Speaker 1: And I'm like, other than being in shape and cut
Speaker 1: and having the staminate the paddle far enough out to
Speaker 1: catch selfish on a kayak, we're basically the same person hunting.
Speaker 1: Let's be If this is what you're gonna use, you
Speaker 1: might as well just grab like the towel bar out
Speaker 1: of your bathroom and tape a real to it. You
Speaker 1: have not honed your micro phishing skills and therefore will
Speaker 1: not survive. It feels like they're trying to drag out
Speaker 1: the sound of the plastics slowly sliding from his nostril
Speaker 1: cavity at the Good Morning Degenerate Anglers. Welcome to Bend,
Speaker 1: the podcast that swears this is the year it's going
Speaker 1: to finally, once and for all, perfectly organize all its
Speaker 1: tackle and keep it that way so it's not constantly
Speaker 1: buying hook swivels and soft plastics it knows it already
Speaker 1: has but can't find the night before a trip. How
Speaker 1: do you like that one? I'm Joe Surmelis, and I
Speaker 1: don't believe in New Year's resolutions, but if I had one,
Speaker 1: it would be something along those lines about organizing tackle,
Speaker 1: because because that's something I know I do, Because yeah,
Speaker 1: I reorganized my tackle at least twice a year. It's
Speaker 1: this weird like zen therapeutic thing. For me. It's and
Speaker 1: it's especially true for fly boxes. There is something about
Speaker 1: a perfectly organized fly box that satisfies me and and
Speaker 1: brings me, brings me some inner peace. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I could not agree more like it, but it's
Speaker 1: so rare that minor organized like I have to take
Speaker 1: a picture for social media because I'm like, Wow, that
Speaker 1: only happens once a year. Because I do. I reorganize
Speaker 1: in a spring and like the streamer box say, we'll
Speaker 1: get all nice, nice before the first warm season streamer trip.
Speaker 1: But by now, like and I mean like right now
Speaker 1: now in winter, my ship is chaos. But I'm one
Speaker 1: of those people, like I gotta say I know where
Speaker 1: everything is, at least in the general sense of like
Speaker 1: what region of the garage, what should be in? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what quadrant? It's in that quadrant? Um. But the only
Speaker 1: time I go nuts is when I jump into a
Speaker 1: curveball program, I e. Like, I get invited on a
Speaker 1: random musky trip, you know, because I don't do that often.
Speaker 1: So finding and organizing all the musky laws and leaders
Speaker 1: that I have scattered about would take effort, but no,
Speaker 1: it totally. It does feel good in the spring when
Speaker 1: everything is perfectly in place. Yeah, yeah, I can relate
Speaker 1: to to much of what you're saying, and I feel
Speaker 1: like I feel like maybe I was misleading with my statements.
Speaker 1: So let me clarify. My ship is not organized, not
Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination, in any sort of
Speaker 1: functional sense. Like unlike you, I can't usually find what
Speaker 1: I need among the precarious stacks of gear that are
Speaker 1: just lining my garage. I don't do well with that.
Speaker 1: What I'm talking about is the the small and useless
Speaker 1: act of organizing and reorganizing individual boxes. There's something a battle,
Speaker 1: not the war. It's like battle, not the war, like that.
Speaker 1: I can that. That feels like something I can handle,
Speaker 1: and so like I will, I'll take all the lures
Speaker 1: or flies out and just kind of reorganize according to
Speaker 1: some system that I decided makes more sense this year,
Speaker 1: Like last year, I decided that all the various prince
Speaker 1: nymphs that I have, like all the different kind of
Speaker 1: prince nymps that I have, deserved their own box instead
Speaker 1: of being them. I've seen them, I've seen you do
Speaker 1: have a lot of those. Yeah, yeah, again guiding out
Speaker 1: here you kind of have to write, And they used
Speaker 1: to just be lumped in with all the small stone flies.
Speaker 1: But I was like, no, no, I've got enough. They
Speaker 1: deserve their own box. So I pulled them all out
Speaker 1: and reorganized everything. And will that help me find my
Speaker 1: prince nymps or catch more fish? Absolutely not. I already
Speaker 1: knew where they were. But still I got a sense
Speaker 1: of joy out of it. Yeah, it was not useful,
Speaker 1: but it was joyful. See. I don't own enough nymps
Speaker 1: to organize them beyond the one standard size fly box
Speaker 1: that I have for nymphs, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like if I broke them down further, we'd have like
Speaker 1: separate thimbles or something like that. Of nimp anyway, but
Speaker 1: I I've got no problem with New Year's resolutions, Okay,
Speaker 1: just to get back to the to the opening point there.
Speaker 1: But if I make one, I won't tell anybody about it,
Speaker 1: Like I have a problem with public posting of resolutions,
Speaker 1: Like if you're gonna do it, just shut up and
Speaker 1: do it for yourself, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: maybe and I could be a jerk here and get
Speaker 1: flak for this. I don't know, but I never got that.
Speaker 1: Like one week smoke free, you know, four people are like, awesome, job, bro,
Speaker 1: keep it up. But then if any of those people
Speaker 1: see you burning a heat or a week later outside
Speaker 1: the launcher mat, now, like they just know you have
Speaker 1: no follow through? So why make that public? You know,
Speaker 1: what's the doubt? I think that's the point. I think
Speaker 1: that's the point. I think like that's for people who
Speaker 1: need the social pressure to keep an agreement with themselves.
Speaker 1: And sure, great, I don't. I don't, I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: with you, man, I don't. I don't want other people
Speaker 1: judging me for choices I made about my own self
Speaker 1: and health or whatever. And like, this whole conversation just
Speaker 1: has me thinking about last episode when we were talking
Speaker 1: about how how New Years kind of gets you down,
Speaker 1: and I've actually been thinking about that and I and
Speaker 1: and wondering why it doesn't bump me out quite as much.
Speaker 1: And I think there a couple answers, like one we
Speaker 1: have skiing out here, which makes the winter nicer, and
Speaker 1: that might be part of it. But the real answer,
Speaker 1: the thing that I've been thinking about is it's super
Speaker 1: deep and like mind blowing all right, are you? Are
Speaker 1: you ready for this? Do tell lay it on me.
Speaker 1: The days are getting longer. For dumb and obvious as
Speaker 1: that sounds, because it does. I think. I think we
Speaker 1: sometimes forget the whole point of having winter holidays are
Speaker 1: to keep us from losing our minds during the darkest
Speaker 1: days of the winter. And we made it. Those days
Speaker 1: are oh her, Yeah, from now until June, every day
Speaker 1: is gonna get just a little longer, just a little brighter,
Speaker 1: except for you know, if you happen to be a
Speaker 1: listener in the Southern hemisphere, I feel like I feel
Speaker 1: like you guys get really screwed on this whole deal.
Speaker 1: All the winter holidays happened in the middle of your summer,
Speaker 1: and then what do you have to get you through
Speaker 1: the dark cold days of June. Yeah? I never thought
Speaker 1: about that International Day for the Fight against Illegal, unreported
Speaker 1: and Unregulated Fishing. That's not a real thing. International Day
Speaker 1: of Yoga, World Seafarer Day. All those are actual U
Speaker 1: N recognized holidays. For the record, I looked it up anyway. Uh.
Speaker 1: For those of us who live in the top half
Speaker 1: the globe, congratulations we survived the darkest days of the
Speaker 1: darkest year in recent memory. You know, Amen to that,
Speaker 1: Amen to that. I like, I like where your head
Speaker 1: is out. Let's turn the page on this sun, bitch.
Speaker 1: And from the view out of my social media feed,
Speaker 1: it looks like many of you are way ahead of us.
Speaker 1: And I'm seeing lots of picks, uh, you guys getting
Speaker 1: out and having fun. And many of those picks have
Speaker 1: involved big coats and little rods. But maybe some of
Speaker 1: you dreamers out there you have the coat like, you've
Speaker 1: figured out the coat part, but just need the perfect
Speaker 1: little rod to begin your hard water pursuits. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: Miles found a super sweet Internet score for you in
Speaker 1: this week's sail bin. 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 so hurtful with me so angry today.
Speaker 1: In the saale bin we find a very simple offering.
Speaker 1: Whoever posted this particular gem on East Idaho Craigslist is
Speaker 1: not a person of many words. It's not someone that
Speaker 1: I would call verbose. They are into the whole brevity thing.
Speaker 1: The title is simple ice fishing poles, That's all it says.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things about this that are simple,
Speaker 1: very simple, all right. Look, I am not an expert
Speaker 1: on ice fishing. I enjoy ice fishing, have some ice
Speaker 1: gear I get out when I can. I've worked on
Speaker 1: some ice fishing shows. I like grilling brods, drinking beer,
Speaker 1: and fishing through holes in the ice as much as
Speaker 1: the next guy. But I do not claim like solid
Speaker 1: expertise there. It's just something I do. Yep, I'm right
Speaker 1: there with you. I love it, but I don't have
Speaker 1: all the gear I mooch off somebody else. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like I know stuff, but I
Speaker 1: know enough to know that I'm not the guy who
Speaker 1: knows it all. But when I look at this post
Speaker 1: even I know that something doesn't seem right, Because while
Speaker 1: I might not be the most experienced ice angler on
Speaker 1: the planet, I do know the difference between an ice
Speaker 1: fishing rod and a fly fishing rod. And what I
Speaker 1: see pictured in the two photos on this post are
Speaker 1: just the bottom sections of two very very crappy fly
Speaker 1: rods with two very very crappy fly reels. All right,
Speaker 1: just so, for context, picture the bottom section of a
Speaker 1: four piece fly rod, the really thick part. Now, picture
Speaker 1: that with a couple of snake guides attached and a
Speaker 1: tip top glued to the end of it, and you've
Speaker 1: got it. That's that is what is being sold. You
Speaker 1: can't zoom in enough on the photo. Like even the
Speaker 1: tip guides. Something looks weird about those, like they were
Speaker 1: like a repurposed something else that was glued on the end.
