Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to podcast,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
Speaker 1: for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. All right, man,
Speaker 1: this is a good one. This is about you know,
Speaker 1: this is the show I'm looking most forward to for
Speaker 1: the whole year, even though even though our guest thinks
Speaker 1: it's stupid, he's over it. Probably he's what he's so
Speaker 1: over it. We have in studio the guy Jason Fisher.
Speaker 1: It's a great last name for what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Jason Fisher, the guy who caught the the Whalley chee
Speaker 1: Ds and the now infamous. And it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: know is it famous or infamous? It's infamous, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: infamous wall Ie tournament cheating scandal of of Ohio, of
Speaker 1: Lake Erie. He's shaking his head. No, I still don't
Speaker 1: even know what I'm doing here. This is it's it's unreal,
Speaker 1: what's going on. We're still getting phone calls from news
Speaker 1: outlets and podcasts and all these people want to like
Speaker 1: think we're interesting, and I'm just like, I have no
Speaker 1: clue how this went such a worldwide thing. And here
Speaker 1: I sit with you out here in Bozeman in Montana,
Speaker 1: ready to talk about it. But but let's do it.
Speaker 1: You know what I knew the story was. I mean
Speaker 1: the minute I saw it, I knew it was interesting,
Speaker 1: but I I just thought it would be very contained.
Speaker 1: And I knew about it right off the bat because
Speaker 1: Chester's Walleye Derby partner Seth that we work with. I
Speaker 1: was with Seth, and Seth like stays hip to all
Speaker 1: things Walleye and all things Tournament. So it wasn't like
Speaker 1: it was like hours after that after it happened. He
Speaker 1: had knew him, he knew something shit about it, and
Speaker 1: so right away, um, I was like, oh that's good,
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. And I was that day. I think it
Speaker 1: was the next day after the term, I was telling
Speaker 1: get the guy in the show, Get the guy in
Speaker 1: the show, and uh, then it blew up and I
Speaker 1: knew it had officially blown up when I saw a
Speaker 1: guy on barstool Sports of all places, trying to describe it.
Speaker 1: This dude, it's like his zero idea what he's talking
Speaker 1: about he said today were putting metal balls in the fish,
Speaker 1: metal balls, the metal balls. Right after that happened, Seth
Speaker 1: and I got like, I don't know how many, like
Speaker 1: a hundred d m s people like, did you see
Speaker 1: this already? We're like, yeah, we saw. I used that
Speaker 1: to gauge the I used that. That's one of my
Speaker 1: primary metrics to gauge how interesting some thing is. The
Speaker 1: people is how many of my friends will independently, um
Speaker 1: send me something so like the Coronado ship. Remember that,
Speaker 1: how many maybe five probably more people said the Mammoth
Speaker 1: that they were able to reconstruct his travels based on
Speaker 1: them call it. But if you're late to the game,
Speaker 1: it's like, don't even bother sending it to Steve because no,
Speaker 1: because I need it. You've already heard it. I need
Speaker 1: to use this text message. I'm like whatever, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to clog up your phone. No too, I get too.
Speaker 1: I get like Titta. Later, if I get up into
Speaker 1: four and five, I know we're on something up and
Speaker 1: I'm this probably shattered the record, even though you think
Speaker 1: it's stupid, so so, and the crazy thing is is
Speaker 1: you were first man. I mean, so it's it's I swear.
Speaker 1: So it turns into the day of you know, people
Speaker 1: within our our our community are anglers. I mean they're
Speaker 1: just rapid fire, and they're starting the memes or starting
Speaker 1: this or starting and the favorite is my favorite is
Speaker 1: the I think it was you as Trump and WALLEYE.
Speaker 1: Fisherman has Biden. Yeah, yeah, that one. I so again
Speaker 1: I received that one. Like you said, you gauge how
Speaker 1: good something is by how many people. So I have
Speaker 1: like friends from high school and just people who haven't
Speaker 1: talked to in years. They're like sending me like, oh,
Speaker 1: look at this, you know, like I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: already times. But but but then so, like the next
Speaker 1: day after this, I start to get calls from all
Speaker 1: these media outlets, and then you texted me and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: Steve Ronella with meat eat, like like nobody knows who
Speaker 1: the hell you are. And I'm like, yeah, okay, this
Speaker 1: is probably one of my buddies, like trying to trying
Speaker 1: to joke on me, because at this point nobody was
Speaker 1: nobody like that. No, no national level me media outlet
Speaker 1: is trying to get ahold of me. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just people burning my phone up. Buddies and then I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, and then I'm like, what, I
Speaker 1: don't believe you? So you call text I know it's you.
Speaker 1: Well the first thing you told me, the first thing
Speaker 1: you said is I don't know what to say. They
Speaker 1: cheated and got called. Yeah, it's it was just one
Speaker 1: of those where I'm like, why I didn't realize. I
Speaker 1: can understand Lake Erie. You know, it's a big fishery.
Speaker 1: I can understand tournament fishermen nationwide, even bass guys, catfish guys,
Speaker 1: all these fishermen. I can understand why those people are
Speaker 1: going to be upset. But just the the whole vast majority,
Speaker 1: like you see TikTok TikTok went nuts with just parodies
Speaker 1: and memes and people using like the the sound, and
Speaker 1: I to me still right now, I have no clue
Speaker 1: why it turned into such a big deal. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're gonna calls from New Zealand, Australia, you know, London,
Speaker 1: all these media outlets wanting the story, Norway, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, this is unbelievable. Meanwhile, meanwhile, my wife's like
Speaker 1: you got kids to watch, Like I don't care. She's like,
Speaker 1: you you worked all day yesterday and you know, you
Speaker 1: got to take care of the kids right now. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, Like this is the Discovery Channel or something,
Speaker 1: and she's like, she's like, I don't care who it is. He,
Speaker 1: you know, get up and take care of your kid.
Speaker 1: He's need some food or something. This even spread into
Speaker 1: a circle of video game journalists I follow on Twitter
Speaker 1: who were like, Wow, I'm learning about a whole new
Speaker 1: world here and there spreading a game journalists on Twitter. Yes,
Speaker 1: are you surprised by this? Twitter is not dead after all.
Speaker 1: I guess now fills but he'll be able to say
Speaker 1: what he really thinks non Twitter. Now think about So
Speaker 1: you still have no idea why this? Why do you
Speaker 1: think I'll tell him his his his worries are over.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell him exactly by it centering, But first
Speaker 1: we gotta talk about a couple of other things. You
Speaker 1: got a minute, right, I got a little bit. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you why I think it's interesting. You want
Speaker 1: me to tease it for you. Let's tease it. How
Speaker 1: in the world would you not think that someone's gonna
Speaker 1: realize there's big ass lead balls in a fish. Just
Speaker 1: think about that one for a minute. If they had
Speaker 1: gotten caught reading a scale, no one would care, right,
Speaker 1: But there's an audacity, there's like a crazy audacity to it.
Speaker 1: And then also also the way in which the gentleman
Speaker 1: in the video, the way in which the perpetrator just
Speaker 1: decides to stand there and hang his head and take
Speaker 1: his lumps as though he'd been tied to a whipping post.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was. It was. Oh I would have
Speaker 1: run one of two. One of two stayed there, the
Speaker 1: other one did run. Run. Yeah, okay, that's great. I was.
Speaker 1: The other guy was in his truck or something, but
Speaker 1: he knew what was going on. So I'll tell you
Speaker 1: all about it. Well, that's what that's what you're here for.
Speaker 1: The whold texts. We gotta talk about something else. Real question.
Speaker 1: I was gonna I was gonna give you a cliffhanger
Speaker 1: right back. I was pleasing. But that that in and
Speaker 1: of itself is a great story too, because the guys,
Speaker 1: not me, the anglers, is who make this story interesting.
Speaker 1: These are the guys that just wanted to punish these dudes.
Speaker 1: Because I'm the facilitator, right Like, if we're all here
Speaker 1: and we're betting, we're you know, we're playing darts or something,
Speaker 1: and you say, hey, Fisher, hold the cash. It's not
Speaker 1: my money, it's your money, right, So I'm not the
Speaker 1: one I'm upset because it's my it's my venue. But
Speaker 1: these guys it's their money, it's their time to shine.
Speaker 1: And that's that's why this story is bad for all
Speaker 1: these dudes. You but you wind up being well into this.
Speaker 1: But you want to being like Gandhi. Oh yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: like you could feel it was ready to teeter over
Speaker 1: the edge at any second. You know, I was good.
Speaker 1: There was another uh you know, Henry Kissinger want a
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize. But had I said you were like Kissinger,
Speaker 1: people be like you mean like, uh, the um clandestine
Speaker 1: bombing operations in Laos and Cambodia or do you mean
Speaker 1: the or do you mean the Mobile Peace Prize? So
Speaker 1: I went Gandhi, Yeah, Gandhi's a better choice. Gandhi wouldn't
Speaker 1: approve of Walleye fishing, probably not, but it was Gandhi
Speaker 1: esque what you did. You didn't want these that that
Speaker 1: you that you thought to you like like the lady Justice.
Speaker 1: You the first thing on your mind was being like
Speaker 1: the individual safety sensing the heated passions because you'd have
Speaker 1: thought it was gonna wind up being that someone was
Speaker 1: gonna get their you know, I'm not I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that I saved the day, but I truly believe that
Speaker 1: had it gone on for a little bit longer, one
Speaker 1: of these guys would have just said the hell with
Speaker 1: it and just and just went after I'm sure you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, then they would have enjoyed the full support, well,
Speaker 1: the whole, yeah, the whole. Then then we probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be here because then the story would be twisted in
Speaker 1: a different light. It wouldn't be somebody, you know, put
Speaker 1: some weights and fish. It would be you know, big
Speaker 1: brawl at a walleye thing and then fisherman. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we would probably never be able to walleye fish again
Speaker 1: on on the lake shore. You know, they'd be uh,
Speaker 1: there'd be articles about the further testament to the divisiveness
Speaker 1: of American culture today. Um, alright, couple things that hit
Speaker 1: on this one. There's the thing that we've been wanting
Speaker 1: to talk about for a long time, but we never
Speaker 1: never It's very important to me that I talked about it,
Speaker 1: but it never seems like a good time to talk
Speaker 1: about it. So let's gonna talk about it. Um, there's
Speaker 1: this new U. S. Geological Survey report. People are gonna
Speaker 1: be sitting there being like, why in the world are
Speaker 1: you talking about this when we can hear about we
Speaker 1: got weights in fish. Okay, here's the thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about. I don't know what it's. I just
Speaker 1: want people to know about this because I don't know
Speaker 1: what I don't know what any individuals gonna do about it.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about it. So we've covered in the past.
Speaker 1: If you watched me either the television show, you saw
Speaker 1: an episode we did about sage grouse. Okay, and in
Speaker 1: the episode about sage grouse we covered the the sage
Speaker 1: brush sea or the sage brush ecosystem. A new report
Speaker 1: came up from the U. S Geological Survey. Uh. We've
Speaker 1: also in the past had on people from the U.
Speaker 1: S Geological Survey. We had on a guy who's ran
Speaker 1: the process of trying to count how many grizzly bears
Speaker 1: are in the lower forty eight. We had on a
Speaker 1: guy that works on the way ducks move do z
Speaker 1: ease UM, particularly the way asiatic diseases flow into North
Speaker 1: America via ducks. UM. Now I'll point out the Geological
Speaker 1: Survey is not a They're not a policy making agency
Speaker 1: US Geological Survey. They don't manage land. They don't do policy.
Speaker 1: They do science for policymakers. They're saying that we've lost
Speaker 1: half of the original sage brush ecosystems. We are losing
Speaker 1: one point three over the past twenty years. We've lost
Speaker 1: one point three million acres of sage brush habitat per year.
Speaker 1: Another thing I didn't realize the sage brush ecosystem I'm
Speaker 1: reading for this report. The sage brush ecosystem is the
Speaker 1: largest terrestrial biome in the lower forty eight. Like, what
Speaker 1: you mean by the biggest terrestrial biome in the world
Speaker 1: is the tiger. So it's that mixed aspen black spruce
Speaker 1: stuff that you met that like crossed most of Canada, Interior, Alaska, Siberia.
Speaker 1: The tiger is the largest biome. But this is the
Speaker 1: largest biome, largest terrestrial so land based biome in the
Speaker 1: lower forty eight, sixty million acres spanning thirteen western states. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a recommendation in here that people have been focused
Speaker 1: for a long time. Sage brush recovery has been focused
Speaker 1: on looking at compromised sage brush areas and trying to
Speaker 1: restore low quality sage brush areas. And this report and
Speaker 1: the people thinking about this report are suggesting that it
Speaker 1: be like a radical reconsideration, it seems to me, and
Speaker 1: switch gears and just try to preserve, not just try
Speaker 1: to focus on preserving the remaining thirty three million acres
Speaker 1: of sage brush. Which it's kind of like it's almost
Speaker 1: fatalist because it's kind of like kissing the ones that
Speaker 1: are there goodbye. No, that's depressing as ship. That is
Speaker 1: what is the like We're losing so many of those
Speaker 1: acres due to what Like what's the main thing that
Speaker 1: is for? So I'll tell you it's a great question. Chester.
Speaker 1: They're gonna get to your thumb and your baby um
Speaker 1: increased fire when you burn it. When it burns, cheat
Speaker 1: grass beats it to the punch I got. So after
Speaker 1: you cook it off, then an invasive comes into cheat
Speaker 1: grass is like hicks, and it just grows everywhere. And
Speaker 1: it's just the stage brush is too slow to recover,
Speaker 1: and so non non natives get a foothold. They never
Speaker 1: need us grab hold. Also related to fire suppression and
Speaker 1: other things and climate issues um juniper encroachment. Seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of that where which wasn't Colorado. Which are those
Speaker 1: junipers native? Yeah, but they're just they're just out competing
Speaker 1: sagebrush and in some play in some ways they look
Speaker 1: at fire suppression because you don't historically you have these
Speaker 1: very low level, fast burning fires often right that would
Speaker 1: be adversarial to stage brush and ben adversarial to juniper.
Speaker 1: But through fire suppression, you've got junipers that grow in
Speaker 1: on stage brushes. All these pictures like they'll find like
Speaker 1: some hundred year old picture and you go and get
Speaker 1: the photographer to stay in the exact same place and
Speaker 1: take a picture now, and you're just like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: Like even you wouldn't believe you're when you're cruising around now,
Speaker 1: you're not getting like even in this area, you're not
Speaker 1: getting a sense of how open ship used to be.
Speaker 1: For most of Lodge Pole juniper just pine and croachm
Speaker 1: on grasslands and it's just like anything like in the mountains.
Speaker 1: Now those fight it's just based off of fires mainly
Speaker 1: you know, hot burning fire. Now we'll just you know,
Speaker 1: wipe out the undergrowth and whatnot, and then it gets
Speaker 1: beat by these like super prevalent non natives. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is human encroachment. UH subdivision's oil and gas development. UM.
