcycle, they're gonna pin it every time.
Speaker 1: They're gonna go as fast as they can. If in
Speaker 1: the class. They could do a d FT free dive
Speaker 1: every dive. That's how deep they think they can go.
Speaker 1: And you think about even when we're diving in t
Speaker 1: you know, for the lobsters, it's not every time you
Speaker 1: can even you know, spend more than ten seconds down there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you didn't get to good breath or whatever. Imagine
Speaker 1: trying to do that super deep. Here's asking for trouble. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the Bahamas. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: get into a little bit about like the sort of
Speaker 1: regulatory structure in the Bahamas. And the reason I bring
Speaker 1: it up is the only place I've ever been where
Speaker 1: size limits on fish is expressed in pounds. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of that anywhere? I think in the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: they do that. And the boat limit is in pounds
Speaker 1: as well. The other thing to note is for a
Speaker 1: Bahamian registered boat with Bahamians on board, the regulations are
Speaker 1: different than for us because we're a foreign flagged vessel.
Speaker 1: Oh there's not at all. Yeah, for them, there's nothing,
Speaker 1: none at all, no lot, no size limit for lobsters.
Speaker 1: You still got your size limit, philpsters, your group and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But we can get as much as
Speaker 1: we want got it, So give me hit me with
Speaker 1: a couple of these like size things. It's weird because
Speaker 1: like a lobster, for for a foreign vessel, a lobster tail,
Speaker 1: it's not the lobster, it's how long his tail is.
Speaker 1: And that's expressed in regular old inches, so five and
Speaker 1: a half inches, right, So it's five and a half inches,
Speaker 1: which for the area that we are, and for the
Speaker 1: number that we're allowed to get, which is ten, you're
Speaker 1: never even gonna come, you know, worry about that because
Speaker 1: most of the ones we got were like five pounds.
Speaker 1: I mean they were big. Well I'll point out that
Speaker 1: in my um very juvenile efforts in the Bahamas some
Speaker 1: a few years ago, we couldn't find one of the
Speaker 1: five half We're like, you know, right out like kind
Speaker 1: of like out in front of where they lived, right
Speaker 1: along Long Island. Couldn't you know, You'd think it looks
Speaker 1: huge and you bring it up like in different areas
Speaker 1: of the Bahamas have general different sizes. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is about here and a couple other spots
Speaker 1: in the Bahamas, but the access to deep water or
Speaker 1: the temperature or whatever, these big giant ones off the
Speaker 1: wall and come up in shallow um, but other places
Speaker 1: you go, you'll you'll just never find one in all
Speaker 1: your time, you know, looking um, they're all going to
Speaker 1: be those little ones that are just barely legal. So
Speaker 1: you can take them by hand by a hook, which
Speaker 1: I think we probably have some video Brandon hooking him.
Speaker 1: What is it called hook hooking? Hook and joke? Hook
Speaker 1: and joke? So what's the word hook and joke? Like
Speaker 1: a j j Okay, so tell them so like the
Speaker 1: bottom when you kill him, that's the joking pot joking,
Speaker 1: hook and joke. Do you use the word joke for
Speaker 1: other things or does it just mean like specific to lobsters,
Speaker 1: that means stab stop? Okay? So, uh, you can shoot
Speaker 1: them with a pulse bear or sling, which the regulations
Speaker 1: for underwater hunting here is just something triggerless. You can't
Speaker 1: have a way of resting, you know, or how how
Speaker 1: of this hit so basically loaded power that you don't
Speaker 1: have to you know, touch or whatever you can like
Speaker 1: let go and then shorthand you can't use a spear gun, correct,
Speaker 1: You have to use the thing where you like hand,
Speaker 1: your hand is holding it and it's triggered, not triggered,
Speaker 1: you release your hand and let it go. There's no
Speaker 1: way to store the energy. Right, So for the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, what they call a Hawaiian sling, the
Speaker 1: rest of the world does is a hand spirit what
Speaker 1: we call poll spear, in which Hawaiians call not a
Speaker 1: Hawaiian sling three prong or there is a Hawaiian sling,
Speaker 1: it's just a it's a little different. I think that
Speaker 1: normally has like a free flying shaft, and so what
Speaker 1: we use on this chip we just call it pull spears.
Speaker 1: But then it has a three prong on it, then
Speaker 1: we just don't even call it a pul spear, just
Speaker 1: call it a three prong, right, And the local go
Speaker 1: to is a true Hawaiian sling, which is basically a
Speaker 1: piece of cylinder would with a hole through the middle
Speaker 1: of it and a piece of and tied to it,
Speaker 1: and they'll put like a notch in the back of
Speaker 1: a spear gun looking spear with no um you know,
Speaker 1: rests on it or whatever, and they shoot it like
Speaker 1: a bow arrow and it just goes free. So for
Speaker 1: most that's used here, that's the traditional way to do it.
Speaker 1: That's why I like in those holes where we found
Speaker 1: the grouper, there's multiple shafts in there because you shoot
Speaker 1: a fish and they haul butt with it. We would
Speaker 1: never have gotten a yellow jack like if we'd been
Speaker 1: using those because they just take off with it. Oh,
Speaker 1: so that's what the shafts were. That's all makeing sense now.
Speaker 1: And then uh, a little more on regulatory who like
Speaker 1: who is the governing regulatory body in the Bahamas for fisheries,
Speaker 1: the defense false defense force? That sounds real hardcore and yeah,
Speaker 1: and how would like how often is it that? And
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say this as a way to
Speaker 1: promote any kind of like derelict behavior, but how often
Speaker 1: do they patrol? Yeah? Well the main places a Nassa,
Speaker 1: that's where the base is, but they also send boats
Speaker 1: to different islands the station now for a short period
Speaker 1: of time, and their patrol these areas. But an avocode
Speaker 1: I barely see him. Okay. Another regulatory thing, like we're
Speaker 1: talking about the weight things, so certain grouper need to
Speaker 1: be three pounds. It's not an inch thing. So I
Speaker 1: think that's the reason that's so tricky is like take
Speaker 1: take something that you know what it weighs. Like let's
Speaker 1: say you have like a certified three pound weight and
Speaker 1: then go grab a whole bunch of scales, right and wait,
Speaker 1: a bunch of times you're gonna get two pounds fifty
Speaker 1: ances you're gonna get three pounds two. It's like with
Speaker 1: by measuring of fish, it's like it takes out some
Speaker 1: level of debate. It's like that fish is blank long.
Speaker 1: It just seems like I'm into it. It just seems
Speaker 1: like a strange thing to enforce. Yeah, it's a shot
Speaker 1: in the dark. And it's weird because that's the only
Speaker 1: isn't that the only fish there's actually but they're actually
Speaker 1: and um talking about slot sizes nobly it would probably
Speaker 1: be a good thing. The other thing is like, so
Speaker 1: that's Brandon making that. But the other problem is you
Speaker 1: gotta have somebody to enveloce agreed, agreed, and from a foreigner,
Speaker 1: you know, coming here and seeing all the dere look
Speaker 1: people that do bad stuff here, you know, Um, sadly
Speaker 1: it's it's mostly people visiting, you know that don't follow
Speaker 1: the regulations. And you know it's unfortunate because there's such
Speaker 1: an unbelievable resource here and um, you know, you want
Speaker 1: to protect this, you want this to be able to
Speaker 1: you know, keep going for our kids to be able
Speaker 1: to do it, obviously, but the the the different regulations
Speaker 1: they have are wild. So they've got it's ten lobsters
Speaker 1: per boat. For foreign vessel, it's eight conk with a
Speaker 1: developed lip lip which we've got in the bucket here
Speaker 1: and we'll clean those in a it. Oh yeah. People
Speaker 1: get frustrated when we're doing stuff on the show, like
Speaker 1: we had a guy making Clovis points and people are
Speaker 1: really annoy because they couldn't see it. This can be
Speaker 1: one of those things that really annoys people. Well, video
Speaker 1: it to listen to someone clean account it's no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a noisy process though, right, kept off film it
Speaker 1: and we'll put on Instagram. There we go. So even
Speaker 1: for logic's different as well. So it's eighteen is read
Speaker 1: Gosh that what I sent you? You read it? So
Speaker 1: I think during COVID they've updated some regulations because they
Speaker 1: had some time. Um. But it used to be you're
Speaker 1: allowed eighteen polagic fish. It can be a combination of dolphin, wahoo, tuna, um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's their main ones are worried about.
Speaker 1: There's no billfish landing in the Bahamas unless it's for
Speaker 1: a tournament. So for a tournament, they'll say, hey, if
Speaker 1: you get a fish over five pounds or whatever the
Speaker 1: size limit is for that specific tournament, they can kill it,
Speaker 1: which is a very strange. That's real weird, real weird.
Speaker 1: So you asked about swordfish here, Well, that's kind of
Speaker 1: like a money talk sort of thing that right, Like
Speaker 1: you're bringing like a massive amount of economic activity down.
Speaker 1: But the thing is not many get killed during tournaments. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: which is now fifty and twenty years ago. That's a
Speaker 1: different story. It's a lot more bigger maleins in. Sharks
Speaker 1: are totally off limits in the Bahamas? Is that true now? Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's totally closed. They're not allowed to kill him.
Speaker 1: You can catch them, you just gotta release it. And
Speaker 1: what about turtles, you're not allowed to kill them? No,
Speaker 1: Unfortunately in your lifetime where turtles ever open, they had
Speaker 1: a season just like um they used to open and
Speaker 1: closed the same time as crossing season. Oh, how long ago,
Speaker 1: like when you're six years ago, seven years ago? Doing
Speaker 1: at the most? Yeah, for a commercial market, personal personal
Speaker 1: and what ones were you after? Green turtles? And how
Speaker 1: would that go down? It's kind of violent, but I
Speaker 1: mean we used to use fifteen foot pole and I
Speaker 1: had a pair of grains on the entire to rope
Speaker 1: and a gallon bottle and just strike them with it
Speaker 1: and they'll take it and run with it and just
Speaker 1: pull them back up. Strike them with what pair of grains?
Speaker 1: What it is? It's uh you well, like two barbs,
Speaker 1: Like they're probably about that why they go in and
Speaker 1: they can't come out and you drive it with what
Speaker 1: a pole? Yeah? Just straight through the shell? Well, typically
Speaker 1: we like to do it down towards the back end,
Speaker 1: that little striple just shell, so you don't damage the insides,
Speaker 1: the guts and all that. But me's started when I
Speaker 1: first started doing it, I got cursed out many times
Speaker 1: from my phone. He's sending up shoving it straight through
Speaker 1: the top end bottom, No, because you mess up all insides.
