Speaker 1: Do you roll a surf cart full of tackle and
Speaker 1: three ten a foot rods onto a crowded beach and
Speaker 1: so blood wearings for Croaker's right where everyone is swimming.
Speaker 1: Did you bring your favorite tackle, lures, a cooler of
Speaker 1: food and drake if you feel you need it? And
Speaker 1: away we go, getting these guys and just left Wall
Speaker 1: Street a half an hour ago. They're like came in
Speaker 1: the world. And then they get on the boat and
Speaker 1: they can't cash bro deserves and raids. And to that,
Speaker 1: I say, broke could have also been restocking the thing
Speaker 1: um of bombers. Good morning to generate anglers and welcome
Speaker 1: to Bend, the fishing podcast that relies solely on the
Speaker 1: Flexile family of products for everything from mending outboard fuel
Speaker 1: lines to turning any pair of pants in the waiters
Speaker 1: to make in any live bit of soft plastic. I'm
Speaker 1: Joe sphermelli a mouth nulty uh, and I I have
Speaker 1: no idea where this is going, but I do feel
Speaker 1: like I feel like I need to I need to
Speaker 1: be the voice of reason here and and and put
Speaker 1: out a little p s A. We have not picked
Speaker 1: up flex Seal as a sponsor. Joe's not doing this
Speaker 1: out of obligation. This is not a hard sell. I
Speaker 1: don't know where the flex seal is coming from. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true, that that's accurate. However, I wouldn't mind picking
Speaker 1: him up as a sponsor um because I'm about some
Speaker 1: flex seal. Matter of fact. Matter of fact, the best
Speaker 1: fly fishing trick I know revolves around it. Do you
Speaker 1: wanna know what it is? Clear flex seal, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is the best sealing for foam flies, flier flex s. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you didn't even know there was You're not on
Speaker 1: the inside of the flex seal famil products, right, But
Speaker 1: I learned this. But I learned this from my bud,
Speaker 1: Carl Harris at c g H Custom Tackle. You actually
Speaker 1: own some of his bugs. He sent its someone I
Speaker 1: gave you um and you guys should also, you guys
Speaker 1: listening should check him out. But anyway, Carl figured out
Speaker 1: that clear flex seal like adds adorable shell, but true
Speaker 1: to its name, stays flexible when dry. And I haven't
Speaker 1: used anything else to seal a popper or a foam
Speaker 1: bug since. But right, bonus tip, bonus tip, you have
Speaker 1: to buy the jar of brush a will flex seal. Right,
Speaker 1: not the spray and double bonus tip. Here's another bonus tip,
Speaker 1: poured into a mason jar to store it because it's
Speaker 1: more airtight like the can ends up not ceiling after
Speaker 1: a while. Right, so poured into him ball mason jar.
Speaker 1: Seal it up, got a huge jar that ship at
Speaker 1: my tying desk. Shit, it's great stuff, great stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: learning so much. The I mean, the base thing is
Speaker 1: I honestly, dude, I had no idea flex Seal was
Speaker 1: even around anymore. I thought that died. I thought it
Speaker 1: died with Billy Mays. I don't know now oxy clean
Speaker 1: died with Billy Mays. Bion's wasn't FLEXI It's all the
Speaker 1: same to me. I will say that sounds like a
Speaker 1: great tip, and it's definitely legit if Carl gave it
Speaker 1: to you, because that dude makes he makes some sexy
Speaker 1: baitfish imitation streamers. He thinks outside the box, that dude
Speaker 1: with his patterns. Yeah, the Montana trout definitely approve of
Speaker 1: those streamers. He A. I have tested that out, and
Speaker 1: I'm he also got He also gave me some some
Speaker 1: wicked looking frog patterns that I'm hoping to pin into
Speaker 1: some bass face later this summer. But even if you
Speaker 1: don't fly fish, which is fine, I happen to know
Speaker 1: who makes some wicked conventional frog lures. Wow, that's funny,
Speaker 1: so do I. That would be thirteen Fishing, who were
Speaker 1: very proud to say sponsors this show. And while I'm not,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna give up a ton of the goods
Speaker 1: so that I don't ruin the next season of B
Speaker 1: Side Fishing. Let's just say I put their trash pan
Speaker 1: to hollow body frogs, both the regular traditional body and
Speaker 1: the popping models to work in Virginia recently, and the
Speaker 1: snakeheads responded extremely favorably. The trash pandas are tough frogs.