Speaker 1: That's like kind of the most immediately controllable one. It
Speaker 1: looks like this report says about a quarter of the
Speaker 1: impact is attributed to urban development. That's that's a lot.
Speaker 1: You look at the Gallatin Valley, it's like where can
Speaker 1: we build and it's basically just like out towards between
Speaker 1: three Forks and Townsend that's all sage and that's like
Speaker 1: huge development area right now. That's why I'm like, I've
Speaker 1: I've over the years become like a very much cow's
Speaker 1: not condos guy. Man, you have that bumper sticker. I
Speaker 1: need to get one. Like a lot of people like
Speaker 1: people on the sort of like do's not even want
Speaker 1: to say radical. There's a lot of people from the
Speaker 1: environmental and conservation space that are always very quick to
Speaker 1: point fingers at ranchers um because of various things like
Speaker 1: cattle on stream banks and stream bank erosion and eating
Speaker 1: grass whatever. Well, I'll tell you what, man, you look
Speaker 1: at that or a parking lot, right there's a real
Speaker 1: finality to concrete, Yeah, you can't a real finality to
Speaker 1: a crop field. Cropfield looks to me like currently doing
Speaker 1: something and has so much future potential concrete done. Not
Speaker 1: many people have killed the Hungarian partridge in a Walmart
Speaker 1: parking lot. Probably, I mean I could also be mistaken
Speaker 1: to say this, but I my sense is that a
Speaker 1: fair number that people who are maybe throwing farming and
Speaker 1: ranching under the bus, or those who are moving into
Speaker 1: the condos are buying the condom. Yeah, that's true. And
Speaker 1: also they're like they're absolutists and they're they don't think
Speaker 1: they're I don't think they're even kind of realistic. Only
Speaker 1: they're kind of realistic to be like, oh, oh industrial
Speaker 1: egg or go away and it will be replaced by
Speaker 1: national parks. It's like, no, won't. Yeah, you're never going
Speaker 1: to get back to where you were two d years ago.
Speaker 1: And this is talking about sage grouse, um, talking about
Speaker 1: prong horn, mule deer. It even mentions cattle grazing. But
Speaker 1: you just take the wildlife end of it. Um, those
Speaker 1: species aren't imperiled because of cattle ranching, right, not like
Speaker 1: they are from not like they are from concrete development. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: Chester cut his thumb open and had a baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to talk about first. Well, first I had
Speaker 1: the baby. Let's cover that first thing. Um, we were, well,
Speaker 1: the little little pooper is still supposed to be in
Speaker 1: in the oven right now, not supposed to have been born.
Speaker 1: I think he was due the uh of this month, November,
Speaker 1: and he came, uh the ninth. Yeah, he came the
Speaker 1: of October. What the thing I find most interesting about
Speaker 1: your baby who I visited in help, is that you
Speaker 1: thought it was nice of you bang his meat loaf.
Speaker 1: You thought you were gonna do you see those hats
Speaker 1: green chilies in there? Yeah, they're delicious in my agbor
Speaker 1: gab those to me, my neighbor, jet boat pat to me. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say is you thought it was
Speaker 1: so funny is you were trying to angle how we
Speaker 1: were going to go hunting this coming weekend because the
Speaker 1: baby wouldn't. People like, man, it's pretty close to the
Speaker 1: do date. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I was
Speaker 1: actually gonna make that happen, but you gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: entertain the idea, as things are never gonna happen. So, um,
Speaker 1: I thought about it, But the more I thought about it,
Speaker 1: the more I wasn't gonna gonna go mule their hunting
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, no this we almost delivered the baby
Speaker 1: in the car. Danielle went from her busy, normal self
Speaker 1: running around town, editing photos, yelling at Chester for yelling
Speaker 1: at me for laying on the couch saying I was tired. No,
Speaker 1: that didn't happen, but she, uh yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: her normal busy self. On we went to bed and
Speaker 1: she said to me, I've got I've got some kind
Speaker 1: of weird cramps going on. Um, she's pretty tough, but
Speaker 1: she's like, you can go back to bed, it's fine.
Speaker 1: And this is probably at midnight and I wake up
Speaker 1: at like two and she's like, I still got these cramps.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go take a hot shower. And she started
Speaker 1: getting a little The cramps started getting a little worse,
Speaker 1: and she called Boseman Hospital here and they're like, maybe
Speaker 1: you should just come in and have us check you out.
Speaker 1: And then her water broke a little bit. But she
Speaker 1: still wasn't like in pain or she didn't think she
Speaker 1: was in labor. She was in in labor. And uh.
Speaker 1: We put her in the car and we started at
Speaker 1: about seventy on the on the Interstate and we started
Speaker 1: driving to Bozeman. It's about a twenty five minute drive
Speaker 1: by the time we ended up, you know, between Belgrade
Speaker 1: and Bozeman were I was probably going a hundred and
Speaker 1: five because she said he is coming now, and she
Speaker 1: was even out of her seatbelt, back arched up in
Speaker 1: the air. Her hands were like down there because she
Speaker 1: thought he was coming. And I'm sitting there like just
Speaker 1: inside an emotional wreck outside. Did you think about pulling
Speaker 1: over and just trying to have the baby. No. I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to do that until she was like he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's there. Yeah, my old man delivered a
Speaker 1: baby on the side of a road one time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the woman that was trying to get to play. He
Speaker 1: pulled over and he said he we'll delivered it in
Speaker 1: that he just caught the baby shout out. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was like, dear God, please just make him stay in
Speaker 1: there just a little bit longer, because I had a plan,
Speaker 1: Like it was like I was gonna pull up call
Speaker 1: nine on one immediately and then if I was going
Speaker 1: to get pulled over on the interstate, I was going
Speaker 1: to keep going and also called nine one one and
Speaker 1: tell him bullets fly. Yeah, but we made it. We
Speaker 1: got a mad chase at the hospital exit. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: falling over at the er. Anyways, I pull over at
Speaker 1: the er, quick back pedal a little bit in the car.
Speaker 1: She didn't have a baby bump anymore. You know, she
Speaker 1: had his feet what I think we're his feet now.
Speaker 1: He was so low his feet were pushing on her stomach,
Speaker 1: so there was no baby bump. It was like a
Speaker 1: triangle and you could see his feet like pushing out
Speaker 1: on her stomach. I think that's what it was. But
Speaker 1: it was like something out of a sci fi And meantime,
Speaker 1: in my head there were some not so good thoughts
Speaker 1: coming going around because give me an example. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you mean. Honestly, I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not sure cute. I thought something was real wrong because
Speaker 1: it was early and oh yeah, and you know obviously
Speaker 1: she was in labor. It's my first time having a child.
Speaker 1: She's in pain. Pain. Uh. I look over and it's
Speaker 1: not a normal baby bump. It's this weird two feet
Speaker 1: trying to kick himself out. Um, so it's early. It's
Speaker 1: early too. So anyways, we got to the hospital. The guy,
Speaker 1: uh security guard and like look scared to death. Because
Speaker 1: Danielle was like, get me, get me to the you know,
Speaker 1: delivery room, and he's running her down the hallway. I
Speaker 1: parked the car, run back in and I sprint down
Speaker 1: this long hallway and at the end of this hallway
Speaker 1: are two doors, and you know, it's the delivery room.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird how it's just, you know, this
Speaker 1: long hallway and at the end of it is the
Speaker 1: room we run into. Danielle gets on the bed, She's like,
Speaker 1: can I get an epidural. They're like, well, we'll check
Speaker 1: you out real quick. They're like, no, honey, you're having
Speaker 1: this baby right now. Basically, the doctor comes in and
Speaker 1: has just enough time to snap on his gloves and
Speaker 1: I grabbed one leg and nurse grabbed the other leg,
Speaker 1: and out pops Oscar Chester. I love you, and I
Speaker 1: would raise that baby as my own if I had to.
Speaker 1: But I will not call it Oscar. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: it Chester, telling him since day one, please please elaborate
Speaker 1: he was gonna call it Chester to change his mind.
Speaker 1: No I didn't. I never said I'm going to call
Speaker 1: it Chester. I pondered the idea, but Oscar the last Chester.
Speaker 1: Oscar Gregory O G. That's pretty good. I might call
Speaker 1: him o G. Just call him o ceah, so oh
Speaker 1: see that's not bad. Anyways, he's he's healthy, he's small,
Speaker 1: so he was on oxygen for a little while. Um,
Speaker 1: but he's he's cute as all kid. Well now he's
Speaker 1: gaining weight too. Yeah, he's still not as big as
Speaker 1: those walleyes. I tried on the day when I got
Speaker 1: the text message that your baby had been born. I
Speaker 1: got a little angling in that day, and I wanted
Speaker 1: so bad to catch walleye and that. So I can
Speaker 1: always tell your little kid, yeah o G. I could
Speaker 1: always be like, dude, I called a wallet the day
Speaker 1: you were born. Ever forget that, That's what I would
Speaker 1: have said. Instead, all I got was a mooney cares
Speaker 1: about that? I caught a moon eye, like I got
Speaker 1: a sagger. That's close. It would have counted. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's count. So yeah, we've been at home, um, kind
Speaker 1: of enjoying this time off, just me and mom and
Speaker 1: my wife called it the baby bubble. The baby bubble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: going to a baby bubble. Yeah, it's kind of odd.
Speaker 1: Hold up, Yeah, I've got some projects done around the house. Um,
Speaker 1: put a heater in my garage. Um, I got out
Speaker 1: bow hunting one day locally here with the longbow I
Speaker 1: built a few years ago, and I saw a bunch
Speaker 1: of deer shot a dough. She took a couple of
Speaker 1: steps and I was trying to get another arrow out
Speaker 1: and I sliced the heck out of my thumb. Back
Speaker 1: down to the emergency room, back down to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Trip here we go. I got a few stitches in there.
Speaker 1: Slow any chases on this trip or no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's great man, Yeah, no, it was. It's been good.
Speaker 1: Now I'm here, we're gonna talk about but you're, um,
Speaker 1: it's amazing what they can do now with the babies.
Speaker 1: You could have a baby that early in that small
Speaker 1: and now that babies at home gain weight, right, that's
Speaker 1: like the one thing that they want to see is
Speaker 1: weight game. So we feed him every three hours and
Speaker 1: they're like they check his weight. Um, but we have
Speaker 1: oxygen tanks at home, which he has been off of
Speaker 1: him for a while, and then a little monitor, so
Speaker 1: we gotta every time we move them, move chords around
Speaker 1: and stuff. Um. But like you said, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, could you have taken him home probably not.
Speaker 1: I don't know, go back far enough. It had been
Speaker 1: just like I don't want to talk about what it
Speaker 1: was like. But not good, no, no, but he was
Speaker 1: actually right when he was born off oxygen for two
Speaker 1: days and then he kind of he was working so hard,
Speaker 1: got a little tired, and that's when they put him
Speaker 1: on oxygen. Oscar Oscar Floyd, Oscar, not Chester. There's a
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it Oscar. There's a reason behind that name. Though.
Speaker 1: Danielle's great grandfather was a cowboy up near have Her, Montana.
Speaker 1: His name was Oscar. Oh. You know what, I just
Speaker 1: realized that, you know, Boone's kid, first kid that got killed,
Speaker 1: was named James. I'm gonna start telling everybody that's why
Speaker 1: I name my kid after why not? Right, Yeah, It's like,
Speaker 1: feel like I'll tell you what I did, all right, Jason,
Speaker 1: we got wait, how did you get in the wall?
Speaker 1: But how did you in the wall? Eye tournament business?
Speaker 1: This is a good place to start. So while I
Speaker 1: fishing or tournaments fishing, alright, So fishing, I've always fished, um,
Speaker 1: you know, just just like anybody else. Family, farm ponds,
Speaker 1: you know, just bob er and a hook, you know,
Speaker 1: worm catching bass. Born in Ohio. I was actually born
Speaker 1: in California. Um military family, so we bounced around a bit.
Speaker 1: UM came to Ohio. That's where my parents were from
Speaker 1: family farm and p a. Much of my fishing was
Speaker 1: with my grandfather's. Both of them would take me fishing.
Speaker 1: The one I didn't think that you could actually catch fish,
Speaker 1: because we'd go out and I'm pretty sure we went
Speaker 1: out on his boat just to get out of the house,
Speaker 1: away from the wives and the grandma's. And then my
Speaker 1: other grandfather didn't fish much at all, but we would
Speaker 1: go to our family farm pond and it was like
Speaker 1: lights out, you know, bass and and catfish, and we
Speaker 1: thought we were heroes. So I had to independently different
Speaker 1: fishing upbringings from my grandfather's. UM. My dad never really
Speaker 1: fished all that much with us. He was more of
Speaker 1: a hunter. UM. But but I I fished with my
Speaker 1: grandparents growing up a lot. So UM I always fished,
Speaker 1: and and I got into college and I met a
Speaker 1: few guys and and one of my buddies in particular,
Speaker 1: he grew up in Toledo and he ran fishing charters
Speaker 1: and his family grew up fishing Walleye and salmon on
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, and he was a big time fisherman.
Speaker 1: We're just studying college. Um so a lot of stuff, man.
Speaker 1: I I I basically studied, I think girls in baseball.
Speaker 1: Um and then I went down to southern Ohio. So
Speaker 1: I did a lot of hunting down there. I met
Speaker 1: some guys, you know. So people thought I transferred out
Speaker 1: of college because everything but school interested me. Um. So
Speaker 1: I did go into college. I end up. I end
Speaker 1: up going through the police academy. Uh. And that's what
Speaker 1: I do now. I do that now. Um as my job.
Speaker 1: I'm a local city city cop outside of Cleveland, and
Speaker 1: I worked for a nice town. But that's what I do.
Speaker 1: So book smart stuff's not my not my deal. And
Speaker 1: hands on, I worked, you know, I grew up doing
Speaker 1: construction and and underground utilities and kind of working hard.
Speaker 1: And then I just I found my way into actually
Speaker 1: the real estate stuff. I was working with the real
Speaker 1: estate company and then in oh six oh seven, that
Speaker 1: kind of crashed out nationwide and my boss is like,
Speaker 1: you gotta do something. Man. He goes, basically, I've been
Speaker 1: paying you, but the banks aren't paying us. So I
Speaker 1: thought it was a good time, you know, to go
Speaker 1: back as I always wanted to do it. So I
Speaker 1: went through the police Academy and and that's what I did.
Speaker 1: UM actually started to think about a career job. So
Speaker 1: that's that's when I turned over and did that. UM
Speaker 1: put back to back to college and fishing. I met.