Speaker 1: I mean, who there's there's a lot of creativity here,
Speaker 1: which I respect, but the I think, I think there's
Speaker 1: there's one major problem, right because so as far as
Speaker 1: I understand it, ice rods have two sort of basic
Speaker 1: essential qualities. One is that they're short, so that you
Speaker 1: can jig over a hole without sitting six ft away
Speaker 1: from that hole. That makes sense, and these these spent
Speaker 1: that bill. They are short, you could do that. But
Speaker 1: the other thing that I expect from an ice rod
Speaker 1: is that it will be sensitive and have a pretty
Speaker 1: soft tip, because you need to be able to detect
Speaker 1: a light strike and set the hook and fight a
Speaker 1: fish up through the ice without breaking pretty late line.
Speaker 1: And that's where this this particular innovation I think falls
Speaker 1: short in that respect. Yeah, it reminds me of a
Speaker 1: quote I believe that Gary Loomis once said, I can
Speaker 1: build you a rod that will never break, you just
Speaker 1: won't want to fish with it exactly. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: be if this is what you're gonna use, you might
Speaker 1: as well just grab like the towel bar out of
Speaker 1: your bathroom and tape a reel to it like that.
Speaker 1: That would essentually perform the same function as either. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't look as cool, but it would do the same thing.
Speaker 1: So all right, I respect the repurposing here, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you got some old fly rods sitting around you don't
Speaker 1: know what to do with them. Like, I got an
Speaker 1: idea maybe I could, maybe I could turn it into
Speaker 1: an ice rod. But it didn't work. It clearly didn't work,
Speaker 1: And now someone's trying to sell that bad idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta say that ten dollars for both, and if
Speaker 1: you needed a couple of cheap o reels to knock
Speaker 1: around with, that's the deal of the century for sure,
Speaker 1: for sure, And and honestly not even that at that
Speaker 1: price for ten bucks for both, I would consider buying
Speaker 1: this set just to see the looks on my friends
Speaker 1: faces when I like rolled into the ice shack and
Speaker 1: pulled out these rods and started jigging with them like that.
Speaker 1: That would be worth ten bucks for me just to
Speaker 1: see that reaction, like, what the hell is that my
Speaker 1: new ice rod? Do you like it? So the part
Speaker 1: that gets me is like, what do you do with
Speaker 1: this when you're in eighty feet of water jigging for
Speaker 1: giant lakers? Like you're just gonna be standing there front
Speaker 1: and there's no quick release on a fly reel, so
Speaker 1: you're just gonna be sending a minutes to get it
Speaker 1: down the depth. That's the major. So I can forgive
Speaker 1: the half a fly rod, but like stick a couple
Speaker 1: of spinning reels on there. You know, it's just this
Speaker 1: is not functional. It didn't work. You're trying to trying
Speaker 1: to sell us your mistakes, which again, good on you,
Speaker 1: and at least it's cheap. So uh that one man.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of laughs out of that. Whoever
Speaker 1: posted that in East Idaho, thank you. If you come
Speaker 1: across any online fishing gems for sale, just let us
Speaker 1: know send us a link to vent at the meat
Speaker 1: eater dot com. You all been doing a great job
Speaker 1: sending us those submissions, and we do appreciate them and
Speaker 1: we look forward to the next ones that you come
Speaker 1: up with. So that's true. We have been getting a
Speaker 1: lot of good sale bin submissions lately. Several of you
Speaker 1: out there send us a link to someone in Minnesota
Speaker 1: who's converting old beer taps into ice fishing rods, and
Speaker 1: while we didn't quite think that one had the legs
Speaker 1: for its own segment, we it definitely deserves an honorable mention.
Speaker 1: It's a good one. The only thing in that one
Speaker 1: that we can expand on. I particularly like the fact
Speaker 1: that their price not according to the quality of the rod,
Speaker 1: blank or like the action or anything, but the price
Speaker 1: is according to how rare the beer tap is. Like
Speaker 1: the standard bud heavy tap goes for sixty bucks, but
Speaker 1: if you want the limited edition bush like corn Cob tap,
Speaker 1: that's gonna cost you a hondo. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the rods are all just broken off ands of
Speaker 1: ugly sticks, so like there's no one's not carbon you know,
Speaker 1: priorities do priority. Someone also sent me one that was
Speaker 1: a set of matching beer tap rods, and I believe
Speaker 1: all the taps had little Montreal Canadians goalie masks on,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole set, And I'm sure I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was molson um. Anyhow, when the people are out
Speaker 1: there using beer tap rods or normal rods. I have
Speaker 1: been seeing some stunner lake trout pictures lately, and I'm jealous,
Speaker 1: got to say, because lake trot are one of those
Speaker 1: fish that I rarely get to mess with him, but
Speaker 1: I love them and find them so fascinating me too. Definitely,
Speaker 1: I feel like a total dumbass when it comes to
Speaker 1: fishing for lake trout because actually I've only ever caught
Speaker 1: them by accident. I've never really know, I've never targeted
Speaker 1: lake trout, but I know, like I know enough to
Speaker 1: know that the people who really get after them have
Speaker 1: it down to like a science. There's that dude to
Speaker 1: the guy Grant Gully who took Steve out on the
Speaker 1: last season of the Dots Boat And I've I've gotten
Speaker 1: a no Grant a little bit. And that guy he's
Speaker 1: got the Laker game dialed. He just got it figured out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, No dude. One of the cool things I
Speaker 1: ever did was I targeted them on the Ice and
Speaker 1: Colorado with legendary guy Bernie Keith. Awesome dude, And he
Speaker 1: said in the beginning, He's like, you want to catch
Speaker 1: a lot or you want to catch giants. And I
Speaker 1: went with the ladder and in two days on the
Speaker 1: ice at Lake Grand but we only hit five fish
Speaker 1: where they were all overt on giant tuna size soft plastics.
Speaker 1: And to fight fish like that on a tiny rod
Speaker 1: like scream and drag, it was insane. It was insane.
Speaker 1: And you know, but of course, seeing where I live,
Speaker 1: I also have a soft spot for Great Lakes fish too,
Speaker 1: because they're one of the few fisheries that we've been
Speaker 1: able to successfully recover after we've you know, pretty much
Speaker 1: damn near wipe them out. So um, I go up
Speaker 1: to the Great Lakes to fly fish for them. Though
Speaker 1: I do understand most guys troll their lakers, but I
Speaker 1: hate trolling all yeah, And and I'm not a trolling guy.
Speaker 1: Like if I never go on another bill fish trip again,
Speaker 1: that'll that'll be fine with me. Um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: in today's weekly word, Miles is gonna tell you what
Speaker 1: lake trout and old fish have in common. Webster's Dictionary
Speaker 1: defines fish as this week's word is pelagic. No not
Speaker 1: the apparel brand voted most likely to instigate a bar
Speaker 1: fight in the Fort Lauderdale Airport chilies. Polagic comes from
Speaker 1: the ancient Greek word pelagicos, meaning sea. For the purposes
Speaker 1: of US anglers, the term usually references the pelagic zone
Speaker 1: and pelagic fish. The pelagic zone describes the part of
Speaker 1: a body of water outside the tidal influence of a
Speaker 1: shoreline and not near any sort of bottom structure. Polagic
Speaker 1: fish or fish that live at least part of the
Speaker 1: time in that open water. We're talking tuna, billfish, mahi, mackerel, sharks,
Speaker 1: raise lake trout. Yeah, freshwater fish can be polagic too,
Speaker 1: if they live in a big enough lake, as well
Speaker 1: as the massive schools of bait fish on which those
Speaker 1: species feed herring, whiting, anchovy, jellyfish, flying fish, stard eining, smelt,
Speaker 1: and lots of others. Still. Other popular fish my great
Speaker 1: between the polagic and coastal zones, like Jack's barracuda, redfish,
Speaker 1: and salmon point is. Many of our favorite targets are
Speaker 1: at least partially pelagic. So if you liked fish, you
Speaker 1: might associate the term with abundance, big fish, bloody decks,
Speaker 1: and full coolers, But the truth of the pelagic zone
Speaker 1: is very different. Polagic actually describes the vast nothingness of
Speaker 1: open water, one of the most sterile and least hospitable
Speaker 1: places on the planet. Polagic fish only make up eleven
Speaker 1: percent of the total fish species, though they live in
Speaker 1: the largest aquatic habitat on Earth. And here's the thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of us don't know. The pelagic zone
Speaker 1: is actually broken up into five different categories. Because open
Speaker 1: water isn't just broad, it's also usually deep. One of
Speaker 1: the anglers talk about the pelagic zone, we're usually just
Speaker 1: referencing the surface layer, the epic pelagic zone, which generally
Speaker 1: extends down about six hundred and fifty feet depending on
Speaker 1: the clarity of the water. That's where the vast majority
Speaker 1: of sunlight, oxygen, energy, nutrients, and organisms are found, and
Speaker 1: not surprisingly, it's also where most of the fish live.
Speaker 1: But the polagic zone goes a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: deeper than that. Below the epipolagic zone you find the
Speaker 1: messo polagic zone, Meso being the Greek word for middle.
Speaker 1: This area goes down to about thirty three hundred feet
Speaker 1: and is also known as the twilight zone because even
Speaker 1: though light does penetrate down that far, it's pretty diffuse.
