Speaker 1: It's a sunfish. Jay stopped calling the police. They're busy
Speaker 1: arresting your friends for throwing hands in the parking lot
Speaker 1: of the Cumberland Farms. I'm gonna go with murder Hut.
Speaker 1: One medieval theory suggested the fules were the transmogrified forms
Speaker 1: of the bastard children of priests and married women, fleeing
Speaker 1: persecution through shape shifting. And remember, the only appropriate gift
Speaker 1: response to anything by the Coogan Squad is Jesus eating
Speaker 1: the city. Good morning, degenerate anglers. Welcome to Bent the
Speaker 1: Fishing podcast that heckles rent a cops but respects the
Speaker 1: real cops. I'm Joe Surmelli Miles Nulty, and even though
Speaker 1: I have been handcuffed and placed in the back of
Speaker 1: squad cars twice, I have never technically been arrested. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm gonna lose street crad here, but
Speaker 1: neither of I. I have not been arrested nor written
Speaker 1: in a cop car, which I feel like is as
Speaker 1: a young man ends rite of passage. But I do
Speaker 1: still chuckle with a few friends about a party I
Speaker 1: was at rated by the cops. That's the closest I
Speaker 1: can come and I had a buddy that used to
Speaker 1: get off on um going to house parties and hiding
Speaker 1: perishable items throughout the house, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like take the bologna out of the fridge and drop
Speaker 1: it in a box of corn flakes. And uh, as
Speaker 1: this very upset officer was lecturing a room full of
Speaker 1: drunk kids, he looks up and there's a giant polish
Speaker 1: sausage hanging from the chandelier, dangling like an inch above
Speaker 1: his head, and the whole room just lost it. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he was just he was He was just
Speaker 1: more upset though. So that's that's my cops story. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a good image. I feel bad for that guy.
Speaker 1: Oh man. Yeah, what a terrible, terrible job breaking up
Speaker 1: kids house parties and they could be doing real work. Uh.
Speaker 1: Speaking of police, this podcast is fueled by Black Rifle Coffee,
Speaker 1: and besides supporting original fishing podcasts, Black Rifle also supports
Speaker 1: local police. Proceeds from their Thin Blue Line series go
Speaker 1: to law enforcement officers and their families in need. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Black Rifles Coffee Club keeps us caffeinated even when we
Speaker 1: forget to stop at the store on our way back
Speaker 1: from fishing super convenient. Just head on over to Black
Speaker 1: Rifle Coffee dot com back slash Meat Eater, let them
Speaker 1: know what you like, and they make sure you're steadily stocked.
Speaker 1: And just like this podcast, those guys represent the whole country.
Speaker 1: There to Eastern and Western regional roasting facilities, ensure that
Speaker 1: your beans are always freshman. Use the discount code meat
Speaker 1: either at check out and they'll take off your first order,
Speaker 1: which is very nice of them. It is it is,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm drinking some coffee right now, and it is.
Speaker 1: It's delicious. I'm just gonna just gonna admit that, all
Speaker 1: right before we dig into the show. Joe, I gotta,
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta talk something through with you. I
Speaker 1: had this experience last week and I just can't shake it.
Speaker 1: And I just I just want to see what your
Speaker 1: take on it is, all right, So hey on, I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll get all psychological on. Yeah, let's see if we
Speaker 1: can break this one down. Dr Joe. I went fishing
Speaker 1: with some friends, uh, and we were on the Madison
Speaker 1: this is last week, and it was one of those
Speaker 1: days where everything was just kind of lining up right.
Speaker 1: We had we had that fall light that we get
Speaker 1: out here, and the hills were just glowing gold beau.
Speaker 1: It was really nice to fish were super active. They
Speaker 1: were eating on the surface, they were eating subsurface. They
Speaker 1: were just on the chow. It was one of those days.
Speaker 1: It was great. Uh. And so we're fishing far so good.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't see the problem yet. So far
Speaker 1: so good. We're fishing out of my boat. So, you know,
Speaker 1: even though it's it's it's the cool season and the
Speaker 1: water was very cold. I was not wearing waiters because
Speaker 1: I had no intention of getting out of that boat.
Speaker 1: We're boat fishing, you know. So we're anchored up on
Speaker 1: this midriver spot and I hook a fish a couple
Speaker 1: of headshakes, and it comes to the surface and rolls,
Speaker 1: and I get a good look at it. It's like
Speaker 1: a solid two foot trop maybe a little bigger. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a big fish, right, It was definitely the
Speaker 1: biggest fish of the day. And then as soon as
Speaker 1: it rolls, it takes off downstream right mid current, and
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm I'm into my backing on the first run,
Speaker 1: which almost never happens with trout. Right, Like, this is
Speaker 1: a good fish. So I know in this moment. What
Speaker 1: I need to do. I need to just hurtle my
Speaker 1: ass over the gunnal right in the middle of that
Speaker 1: cold as river and chase the fish down right, like
Speaker 1: I have to be swimming and splashing. I have to
Speaker 1: like get that fish and no matter what. Okay, there
Speaker 1: was no time in this situation for me to wait
Speaker 1: for my buddy to pull the anchor and chase them
Speaker 1: down right, Like I got this fish on a small hook,
Speaker 1: it's on light line, and I'm I've done this plenty
Speaker 1: of times. I know what's about to happen. Fish that big,
Speaker 1: that much current, that much line out, It's either gonna
Speaker 1: break off straight in the hook or pull free, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen in any second. So I'm standing there,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, and you know, like there's no confusion as
Speaker 1: to what's about to happen. So I'm standing there, I'm
Speaker 1: watching the last turns of line come off my reel,
Speaker 1: and I'm like having this conversation with myself in my head.
Speaker 1: I'm like, jump, jump in do it. You're gonna lose
Speaker 1: this fish, Go get it. Jump. But I just stood there,
Speaker 1: like having this internal battle with myself, like I didn't
Speaker 1: want to spend the rest of the day soaking, wet
Speaker 1: and freezing my ass off. But I also didn't want
Speaker 1: to lose this really good fish because because it's just
Speaker 1: because I'm too soft to deal with a little discomfort.
Speaker 1: And this is the battle, like the tension that's raging
Speaker 1: in my head as I watched the last couple of
Speaker 1: turns come off the reel and go, I'm about to
Speaker 1: lose his fish, Like I know that there was a
Speaker 1: time when I would have not even thought about it,
Speaker 1: Like I just would have gone over the side of
Speaker 1: the boat. Come in the water. I'm getting the fish,
Speaker 1: like I've I'm sacrificing my body that face should coming
Speaker 1: to me. I don't care what it takes, like I'll swim.
Speaker 1: But I didn't do that, And now I'm left wondering,
Speaker 1: like what changed form in me? Like do I is
Speaker 1: it that I care less about catching fish than I
Speaker 1: used to? Like do I have less to prove to
Speaker 1: myself for the world? Like am I just getting lame?
Speaker 1: Am I getting smarter? I honestly can't figure it out,
Speaker 1: and it has been messing with my head ever since.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help you. I'm about to help you right
Speaker 1: now I'll bill you my hourly rates. Would this have
Speaker 1: been the biggest trout you ever caught? No? God, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it was a really nice fish, Like, it
Speaker 1: was a very big fish. It was a legitimately large
Speaker 1: fish from Montana. But no, I'm very lucky. I've caught
Speaker 1: a lot of big trout. It would not have been
Speaker 1: my biggest. Okay, there you go. Okay, so I think
Speaker 1: the decision was subliminally made based on experience, right, because
Speaker 1: you and I hear me. Do you think I'm getting smarter? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of right. You and I are both lucky enough
Speaker 1: to have caught lots of fishing lots of places. Right
Speaker 1: As an example, like, I'm not willing to freeze my
Speaker 1: ass off and diving in after like a brown. Okay,
Speaker 1: probably not even a twenty two. So unless at this
Speaker 1: point I was convinced like this is the biggest brown
Speaker 1: I've ever hooked, A true milestone, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I look at it like, dude, I've done my time
Speaker 1: in terms of freezing and soaking over the years. So
Speaker 1: if I lose the two like, i'll, you know, good
Speaker 1: chance I'll stick another one of those. You know, So
Speaker 1: this one this one's going to get away for for
Speaker 1: my comfort. However, um yeah, I mean, if you're one
Speaker 1: of those people that only gauges the value of a
Speaker 1: trip by what you have to show for it on Instagram,
Speaker 1: it's a different story. You're not. Well, you're not one
Speaker 1: of those people, you know, but we know someone, we
Speaker 1: know somebody who is Who is that person? Oh? I
Speaker 1: don't know? Yah, don't don't do it. Yeah, we have to. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it. Now. Listen, We've heard from a
Speaker 1: number of you about our inclusion of Internet sensation Lance
Speaker 1: Vying our podcast, and uh, man, I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: it reeks of current American politics, because man, you guys
Speaker 1: are staunchly divided. There is no middle ground from the
Speaker 1: two camps we are learning it is that those camps
Speaker 1: are either love or hate. There is no middle, and
Speaker 1: I know where I sit. By the way, we've kind
Speaker 1: of thoroughly been enjoying some of the hates though, right
Speaker 1: because they say ship like Lance needs to go and
Speaker 1: if you're actually paying this idiot, I feel bad for you.
Speaker 1: So listen, we're listening to you, guys. Okay, we're absorbing
Speaker 1: your feedback and we've decided to change up the Lance
Speaker 1: format a bit, uh, and we're only gonna focus on
Speaker 1: the wants and needs of his true fans and going forward,
Speaker 1: just have him answer the many questions you guys have
Speaker 1: been sending in. So if you have a question for Lance, okay,
Speaker 1: whether it's personal or you're like you know, asking asking
Speaker 1: for a friend, go ahead and send that to Bent
Speaker 1: at the meat eater dot com. The land, to the boats,
Speaker 1: to the like to the sea being up the inn
Speaker 1: on that. But John Boyd Land, what's up? Brain farts?