Speaker 1: They can they could, I mean not no kidding, They
Speaker 1: could take some serious abuse. I was very impressed by those.
Speaker 1: Snakeheads are more abusive than bass when it comes, much
Speaker 1: more so, a lot more toothy, a lot more toothy,
Speaker 1: more more bite pressure too, I think, and I will
Speaker 1: say that that few things bring me as much joys
Speaker 1: as frog fish. I haven't done it actually since last
Speaker 1: summer um, so I'm looking forward to that and I
Speaker 1: am hoping that's the theme you're going with for this
Speaker 1: episode because just please God, I hope it's not flexible.
Speaker 1: That's not the full show. It's not that either. Um
Speaker 1: it's but it's actually it's about flexing in general. See
Speaker 1: what I did. It's topic, yeah, say it's creative. Uh,
Speaker 1: this topic has come up time to time. But this
Speaker 1: week I think we're gonna go all in on the
Speaker 1: various ways in which anglers flex, and we all flex
Speaker 1: even if we don't think we're flexing, which is sort
Speaker 1: of part of the fund Like we're gonna expose your
Speaker 1: subconscious flexing, like meta flexing exactly. Yeah, I dig it,
Speaker 1: I dig it. Well, I mean, you know the obvious one,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that where you going. But there's
Speaker 1: the obvious flex. It's the dude who's crown about get
Speaker 1: the biggest fish look at me, and those guys are
Speaker 1: just assholes. So I'm guessing. I'm guessing you're gonna get
Speaker 1: more nuanced and we're not just going to talk about
Speaker 1: those guys all day because that would also suck. No, no,
Speaker 1: And you're spot on right, because flexing over what you
Speaker 1: caught is just too obvious and kind of lame. Like
Speaker 1: one example, one of my favorite flexes um is just
Speaker 1: simply being right about a lower fly. And I know
Speaker 1: for sure you get this because you were a guide.
Speaker 1: Right You're out with somebody that's struggling a bit and
Speaker 1: just like insistent on fishing a certain way, and you're like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: just look, just switch to this for a little bit,
Speaker 1: just trust me, and you're right, Like, that's a good
Speaker 1: flex and because because I'm at the point in my
Speaker 1: fishing and I mean this where I enjoy seeing the
Speaker 1: people i'm with catch fish as much as I enjoy
Speaker 1: catching fish. It's like a double wind because I'm happy
Speaker 1: about their success, but I also just got to flex
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's great, it's I mean similar to that.
Speaker 1: I feel like the ultimate form of what you're talking
Speaker 1: about is seeing a stranger, like a complete stranger you
Speaker 1: don't know, on the water, struggling well you've got it dialed,
Speaker 1: and then just going up to them unprompted and offering
Speaker 1: advice like it's it's the best because you get to
Speaker 1: be both magnanimous and kind of an egotistical ass at
Speaker 1: the same time. Right, Like you you were both the
Speaker 1: nice guy, but you just flexed on him. And there's
Speaker 1: also the opposite side which used to happen sometimes while
Speaker 1: guiding right, And I know, I know that we had
Speaker 1: tied on exactly the right thing. I know what they
Speaker 1: were eating and how, and we're using the right thing.