Speaker 1: And he used to eat the bottom pot as well,
Speaker 1: like calop that's traditionally in the camant. Can't stand that.
Speaker 1: I don't like what is that is that? It's like
Speaker 1: a it's like a gelatine. What's the yield on a turtle?
Speaker 1: So a lot of people actually just when they kill turtles,
Speaker 1: they just take the two front flippers, that's the biggest.
Speaker 1: But when you get turtles. The best size they eat
Speaker 1: is anywhere from fifty pounds. Anything above that is it
Speaker 1: starts to get a little tougher, Like I've gotten some
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty hundred and sixty pounds, and you will
Speaker 1: taste the difference the taste of the turtle and the
Speaker 1: texture of the main meat is in the front flippers.
Speaker 1: That's where the most is. That's where the most that's
Speaker 1: the biggest muscle mass. I noticed that checking them out
Speaker 1: when they're just when they decided kicking in high gear.
Speaker 1: The back feet don't do ship. Yeah, they're talking go man,
Speaker 1: I had no idea they could go that fast. Oh.
Speaker 1: Then things sometimes like when we chase them, if they
Speaker 1: don't just stay there on the bottom, we'll have to
Speaker 1: get on playing and chase them around until they come
Speaker 1: on fire. Then you stick them. Man, that's gotta be
Speaker 1: like a good time. That is a very good I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. They have a lot of guts. Huh. I
Speaker 1: heard that cleaning them can be pretty stinky. No, I
Speaker 1: mean to me, I'm kind of used it. But yes,
Speaker 1: another interesting thing with them, like you know we're used
Speaker 1: to like fish blood where you when you shoot a
Speaker 1: fish in a hole. You see the blood coming out
Speaker 1: just kind of disperses or whatever looks green even on
Speaker 1: the surface of blood kind of comes out. Man, when
Speaker 1: you clean the turtle, it's like leshmon blood, it's got
Speaker 1: so much oxygen in it. Like I hit one with
Speaker 1: the boat accidentally many years ago, and I looked behind me.
Speaker 1: I was like, what the hell did I hit like
Speaker 1: a red tarp and went back and it was a turtle,
Speaker 1: and I mean it had an area the size of
Speaker 1: this room full of blood. And I was like, jeeze,
Speaker 1: I was in the US, Like I felt so horrible,
Speaker 1: but like, you know, what are you gonna do? Like
Speaker 1: they come up and the such a big animal. Man. There.
Speaker 1: One of the most surprising things I have been countered
Speaker 1: eating turtles is I was in South America and they were, uh,
Speaker 1: preparing turtle eggs. And you know, when you take a
Speaker 1: regular chicken egg right and cook it, the yolk solidifies obviously,
Speaker 1: it's like the white part or sorry, not the yolk.
Speaker 1: The white solidifies like the yolk does its thing, and
Speaker 1: the white does its thing. When you cook turtle eggs,
Speaker 1: the yoke, like the orange part turns into what you'd
Speaker 1: imagine it would like a very intense it's like a
Speaker 1: it's like a chicken egg times ten intense flavored yolk nous,
Speaker 1: but the white doesn't solidify, so you'd bit out of there.
Speaker 1: It was a hard thing to get into. The most
Speaker 1: sought out, like a lot of people have died side,
Speaker 1: so the most sought after, like when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, for getting soft shell turtles, and then you know,
Speaker 1: our family down at the Cayman Islands for the turtles
Speaker 1: was the undeveloped eggs still inside of turtle, like when
Speaker 1: you ever those ones that are still yellow and they're
Speaker 1: all they're like a pink membrane around him. And those
Speaker 1: were the best ones because then you just cook that
Speaker 1: whole thing whole, really cooking in a pan, like next
Speaker 1: time you catch like a soft sheller. But I can't remember,
Speaker 1: to be honest, like we only did it when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid. No, I can't do all that
Speaker 1: speaking almost dying, Krian, I didn't, uh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: You're so susceptible, dude to the seasickness. You're like Janice, Really,
Speaker 1: he's that bad? Is so bad? We were one time.
Speaker 1: Not we're on like a twenty two ft boat was
Speaker 1: so seasick. He didn't realize we were fighting a swordfish,
Speaker 1: and there's no like cabin like a boat was steering
Speaker 1: wheel in the middle. Came under the realization that we
Speaker 1: were fighting a swordfish seasick. So maybe I could have
Speaker 1: been a little bit better prepared. It's been a long
Speaker 1: time since I got in seasick. But growing up, I
Speaker 1: was one of those kids on the big yellow school
Speaker 1: bus who always was carrying like a brown paper bag
Speaker 1: in case I bombed. So, Um, you were green. You
Speaker 1: were actually green yesterday. God, I never picture of me.
Speaker 1: I would have wanted to see that, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: just day one minus drama. Men. I didn't take anything
Speaker 1: for it. I thought it would be great, and I
Speaker 1: was fine for for a number of hours. Um, and
Speaker 1: you guys were all in the water and I was
Speaker 1: hanging I was brandon on the boat, and at some
Speaker 1: point it just hit me. I think I was maybe
Speaker 1: mid sentence with you, and I just was like, excuse me,
Speaker 1: gotta go, and nothing, nothing came out. But I went
Speaker 1: to yeah, a little bit of a dry heave, and
Speaker 1: a went went to the to the pit of the
Speaker 1: boat and just kind of like rolled into a little
Speaker 1: ball uh and was like that for a while, and
Speaker 1: then I thankfully was able to I got some drama
Speaker 1: mean in me I slept, but then I was still sick.
Speaker 1: I probably took the drama mean too late. It was terrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's insane. For anyone who's ever been
Speaker 1: seasick before, it's almost like there's nothing worse. You just
Speaker 1: totally You're disoriented, everything hurts, you're don't it's just bad.
Speaker 1: I was surprised. I'll ask Brandon about this too, because
Speaker 1: whenever I'm was someone who's getting sea sick, we tell
Speaker 1: not to go down out of sight, but to stay
Speaker 1: up and walk, like concentrate on something that's not moving,
Speaker 1: like try to look off at the horizon. Didn't work
Speaker 1: for me, But you suggested that she go down because
Speaker 1: because of the because there was air conditions to keep you.
Speaker 1: There was a c it was in the center of
Speaker 1: the boat down below, and I was moving less. That
Speaker 1: somewhat therapeutic. So it was somewhat therapeutic. And I also
Speaker 1: hadn't like slept that much the past couple of days,
Speaker 1: but that I was the fact that I was able
Speaker 1: to get like just a tiny bit more comfortable and
Speaker 1: then you got some drugs in me, and then I
Speaker 1: was able to pass out. And then I woke up
Speaker 1: hours later and I'm like I have to record them
Speaker 1: coming up with this fish. And he's like that that
Speaker 1: already happened like four times over. He missed half the day, sweetheart,
Speaker 1: and then you got deserted. You got so then I
Speaker 1: thought I felt better. When you guys came back on
Speaker 1: the boat, I was a little bit better. And then
Speaker 1: it happened all over again. I guess that's when I
Speaker 1: turned green again. And uh, and they all they brought
Speaker 1: me to a deserted island and left me there like castaway,
Speaker 1: a beautiful island. It was beautiful. She had a little
Speaker 1: volley what was that little volleyball on castle that they got?
Speaker 1: Pack of dogs ever come there? That I was. No
Speaker 1: pack of dogs didn't come. They just they left me
Speaker 1: to the dogs, guys. But no, as soon as I
Speaker 1: was ashore, I mean, that was the whole point, right,
Speaker 1: Like Steve, you were like, you're gonna feel better in
Speaker 1: just like five minutes, and it's probably three minutes and
Speaker 1: I felt totally normal again. You guys took off and
Speaker 1: I'm like, screw this. I'm not the type of person
Speaker 1: who just like lies down in the sand and sun basee.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna go hunt. So then I
Speaker 1: went and got conk for the first time. So that
Speaker 1: was my first getting conk out of the water. And
Speaker 1: you were fine, like you found the proper, proper I mean,
Speaker 1: the next couple of days you found the proper little
Speaker 1: cocktailer meds yeah, totally yeah, non drowsy drama means, my friend,
Speaker 1: it was great. Yet the rest of the trip, I
Speaker 1: had absolutely no problem with zero zero issue, zero issue,
Speaker 1: day two, day three, etcetera. You're gonna have a lot
Speaker 1: of people writing you, um folk remedies. My neighbor in Alaska,
Speaker 1: Ron Layton, here's what he told me. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was like a professional longliner, right, like he's like a
Speaker 1: man of the sea. And he said, there's one way
Speaker 1: to cure seasickness. He told me that they made him
Speaker 1: do it when he was a kid. Every time you
Speaker 1: start getting seasick, you drink. They make you drink a
Speaker 1: big mug of salt water and so you puke. And
Speaker 1: he said that's how you cure it. I mean, but
Speaker 1: he half the stuff that guy tells me, it's like
Speaker 1: everything he tells me, where he tells me, I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's no way that's true. Now ever, sent the things
Speaker 1: he tells me, my initial thing is that can't be true.
Speaker 1: Fifty of the time it is, so now you can't
Speaker 1: ignore I can't ignore anything he tells me because I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's a like half half the time he tells me something,
Speaker 1: I'm like, it is true. I mean, I can see
Speaker 1: that as kind of like a miserable lead up to
Speaker 1: a lot of relief because if you throw up, you'll
Speaker 1: feel better. But I don't. I mean, with that really
Speaker 1: like carrier, then I feel like you'd be on round two.
Speaker 1: That cures. That's what he had to do. And that's
Speaker 1: if you're if that's if you want to get serious
Speaker 1: about solving your six problem, you had drink big things
Speaker 1: of salt. It seems so miserable, dude, when you're like
Speaker 1: to be like, I don't know, do drink a picture
Speaker 1: of salt water that'll feel great. I'm somehow not convinced,
Speaker 1: But okay, um, what is the story with what's the
Speaker 1: story with a lot? Like? What? What? What? What y'all
Speaker 1: call a lobster condo lobster trap in the States, they
Speaker 1: call it a condo, which is they're illegal. Now they've
Speaker 1: they've outlawed being able to put out artificial structures for lobsters.
Speaker 1: There was a big hubbub about it. She was probably
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago now in Florida, UM, and they just
Speaker 1: did away with it completely. Um. But in the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: the commercial lobster guys, you want to talk about dedicated
Speaker 1: people to working year round, to making their living. It's
Speaker 1: pretty unbelievable. But I'll let Brandon tell kind of how
Speaker 1: it's done. So for like lobster, and it's a lot
Speaker 1: of money involved in it just to make it. So
Speaker 1: you'll buy it's basically roof and tent, but it's treated
Speaker 1: with I think it's um galvanized tent a lost long ago.