Speaker 1: Today's question comes from at throw Down Fishing Underscore, Inc.
Speaker 1: He writes, Hey, Land, just the sound of your voice
Speaker 1: makes me want to beat you mercilessly. I'm curious, though,
Speaker 1: what do you consider best practices for posting gifts as
Speaker 1: comments on social media? Great question, as they say a
Speaker 1: picture is worth a thousand words. I mean one of
Speaker 1: my pictures of worth a thousand dollars in free tackle,
Speaker 1: but hashtag hate the player, not the game anyway. Thanks
Speaker 1: to the magic of jifts, not only do you have
Speaker 1: the option to post a picture as a response, you
Speaker 1: can also post an animated picture which makes it like
Speaker 1: sophisticated or whatever. The critical thing to remember is that
Speaker 1: a gift is supposed to make people think. Don't be obvious.
Speaker 1: Here's a quick quiz. Someone throws up a shot of
Speaker 1: what they consider a hog bass, like a four to
Speaker 1: five pounder. The proper gift response would be a stone
Speaker 1: called Steve Austin chugging a gallon of milk. Be Kanye
Speaker 1: West clapping behind the words Kanye approves. See Mr Bean
Speaker 1: fainting and D Samuel Jackson and paulp Fiction saying look
Speaker 1: at the big brains on Brad. If you answered D
Speaker 1: Samuel Jackson and pulp fiction saying look at the big
Speaker 1: brains on Brad, you could not be more incorrect. The
Speaker 1: answer is C Mr Bean fainting. Why because it leaves
Speaker 1: room for interpretation. Is Mr Bean feigning because he's so
Speaker 1: impressed by your hog bass? Or is Mr Bean feigning
Speaker 1: because he's sick of idiots like you ruining the internet
Speaker 1: By posting small fish that you consider big You want
Speaker 1: the poster to lose sleep, ignore his alarm, and thus
Speaker 1: show a plate for his shift at Burger king hashtag
Speaker 1: only whopper you'll ever see. So that's it for this week.
Speaker 1: I throw it on fishing inc I hope this lesson
Speaker 1: gave you something to think about what you're sitting around
Speaker 1: the KOI pon you keep posting on your instant stories
Speaker 1: and remember the only appropriate gift response to anything by
Speaker 1: the Google squad is Jesus healing the sick. All right,
Speaker 1: I've said it before, I'm gonna say it again. I
Speaker 1: am among the large ranks of people who lose hope
Speaker 1: in the future of humanity every single time we bring
Speaker 1: him on the show Man Game over Man, Game over Strong.
Speaker 1: That's that's strong. I mean, maybe it's because I'm a
Speaker 1: total trouglodyte and I'm terrible at social media. I'd rather
Speaker 1: read words on dead Tree skin than screens. But I
Speaker 1: just can't find anything to like about that guy. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I hear what you're saying, right, but I
Speaker 1: appreciate the service he provides. Right, So everyone wants to
Speaker 1: know how to make it as an internet fisherman so
Speaker 1: they don't have to have a real job, you know.
Speaker 1: But the people who have done that successfully, they're not
Speaker 1: exactly given seminars and spilling their guts. They're not telling
Speaker 1: you the secret to just being an internet fisherman. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like I don't really care about euro
Speaker 1: nymphing either, but I've had to edit many articles about
Speaker 1: it through my career because apparently other people do. So
Speaker 1: that's a fair point. And maybe Lance will become like
Speaker 1: the Tony Robbins of internet fishing. Who knows. I believe
Speaker 1: I've already once called him that he definitely is. And
Speaker 1: look luckily for you, though, like we don't. We don't
Speaker 1: keep you around for your social media prowess, so you're
Speaker 1: off the hook with now. We keep you around because
Speaker 1: of your deep and seemingly unending knowledge of fish species,
Speaker 1: which you are about to demonstrate in this week's edition
Speaker 1: of fin Clips. This is the part of the show
Speaker 1: where we profile a fish species, usually one we think
Speaker 1: is more interesting than most people realize. How much do
Speaker 1: you know about American eels? If you're like most of us,
Speaker 1: probably not much. Before sushi got popular here, the only
Speaker 1: use we had for freshwater eels was impaling their young
Speaker 1: for striper bait. These days, you can get barbecue deal
Speaker 1: over sushi race in all fifty states, and if you
Speaker 1: don't eat nagi, you're missing out. Seriously, it's delicious. Freshwater
Speaker 1: eels are also one of the coolest fish on the continent.
Speaker 1: Some people get hung up on the whole four ft
Speaker 1: long underwater snake look they have going, but don't rush
Speaker 1: to judgment until all the facts are in. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure Joe is going to tell me that I have
Speaker 1: it all wrong on eels, since once again the guy
Speaker 1: out west is trying to talk about an East Coast
Speaker 1: fish and the truth is that I've never actually caught
Speaker 1: a freshwater eel, but I have been really fascinated by
Speaker 1: them ever since I learned that they have mysterious orgies
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle. But I'll get
Speaker 1: to that later. I might stress might have hooked an
Speaker 1: American eel once. I was fishing the Kennebec River in
Speaker 1: Maine catching cookie cutter trout on San Juan worms when
Speaker 1: I hooked into something that was most definitely not a
Speaker 1: foot long rainbow. It ripped downstream and had me nearly
Speaker 1: spooled before the line finally snapped. Later that night at
Speaker 1: the bar, I was having a few drinks and telling
Speaker 1: one of the locals the story about the giant trout
Speaker 1: that I lost that day, and after hearing my details,
Speaker 1: he told me that wasn't a trout. It was a
Speaker 1: goddamn eel. So even though I can't prove it, I'm
Speaker 1: saying I hooked the neil once and it kicked my ass.
Speaker 1: But getting back to the whole Bermuda triangle orgy thing,
Speaker 1: American eels, like their European cousins, are catadromous, meaning they
Speaker 1: live their adult lives and fresh water, but spawn in
Speaker 1: the ocean. Basically the exact opposite of salmon and steelhead.
Speaker 1: That makes studying their reproduction really challenging. So for thousands
Speaker 1: of years people have been trying to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: where and how Atlantic eels spawn. According to the writer
Speaker 1: Lucy Cook, whose book The Truth About Animals Is When
Speaker 1: You should absolutely consider reading quote, Aristotle was obsessed with
Speaker 1: eel genitals. Way back in the fourth century BC. Aristotle
Speaker 1: was hacking away at eels in his laboratory on the
Speaker 1: Greek island of Les Bus in a fruitless search for
Speaker 1: any evidence of genitalia. Since Aristotle couldn't find their sex parts,
Speaker 1: he concluded wrongly that baby eels emerge fully formed from
Speaker 1: what mud, no parentage required. Aristotle was far from the
Speaker 1: last person to invent an elaborate story to explain the
Speaker 1: genesis of infant eels. Try as they might, early naturalists
Speaker 1: could never figure out how or where eels reproduced. In
Speaker 1: the absence of real expan asians, they came up with
Speaker 1: some very creative hypotheses. Eels emerge from the gills of
Speaker 1: other fishes, from the fresh morning dew during certain months,
Speaker 1: from electrical disturbances, from the thatching of roofs after a rainstorm.
Speaker 1: They reproduce by rubbing themselves against rocks, and that quote
Speaker 1: the scrapings come to life. One medieval theory suggested that
Speaker 1: eels were the transmogrified forms of the bastard children of
Speaker 1: priests and married women fleeing persecution through shape shifting. These
Speaker 1: go on and on, and while it's always fun to
Speaker 1: laugh at the ignorance of ancient scientists from our smug
Speaker 1: positions in the future, the truth is that we still
Speaker 1: don't know for sure how big eels make little eels.
Speaker 1: But here's what we do know, or or what we
Speaker 1: think we know. Atlantic eels start their life as an egg,
Speaker 1: no bigger than a grain of rice. These tiny eggs
Speaker 1: suspend in the depths of an underwater forest and the
Speaker 1: Saragasso Sea, the deepest saltiest slice of the Atlantic Ocean,
Speaker 1: located smack in the middle of the me To Triangle.
Speaker 1: Over the next seven months to three years, they undergo
Speaker 1: two complete metamorphoses and travel four thousand miles to the
Speaker 1: rivers of North America and Europe. Once there, they wriggle
Speaker 1: upstream and bury themselves in substrate, eating absolutely everything that
Speaker 1: gets in their way, bugs, fish, mice, birds, whatever. Then,
Speaker 1: anywhere from six to thirty years later, they make the
Speaker 1: return trip back to the Saragasso, undergoing yet another metamorphosis
Speaker 1: and developing sexual organs somewhere along the way. Researchers think
Speaker 1: that once they arrive, they intertwine in giant wriggling bowls
Speaker 1: of mass population in the darkest steps of the ocean,
Speaker 1: but no one actually knows this for sure, because no
Speaker 1: eel has ever been tracked all the way to its
Speaker 1: mating grounds, and no wild fertilized eggs have ever been found.