Speaker 1: But the clients still weren't catching fish because they weren't
Speaker 1: listening and they weren't fishing it right right, And so
Speaker 1: sometimes I'd get them, uh, do you think we should
Speaker 1: try something different? Question? Right, And and at that point,
Speaker 1: like I hated to do it, but I have to
Speaker 1: take the rod and then like hook three fish on
Speaker 1: three consecutive casts and just hand it back and say, no,
Speaker 1: I think we should stick with that. I think we're good.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. That's great, I said. Now another
Speaker 1: one I love. I also really love. And it sounds shitty,
Speaker 1: but it's true. I love catching fish behind somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that might be the best flex of all and
Speaker 1: for me at least, like it's a scenario at least
Speaker 1: I don't end up in very often, and you wouldn't
Speaker 1: unless you're you're you're kind of the guy that goes
Speaker 1: out looking to do this to prove a point. But
Speaker 1: every once in a while, right, you just unknowingly step
Speaker 1: into that scenario where someone is where you want to
Speaker 1: be and you're watching them just going they're not fishing
Speaker 1: that effectively at all, and you don't push them out,
Speaker 1: you don't make a scene. You just bide your time
Speaker 1: close by way for them to give up the ghost
Speaker 1: and just slide in and connect. And that's the thing
Speaker 1: of beauty. I'm sorry. And you still don't comment or
Speaker 1: rub it in. You just keep to yourself. But you
Speaker 1: know they know, right And like I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: the last time that happened to me, this was years ago.
Speaker 1: It was one of Steelhead River in Ohio, and it
Speaker 1: was it was glorious, just glorious. You described this as
Speaker 1: a rare occurrence, but this happens all the time fishing
Speaker 1: driftboats on the popular a good point where you're fishing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that all the time. Like that was
Speaker 1: that was the game. It still is the game. It's
Speaker 1: and jumping ahead of another boat, like rowing around another
Speaker 1: boat to get to the water before them. Is is
Speaker 1: is that's a that's no, cannot do that. But there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with hanging back and just mowing someone else's lawn,
Speaker 1: as my my good guy buddy used to call it.
Speaker 1: Uh it's like it's the public yet quiet flex yep.
Speaker 1: And it's just it's satisfying, satisfying. Uh. And and despite
Speaker 1: the fact that I do like those more quiet, less,
Speaker 1: little more low key flexus, that's that's that's more my style.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you've got no choice. You just gotta be overt
Speaker 1: about it. People from New York City and the boroughs
Speaker 1: like out near where you are, they kind of already
Speaker 1: have that reputation. Like the Jersey Shore thing is all
Speaker 1: about overt flexing. I think that's I think that's what
Speaker 1: the situation major game. That's right. And and on that topic,
Speaker 1: all that like that, that fact about that area makes
Speaker 1: the story we have for Smooth Moves this week Extra Suite.
Speaker 1: This is the part of the show where we get
Speaker 1: guides and captains and shop workers anyone else makes live
Speaker 1: in the fishing industry, and we bring them on and
Speaker 1: we let them bitch about dumb things their clients doing.
Speaker 1: Today we are joined by Staaten Island's native son, Captain
Speaker 1: Frank Crest Telly. Why all right? Joining us today on
Speaker 1: Smooth Moves are buddy Captain Frank Cress Telly. What's going on? Frankie, Hey, Joe?
Speaker 1: How you doing good, good, it's good to see you.
Speaker 1: And uh man, there's so much to set up about you.
Speaker 1: So you're a you're a veteran captain in the New
Speaker 1: York City area, originally from Staten Island, right born and raised,
Speaker 1: and you've done You've had a huge hand in conservation
Speaker 1: work on the striper scene. You have TV show Finchaser's
Speaker 1: You're You're a man, you have you you you have
Speaker 1: irons in many many fires. And there's the like, weren't
Speaker 1: you also a mechanic and they're they're kind of other business.
Speaker 1: I don't you've done everything, man, I mentioned anything like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did that for a couple of years. I did
Speaker 1: do a lot of different businesses order mechanic by trade,
Speaker 1: and I had gas stations, repair shops and that until
Speaker 1: we decided to have kids. And then we figured that,
Speaker 1: you know, we somebody had to raise the kids, you know,
Speaker 1: So I got out of that business and it was
Speaker 1: changing dramatically. But yeah, we had used cars, rentals, little phones,
Speaker 1: phone since oh you figured you figured being a charter
Speaker 1: captain would give you more time with your family. I
Speaker 1: bet that didn't really work out. What happened is once
Speaker 1: the kids got into full time school. Then I actually
Speaker 1: went to a Tony Robbins seminar, and I had to
Speaker 1: figure out, like what was I gonna do? And and
Speaker 1: and I decided, yeah, man, we love fishing. If I
Speaker 1: can make that a business, you know, And I signed
Speaker 1: up right there that Monday when I get out of
Speaker 1: the place, and I signed up my buddy Dino as well.