Speaker 1: I met this guy and and he's just he was
Speaker 1: an outdoor full you know, hunting and fishing, and he
Speaker 1: grew up fishing. So I always went out on his boat,
Speaker 1: used his gear, and we learned. I learned to fish
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, I learned how to fish for walleye
Speaker 1: and he It wasn't a tournament style, was just basically
Speaker 1: a catch style. Just get out there, troll, get as
Speaker 1: many fish as you can, uh you know, go home,
Speaker 1: clean them up, eat them, do do the thing the
Speaker 1: next time. You know, is there what is the difference
Speaker 1: between the tournament style and the cut style. So Lake
Speaker 1: Erie is a phenomenal fishery just in general, but the
Speaker 1: tournament style, you you transition from trying to catch just
Speaker 1: as many fish as you can. And we would do
Speaker 1: that oftentimes, like you'll troll and you'll troll spoons and
Speaker 1: uh you you know, basically spread them out and spoons
Speaker 1: are fantastic way to catch fish, but I as a
Speaker 1: tournament guy, we wouldn't target big fish that way. So
Speaker 1: you would target structure or deep water, using like bigger
Speaker 1: crank baits and things like that, and not saying you
Speaker 1: can't big fish. You want a few hogs and not
Speaker 1: a bunch of littles. Right, so you're almost you're almost
Speaker 1: trying to get away from the schools. You're trying to
Speaker 1: fish the edges of schools because one theory on it
Speaker 1: is is that the big fish don't like to be
Speaker 1: around the little fish and vice versa. If if if
Speaker 1: you're a big fish with a bunch of little you know,
Speaker 1: smaller fish, oftentimes males, it's just they're annoying them, especially
Speaker 1: during like early springtime spot like the males are actually
Speaker 1: pestering the females. So you know, in a tournament setting,
Speaker 1: are you're trying to get trophy fish, you want the
Speaker 1: big females, and they're they're just bigger all throughout the
Speaker 1: year end in the fall, So fishing styles are slightly different.
Speaker 1: But but just to catch fish, it's basically, you know
Speaker 1: how I got brought up? Can you shed a little
Speaker 1: light on that fishery from when you were fishing with
Speaker 1: your buddy back in college to what it is now.
Speaker 1: So the answers yes, and the answers yes and no.
Speaker 1: Because I had no idea that we actually could, you know,
Speaker 1: had such a good fishery on Lake Erie. It was
Speaker 1: just I never did that. My family didn't have boats.
Speaker 1: We weren't out there running Lake Erie like a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys grew up doing. So. I just thought
Speaker 1: it was yeah, would go out there and it was easy.
Speaker 1: So now I see that it's not so easy. But
Speaker 1: once you know where they're at or know how to
Speaker 1: do it, it's it can be easy because you can.
Speaker 1: They say that they're you know, a hundred million walleyes
Speaker 1: on Lake Erie. And as you were talking about the ducks,
Speaker 1: they are doing interesting studies. Uh. There's a biologist with
Speaker 1: the ode and Ours names Travis Hartman. I've been talking
Speaker 1: to him. He puts out where they're spawning, where they're
Speaker 1: going to you know, feed throughout the course of the
Speaker 1: year because they all migrate from the shallow waters of
Speaker 1: the west, the all the spawning structure all the way
Speaker 1: back out east, and then they work their way back
Speaker 1: I mean in you know, Pennsylvania, Buffalo, New York and
Speaker 1: things like that, and then they're coming back east and
Speaker 1: they're it's all food related. It's food driven, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure a lot of it has to do with temperature.
Speaker 1: But basically, to answer your question is, I don't know
Speaker 1: the specifics about walleye fishing and how it's changed because
Speaker 1: I'm relatively new into it. But I can tell you this.
Speaker 1: When I started was the beginning of like this O
Speaker 1: two oh three hatch where these fish were just everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know, phenomenal fishing. And then you know, around the
Speaker 1: mid like twelve to fifteen, they were giants, so everybody
Speaker 1: thought you thought you were a hero, you know. And
Speaker 1: that's coming back now because now we've had this fifteen
Speaker 1: and sixteen hatch where it's just continuous year after year
Speaker 1: of these good hatches on Lake Erie, and now these
Speaker 1: fish are like five six pound fish. And then the
Speaker 1: next two years. If you if you're a walleye fisherman
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world and you wanted to go catch
Speaker 1: some trophy walleyes and catch a lot of them, you're
Speaker 1: gonna want to go to Lake Erie. It's just I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say it's easy, but when you find them,
Speaker 1: it can be easy, and you can they're healthy, just
Speaker 1: the fisheries healthy in general, and it's and it's thriving
Speaker 1: out there. Wold be good little trip for you an Oscar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if should we invite seth Okay, So
Speaker 1: you get turned on the wall eyes and so I
Speaker 1: I go, I go to buy a boat. I want
Speaker 1: my own boat now, I want to be I want
Speaker 1: I I'm tired of borrowing my buddies gear. I want
Speaker 1: my own boat. So I transitioned from like stuff that
Speaker 1: you should not be on the water with, you know,
Speaker 1: meaning it's almost like a boat that that some of
Speaker 1: these refugees are coming over from like Costa Rica, Like
Speaker 1: you should not be on Lake Erie on these boats,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a garbage can with it with
Speaker 1: a motor on it or something lake fast and and
Speaker 1: and you know the boats that I transitioned into the
Speaker 1: lake area with is just you know, that's for a
Speaker 1: whole new day. But so I go to buy a boat,
Speaker 1: and I bought The first boat I bought was aluminum boat,
Speaker 1: and it was brand new, new motor started every time,
Speaker 1: and that was something if I've made it to the lake,
Speaker 1: fired up the boat, fished and got back. We were
Speaker 1: having a good day no matter what you caught out there.
Speaker 1: My first boats. If we made it like out and
Speaker 1: back without a call to the coast guard, we were
Speaker 1: doing good. So this is a whole new thing. We
Speaker 1: got a brand new boat, new gear, and I'm out there.
Speaker 1: We're just trying to do things, you know, by ourselves.
Speaker 1: And this is around that you know, twelve to fifteen,
Speaker 1: where these fish you're just catching giants. So you know,
Speaker 1: we went out there and I worked, you know, evenings,
Speaker 1: so my cousin and I would fish every single day.
Speaker 1: I'm talking rain, sleet, or shine. If it wasn't blowing
Speaker 1: thirty miles an hour out of the northwest, we were
Speaker 1: out there fishing and we just acted like we knew
Speaker 1: what we were doing. And we started to learn and
Speaker 1: catch these fish, and like charter guys would call, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you guys do today? What are
Speaker 1: you doing? Like they had no clue that we were
Speaker 1: so new at this that they should never even me
Speaker 1: talk into us, but they were asking us for advice,
Speaker 1: and you know, it just transpired into this thing where
Speaker 1: where I just I just love to do it. So
Speaker 1: we started fishing every day, and uh, I got into
Speaker 1: getting a new boat from the boat shop that I
Speaker 1: work at a little bit in and these guys started
Speaker 1: to see me tinkering around with my boat. I'd always
Speaker 1: put something on it. I'd put a new fish finder
Speaker 1: on it, or or I changed it oil in the boat.
Speaker 1: So that's when they started, you know, hey, you want
Speaker 1: to work here a couple of hours a week or whatever. Yes, Sure.
Speaker 1: So I just kind of dabbled myself into the mix
Speaker 1: of this fishing industry, like with talking to these charter guys,
Speaker 1: are talking to the guys at the boat shop, and
Speaker 1: an opportunity came about to run a tournament. A the
Speaker 1: people who ran this boat shops tournament um just they
Speaker 1: just didn't want to continue it anymore. They said, we're
Speaker 1: not doing it. And the boat shops like, look, we
Speaker 1: don't want our tournament to go by the wayside. Do
Speaker 1: you want to run it for us? This year was
Speaker 1: a tournament called so it was called the Vix Sports
Speaker 1: Center open Um. It was run Vick Sports Centers, the
Speaker 1: boat shop that I worked for, and they just had
Speaker 1: an annual tournament just to have fun. With families. You know,
Speaker 1: they'd give away prizes. If you bought a boat from
Speaker 1: them and you won, you would get prizes. If you
Speaker 1: had your family on board, you would win extra extra prizes.
Speaker 1: So it's just like a for fun thing, not big money. No,
Speaker 1: not big money, you know, a couple of grand whatever. However,
Speaker 1: many tournaments around US are all based on entry fees.
Speaker 1: So if you have fifty boats, you're gonna win a
Speaker 1: lot more money that if you have ten. It's just
Speaker 1: the way it goes. So UM all based on entry fees.
Speaker 1: So I ran this tournament, had no clue what I
Speaker 1: was doing. I knew we had to put fish on
Speaker 1: the scales and at the end of the day tallied up.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had a white grease board. We're writing
Speaker 1: the names on there with the weights, and we just
Speaker 1: we just bought thirty pizzas or something that day. We
Speaker 1: just had a little you know fun in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: You know. It was just a grass roots go there,
Speaker 1: catch fish and see who one type thing. But that
Speaker 1: was my first actual like tournament experience as as a
Speaker 1: tournament director. UM I fished a few tournaments myself. We
Speaker 1: did okay, but you know, we currently fished for just
Speaker 1: the Lake Erie. Walleye Trail was not mine, it was
Speaker 1: it was a circuit that we always fished caming up.
Speaker 1: It was the biggest, you know series on Lake Erie.
Speaker 1: But there was only four events at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the year, and I would fish that with a partner
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we did, okay, we I think
Speaker 1: the highest I ever finished was like a third or
Speaker 1: fourth place. But but my first tournament directing experience was
Speaker 1: this fixed sports center open got it? What was the
Speaker 1: name of the tournament that the that the infamous occurrence
Speaker 1: happened done? So, So that's the lake Erie while Eye Trail.
Speaker 1: It's what I currently so I I could back up
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I fished the lake Erie while
Speaker 1: I Trailed with a partner for several years and then
Speaker 1: the guys running that event just had had enough. It's
Speaker 1: it's a lot, you know, so whenever your family dynamic
Speaker 1: changes a little bit, they just they said, we're we're
Speaker 1: done with it. And they were looking for a tournament director.
Speaker 1: So this is a tournament I think someone owns so
Speaker 1: it is at that point in time, it was owned
Speaker 1: by a club, so our club had to say so
Speaker 1: and they put it on. So funding was you know,
Speaker 1: probably I would imagine because a bunch of guys throw
Speaker 1: some money in there to get a trailer and some equipment.
Speaker 1: So it was probably not just one person that shelled
Speaker 1: out all this cash. It was a handful of guys
Speaker 1: in the tournament directors or whoever owns a tournament is
Speaker 1: putting some money in their pocket. Yeah, so our tournament
Speaker 1: is like a fifteen percent so um, our tournaments are
Speaker 1: three hundred bucks tournament turned that tournament's cut is about
Speaker 1: forty five dollars. Now that's all expenses, and then you know, home,
Speaker 1: what's three bucks? Entry? Entry feast pays three d bucks yep, yep,
Speaker 1: And the tournament pulls forty five bucks out and the
Speaker 1: rest of its prize money correct. And then obviously you
Speaker 1: have some sponsorship bonuses and things like that. But everybody
Speaker 1: thinks you do make money as a tournament director. You
Speaker 1: do make money, but you're not getting rich by any means.
Speaker 1: You're covering the costs. You know, I have like a
Speaker 1: bunch of a bunch of helpers that help out every day.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got a gas to just get to
Speaker 1: where you're going. All of the things that you provide.
Speaker 1: There's awards in there. Um awards are expensive now, they
Speaker 1: just keep going up and up and up. But all
Speaker 1: of these expenses come out of that forty five bucks too,
Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, you may walk
Speaker 1: away with five bucks or something in your pocket. That's
Speaker 1: all you're gonna make off tournament, the tournament itself, tournament
Speaker 1: day itself, you're not making money off of. Where you
Speaker 1: can make money is if you get a sponsorship or
Speaker 1: a company that wants you to promote their business. That's
Speaker 1: where the tournament can make money. But the actual like
Speaker 1: cut off of the tournament is very minimal. But as
Speaker 1: the director owner of the tournament, you could sell a
Speaker 1: sponsorship package and have all the signage be Bill's boat,
Speaker 1: Marina or whatever. The of course, yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: where as a business you can make money in the
Speaker 1: tournament world. It's not the cut off of the entry
Speaker 1: fees because that's that's small. On a full field, you're
Speaker 1: talking like three grand, you know, on a sixty boat field,
Speaker 1: you're talking about three grand and you've got to cover
Speaker 1: a lot of expenses that day. What what's the most
Speaker 1: you ever made fish and walleye, what's the biggest purse
Speaker 1: you ever landed. I personally, I think we finished fourth
Speaker 1: place in a in a national tournament. I think we
Speaker 1: brought home Maybecks, me and me and my partner, so
Speaker 1: we split it up. It was probably about twelve fifty apiece. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I personally have never done great. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can't beat them, be the tournament director. I
Speaker 1: guess because the cheaters, what are the cheaters first names? Do?
Speaker 1: I have to say? Chase and Jake? Chase and Jake.
Speaker 1: I don't even I don't even like saying it. It's
Speaker 1: like taboo Chase and Jake. Uh. You heard as the
Speaker 1: days went on following the story, like the amount of
Speaker 1: money they had won kind of seemed to get to
Speaker 1: a point where I was thinking, really, but you already
Speaker 1: knew that, right, Like you were at least aware of
Speaker 1: them winning all this money. You know what they had, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had, Like you heard, they had won hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 1: They won hundreds of thousands of dollars fishing walleye so
Speaker 1: on Lake Erie. So the walleye, the Wallyye tournament game
Speaker 1: has changed over the course, I would say even the
Speaker 1: last like five years, maybe seven. But but there's several
Speaker 1: big derby's that we run now um on Lake Erie
Speaker 1: that you can make some serious cash. So, like, so
Speaker 1: I have a tournament right now running. It's called the
Speaker 1: It's called the Walleye Fall Abrawl, and I'm personally our
Speaker 1: tournament is given away five irony. Yeah, the that's on
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, we're giving away five hundred and twelve
Speaker 1: or fifteen thousand dollars in cash and prizes to people.
Speaker 1: And it's a thirty five dollar entry. So like the
Speaker 1: game has changed within the last few years to just
Speaker 1: be this mega Well it's thirty five dollar entry, right,
Speaker 1: So what happened? You go ahead, where's the money come from?
Speaker 1: Like sponsorships, um, and stuff like that? Right? So Blaster
Speaker 1: the Blaster Company, for you know, they make like oils
Speaker 1: and degreasers and and and so they they've you know,
Speaker 1: titled this and grabbed ahold of this Fall Fall Brawl
Speaker 1: and the money's there. Ranger Boats Vick Sports Center they're
Speaker 1: putting up the first and second place are both boats
Speaker 1: that are over north of a hundred thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: you you, as anglers, anybody can join up for thirty
Speaker 1: five bucks. That's amazing. That that's all the commitment to
Speaker 1: extended from a cash perspective, well to throw your hat.
Speaker 1: And some people don't even fish. I mean they sign up,
Speaker 1: you know, their wives, and on the off chance that
Speaker 1: they do come fishing and catch that fish, you know,
Speaker 1: you you have the opportunity of a lifetime. And it
Speaker 1: happened last year. You know a guy in in you know,
Speaker 1: just his you know, small little john boat right out
Speaker 1: of harbor of Cleveland. You could probably throw in a
Speaker 1: rock to where his boat was. You know, he won
Speaker 1: a brand new hunter and dollar ranger boat that you know.