Speaker 1: So what you'll do You get a stock a tent
Speaker 1: that comes with a hundred sheets in it. Then you'll
Speaker 1: get some two by sexes cement blocks. Then you need
Speaker 1: uh the Cuban rope, the block we call it trap rope.
Speaker 1: So you're your blocks dof yes, you're tied it blocks
Speaker 1: to the tin. Nail it off then off. That's for
Speaker 1: the setting. Them describe the structure like how you make
Speaker 1: a structure like where where the positioning or the wood
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Okay, so the would would be
Speaker 1: length wigs of the tent, so to be I think
Speaker 1: that's six by three would be the measurement of the
Speaker 1: drop when you finished. So you're making you're making an
Speaker 1: artificial ledge for lobsters, basically a hole that's the perfect
Speaker 1: height six inches off the bottom and six ft deep
Speaker 1: three ft wide, and you put it out where there
Speaker 1: there's no other real structure. Um it can be in
Speaker 1: proximity rocks or whatever, but the majority and they put
Speaker 1: up in the grass, so it's not even near where
Speaker 1: people are normally gonna go. Look, but the lobsters are
Speaker 1: out there feeding in the grass, so like you know,
Speaker 1: feeding and they're like, oh yeah, there's a great place
Speaker 1: to live, and they stay there. And each lobster boat
Speaker 1: will have thousands of these. They'll set thousands of the
Speaker 1: big thousands, big commercial boats they set thousands, tens of
Speaker 1: thousands waiting matt let Let's imagine like this, some people
Speaker 1: can understand. Imagine that you took a sheet apply wood,
Speaker 1: and I'm just make it understandable as possible. He took
Speaker 1: a sheet apply would and bolted or nailed a couple
Speaker 1: four by fours to it, and set the four by
Speaker 1: fours on the bottom of the sea so that the
Speaker 1: sheet apply would is sitting how many inches off the
Speaker 1: bottom six inches? And then all manners ship can crawl
Speaker 1: under that sheet apply wood and fit between the bottom
Speaker 1: and the sheet apply would and they just so what
Speaker 1: the crawfish does as well. If you ever noticed the traps,
Speaker 1: then they more than six inches deep, So what the
Speaker 1: craw fish should do when they go in, they'll dig
Speaker 1: it out. And if you ever noticed in front of
Speaker 1: the traps you see them shells, they eat them. They
Speaker 1: dig it out the bottom and eat it, and they
Speaker 1: come and go as they So what are called spiny
Speaker 1: lobsters you guys called croes. Yeah, it's a claw that's
Speaker 1: just folks on. It's a clawless lobster, which has an
Speaker 1: enormous range. I mean they're everywhere. But like Americans, when
Speaker 1: Americans visualized lobster, always thinking of the main lobster, the
Speaker 1: claude lobster. Uh. And when you set one of those out,
Speaker 1: when you when you were doing this professionally, you set
Speaker 1: one of those out, like what kind of volume of
Speaker 1: lobsters would turn up under one of those. So the
Speaker 1: most way've ever I would say I've gotten from one
Speaker 1: that's about sixty pounds of tails, So that's probably under
Speaker 1: one of those. I've seen it sometimes when crawfish move
Speaker 1: off at a heavy cold front com I've seen crawlfish
Speaker 1: as so many they can't fit under it. They just
Speaker 1: stocked all on the outside. When you get there, you
Speaker 1: can see the big dog spot on the bottom. It's
Speaker 1: so much around it and on top it's like opening
Speaker 1: like a condo cabinet in New York City shining a
Speaker 1: flashlight and the cockroaches scatter out. So when you notice
Speaker 1: one time when you were going down to check one,
Speaker 1: you went down and kind of knocked on it. What
Speaker 1: were you doing? So what happens like that's just me
Speaker 1: personally doing it. But if you knock on it to
Speaker 1: come today edges and stick to antenna's out interesting taking
Speaker 1: and just knock it buying it and you can see
Speaker 1: him they come out, stick to antenna's out a little
Speaker 1: bit and you kind of get an assessment what's going
Speaker 1: on in there? Yeah, I thought you were gonna say
Speaker 1: it's because of the more it is, Because the more
Speaker 1: it will come back. I don't even check for all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So then you went down and you got
Speaker 1: your You got a hook basically got three and a
Speaker 1: half foot Dowell. So what it is, it's actually uh
Speaker 1: Hawaiian sling shaft. I cut it in half. That's six
Speaker 1: ft shaft, so it's three ft long. You take a
Speaker 1: paint bush brush roller the handle off of that, use
Speaker 1: that uh brass fitting for it's the al adopter for
Speaker 1: you dry gas tanks. You put that on the end
Speaker 1: of the spill and you're shopping at top point. Then
Speaker 1: how it's got the thread, You could screw it into
Speaker 1: the handle of the print brush roller, drop through it,
Speaker 1: put a little pin in it. Then you fill the
Speaker 1: handle up with fiberglass resent to give it more wait wait,
Speaker 1: and also the whole it long ago that the top
Speaker 1: piece is just I think it's a ten old fishing hook,
Speaker 1: and just shave the little bed off so they can't
Speaker 1: get stuck on it. The barb the barb, and you
Speaker 1: screw it on, put a little screw through it, tighten
Speaker 1: it down. Then over it you slide a big crimp,
Speaker 1: take it to hydraulic press and they press it and
Speaker 1: that's your hook made up compared to what they sell
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars. And then you go down and it
Speaker 1: surprised me. I don't know if you just reach none
Speaker 1: of their hook in the mouth, but you go out
Speaker 1: down and just flip the whole damn thing over while
Speaker 1: they go all over the That wasn't intentional. Oh you
Speaker 1: weren't trying to do I don't. I don't flip it
Speaker 1: over for that same reason. They just I like the
Speaker 1: lift up. I thought maybe you were showing me what
Speaker 1: was going on, or I could tell what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So that's not normally. Normally when when we do it,
Speaker 1: we have a shot piece of PVC pipe, Okay, we've
Speaker 1: propped one side up on it when you're doing like
Speaker 1: industrial grade. So what I'm doing when I was doing
Speaker 1: a commercial and just rake out all you could hook
Speaker 1: from it down, but I like to rake out a
Speaker 1: certain amount. Look through it. See what's big enough, what's
Speaker 1: not big enough? Hook whatever, say is big enough? Let
Speaker 1: the raskill go back, rak out some of the next
Speaker 1: side opposite side what you just did, because all the
Speaker 1: dust and mud and everything, so you can see on
Speaker 1: the side. Just go from side to side, and you
Speaker 1: always do when you're doing this commercially, you're doing it
Speaker 1: tankless right with a compressor, or you do do okay,
Speaker 1: so you're down there just working away commercially. If you
Speaker 1: want to do it on a commercial scale, free divan
Speaker 1: is in the way to go. I see that's too much.
Speaker 1: And watch up and down because you yeah, and you
Speaker 1: hook it, and you take the hook and you're basically
Speaker 1: hooking it under his right where his tail meets his head. Oh, which,
Speaker 1: what do you call it? Carapist? So it's interesting to note,
Speaker 1: like it's even hard to get a video this most
Speaker 1: of the time. But when they're hooking him, they're hooking
Speaker 1: them there and you hook and then your other hand
Speaker 1: is here, Oh my other hands like just sitting to
Speaker 1: the side, and I bring it to me, hold it
Speaker 1: like this, same time I grab it, I push up.
Speaker 1: What I'm trying to say is like when you hook him,
Speaker 1: you're hooking them and they're normal, they're like feet around
Speaker 1: the bottom, but you hook him and their tail flips,
Speaker 1: they flip upside down and he's catching their tail now
Speaker 1: facing towards him, and then in one motion he's joking it,
Speaker 1: killing it right in the center of the carapace. Underknee,
Speaker 1: tossing that the side and doing it again. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of like if you're holding a fry pan and
Speaker 1: you're flipping it. I'm just trying to give the audience
Speaker 1: a visual like you're just kind of like flipping it
Speaker 1: towards you pretty much. And it's the efficiency with which
Speaker 1: they do it is unbelievable. Like on a I don't
Speaker 1: know how to gauge like how many can be done
Speaker 1: in a certain period of time, but saying a in
Speaker 1: a in a free dive, in a one minute free dive,
Speaker 1: a free dive like where he was the other day.
Speaker 1: If it was just me, I probably could oak six
Speaker 1: or seven at a time, and you just kind of
Speaker 1: scared them around on the bottom. I just throw him
Speaker 1: out from under the trap. If you kill them, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't lost like when you were stopping to pick
Speaker 1: them up. I don't like other people picking oak a
Speaker 1: little track. Then I'll sit up around. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what you were doing because I thought you lost him. No,
Speaker 1: I kept I always keep accounting. So then I went
Speaker 1: and put him in your little pile because I didn't
Speaker 1: realize you were putting them there on purpose. I thought
Speaker 1: you dropped it something. I'm just trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And you do not like what you do that you
Speaker 1: can't hear what you're saying. You're underwater something like pieces
Speaker 1: together and you guys would sometimes do five hundred pounds
Speaker 1: in a day of tails. Tales, just tales. It's working
Speaker 1: your ass off. The most I've ever done with my
Speaker 1: father was almost eight hundred and one day. That's a
Speaker 1: big like, that's a big day financially, right, that's a
Speaker 1: huge day. Depending on the price too. Sometimes little average
Speaker 1: normally to start like seven eight dollars aupong, but last
Speaker 1: year was I think it was last year. Last year
Speaker 1: was the highest it's been for a very long time.