Speaker 1: There's not enough sunlight at these depths for photosynthesis, so
Speaker 1: no plankton. Quite a few fish species do live down here,
Speaker 1: but they come up into shallow water to feed at
Speaker 1: night and hide in the depths during the day. Below this,
Speaker 1: you hit the bath up polagic zone from the Greek
Speaker 1: word bathist meaning deep. This extends from feet down to
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand feet, and it's also called the darker midnight
Speaker 1: zone because duh, no light reaches down here. This is
Speaker 1: the zone where those creepy deep water fish that create
Speaker 1: their own bioluminescence and have ultra black light absorbing skin live.
Speaker 1: Check out fish News from a few weeks ago for
Speaker 1: more details on these strange, of it fascinating adaptations. This
Speaker 1: zone is pretty damn inhospitable, at least from a terrestrial perspective.
Speaker 1: Aside from being completely dark, it's also cold, low and
Speaker 1: oxygen and high end salinity and pressure. Fish down here
Speaker 1: survived either by eating the remains of shallower water fish
Speaker 1: that die and sink, or by eating each other. Next,
Speaker 1: you hit the abysso pelagic zone from the Greek abyssos
Speaker 1: meaning bottomless. This goes from thirteen thousand feet down to
Speaker 1: nearly twenty thou feet and is where many of the
Speaker 1: deepest oceans bottom out, but in certain places, like the
Speaker 1: Mariana Trench, the ocean goes to an even deeper zone,
Speaker 1: the Hado pelagic zone, sometimes called the underworld, since Hado
Speaker 1: comes from Hades, the Greek god of the dead. We're
Speaker 1: talking about depths down to thirty six thousand feet, and honestly,
Speaker 1: we don't really know what lives in that zone because
Speaker 1: we can't get there. For me, like lots of other anglers,
Speaker 1: I think the word pelagic hundres up images of early
Speaker 1: morning offshore runs, sinking the horizon, blow ups in the
Speaker 1: bubble trail, trolling lines, popping off outriggers, scrambling shouts of
Speaker 1: fish on long, sweaty stints, and a fighting harness, prismatic
Speaker 1: flashes through blue water, and if you're lucky, a well
Speaker 1: placed gaffer tag followed by high fives and cold beer.
Speaker 1: It's a word that we've appropriated to describe a particular
Speaker 1: kind of fishing, big targets in open water, but the
Speaker 1: actual definition of pelagic doesn't fit that fantasy very well.
Speaker 1: It's a place of scarcity, a massive watery desert that
Speaker 1: includes the least comfortable parts of this planet. I don't
Speaker 1: exactly know what all this says about fishing culture. Maybe
Speaker 1: it reflects our optimism, our confidence that we can find
Speaker 1: the haystack needles that are pelagic fish. Maybe it just
Speaker 1: shows that we don't actually understand the English language all
Speaker 1: that well. Or maybe it speaks to the kind of
Speaker 1: native intelligence common among our kind. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of anglers who barely passed by all G class by
Speaker 1: sitting tall behind the smart kids, but can recite exactly
Speaker 1: which Booey's, Feds, sea mounts and rex hold particular fish
Speaker 1: in any given conditions. The one thing you got wrong,
Speaker 1: I believe Hank Parker fished the Hato Polegic zone, uh
Speaker 1: well over a dozen years ago with flying lures spider wire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was all about the spider wire. It was right
Speaker 1: when spider wire came out, and it was like, you
Speaker 1: want to hit the Hato Polegic Zone with you know,
Speaker 1: spider wire. I think you're gonna need lead core for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah kidding, But don't on what you said there. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much how I got through some of my science classes, dude,
Speaker 1: Like I was. I was never bold enough to blatantly
Speaker 1: cheat on the test, but I damn shure cop had
Speaker 1: some homework. I also somehow ended up an ap bio
Speaker 1: one year, and what I did in that situation was
Speaker 1: just simply fail. I did not. I intentionally did not
Speaker 1: sign up for ap bio because I knew that if
Speaker 1: I had, I would have either failed or cheated. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I did it. I really don't know.
Speaker 1: It was a patch. But unfortunately for us, there are
Speaker 1: no notes to steal or shoulders to peek over, because
Speaker 1: it's just the two of us going mono amano in
Speaker 1: fish news, fish news. That escalated quickly. All right, so
Speaker 1: before we kick in the news, I do have one
Speaker 1: fan shout out this week, um, and that's going to
Speaker 1: Tyler Berman, who emailed us and the subject line of
Speaker 1: that email was dude snorted as Senko and I followed
Speaker 1: the Reddit link in this email to a video of
Speaker 1: a man getting a Senko removed from his nose by
Speaker 1: a doctor. Now you you watch this A doctor? A
Speaker 1: doctor I'm using I'm using air quotes in my voice
Speaker 1: in case you couldn't tell a doctor. Okay, So I good.
Speaker 1: So you saw this too, You watch this too? And
Speaker 1: this isn't a news story. We can officially use it's
Speaker 1: not news and I think the reason is because, as
Speaker 1: you've just hinted at, I'm calling total bullshit on the
Speaker 1: whole video. I'm calling it fake. Gotta be bullshit. But
Speaker 1: I can't figure out why anyone would stage such an
Speaker 1: elaborate fake. It's not like why. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't and perhaps it's already been debunked. I don't know
Speaker 1: how long it's been around. Um, but I don't think
Speaker 1: the doctor's real or anything, because this dweeb is acting
Speaker 1: like he has a length of barbed wire jammed up
Speaker 1: his nose and they remove this sinko painfully slowly. Okay,
Speaker 1: with with with tweezers. Here's a bit of audio. Oh man,
Speaker 1: oh sorry, it's just so it just feels so weird. Sorry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then and then later, a little bit later, here's
Speaker 1: this Okay, And I don't know if you read the comments, man,
Speaker 1: but most of them were saying what I was thinking,
Speaker 1: which was just pull it out, yea, why are we
Speaker 1: one centimeter at a time like you? It feels like
Speaker 1: one of those I don't know if I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: this right those is a SMR videos, the weird like
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, it feels like they're trying to drag
Speaker 1: out the sound of the plastics slowly sliding from his
Speaker 1: nostril cavity. Like I didn't get it. First of all,
Speaker 1: Sanko's are lubricated out of the package. Man if I did, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I if I had a choice between a senko
Speaker 1: or like a big pen jammed up my snooter, I'd
Speaker 1: take the sanko every time. Every time. Um. And also
Speaker 1: when it finally wiggles out, it's oddly void of boogers.
Speaker 1: So I'm calling I'm calling this fake right, But Tyler, yeah,
Speaker 1: we appreciate you. I'm gonna say one more thing, but
Speaker 1: if you watch this video, like it is very elaborately staged.
Speaker 1: There's like a very doctor seeming actor and a code
Speaker 1: and like they spent some time and some effort and
Speaker 1: some resources making this, and I cannot understand why. So
Speaker 1: that's that's what. And not that I expect many people
Speaker 1: didn't to like just know the soft top of their head.
Speaker 1: But the guy who's getting it pulled out of his
Speaker 1: nose looks like the lead singer of mud Honey. He does.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, that's my fans shout out, Tyler, thank you.
Speaker 1: I mean I've got my little early one, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to shout anybody out by name on this one,
Speaker 1: and it'll make sense in a second. But it does
Speaker 1: connect to that in sort of the shape of the bait.
Speaker 1: A lot of people lately have reached out to us
Speaker 1: with links two lures in the shape of penises, and
Speaker 1: I got to admit that I was I was totally
Speaker 1: ignorant of this like propensity that anglers seem to have
Speaker 1: for casting out phallic lures and trying to get fished
Speaker 1: eat them. I had no idea that was a thing. Man,
Speaker 1: We've gotten We've got links to crank baits, stick baits,
Speaker 1: soft plastics. But remember, I know where you're going now here.
Speaker 1: So we've gotten a lot of links to ones that
Speaker 1: are pre made for sale. Are you going to the
Speaker 1: gentleman that made his own. I'm not calling him out
Speaker 1: because that's one of the ones. There's one the ones
Speaker 1: that I'm not he said. He sent us an email.
Speaker 1: He said, I got a three D printer for Christmas
Speaker 1: and I made this top order and it's a it's
Speaker 1: a penis and nuts, And like in my head, I'm like,
Speaker 1: why why did you make that? And why why did
Speaker 1: you Why did you send that? That's where I'm going?
Speaker 1: Where I'm going? Is I don't get it? Like, is
Speaker 1: this some weird desire to debase the fish? Is it
Speaker 1: like some kind of like dominance thing. I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't. I don't get it. I I
Speaker 1: believe it's all. I don't believe anybody's using those weener lures.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's like a joke you buy for
Speaker 1: your friend, but it was funny thirty years ago, Like
Speaker 1: these are not new, Like you've been able to buy
Speaker 1: them booby and weener lures forever. He just had to
Speaker 1: do it, you know, through mail order instead of on Facebook.