Speaker 1: Another guy that finished because of what happened, because he
Speaker 1: just he looked into some toad, just the big one man,
Speaker 1: that's this big fish, Just one big fish, just one
Speaker 1: big fish. And uh a guy off shore last year
Speaker 1: it was either like fifty five or sixty five grand
Speaker 1: that he won for fifth place or six place. I
Speaker 1: can't remember off the top of my head. But that's
Speaker 1: the cool thing about these Derby's is anybody could do it.
Speaker 1: You could show up on a weekend vacation if you're enter,
Speaker 1: if you enter into the tournament, you catch one, it's
Speaker 1: it could potentially be life changing for somebody. But there's
Speaker 1: also like pro style anglers doing these things are no
Speaker 1: So there are, of course there are anybody who fishes
Speaker 1: while I you know, and and they're gonna be around
Speaker 1: eight Lake Erie. They're probably gonna enter, so you do
Speaker 1: have the big name pros. But I can honestly tell
Speaker 1: you that those guys haven't won. There's been some people
Speaker 1: that have cashed the checks and uh a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago a pretty well known charter guy one um
Speaker 1: and this spring another charter guy one that's just you know,
Speaker 1: you up your odds. The more you play the lottery,
Speaker 1: the more chances you have to win the lottery. But
Speaker 1: but the the average Joe's just the average guy that
Speaker 1: goes out and wins one of these things. I think
Speaker 1: it's just cool. It's the best story there is. And
Speaker 1: they just the guy that won last year, his kid
Speaker 1: posted something on Snapchat and the photo just went all
Speaker 1: around our area is you know, here's the Fall Brawl winner,
Speaker 1: and it was it ended up winning, and it was
Speaker 1: just cool as hell because it's just this fish laying
Speaker 1: in the bottom of this tin can boat. And his
Speaker 1: kid called it right off the rip, you know, and
Speaker 1: they would have won a what they would have won
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty thousand dollar, hundred twenty thousand dollar
Speaker 1: Ranger four Virado. I mean, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: guy was in, but I know it was a small
Speaker 1: aluminum boat, so, you know, huge upgrade. And this this
Speaker 1: is just this fall Brow is just the big fish,
Speaker 1: just the big fish, not the tournament where these guys
Speaker 1: ended up. So, but the interesting thing about those two
Speaker 1: guys is they weren't like they stuck to these smaller
Speaker 1: like regional tournaments and not like the national tour, which
Speaker 1: kind of struck me as pretty telling about their like,
Speaker 1: Oh that's yeah, man, because they're gonna get way more
Speaker 1: attention focused on him in a big national walleye tournaments.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. This is probably a million
Speaker 1: dudes just fish small tournaments. Yeah, do you think Chester
Speaker 1: is bad because he fishes? Saying that, I'm saying it
Speaker 1: seems like like like it was a point that was
Speaker 1: made about these guys that they never chose to like
Speaker 1: even though they're doing so well and they never made
Speaker 1: the leap to like the resume would have led one
Speaker 1: to believe that they would have chosen to be which
Speaker 1: you take on that, Jason, So there's a few differences
Speaker 1: the national level tour um here, the National Walleye Tour,
Speaker 1: you fish with somebody on your boat that is not
Speaker 1: your partner. You get what's called a co angler. So you,
Speaker 1: as a co angler would sign up, Hey, there's there's
Speaker 1: a walleye tour coming to Bozeman, Montana. I'm going to
Speaker 1: sign up as a code on the off chance you
Speaker 1: get to fish with some of these great guys that
Speaker 1: you hear, you know, like the Keith Cabias or you know,
Speaker 1: Corey Sprangle. You're like, hey, it's basically an educational charter.
Speaker 1: You heard of those guys Chester, those are the big names. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I've done it myself because it's you want
Speaker 1: to fish with these guys and you get randomly paired
Speaker 1: up with somebody on the national tour here. So I
Speaker 1: don't know that you would have the dynamic to jump
Speaker 1: in that tournament and be able to do well. Now.
Speaker 1: I know they fished in the National Walleye Tour when
Speaker 1: it would come to Lake Erie, but they wouldn't travel
Speaker 1: to go do these events. And then the other national
Speaker 1: tournament that you have is the Master's Walleye Circuit, and
Speaker 1: again they wouldn't travel to those, but they would fish
Speaker 1: it when it would come two hours lake Erie in
Speaker 1: the waters. What's his name is again? I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: forget again. Jake and Chase. You'd be bummed if one
Speaker 1: of their names is Dave, because you like the name Dave.
Speaker 1: Chase and Jake. When did you how long? How long
Speaker 1: have you been hanging? I mean, when did you first
Speaker 1: meet Chase and Jake? So I met at them through
Speaker 1: the boat shop just just fish. I mean you would
Speaker 1: you would fish against these guys. You would talk to
Speaker 1: them at you know, weigh ends, and I would say
Speaker 1: I met him probably I don't know, five, five or
Speaker 1: six years ago, maybe just fishing against them, and um,
Speaker 1: they weren't they weren't alway. I didn't always know them
Speaker 1: as partners. You know, you could fish with other people.
Speaker 1: But but over the past couple of years they that
Speaker 1: they were the team, right, And uh, I would work,
Speaker 1: you know, I work at the shops. So these guys
Speaker 1: would fish. They had they had ranger boats. I would
Speaker 1: work on their boats. I would help them out with this,
Speaker 1: you wrench on their boats. Yeah, yeah, I mean these
Speaker 1: guys were in and amongst the crew. They would fish
Speaker 1: my my series. Um, they were always at the shop
Speaker 1: getting stuff done and they would get you know, new
Speaker 1: boats every year. So I was in there either helping
Speaker 1: rig rig asking questions, answering questions, you know, being a
Speaker 1: part of you know, I would say these guys and
Speaker 1: and there, you know, journey through this thing. And they're
Speaker 1: not always fishing my tournaments, they're fishing other tournaments. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean I've known them for for several years,
Speaker 1: five six years. I've never fished with him, never went
Speaker 1: in a boat with him, never went in a boat
Speaker 1: with them. Did you when did they become uh known
Speaker 1: as winners? Basically since I knew them, they were always
Speaker 1: So We've had several different series on Lake Erie that
Speaker 1: would either you know, put on a few events or
Speaker 1: they've they've kind of come and gone, they've run their course.
Speaker 1: But but they've always won, you know, or been the
Speaker 1: leaders amongst the leaders or the place winners. So you know,
Speaker 1: to say that they were just like just this random
Speaker 1: you know, showed up and started winning thing that you know,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be the case. They've always kind of been
Speaker 1: in the mix. So my theory on it is is,
Speaker 1: you know, they probably are good anglers. I've never been
Speaker 1: in the boat with them, but you've got to be
Speaker 1: able to go and catch some fish to be in
Speaker 1: these tournaments. And who knows, you know, when it changed
Speaker 1: to kind of what it transpired out to be now.
Speaker 1: But I mean they've they've always been fisherman. You know.
Speaker 1: Do you think they were interested in in cash or recognition? Yes, so,
Speaker 1: like it definitely is a recognition thing, um, because if
Speaker 1: you followed them on social media, it's always you know,
Speaker 1: they started their own YouTube channel and they came up
Speaker 1: with with a little nickname and they started their little
Speaker 1: fishing group, Cranking Hogs. Yeah, so if you knew him,
Speaker 1: like going back six years, like how long did it
Speaker 1: take for the rumors to like start swirling around? They've
Speaker 1: always been around so fun fact, the first tournament that
Speaker 1: I ran, the people that did not want to do
Speaker 1: the tournament quit the tournament because of one of these guys.
Speaker 1: Straight up. So this this guy was was fishing on
Speaker 1: an inland lake and they have a a rule that
Speaker 1: you have to be on the wall off the water
Speaker 1: before like seven o'clock the day prior. So you lost me.
Speaker 1: So so to practice fishing for these events, let's say,
Speaker 1: it was on a Saturday or Sunday the day before that.
Speaker 1: You cannot be on the water past seven p i. So,
Speaker 1: so they disqualified him. And because he was scouting too late.
Speaker 1: So there's obviously different stories. But like the story that
Speaker 1: he told me was he was just there. He was
Speaker 1: with like a young guy or whatever, and they were
Speaker 1: taking photos and they were just on the water. Their
Speaker 1: boat was not on the trailer. But they said, listen,
Speaker 1: you're on the water. It's past seven o'clock. We're going
Speaker 1: to disqualify you. But there was always you know, that
Speaker 1: that smoke in the air that that you know, he
Speaker 1: was winning too much. He was cranking hogs for the
Speaker 1: next day. So those guys this is before my time,
Speaker 1: we're obviously looking at him, or at least they were
Speaker 1: there right. Um. So the boat shop that I worked
Speaker 1: for was like, listen, man, you know, this is one
Speaker 1: of our guys. He's running one of our boats, and
Speaker 1: we want, you know, we don't want this tournament to
Speaker 1: go by the wayside because of you know, this guy.
Speaker 1: That's why I started, you know, running the tournaments. That
Speaker 1: one of the guys fishing after fishing after hours on
Speaker 1: a scout day or being on the water after hours
Speaker 1: on a scout day caused someone to abandon the tournament.
Speaker 1: That's like a pretty thinly held conviction. Well so, so
Speaker 1: it just caused a stink, right the group, the group
Speaker 1: that was running these tournaments was like, because he started
Speaker 1: all this drama, you know I'm gonna you know, I
Speaker 1: got disqualified. This is bs and blah blah blah. You know,
Speaker 1: he raised the stink and they're they're like, you know what, men,
Speaker 1: we we just won't. We won't do the tournament for you.
Speaker 1: God got it just like because it was it was
Speaker 1: as you laid out earlier. It's a passion pursuit for
Speaker 1: the director. It's not a giant money maker. And they're like,
Speaker 1: this isn't even fun. Screw it was that. That's exactly it,
Speaker 1: because I can tell you that that had this man,
Speaker 1: we I could just just so much. But they don't
Speaker 1: want the drama. You know who would if you're doing
Speaker 1: this for fun. You're you're putting in all this work.
Speaker 1: If you were making a hundred grand or something, okay,
Speaker 1: you might deal with some headaches, but you're not like
Speaker 1: you're literally like pissing off your wife or taking a
Speaker 1: day away from your kids to make a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred bucks, you know, and it's just not worth it.
Speaker 1: And this club in particular, I believe they're a hundred
Speaker 1: percent club. They do it for the fun of the game.
Speaker 1: So they're like, we're not making anything off this. So
Speaker 1: I mean, of the of the of the entrance fee
Speaker 1: goes to prize money. You got it. You got it.
Speaker 1: And and and these people were just like, look, we
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with this, and if you're going
Speaker 1: to cause a stink, we just won't hold the tournament.
Speaker 1: You know, We're just not gonna do it. So so
Speaker 1: I ran the tournament, and uh I ran the tournament.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I want to say maybe maybe sixteen or seventeen,
Speaker 1: you know, So that's how you inherited the tournament. That's
Speaker 1: how I inherited the tournament. And uh, fun funny thing
Speaker 1: is he he won that tournament that I ran in
Speaker 1: and so this was this was he both of them
Speaker 1: or one. So so this this tournament was you could
Speaker 1: not it was more than a one angler or or
Speaker 1: a part in the tournament. So there was a couple
Speaker 1: of people on the boat and these two guys were
Speaker 1: not partnered up at the time. Um, and it, man,
Speaker 1: I tell you it, just it piste people off. Was
Speaker 1: it the one? Was it the one with the stocking
Speaker 1: charge or not? Well, you gotta be more. Uh it
Speaker 1: was it the dude in the video? Jake? No, No,
Speaker 1: that's all so developing a theory? Can I can I
Speaker 1: jump ahead? Yeah? The chance? Is there a chance? Jake
Speaker 1: was shocked to see those metal balls. It was shocked
Speaker 1: to see the lead weights in the fish. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get too far ahead of myself. No, no, but
Speaker 1: but that's that's some meat and potatoes. And I haven't
Speaker 1: I haven't publicly said this to anybody, and I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it, and this will be the only
Speaker 1: time I mentioned their names. Fair deal. So when I
Speaker 1: said I'm gonna inspect these fish, and I grabbed the
Speaker 1: bag and I had it and I'm kneeling down, Jake said,
Speaker 1: where's Chase? And he felt alone? And I knew it,
Speaker 1: and I knew it. I knew it in my gut
Speaker 1: that something was wrong. I knew he felt alone. Mm
Speaker 1: hmmmm mmmm. Make of that what you may, dude, that's
Speaker 1: a bummer. Yeah. Um, So you're trained at police work,
Speaker 1: to you man, so you pay attention to ship. I
Speaker 1: just is that just talk to people all the time,
Speaker 1: and they're probably telling you half bullshit, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I mean yeah, but everybody you talk to
Speaker 1: people all the time, that's half bullshit too. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just that's just the way it is. When you,
Speaker 1: like going back to that first tournament when you said
Speaker 1: like a lot of people were pissed, is they're like
Speaker 1: like overall like within that angling community, like is it
Speaker 1: a tight knit group of people? Like yeah? And I
Speaker 1: mean so there are people that literally quit fishing tournaments
Speaker 1: because they're like, we can't win. That's how they felt,
Speaker 1: you know. And um and and I'm and I'm the
Speaker 1: type of guy that like, I'm not gonna discriminate on
Speaker 1: you because you're winning, right. I don't know that there's
Speaker 1: any type of like dishonesty going on. And I can't say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you're too good for the game, because if you are
Speaker 1: that good, that's bad for tournament fishing. Uh. If I
Speaker 1: block you, and if and if you're if you're you're
Speaker 1: doing something and I don't have any proof that's bad.
Speaker 1: Also because I'm just basically just acting willy nilly, So
Speaker 1: I try to always treat them fairly like I I
Speaker 1: and in my own buddies, we'll tell me to a fault.
Speaker 1: I gave them the benefit of the doubt because I
Speaker 1: had no actual evidence that they were doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1: You probably no better, mean, but there must be six
Speaker 1: ways to cheat, right or whatever? Like early on, was
Speaker 1: there a they must be doing X, Like they're they're
Speaker 1: catching fish elsewhere and hiding them somewhere, they're putting them
Speaker 1: in alive. Well, and I don't know, like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like what was the sort of idea that
Speaker 1: people had in the rumor mill? You name it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of it. And and I've heard, oh, they must
Speaker 1: be meeting somebody. And then you know, it's not uncommon
Speaker 1: to catch big fish in Lake Erie, but it's tough
Speaker 1: to do at this port on this day and catch
Speaker 1: five of them, right, Most of these guys will go
Speaker 1: out and they'll catch two or three or you know,
Speaker 1: or they'll catch five good ones. But you but you
Speaker 1: hear this, We need the kicker, right, you need that
Speaker 1: like ten pounder or whatever. That kind of will put
Speaker 1: you away from the pack, because if you catch five
Speaker 1: fish on Lake Erie, they're all going to weigh decent, decently,
Speaker 1: you know, close to one another, but you need those kickers.