Speaker 1: It started at fourteen and to the end of the season,
Speaker 1: I think it ended off like twenty two or how
Speaker 1: Now this year it started off as ten dollars. Have
Speaker 1: you done commercial conk isshing? No too much work involved
Speaker 1: For the price of cong what is it? What? What
Speaker 1: would be the price of cock? I think it's like
Speaker 1: to the wholesale place, what we're setting the two would
Speaker 1: be like three dollars a pound, god dollars clean clean, cleaned,
Speaker 1: no no shell, nothing, no skin on it, everything cleaned,
Speaker 1: it's too much work for the price. You guys will
Speaker 1: find out why soon because we're going to clean the
Speaker 1: conck on areas. It's not gonna get that from your
Speaker 1: normal podcast. But the way this season is going so
Speaker 1: far and Abago, my father said he's just gonna set
Speaker 1: fish pots. He can make more money really just because
Speaker 1: the markets. It's no girlfish. Oh there's none really. The
Speaker 1: first day he had he got a hundred and eleven
Speaker 1: pounds compared to average of four to five hundred pounds
Speaker 1: the first day. So what do you think makes a
Speaker 1: difference from year to you as to whether there's a
Speaker 1: good season or not out of season fishing? Really you
Speaker 1: think so? You don't think it's environmental conditions or hurricanes
Speaker 1: or current or any of that. Interesting. Oh yeah, all yeah,
Speaker 1: all summer long. My father said that there's small boats
Speaker 1: down neckar official and what the first day is to be. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna stock at a point of patrol, and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna throw any nations under the bus. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other nations that are historically blamed
Speaker 1: here for invading Bohemian waters. And there is a which
Speaker 1: is true hatred, I mean a solid hatred for good
Speaker 1: reason for them coming and stealing the resource because they
Speaker 1: kill everything. They kill everything. They go out there and
Speaker 1: dive on compressors in two of water because there's just
Speaker 1: not the enforcement for it. And it's interesting because the
Speaker 1: from from my understanding of the Behaming Devins Force and whatever,
Speaker 1: they do have a fair number of boats. The problem
Speaker 1: is they don't have the funding for like fuel, so
Speaker 1: like we're always asking like, what where the hell are
Speaker 1: you guys at the dock, Like we don't have any
Speaker 1: money for fuel to go out and actually patrol, because
Speaker 1: you think in one day they could go and confiscate
Speaker 1: all the boats they would ever need for patrolling, you know,
Speaker 1: because there's all these big old boats coming over from
Speaker 1: all over that don't have I have not checked into
Speaker 1: the US or whatever, because you gotta check in and
Speaker 1: do customs in immigration, pay your your um you know,
Speaker 1: entry fees, and get your licenses before you can go
Speaker 1: and do anything. You're not allowed to take anything until
Speaker 1: you've landed in the Bahamas and done that. And people
Speaker 1: do day trips that come over here and they hammer
Speaker 1: the place and they run back so famous pla man.
Speaker 1: It's it's really unfortunate coming from Miami. Yeah, there's just
Speaker 1: not enforcement. They just don't have the money for fuel.
Speaker 1: It's not allocated for it, unfortunately. And hopefully that changes
Speaker 1: here in the next ten years as they you know,
Speaker 1: just make it better. Let's talk about whole hunting for
Speaker 1: a minute. We've covered various aspects of of of spear fishing,
Speaker 1: but we haven't talked about whole hunting for big grouper.
Speaker 1: It would be I could see how someone would look
Speaker 1: and think that it was like naughty because someone made
Speaker 1: the comment about shooting fish in a barrel. Explain the
Speaker 1: basic like why are the rules different underwater in what way? Explain?
Speaker 1: How explain how you go a whole hunting for grouper um,
Speaker 1: So a grouper and most of these reef fish that
Speaker 1: we're hunting there on the reef, so somewhere is going
Speaker 1: to be there at home, and they live in holes.
Speaker 1: They live in hole, so you're eventually gonna go in
Speaker 1: a hole. So like as kids and growing up, and
Speaker 1: I mean honestly, until about fifteen years ago, I'd never
Speaker 1: really used a light except for lobsters. And you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you said that to be handful of times
Speaker 1: about lights. You're like, if we'd have had these lights
Speaker 1: and we were kids, dude, have been a whole different programs. Huge.
Speaker 1: So like you know, we you know, would follow a
Speaker 1: group when we were kids, and you go in a
Speaker 1: hole and you look in there and just black. You're like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's go find something else. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: let me spend a couple seconds on these holes. It
Speaker 1: might be that that um like when we're saying a hole,
Speaker 1: it's I want you to people to understand like how
Speaker 1: like what exactly we're talking about. It might be that
Speaker 1: you have a hole. I mean, there's all kinds of configurations,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be unusual to find a hole that
Speaker 1: would be big enough for you to get your head
Speaker 1: and shoulders into the mouth. I mean, it's like a
Speaker 1: hole in the rocks. They're a little cave opening. You
Speaker 1: could get your head and shoulders into it or not.
Speaker 1: Or it might be that you can just look under
Speaker 1: it and you couldn't get any party you in there,
Speaker 1: but you shine a light in there, you realize you're
Speaker 1: looking into the space that could be the size of
Speaker 1: a five gallon bucket. It could be the size of
Speaker 1: a household refrigerator in these cavities, and then and then
Speaker 1: off of that is all these other little pockets and
Speaker 1: ledges and holes like a coffee can, and that like
Speaker 1: a hole the diameter of a coffee can that goes
Speaker 1: back in three ft and you wonder how the hell
Speaker 1: that form? Right, But like like holes of all makes
Speaker 1: and sizes Swiss cheese. A good way to think of it,
Speaker 1: A good way to describe it so people can visualize
Speaker 1: it is think of your house. Then think of five
Speaker 1: of your friends houses. All of them are shaped differently.
Speaker 1: You think about being able to come through the front door,
Speaker 1: walk into the first room, then go into a hallway,
Speaker 1: then it opens up into another's, then there's a bathroom,
Speaker 1: and there's all these different spaces and they turn and
Speaker 1: all that, and they got upstairs and downstairs, and that's
Speaker 1: how it is. So you shrunk a house down to
Speaker 1: the size of a car, that would be like a
Speaker 1: grouper hole. And every single one is different. So there
Speaker 1: was one towards the end of the day yesterday were
Speaker 1: instead of like kind of prefering prepping you on it,
Speaker 1: I was like, just go go look at it and
Speaker 1: tell me what you think the approach is for let's
Speaker 1: focus it on that fish for minute, because this fish
Speaker 1: had a this has had uncertain fate. Who you found
Speaker 1: the fish? Yeah, so you found it out and about
Speaker 1: doing his business. And I chased him man as fast
Speaker 1: as I could swim for probably two fifty yards. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When you take off after one, you're gone. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: can't Like a lot of times I can't find I
Speaker 1: like kick to try to look around, and I'll oh,
Speaker 1: ship there he is way over there. Yeah, you like
Speaker 1: stay on top of him. Yeah, So I haul asked
Speaker 1: after him because I know he's going to a hole
Speaker 1: and that one had the choice of heading to the
Speaker 1: right and going out off the drop off and going
Speaker 1: into a hundred foot of water and it's but instead
Speaker 1: he turned and went shallow, so he actually went in
Speaker 1: to about thirty water. So I followed him. He went
Speaker 1: a hole, and looking at the hole, I could tell
Speaker 1: by the way it was swept out, you know, with
Speaker 1: sand and stuff, that was his spot. So I waited
Speaker 1: for you guys to come, and I knew it was
Speaker 1: like a twenty pound yellophin grouper. And I went down
Speaker 1: and put the light on him and put a camera
Speaker 1: in there to record actually in the hole while he
Speaker 1: was in there, and you can tell when you look
Speaker 1: in there on a hole like that, he's not leaving,
Speaker 1: like that's where he knows, the absolute safest place within
Speaker 1: whatever proximity, Like that's the spot. So the challenge with
Speaker 1: that hole is he had swept it out so that
Speaker 1: the entrance, which was like if you make if you
Speaker 1: make a circle with your arms right now towards your
Speaker 1: chest and kind of bring it in a little bit
Speaker 1: of it's kind of oblong shape, and you had to
Speaker 1: go down a little bit and then up into it,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. Because he swept out the sand,
Speaker 1: you can't get a spear in there. If you put
Speaker 1: a spear in the whole, you're it's blow him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because of the lip of the ledge is basically pushing
Speaker 1: your spear down, and you couldn't excavate anything to make
Speaker 1: room for the butt end of the spear because it
Speaker 1: was all just rock coral, hard coral. So you tried
Speaker 1: and you never even could get the angle, and so
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, whoever wants to try it. Parent was
Speaker 1: giving me all kind of advice behind to do it.
Speaker 1: I said, then you go do it, And I tried,
Speaker 1: and he got in there with his with his spear
Speaker 1: and got it all lined up. That notice that he
Speaker 1: had to get his body back out and take a
Speaker 1: blind shot, trying to configure the spirit at the angle
Speaker 1: of what you think it needs to be, because you
Speaker 1: can actually be up in the hole while you shoot.
Speaker 1: Then Cameron went back down. Who don't, don't steal all
Speaker 1: his glory here. So you pulled the trigger and you
Speaker 1: can hear I at least for me, it was one
Speaker 1: of the most satisfying noises ever, was to hear you
Speaker 1: hit solid rock that was rock, solid rock. So then
Speaker 1: you did not clear the lip. So of course we
Speaker 1: give shipped to parentesses surveys like all right, will you
Speaker 1: go catch him with your hands? Then I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I think I can do it. So I
Speaker 1: went down there and blocked the whole hole with my shoulders,
Speaker 1: put my head in there, and I had him like
Speaker 1: I had him in my hands multiple times in the hole.
Speaker 1: He just wouldn't open his mouth. The trick is to
Speaker 1: get him to bite you so that you can get
Speaker 1: your hands in his mouth and then you can get
Speaker 1: your hands in his gills and it's basically noodling, which
Speaker 1: I've I've done plenty of times, but man, that was
Speaker 1: a noodle. Yeah. So I had a pretty good battle
Speaker 1: with him. And during this, you know, all of us
Speaker 1: mucking around down there, we had two sharks that had
Speaker 1: come up, and one of them just as I came
Speaker 1: to the surface after a noodle him and all that
Speaker 1: hell was breaking loose, was like right there at the
Speaker 1: mouth of the hole, and that grouper came out like,
Speaker 1: you know, like a guy that had almost got knocked out.
Speaker 1: Here's the things, like nothing had actually happened to him,
Speaker 1: but he had just had the most harrowing he had
Speaker 1: had probably the most harrowing minutes he's ever had in
Speaker 1: his whole life. And the way that shark is like
Speaker 1: something is with that fish. What I mean, he had
Speaker 1: his number. Yeah, So the grouper just came out of
Speaker 1: the hole, and you know, it's like he's been in
Speaker 1: a dark room for forty five minutes. He walked out
Speaker 1: of the sunlight and right there is a six ft
Speaker 1: shark like, something's wrong with you. I couldn't believe with
Speaker 1: that shark recognized that. He's like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, but you're not right. And man, they both
Speaker 1: took off like a bat out of hell and they
Speaker 1: were instantly gone. If I had to bet money, I
Speaker 1: think the group was not alive. I think so too,
Speaker 1: because here's what I think what happened to him. He's
Speaker 1: he can't go to his main hide out, and he's
Speaker 1: gonna go into like he's got to know exactly where
Speaker 1: he's going. And if he goes into any place that
Speaker 1: we're a dead ends or there's another grouper, he's gonna pause.