Speaker 1: But why do we care, Well, besides the fact that
Speaker 1: most people like a good mystery, eels are important fish
Speaker 1: in American history, similar to the shad we covered in
Speaker 1: a previous episode. American eels fed both the Native people
Speaker 1: and the early Europeans in North America, although Turkey probably
Speaker 1: wasn't actually part of the first Thanksgiving eels were. Today
Speaker 1: eel stocks are crashing in some places by as much
Speaker 1: as due to the same things that are hurting so
Speaker 1: many other migratory fish damns over fishing and pollution. If
Speaker 1: we understood eel sex, we might be able to better
Speaker 1: manage our stocks or breathe them in captivity and take
Speaker 1: some of the pressure off wild fisheries. This isn't even
Speaker 1: close to the full story on freshwater eels. To learn more,
Speaker 1: including the heavily armed gangs that are running the illicit
Speaker 1: eel trade, check out the story I wrote over at
Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com called Barroom Banter Mysterious Eel
Speaker 1: sex in the Bermida Triangle. I just feel the need
Speaker 1: to to ask, man, like, why do you always take
Speaker 1: the East Coast species for this? Like you know that
Speaker 1: is my turf and uh, I just you know, stay
Speaker 1: in your lane, man, what do you know? What do
Speaker 1: you know about eels? You just admitted that you've never
Speaker 1: caught one? Well, I know, I know that they're delicious
Speaker 1: and creepy looking and everything else I read either in
Speaker 1: books or on the internet. So the delicious. I think
Speaker 1: it is debatable, Like I don't mind the sushi, but
Speaker 1: it's that it's all right. I don't know. But look,
Speaker 1: I know I used to catch I used to catch
Speaker 1: eels fairly frequently as a kid. But it's it's weird.
Speaker 1: It's really not that common anymore. And they're all dying.
Speaker 1: That's why I think they're dying because all the Italian
Speaker 1: stallions out here caught them up. Because I think somebody
Speaker 1: once told me eel plays a big role in their
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve dinners for people with ties to the Old Country.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you what, dude, I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: finc clips on Grayling or west Slope, east side, yellow orange,
Speaker 1: cut through whatever the niche species you have at they
Speaker 1: will see how you love kids. We'll go today. Man,
Speaker 1: I am fascinated by the things I can't have, like
Speaker 1: so many of us. Your Eastern all your Eastern species
Speaker 1: seem like weirdly exotic to me, even though they're totally
Speaker 1: normal to you. And you guys have you guys have
Speaker 1: legitimately cool fish man like, it's not all three eyed
Speaker 1: blinky's that nuclear wastewater outlets. So I think you should
Speaker 1: take this as a compliment and not get all annoyed
Speaker 1: about it. Well, no, it's it's a lot of those though.
Speaker 1: I mean I could if you have you ever come
Speaker 1: out here and want three eyed, blinky nuclear fish, I
Speaker 1: know where to find them. Um. And you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's only fair since Eastern anglers have been kind of
Speaker 1: exploiting your fish for generations. You know me. But we
Speaker 1: wouldn't do nearly as good of a job of exploiting
Speaker 1: those fish if it weren't for the fact that every
Speaker 1: what is it like, third person who lives in Montana
Speaker 1: is a fishing guide. Loo think those are the most
Speaker 1: those are the most recent stats, you know. And since
Speaker 1: that's the case, we have no shortage of fishing people
Speaker 1: to call when we're bored and want to ask stupid questions,
Speaker 1: which we're about to do. It is time for trivia.
Speaker 1: You gotta be highly skilled for these shows. You understand
Speaker 1: that if the fire are you well? First? Are you
Speaker 1: very smart? Man? All right? It is that time where
Speaker 1: we get to play a trivia game. Everyone's least favorite
Speaker 1: trivia game because there's nothing to win, but you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna lose your dignity today we are playing with our
Speaker 1: our friend Kinsley Scott and uh and and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask her a couple of questions that will probably bring
Speaker 1: down everybody's i Q, but hopefully we'll have a little
Speaker 1: bit of fun with it. Thanks for agreeing to do this, Kinsley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Well, so you're feeling good. Yes,
Speaker 1: we'll see how much I can embarrass myself. Your questions,
Speaker 1: I don't know what they are, so he has no idea.
Speaker 1: I have not a clue, and he doesn't get to
Speaker 1: know either. Um, for those of you who do not know,
Speaker 1: Kinsley is a guide who splits her time between Montana
Speaker 1: and Washington, so she does a lot of catching of
Speaker 1: the trouts, among other things. And she's a she's a
Speaker 1: pretty damn fine steelhead guide. And so this first set
Speaker 1: of questions, or this first question rather, Kinsley is going
Speaker 1: to be steel head specific alright, So you're feeling you're
Speaker 1: feeling strong on your steel head knowledge. We'll see we
Speaker 1: will indeed, all right, So steel head. And and just
Speaker 1: to be cleared, Joe, I'm talking about native range ocean
Speaker 1: run steelhead. I have no idea if what I'm about
Speaker 1: to say is true for Great Lakes fish. All right,
Speaker 1: I haven't left to do. It is probably not. Let's
Speaker 1: just clear that up right now. I'm not dogging on
Speaker 1: your fish. I'm just saying I don't know if this
Speaker 1: fits over there. I just don't know. Is velvita and
Speaker 1: and and shrimp oil eggs in your question somewhere? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a favorite bait. That is a favorite
Speaker 1: bait out here that that's that's just oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that crosses that crosses over your stead yeah steelhead, yeah yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: so this this part's effect. And then I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: you some questions about why it is steel head have
Speaker 1: a higher percentage of females than males in their population,
Speaker 1: and I want to know why is that. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give you a few options. You have to pick one,
Speaker 1: all right, So why are there more females than males. A, Well,
Speaker 1: the males are fat and they're lazy. So because some
Speaker 1: male steel head they just choose to hang around in
Speaker 1: the rivers, right, Since the impulse to head out to
Speaker 1: sea can be impacted by the amount of fat and
Speaker 1: efficious body, and male steel head don't need as much
Speaker 1: fat reserves as females. They just don't bother. They just
Speaker 1: they just prefer to hang out on the back eddie couch,
Speaker 1: eating cat as cheetos and watching river monsters. So so
Speaker 1: a is that it's because they're fat and lazy, be
Speaker 1: sometimes they're a little too enthusiastic about spawning. Steel Head
Speaker 1: can migrate back out to see after spawning, unlike Pacific
Speaker 1: salmon that all die, but the majority of steel head
Speaker 1: never make it back to the ocean. Historically, like sev
Speaker 1: of fish used to make it all the way back
Speaker 1: to the salt depending on where in the world they were,
Speaker 1: but now with the dams and habitat degradation everything else,
Speaker 1: that numbers more like one but that numbers even lower
Speaker 1: for male steel head. Whereas female steel head will only
Speaker 1: drop eggs once, some male steel head will just keep
Speaker 1: on fertilizing until they're so utterly depleted that they can't
Speaker 1: make it back. See. Male steel head are mostly unnecessary
Speaker 1: because one male can fertilize the eggs of many different females,
Speaker 1: and because resident male rainbow trout can also fertilize those
Speaker 1: eggs just as effectively as male steel head that migrated.
Speaker 1: Steelhead populations just don't need very many males to maintain
Speaker 1: healthy numbers or D all of the above. All right,
Speaker 1: So your options about why there are more females and
Speaker 1: males and steel head populations is A. Males are fat
Speaker 1: and lazy. B males are too enthusiastic about spawning, see
Speaker 1: males are mostly unnecessary. Or D. All of the above.
Speaker 1: There's truth and all of those. Um. Okay, So let
Speaker 1: me get this straight. A they're lazy. Hey, they're lazy.
Speaker 1: They don't even bother migrating. Be there too enthusiastic about spawning,
Speaker 1: so they essentially kill themselves. See they're not that necessarily
Speaker 1: in population anyway, so natural selection doesn't really need them.
Speaker 1: Or D. All the things are true. My gut is
Speaker 1: saying that D because there is truth in every every
Speaker 1: one of those. Um. Like you said, rainbow trout will
Speaker 1: fertilize reds for females. Um, I'm gonna go with D.
Speaker 1: You are correct. All those things are true. Yes, let
Speaker 1: me let me wipe the sweat from my forehead. Correct.
Speaker 1: Every single one of those is true, and all of
Speaker 1: those are reasons why we have more migratory females than males.
Speaker 1: All right, So you got your first question right. You
Speaker 1: should maybe relax a little bit here, you go irish
Speaker 1: up that coffee. Uh okay. So you you are from Montana,
Speaker 1: I know this, and as a Montana and you know
Speaker 1: how many just weird little creeks there are everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: And and there are some river and creek names that
Speaker 1: are just like it's like everyone just used the same
Speaker 1: one over and over there and they couldn't get creative
Speaker 1: about it. Right. I once counted the number of Willow
Speaker 1: creeks in Montana, and I now can't remember the exact number,
Speaker 1: but it was over twenty of bear creeks and rock Creek,
Speaker 1: Rock Creek. We got them in Pennsylvania, everywhere, It's true.
Speaker 1: But then there are those ones that go the other direction. Right.
Speaker 1: They're just so unique and weird that you can't forget
Speaker 1: the names, and you know there's got to be a
Speaker 1: story behind them, but you usually can't figure it out.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna read you a list of river and
Speaker 1: creek names, and you tell me which one is not
Speaker 1: an actual creek somewhere in the world. All right? So
Speaker 1: is it in the world? Yes? So is it a
Speaker 1: pick a tooth creek? Be Murdering Hut Creek, see Peckerwood Creek,
Speaker 1: d Dwarfs kill Creek or e Rivie de ha ha.
Speaker 1: You want to hear him again? Impossible? This is impossible. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's I feel like the most ridiculous one has to
Speaker 1: exist because how would you? It's reverse psychology essentially on
Speaker 1: the question. That's a good strategy. I agree with that strategy. Yes,
Speaker 1: I need to hear him again. Is it a pick
Speaker 1: a tooth creek, be Murdering Hut Creek, see Peckerwood Creek,
Speaker 1: d dwarfs Kill Creek or e Rivie de ha ha, whoever, whoever?
Speaker 1: If that, if that truly does exist, they deserve a
Speaker 1: metal um. I. I'm going to have to go with
Speaker 1: maybe one of the more generic ones in the middle.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just pick one because I can't even remember
Speaker 1: the first two. We'll go with. If she doesn't get it,
Speaker 1: let me take a shot. What was c again? See
Speaker 1: is Peckerwood Creek? I feel like that doesn't exist? And
Speaker 1: then D was dwarfs Kill Creek. I'm gonna go with
Speaker 1: murder Hut Murdering Hut Creek. B Joe, I think the
Speaker 1: fake one is Peckerwood Creek. God, I wish that were true.