Speaker 1: But it's like the Spencer's Gifts of the fishing world.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying? Yeah? Pretty yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: So I think what we're both saying is we we
Speaker 1: love seeing weird stuff from you guys, but you can
Speaker 1: stop with the dick laures. Like we're not doing a
Speaker 1: sale bin on the dick lures. Nope, we're not sharing
Speaker 1: your homemade dick laure's on Instagram, which I don't know
Speaker 1: why you'd want us to do that anyway, you know, Oh, anyway,
Speaker 1: I just I had that one like the keep coming,
Speaker 1: so I felt like they had to be addressed. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, let's let's move on to some fish news,
Speaker 1: maybe something a little more substances. Okay, alright, alright, fair enough,
Speaker 1: fair enough. So I get to kick off this week
Speaker 1: as a reminder, as always, this is a competition, Miles
Speaker 1: and I don't know what stories the other guys bringing
Speaker 1: to the table, and uh, Madman audio engineer Phil will
Speaker 1: declare a news victor at the end. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to start off today with a nod to a buddy
Speaker 1: of mine, Jason Mark, who's a journalist of the highest caliber,
Speaker 1: exquisite writer. Um and I met Jason two summers ago.
Speaker 1: He was working on a piece about snakeheads on the
Speaker 1: Delaware River water shed for the Philadelphia Inquired and uh,
Speaker 1: he tagged along with me on a snake hunt. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a caveat that has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the story. I just I just have to tell it, right,
Speaker 1: I just have to bring it up. At the time
Speaker 1: I met Jason, he was a very clean cut, well
Speaker 1: pressed man. In and then last summer, last summer, I'm
Speaker 1: snakehead fishing on the side of the road in South
Speaker 1: Jersey and up pulls this pick up with a kayak
Speaker 1: stashed in the back, and out pops a long haired,
Speaker 1: very unshaven Jason, wearing like a full brim boonty hat
Speaker 1: and like he's all sweaty. And it turned out he
Speaker 1: became so snake head obsessed he now spends his summer
Speaker 1: is just mucking around the swamps of South Jersey. And
Speaker 1: I but tell you what, Jason is still writing and
Speaker 1: writing very well, and he recently had a story in
Speaker 1: the New York Times headline the problem with problem sharks. Okay,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna summarize a lot of this because it's
Speaker 1: a long one, right, but here's the gist. We all know.
Speaker 1: I think we all know what shark coals are, Okay.
Speaker 1: Shark bites a swimmer causes mass hysteria, and in the past,
Speaker 1: even here in the US, that would lead to the
Speaker 1: killing of a bunch of sharks in the area of
Speaker 1: the attack, right with the idea of being you're you're
Speaker 1: getting rid of the problem one. Okay. Now, while these
Speaker 1: full on blood bats don't happen like they used to
Speaker 1: in other countries, particularly South Africa and Australia, um, they
Speaker 1: do still use nets and baited hook's. Time to time,
Speaker 1: they're still deployed along some beaches where swimmers and large
Speaker 1: numbers of sharks often mingle. So there's a doctor, Dr
Speaker 1: Eric Kluwa clue c l u A. It's French. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to pronounce. Do you know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce what'ch is? Gonna call him Dr Clua okay um
Speaker 1: And he's a marine biologist based in Paris, and he
Speaker 1: says he's figured out how we can get away from
Speaker 1: shark calls, which, as the story says, is like executing
Speaker 1: everyone in a police line up in order to ensure
Speaker 1: justice was dispensed on the guilty party. And now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from Jason's story here fascinating. Dr Cluis said
Speaker 1: he has found a way to make precision strikes on
Speaker 1: sharks that have attacked people through a form of DNA
Speaker 1: profiling he calls bite printing, and he believes it's usually
Speaker 1: just solo quote problem sharks that attack humans repeatedly analogizing
Speaker 1: them to terrestrial predators that have been documented behaving the
Speaker 1: same way. Instead of culling every bear, tiger or lion
Speaker 1: when only one has serially attacked people. Wildlife managers on
Speaker 1: land usually focus their ire on the culprit. Dr Cluis
Speaker 1: said the problem sharks could be dispatched the same way,
Speaker 1: and once a database of these bite prints is built,
Speaker 1: DNA could be collected from the wounds of people who
Speaker 1: were bitten by sharks and matched to a known shark.
Speaker 1: The offending shark would then need to be found and killed. Okay,
Speaker 1: okay with me so far, I'm with you. I have
Speaker 1: a couple of questions, but finished. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So many other people in the science field, um have
Speaker 1: pooh pooed this idea, and I don't necessarily mean the
Speaker 1: bite printing part. Right. It seems most agree that collecting DNA,
Speaker 1: uh you know, via bite print could work, right, And
Speaker 1: clue Is is perfecting the technique using tiger sharks in
Speaker 1: French Polynesia. And here's a quote. He says, I'll let
Speaker 1: them bite a pig leg or something else with flesh,
Speaker 1: muscle and bone, and that's what he's using to perfect
Speaker 1: this DNA collection from a bite wound. But many people
Speaker 1: are saying, first of all, the idea of a rogue
Speaker 1: jaws like problem shark has been long debunked, Like there's
Speaker 1: really no science that that proves that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Clue is saying. On the other hand, his research and
Speaker 1: data collection will prove the opposite, the problem sharks do exist. Um,
Speaker 1: but I mean, here's where we get our fishy tie in, right,
Speaker 1: what what? What? What this guy fails to address in
Speaker 1: this even though other sources who aren't even anglers have
Speaker 1: addressed it very loudly and the pieces Okay, like, let's
Speaker 1: say this, this data collection proves there's a problem shark
Speaker 1: that's bitten three people, how do you now single it
Speaker 1: out and targeting? That's just that was that was my question.
Speaker 1: That's what. He doesn't address that at all, right, and
Speaker 1: and that's just not how fishing works. So if I'm
Speaker 1: understanding this right, like, theoretically a great white could bite
Speaker 1: someone and say cape and by the time you get
Speaker 1: the data back, assuming that there's a pool of pool
Speaker 1: of data, right, like, I imagine that shark would have
Speaker 1: had to have bitten other people at least two people, right,
Speaker 1: at least two people for for you know, proper data
Speaker 1: to be collected, and then you take the time to determine,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, that's the problem shark. It could be a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty miles off Jersey and five feet of water. Like,
Speaker 1: you can't just take a boat out in the ocean
Speaker 1: and say I want that one. So, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: this is just a case of hard core science not
Speaker 1: jibing with simple common sense. Like in my head, it's
Speaker 1: like teeters on ridiculous. It's like saying, you know, new
Speaker 1: study find serial killers drive cars. Well yeah, but like
Speaker 1: it doesn't doesn't help us find them. So I tend
Speaker 1: to give researchers the benefit of the doubt in these things.
Speaker 1: Not always right, but they're they're generally pretty like smart
Speaker 1: folks who understand complex problem solving. So I would love
Speaker 1: to be able to ask this guy like, what's your
Speaker 1: what's your solution? Man? Like, okay, you've got the DNA
Speaker 1: of the a problem shark. How do you they're they're
Speaker 1: sharks in this area? How do you tell which one
Speaker 1: is the one without killing all of them or sampling? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't get it. No, No, you're right, But even
Speaker 1: if you could tell which one, how do you target
Speaker 1: that shark in a pack of Yeah? I just don't see.
Speaker 1: I don't see how that would ever work. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that. Hypothetically that database could be created,
Speaker 1: but in my opinion, it would take a damn long time.
Speaker 1: Like we like we were saying, in order to identify
Speaker 1: one of those sharks, wouldn't it have to bite multiple
Speaker 1: people and you'd have to have the DNA from multiple people?
Speaker 1: I mean you could would it would do Here's what
Speaker 1: I'll say. It would prove or disprove the idea of
Speaker 1: problem sharks. And so like, if that's what we're going
Speaker 1: for here, you could say, like, oh, this, this person
Speaker 1: and this person, this person were all bit it's the
Speaker 1: same shark. Yeah. But yeah, but even that, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I could counter argue that and say that,
Speaker 1: like if you look at the New Jersey attacks from
Speaker 1: close to shore, the book I did on philistines, here,
Speaker 1: there's a million theories as to why those sharks where
Speaker 1: they're doing that, and in a lot of cases they
Speaker 1: point to environmental things. It's not like those fish were
Speaker 1: blood hungry for humans. They where were they weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to be, or got pushed there because of weather factors,
Speaker 1: or you know, they ran out of a food source here,
Speaker 1: Like what what what is a problem shark? Okay, but
Speaker 1: regardless of the reason why they get there. You can
Speaker 1: say the same thing about bears in that and we
Speaker 1: we do have problem bears. There are usually environmental factors
Speaker 1: to drive a bear to seek an alternate food source
Speaker 1: that maybe become human based, whether it's human food or people.
Speaker 1: But once that's happened, then that bear is a problem.
Speaker 1: I said, it will continue to seek out that food source,
Speaker 1: and so that's where I would say it could be valuable. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well I find the shark. All you do
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, they're a problem. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: think we have to figure something else off that. There's
Speaker 1: a lot more work to be done here, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more and on the kind of on
Speaker 1: the subject of areas of fisheries management where we have
Speaker 1: a lot of work to do. I'm gonna pivot from
Speaker 1: the salt to the fresh air. And you know, in
Speaker 1: in previous Fish News segments, we've talked quite a lot
Speaker 1: about the detrimental impacts of fertilizer, specifically phosphorus on water quality.