Speaker 1: He had no choice. I went to his house, styled
Speaker 1: the phone number for the captain, put the phone in
Speaker 1: his hand. You've ever heard You've made it work. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many things. You also run the Manhattan Cup tournament,
Speaker 1: which I fished, um but on the actual like charter
Speaker 1: for higher how many years have you been a captain
Speaker 1: for hire Man? So this year would be like twenty
Speaker 1: two years, so that a few years not you know,
Speaker 1: only very special people because I've been focusing on the
Speaker 1: video and TV stuff. And challenge in the beginning was
Speaker 1: just that you want to take people fishing when it's good,
Speaker 1: but you also want to film when it's good, and
Speaker 1: it's hard to film even when it's good. You know,
Speaker 1: the cameras comes on and the fish disappear. Uh so yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, it was a time where I
Speaker 1: did like a hundred and sixty trips a year for
Speaker 1: a bunch of years and was doing six a week
Speaker 1: and grinding it out. And seventy of my business comes
Speaker 1: from Manhattan, so I would drive from that now and
Speaker 1: to you know, twenty third Street, pick these people up,
Speaker 1: and then start a trip from there. You know, when
Speaker 1: market closed, stuff mostly afternoons, and then fly fishermen would
Speaker 1: come in the morning, and it was it was great
Speaker 1: when the fishing was great, and then not so great
Speaker 1: when the fishing was you know, I always have so
Speaker 1: much respect for the salty guys because like unlike a river,
Speaker 1: the fish aren't always there every day, like if they
Speaker 1: could just not be there. But you've so you do
Speaker 1: the fly thing, you do inshore. You also have spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time offshore. So I'm very curious with
Speaker 1: this smooth move. Where are we going? Are we going
Speaker 1: inshore Manhattan? We're going offshore to the canyons, you know,
Speaker 1: knowing where you pull so many clients from that area.
Speaker 1: You gotta have something good for us. I really hate
Speaker 1: to like try and correct people are like put them
Speaker 1: in their place, like about if they're wrong, But sometimes
Speaker 1: they get on board very strong opinions about how State
Speaker 1: Island Isn't that what you do if you're from Staten
Speaker 1: Island Put correct people and put them in their place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it would be you know, you gotta remember, like
Speaker 1: you're getting these guys that just left Wall Street a
Speaker 1: half an hour ago. They're making multimillion dollar deals, right,
Speaker 1: They're like, came in the world, you know, Matthew mhonnock,
Speaker 1: beating on his chest and everything. And then they get
Speaker 1: on the boat and they can't cast, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to help him and it's making it worse. And then
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you know, my rod and this and that,
Speaker 1: and like, dude, you just gotta shoot line. Just relaxed,
Speaker 1: chill out, you know whatever. And so you know, this
Speaker 1: one guy was really giving me a hard time and
Speaker 1: we were having a hard time fishing. We were marking
Speaker 1: fish everywhere, but we could not hook up. So finally
Speaker 1: he goes, you know, you keep talking about these marking
Speaker 1: these fish. You know that thing probably looks like that
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, for hours you've been saying
Speaker 1: So I said, oh you think that that's not working?
Speaker 1: He goes, yeah, I go okay, oh, hold on a second, really, man,
Speaker 1: and everybody starts me and I stopped moving away before
Speaker 1: everybody really reeled their lines in right, and my mates
Speaker 1: looking at me and I I hate the throttle and
Speaker 1: we're flying offshore now we're right by Breezy Point and
Speaker 1: I just I drive three miles straight out into the
Speaker 1: shipping channel and I stopped the boat and everybody's looking
Speaker 1: at me like what the hell going on? So I
Speaker 1: told the guy come here, they bring it over the sound.
Speaker 1: I said, you see no fish now, if you want,
Speaker 1: I'll take you back to at least where the fish
Speaker 1: are and maybe they'll start biting in there. And the
Speaker 1: guy was just like, oh boy, okay. So then it's funny.