Speaker 1: So it's like were they getting fish from somebody else
Speaker 1: or were they you know, tampering with the fish or
Speaker 1: were they catching the fish throughout the week and then
Speaker 1: keeping them and then you know, get them out of
Speaker 1: a cooler and way in them. I mean, there's just
Speaker 1: like so many different ways on Lake Erie to do
Speaker 1: dishonest things. Catch you know, too many rods in the water.
Speaker 1: You know who knows you know, So there's always this
Speaker 1: element of of basically an honor system. But we would
Speaker 1: combat that, and all of these tournaments generally use like
Speaker 1: polygraph testing and lie detector testing. Now you're entering into
Speaker 1: area that I'm very very interested in. I heard before
Speaker 1: we get to the polygraph, before we get to the polygraph,
Speaker 1: like I've never been to one of these tournaments or
Speaker 1: away and is there like standard x Y, I see
Speaker 1: procedures that the directors are the people who are working
Speaker 1: the tournament due to like inspect the fish or like
Speaker 1: it wouldn't matter if it was a bass tournament or
Speaker 1: a wallet whatever, like, because there things that are always
Speaker 1: looking for so for right off the rip, the first
Speaker 1: thing that you do when you show up in the
Speaker 1: morning is you drive through a line and we inspect
Speaker 1: the boats. We inspect your live well. Um sometimes it
Speaker 1: just depends kind of where we're at time wise, will
Speaker 1: inspect hatches or coolers, um, but places where you could
Speaker 1: potentially put a fish, we will inspect that day of well,
Speaker 1: give you a check in. Nobody gets a pass. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: it's it's how backed up it is on how fast
Speaker 1: that goes. There's always people complaining about my boat got
Speaker 1: tossed and this guy's boat got looked at type thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But but you just you try and work within the system.
Speaker 1: And I personally think randomized checks are good because you know, Steve,
Speaker 1: your mot your your boat might get you know, passed
Speaker 1: by or checked and then your boat might get completely
Speaker 1: looked at in the coolers and the hatches and where
Speaker 1: you know. Um, So that's the first thing we do.
Speaker 1: The second thing we do is everybody leaves at the
Speaker 1: same time and I call you out. So boat number one,
Speaker 1: you guys are good to go. They have a boat board,
Speaker 1: so I know that everybody's leaving at the same time.
Speaker 1: So they're all fishing within the same hours. So you
Speaker 1: can't show up at five am, get your boat checked
Speaker 1: in and then sneak away and go fish and have
Speaker 1: extra time. So everybody leaves and returns, we check them
Speaker 1: in as they leave and check them uh and as
Speaker 1: they return. Obviously that's for safety too. And how many
Speaker 1: miles might they be? How many miles might they cover
Speaker 1: in that span of time between check in, between checking
Speaker 1: out and checking in on the earie could be a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so these guys, it's obviously it has to do
Speaker 1: with the prize money. But but also these guys just
Speaker 1: don't care if they if I told them that there
Speaker 1: was a good bite going eighty miles away, if they
Speaker 1: had enough gas, they would go there. I don't care
Speaker 1: if they would be negative money at the end net
Speaker 1: negative money to go and do it. They would do
Speaker 1: it to win. So the point being on the distances,
Speaker 1: you're doing what you can, but who knows what the
Speaker 1: hell people are doing right for those hours right, And
Speaker 1: that goes back to the is it for the money
Speaker 1: or the notoriety thing? That's when it's you're going to win.
Speaker 1: So they'll do whatever it takes to win and fish
Speaker 1: wherever they need to fish to win. The two how
Speaker 1: long ago did the um the two anglers Chase and Jake.
Speaker 1: How long ago do they become like associates where they're
Speaker 1: actually fishing together. It's either been like two or three
Speaker 1: years or three or four years. I mean it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's more recent history than it is, just a
Speaker 1: long time history. Had they each individ udually developed a
Speaker 1: reputation on their own, I would no. I would say no, Um,
Speaker 1: the one guy did, stemming back from the very first
Speaker 1: tournament that I ever worked. You know what worked, worked
Speaker 1: and took over because he's been around UM. Like you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't really know about the other guy until, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of years back when they became partners. So
Speaker 1: maybe explain quickly how this tournament works. Like you had
Speaker 1: X amount of boats, they go out for the day,
Speaker 1: they bring back X amount of fish. You weigh um,
Speaker 1: just so people get a sense of like what happened,
Speaker 1: you know, so in our world, we we weighed five fish, um,
Speaker 1: and we we were leaving from Cleveland. This is our
Speaker 1: championship event. You register, anybody can register, but the teams
Speaker 1: that fish with us for the season are fishing for
Speaker 1: team of your points. And this is just this is
Speaker 1: the championship. It all leads down to this basically. So
Speaker 1: we leave out of Cleveland. I think we're at about
Speaker 1: seven am to three. We have an eight hour window
Speaker 1: they bring back their five best fish. And I always
Speaker 1: say this boat per boat, per boat, So your team,
Speaker 1: you can catch as many fish as you want, but
Speaker 1: we want you to bring back your five best and
Speaker 1: I don't I notice you don't care if they're dead
Speaker 1: or alive. So on Lake Erie, UM, first off, while
Speaker 1: are difficult to keep alive, especially when they're coming out
Speaker 1: of deep water, and then especially in the summertime, it's
Speaker 1: just near and possible. And then you throw in the
Speaker 1: factor of these thirty forty fifty mile runs and two
Speaker 1: or three ft waves, and it's just they're they're just
Speaker 1: getting the crap beat out of them. So additionally to that,
Speaker 1: the division has all tournaments on Lake Erie are harvest tournaments,
Speaker 1: so the guys keep them or we donate them. UM,
Speaker 1: so they cannot be released because they want them out
Speaker 1: of there because just the numbers are really high. The
Speaker 1: numbers are high, but also they've probably seen in the
Speaker 1: past the fish not be able to make it. They're
Speaker 1: just beat up, you know, so you bring back your
Speaker 1: best five to the scales, we check you back in.
Speaker 1: You get in line and you weigh your best five fish.
Speaker 1: You come up there. If you have a big fish,
Speaker 1: will weigh that first, and then you put all five
Speaker 1: of your fish up there, and then the team. It's
Speaker 1: strictly by weight. It's not length, it's it's weight. And
Speaker 1: if we have a tiebreaker, it's done by your big fish. Um.
Speaker 1: So then the you know, the teams stack up where
Speaker 1: they may well. I think this tournament we may have
Speaker 1: had eighty boats. So what's a what's a winning weight for?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that varies, but what's like an average
Speaker 1: like good weight that you guys are bringing in on
Speaker 1: this particular day. So, like you said, it number one.
Speaker 1: It varies by location, but also varies by time of
Speaker 1: the year. So a winning wait for this tournament, it
Speaker 1: was really tough fishing, um I was. I was thinking
Speaker 1: somewhere in the high twenty eight pounds. I always get
Speaker 1: generally pretty close. I'll say, take it'll take thirty three pounds,
Speaker 1: or it may take forty pounds, or you might say
Speaker 1: in a couple of years, especially in the springtime, it
Speaker 1: might take forty five pounds to win, um five nine pounders. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of my my tournament partner last year last
Speaker 1: year weighed in a forty pound bag in here on
Speaker 1: and I don't he was almost not not he didn't
Speaker 1: even get a plaque, but he made a check for
Speaker 1: forty pounds. And a couple of years back, like sixteen,
Speaker 1: I waited with a partner back to back days forty
Speaker 1: two pound bags. We weighed eighty four pounds for the
Speaker 1: two days and we finished fourth. It's it's nuts. What
Speaker 1: is Let's just take the let's just take the day
Speaker 1: of the tournament. We're focused on what was the what
Speaker 1: was the spread? So on those days when everybody's bringing in,
Speaker 1: let's say it's a day where forty one wins is
Speaker 1: second placed, uh forty pounds fourteen ounces. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: when the days that guys do good, generally a lot
Speaker 1: of guys will do well. And then when the days
Speaker 1: that guys do bad, a lot of guys will do bad.
Speaker 1: But you'll still see the people that get into them
Speaker 1: have pretty consistent weights. So you may have five or
Speaker 1: ten guys within like five pounds, give or take a
Speaker 1: pound or two here or there, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to see one guy that comes in with thirty eight
Speaker 1: pounds and then the rest of the field has twenty five.
Speaker 1: It's just that that's an extreme outlier. Could happen, sure,
Speaker 1: but generally these guys are good and and there's sixty
Speaker 1: of them, right, so you're not gonna have one person
Speaker 1: that's just reinvented the wheel for the most are got it?
Speaker 1: What on the what on this day was what were people?
Speaker 1: What were the bags coming in at? So the last
Speaker 1: place that we paid down to was tenth place. They
Speaker 1: were at like sixteen point eight nine. And how much
Speaker 1: how much cash is tenth place? I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe five eight hundred bucks? And then how much cash
Speaker 1: was first place that day? Eight thousand that's good day
Speaker 1: of fishing plus a boat. Right, so there was no
Speaker 1: not a not a boat, not a boat, eight thousand,
Speaker 1: just a check for eight thousand bucks. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of efficient So there was a lot of contingencies on this.
Speaker 1: Again it was our last event, but but eight grand
Speaker 1: was the tournament payout for first place. All right, Here,
Speaker 1: here's the thing I need to that I've tried to
Speaker 1: explain to people. They weren't a contender to win the
Speaker 1: day they were in contender to win the series. Correct,
Speaker 1: explain that. So for the year, we have several sponsors
Speaker 1: that pay out what's what we call the Team of
Speaker 1: the Year. So Anglers will accumulate points throughout the course
Speaker 1: of the season, and we take your best four tournaments
Speaker 1: plus the championship and gives you the Team of the
Speaker 1: year the top dogs and um, they were in contention
Speaker 1: for that. They were in first place leading up to
Speaker 1: this event for Team of the Year. And that's is
Speaker 1: that a good chunk of change? That's ten grand, So
Speaker 1: that's the bonus this Now we're starting to talk about
Speaker 1: how you're making money in this because eight grand for
Speaker 1: the tournament, ten grand for the Team of the year,
Speaker 1: and then we have several other contingencies that we're all
Speaker 1: going to boil down to this. Would it have been
Speaker 1: possible to walk away with would it have been possible
Speaker 1: to walk away with eight teen that day? They had
Speaker 1: they won? Not? I mean theoretically, could someone cap off
Speaker 1: a win for the day and there's eight and then
Speaker 1: also had achieved Team of the Year and then they
Speaker 1: get an additional ten. So I had like seven teams
Speaker 1: and this all plays in a factor and how this
Speaker 1: all transpired. But I had seven teams or eight teams
Speaker 1: that were within points to be able to win the
Speaker 1: championship for the team, and then actually obviously they would
Speaker 1: have been contenders to win the tournament as well. So
Speaker 1: the championships weighted heavier, so it's three points as opposed
Speaker 1: to the general season, which is too. So I had
Speaker 1: my top seven teams that these guys, had they done
Speaker 1: well enough, they would have probably one team of the year,
Speaker 1: depending on how the other teams finished. So I had
Speaker 1: all that mathematics worked out, and I had it all
Speaker 1: written down, and and that kind of factors into how
Speaker 1: you know, But I guess what a mask is. You
Speaker 1: could potentially win both those purses. Oh yeah, absolutely. I
Speaker 1: didn't know if there's anything to exclude you from winning
Speaker 1: the ten and the eight. No, And most of these
Speaker 1: guys that are in the in the mix are good
Speaker 1: enough to win both. That's you know. They they're consistent
Speaker 1: throughout the year, and they're generally going to be consistent
Speaker 1: in the championship too. So now in the back of
Speaker 1: your head is like, like that has a pretty big
Speaker 1: impact on your year. Yeah, to walk with that kind
Speaker 1: of cash next time someone yells a you bought fishing
Speaker 1: too much. Be like, look at this. M hmm. These guys,
Speaker 1: these guys that do this, they make money. But they
Speaker 1: I say this all the time. They're pulling into the
Speaker 1: parking lot with two grand worth of equipment. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like there's no there's no shortage of money. And
Speaker 1: these guys are not you know, super wealthy businessmen. They're
Speaker 1: not all lawyers, they're not all doctors or something. These
Speaker 1: are your salt to the earth carpenters. You know, you're
Speaker 1: you're paving crews, your concrete workers, your police officers, your firemen.
Speaker 1: You know, there's businessmen mixed in here. There's real estate,
Speaker 1: property owners. But these are all aspects of life. So
Speaker 1: these guys devote their life to this. They care about
Speaker 1: this stuff, they love doing it. And it's not it's
Speaker 1: not all about the money. But to walk away with
Speaker 1: the eight thousand or ten thousand dollar check makes a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, more worth it to them. But
Speaker 1: it's it's not just strictly based on that money. When
Speaker 1: I first the first clip I saw from the day
Speaker 1: it was it was a thirty minute long long clip
Speaker 1: that's almost filming, and you were and you were waiting.
Speaker 1: A lot of guys are getting weighed. As a tournament director,
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned this to me on the phone.
Speaker 1: As a tournament director, in order to enhance the drama,
Speaker 1: you might schedule out the weights in order to get
Speaker 1: these these top contenders waded towards the end. Is that accurate? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So what I did was that I took took all
Speaker 1: those teams that were in the running for Team of
Speaker 1: the Year, and I made a sheet for my way guy,
Speaker 1: my my guy that checks in the fish, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: if these guys have a good bag, keep him aside.
Speaker 1: If these guys have a really good bag, keep him aside.
Speaker 1: If these guys have a decent bag, keep him aside.
Speaker 1: Because I wanted the build up to be at the end.
Speaker 1: So if your Team of the Year and you walk up,
Speaker 1: you know, your third guy on the stage, and you
Speaker 1: put up a good number, it's just it is what
Speaker 1: it is, right, Okay, they got you know all right
Speaker 1: there in there in the lead, but there's no build
Speaker 1: up there just out of curiosity, how many people are
Speaker 1: hanging around for this like this particular like team championship
Speaker 1: way in thing, and there was probably I don't know,
Speaker 1: you don't gather from the first video I saw Europe MCN.
Speaker 1: But everybody's standing back a little ways and it's not
Speaker 1: until she is the fan that you go like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of people. Yeah, well, these guys all
Speaker 1: kind of hang back. They hang by their trucks or
Speaker 1: you know, doing whatever, eating hot dogs, hanging out. But
Speaker 1: you gotta understand, if there's eight boats two anglers per boat,
Speaker 1: there's hundred sixty you know anglers there, and then you
Speaker 1: know they may have their wives or kids or just
Speaker 1: some random fishermen they are coming back for the day
Speaker 1: they want to hang out, you know. So you start
Speaker 1: to accumulate a decent crowd towards the end of this thing,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, we try, we try to keep that.
Speaker 1: It was never like that before. But you know, so
Speaker 1: we cook, you know, food, and I got my dad
Speaker 1: out there slinging food on the grill just because I
Speaker 1: want the people to stay. It's important for not only
Speaker 1: the fishermen, but then you get things like sponsors, and
Speaker 1: that's how your circuit gets bigger as being to updraw
Speaker 1: the crowd. So you know, that's that's important to us.