Speaker 1: That dud's on him. Man. Yeah, bad for him. I
Speaker 1: think he survived. It would be surprised. The group was
Speaker 1: a tough fish, especially a shop on him. I can't
Speaker 1: believe that was wild to fit himself in a small
Speaker 1: little but you don't think he could fit him so
Speaker 1: and that I hope he's alive. That's something interesting to
Speaker 1: say for both the grouper and the shark. Like the
Speaker 1: fish are amazingly hardy. Like the grouper that uh that
Speaker 1: we got with Kimmy, that one had an old scar
Speaker 1: in it from where he had been shot and had
Speaker 1: ripped out, you know, and he had healed over and
Speaker 1: you actually pointed it out. Oh yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: was playing it like the plane his day. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: a lot of those big old warriors like that, they're
Speaker 1: going to have that. And then on the on the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum, the sharks, like how fast
Speaker 1: that shark went, Like we're always like yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like look at the shark, or Al Roker said, you know,
Speaker 1: redirect the shark, you know, when they're coming at you
Speaker 1: or whatever. Seeing how fast that shark goes, there is
Speaker 1: nothing you can do. If they want you, if they
Speaker 1: want to bite you, you're getting bit. There's no way
Speaker 1: to stop them. They're just so fast. I was really
Speaker 1: impressed by how fast that shark swam. I normally would
Speaker 1: would put money on the grouper, but seeing that shark
Speaker 1: just chase that grouper and just how much he gained
Speaker 1: on him, I would put my money on this shark.
Speaker 1: What a little more, what a morsel man, a big
Speaker 1: meal dude. And so let's let's talk about the let's
Speaker 1: come around on a whole hunt that went right. You
Speaker 1: saw him out mine in his own business. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take you with me every time we go
Speaker 1: for groupers, because as soon as you and I jump
Speaker 1: in the water, the bubbles clear, we see one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we jumped in that spot and um. As soon
Speaker 1: as bubbles cleared, like, I kicked towards the reef and
Speaker 1: I saw a big one, like the biggest grouper we've
Speaker 1: seen the whole trip. And he started hauling butt um
Speaker 1: up the reef and I took off like about out
Speaker 1: of hell. Yeah. How far did he go before he
Speaker 1: went into his hole? Probably forty yards fifty yards um,
Speaker 1: And we're talking about we're talking about a forty pound fish. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's tough in that shallow stuff because you're like
Speaker 1: your neck is so craned. Think about laying flat on
Speaker 1: the floor on your stomach and having a crane to
Speaker 1: look in front of you along the floor. That's a
Speaker 1: weird position. And like in the shallows, they're like straight
Speaker 1: front of you. It's not like looking down, so they're
Speaker 1: already on the edge of visibility. So I'm hauling but
Speaker 1: after him, and he went up into a section of
Speaker 1: the reef that um Zach Brown and I actually found
Speaker 1: together um And in fact, I call that that spot.
Speaker 1: I think Zach Hole or Zach black or something Zack
Speaker 1: black black. Yeah. And he went in the same hole
Speaker 1: that Zach and I had gotten a big yellopin grouper
Speaker 1: in and I mean you said it was like the
Speaker 1: most happy you see me a long time. Like I
Speaker 1: was just like, yes, yes, because I knew the hole.
Speaker 1: And the only way to figure those holes out is
Speaker 1: to have an experience like we did yesterday. Is like
Speaker 1: you gotta just spend a ton of time in there
Speaker 1: and figure out I can get my body into this
Speaker 1: hole by twisting this way. Then I got to bring
Speaker 1: the pulse spirit in this way. But once they go
Speaker 1: in these dark holes where they think they're safe, for
Speaker 1: the most part, those groupers like to have an exit.
Speaker 1: That particular hole does not have an exit, but it
Speaker 1: has enough space in there that he can go in
Speaker 1: and turn around. So their m O is to go
Speaker 1: in those holes, go way back up in the dark,
Speaker 1: and just lay up against the back of it so
Speaker 1: that anybody looking in there is just going to think
Speaker 1: it's the back of the hole. Because their camouflage and
Speaker 1: their coloring they can change, you know, like a chameleon,
Speaker 1: they can change to match whatever they're doing. So when
Speaker 1: they're they're usually just jet black. So I went in
Speaker 1: there and looked with the light. Once kind of the
Speaker 1: you know, the dust settled, and then we started having
Speaker 1: to strategize like how how can we get in that
Speaker 1: hole with a spear short enough to get in the
Speaker 1: hole and then shoot him. Yeah, because you actually said,
Speaker 1: even though you knew that hole and you found that whole,
Speaker 1: you guys weren't successful because it was too small for
Speaker 1: zax body and it was a tricky hole. Like it
Speaker 1: was great, it was a wonderful opportunity. And of course
Speaker 1: having you put all those spotlights on the fish so
Speaker 1: we could see it was everything, because Steve and I
Speaker 1: couldn't even see it at first. But then trying to
Speaker 1: figure out because you really had to go deep into
Speaker 1: that hole because he was way in the back and
Speaker 1: and it's like a narrow little thing that's like just
Speaker 1: enough to fit my body. But trying to then figure
Speaker 1: out how to get a spear in there at the
Speaker 1: right angle and how to have it loaded in there,
Speaker 1: that was a lot. And for reference, the hole that
Speaker 1: we're talking about was probably just wide enough that Steve
Speaker 1: or I or Kimmy's shoulders could get in, so we
Speaker 1: could sneak our body in there. But then you had
Speaker 1: to go easy six ft just you your feet are
Speaker 1: sticking out, just your feet are sticking out, so you're
Speaker 1: and it's not like it's straight down, so you're going
Speaker 1: probably down two ft and then immediately turning and going
Speaker 1: to the left five ft six ft and the fishes
Speaker 1: back there about nine he's way in there. So it's
Speaker 1: it's wild. It's like a weird like kind of side
Speaker 1: shaped chimney, and it's it's just it's weird to squeeze
Speaker 1: yourself in this like twisted tunnel that's just enough to
Speaker 1: fit your body, knowing that there's no possible way when
Speaker 1: you're in all the way to your ankles and you
Speaker 1: know that you can't turn around. That's a weird feeling,
Speaker 1: really weird, because going backwards is not the easiest thing
Speaker 1: to And how and how many feet were you guys underwater?
Speaker 1: I was And this is on a breath, you know,
Speaker 1: on a single breath. So and this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that I love about the whole hunting is
Speaker 1: the strategy behind it because all of us are you know,
Speaker 1: we're students of whatever sport it is, you know, hunting, diving, fishing,
Speaker 1: and for each one of these situations, you have to
Speaker 1: draw on every experience you had leading up to that
Speaker 1: to make it happen. Because like general people would have
Speaker 1: like a big long pulse fore we've been using the
Speaker 1: whole time and be like this, it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: You just can't get the thing in there, or you
Speaker 1: know he's around the corner, blah blah blah, We're not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to get it. Yea, we kicked around,
Speaker 1: harpooning it. Yeah, just pushing into him. So in my mind,
Speaker 1: and there's there's usually a way that you can figure
Speaker 1: it out. Um, it's just being patient, you know, because
Speaker 1: once you touch him that one time, he's gonna blow
Speaker 1: out of there. So making that first shot count and
Speaker 1: not just taking a pot shot is really important. What
Speaker 1: you gotta wait for the sand to settle. It's got
Speaker 1: to be clear enough you can see him. You know.
Speaker 1: Steve was backing you out, and I think I told you,
Speaker 1: you know, like if she starts getting stuck, you know,
Speaker 1: pull her out. Um. And I told Cammy, I was like,
Speaker 1: when you do go and shoot him, if you don't
Speaker 1: have the perfect shot, don't don't let it go. But
Speaker 1: when you do shoot him, just let go of everything.
Speaker 1: All you need to focus on is getting out of
Speaker 1: that hole because there's not enough space for both of
Speaker 1: you guys to be in that hole at the same
Speaker 1: time at the entrance because it's so narrow, and then
Speaker 1: you've got a spear coming back at you too. So
Speaker 1: the danger factor in the complexity of all is is
Speaker 1: what makes it very challenging, very dangerous, and and you
Speaker 1: know awesome as well. Yeah, I just want to illuminate
Speaker 1: the picture. It's like I was on the top watching
Speaker 1: this all go down. It's like multiple dives down from
Speaker 1: all of you, sometimes one of you, sometimes a couple
Speaker 1: of you guys two together, checking it out, seeing it
Speaker 1: coming back up, readjusting the plan, thinking of different, you know,
Speaker 1: ways to get him out. Who was going to do what,
Speaker 1: who was gonna you know. It was just kind of
Speaker 1: this battle plan unfolding as you'd go and lay eyes
Speaker 1: on him, or at one point maybe he was like
Speaker 1: further back in the hole you couldn't see him. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like your your team coming together to try
Speaker 1: to figure out whose job, who's doing what, how to
Speaker 1: get this and then to see it all come together
Speaker 1: from the surface was comple I mean it was insane
Speaker 1: to see, like Kimmy jam that spearing Steve was behind
Speaker 1: her went in and I mean immediately, like Camerin said,
Speaker 1: Cameron just looked me in the eye. I was like,
Speaker 1: after your spirit, do not even try to horse it out.
Speaker 1: Get out of there. You came up with a smile
Speaker 1: on your face. I knew, I knew I got him good.
Speaker 1: Like I said, when he came up, was that on
Speaker 1: the work exactly? Who knew? You hit him solid fist
Speaker 1: camera on the way up, and then said, I said,
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna work. And then when he started
Speaker 1: talking to me, I just happened to put my face
Speaker 1: back in the water, and Steve was already going down
Speaker 1: there to retrieve it. I'm like, oh, Steve's already in it,
Speaker 1: so tell us from from your side, because I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, like, at least in my mind, I think
Speaker 1: that's the first time you realized how strong fish can be.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean the first thing that surprised me
Speaker 1: is when I put my arm and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: the shaft and that thing's long. I was like, damn,
Speaker 1: that thing isn't there far. And I've actually reached up
Speaker 1: in there pretty good and got ahold of shaft and
Speaker 1: started to pull him. I was surprised that I could
Speaker 1: actually pull him a little bit, but then he come out.