Speaker 1: You're gonna win no matter what, because I actually couldn't
Speaker 1: come up with a fake name nearly as good as
Speaker 1: any of the real ones. They're all real, so you win.
Speaker 1: No matter what you peck on this one, there is
Speaker 1: no answer. I just had too much fun finding ridiculous
Speaker 1: creek names and putting him in there. Do you know
Speaker 1: where these places where they there are? Some of them
Speaker 1: are in uh so. The last one was in French Canadia,
Speaker 1: and know that a couple of them were Australian. One
Speaker 1: was in Pennsylvania. I believe, I can't exactly remember. At
Speaker 1: this point, I should have written all that down, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. I just had too much fun coming up
Speaker 1: with those titles. But see, I figured they could all
Speaker 1: be real too. But I figured, if he's gonna stick
Speaker 1: one in, he's just gonna throw out pecker. Would I
Speaker 1: wish I had? I think that's a little our trivia.
Speaker 1: Our trivia segment is based on trust. Okay, the trade, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you won, you can't lose. This is a not lose
Speaker 1: not there's no way you can lose it. This one.
Speaker 1: You got them both, you got full credit. Okay, Well, then,
Speaker 1: since when did trivia become teball where we all get
Speaker 1: a trophy? Today? When I was driving. Thanks for letting
Speaker 1: us just be manipulative and mess with your head, Ginsley.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. Thank you. That was bullshit. Come on,
Speaker 1: you cannot do that. It's the whole world God crazy
Speaker 1: about the only one right here gets a gun about
Speaker 1: the roll. You cannot do that going forward, I forbid it.
Speaker 1: I can, and I did. When you do trivia, you
Speaker 1: can write whatever questions you want. Is our show, and
Speaker 1: we control the laws of reality in this tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: little universe of ours. Except in one segment, where Fill
Speaker 1: the engineer is all knowing, all powerful, and all deciding.
Speaker 1: It's now time for us to genuflict and grovel at
Speaker 1: his heels in the hopes that we are the shows.
Speaker 1: In one it's time for fish news. Fish news. That
Speaker 1: escalated quickly, so before we kick off fish news, which,
Speaker 1: as a reminder, is a competition, Miles and I don't
Speaker 1: know which news stories the other feller has dredged up, uh,
Speaker 1: and a winner is declared by the infallible audio engineer
Speaker 1: of ours Phil at the end, we do like to
Speaker 1: use this space to give a and shout out and
Speaker 1: such one appropriate time to time. And I must say
Speaker 1: at Miles, I don't I don't know if you've been
Speaker 1: seeing this, but I've gotten quite a few notes about
Speaker 1: bushy figurines since your aushy story a few weeks. You've
Speaker 1: got some stuff. The story seems to have resonated. It
Speaker 1: appears that the folks are into that one. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: almost to the point where I feel like there's a
Speaker 1: lot more people actually fishing bushies out there than we
Speaker 1: even realized when when you broke the story. I would agree.
Speaker 1: So I just just wanted to point out that that
Speaker 1: that you guys love bushies. Apparently. In fact, listener Jeff
Speaker 1: Caldwell even wrote in to tell me that there are
Speaker 1: Misfits bushes available because apparently true. No, well, actually I
Speaker 1: got all excited right because I'm a huge Misfits fan,
Speaker 1: thinking they'd go great next to my Misfits bobble heads
Speaker 1: and um custom Commission Danzig bust I have carved out
Speaker 1: of imported Italian marble. But actually I looked it up
Speaker 1: and that's that's not correct, Jeff. There are no Misfits
Speaker 1: bushies that I could find. Um, So if you know
Speaker 1: something I don't and they do exist, as please send
Speaker 1: me the link. But quick side note, and my miles
Speaker 1: I told you about this, I just have to share it.
Speaker 1: A good friend of mine, Mick Trump, and recently sent
Speaker 1: me a custom Misfits popper popper head with the skull. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you showed me those photos that looks amazing. I put
Speaker 1: them on Instagram, and freaking Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein, the
Speaker 1: guitar player of the Misfits, shared my fly photo in
Speaker 1: his Instagram stories. So I went from last year ever
Speaker 1: to best year ever, just like that with one share.
Speaker 1: So how about that? We've peaked me and Doyle. Uh So,
Speaker 1: while while I'm officially having a good year, now, I'll
Speaker 1: jump in and say, not long ago, the police and
Speaker 1: wearing Massachusetts were having a particularly bad day, and I
Speaker 1: love the story of their torment. So we'll kick it
Speaker 1: off here. Here's one from the New York Times headline,
Speaker 1: Massachusetts town begs residents to stop calling about fish. Okay,
Speaker 1: which doesn't That doesn't tell you the good It's a
Speaker 1: good headline, but it's it doesn't really doesn't really sell
Speaker 1: it yet. So I'll read a little bit. I'll read
Speaker 1: a little bit here. Uh. Some of the calls reported
Speaker 1: an injured seal. Others said they had seen the shark Still,
Speaker 1: others implored officials to help what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: stranded fish. By early afternoon Monday, dozens of people had
Speaker 1: called emergency officials and wear them on the southeast coast
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts. The town's department dispatched two officers to investigate.
Speaker 1: So what did they find? Well, it says they soon
Speaker 1: discovered that the odd looking creature lulling in a cove
Speaker 1: off Buzzard's Bay was no cause for alarm. It was
Speaker 1: an ocean sunfish, an enormous blob like creature that eats jellyfish,
Speaker 1: has a dorsal fin that, to the untrained I can
Speaker 1: resemble that of a shark. Now, you grew up in Hawaii, right,
Speaker 1: so probably you know them as mola mola. Correct? Right so?
Speaker 1: And frankly, all the off shore dudes I run with
Speaker 1: we always called amla's when we saw them. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool, Yeah, I don't know. We we also say
Speaker 1: mahi more even though dolphin is more the East coast thing.
Speaker 1: I just gravitate to the Pacific terms. Apparently, me and
Speaker 1: my friends ocean sunfish, mola mola Okay, same thing. But see,
Speaker 1: the calls did not stop, and the town ended up
Speaker 1: getting so frustrated that they had to issue a plea
Speaker 1: on their Facebook page begging people to stop calling, adding
Speaker 1: in the post, it is not not in all caps
Speaker 1: stranded or suffering. The sunfish is fine, fine in all caps,
Speaker 1: then following that in all caps all the way through.
Speaker 1: Please stop calling the police department about the sunfish. And
Speaker 1: there's a there's a there's a great quote in here
Speaker 1: from Whereham's harbormaster Gary Buckminster that reads, we get it,
Speaker 1: he added, referring to the concern residents had expressed. But
Speaker 1: one one isn't a good avenue to report fish that
Speaker 1: are swimming around. That's what I was thinking this whole time,
Speaker 1: the police, Like that's anybody who's I mean, I get
Speaker 1: not being familiar with house a particular critter reacts or
Speaker 1: you know, behaves and and expressing concern. I can I
Speaker 1: can get myself there. But then that your first thought
Speaker 1: as well, I better call the cops, Like you don't
Speaker 1: understand the function of the police department at all. If
Speaker 1: that's what you did, and not even the local number
Speaker 1: of the police, We're just gonna go. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: go straight to UH one. But now here's why I'm surprised, right,
Speaker 1: And this story even kind of echoes my surprise later on.
Speaker 1: And you might remember this. Back in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: two schmos fishing on a boat up and mass encountered
Speaker 1: a giant sunfish, a giant mola, and a video this encounter,
Speaker 1: and it went super mega viral because they were so
Speaker 1: confused about what they were seeing. Uh, this is the
Speaker 1: infamous baby whale video. Right. So here's a little mash
Speaker 1: up we put together as a refresher. It's a baby whale. Man,
Speaker 1: we gotta call the aquarium of something to it. You
Speaker 1: want to try to pull it in, Let's look it,
Speaker 1: j J. We could get some big money for that.
Speaker 1: If it's a fish fight. Come on, let's plow up
Speaker 1: next to that ship. Role, let's help it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: And as we now know, it was not a baby whale. Ja.
Speaker 1: Every time I hear that, I cannot help but crack
Speaker 1: up like it's it's old news. Now. It's been around
Speaker 1: for years, but that one still makes me laugh. That
Speaker 1: video never gets old. So it was not a baby whale,
Speaker 1: nor as they suggested, a flounder, nor as they later suggested,
Speaker 1: a tuna. And it was not in distress nor valuable.
Speaker 1: You'd actually have gotten no money for it and possibly
Speaker 1: find had you brought it back to the dock. But
Speaker 1: I kind of thought the world saw this video right like.
Speaker 1: It ended up on news channels all over And even
Speaker 1: if the world hasn't seen this video, hasn't everyone in
Speaker 1: coastal Massachusetts seen it? You know? I would think apparently not.
Speaker 1: But I mean, hell, J and Companies spent a full
Speaker 1: seven minutes essentially answering all the questions and ruling out
Speaker 1: all the possibilities that people were flooding the local Wear
Speaker 1: and p D with last week. It would have been
Speaker 1: so good of the Wear and p D could have
Speaker 1: put together like a similar mash up like what what
Speaker 1: you did and just played that out to people. I
Speaker 1: think that would have been a better response. Actually, I
Speaker 1: just I just I'm shocked that there's that you know
Speaker 1: that I don't know. I will say this though, I
Speaker 1: bumped into tons and tons of molas off shore over
Speaker 1: the year, and they are one freakishly bizarre fish. They're
Speaker 1: very weird one in person, they're weird looking. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think this is what happens most of the time
Speaker 1: you see him way off shore, But every once in
Speaker 1: a while they just sort of ride the wrong current
Speaker 1: or whatever and they end up real tight to the beach.