Speaker 1: When they came up with their bag. It seems that
Speaker 1: like in the crowd, you can you're already hearing a murmuring,
Speaker 1: there's guy says, let me see those fish, right, or
Speaker 1: I hear guys say I caught fish that looked a lot,
Speaker 1: or caught fish looked just like that in reference to
Speaker 1: the weight. So when when they came up and your
Speaker 1: m seeing the event, they're bringing their fish up, did
Speaker 1: you know something's going on? So I didn't know in
Speaker 1: a sense of did you know that there was something
Speaker 1: going on? But but I'll back up a little bit.
Speaker 1: So I was paying very close attention to the fish
Speaker 1: in general because I'm trying to make it exciting for
Speaker 1: the live feed and for the anglers. So the second
Speaker 1: place team that was running for Team of the Year,
Speaker 1: they put up a fifth place number. So I knew
Speaker 1: that these guys that were in first place going into
Speaker 1: this event needed to be within five spots of them
Speaker 1: in order to capture the Team of your title based
Speaker 1: off points. So when I saw them put up a
Speaker 1: fifth place number, I'm like, Okay, they need to be
Speaker 1: tenth place or above and they're gonna win. So you
Speaker 1: actually hear me say it, I'm like, you need sixteen
Speaker 1: point eight nine pounds. I think that was the number
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, in order to capture
Speaker 1: the Team of the Year. So when they're putting these
Speaker 1: fish from the bag to our way basket, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm doing some quick math. I'm like, all right, four pounds.
Speaker 1: Four pounds, Okay, like they got Probably that's that that
Speaker 1: real consistent. You're doing that base off just off the
Speaker 1: scale or off looking at so that that was the
Speaker 1: number they needed was roughly seventeen pounds that day, roughly
Speaker 1: seventeen pounds to take home the Team of the Year title.
Speaker 1: And how long did they know that that's what it
Speaker 1: was going to be. They did not know that, so
Speaker 1: so you didn't announce it and in an hour went by.
Speaker 1: So this is part of this is part of like
Speaker 1: the perfect storm, right, And I've heard I'm not out there,
Speaker 1: I wasn't one of the guys, but I've heard it was,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, how did you guys do today? You know,
Speaker 1: And and nobody would tell them, nobody said a word
Speaker 1: to like how much or how good their day was.
Speaker 1: So when they got in and I and I told them,
Speaker 1: I said, hey, I want you guys to weigh last.
Speaker 1: I kept them there. One of my guys got them
Speaker 1: off the boat and kept them in a tank and
Speaker 1: waited to the end to weigh their fish. So they
Speaker 1: had no clue how the day was going to transpire,
Speaker 1: no clue, so, you know, just just knowing that and
Speaker 1: knowing how this all worked out, it was it was
Speaker 1: just like the perfect storm that if in fact they
Speaker 1: put all those weights in the fish, right, because technically
Speaker 1: nobody's been proven guilty of anything here, if they did that,
Speaker 1: they did it based off of what they thought they
Speaker 1: needed for the day, and they thought they somehow we're watching.
Speaker 1: I thought they could somehow watch what was going on
Speaker 1: and be like, we need sixteen ounces. So it's that's
Speaker 1: true normally because I put on a live feed and
Speaker 1: guys can watch and ultimately it takes a long time
Speaker 1: to get through all of the anglers. But in this
Speaker 1: perfect storm situation, I wanted them to weigh last because
Speaker 1: of the drama of the event. So when they got
Speaker 1: from their boat, I put him in the tank and
Speaker 1: to keep their fish, you know, healthier or wet, and
Speaker 1: they couldn't change it. It was from that second my
Speaker 1: guy went and grabbed him off the boat and brought
Speaker 1: him over the tank. It was locked in that. Those
Speaker 1: are the fish that they were weighing. They had no
Speaker 1: access to them, they had no access to them. Well,
Speaker 1: they kept, they kept, They had the fish the whole time.
Speaker 1: They were in possession of them. But they were there.
Speaker 1: They couldn't There was nothing that could be changed with them,
Speaker 1: their visible. The problem for them was everybody did shitty,
Speaker 1: so they overcompensated a little bit. You got so everybody.
Speaker 1: So the fishing was tough. Okay, the days leading up
Speaker 1: to it, we had some northeast winds. Guys weren't able
Speaker 1: to pre fish and that's essentially practice. So nobody really
Speaker 1: knew how it was going to pan out. But but
Speaker 1: it sucked for a lot of different boats and the closest,
Speaker 1: the best boat of the day was twenty eight pounds
Speaker 1: in some change, whatever it was. They beat them by
Speaker 1: almost five six pounds. That's a lot. Yeah, an extra
Speaker 1: extra did they not need? Did they not need the lead?
Speaker 1: So they would not have won the tournament. They would
Speaker 1: have if if you take out the extras that were
Speaker 1: in the fish and just wade the fish, they probably
Speaker 1: would have been somewhere in pound ballpark. I would guess
Speaker 1: and would have had Angler the Year and would have
Speaker 1: had Angler of the Year. And with their bag way,
Speaker 1: I believe thirty three point nine one. So is there right,
Speaker 1: You're like, well, so, so yeah, I was. As I
Speaker 1: was saying that, when they're in the tank and they're
Speaker 1: putting the fish from the bag to the basket, I'm
Speaker 1: doing quick math in my head and I'm saying, okay,
Speaker 1: five fish times four or five pounds, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: in twenty or twenty pound ball. And you're making that
Speaker 1: guess knowing what having looked at you know what basically
Speaker 1: what a fish is gonna weigh. So I I do
Speaker 1: a pretty good job. It's my It is my job.
Speaker 1: When you're coming up and I look at my computer
Speaker 1: screen and I see that the big fish number is
Speaker 1: that like seven point eight, and you got a big
Speaker 1: tail hanging out of that basket, it's my job to say, oh,
Speaker 1: here we go. You know, we got one, you know,
Speaker 1: looking for the big fish of the day, eight point two,
Speaker 1: We got a new leader. If I'm not doing that,
Speaker 1: if I'm not doing that, then then our tournament is
Speaker 1: just the same old turn that everybody else is having.
Speaker 1: So I owe it to these guys to just be
Speaker 1: you know, as exciting as possible your ass off in
Speaker 1: the videos. I'm I'm trying, you know, because it's you
Speaker 1: do a good job. It's awesome. Like these guys are
Speaker 1: not only fishing my events, but they're my friends. So
Speaker 1: the question everybody always asked me is like, oh, well
Speaker 1: aren't you doesn't it suck you're not fishing anymore. I
Speaker 1: get to be a part of the championship bag every time.
Speaker 1: So those dudes are high five in each other, they're
Speaker 1: high five in me. They're grabbing ahold of me, giving
Speaker 1: me a hug. I mean, it's it's awesome, you know,
Speaker 1: And uh, that's part of it too, So I really
Speaker 1: want to do a good job at that. Are they
Speaker 1: weighing the fish one at a time? No, So we
Speaker 1: weigh in the big fish first, that's one at a time,
Speaker 1: and then they add the other to make your five
Speaker 1: fish basket, and then we ate weigh all five. So
Speaker 1: any so, so Chase and Jake step up. One of
Speaker 1: them stufs up whatever hill and he's gonna put his
Speaker 1: biggest fish on the scale and you see the read out.
Speaker 1: Did you think that fish does a weigh that I've
Speaker 1: ben look at these fish all my life. So people
Speaker 1: people say when they watch the live feed that that
Speaker 1: they can't tell. But the wind was just sucked right
Speaker 1: from my sales man because it was seven nine oh.
Speaker 1: And there's just zero chance that it was seven nine
Speaker 1: oh because you've been looking at too many fish. You know,
Speaker 1: eight pound fish are are those fish on lake area that?
Speaker 1: And they're just a solid, healthy lake erie fish. Now,
Speaker 1: the class of fish that were coming in was the
Speaker 1: stock five pounders that are on lake area right now.
Speaker 1: You can go out there and if you want to
Speaker 1: make some some walleye gumbo, you're you're gonna catch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the perfect fish to do that with. These were not
Speaker 1: those eight pounders. And to weigh seven nine oh, you
Speaker 1: can tell. You can tell by the tail, you could
Speaker 1: tell by the head, and it just wasn't there man.
Speaker 1: So I I just the wind was just sucked right
Speaker 1: from my soul at that time. And I'm what do
Speaker 1: I do? You know, what do I do? So they
Speaker 1: put the big fish into the basket and weigh them
Speaker 1: all and I'm just like thirty three and some change
Speaker 1: would have almost thirty four pounds. I'm like, no way,
Speaker 1: And what was the what was the second place at
Speaker 1: that point in time in some change that's ro off
Speaker 1: and and they're the similar class of fish or like
Speaker 1: these fish look like those foot fish, but they're somehow
Speaker 1: you know, seven pounds eight pounds heavier than everybody else. Right,
Speaker 1: we know they're like going for the team of the year.
Speaker 1: Where were they? How are they standing for the individual
Speaker 1: tournament top dog? They Yeah, they would have won. They
Speaker 1: would have won by six pounds. They would have for
Speaker 1: for that particular they would have won the tournament and
Speaker 1: the Team of the year and walked with eighteen okay
Speaker 1: without not without the way I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: if they were if they got real greedy and they're
Speaker 1: trying to get both purses. So they did, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that was what happened, But they would have been if
Speaker 1: the fish that they weighed were unaltered, they would have
Speaker 1: been in the money. And they also would have one
Speaker 1: Team of the year because they would have been above
Speaker 1: sixteen point. But they wouldn't have won the individual. But
Speaker 1: they you know, keep in mind, no one knows. Maybe
Speaker 1: you know that that um the first time they did this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know what I'm saying, like because in my
Speaker 1: head I'm like, oh, if they just wouldn't have done it.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, well, if they wouldn't have done it,
Speaker 1: they might have never even been in that situation anyways,
Speaker 1: because it might have been habitual, right, unless it was
Speaker 1: just like yeah, he had to be like was it
Speaker 1: the first time? Did you get caught? The first time?
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that like, not only were there
Speaker 1: there's big lead weights, but they're like, oh that's not enough,
Speaker 1: I gotta shove some blaze. And the one that the
Speaker 1: one that got me was the pair of pliers. So
Speaker 1: so let's back up to back up to the moment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to get to all this stuff. But you
Speaker 1: haven't touched one of the fish yet. No, okay, So
Speaker 1: he lays it up and you're like, you're like the ky,
Speaker 1: that's not right. They lay them all up. That's not right. Uh,
Speaker 1: this all happened very fast. What was so? So give
Speaker 1: me a play by play. What was the next thing
Speaker 1: you did? He all five around the scale and you're like,
Speaker 1: no way. So yeah, I just I tried to play
Speaker 1: it off like it was all good, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: get some photos. I want you to hang tight because
Speaker 1: I wanted to look at him. I know, I knew
Speaker 1: in my gut that just something was wrong and I
Speaker 1: had to do something, Like I've I'm just in my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm hearing all the all the anglers throughout the whole
Speaker 1: course of the you know this year and last year,
Speaker 1: you know that you gotta you gotta protest them, you
Speaker 1: gotta do this, you gotta check those fish, you gotta
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta do something about this because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm literally losing anglers because they continue to win and
Speaker 1: guys are just like, I'm done with it. What was
Speaker 1: the crowd reaction? They were pissed, and it was it
Speaker 1: was like silent. It was when you have a team
Speaker 1: that puts up a good number and not one single
Speaker 1: person in the crowd is happy for him. Exception, I
Speaker 1: think it was like my buddy's mom there. She was
Speaker 1: like she's like and he's like, he's like, we're not
Speaker 1: room for those guys, you know, but but like nobody's happy.
Speaker 1: You know that there's a problem, and and and it
Speaker 1: all falls back on me because everybody wants me to
Speaker 1: do something about it. It's not it's not an easy
Speaker 1: spot to be in, man, No, Like that's tough. This
Speaker 1: whole year and again, so they were disqualified from an
Speaker 1: event um last year, the Fall Brawl. I now run it.
Speaker 1: I did not run it last year. So they were
Speaker 1: disqualified via the results of this polygraph. And this has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with when they got disqualified for the
Speaker 1: late night fishing, nothing to do with it. So there's
Speaker 1: these incidents, right, But I have no first hand knowledge
Speaker 1: as to what took place. And again, you know, could
Speaker 1: I say I don't want you to fish? That's what
Speaker 1: everybody wants me to say. But I'm treating these guys
Speaker 1: as equals because I have no actual knowledge that anything
Speaker 1: was wrong. I I hear this story. Hey you were
Speaker 1: disqualified from that event, but why did did you not
Speaker 1: wear your life jacket? Or did you you know, alter
Speaker 1: the fish like to to ultimate ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: You can't get that piece of knowledge. No, is there
Speaker 1: a standard set of questions that are asked in those
Speaker 1: polygraphs or I think it all depends on, you know,
Speaker 1: the the actual tournament and then the examiner, and then
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's could have been did you drink beer?
Speaker 1: Of course? Right? Did you ask did you have three
Speaker 1: rods out? And then realize you add to me rods
Speaker 1: out and pull a rod in or whatever. Right, So
Speaker 1: so that and that's my point, Like, should being disqualified
Speaker 1: from an event be a life sentence, you know, because
Speaker 1: I don't know what they did. And I've always maintained
Speaker 1: this with whoever I talked to, Like, if you did
Speaker 1: something wrong, that's okay. Everybody will do something wrong at
Speaker 1: some point in time in their life. But if you
Speaker 1: cheat people out of money, screw you like I like
Speaker 1: I I and I always say, I'll treat this as
Speaker 1: if it was my money, but it's not my money,
Speaker 1: it's your money. So if you're treating or cheating people
Speaker 1: out of money, I have a huge issue with that.
Speaker 1: I don't want you any part of our events. And
Speaker 1: and I could never say that that is actually what
Speaker 1: took place. So I so I allow these guys to
Speaker 1: fish Like my own buddies. I could look show you
Speaker 1: text threads where like my buddies are like, you gotta
Speaker 1: get these dudes out of here. This is bullshit, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, just shut up. I don't have anything
Speaker 1: to exclude them with, and it wouldn't be right for
Speaker 1: me to do that. I mean, I felt that, you know,
Speaker 1: and I defended these guys because I had no proof
Speaker 1: that they did anything wrong, and I'm not going to
Speaker 1: treat somebody differently because they're doing well. You know. Is
Speaker 1: there a reason you rely on polygraphs for this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff rather than something like a random fish inspection,
Speaker 1: like every every bag that comes up, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: one of these fish and kind of feel around and
Speaker 1: see if anything sketchy. So that would give you one
Speaker 1: verification that somebody didn't cheat in that way on that fish.
Speaker 1: So first of all, your way five, so you got
Speaker 1: a one in you know, chance of catching somebody if
Speaker 1: they didn't alter one fish. And then there's so many
Speaker 1: different ways that somebody could do something dishonest at a tournament.