Speaker 1: Right and and just a little quick update, nutrients from
Speaker 1: fertilizer using lawns, golf courses and agriculture get into waterways
Speaker 1: and then concentrate in lakes and then cause algae blooms
Speaker 1: lead all kinds of problems, right, like oxygen depletion, soiund
Speaker 1: of bacteria. These these are things we talked about, and
Speaker 1: this is a major and growing problem in fisheries across
Speaker 1: the globe. Right you think about the massive red tides
Speaker 1: and fish hills in Florida, or the blue green algae
Speaker 1: warnings that seem to be just growing in scope and
Speaker 1: scale every summer all over the place. So in light
Speaker 1: of all that, here's my question on this story. Why
Speaker 1: is a ranch on Colorado's Blue River requesting permits to
Speaker 1: intentionally add phosphorus to the river, And why do some
Speaker 1: conservation groups and environmental advocates support the idea? All right,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a little backstory
Speaker 1: here so we can put this. I'm not supposed to answer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to. I'm just I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: was hypothetical rhetorical. Um, not a hypothetal rhetorical All right, First,
Speaker 1: a little backstory. The Blue River cuts through the mountains
Speaker 1: of central Colorado on the west side of the Continental
Speaker 1: Divide in the nineteen sixties, as Colorado's Front Range population
Speaker 1: began to expand, city planners realized that they didn't have
Speaker 1: enough water to support the number of people they were
Speaker 1: hoping to attract into these metropolitan areas east of the divide.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Denver, Colorado, Springs, Pueblo, Fort Collins. So
Speaker 1: they devised massive pipe line projects to divert water through
Speaker 1: the mountains from the wet or western side to the
Speaker 1: drier east side, where all the people want to live
Speaker 1: because it's warm and sunny. The backstory on these water
Speaker 1: diversion projects is like fascinating in and of itself. It's
Speaker 1: it's worthy of its own segment. But but but I I
Speaker 1: ain't got time for all that right now. I just
Speaker 1: need to give you the basics. What's important here is
Speaker 1: that the Blue is one of the rivers that gets diverted,
Speaker 1: moving water from the Dylan Reservoir over to the South
Speaker 1: Platte River, and therefore Denver Dylan Reservoir sits above a
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty one ft high bottom release dam,
Speaker 1: meaning that the water flowing out of that dam into
Speaker 1: the Blue River below comes from the lower reaches of
Speaker 1: the water colum so it remains at a relatively constant
Speaker 1: temperature that's optimal for trout, never getting too hot in
Speaker 1: the summer or too cold in the winter. Just about
Speaker 1: every famous trout fishery in the US sits below a
Speaker 1: bottom release damp for exactly that reason. And and the
Speaker 1: Blue has long been a famous trout fishery. It's it's
Speaker 1: no and for producing just massive rainbows and and big
Speaker 1: browns too. Part of the reason that fishery has remained
Speaker 1: so healthy is that in the nineteen eighties, as the
Speaker 1: mountain towns grew in the upper Blue River basin, water
Speaker 1: quality managers enacted very strict regulations on wastewater discharge, which
Speaker 1: kept levels of pollutants, including phosphorus pretty low. For several decades,
Speaker 1: the Blue was arguably one of the best trophy trout
Speaker 1: rivers in Colorado and the country. Really. Guides and outfitters
Speaker 1: proliferated and profited, and private ranches were bought up along
Speaker 1: the banks, creating exclusive access for their owners and clientele.
Speaker 1: One of those ranches, Blue Valley Ranch, owns a stretch
Speaker 1: so noted for its big fish that local anglers refer
Speaker 1: to it as Jurassic Park. Okay, so now fast forward
Speaker 1: to Colorado Parks and Wildlife stripped a nineteen mile stretch
Speaker 1: of the Blue which includes the Jurassic Park section, of
Speaker 1: its Gold Medal status because they found that the size
Speaker 1: and no umber of trout and the river had significantly declined.
Speaker 1: Biologists explained that the water lacked nutrients, so basically, many
Speaker 1: of the nutrients flowing into the system we're getting trapped
Speaker 1: in Dylan Reservoir and not making their way through the dam.
Speaker 1: Low nutrients means few aquatic plants, which means low numbers
Speaker 1: of aquatic insects, which means no food for trout. So
Speaker 1: this year Blue Valley Ranch, a twenty five thousand acre
Speaker 1: swath of land which again houses that Jurassic Park section,
Speaker 1: wants to pilot a program that would intentionally add nearly
Speaker 1: two thousand gallons of phosphorus to the river annually in
Speaker 1: order to boost nutrient levels and hopefully fish size and populations.
Speaker 1: Now this could sound like an evil plot by a
Speaker 1: rich landowner to improve the fishing on his private stretch
Speaker 1: of river at the expense of the ecosystem, but it's
Speaker 1: it's not actually that simple. Paul Tutor Jones, the second,
Speaker 1: who owns the ranch, the dude, he's actually proven himself
Speaker 1: to be like a pretty good steward of the land
Speaker 1: in the water and wildlife. He's he spent a lot
Speaker 1: of his money trying to improve habitat. He he built
Speaker 1: these uh, these these wildlife corridors to get through the
Speaker 1: busy highway near there so there were less issues. He's
Speaker 1: set up a foundation that works to protect the mangroves
Speaker 1: in Florida, and he's just he's done a ton of
Speaker 1: stream habitat restoration on the Blue which not only benefits
Speaker 1: him but all the anglers, the fish that river. So
Speaker 1: various local conservation groups and water planning organizations are backing
Speaker 1: this project that includes Trout Unlimited, the Blue River Watershed Group,
Speaker 1: and the Colorado Basin Round Table, and they're hoping that
Speaker 1: this has the potential to rehabilitate the section of the river.
Speaker 1: But what I'm wanting, like, what does rehabilitation really mean here?
Speaker 1: We're talking about an artificial system that's been damned and
Speaker 1: redirected and planted with completely non native fish that grow
Speaker 1: to disproportionately large sizes. Sarah Marshall, an eco hydrologist with
Speaker 1: the Colorado Natural Heritage Program at Colorado State University. She
Speaker 1: sees value in the Blue Valley Ranches experiment, but said
Speaker 1: further tinkering with the river to restore it could have risks.
Speaker 1: She told The Aspen Times, the proposed study sounds like
Speaker 1: a band aid rather than fixing the underlying causes of
Speaker 1: degraded stream habitat. And I gotta say, man, I'm as
Speaker 1: as I so often, and I'm torn on this one.
Speaker 1: I fished the Blue and it's it's an incredible fishery,
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's amazing, and and I hate to
Speaker 1: see a section of stream lose its fish, particularly one
Speaker 1: that's as good as that one. But I'm also not
Speaker 1: totally comfortable with intentionally adding phosphorus to a river when
Speaker 1: we're working so hard to limit the nutrient load in
Speaker 1: in so many of our waters. Right, it might help
Speaker 1: that twenty mile stretch it's lacking nutrients, but then just
Speaker 1: add to the problem downstream. Right, it seems like one
Speaker 1: of those situations where we've completely screwed up a natural
Speaker 1: system and we're just gonna keep doing more and more tinkering,
Speaker 1: thinking that like screwing it up further, we'll fix what
Speaker 1: we've already done. But projects like that don't really have
Speaker 1: a great record. So it's a tough one, man, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: And it's it's a hard one for me to speak
Speaker 1: to you because I I certainly know the blue I've
Speaker 1: never fished it. I mean I'm not I'm not that
Speaker 1: in tune with that particular river. But you can't help
Speaker 1: but see both sides of it. I mean, without knowing
Speaker 1: what the vegetation in there look like. I mean that
Speaker 1: that is important, and forget all the pollution and conservation.
Speaker 1: I mean, you get a high water year here on
Speaker 1: the river and then the grass doesn't grow, the fishing
Speaker 1: sucks in certain spots, like you like, you do need that.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I also think that you can overprotect something
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you look at something like this
Speaker 1: that was so special and blue ribbon, how many great
Speaker 1: trout streams out there are not protected nearly as much
Speaker 1: as this one is. I mean, especially like I look
Speaker 1: at Pennsylvania. There's a lot of great trout streams in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania that I mean, they're not coddled the way some
Speaker 1: of these Western fisheries are. There's all kinds of ship
Speaker 1: dumping into them, and they still fish, and they have
Speaker 1: big fish in them. And so I'm not saying you
Speaker 1: can't do anything, but I mean I don't have a
Speaker 1: firm answer on that either, because I see that I
Speaker 1: see the value both ways. But I mean, this wasn't
Speaker 1: This was not a trophy trout stream initially. Originally, if
Speaker 1: we're talking about what it used to be, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be probably a pretty good
Speaker 1: cut cutthroat stream, but no one really knows because there
Speaker 1: was so much mining activity in that area in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds it basically killed everything off. And then in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties they built this dam to to send
Speaker 1: water over to Denver, which created this bottom release fishery
Speaker 1: that grew these massive trout and for forty years it
Speaker 1: was great, and then they ran our nutrients. It's not
Speaker 1: great anymore. So I mean, what are we fixing? What
Speaker 1: are we trying to restore? Yeah, you're you're fixing something
Speaker 1: that was manufactured from from from the get go, right,
Speaker 1: And I get it. Like, I love big trout streams too,
Speaker 1: I love bottom release dams, I love tailwaters. There's some
Speaker 1: of my favorite places fish. But is it worth potentially
Speaker 1: adding more phosphorus load to the Greater Colorado River system
Speaker 1: that could us things up downstream just to have that
Speaker 1: one piece go back to what it was for a
Speaker 1: very short period of time. The correct the correct answer
Speaker 1: to that is probably not. I mean probably not. But
Speaker 1: I mean, did you know how anglers are, man, It's
Speaker 1: like people care most about what where they're fishing and
Speaker 1: how it affects what they want to do. And I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a problem with so many conservation issues, is
Speaker 1: we're worried about right here and now and not fifty
Speaker 1: miles from here. I mean, it happens all the time.