Speaker 1: But they look like an evolutionary accident, like someone was like, whoops,
Speaker 1: screw that. We'll just let it. Oh, we'll do better
Speaker 1: when we start working on the billfish, you know. And
Speaker 1: they're and they're just they're so clumsy and goofy, and
Speaker 1: I've always known what they were, but man, like, those
Speaker 1: big old things they got have given me and many
Speaker 1: a shark crew heart palpitations because they come up at
Speaker 1: a distance, way out there in your slick and you're like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's just old dope, you know, swimming
Speaker 1: and hoovering pieces of bunk er chum, and you feel
Speaker 1: bad for him. I'm like, I feel bad for you.
Speaker 1: You're you're weird. This is your life. But anyway, there
Speaker 1: you go. It's a sunfish. Jay. Stop calling the police.
Speaker 1: They're busy arresting your friends for throwing hands in the
Speaker 1: parking lot at the Cumberland Farms. Oh. I love that story,
Speaker 1: and it teas It teased me up nicely because we're
Speaker 1: we're on the subject of evolutionary accidents, and I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna run with that one. And I'll look at I'm
Speaker 1: kind of stepping into a little bit of Joe territory here,
Speaker 1: but I just couldn't let this one go, all right.
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, man, but when I
Speaker 1: hear Isle of White, I immediately think of Jimi Hendrix.
Speaker 1: I think of the posthumus album that was recorded when
Speaker 1: he played at the Island of White Festival just weeks
Speaker 1: before his death. And I gotta say that's possibly one
Speaker 1: of the best versions of machine Gun ever laid down,
Speaker 1: hands down. But I have to go listen to that now,
Speaker 1: like it's been years. It's good. It's good. But this
Speaker 1: next story like gives me just a little bit of
Speaker 1: a slight, slightly new association with the island that sits
Speaker 1: just south of the UK and the English Channel. British
Speaker 1: angler Jason Gillespie was fishing just off the Isle of
Speaker 1: White when he caught something unprecedented, a completely white tope shark. Now,
Speaker 1: I gotta admit, I've never heard of a tope shark before.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with these? Uh? No, is the short answer.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've heard that name before. Unlike last
Speaker 1: week we mentioned a gulper shark. Like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the hell, but I feel like I have heard
Speaker 1: of tope shark. It's a new one on me there.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you what it looked like or anything,
Speaker 1: but they're also called school sharks snapper sharks, and this
Speaker 1: one kind of fits soup finn sharks, which pretty well
Speaker 1: explains why they are critically endangered. Delicious tope sharks max
Speaker 1: out at about seven feet in length, and they're normally
Speaker 1: bluish gray on their backs and flanks and white on
Speaker 1: their bellies, you know, just like most sharks. The specimen
Speaker 1: that Gillespie landed, however, or Gillespie excuse me, was a
Speaker 1: mature adult tope shark, completely bone white. And if you
Speaker 1: look up pictures of this thing, it's it's it's weird
Speaker 1: looking it. It looks a little like those creepy goblin
Speaker 1: sharks that leave live in like the super deep oceans.
Speaker 1: Not not the normal tope sharks, but this version of
Speaker 1: it has like a little bit of the goblin shark
Speaker 1: thing going on. Gillespie was quoted as saying, I've been
Speaker 1: fishing for thirty years and I've never seen anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's the fish of a lifetime one in a million.
Speaker 1: He wanted to say that a friend of his claimed
Speaker 1: to have caught one before, but he didn't think that
Speaker 1: albino sharks could survive into adulthood. He told the British
Speaker 1: news agency s w N S quote. I think generally
Speaker 1: if they lose their color, they struggled to survive because
Speaker 1: they don't have the same camouflage and they can't hunt
Speaker 1: as effectively and they get picked off by predators. Biologists agree,
Speaker 1: which the last beyond this point, which is why they
Speaker 1: hypothesize that the shark isn't an albino but instead lucistic.
Speaker 1: In other words, it wasn't born without pigment, but lost
Speaker 1: its pigment throughout its life. And for reference, Joe, I'll
Speaker 1: use one of your personal icons here, I think Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson. And while that story is interesting and it's
Speaker 1: been widely reported, I actually have a follow up for
Speaker 1: it that that popped up after I had finished that one,
Speaker 1: and it's totally absurd. Uh. It's been a big week
Speaker 1: in albio shark news apparently. Um. Before I dig into
Speaker 1: this one, I have to mention that I can't confirm
Speaker 1: the veracity of what I'm about to say. It comes
Speaker 1: from the Sun, which isn't exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity,
Speaker 1: but still, I just I had to do it. They
Speaker 1: report that an Indonesian vessel caught a quote larger shark
Speaker 1: in a net off the coast of Malaku Province into Asia.
Speaker 1: They do not identify what kind of shark it was,
Speaker 1: because that's not the point of the story. The point
Speaker 1: of the story is what they found inside of the
Speaker 1: larger shark, an albino cyclops shark fetus. Yes, you you
Speaker 1: heard that right. It's a baby shark with fully formed
Speaker 1: fins and body structure without any pigmentation, and one crazy
Speaker 1: ass giant eyeball right above its mouth. Now, this could
Speaker 1: be about as real as the National Inquirer scoop on
Speaker 1: undead Elvis and JFK Jr. Secretly hanging out at Trump rallies.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I just forget bat Boy. Do
Speaker 1: not forget bad Boy. Sorry about bat Boys there too,
Speaker 1: but I felt like I like, I came across it
Speaker 1: and I just had to include it since I apparently
Speaker 1: decided to cover the freakish shark beat this week, and man,
Speaker 1: it's it's creepy looking. Well, there was also something because
Speaker 1: I thought about it for a hot second and I
Speaker 1: didn't do it. There was also like a two headed
Speaker 1: shark something caught recently. I must have I would have
Speaker 1: covered as weird weird things. Maybe the sharks heard the
Speaker 1: you know, they heard that they're on the list for
Speaker 1: for the COVID vaccine, and they're like, we're gonna We're
Speaker 1: freaking out, man. I think that the amount of stress
Speaker 1: that they're experiencing is causing some serious deformities. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: the first one, though, the tope shark, is still the
Speaker 1: most interesting to me, And I mean I don't know. Obviously,
Speaker 1: anything that's an albino, regardless of species, we all know
Speaker 1: has a lesser chance of survival, right because it's just
Speaker 1: like sticks out like a sore thumb. But yeah, just
Speaker 1: it's not like it never happens. You and I have
Speaker 1: both seen the albino sailfish in the albino marlin, so
Speaker 1: that it makes you wonder if it was so rare
Speaker 1: for them to reach adulthood, as science is saying, being
Speaker 1: stark white like that, were they or did they have
Speaker 1: the Michael Jackson thing too? This is This is a
Speaker 1: good question. Uh, it might be lucistic, it might be
Speaker 1: albutism I think that just again, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: claim expertise here, but I think just in apparently the
Speaker 1: way that that shark lives, it's it's highly migratory and
Speaker 1: lives in the open ocean. So I think that that
Speaker 1: would be It's not like it's an ambush predator. It's
Speaker 1: like get hide anywhere. This thing lives in open ocean,
Speaker 1: and I think an albino shark migrating across massive open
Speaker 1: ocean is probably not going to do very well for
Speaker 1: very long. Yeah, it's just just my theory. Is it
Speaker 1: a deep dwelling shark too? You know, deep water species?
Speaker 1: Because I have to imagine after a certain point, right,
Speaker 1: I should actually know the math of exactly how deep.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would make no difference if you were
Speaker 1: an albino anymore. Well, that's why the goblin shark is
Speaker 1: is totally like has no pigment. They can pull that
Speaker 1: off because there's no light down there. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it's not that deep a dweller. Well, they live
Speaker 1: right next to one of those cookie cutter sharks. They're
Speaker 1: scary too. There's so much scary ship down there. Talk
Speaker 1: about it more. But I have one more comment, just
Speaker 1: because it's just it just popped into my head about
Speaker 1: the weird cyclops shark. You know, these stories pop up
Speaker 1: time to time about the sharks with two heads and
Speaker 1: this and that. Do you remember one years ago that
Speaker 1: was trout with two mouths? I missed that trout. I
Speaker 1: missed that one. And you know, like when you're a
Speaker 1: kid and you you slice underneath the jaw and then
Speaker 1: stick your finger in there and like pull the tongue
Speaker 1: out and the guts out, like if you're cleaning a
Speaker 1: trout to put on a campfire. Every which way I
Speaker 1: look at that photo. All it looked to me is
Speaker 1: like somebody slit that and separated it and opened that
Speaker 1: little tongue tab below the chin. But it was all
Speaker 1: over the news as a as a two mouthed, two
Speaker 1: mouth trout. This one could be just as real as that.
Speaker 1: For the record, I'm not claiming that this is real.
Speaker 1: It looks really creepy and it also looks like it
Speaker 1: could be completely fake. But I just had to throw
Speaker 1: it in there. Every time I see a two headed,
Speaker 1: two arms somehow, I'm always skeptical of it. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I just I just don't take it at face value
Speaker 1: that it's real. But let me tell you what is real,
Speaker 1: the mullet toss. You know what the mullet tosses. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I have so many theories on this, but
Speaker 1: I'm not going to take up the time making up
Speaker 1: stupid stupid ship. What do you got? Well, that's fine
Speaker 1: because don't think too hard because it's pretty much exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like. Okay, So this is some exciting
Speaker 1: news out of Orange Beach, Alabama from Fox dot com
Speaker 1: headline fish will fly in rescheduled Gulf Coast event mullet toss.