Speaker 1: Did he come out and head first? Tail man? I was,
Speaker 1: I was, I had no idea that fishes that big
Speaker 1: Steve was whipped and it was just nothing. But like
Speaker 1: I just like I could see his just tail. No, no,
Speaker 1: he came out head first, but somehow that there was
Speaker 1: so much silt sediments ship and I just saw like
Speaker 1: what I thought, like a hall of it tail, you know,
Speaker 1: just tail. His tail is probably easily two hands fans
Speaker 1: like your hands, yeah, your hands easily. Oh wait, did
Speaker 1: we did we say how big this grouper was? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I feel like forty pounds, Brandon feels like upper third.
Speaker 1: It was. It was like a man and they were
Speaker 1: getting dragged around in circles. He got me like, so
Speaker 1: you got it coming out, and like what was kind
Speaker 1: of your plan? Like I'm just gonna take him the surface.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I thought. I had to hurry because I thought if
Speaker 1: he just came out, so I kept taking if he
Speaker 1: comes out and just slims away with the whole kit
Speaker 1: and caboodle, which yeah, so I thought it was like
Speaker 1: I thought it was like an essence of like and
Speaker 1: that's weary. And you know because if he came out
Speaker 1: and for all the serpent, he just like swam off
Speaker 1: after he just swam off. So I thought you had
Speaker 1: to kind of be like Johnny out the spot. I
Speaker 1: was gonna pull him out of the hole. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you guys are eyes hanging around making sure nothing bad
Speaker 1: happens to be so sure I got him out of
Speaker 1: the whole. Someone else to do something just from from
Speaker 1: as soon as I looked down. I was just trying
Speaker 1: to be helpful. You pull you pulled him out, and
Speaker 1: you're kind of facing the hole. You pulled him out,
Speaker 1: and in the video you can see he comes out
Speaker 1: like a bad comes to life and spins you around.
Speaker 1: I was crazy at least, and you had made a
Speaker 1: comment about you like the kind of fish where you
Speaker 1: gotta dig your heels in try to drag him out
Speaker 1: of the hole, which is hard with a fin on.
Speaker 1: But I actually when he went under that next ledge,
Speaker 1: I had like I was trying to brace myself like
Speaker 1: I was gonna do a dead list. I was like
Speaker 1: getting set up for a dead list. And then once
Speaker 1: he was free of the hole, and Kimmy was down
Speaker 1: there and then I was like, holy ship, that fish
Speaker 1: is big. Man. It just seems like in that I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but like in that because most of
Speaker 1: fish are looking there aren't big. You know, you're looking
Speaker 1: at all kinds of fish, like you know, two three
Speaker 1: four pounds, I mean, just aw the reef fish. And
Speaker 1: I just didn't know that something like that was around
Speaker 1: when I went and looked at it, because you are
Speaker 1: looking at like there's like a portion of a fish
Speaker 1: when you put a light. Now you like, just look
Speaker 1: where the light is. I'm like, fish, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Hear what about this? He says, like thirty forty something
Speaker 1: pounds When you're looking at in the cooler, what's its dimensions?
Speaker 1: It filled a YETI one, It's lips and tail are touching, yeah,
Speaker 1: and just fat and chubby in between those those big blacks. Um,
Speaker 1: we can always tell, like they're over thirty five when
Speaker 1: they get that big bottom jaw, Like you can see
Speaker 1: the big shoulders, but that big bottom jaw. As they
Speaker 1: get bigger, it just gets bigger and bigger, and you're like,
Speaker 1: that's a real one, you know. But less than that,
Speaker 1: I still think it's kind of not a juvenile I
Speaker 1: mean they're good fish, but that's a stud like that,
Speaker 1: a big one. You know. A thing I've learned from
Speaker 1: I think I'll learn from spear fisherman that I had
Speaker 1: to put together for like after a whole life of
Speaker 1: rod and reel and fish. Is that like grip Like
Speaker 1: that if you get your hand up in his throat,
Speaker 1: so your thumb is under one gill plate and your
Speaker 1: four fingers go on to the other guilt plate, and
Speaker 1: you're basically like grabbing his trachia. You're grabbing the base
Speaker 1: of his gills, pushing all of his gills together too,
Speaker 1: closing it. Man, you can manage a hell of a
Speaker 1: big fish like that, and it's so much easier to
Speaker 1: swim them and turn them by their head. You got them.
Speaker 1: You're thinking, you're they shut right down. You're not letting
Speaker 1: water go through their gills. They're like, oh jeez, I
Speaker 1: mean this is difference, Like it puts you in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat in a way, the holding his tail and ship.
Speaker 1: It just makes them that much more. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how they're shaped to be hydrodynamic. So oh yeah, that
Speaker 1: was like I couldn't believe the first time I did.
Speaker 1: I did it on a on a yellow tail and
Speaker 1: it was like he was just like very hard to man,
Speaker 1: it's wrapping all over, beat me inside of the head
Speaker 1: and I met you got him like that and he's
Speaker 1: just like okay, Uh, if you curious what all this
Speaker 1: looks like all the whole hunting parent as a camera,
Speaker 1: as a underwater cameraman, how would you rank coverage. It's
Speaker 1: one of those difficult things to shoot ever, because you
Speaker 1: guys are disappearing inside of a cave, and it does
Speaker 1: make it doesn't create certain complexities. It well, it's dark
Speaker 1: and you have a flashlight and they're silt everywhere. So honestly,
Speaker 1: the camera rigs like we can barely get them inside
Speaker 1: the holes. UM. Having go pros and things rigged up
Speaker 1: in the cave like camera setting up is super helpful
Speaker 1: for us, UM because the grouper and stuff they just
Speaker 1: disappeared into the dark. So it's not the easiest thing
Speaker 1: to shoot. And one thing people forget is that the
Speaker 1: camera guys have to keep up with you athletes or divers,
Speaker 1: and uh, that's that's gonna be hard. Sometimes we have
Speaker 1: this great, great stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, if you were
Speaker 1: too great, like the footage that we've been getting recently.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's as good as it gets
Speaker 1: for the Bahamas UM, and there's a lot of team
Speaker 1: we're involved in that with you guys hunting, but also
Speaker 1: like Kimmy and and Cameron, I've been diving with them
Speaker 1: for almost a decade now. So when we're all diving
Speaker 1: together is the most fun for me because we don't
Speaker 1: even have conversations. We just look at each other and
Speaker 1: all of us know exactly what to do at all
Speaker 1: times in the water, and it's like this unspoken communication
Speaker 1: when we're hunting and filming, that's just like everything is seamless,
Speaker 1: and creating with professionals and and getting it all on camera.
Speaker 1: It's just what we've created this past week is going
Speaker 1: to be one of those badass Bahamas shows I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: So I'm excited about it. That's not I'm talking about
Speaker 1: and they'll be able to see it where Kimmy on
Speaker 1: meat Eater YouTube. I think it's going to release in
Speaker 1: October and um yeah, I'm gonna have my own little
Speaker 1: series on meat Eater what other what other places are
Speaker 1: on there? So this is our our travel episode. It
Speaker 1: is UM currently a four part series and so we
Speaker 1: have Maui my origins, um, and we have other places
Speaker 1: in Hawaii Big Island and this is the travel episode Bahamas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but paren Um and my husband Justin have been filming
Speaker 1: all the underwater stuff and I think it's just it's
Speaker 1: so damn cool to have like people who are not
Speaker 1: just really really good cameraman, but they're also they're also
Speaker 1: holding their breath with us. I don't think a lot
Speaker 1: of people understand that. And they're also just that their
Speaker 1: knowledge and understanding of spear fishing, Like like they're not
Speaker 1: just Okay, we're gonna work our cameras and then be done.
Speaker 1: Like any break they get, they're out there poking fish too.
Speaker 1: And that's what makes it so cool, is it? Like
Speaker 1: when we say it's teamwork, I mean it is such teamwork.
Speaker 1: Half the times when we're diving, like it's even our
Speaker 1: camera guys like grunting or getting our attention to show
Speaker 1: us like a fish that we're not seeing and you
Speaker 1: guys are capturing it, but you're you're hunting it with us.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think like makes the filming of
Speaker 1: the whole thing so fun. Definitely my heart. The problem
Speaker 1: I have with the way they grunt when they see something.
Speaker 1: It first takes me five minutes figure out where they
Speaker 1: all are at because it never just like automatically occurs
Speaker 1: to me there behind me. I always start looking like
Speaker 1: in front of me because you're like underwater noise, it
Speaker 1: just no direction to it. But every time I hear
Speaker 1: him grunt and I start looking in front of me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, the one place I know he's not is there,
Speaker 1: But I still like where is he? They'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's right somewhere behind when you got a fish or
Speaker 1: just what like, what are you talking about? Going idiot? Idiot,
Speaker 1: idiot right there? I only had grant you a few times,
Speaker 1: teams so much if we could talk underwater, little underwater chokboards,
Speaker 1: He's like, look to your right, there is a large
Speaker 1: hog fish staring at you. Cute cards. No, it was
Speaker 1: so cool is that you guys put each other on
Speaker 1: so many different fish species so you were able to experience,
Speaker 1: like what it was catching gellow jack, black grouper, a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, and just to to have that
Speaker 1: different experience with each species. And I love I love
Speaker 1: seeing the learning curve because I mean I said it yesterday,
Speaker 1: like Kimmy is arguably one of the best female and
Speaker 1: male spiritfish period in the world. Like she's phenomenal. She
Speaker 1: just has that way in the water. Um, but even
Speaker 1: still like nerves using different rig and you know, the
Speaker 1: water the first day, like you kind of worked out
Speaker 1: the kinks and same thing with Steve, you know, by
Speaker 1: the end of the trip. I mean we still made
Speaker 1: some mistakes, but night and day different than you know
Speaker 1: the first day, like your guys learning curves like this,
Speaker 1: Like it was pretty incredible. That's the fun part. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: uh got one A couple of things left. One major thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: A conk is a large marine snail. What's a big conk? Way,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a few pounds, right, I've had something
Speaker 1: with the actual meat itself. Way is up to two pounds,
Speaker 1: all the meat itself and the whole damn shells weigh
Speaker 1: heavier than that, probably a foot long, and tastes real
Speaker 1: good paint and the as to clean. Oh but you don't.