Speaker 1: And and look, I get a lot of people make
Speaker 1: their living guiding that river. And I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: say that their needs aren't serious or significant. I I
Speaker 1: just it's it's a hard one. It's complicated, it's it's
Speaker 1: a very hard one. It's very and I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think we'll we'll necessarily resolve it here um, but
Speaker 1: by all means, email us way in. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on it. And how do I segway
Speaker 1: this Well, hopefully it'll get back to a status of
Speaker 1: of some serious meat eating trout gigantic meat eaters, which
Speaker 1: is a that's a that's a ship segue. But I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to see where it goes, now,
Speaker 1: like here's here's where it's gonna go, because this this
Speaker 1: is a fun one that's ironically going to pair perfectly
Speaker 1: with this week's closing and the line segments. So stay
Speaker 1: tuned for that. But you'll know where that's going as
Speaker 1: soon as I read this headline here from Louisiana Sportsman.
Speaker 1: Two catfish eat family of ducks. Okay, So this pair,
Speaker 1: this pair of blue cats was caught by angler Nick
Speaker 1: Price your Homa and the fish wade nineteen and a
Speaker 1: half and twenty point two pounds, so definitely respectable blue cats, right,
Speaker 1: but not like super tanker monsters either. And according to
Speaker 1: the story, Nick noticed the guts on these cats were
Speaker 1: abnormally extended, so after fileeing, he slit open the stomachs
Speaker 1: and outpoured a whole family of ducks. Wow, okay, and
Speaker 1: Nick says one cat was full of just babies. The
Speaker 1: other one had one baby and the mama duck. So
Speaker 1: like the full grown duck, he can't be mallards, That's
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna say. There's no way these are. These
Speaker 1: have got to be a smaller duck. Anyway, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: throw a shot up on the on our our weekly
Speaker 1: Bent Insto stories so you guys can see it. They're
Speaker 1: they're pretty. You could tell their ducks. They're kind of decomposed.
Speaker 1: And I'm not I'm not a bird person. I don't
Speaker 1: know what they are. But one is definitely a full
Speaker 1: grown duck. Okay um, because that's what I thought. Like babies,
Speaker 1: I understand. But the mama duck, that's impressive, especially considering
Speaker 1: these were not forty fifty pound blue cats like twins.
Speaker 1: Good but it's not. It's not insane. So Nick Nick
Speaker 1: reckons the fish were paired up and swimming around together
Speaker 1: when they happened upon the Ducksworth family here, and he
Speaker 1: says he showed this the pictures of the stomach contents
Speaker 1: to his dad and uncle and they've both been catfishing
Speaker 1: this area for fifty years and said they've never seen
Speaker 1: anything like that. Now remember that part right there, as
Speaker 1: you ventured into the end of the line segment. Fifty
Speaker 1: years the local cat crew had never seen anything like this.
Speaker 1: That will be important again later. But Nick says he
Speaker 1: did do some research and found some video of catfish
Speaker 1: taking shots at ducks and other birds, which I've seen
Speaker 1: them wells catfish over in Europe particular. Right, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't think Nick's gonna start baiting
Speaker 1: with with duck parts. He did, however, add, and I'm
Speaker 1: quoting here, I have an unusual catfish bait. It only
Speaker 1: catches big catfish. It won't catch a lot, but you
Speaker 1: catch bigger ones with more meat than five small ones.
Speaker 1: His secret speckled trout belly. Hm. Now he says it's
Speaker 1: prime catfish bait. They love it. I've been using it
Speaker 1: here for at least three years. My biggest catch has
Speaker 1: been about thirty eight pounds Nick, Like, what just ride
Speaker 1: on the ducks? Band? Like, why are you give your
Speaker 1: sh it away like that? You know we're there's a
Speaker 1: chance that we're gonna tell it to everybody, but you know,
Speaker 1: I mean we kind of just so. Um. I just
Speaker 1: thought that was an interesting little one. You know that
Speaker 1: the birds pop up now and again, the mice and
Speaker 1: the voles and the things and the trout stomachs. But
Speaker 1: I I don't ever recall seeing a whole family at
Speaker 1: ducks in blue cat's stomachs before. I haven't. I've don't.
Speaker 1: Actually I've never caught a blue cat, so I can't
Speaker 1: speak to it. But no, well never kind of blue
Speaker 1: that I've caught lots of other cats, but I've never
Speaker 1: caught a blue. Um. I sort of from my my
Speaker 1: second story today, I also went a little bit more
Speaker 1: like lighthearted and fun, not not quite so sciency and serious.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a but but like you, you
Speaker 1: know you you went, you went salt into fresh, and
Speaker 1: I went fresh and now went to salt. So we're
Speaker 1: getting a whole smattering of everything. And and I'll admit
Speaker 1: my first story was really long, so the second one
Speaker 1: is going to be pretty short. I gotta I gotta
Speaker 1: close with the best headline, and that's purely why I
Speaker 1: picked the story. The best headline I found all week.
Speaker 1: Fish sex organs boosted under high c O two and
Speaker 1: this one came from PiZZ dot org, one of those
Speaker 1: science journalism websites that I enjoyed just like hanging around on.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm gonna file this in the very very
Speaker 1: slim category of benefits of climate change. So a new
Speaker 1: study out of the University of Adelaide found that one
Speaker 1: particular species of reef fish looks like it may actually
Speaker 1: benefit from ocean acidification. You know that that that's happening
Speaker 1: right now as a result of increased CO two in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. The common triple fin or for sterry gin
Speaker 1: la pillum I know I blew that uh is a
Speaker 1: shallow water species found off the coast of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: When exposed to increased levels of oceanic acidity, these fish
Speaker 1: produced more sperm and eggs and take better care of
Speaker 1: their fertile ova. The research team compared the triple fin
Speaker 1: found in areas of underwater volcanic seeps that naturally have
Speaker 1: high levels of carbon dioxide with fish found outside those areas,
Speaker 1: and they discovered that those fish experienced no negative effects
Speaker 1: from acidification and significant increase in gonad production. The males
Speaker 1: in the area of high acid eight and foraged more,
Speaker 1: and the females devoted more of their energy to a
Speaker 1: vary in production. The researchers also found that the male
Speaker 1: spent more time and energy guarding the fertilized eggs, which
Speaker 1: might lead to better recruitment. So there's the good news
Speaker 1: and all this. The bad news is that we're talking
Speaker 1: about tide pool fish that grow to a whopping eight centimeters.
Speaker 1: So like, I don't think you're gonna look for the
Speaker 1: triple fin to take the place of your favorite sport fish,
Speaker 1: which are not going to fare so well from acidified oceans.
Speaker 1: But hey, something's gonna do, all right. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what to say about that. I was thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe they were like a different version of the triple tail,
Speaker 1: I know, I was. I was like, oh, like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're talking about tiny little tide pool fish that uh,
Speaker 1: that will do great whenever the else dies. Here here's
Speaker 1: what I'll say about that. I once did an interview
Speaker 1: with a very smart gentleman who wrote a very great
Speaker 1: book about micro fishing, and I was like, what is
Speaker 1: all this about? And and and it was a very
Speaker 1: interesting conversation. But one of the things that he said
Speaker 1: is like, you know, micro fishermen might be laughing all
Speaker 1: the way to the bank because at some point like
Speaker 1: that might be what's left and then you have not
Speaker 1: honed your micro phishing skills and therefore will not survive.
Speaker 1: So don't joke. You never know if you don't. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what we're gonna be fishing
Speaker 1: for in thirty years or what's gonna gonna be the
Speaker 1: thing that that makes me most excited? It might be
Speaker 1: a whopper. I got an eight centimeter broye, but at
Speaker 1: the same time huge like like when are we when
Speaker 1: are we gonna get like the like the you know,
Speaker 1: some climate change thing produces ten pound blue gills, you know,
Speaker 1: like we've been hearing about that our whole life, Like
Speaker 1: the radioactive like gonna get some of that, you know?
Speaker 1: You know, well, at least we know at least one
Speaker 1: fish seems like he's gonna benefit from it. So maybe
Speaker 1: others will too. Who knows, We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll all
Speaker 1: find out soon enough. We can only hope either we
Speaker 1: clean up the whole climate and the whole thing, or
Speaker 1: we just hope for like, you know, stupid radioactive fish. Uh.
Speaker 1: Phil has got a lot of take in here. We
Speaker 1: got um sexual fish, organs, duck duck sauce, uh, catfish
Speaker 1: with duck sauce, catfish, Yeah, miracle grow sprinkle a little
Speaker 1: miracle grow, and your favorite trout stream uh and shark hunting. Phil.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you're thinking. Man, We'll see which
Speaker 1: way you sway this weekend. As soon as we're done
Speaker 1: hearing from you. It's on too awkward moments in Angling
Speaker 1: Quack Quack Joe Simmeli, you are the winner this week.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to ask you, guys, um for
Speaker 1: a favor for a friend of mine. Um, if you
Speaker 1: guys come across any new stories about how increased CEO
Speaker 1: two levels can improve the performance of human sex organs
Speaker 1: or anything, it doesn't have to be CEO two, go
Speaker 1: ahead and pass those stories belong to me and I'll
Speaker 1: forward them on to my friend for you know, no reason. Thanks,
Speaker 1: Why did you take a picture? A life? So I
Speaker 1: want to say I feel bad about what we're about
Speaker 1: to do here, but I don't. I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: feel bad because you guys send us shots to trash
Speaker 1: like you guys opt into this. You put the ship
Speaker 1: talk ball squarely in our court, and you say things
Speaker 1: like here's a picture destroy me. So I can't. I
Speaker 1: can't feel too bad because those are the emails that
Speaker 1: we get guilt at all, exactly right. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: enjoy this one a little more usual because, um, today's
Speaker 1: awkward moment awkward photo is from a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna deconstruct a photo of this pal
Speaker 1: or maybe former pal, Kevin Hughes. And when he sent
Speaker 1: this shot, he didn't even provide a backstory. He was
Speaker 1: basically like, Hey, you said you were looking for awkward shots.