Speaker 1: It sounds yes, Well I have no I have never
Speaker 1: attended this event. I have been aware of it, um,
Speaker 1: And it's a big deal down on the Florida Alabama border.
Speaker 1: And it happens every year at the Florabama Lounge, which
Speaker 1: is a well known and popular drinking establishment slash roadhouse. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is right from the story. In this event,
Speaker 1: contestants throw dead fish from a point in Florida across
Speaker 1: the state line into Alabama, vying for distance records. So,
Speaker 1: as I've hinted at, don't think too hard. It is
Speaker 1: exactly what it sounds like. And of course it's mullet
Speaker 1: um that they're throwing, which I will say for anyone unaware,
Speaker 1: mullet are are a culturally significant species in that of
Speaker 1: the country, more so than than anywhere else. There's mullet festivals,
Speaker 1: you can buy smoke mullet on the side of the
Speaker 1: road and stuff like that. Uh. Now, normally the mullet
Speaker 1: toss happens in April, but Rhona Rhona squash that right.
Speaker 1: You attack on a few hurricanes in that area this season,
Speaker 1: plus constantly fluctuating state restrictions on how bars could operate,
Speaker 1: if they can be open, if they can't, and the
Speaker 1: mullet toss this year it kind of got sideline um.
Speaker 1: But you know, we can breathe a sigh of relief,
Speaker 1: fish hurlers because the event actually starts today October twenty
Speaker 1: three and runs all weekend. And in case you're wondering,
Speaker 1: just can we still get flights? I was just gonna say,
Speaker 1: think about what you're saying. Not only can we get them,
Speaker 1: we can fly first class for like ten dollars. Airlines
Speaker 1: emails me daily just like, please go somewhere, Please we'll
Speaker 1: pick you up at your house. We'll get you a
Speaker 1: limo to come to fill the airport, private jet just
Speaker 1: fly somewhere daily. I have to like say, like like
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's out of control. So yeah, um,
Speaker 1: we'd probably well, obviously we're not gonna catch today's festivities,
Speaker 1: but we can be there by Saturday night, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Um, And in in case you or
Speaker 1: anybody else is wondering. And again I'm not judging this
Speaker 1: information one way or another. It's just you know, because
Speaker 1: I like to be factual and give you all sides. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the bars owners uh says masks are optional,
Speaker 1: so there's that. Um yeah, And the same guy reminds
Speaker 1: us it's an outdoor event and it's usually breezy there,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to worry about the COVID too much.
Speaker 1: Though it does it does leave me wondering, right, Um,
Speaker 1: this could be we should go because this might be
Speaker 1: the mullet toss of the century. Records will be broken
Speaker 1: because I have to imagine you've got eight months of
Speaker 1: quarantine to just fling dead mullet around the yard like
Speaker 1: you owned your goddamn craft. If this is if this
Speaker 1: is your thing, that you and and we're laughing, but
Speaker 1: you know, there are certain people in this competition, like
Speaker 1: there could be a documentary. It's like, well, everybody comes
Speaker 1: in as fun, but old Billy Jefferson, he's the mullet
Speaker 1: toss guy. So you know it's it's It's kind of
Speaker 1: like how throughout Quarantine, I've magically gotten better at spinning
Speaker 1: deer hair. This could be a competition for the ages,
Speaker 1: all right, I have technical questions, yeah, and and maybe
Speaker 1: you don't know the answers, but I still have them.
Speaker 1: I may not. Is there like a particular Is this
Speaker 1: like the shot put where you have to you know,
Speaker 1: the mechanics of it are dictated in rules and there's
Speaker 1: only one type of tossing? Or can you throw these
Speaker 1: things however you want? You know, two hands over the head, underhand,
Speaker 1: throw it like a football whatever. It's just about your distance,
Speaker 1: like can you get a running start? I want there
Speaker 1: have got to be some rules around this. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I am not entirely sure about that, but I already
Speaker 1: have a feeling one or more people is going to
Speaker 1: write in after this episode and and tell us, though
Speaker 1: I will say and again, pardon if I'm wrong, but
Speaker 1: I remember covering this in a magazine years ago briefly,
Speaker 1: and I think it was just like, whatever you gotta
Speaker 1: do to get the mullet as far as you can go,
Speaker 1: Like you may even be allowed to make a giant slingshot,
Speaker 1: like I'm really not mechanical advantage is allowed. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, and I should I
Speaker 1: should have gone further into that. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: mullet toss, which is interesting to me because mullet run
Speaker 1: fish wise, huge deal in the Gulf, huge deal in Florida, right,
Speaker 1: Um not so, I mean we were we just got
Speaker 1: over our mullet run here. It's just not as big
Speaker 1: a thing here because it never seems to coincide with
Speaker 1: any other fish. So it's like, oh dude, there's mullet
Speaker 1: all over. Yeah, but the stripers aren't here yet or
Speaker 1: this isn't here yet, so they just it doesn't have
Speaker 1: the same pun um. And I've never eaten it, but
Speaker 1: I've I've bought giant horse mullet at one of the
Speaker 1: seafood markets here at time or two of her bait,
Speaker 1: and to me, it is so pungent. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't fully get it, but I do know it's a
Speaker 1: big thing down there. I think it's like any greasy fish.
Speaker 1: If you smoke it, it's good. That's that's my understanding.
Speaker 1: I've had it in like a like a dip, like
Speaker 1: a smoke fish dip, and it was fun. Um here.
Speaker 1: I don't want to spend too much some my mulley
Speaker 1: because we're gonna run out of time, but I do
Speaker 1: have a couple of things I want to say. Molly
Speaker 1: get a bad rap in my opinion, and I know
Speaker 1: why I have cursed many mullet many a time, because
Speaker 1: if you're fishing for other species, particularly if you're in
Speaker 1: like shallow water fishing for neurotic species, and mullet show
Speaker 1: up to do that obnoxious thing where they just jump
Speaker 1: for no reason and they spook everything around you just
Speaker 1: you just you just hate them. But they strike me
Speaker 1: as one of those fish that I want to learn
Speaker 1: how to catch because they're really hard to catch, right,
Speaker 1: because they're plankton eaters and so micro hooks and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not first, but it's crazy. It's the weird tactical
Speaker 1: fishing rabbit hole that I could see myself going down
Speaker 1: that it's it's like a species like that that's super
Speaker 1: omnipresent but really really hard to to fool. Is exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that I can get totally lost
Speaker 1: in and stuck on. I haven't done it yet, but
Speaker 1: I'm not ruling it out as a possibility for my retirement.
Speaker 1: That might be really to see you buying a little
Speaker 1: place on a back creek dock with there's no red fish,
Speaker 1: no tar, nothing just so, and you'd be happy. I would.
Speaker 1: I would, And I'm gonna I'm gonna pivot off of
Speaker 1: off of dead fish being flung through the air to
Speaker 1: another dead fish story. Um, but to get there, I gotta,
Speaker 1: I gotta. I want to. I want to go through
Speaker 1: a different lens. I'm curious, Joe, were you Were you
Speaker 1: a fan of the Far Side comics by Gary Larson?
Speaker 1: Were you? Did you ever get into those? I mean,
Speaker 1: I certainly know m I read a bunch, but no
Speaker 1: to say I was a fan devoted to him? No, No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I loved him as a kid, like I really did.
Speaker 1: Like we had the books and I read them and
Speaker 1: even though you know, when I was a kids, some
Speaker 1: of them went over my head because some of them
Speaker 1: were kind of heavy, but I really liked them. And
Speaker 1: Larson actually did a number of fishing related cartoons, but
Speaker 1: the most famous of his fishing cartoons shows a couple
Speaker 1: of dudes fishing from a boat on a lake and
Speaker 1: in the background, several mushroom clouds rise from a nuclear attack,
Speaker 1: and one guy says to the other, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what this means. Norm no size restrictions and screw the limit, right,
Speaker 1: And it's it's funny, but it's it's super dark humor.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's only funny because you don't expect that
Speaker 1: to ever happen, but it's it's kind of in a
Speaker 1: weird way, becoming a reality this fall in Colorado, except
Speaker 1: instead of nuclear holocaust, we're talking about record drought. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: well I was just gonna say too. I mean, not
Speaker 1: not entirely sure where you're going, but there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people early pandemic who had that vibe like
Speaker 1: with like they were like, when are there no limits?
Speaker 1: And I can just gonna start why can deer like
Speaker 1: those people existed the totally did. And I will just
Speaker 1: say right now, this story has nothing to do with COVID. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: none at all right. Now we are in what's being
Speaker 1: called a mega drought. More than forty five of the
Speaker 1: lower forty eight needs moisture real bad, and Colorado is
Speaker 1: getting hit particularly hard. The entire western half of the
Speaker 1: state is an extreme drought, and almost of the state
Speaker 1: is in what's called exceptional drought. One thing not so
Speaker 1: extremely tend being extremely extreme. I give us a night.
Speaker 1: Fish need water, but right now there isn't enough of
Speaker 1: it to go around. Some of Colorado's many reservoirs are
Speaker 1: being drained down to the point where they cannot support
Speaker 1: fish populations, so Colorado Parks and Wildlife have declared emergency
Speaker 1: fish salvages. Salvages mean a complete suspension of bag or
Speaker 1: size limits. Basically, it means that CPW has given up
Speaker 1: hope that fish will survive in these watersheds, and instead
Speaker 1: of yeah, instead of letting those fish go to waste,
Speaker 1: they let anglers come in and take as many as
Speaker 1: they can. CPW has enacted salvages at four different reservoirs,
Speaker 1: bar Jumbo, Pewter Ponds, and as of last week, Wahatya,
Speaker 1: though the salvage at Jumbo was recently rescinded to be
Speaker 1: clear as far as I can understand, the other ones
Speaker 1: are still gone. Fish habitat is not the primary purpose
Speaker 1: of Colorado reservoirs, or really any reservoir anywhere. They're owned
Speaker 1: and managed by irrigation companies. In a state that's mostly arid,
Speaker 1: reservoirs function as water catchment and retention systems. Colorado has
Speaker 1: lots of mountains. Those traps snow in the cold months.