Speaker 1: Altering the fish, in my opinion, would be like the
Speaker 1: last one. The first one would be calling your buddy
Speaker 1: and saying, hey man, they're biting over here, get over here,
Speaker 1: and then you just catch good fish. The next one
Speaker 1: would be probably using too many rods to catch those fish.
Speaker 1: You know. But I would guess if anybody was doing
Speaker 1: anything wrong on the event, it wouldn't be loading the fish.
Speaker 1: That's a good explanation because i've i've I hadn't thought
Speaker 1: of that. I kept been like, well, it seems like
Speaker 1: none of this would be an issue if they didn't
Speaker 1: use magnets or some sort of metal detector of some sort.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just like it's such a uh you
Speaker 1: can't control all these other things. It's the it's the
Speaker 1: most like antiquated way to cheating event would be to
Speaker 1: load of fish. But also at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: one of those where that's a question on every every
Speaker 1: test did you alter the fish in anyway? And if
Speaker 1: you're passing those tests, you have to believe that they
Speaker 1: were doing things honestly, and we have you know, it's
Speaker 1: the good old boys system with I'm not on your
Speaker 1: boat with you, but you have these tests and you would,
Speaker 1: you know, verify the results based on them. So you
Speaker 1: just assume that they're, you know, doing what their job is,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, uh, you tell them to go hang
Speaker 1: their fish up for some pictures. Known what happens. They
Speaker 1: take a few photos and you start hearing the crowd grumbling,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's when it's like, uh, I'd like
Speaker 1: to see those fish. Let me see those fish. We
Speaker 1: had the same fish as those that didn't weigh that
Speaker 1: whatever I'm paraphrasing, but no, you're you're quoting. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what these guys are saying, you know. I mean, so
Speaker 1: I say, listen, I want to I want to check
Speaker 1: those fish, you know, And he's like, oh, this is bullshit.
Speaker 1: This has got to stop. Are you serious? And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to check the fish. So I get only
Speaker 1: one of them is there? Yeah? The other guys he
Speaker 1: headed to the truck the minute you said I'm gonna
Speaker 1: check those fish. Yeah, because he was doing photos. He
Speaker 1: was doing photos and then you know, he bounced, um,
Speaker 1: which should be unusual to bounce in that moment. So
Speaker 1: the weird thing is with these guys. Yeah, so you look,
Speaker 1: just look at human behavior, right, if you just want something,
Speaker 1: you're proud of it, like you want to be there,
Speaker 1: you want to be part of that moment, because that's
Speaker 1: mostly what these guys fish for. You know, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't go out there and put up a first
Speaker 1: place bag and not even weigh your fish or be
Speaker 1: up on stage, like who who does that? But that
Speaker 1: was that's how this went down. And you're not even
Speaker 1: a part of being on the stage. You just one
Speaker 1: team of the year. You just won first place in
Speaker 1: the tournament and you weren't even on the stage, Like
Speaker 1: what do you have to do? Know, I mean, so
Speaker 1: to take the human behavior elements so that you have that.
Speaker 1: And I say, I want to look at these fish,
Speaker 1: and he's just like he's pissed. He's pissed at me,
Speaker 1: like I didn't protests. I didn't see that he's protesting
Speaker 1: the decision, the angle, yeah, the anglers. Like he's pissed
Speaker 1: at me, like are you kidding me? You know, because
Speaker 1: these guys are always giving me an as sache, like
Speaker 1: this has got to stop. And I'm like, ah, I
Speaker 1: want to look at him, you know, and I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say that I did anything to
Speaker 1: be like a hero, but I was very uncomfortable. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to do this. And and if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I am the asshole, you know, if I'm if I'm
Speaker 1: looking at these fish, and and if I slice that
Speaker 1: fish open and I'm wrong the whole I probably don't
Speaker 1: have a tournament anymore, you know, especially if you did
Speaker 1: just the one person right exactly. And and so that's
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I'm all always trying to not treat
Speaker 1: these people differently than than the rest of the guys.
Speaker 1: So I said, I want to look at them. So
Speaker 1: the first fish I get out and I just looked
Speaker 1: to see the condition of the fish. Is it alive?
Speaker 1: Does it look like we call it, you know, zombies?
Speaker 1: Do they look like a corpse? Because walleyes have color,
Speaker 1: you know, nice green color. You can sometimes if they're
Speaker 1: on ice, you could see the spots where the ice
Speaker 1: cubes were sitting. I mean, I'm looking at the fish
Speaker 1: to see what the condition is and it and it
Speaker 1: and it looked kind of like a zombie, you know.
Speaker 1: It just it looked like a beat up walleye. So
Speaker 1: I put that fish in the basket and I pull
Speaker 1: out the second fish out of the bag and the
Speaker 1: same thing. I'm just like, man, no color looks looks dead.
Speaker 1: You know, the eyes the tail fish developed ammonia. When
Speaker 1: they're in the live well, their fins get red and
Speaker 1: you could tell, you know, when they're in a live
Speaker 1: one they come out of the livel you can see
Speaker 1: that red redness on their gills, on their tail. So
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this and I take my hands and
Speaker 1: I actually like I squeeze the fish because you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to just feel if it was firm, like
Speaker 1: when a fish is on ice or it's or it's fresh,
Speaker 1: it kind of has like a firmness to it actually,
Speaker 1: Like so when you eat fish, you like to do
Speaker 1: it out of cold water because they're not mushy or
Speaker 1: if you freeze, like people fish for croppy and they
Speaker 1: say they get mushy if you put them on ice.
Speaker 1: So I just want to feel the fish. And I
Speaker 1: feel this like hard like ball in the belly of
Speaker 1: this fish, and I'm like, oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I knew. I knew. Was it was it subtle? No, No,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't like a crawdad walleyes are not eating
Speaker 1: like baby turtles or something, you know. I just I
Speaker 1: knew immediately what had what was going on. I just
Speaker 1: knew it because you match that up with the weight
Speaker 1: of the fish not being consistent with the actual size
Speaker 1: of the fish. So it didn't it didn't meet the
Speaker 1: eyeball test. So then I I touched this thing, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god. So I didn't have a knife.
Speaker 1: Here's where your leatherman comes in. The leatherman did not
Speaker 1: come from within the fish. The leatherman I've heard, okay,
Speaker 1: I've heard people say multiple people talk about the players,
Speaker 1: but I never saw players come out of the fish.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know what people are talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's just one of those that's one of those
Speaker 1: Internet stories because you see the picture of the fish.
Speaker 1: So so my buddy gets me this leatherman and he
Speaker 1: hands me this thing and it's got to bust it
Speaker 1: off tip. It's like the most garbage knife that you
Speaker 1: could even imagine. And and you see on the video,
Speaker 1: I swiped this fish like with some pretty serious aggression
Speaker 1: because I was pissed. I knew, you know, I did
Speaker 1: not go searching in the fish for something. I knew
Speaker 1: that there was something in there or that I needed
Speaker 1: to get out. So I swiped this fish open, and
Speaker 1: I grabbed I grabbed the weight, and I you know,
Speaker 1: obviously this is where the internet caught fire. Raw emotion
Speaker 1: from like my soul comes out because everything that anybody
Speaker 1: had ever said about these guys has now just became
Speaker 1: public knowledge and a hundred percent fact. There was no polygraph.
Speaker 1: There was no he said, she said, there was no.
Speaker 1: Oh he was on the water later, Oh he met
Speaker 1: up with a different person, or oh, he texted and
Speaker 1: and or he bought a fish from a charter captain,
Speaker 1: you name it. I've heard all the stories, right, there
Speaker 1: was no stories. There was weights that I'm yanking out
Speaker 1: of the fish. And that's you know, and that's when
Speaker 1: you hear we got weights and fish. Get the fuck
Speaker 1: out of here. Because I I hated what I just
Speaker 1: what I just found out is these guys duped me.
Speaker 1: You know, they were they were pulling it over on me.
Speaker 1: And this is my event and I was the one fooled.
Speaker 1: And since I allowed it, I allowed some impropriety in
Speaker 1: my event. And it's sickened me, you know, because I
Speaker 1: care about these dudes, and I've I've said this, but
Speaker 1: like these anglers, they are my dare my boys there.
Speaker 1: You know. They brought me through. So last year I
Speaker 1: had cancer, Okay, I didn't tell anybody. These dudes found out.
Speaker 1: They made a charity event in my honor. Um we
Speaker 1: raised funds. I was financially stable. We raised funds for
Speaker 1: somebody else and we continue that now year after year.
Speaker 1: They cut my grass, they brought me food, they showed
Speaker 1: up at my house. I love these dudes, and and
Speaker 1: these guys took away all those moments, you know, standing
Speaker 1: on stage with your kids and sharing that first place.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's ever taken second place should have taken first.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's ever taken third should have been second. Anybody
Speaker 1: who was out of the money should have had a
Speaker 1: couple of bucks. They pour their life and soul into
Speaker 1: these events and and and to take not the money
Speaker 1: that time that you can never get back, because there
Speaker 1: there's that element you don't know. And all of these
Speaker 1: dudes brought me out of the worst time of my
Speaker 1: life and got me through it. And I care about
Speaker 1: this stuff more than you could even imagine, just because
Speaker 1: of the people who are involved. It's not about making
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred bucks on a weekend. It's not
Speaker 1: about a sponsorship. It's about the dudes that care about
Speaker 1: the sport and care about me. And I want to
Speaker 1: provide the best tournament on lake Erie because it's they
Speaker 1: deserve it. These guys deserve it, and lake Erie deserves it.
Speaker 1: And that's that's what that boiling up, that's what came
Speaker 1: out because you almost at them. Yeah, it was that
Speaker 1: like an umpire throwing you out of the game. I
Speaker 1: thought you your instinct was to give him a haymaker
Speaker 1: and then instead to the umpire. Sean felt it was
Speaker 1: just umpire from the start. Yeah, but I mean it
Speaker 1: might be a beautiful hybrid of the two. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I think that it's an umpire uh more than a haymaker.
Speaker 1: I never, I never. Yeah, I played baseball for for
Speaker 1: a long time, so that's what came out. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I may or may not have been ejected from a
Speaker 1: few games. So you're like, now the tables have turned. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: so like these dudes, these do I just they're they're gone.
Speaker 1: I wanted everybody, everybody to know that they're gone. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just in case nobody saw what happened. Like they
Speaker 1: weren't subtle about it. It wasn't like they slipped a
Speaker 1: few split shots in there. These are like giant the
Speaker 1: wights and twelve to twelve ounce and in eight out
Speaker 1: in eight ounce weights is a lot. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: lot in that fish, in that fishing, in those strategies.
Speaker 1: Is there a reason to have those weights? No, not
Speaker 1: that heavy. So we would we would typically use two
Speaker 1: ounce sometimes even three ounce weights to essentially we call
Speaker 1: it snap waiting to get your baits deep um, but
Speaker 1: but no, we there would be no reason to have
Speaker 1: a twelve ounce weight on the boat even. I mean
Speaker 1: some guys will fish with down riggers. But then you're talking,
Speaker 1: you know, pound weights. What what was up with the
Speaker 1: what was up with the fish filets they had stuffed
Speaker 1: in there. I think the theory that I think is
Speaker 1: that was padding. I think it was just simple. I
Speaker 1: think it was padding, yeah, to like to to help
Speaker 1: the look of a lead ball in the stomach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like the wadding on a musket ball. Were
Speaker 1: the like was it just inside the body cavity or
Speaker 1: in the stomach like or did it just you cut
Speaker 1: it open? So yeah, I mean I'm not like a
Speaker 1: surgeon or anything, Like, I'm just wondering how they jammed
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Yeah, I would imagine. So I haven't
Speaker 1: personally done it, but like I know guys have tried,
Speaker 1: and they're like, I don't. We don't even know how
Speaker 1: you could do this. It's hard to stuff a weight
Speaker 1: down the throat. So, um, you know, I have no idea. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's like I want to be so far away from
Speaker 1: the situation, but guys have, like they've tried, Like, we
Speaker 1: don't even know how they could do it in the
Speaker 1: in the video, the what gives it almost like a
Speaker 1: um like a level of emotion on part of the
Speaker 1: Greek tragedy is the way that Jake hangs his head
Speaker 1: and silently stands there absorbing a massive amount of abuse.
Speaker 1: What uh? When did that end? I don't think it
Speaker 1: ended until they It still hasn't ended. To take a
Speaker 1: look at social media. But when did it be that
Speaker 1: he How did it come to be that he left
Speaker 1: that circle of like someone's gonna beat his ass? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there was a guy there that that took control
Speaker 1: of the situation. He's a he's a county sheriff and
Speaker 1: he he said, you know, we gotta we gotta treat
Speaker 1: this thing as if it's a crime. So he kind
Speaker 1: of pulled him off to the side, made him hang
Speaker 1: there until some local law enforcement showed up, and and
Speaker 1: you know, they were still badgering them verbally. But that's
Speaker 1: the image of them sitting on the side of the curb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, So, So what what criminal charges will come
Speaker 1: out of this wanton wanton waste? Right? Probably for the
Speaker 1: fish filets would be like one of many. So what
Speaker 1: they've been charged with was unlawful possession of like wild
Speaker 1: game something of that nature or something like that. Well,
Speaker 1: what was the unlawful possession? I think like the fish filets.
Speaker 1: So you can't some lakes like Lake Ontario salmon fishing
Speaker 1: at least at the water. Yeah. So so that may
Speaker 1: have been part of that because they they've also obscured
Speaker 1: the identity of the fish. Maybe it I believe it's
Speaker 1: still had the skin attached. So there's just so many
Speaker 1: rules and regulations and that the division knows by heart
Speaker 1: that I obviously don't. So they were charged with some
Speaker 1: kind of uh possession of those fish filets or doing
Speaker 1: whatever I did with the fish flace. And then mostly
Speaker 1: all the other charges were theft related charges um, and
Speaker 1: uh anything serious Yeah, I mean grand theft over over
Speaker 1: a thousand bucks, you know, felony level. Um. They both
Speaker 1: of them were charged with the same thing, I believe,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's in the court system now. I think
Speaker 1: they actually had they had court recently. So did they
Speaker 1: seize their equipment and boat and trucks and all that stuff?
Speaker 1: They seized the boat, I know that. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there was any equipment on the boat. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't believe a truck was sees just the boat
Speaker 1: and maybe whatever equipment was on it, and there was
Speaker 1: a court date. This isn't gonna come to a jury trial, right,
Speaker 1: It's their right to do that. But you know that's there,
Speaker 1: that's their their call. Anytime you get a jury trial,
Speaker 1: it's because somebody wants one. You know, what a how
Speaker 1: are they doing? Nobody knows so honestly, I have asked
Speaker 1: a couple of people that know them. So the owner
Speaker 1: of the boat shop a very good friend of mine.
Speaker 1: He obviously sold this guy a dozen boats over the years,
Speaker 1: knows him and uh, you know, considered him a friend.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, are they okay? Because like, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't to take the beating that they took online.