Speaker 1: Here you go. That's what I got from Kevin. And
Speaker 1: I don't know Kevin at all, but I feel zero
Speaker 1: issue with with trash in this one because awkward awkward
Speaker 1: it is. Again, I don't know this guy, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say that Kevin is either just
Speaker 1: incredibly self confident, like just just one of those people
Speaker 1: who's automatically comfortable in their skin no matter how they look,
Speaker 1: or totally unaware of what he was getting into when
Speaker 1: he offered up the shot. Well, I I can tell
Speaker 1: you that he's totally confident now because a quick bit
Speaker 1: of backstory on keV. I've known him for years and
Speaker 1: he lives down in Miami and you can find him
Speaker 1: on the Instagram at small Craft Advisory Fishing, which is
Speaker 1: a very clever name considering his stick kayak fishing, and
Speaker 1: he produces all kinds of cool videos and social media
Speaker 1: and even guides a bit. But when I say kayak fishing,
Speaker 1: I mean like giant tarpin and snook and tuna and
Speaker 1: all kinds of macho stuff like he gets after it.
Speaker 1: Kevin is not at the golf course pond, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And while I don't have time to
Speaker 1: explain why, I also believe he's one of the luckiest
Speaker 1: anglers on the planet. I have joked with with mutual
Speaker 1: friends more than once that he has a horseshoe stuck
Speaker 1: up his ass, so good for him. He's lucky. Kevin
Speaker 1: is also a gorgeous man, Like, no kidding. Over the years,
Speaker 1: my own wife has been like, OMG, Kevin Hughes is
Speaker 1: so hot, and I'm like, yeah, a famous celebrity, it's
Speaker 1: a buddy, and I'm like, other than being in shape
Speaker 1: and cut and having the stamina the paddle far enough
Speaker 1: out to catch sailfish on a kayak, we're basically the
Speaker 1: same person hunt you know. Yeah, I'm sure no other
Speaker 1: than other than his like seemingly chiseled physique, his his
Speaker 1: southern location and his badass jackalope tattoo. You guys are
Speaker 1: basically twins. We are. But then Kevin had to go
Speaker 1: send us this photo of him in April two thousand
Speaker 1: one standing on the shore of a Colorado Lake, and
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to begin, but I guess
Speaker 1: I'll start here. Fourteen year old Kevin was not so cut,
Speaker 1: not at all. And let's just say he was likely
Speaker 1: familiar with Oxy or stride X pads. Okay, and look,
Speaker 1: I was too. I'm not making fun of that. I'm
Speaker 1: just we're we're stating facts about the photo, pointing things out,
Speaker 1: and I felt the need to go there. No, that's
Speaker 1: that's I think. I think it's earned. And I also
Speaker 1: feel like I gotta say I was an oxy guy myself.
Speaker 1: And for the young guns out there who grew up
Speaker 1: in the big farmer generation, we're talking about a stringent acnepads,
Speaker 1: all right, not hillbilly heroin. But I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: one to pick on a little kid's pimples. I'd consider
Speaker 1: that a low blow. I will reserve my ridicule for
Speaker 1: the clothes that his mom probably bought for him. And
Speaker 1: young Kevin's mom seems like she had good taste, because
Speaker 1: his attire is what's what's what's the magic to stunning?
Speaker 1: It's stunning. I'm dying to get into that shirt, but
Speaker 1: I will. I will start at the top. I will
Speaker 1: hold back Kevin is wearing a white Abercrombie visor, which
Speaker 1: leads me to believe that he was either the last
Speaker 1: preppy kids still wearing Abercrombie in two thousand one, or
Speaker 1: he was really into eminem and I hope it was
Speaker 1: the ladder, Like I hope that when he wasn't fishing,
Speaker 1: he was just watching eight Mile on repeat and daydreaming
Speaker 1: about himself winning rap battles. Let's say, strong chance there
Speaker 1: were slim shady posters in this room. Yeah yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the shirt. The shirt sort of backs that up. Okay,
Speaker 1: this shirt, it's loose, flowy and breathable, button up like
Speaker 1: a Hawaiian shirt, but it's got this crazy Asian print happening, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all over the place. It's a white shirt,
Speaker 1: but it's just slathered with Chinese letters and dragons, just
Speaker 1: all different color dragons, man like, randomized all over the shirt.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I hate, I hate to rumpt you,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure that when I saw Wu Tang
Speaker 1: play in Hawaii, one of them was wearing that shirt.
Speaker 1: Oh you saw Woo Tang? Yeah? Man, all right, we
Speaker 1: can't get off on that now, but there you go.
Speaker 1: So that's that's that you just made the shirt cooler
Speaker 1: and kind of ruined the whole make fun of the thing.
Speaker 1: But anyway, um, I look at it and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: this is kind of foreshadowing, right, because I was like,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of kind of a little bit scarface.
Speaker 1: And Kevin did end up moving to Miami, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So it's like a little picture of
Speaker 1: the future, like what he's gonna rock and you know
Speaker 1: where he lives. Um, but can't you see him at
Speaker 1: the mall with his friends falling in love with that shirt,
Speaker 1: like what you know, while there were no adults there,
Speaker 1: like I bought you know, weird clothes and stuff when
Speaker 1: I was at the mall with my friends and my dad,
Speaker 1: you know, Paradjenko is my dad be like, what the
Speaker 1: hell you wearing bell bottoms? You know what happened all
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, yes, I can relate to that,
Speaker 1: but the shirt does not flag that way for me.
Speaker 1: It's just like, guy, I think we have different perspectives
Speaker 1: on that shirt. The Asian themed Hawaiian shirt just doesn't
Speaker 1: throw me at all. I can picture I can actually
Speaker 1: picture some I think some of my high school teachers
Speaker 1: wore that shirt in the late nineties. If I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: and I would probably still rock that shirt to this day.
Speaker 1: I could see you where and I you know what,
Speaker 1: damn it, I could see you wearing that shirt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could do a Christmas party or something, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: or just out fishing on a summer day. It could happen.
Speaker 1: I will admit that the shirt feels a little out
Speaker 1: of place, like with the backdrop of the Colorado High
Speaker 1: Mountain Lake. So yeah, I see, I see how it's
Speaker 1: a little out of place there. But I can't throw
Speaker 1: too much shade because I can see myself doing that.
Speaker 1: But let's let's move off the shirt. Let's move on
Speaker 1: to the fish. Kevin's holding a small rainbow trout. And
Speaker 1: it's not like when I stay small. We're not talking
Speaker 1: like four inches of fury small. It's but it's also
Speaker 1: not it's not what I would put into the hog category, right,
Speaker 1: Just let's call it a twelve venture. It's a perfectly
Speaker 1: respectable fish for a fourteen year old kid to get
Speaker 1: excited about. He could have used maybe a little guidance
Speaker 1: on the on the hold, like maybe loosen up the
Speaker 1: full hand around the girl's death grip. But again, I've
Speaker 1: seen worse. It's not the worst I've seen. Yeah, see,
Speaker 1: we may disagree here, but like, what what strikes me
Speaker 1: is a look on his face, right, a face, by
Speaker 1: the way, that's wearing glasses that I don't recall being
Speaker 1: in style. Okay, just the these thin gold framed oblong
Speaker 1: not sunglasses. These are like glasses, glasses that I just
Speaker 1: I don't feel matches age. It's like he's trying to
Speaker 1: find his own style with with the ensemble, with the clothing,
Speaker 1: but like these are the glasses like his mom bought
Speaker 1: him six years earlier that he's still wearing. Okay, but anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't think the ensemble belongs in this fishy setting.
Speaker 1: And his face to me looks as though someone else
Speaker 1: caught the trout and handed it to him and said,
Speaker 1: he hold my trout for a sect, dude, And then
Speaker 1: like before he could respond and say I don't know
Speaker 1: how to hold a fish, someone quickly snapped his photo.
Speaker 1: That's what I see. I get that. The thing that
Speaker 1: sticks out for me on that one is just his
Speaker 1: apparent total lack of enthusiasm, right, and it doesn't come
Speaker 1: off like it doesn't come off like the I'm too
Speaker 1: cool to look excited aloof teenager thing, which I would
Speaker 1: understand for a fourteen year old. It doesn't feel like that.
Speaker 1: It feels strangely more wholesome, Like if I were to
Speaker 1: caption this photo, it would say something like, hey, this
Speaker 1: fishing stuff is pretty neat, Like that's what did she's saying,
Speaker 1: like the moose from Wally World. Actually, this fish is
Speaker 1: a pretty neat one. But my big takeaway from the
Speaker 1: photo is that I'm looking at someone who has no
Speaker 1: business being as comfortable and confident in his body as
Speaker 1: he seems to be. Like I don't know how he
Speaker 1: can have that look of confidence and be the fourteen
Speaker 1: year old kid that he is, and it seems like, man,
Speaker 1: I gotta see. I gotta say, it seems like it's
Speaker 1: all worked out for him, because you say, Kevin sprouted
Speaker 1: into an absolute angling badass. And my my final point
Speaker 1: here is that this picture should provide hope to all
Speaker 1: the mid puberty kids out there stuck somewhere between wanting
Speaker 1: to be k v D and I don't know what's
Speaker 1: called post bologne depending on and they're like they're like
Speaker 1: trying to make the decision based on what they think
Speaker 1: is going to get them get them more attention from
Speaker 1: the people that they're interested in romantically. But here's a
Speaker 1: hit for all of you. It's always the musician and
Speaker 1: not of the fisherman. Always just playing simple. You'll make
Speaker 1: it so much more being a drummer and a Deaf
Speaker 1: Leppard cover band, you know, especially considering you have two arms,
Speaker 1: than like winning the bass Master Classics. True, but listen
Speaker 1: there there is a video of Kevin out there paddling
Speaker 1: under ten docks with a forty pound snook on the line,
Speaker 1: passing his rod around pilings twelve times, and you're watching
Speaker 1: this go and there's no way to do it is
Speaker 1: landing this fish. But he us amazing angler Queues, You're
Speaker 1: an American badass, and we do thank you for sending
Speaker 1: this okay, and to everyone else, if you're dying to
Speaker 1: be this embarrassed on our podcast, please keep those shots
Speaker 1: coming to Bent at the meat eater dot com. You
Speaker 1: know what I gotta say, Kevin's story is the life
Speaker 1: story of his that you you laid out there kind
Speaker 1: of makes me think of the fairy tale the Ugly duckling.