Speaker 1: That snow then melts into rivers, but river flows are
Speaker 1: inconstant seasonal so reservoirs allow water managers like some insurance
Speaker 1: they can bank water, but that insurance will only go
Speaker 1: so far, right, Like, if a drought persists long enough,
Speaker 1: reservoirs get drawn down to irrigate crops and flush toilets
Speaker 1: and water lawns. And I'm not going to go off
Speaker 1: on an anti lawn rent right now. I swore I
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna do it, even though I really really want to.
Speaker 1: But just real quick watering plots of non native grass
Speaker 1: and arid environments because it looks pretty is way up
Speaker 1: there on the list of pointlessly destructive yet seemingly innocent
Speaker 1: stupid ship that people do. Colorado, California, Arizona, New Mexico.
Speaker 1: I am talking to you anyway. I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm done. I'm done. That's it. I had
Speaker 1: and you know, and I even agree with you, except
Speaker 1: I don't feel like the sneers from my neighbors when
Speaker 1: my my ship's running wild. Yeah, I had to say something,
Speaker 1: but I just I don't. I'm not trying to get
Speaker 1: way off off topic. My point here. Fishing is a
Speaker 1: secondary benefit of reservoirs. So when the water needs exceed
Speaker 1: the water capacity, they get drained and the fish can
Speaker 1: either die of oxygen depletion or they can be put
Speaker 1: to some good use of food. So while I find
Speaker 1: this story a bit of a bummer and perhaps a
Speaker 1: harbinger of existential threat to the future of fishing in
Speaker 1: a hotter, drier world, I give Colorado Parks and Wildlife props.
Speaker 1: Instead of ostriching their way through this, they're recognizing what's
Speaker 1: going on and doing their best to let the public
Speaker 1: harvest as much of this resource as possible. And not
Speaker 1: only that, once water levels and lakes get so low
Speaker 1: that fishing becomes unsafe, right because like water, solo is
Speaker 1: just like this mud flat. You can't let people go
Speaker 1: out there. CPW will close public access, but they go
Speaker 1: in and try to shock out whatever fish are remaining
Speaker 1: and then relocate them to healthier systems. This isn't the
Speaker 1: first time CPW has had to declare emergency salvages. In
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, Colorado experienced a similar drought the drains
Speaker 1: some of the same reservoirs, but through restocking and management,
Speaker 1: many of those fisheries were back in great shape by
Speaker 1: This is one of those stories that forces you to
Speaker 1: think about scale in a few different ways. In the
Speaker 1: short short term, anglers are stoked, they get to go
Speaker 1: fill their freezers. It's like that free for all pool
Speaker 1: seen in Caddyshack. In the slightly longer term, they're gonna
Speaker 1: lose some of their local fisheries, at least for a while.
Speaker 1: Those fisheries will probably bounce back in a few years.
Speaker 1: What happens after that will be dictated by temperature and
Speaker 1: precipitation and long term forecast of West It's not that great.
Speaker 1: Final point to consider here, though, is that all of
Speaker 1: these are completely unnatural fisheries. They are man made lakes
Speaker 1: stock with non native fish, manage for entertainment and harvest
Speaker 1: period that's it. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing,
Speaker 1: but it somehow makes this whole situation feel just a
Speaker 1: little less tragic to me knowing that. Yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: a gut reaction to that could be very easily, especially
Speaker 1: if you fish one of these reservoirs. It's like, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, like like the place that I love is
Speaker 1: going away. But I think the overriding message here, even
Speaker 1: though we're all fishermen, um and you said it, reservoirs
Speaker 1: their primary function is not to create fishing and recreation
Speaker 1: opportunities for people. That's not what they're there for. And
Speaker 1: it is completely manufactured. It's a manufactured lake that at
Speaker 1: some point fish were stocked. And that's almost like a
Speaker 1: bonus for the outdoorsman. Lucky you if you have a
Speaker 1: reservoir that fishes really well and you have great access
Speaker 1: to Because where I live, and and this happens in
Speaker 1: a lot of the country, we have some reservoirs out here.
Speaker 1: You can fish most of them. You cannot most of
Speaker 1: the reservoirs, like connected to the Newark Water Shed that
Speaker 1: that feeds um New York City, like in North Jersey especially,
Speaker 1: Oh dude, you hear legendary stories of people like you
Speaker 1: know who hop the fence and and fish this reservoir,
Speaker 1: that reservoir, and it's like you know, Midwest smallmouth to
Speaker 1: the tenth power like nothing else you can find around here.
Speaker 1: But they are all under lock and key. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're protected because that that's New York City's water. You
Speaker 1: can't like they it's it's it's there for a purpose.
Speaker 1: So um I I I understand again that gut reaction
Speaker 1: of like, that's horrible to lose a fishery, but that's
Speaker 1: what these reservoirs are there for first and foremost, you know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a little different in certain like
Speaker 1: when you're talking about water management out west, and we
Speaker 1: can't get into this because we don't time, but there's
Speaker 1: a little there's some some issues there in terms of
Speaker 1: your gets having all the power. But in this particular case,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the fish that live in the
Speaker 1: reservoirs that aren't native there, they were just really put
Speaker 1: and take fisheries that that's a different story than the
Speaker 1: perhaps native fish that lived downstream of those. Sure, anyway,
Speaker 1: a lot to you on there, Phil, Let's uh I
Speaker 1: pandered to you last week with the Pokemon story, and
Speaker 1: that didn't work. So this week I went a completely
Speaker 1: different direction, and uh, I expect some goods gonna come
Speaker 1: out of it. Buddy, I thought you had the shoeing
Speaker 1: with Pokemon too, but you did not. And now it's
Speaker 1: time to see who swayed the all powerful Phil this week.
Speaker 1: And as soon as he's done weighing in, join us
Speaker 1: for an extremely awkward family dinner and a poke in
Speaker 1: the eye with a sharp object in our sale bin
Speaker 1: segment devoted to idiotic online classified ads. M. I have
Speaker 1: to be honest. This week is a little tough for me.
Speaker 1: I keep hearing you guys talking about Oh well, I
Speaker 1: chose this story because I think Phil would like it. Oh,
Speaker 1: Phil likes video games, Phil likes Pokemon. Well, am I
Speaker 1: some lab rat to be to be prodded with a stick? Oh?
Speaker 1: Which which stimuli? Does? He respond? Tokay, no, No, I
Speaker 1: I am a person. I am a human being with
Speaker 1: an evolved brain. I will not be objectified and looked
Speaker 1: down upon like this anyway. Joe Sirmellie is the winner
Speaker 1: this week because I like the fish flying through the air.
Speaker 1: That was funny, but Why did you put the hand
Speaker 1: to pave You don't know what I'm getting, man, You
Speaker 1: didn't have to be to hurtful with me so angry?
Speaker 1: All right? This week on the sale band, I am
Speaker 1: running a two for a two for one special buy
Speaker 1: one get one free because I've got two items here
Speaker 1: that are definitely worth mentioned, but not because of what
Speaker 1: they are, just because of the descriptions. And we've got
Speaker 1: two terrific instances here of t m I within a
Speaker 1: sale post and I just love them. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: love I love a bargain for one to love a
Speaker 1: bargain for me. The first one I was tipped off
Speaker 1: to by my buddy John Fedorca, so shout out to him,
Speaker 1: who sent me a link to a Facebook marketplace item
Speaker 1: in old Bridge, New Jersey. And what we have is
Speaker 1: just a surf fishing combo. The title is just Tica
Speaker 1: ten ft six two or best offer, and Dud's got
Speaker 1: an old pen bait runner on it, which I assume
Speaker 1: is part of the deal. We wouldn't know, though, because
Speaker 1: the description simply reads two hundred oh bi oh. I
Speaker 1: don't fish anymore because my dad is a jerk. So
Speaker 1: there's that. I feel like this means a little bit
Speaker 1: of a marketing one on one class for the For
Speaker 1: the life of me, I can't figure out why you
Speaker 1: felt the need to include that information the sale description.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, I don't want people to think that
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with the item, so I tell my father.
Speaker 1: I just hope it's all resolved by Thanksgiving, you know,
Speaker 1: or considering Thanksgiving is a huge striper weekend. You know,
Speaker 1: Dan'll show up talking about the blitz he fished all morning,
Speaker 1: like sleeping beauty over here, couldn't get his ass up again,
Speaker 1: like it could be really ugly. He's like, you know what, Dad,
Speaker 1: I just sold that present you gave me on Craig's List.
Speaker 1: So that's one rod for sale because Dad is a jerk.
Speaker 1: And uh, we're gonna move on here to double our
Speaker 1: pleasure today. This one is on Facebook marketplace in Rumsen,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and the out of the post is giant
Speaker 1: fish one and we have a very nice sailfish replica.
Speaker 1: And tell you what, a hundred bucks ain't bad. A
Speaker 1: hundred bucks for a big sailfish like that not bad
Speaker 1: if it was around the corner. I'm looking at this photo.
Speaker 1: It looks like a decent mount It looks like a
Speaker 1: decent fish to catch you guys up, I only sent
Speaker 1: Miles the photo of this. I do not have the description.