Speaker 1: It's just tough. I mean, do they deserve some beating, sure,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to see anybody like hurt themselves
Speaker 1: and and and you know, private life, family life suffer
Speaker 1: because they've made a mistake. It's just one of those
Speaker 1: things you just don't want to see if if if
Speaker 1: one of the guys like did something or hurt themselves. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's I don't care what you did,
Speaker 1: what mistakes you made that affects a whole lot of
Speaker 1: other people, and I don't want to see that. So
Speaker 1: I did hear that, you know, there's at least one
Speaker 1: of the two guys is struggling a little bit um
Speaker 1: keeping keeping the sanity amongst all the beating, you know,
Speaker 1: and then one of the guys, you know, maybe I
Speaker 1: hear kind of just whatever. So I don't know that
Speaker 1: to be true. It's just I put feelers out. Did
Speaker 1: they issue any kind of public apology or anything like that. Nope, No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know that you ever will hear
Speaker 1: anything from him. Um, I don't know that they've talked
Speaker 1: to any law enforcement. I don't know if they talked
Speaker 1: to anybody except for whatever attorneys they got. And you
Speaker 1: probably will never hear from him again. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you'll at some point reach out
Speaker 1: to him. I will never reach out to him, um,
Speaker 1: like morally, like I want to, but I just won't
Speaker 1: do it because I don't want that to be misconstrued
Speaker 1: that I was like trying to harass them. Like let's
Speaker 1: say they don't answer the phone and I and I
Speaker 1: keep calling, I don't I just won't. I just won't
Speaker 1: do it. You know, as long as they're doing okay,
Speaker 1: or somebody that knows them says they're doing okay, that's
Speaker 1: that's fine. Is your What does this mean for your tournament? Now?
Speaker 1: I mean you you're gonna forge ahead. You gotta rebrand it.
Speaker 1: Do you expect to be hundreds and hundreds of anglers
Speaker 1: at the next one? Like no one at the next one.
Speaker 1: So I think that we're going to be stronger than
Speaker 1: we ever were. Two reasons, because some of the guys
Speaker 1: that did not fish will fish now. I've had people
Speaker 1: from other states reach out to me. Mostly everybody has
Speaker 1: said that, like, we're proud of what you did. Thank
Speaker 1: you for catching people and keeping it honest, because I've
Speaker 1: always branded my tournament with transparency and just honestly, like
Speaker 1: if I screw up, if I screw up something on
Speaker 1: the roster, you hate me and I didn't get you
Speaker 1: on there, it's my fault, man, I will fix it.
Speaker 1: And and but but I've said I I will not
Speaker 1: stand for somebody stealing from you guys. You know anything
Speaker 1: else we can work through no matter what. And and
Speaker 1: a lot of people like that, A lot of people
Speaker 1: appreciate that, like, I just truly want to do it
Speaker 1: for the right things, and I think it's I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be stronger than ever. You know, I've had
Speaker 1: nothing but positive feedback. Has have more solid accusations emerged,
Speaker 1: like as anyone talked about past winds, you know where
Speaker 1: they're like, well, now that it's a big deal, let
Speaker 1: me tell you what I saw him do one time
Speaker 1: or yes again. Though it's all just like strictly hearsay,
Speaker 1: so you hear all of the stuff about you know,
Speaker 1: I've got text messages, Oh you know this guy tried to,
Speaker 1: you know, ask me if I had any big fish,
Speaker 1: And that's just all. That's just noise really. But what
Speaker 1: it does do is it makes all of the anglers
Speaker 1: think about times where they had some questions because number one,
Speaker 1: I'm not at every tournament. I don't run every tournament,
Speaker 1: and number two, I have other things to think about.
Speaker 1: So if somebody comes up with a fish that might
Speaker 1: not look great, it might just be part of the mix.
Speaker 1: You know, if you wait in second and put up
Speaker 1: thirty three pounds, I didn't know that it was an
Speaker 1: outlier until the very end, when you put up thirty
Speaker 1: three pounds. Now those fish are gone, right. But what
Speaker 1: I mentioned about the perfect storm is I had them
Speaker 1: wait last, not because I thought they were doing anything wrong,
Speaker 1: but because I wanted the drama to be there for
Speaker 1: the event. And when they wait last, and it was
Speaker 1: such an outlier. Now you have all the people saying no, no,
Speaker 1: so you know they're bringing to my attention at this
Speaker 1: time or that time or whatever. It's all there's no
Speaker 1: real way to go back and see what happened. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, everything these guys have ever won is now
Speaker 1: drawn into question. Do you do you anticipate this having
Speaker 1: any kind of large scale effect on fishing tournaments as
Speaker 1: a whole, like around the country or so? I think
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Yes. Number one, I think it's
Speaker 1: a deterrent in general because nobody, no, no, if you
Speaker 1: were a dude that's got away. We got an idea
Speaker 1: for how to win a tournament, that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Nobody in their right mind wants to become a Halloween costume.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just it's I mean, you could you
Speaker 1: the beating these dudes took in our continued. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't know how badly I wanted to post all
Speaker 1: the photos and stuff people sending me Halloween costumes, and
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like this is just priceless stuff.
Speaker 1: But I can't, you know, I just got to maintain
Speaker 1: my my you know, stability here. It it's just nobody
Speaker 1: wants that to happen, you know. See in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind, I'm trying to think of how to
Speaker 1: turn this into a musical. And fishing. I love tournament fishing.
Speaker 1: It's fun. It's a group of people. Like you're saying,
Speaker 1: you learn a lot. You're forced to get outside your
Speaker 1: comfort zone and figure fish out when you may not
Speaker 1: normally do that. But yeah, it's it's hard when you
Speaker 1: know you time all this money to fish and wildlife
Speaker 1: and people like these guys pull stuff like that. You know.
Speaker 1: It's just so here's the thing, right, we all grew up,
Speaker 1: we played sports and we were competitive in some fashion.
Speaker 1: Well now, and I say I say this all the time.
Speaker 1: We're old, we're fat. You can't go play baseball or
Speaker 1: football because you're gonna you have to go to work
Speaker 1: on Monday, right, So imagine finding that that niche. Some
Speaker 1: people it's competitive shooting, some people do acts, throwing, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Some people play cornhole, I mean, you
Speaker 1: name it. People find competition as they transition through life. Well,
Speaker 1: for us, it's fishing and and that adrenaline rush at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the morning. Guys got their music playing
Speaker 1: national anthems, rolling, you know, and then you send them
Speaker 1: and you know, you've got a thirty forty mile trip
Speaker 1: and you're going sixty in this boat. It's just the
Speaker 1: adrenaline's pumping, man, So you're jacked up. And then factor
Speaker 1: that in with you just had a kid. You took
Speaker 1: that day away from your kid, right, no matter what,
Speaker 1: whether it's him babylin or possibly saying dada for the
Speaker 1: first time, or maybe maybe it's something else. You know,
Speaker 1: throughout the course of their life, you're taking that away
Speaker 1: from your kid too. So these guys are investing not
Speaker 1: only time and money, but then life experiences because they
Speaker 1: want that competitive thing back in their life. You need it.
Speaker 1: People are addicted to a lot of things, right, Some
Speaker 1: it's alcohol and whatever and bad stuff. Like we're a
Speaker 1: we're adrenaline junkies, right, You're you're addicted to going out
Speaker 1: in the outdoors and hunting and getting out of your
Speaker 1: comfort level and eating. You know, all this game that
Speaker 1: you find out there, that's what you're addicted to. You know,
Speaker 1: you might be addicted to waterfowl and you know it
Speaker 1: sounds me like you're passionate about it. Everybody has that. Well,
Speaker 1: for these guys, it's fishing and and this is how
Speaker 1: we do it, you know, this is how we spend
Speaker 1: our time. Yeah, no, I Seth and I did uh
Speaker 1: the Montana Wall Eye circuit this year, and I get
Speaker 1: that adrenaline rush. It was, it was so funny. We
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't do it for the money, you know,
Speaker 1: and most guys don't do it for the money at
Speaker 1: all because there's just not that much money. Why why
Speaker 1: were you on that day that one day bugging me
Speaker 1: about if I had any big fish? Get out of here.
Speaker 1: The last guy I would call if I was looking
Speaker 1: for a big wallet. By the way, we're we're donating
Speaker 1: all the We didn't win much, but we're donating all
Speaker 1: back to like kid life jackets and whatnot. So a
Speaker 1: lot of my guys do that. In the last event, Um,
Speaker 1: we helped a young man is Is he's struggling with
Speaker 1: with leukemia and uh, a lot of our anglers called
Speaker 1: me privately and said, send my money to the family
Speaker 1: or you know donors. I don't know the number, but
Speaker 1: I bet you this year alone, we've probably given about
Speaker 1: ten grand to just local people. Um that needed some assistance. Um.
Speaker 1: It's just it's what it's all about, you know. It's
Speaker 1: it's nobody's trying, nobody wants any recognition, nobody's trying to
Speaker 1: be a hero. Chasing Jake sent a lot of that
Speaker 1: money off to those people. Uh, No, I don't think so,
Speaker 1: but I can't, you know, I don't know that to
Speaker 1: be true. You think if Seth and I showed up
Speaker 1: at your tournament next year and we pre fish for
Speaker 1: a few days, we'd get our butts kicked because we've
Speaker 1: never fished on Mike here before. So I think that
Speaker 1: two things would happened. Seat. I think that you would
Speaker 1: have a blast and and anything that you needed we would.
Speaker 1: We would assist you with, including a boat if you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to drag one across the country. And then
Speaker 1: you would get your ass smeared by these guys. These
Speaker 1: these guys, these guys are good. Dude. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a challenge that you shouldn't turn down. No, I'm I
Speaker 1: don't doubt it, but I would to the big water Chester.
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean I'm a little bit accustomed
Speaker 1: to the you know, being from Wisconsin, great lakes stuff,
Speaker 1: but never fished Eerie. So I'll say this, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know you were from Wisconsin. But so we call
Speaker 1: them cheese heads. You guys are fishing fools, and in
Speaker 1: the cheese heads always come down and do good. And
Speaker 1: there's different times of the year where if you want
Speaker 1: a jig and cast at him, you'll do just fine. Uh.
Speaker 1: John Hoyer just won the National Walleted Tour Championship casting
Speaker 1: up in the weeds, and Uh, it's just you gotta
Speaker 1: know your niche and get after it and make it
Speaker 1: work for you. He's that representative of the sport. That's
Speaker 1: just great, dude, nice to anybody that i've personally, you know,
Speaker 1: anybody has nothing but nice things to say about him.
Speaker 1: And and he called, you know, he reached out after this,
Speaker 1: and he goes, you did a good job. So those
Speaker 1: guys were fishing, Uh, the USA Predator Series, they were
Speaker 1: they were acrossed, uh, overseas somewhere Nova Scotia. Maybe they
Speaker 1: mailed me back a tackle boxing you know, I said, like,
Speaker 1: we got weights and fish and him and Max Wilson
Speaker 1: and uh and um and uh Ryan Buddy and uh
Speaker 1: who's the last guy? They sent me back this tackle box, man,
Speaker 1: and I'm just dying from their from their their Predator
Speaker 1: series over you know, because that's when it took place.
Speaker 1: They were they were getting ready to be over there.
Speaker 1: So emailed me that back that tackle box and I
Speaker 1: put it up on my wall. Jason Fisher, thanks for
Speaker 1: coming on, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Although I thought
Speaker 1: it was fake. I thought I was getting catfished, not Wally.
Speaker 1: So that's real. This is the This is gonna be
Speaker 1: the definitive. I think we'll call the episode we Got
Speaker 1: Weights and Fish the definitive oral history. Yeah, thank you though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great and I really appreciate you doing it. Let's
Speaker 1: let's make a side bed here. If you if you
Speaker 1: come up and finish, what do you want to got
Speaker 1: top five or you want to place in the money
Speaker 1: for for your tournament? What's how far down does the
Speaker 1: money go tent So it depends, So we pay out
Speaker 1: fifteen percent of the pool. So you know, if there
Speaker 1: was a hundred guys, we would pay fifteen. Man, we're
Speaker 1: still learning a whole lot. So I would say being
Speaker 1: in the money, be happy. All right, there's a hundred boats.
Speaker 1: You gotta be eighty five of them by my record.
Speaker 1: How many days you're gonna let me pre fish? I
Speaker 1: got a place to say, I got a boat you
Speaker 1: could use. I got everything you need. Man. The one
Speaker 1: thing I don't want if we do go down is
Speaker 1: too much help. Does that make sense? Perfect? We won't
Speaker 1: help you at all, like a boat maybe because who
Speaker 1: knows we might not even have our boat next year.
Speaker 1: That they that we got um. But other than that,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, I don't want people to
Speaker 1: be like, oh they he showed up and they told
Speaker 1: him where to go and how did how to do it? Um?
Speaker 1: He hadn't been around a while because they said, if
Speaker 1: you can't beat him, be the tournament director. So me
Speaker 1: telling you stuff? That's good point, um Chester stop him
Speaker 1: and han man fish damn tournament. I think I think
Speaker 1: it would be an awesome time. Man, it would be
Speaker 1: It would be cool. You know, we don't have to
Speaker 1: we don't have to side bet on anything. But I
Speaker 1: think I'm not good at I'm not hunters there you go.
Speaker 1: I'll make you a side bet any montemony you want,
Speaker 1: and my bet is going to be that I'll bet
Speaker 1: just to just to make it fun. I'll bet against
Speaker 1: you being in the middle mark, So I'll bet the
Speaker 1: hunter Boats. You're your fifty or less. You're saying, okay,
Speaker 1: Hunterbucks says, Hunterbucks says, I'll be above fifty. Okay, make
Speaker 1: a whole shipload of bets. That's what my dad quit smoking.
Speaker 1: I can't make so many bets. You'd be like, I
Speaker 1: can't lose. I can't afford to lose the bet that
Speaker 1: just gonna have a big old pocket full of sinkers.
Speaker 1: We'd love to come down. We got you set up.
Speaker 1: If you need something, we're here for you. Guys gotta
Speaker 1: go fish this tournament. Man, all right, I kind of
Speaker 1: want to go. I don't want to fish it. When
Speaker 1: you guys really need to come down, honestly, is in
Speaker 1: the springtime or the fall, when the fish are just giant.
Speaker 1: To to go and catch fish, it's fun, you can
Speaker 1: have a great trip doing it. But the chase that
Speaker 1: Lake Erie giant is what people come to to Earie four.
Speaker 1: That's that's what you want to do. Go tournament, Yester, Okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a blast tournament. By see if I
Speaker 1: can beat that fish that I got last spring out there. No,
Speaker 1: just imagine, man, this is the longest end of a
Speaker 1: meat Eater podcast. All my craft. I wish all my
Speaker 1: craft hosting and trying to just I wish I had
Speaker 1: my phone. I'd be like, throw your cards on the
Speaker 1: table right now. You know, Phil, turn the machine off.
Speaker 1: Jesse is gonna show this ball. I picture Jason fish.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a nice fish. I remember my first
Speaker 1: walleye and music s