Speaker 1: Let's I want to cover an oar thing. You don't
Speaker 1: like lobster anymore? You got burned out. You're like someone
Speaker 1: who gets the job at of ice cream play pretty
Speaker 1: much and they pretty eat an ice cream. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll still eat it, but I really lost a taste
Speaker 1: for it. Handled too many of them, seeing too much,
Speaker 1: smelled it, eating it too much. But you still like conk? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love conk. It's not cleaning. Conk is not um
Speaker 1: intuitive count No, you like, Well, I'll back some, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna go. We're gonna clean. You're gonna clean one
Speaker 1: for us again. I think I told you to store.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell it again. The first time we tried
Speaker 1: to clean one one. We're in the southern yuk Tam
Speaker 1: Peninsula and we were kind of camping in this old
Speaker 1: bombed out house. Was like the roof had burned off.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like just a structure and the
Speaker 1: windows were gone, but it had the window frames. And
Speaker 1: we had a rental car, and we took the bottle
Speaker 1: jack out of the rental car and we put the
Speaker 1: conk up against the top of the window frame and
Speaker 1: put the bottle jack on the bottom of the window frame,
Speaker 1: and put a two by four between the conk and
Speaker 1: the window frame, so it's like from going from it's
Speaker 1: like the window frame a bottle jack or two by
Speaker 1: four on top of the bottle jack. Then the conk
Speaker 1: sandwich between the two by four and the roof of
Speaker 1: the window frame of a house, and then start working
Speaker 1: the jack. There's a bottle jack didn't make that noise,
Speaker 1: but you get the noise. And then we'd like pick
Speaker 1: crush it and then pick all the chunks of shell
Speaker 1: and ship out of there and try to start out
Speaker 1: what was edible. And then one day we found where
Speaker 1: someone had been cleaning some ages ago, and we're like,
Speaker 1: why do they all have that little hole? And then
Speaker 1: it began to occur how one breaks into a con
Speaker 1: But I still had really ever figured it out till now.
Speaker 1: I say, people completely destroyed the shell to get it out.
Speaker 1: Take a big hama or sledge holm and just completely
Speaker 1: explode the shell and like you said, picked the pieces off. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna deal with that real quick. We gotta step
Speaker 1: outside the right because it's a messy business, all right,
Speaker 1: blocked up. So we got you got the conk in
Speaker 1: your hand, what's he wait? Two three pounds, three pounds,
Speaker 1: two pounds snail in your hand, and he can and
Speaker 1: he's he lookal and he comes to a point and
Speaker 1: those are like his growth rings. And you're gonna chisel
Speaker 1: into that snail shell where the end of his body
Speaker 1: curls all the way around. So we had a special hammer.
Speaker 1: Is that made for that? Yeah? Actually it is. It's
Speaker 1: like imagine, um, it's like two I can't what the
Speaker 1: blade is called, like a yeah, like two hatchet blades
Speaker 1: set at ninety degree angle. So one side's got a
Speaker 1: one side's got a vertical, and one side's got a
Speaker 1: horizontal depending on your stroke. Right, different strokes for different folks,
Speaker 1: that's right. So you're gonna take that, you're gonna bore
Speaker 1: into that shell. Yeah, So what you're gonna do is count.
Speaker 1: I know they typically count up instead of counting down
Speaker 1: practically the same. So I'll count two up. So you
Speaker 1: stop from this one where it's more defined one two
Speaker 1: in between the second and the third. Well, how do
Speaker 1: you know where to start accounting? Yeah, that's immediate argument
Speaker 1: because you go to where it so the first role
Speaker 1: is well defined. But that's someone's preference, so that you'd count.
Speaker 1: He'd be the one count and you count that one
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, that would be one that would be
Speaker 1: too okay, then bullshit with with but right, come come
Speaker 1: to from the sef you could get and that's a
Speaker 1: funny thing because I guarantee you would never get him up. No,
Speaker 1: because that's not technically that's not horns one too, and
Speaker 1: you break that, you get So this goes to show
Speaker 1: that it's it's almost by it's like common sense that
Speaker 1: that's gonna be where it's gonna be, you know, like
Speaker 1: that's where you gotta crack it. Yes and no. But
Speaker 1: I'm saying like for us, like you look at it,
Speaker 1: that makes total sense. It's gonna be there. For me,
Speaker 1: it makes total sense, it's gonna be he you know
Speaker 1: what he said to me A handful of times he
Speaker 1: said to me something about how he was trained or
Speaker 1: how he was taught. He's got like a yeah, an
Speaker 1: allegiance to what I'm saying. Three four, five, seven, that's
Speaker 1: between the seventh and eight. Let's do it, guys. If
Speaker 1: you want to count all the sorry, and how do
Speaker 1: you know where you're gonna whack it? I count the notches.
Speaker 1: So you go, you count too, not just one too.
Speaker 1: And it's in between the second and third, but you're
Speaker 1: you're counting the first match that has texture, Yes, the
Speaker 1: one really defined you know, defined, horny little growth ring, Yes,
Speaker 1: And you just count up too. In between the second
Speaker 1: and third is where you're going to crack them. And
Speaker 1: the goal is that you're going to break a little
Speaker 1: teeny hole in there and then sever his mooring because
Speaker 1: he's like curled inside there and just the muscles stuck
Speaker 1: to the shed itself. That's what it touches him. So
Speaker 1: he's only attached him one little spot inside there. You're
Speaker 1: not really cutting nothing off to say, detouch it. You
Speaker 1: just removing it. It, just trying it free pretty much,
Speaker 1: loosening his grip on his shell. Yes, got it, and
Speaker 1: that's it. What Yeah, there's a little whole third inch
Speaker 1: by an inch Now that's onny one though, I don't
Speaker 1: snakes a bendy dexter flame knife and air and you're
Speaker 1: just freeing up so the flexi blades billiam corn Huh
Speaker 1: To be honest, no, I prefer to use um but
Speaker 1: a knife. Yeah, And then you grab his foot, Wow,
Speaker 1: comes right out of there. You never guess. That's just
Speaker 1: slides right out. He's got a little dinosaur claw for
Speaker 1: a hook. Orange section of black, second brown section in
Speaker 1: a big old white section. So what all this is edible?
Speaker 1: All of it really and truthfully all of it is
Speaker 1: edible besides the spur, the gut and the mouth dies
Speaker 1: and everything. It looks like a little alien. And then
Speaker 1: you gotta get the rubbery skin off there. You don't
Speaker 1: have to. You don't have to, like yments, No, mony,
Speaker 1: they won't cut it off, really, the skin and everything.
Speaker 1: So Steve cut it off for us because we're not behaving.
Speaker 1: I mean that probably we had you all out, and yeah,
Speaker 1: let's probably have a different point of view on it.
Speaker 1: If it's got the skin on, people say it makes
Speaker 1: it tough all but not really. So what come out
Speaker 1: of there is like a big I mean what your
Speaker 1: leftover was, I would say you left over like a
Speaker 1: big Hamburger patty of meat pretty much. Yes, And so Steve,
Speaker 1: what's your hot tip take away from con cleaning? Don't
Speaker 1: use a bottle jack? Okay, So one last thing, speaking
Speaker 1: of conk. The other day we had this is where
Speaker 1: your listeners get involved. The other day we had h
Speaker 1: conk fritters at a restaurant. That is just it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I gues stop thinking about the guy in the restaurant.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. There's a guy, his family has been on
Speaker 1: this island for out and how long hundred fifty years
Speaker 1: something crazy. He lives alone for the most part, lives
Speaker 1: alone on an island, collects rain water and has a
Speaker 1: brackish water well, completely off the grid, and if all things,
Speaker 1: he runs a restaurant that he used to run with
Speaker 1: his mother who grew up there. His siblings were like
Speaker 1: born on the island. He likes to point out that
Speaker 1: he wasn't. He was born in a hospital and take
Speaker 1: him back to the island. Family dates back over a
Speaker 1: century and like the stude named Chester has his restaurant
Speaker 1: and you need to call and tell him you're coming,
Speaker 1: and you pull a boat up. I mean he's many
Speaker 1: miles from the nearest road. You pull a boat up
Speaker 1: and he makes fried fish count fritters and during season
Speaker 1: he cooks you lobster. Cameron's friends with him, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's not it's hard to explain the like, nohemer
Speaker 1: you think of a restaurant, you think of someone like
Speaker 1: he's just like he's just trying to get by in
Speaker 1: a way that makes sense to him, right and provide
Speaker 1: like like a really nice service. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: a restaurant, but it's that no one's getting rich at
Speaker 1: this restaurant. It's just like he like lives the way
Speaker 1: that makes sense to him and the way he's been
Speaker 1: there and is a restaurant. It brings about a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of goodwill. You call him, you come in, you
Speaker 1: park your boat, you walk up, and he makes crying
Speaker 1: fritters and fried fish and sells beer. It's a great
Speaker 1: place and like slamming rump. But for him to get
Speaker 1: fuel is a real pain in the assid and Cameron
Speaker 1: can explain the fuel situation. So he had he's always
Speaker 1: run on generator. It's not like there's power out there.
Speaker 1: And I think in a thirty mile stretch there might
Speaker 1: be five other people that live like he's just right
Speaker 1: smack in the middle of no man's land. So he's
Speaker 1: got a diesel generator that he had for the last
Speaker 1: ten years or whatever that died just after this past hurricane.
Speaker 1: So about ten miles away on another island, we had
Speaker 1: heard that there was another generator that had been up
Speaker 1: in the woods in the bush for like fifteen years
Speaker 1: left like and the guy who owns that island said,
Speaker 1: you guys can have that if you want. So him
Speaker 1: and two other guys went and got that old generator
Speaker 1: has just been overgrown or whatever. Put it on a
Speaker 1: boat and drug it back to the island, and we
Speaker 1: drug it up the hill and put it back in there,
Speaker 1: and somehow a mechanic got it going after you know,
Speaker 1: a week. So now he's got this dilapidated old generator,
Speaker 1: and to get fuel for that, he's got to get
Speaker 1: in his boat and go fifteen miles get deesel, put
Speaker 1: it in jerry cans and bring it back to that
Speaker 1: and hump it up the hill and refill that generator constantly.
Speaker 1: So just before COVID, I got a guy to he
Speaker 1: then got weirdly, he got shut down for nine months
Speaker 1: during talk about brutal, like a place that would no
Speaker 1: one even know about. He's like restaurants gotta showed down.
Speaker 1: I closed so weird, Like I would have been like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep staying open because we're gonna know
Speaker 1: who's gonna know. Um. So he's always he's always said,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can get me a generator, you know,
Speaker 1: that'd be great. So a while back I went there
Speaker 1: and looked in the generator shed man, there's like five
Speaker 1: generators in there, Like a diesel generator is just not
Speaker 1: the way to go. They're just gonna keep dying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they die and just live there, and he's gonna moves
Speaker 1: over and put another one in him. So I was like,
Speaker 1: why not do solar? You know? So I was like,
Speaker 1: started looking into getting quotes for solar. Howd a guy
Speaker 1: go out there and figure out the amount of power
Speaker 1: he needed and give us a quote and a game
Speaker 1: plan for doing solar. And that's where I got Steve involved,
Speaker 1: you know. I said, you know, if if you can
Speaker 1: give back anything for this trip, it would be to
Speaker 1: help him, to get him solar, just because he has
Speaker 1: done such a service for everyone that has ever visited
Speaker 1: that place will never forget it. That's one of the
Speaker 1: coolest spots on the planet. And just to take one
Speaker 1: aspect of us giving back to him and this worldwide
Speaker 1: community that loves that place so much and putting solar
Speaker 1: that's going to help the environment and help that island.