Speaker 1: You do not know why it's funny yet. However, in
Speaker 1: the photo right there two chairs under the sailfish, and
Speaker 1: if you were to sit in either of them, your
Speaker 1: head would hit the sailfish. And the ceiling is I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe five inches away from the highest point
Speaker 1: of the dorsal fin. Uh. And so to my eye,
Speaker 1: if I were a batman, I'm gonna I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: the sailfish is hanging in a mobile home, okay. And
Speaker 1: my suspicion is bolstered by this description. If you don't
Speaker 1: have an eight foot sailfish hanging in your home, you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're missing. We normally keep tennis ball
Speaker 1: on its bill to avoid serious eye injuries. So wherever
Speaker 1: this is hanging, there's not really enough room for it
Speaker 1: to be hanging. And I could not help myself with
Speaker 1: this one, and I pined the cellar and I just said, uh,
Speaker 1: does the tennis ball come with the fish? I'm interested,
Speaker 1: but I've got serious safety concerns. And she wrote me
Speaker 1: back and just said, I will gladly have fixed the
Speaker 1: tennis ball to assuage any fears. Would you prefer a
Speaker 1: tennis ball with a squeaker? So she gave me a
Speaker 1: little like it would have been a tennis ball with
Speaker 1: a squeaker asshole, like would have made it even funnier.
Speaker 1: But she so she gave me a little ship back.
Speaker 1: So good for her. But like, if you're so proud
Speaker 1: of your sailfish mount, but it's hanging in a place
Speaker 1: where like it could take your eye out, I just
Speaker 1: that's that's very fun. I feel like there's a domestic
Speaker 1: dispute behind this one. And I don't mean in the
Speaker 1: violent or terrible way. I mean like in a we
Speaker 1: have a small home and you brought this into it
Speaker 1: and someone lost an eye or nearly did, it's got
Speaker 1: to go. It's it is highly likely because my home
Speaker 1: is not that small, and I'm looking at an eight
Speaker 1: foot tarp in on my wall that has been around
Speaker 1: for twelve years now and is still a domestic dispute,
Speaker 1: even though it's in my office. If my wife had
Speaker 1: her way, that would have never been in the home.
Speaker 1: So very highly likely. But that is your two for
Speaker 1: for this week two for one special. Remember we need
Speaker 1: your help in finding awesome sale in items. You guys
Speaker 1: have been doing a killer job of sending those in
Speaker 1: and tipping us off. Keep those coming to bent at
Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com. I just kind of want
Speaker 1: to reach out and do an intervention with that guy
Speaker 1: who hates his dad, Like, maybe maybe invite him down
Speaker 1: to the beach, tossed out some surf frauds, moderate a
Speaker 1: little toss the old pigskin around, you know, model healthy communication,
Speaker 1: use use fishing to bring families together. It could be
Speaker 1: like the anti politics, And I know you want to
Speaker 1: think that's possible, but really probably isn't man, it probably is.
Speaker 1: Side note though, I actually used to own the exact
Speaker 1: rod that he's selling, and it's a total piece of ship.
Speaker 1: The particular ticka he's selling was in my high school
Speaker 1: senior age price range, like it's sixty bucks, but somehow
Speaker 1: it still came with a lifetime warranty and five times
Speaker 1: in two years I sent it back snapped for no particular.
Speaker 1: It would just it would just randomly break, like mid
Speaker 1: fling just be throwing a plug and it would just snap.
Speaker 1: But um, dude, I mean that's how you learn. That's
Speaker 1: how you come to appreciate good gear and learn what
Speaker 1: to avoid. But it sucks having to do it through,
Speaker 1: you know, repeated frustrating trial and error like that. That's true.
Speaker 1: That that that is a frustrating part about fishing. But
Speaker 1: one way to help yourself out in that process, at
Speaker 1: least when it comes to lures, flies and bits, is
Speaker 1: to listen to our weekly end of the line segment,
Speaker 1: because you know, we're never wrong, never. This week, Joe
Speaker 1: is gonna tell you about a fly that an idiot
Speaker 1: can tie, but really smart fish will eat. Well, that's
Speaker 1: not loud enough. The Flashtail Whistler was designed by legendary
Speaker 1: fly angler, writer and photographer Dan Blanton in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies time frame. Now, just to
Speaker 1: rattle off a few of Blanton's achievements, he received the
Speaker 1: Federation of Fly Fisher's Lifetime Membership Award for outstanding achievements
Speaker 1: in fly fishing in the Silver King Award for contributions
Speaker 1: in saltwater fly fishing in and in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: he was inducted into the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and
Speaker 1: Museum Hall of Fame. Now, according to the Internet, where
Speaker 1: everything is true. Blanton originally designed the whistler to target
Speaker 1: stripe bass in the San Francisco Bay area, and the
Speaker 1: goal was to create a fly that mimicked a popular
Speaker 1: bucktail jig in the water. To achieve this, Blanton used
Speaker 1: a short shank hook which allowed all the bucktail extended
Speaker 1: past the bend to have a more fluid action in
Speaker 1: the water, and he also added lead wraps to the
Speaker 1: hook so the fly would fall nose down while the
Speaker 1: buoyant bucktail trapped air and lifted the tail, further enhancing
Speaker 1: that bucktail jig style action. As I understand it, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until just a little bit later that Blanton tweaked
Speaker 1: the pattern extending the trailing flash material well past the
Speaker 1: bucktail that we landed on the most common iteration of
Speaker 1: the flashtail whistler, which is still widely available today. And
Speaker 1: in case you didn't catch it, that also means the
Speaker 1: pattern hasn't really changed again in fifty years now. Of course,
Speaker 1: since fly tires loved to tinker and can never leave
Speaker 1: well enough alone, you can find whistlers incorporating modern synthetics
Speaker 1: and tied on a variety of hooks, but today we're
Speaker 1: talking about the O G whistler. The classic flashtail whistler
Speaker 1: features a set of lighter bead chain eyes, and behind
Speaker 1: them there's a collar of schlapp and feather, usually ray
Speaker 1: to simulate gills, which fades into white or yellow bucktail.
Speaker 1: Down each side you'll find a single grizzly hackle feather,
Speaker 1: and then that long tail of tinsel flash extending way
Speaker 1: out the back. We live in a streamer obsessed world,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I think the mark of a good streamer
Speaker 1: these days is related to how much skill and effort
Speaker 1: it takes to tie it. But it takes very little
Speaker 1: effort to tie a flash tail whistler. A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: anyone who got themselves a basic tying kit for Christmas
Speaker 1: can knock one of these out. While the whistler is
Speaker 1: hailed first and foremost as a salty pattern for everything
Speaker 1: from tarpin to snook to stripers, I got woke to
Speaker 1: its powers thousands of miles from where any of those
Speaker 1: fish live. It was on a pike trip in Saskatchewan
Speaker 1: on the Cree River system, and the trip was sponsored
Speaker 1: by Cabella's, which meant that every angler was giving one
Speaker 1: of their conveniently prepackaged pike fly sets. Now, like many
Speaker 1: serious anglers, I scoffed at the US right, like, thanks, guys,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, but I doubt I'll be dipping into
Speaker 1: this little starter pack of basic deceivers and loosely packed
Speaker 1: hair bugs. Right. I mean, I brought five boxes loaded
Speaker 1: down with eight to ten inch buford head monsters man
Speaker 1: works of art. I've been crafting for months streamers with
Speaker 1: more material than all those kit flies combined. And it
Speaker 1: was around lunchtime on day one that my good buddy
Speaker 1: Ben Romans tied on the flashtail whistler from his courtesy
Speaker 1: Cabella's kit. Not for the record that the gym socks
Speaker 1: we were heaving weren't catching fish. No, No, quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: We'd been reefing on high thirty inch pike all morning.
Speaker 1: Ben just wanted to throw something a little less taxing
Speaker 1: for a while, and within fifteen cast that slender little
Speaker 1: flashtail got wolfed by a forty six inch northern and
Speaker 1: we thought, well, this is a fluke. This can't be right.
Speaker 1: But it was by the end of the trip. Five
Speaker 1: of the six forty plus inch fish we put in
Speaker 1: the net, eight a flashtail whistler. So effective was this
Speaker 1: fly that we even pillaged all the flash tails from
Speaker 1: everyone else's box and all that remained to them by
Speaker 1: the time we got on the seaplane to depart, where
Speaker 1: five short shank hooks with bead chain eyes and tattered
Speaker 1: red slapping collars. Now, I've caught countless pike as well
Speaker 1: as mahi mahi, lake trout, stripers and jack avow on
Speaker 1: flash tails since that trip many years ago, and it's
Speaker 1: a pattern that's always with me now on large predator missions,
Speaker 1: even if it's not what I tie on first. It
Speaker 1: has proven to be a great insurance policy when all
Speaker 1: those sexy Instagram photo where the meat flies aren't getting
Speaker 1: it done for one reason or another. The flashtail whistler
Speaker 1: is a testament to the idea that if it ain't broke,
Speaker 1: don't fix it, and you need not go broke to
Speaker 1: buy all the materials you need to make a fly
Speaker 1: that appeals to all the big nasties out there. Man,
Speaker 1: I'd tied a lot of whistlers sitting at my weather
Speaker 1: ports in Alaska. They caught I mean, they caught salmon, trout, pike,
Speaker 1: grailing pretty much everything. That's why I'm in that river.
Speaker 1: And best of all, I could bust out a dozen
Speaker 1: of those things after a full day of guide in,
Speaker 1: cleaning boats, doing chores, serving dinner, and washing dishes, even
Speaker 1: when I was exhausted and half drunk, like I could
Speaker 1: just get them done. The half drunk is key, because
Speaker 1: that makes it a guide fly. If you can tie
Speaker 1: the fly pretty ship faced, then then I then I
Speaker 1: consider it a guide fly. Absolutely anyway. That brings us
Speaker 1: to the end of this week's episode. And for those
Speaker 1: of you outlining a book report for English class, Miles
Speaker 1: is officially old. Okay. He can also tie a flashtail
Speaker 1: whistler totally drunk. Aristotle was obsessed with eel junk, and
Speaker 1: Australians have some crazy ass names for creeks. If you're
Speaker 1: planning to turn that heady knowledge in for credit, all
Speaker 1: we ask is proper citation. Give us some stars wherever
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