Speaker 1: You remember that one, of course, I do. It's classic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I got the modern, like watered down version of that
Speaker 1: original story because I was looking at I was, I
Speaker 1: was looking this up, something to do with like getting
Speaker 1: my kid new books and the original by Hans Christian Anderson.
Speaker 1: And it's like so many other classic fairy tales, it's
Speaker 1: so much more brutal stuff the kids get nowadays. Like
Speaker 1: it's not a nice little fun story, no, totally. Man. Like,
Speaker 1: my daughter is really into the Little Mermaid and I,
Speaker 1: you know, Disney, the whole deal, and I but I
Speaker 1: found out, much to my surprise, not long ago, that
Speaker 1: was originally a Hans Christian Anderson tale. I did not
Speaker 1: know that. And in his book, in order to walk
Speaker 1: on land, she had to drink a potion that made
Speaker 1: her feel like she was constantly walking on knives. I mean,
Speaker 1: how terrible is that? And then after enduring all that pain, um,
Speaker 1: the Prince marries another gal and the Little Mermaid kills herself.
Speaker 1: So they left that out of the musical, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we were part of that world, you know, Oh
Speaker 1: that was good. That was good. Yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: look at that stuff and then we wonder why we're
Speaker 1: bitching about the fact that kids are softer nowadays than
Speaker 1: they were in the eight hundreds. Anyway, I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to de rail us into talking about gory fairy tales
Speaker 1: and sensitive children. I was really trying to set up
Speaker 1: a nice little segway there, because for end of the line,
Speaker 1: Joe is going to tell us about some ugly ducklings
Speaker 1: whose entire purpose in life is to elicit violence. Not
Speaker 1: loud enough. Tracing the history of any style of lore
Speaker 1: to its true origins is often pretty difficult. The first
Speaker 1: frog lore is as an example. We're likely whittled in
Speaker 1: a backwoods cabin and crushing fish long before the world
Speaker 1: was introduced to the rubber snag proof frog. In many cases,
Speaker 1: a lure's story starts when either the inventor or someone
Speaker 1: with more business savvy than the inventor begins mass production,
Speaker 1: and such is the case with the first duckling lore.
Speaker 1: I went down quite a rabbit hole trying to get
Speaker 1: a beat on the first duckling to hit tackle shop shelves,
Speaker 1: and to the best of my research, it was the
Speaker 1: creed duck spelled c r e d u K. Multiple
Speaker 1: kind of reliable sources have its mass production starting in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. That mass production happened in the town
Speaker 1: of Oregon, Ohio, and the creed Duck was the brainchild
Speaker 1: of Mr Bill Zabo. The cree duck was made of
Speaker 1: molded plastic and looks exactly precisely like a classic bathtub
Speaker 1: or bur ducky de bait. Has a flat bottom, and
Speaker 1: it's through wired with one big old honk and treble
Speaker 1: hook dangling behind the ass region. On either side of
Speaker 1: that hook, two more wires create little duckling legs, each
Speaker 1: with a small silver spinner blade at the end. Cree Ducks,
Speaker 1: at least per eBay were available in classic, black and yellow,
Speaker 1: black and white, and even white and cinnamon. Though Zabo
Speaker 1: was eventually bought out by a larger manufacturer, it seems
Speaker 1: as though the cree duck was made through at least
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. What's most interesting about it, however, is
Speaker 1: its origin, which I learned about from a single magazine
Speaker 1: ad I've found online from the nineteen sixties that appears
Speaker 1: to be written by Zabo himself. Across the top, it reads,
Speaker 1: Indian guide tells all, now you can use his secret
Speaker 1: to catch big fish. Having fished the Cree river system
Speaker 1: in Northern Canada, I knew right away he was talking
Speaker 1: about the Cree Indians, hence the lore name. The ad
Speaker 1: says nobody could figure out how the Cree guides were
Speaker 1: managing to consistently at stringers of massive pike, which is silly,
Speaker 1: because I know for a fact the pike up there
Speaker 1: will swipe it a gym sock. Still, it goes on
Speaker 1: to say it was only after I had become almost
Speaker 1: a blood brother to an Indian guide that I found
Speaker 1: out how they were using a crudely carved and painted
Speaker 1: wooden duckling with hooks attached. Zabo even guaranteed success with
Speaker 1: your Cree duck in the ad and offered a full
Speaker 1: refund within ten days if you weren't satisfied. I cannot help,
Speaker 1: but wonder how many refunds he gave, because I have
Speaker 1: never been satisfied with the duckling lure, not once ever,
Speaker 1: and in my opinion, they fall squarely in the novelty category.
Speaker 1: Not only have I never caught a fish on one,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a live duckling gets snatched in person.
Speaker 1: I want to see it. I think we all want
Speaker 1: to see it and love the idea of a pike
Speaker 1: or muskie or bass that sucks living foul off the surface.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think duckling loure is sold back
Speaker 1: in the day and continue to sell now. Though duckling
Speaker 1: sort of faded away in the eighties and nineties, companies
Speaker 1: like Savage Gear recently resurrect them. If you fish and
Speaker 1: are on social media, strong chance you caught that fairly
Speaker 1: recent video of a kayak angler nailing a monster pike
Speaker 1: on a buzzing Savage Gear suicide duck. Search for ducklings
Speaker 1: getting eaten by fish on YouTube and you'll find plenty
Speaker 1: of clips. Nobody, including me, ever said it doesn't happen
Speaker 1: or never happens. In fact, I also know there are
Speaker 1: certain leagues in Canada that basically have a yearly duckling
Speaker 1: hatch and the pike gobbled them up like tic TACs.
Speaker 1: But I call bullshit on the idea that a duckling
Speaker 1: is some sort of secret weapon everywhere the way I
Speaker 1: look at them, If you throw it long enough, eventually
Speaker 1: something's going to collaborate. The massive Instagram attention you'd get
Speaker 1: from the shot might be worth it. Two Some but
Speaker 1: I have in the patients to throw a lore I
Speaker 1: have no confidence in for more than twenty minutes, and
Speaker 1: I will quickly op for something I know the fish
Speaker 1: eat on a regular basis. My colleague and buddy, Sam
Speaker 1: Longran Mediator's fishing editor, echoes my feeling. But then there
Speaker 1: was a muskie trip he took with his dad on
Speaker 1: the Flambeau in Immediately after his old man called his
Speaker 1: first ever muskie, he cut off the whopper plopper that
Speaker 1: at trashed and tied on one of them new fangled
Speaker 1: suicide ducks. Sam scoffed, and I get the impression he
Speaker 1: was mildly embarrassed in front of their guide. Few casts in, though,
Speaker 1: that duck got hammered by a forty plus injury, which
Speaker 1: might not have gone over so well considering Sam was
Speaker 1: working really hard on that trip to get one on fly.
Speaker 1: And as Sam put it, my dad fished that damn
Speaker 1: lord for the next day and a half without so
Speaker 1: much as a passing glance. Did that fish really identify
Speaker 1: that as a duckling or did it just make the
Speaker 1: right sound and get in front of a fish that
Speaker 1: was ready to kill. We'll never know, even though I
Speaker 1: think you know what I think, and Sam, I do
Speaker 1: hope your dad gleaned all the install love he could
Speaker 1: out of those photos. Well that's all we have for
Speaker 1: you today. But if your new year's resolution us to
Speaker 1: start scrapbooking like I know Joe's was, this week's page
Speaker 1: would include the worst use yet for fly reels, further
Speaker 1: proof that anglers are either illiterate, brilliant, or some combination
Speaker 1: of both. A Cinderella story of inspiration for all the
Speaker 1: pimplee fat kids out there fondling their zep cos, and
Speaker 1: possibly the best worst lure ever invented. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: terrific as. Always send us a note and let us
Speaker 1: know what you're up to it Bent at the meat
Speaker 1: Eator dot com we look forward to all your news ideas,
Speaker 1: bar nomination, sabin items, awkward photos, love letters, and unmitigated
Speaker 1: hate mail. We do, to be fair, most of those
Speaker 1: are for a lance fee. Uh. No, matter what you
Speaker 1: have to say, we will read it, and if you
Speaker 1: make us laugh, we'll be sure to send a degenerate
Speaker 1: angler sticker your way. Just be sure to send us
Speaker 1: your address too. That's right, We're also keeping an eye
Speaker 1: on the degenerate angler and bent podcast hashtags if you're
Speaker 1: into the whole gram thing. But remember, even if you're
Speaker 1: like Miles and hate social media, you're all is welcome
Speaker 1: here