Speaker 1: I would love to do that. And we are rolling
Speaker 1: right now. We're with Chester. Can you introduce yourself and
Speaker 1: where we are right now? All I'm chest Advil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it flows kunk Shack and Little Habba and the Barry Islands,
Speaker 1: Bahamas and how big is this island that we're standing
Speaker 1: on and who inhabits it? The island is about two
Speaker 1: and a half miles long and about a quarter mile wide.
Speaker 1: Current population. Current population right now is too well, usually
Speaker 1: there's one. So years ago, I was down here in
Speaker 1: the Bahamas and we've been fishing up in the Northern
Speaker 1: Barres Islands. We're running back down south and we ran
Speaker 1: past this island and I was like, man, who lives
Speaker 1: on that island? There's like two little houses, and a
Speaker 1: buddy's like, man, that's that restaurant. It's called Flows. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: how in the heck do they get anything there? But
Speaker 1: let's go check. We gotta go check this out. So
Speaker 1: we pull in running ground a couple of times trying
Speaker 1: to get in here, and finally get in here to
Speaker 1: the dock and walk up and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: can we have lunch? Chester was like, do you have
Speaker 1: lunch tomorrow? And just segued into the next fifteen years
Speaker 1: of getting a no Chester and just what he has
Speaker 1: to go through day to day to live on an
Speaker 1: island by himself and run a restaurant which is arguably
Speaker 1: the best kunk and fresh fish, fried fish I've ever
Speaker 1: had my life anywhere in the world. It's so good,
Speaker 1: so good. Thank you very much for that game. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be wild for you seeing this every day.
Speaker 1: But you know every little bit of history because your
Speaker 1: family has been here for more than a hundred years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what basically what got me started with this? When I
Speaker 1: was in school, My mom told me that this was
Speaker 1: our father's dream before you pass So in school I
Speaker 1: used to think about it all the time. And what
Speaker 1: I'm doing here right now is just trying to fulfill
Speaker 1: his dream because he's not here, So I took it
Speaker 1: upon myself to make it my dream. And what's your
Speaker 1: family's history here? You're telling me about your great or
Speaker 1: great great grandmother. Her name was Agnes Johnson. I think
Speaker 1: she was born in eighteen fourteen, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: And she was the founder of this island, Little Harbor
Speaker 1: under the keys around it, and it's been in our
Speaker 1: family ever since. It's generation property. You said she used
Speaker 1: to what did she used to do on this island.
Speaker 1: She used to cook for the pirates before she bought
Speaker 1: this island. She did Insistent Key, which is opposite Great Harbor,
Speaker 1: and she's to cook for the pirates, and they used
Speaker 1: to pay and go. She was a slave and that's
Speaker 1: why she made her fortune. And she overheard the pirates
Speaker 1: talking about purchasing the harbor, so when they went out
Speaker 1: to see she went in asa and purchase it. And
Speaker 1: when they came back and they met her. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how she got this island. How did that go over
Speaker 1: the pirates, Well, they didn't have a choice in about it.
Speaker 1: She already paid for it. That's pretty wild. And they
Speaker 1: when you as soon as you pull up here, you
Speaker 1: see generations and generation pile the biggest colle pile kunk
Speaker 1: shells I've ever seen. You're looking at over as a conkin.
Speaker 1: I mean it's literally close to a million conk. Well,
Speaker 1: what you got to look at, what you're looking at
Speaker 1: is only half or what used to be here because
Speaker 1: the shell it rots after a while and it turns
Speaker 1: into sign. Hm. That's why you're saying so pretty good
Speaker 1: from all that conk. I guess. So, so you run
Speaker 1: a restaurant, you live on this island. There are needs
Speaker 1: for power electricity to keep things running. What's what's your
Speaker 1: current situation with this now? Well, right now, I'm just
Speaker 1: skating on nice right now. That's what's going on with
Speaker 1: me right now, and you know I need help. If
Speaker 1: whoever can help me, I'd appreciate it very much. What's
Speaker 1: the what's the back story for the The major challenge
Speaker 1: here is Chester lives fifteen miles from any other civilization,
Speaker 1: So to get even fuel for the generator, he's got
Speaker 1: to go down getting his boat if the weather allows,
Speaker 1: and then run another fifteen miles up to gas cans up,
Speaker 1: get him filled with diesel, hop back in the boat,
Speaker 1: run back here, and then hump him up this hill
Speaker 1: and then back another hundred fifty yards back into the
Speaker 1: bush to a generator that is probably thirty or forty
Speaker 1: years old, you know, and it's been it's I mean,
Speaker 1: you're just hanging on by a thread keeping that thing running.
Speaker 1: And how how hot was it today? About nine degrees?
Speaker 1: Having even a fan is helpful here, So you know,
Speaker 1: having that generator there's a big deal. But I had
Speaker 1: had the idea just before COVID to try to get
Speaker 1: your solar. He's got a perfect piece of land here
Speaker 1: that's kind of protected from you know, the hurricanes. There's
Speaker 1: a good spot to put the solar kind of out
Speaker 1: of the way, Um, it's gonna save you know, moving
Speaker 1: diesel and not having to rely on fossil fuels period um.
Speaker 1: And just you know, you think about the things we
Speaker 1: do day to day just to survive, you know, at home,
Speaker 1: and how many people we have helping us. He doesn't
Speaker 1: have anybody help him. He's just him. So you're having
Speaker 1: an off day, and you know it's the however many
Speaker 1: how many how many days you run on diesel before
Speaker 1: you got to refill? Uh? Well, the tank I have
Speaker 1: is about uh about every three three days. I usually
Speaker 1: put in about fifteen gallons roughly m So it's a
Speaker 1: lot of work. Yea, Let's get some solar on this island.
Speaker 1: So personally, I couldn't fund it, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: get some friends together to help do it. And everyone
Speaker 1: I talked to had offered to help. But you know
Speaker 1: Steve and talking to him, and you know, a group
Speaker 1: of friends with here is like, let's do this, you know,
Speaker 1: let's really help him out. We can use our reach,
Speaker 1: you know to help a good guy in a cool place,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to keep you doing what
Speaker 1: you're doing so more people can come and enjoy this.
Speaker 1: And this is there's not enough places like this on
Speaker 1: the planet with people like you. We spent we spent
Speaker 1: um number of hours over a couple of days here
Speaker 1: at Chester's and this was the base camp for part
Speaker 1: of the film shoot. He fed us from the restaurant.
Speaker 1: It was a scene for Um, we used his kitchen
Speaker 1: and his restaurant for a cooking scene for the show.
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I mean it's something that anyone who's
Speaker 1: in this area like needs to come and experience. It
Speaker 1: is something that you really I can't imagine finding anywhere else. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's just kind of preservation of history and and
Speaker 1: continuing that. Yes, you can say that again. He also
Speaker 1: makes a slam and rum punch by it as flows
Speaker 1: famous rum punch flows cock check right flows called check Solar. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I've put together on camer instead of
Speaker 1: a goal fund me to help. He might be sitting
Speaker 1: there thinking like, um, why would I give a shit
Speaker 1: about this place? I don't think I can't explain to you.
Speaker 1: It's a cool place. It's a really cool project. He's
Speaker 1: a great guy, that's a nice guy, and it's like
Speaker 1: it'd just be fun to to do that. I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like a lot of listeners would
Speaker 1: kick in a few bucks. Yeah, I'm gonna kick in
Speaker 1: some money. Yeah, any I mean anything helps, you know,
Speaker 1: And if it takes us five years, you know, to
Speaker 1: do it, you think about how many thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of gallons of diesel burned that that'll save, you know,
Speaker 1: in one of the most pristine spots in the world.
Speaker 1: To be able to do it solar and to take that,
Speaker 1: you know, out of it, those fossil fuels out of it,
Speaker 1: would be pretty amazing. It's just such a nice and
Speaker 1: usual guy. You just want that place and what he's
Speaker 1: doing to exist in this world. I mean he has,
Speaker 1: like you said, over hunt, over a century of history there.
Speaker 1: He said to himself, like I'm never leaving this island.
Speaker 1: That's what he wants to do for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. But it's like not exactly like fitted for
Speaker 1: today's world, you know, and so but to me, it's
Speaker 1: like those are the little gems, a little splashes of
Speaker 1: like awesome unique diversity that makes the world that much
Speaker 1: more interesting. So if we all could help it out
Speaker 1: just so it can exist, Like what a better place
Speaker 1: history floes conk Shack Solar, Yeah, you can have it
Speaker 1: all set up. Ye, flows conk shack solar. One thing
Speaker 1: he mentioned as it being his dad's dream. I feel
Speaker 1: like it was like a couple of generations back. Was
Speaker 1: it Cam his great great great great grandmother Flow she uh.
Speaker 1: He told us a story about how she used to
Speaker 1: serve food on that island to the pirates. She was
Speaker 1: she was born a slave, but yeah, but got into
Speaker 1: feeding the pirates when they would come in and would
Speaker 1: get collect goals. Made a little fortune off of that
Speaker 1: and not to stand them on the island for a while.
Speaker 1: And had heard the pirates like that island. So when
Speaker 1: the pirates went out to do their thing, she went
Speaker 1: to Nassau and bought the island. So they were a
Speaker 1: little bitter about that, That's what I asked. I was like,
Speaker 1: so what did the pirates do? They must have been passed.
Speaker 1: So let's keep that history up into the president. It's fun.
Speaker 1: It's a fun project. We'll talk more about it. You're
Speaker 1: also gonna put a get We also got a little
Speaker 1: video of showing the place. Sweet. Maybe sweet people could,
Speaker 1: like I said, kick in a couple of bucks and
Speaker 1: we'll pull that whole thing together to be fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's where it's where Kimmy did her cooking second or
Speaker 1: the three of us, I should say, did our cooking
Speaker 1: segment um for her show in the series. And Chester's
Speaker 1: on it, Chesters on it all right, not to be
Speaker 1: confused the Chester the divester different, Chester, polygraph Chester, yeah
Speaker 1: line Chester al right, everybuddy, thanks a lot,