Speaker 1: On the on the way back, I decided'm gonna check
Speaker 1: the rockaway reef because I really drove. These guys are
Speaker 1: already offshore and well, and I go, now, you see
Speaker 1: that's bait and fish on the machine. And the guy's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I got it, Like you know, like I was rubbing
Speaker 1: his face. I wasn't rubbing his face. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: show this a little this would be and fish like
Speaker 1: a little more ingredients, you know. And so he's looking
Speaker 1: at his friend, like and he doesn't even touch a rod.
Speaker 1: And the guy, who know is the least, you know,
Speaker 1: barely fished. I go take that little diamond jake and
Speaker 1: put it over and just you know, ja get and
Speaker 1: he catches an albi And the guy was like so
Speaker 1: pissed off that you know that he didn't believe the
Speaker 1: whole program. But usually guys go along with, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to do, and I just want people
Speaker 1: have fun. So like if they want to sit there
Speaker 1: and drink beer and eat sandwiches and don't worry about fishing,
Speaker 1: and that's fine, but you know, you usually got to
Speaker 1: balance it up and the challenges The market closes the
Speaker 1: same time every day, doesn't care what time, what the
Speaker 1: tide is, what the wind is. You got to be
Speaker 1: back in four or five hours because then they're gonna
Speaker 1: go to dinner after that. So you had a very
Speaker 1: small window to find fish every day. And it was interesting, man.
Speaker 1: So like a lot of your deal, like you were
Speaker 1: literally picking guys up in the South end of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: like in the financial district to fish when the market
Speaker 1: closed between that and their fancy dinner yep, and their
Speaker 1: clients would never forget right. I mean they could take you.
Speaker 1: How many hundred dollars steaks could these guys eat in
Speaker 1: their life? And they forget where they went, But they
Speaker 1: never forget if a guy takes some fishing and then
Speaker 1: takes them out to dinner. So that's how we built.
Speaker 1: Like I know, I know you don't. You want to
Speaker 1: have a good time, your mellow. We've hung out and
Speaker 1: I know your program. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: also know that sometimes as the captain, you gotta flex
Speaker 1: a little bit because otherwise people aren't going to trust you.
Speaker 1: And if they don't trust you, they're not gonna catch
Speaker 1: fish because they're not gonna listen to you. So every
Speaker 1: once in a while you have to pull that power
Speaker 1: move and be like, oh really, let me show you.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, like oh, they believe you,
Speaker 1: and they get a little more, she said, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they start catching fish, so nobody will not nobody.
Speaker 1: I never like doing that. I can tell you don't
Speaker 1: like do it, but sometimes you have to do the
Speaker 1: flex if you want the day to work out. Did
Speaker 1: you get invited to all the dinners, all the power dinners? No?
Speaker 1: I dropped them off. They go eat and then I
Speaker 1: gotta drive sixteen miles home, clean the boat, and then
Speaker 1: you know, by then it's eleven o'clock and then and
Speaker 1: then to a fly trip in the morning or something.
Speaker 1: You know. So if people don't think it's hard work, man,
Speaker 1: it's hard work. Listen, don't be surprised if you hear
Speaker 1: more from Captain frank On bent Down down the Road apiece,
Speaker 1: or maybe just maybe see him in season three of
Speaker 1: dust Boat, which is in the works right now. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Frank Frankie is so fun and he was actually telling
Speaker 1: us that that in those days when he was guiding
Speaker 1: all the wall streets, it wasn't uncommon for these guys
Speaker 1: to show up at the boat still wearing black wing
Speaker 1: tips in a suit, which is funny because in their world,
Speaker 1: like that look alone is a flex you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But as soon as you're trying to pull
Speaker 1: it off on a striper boat, you're doing the opposite
Speaker 1: of flexing. Like you just looked dumb. But he said
Speaker 1: that was very common, you know. I really I like
Speaker 1: that story for a lot of reasons. But one of
Speaker 1: the things I think it brings up and and this
Speaker 1: is true in my experience, like Frank was saying, most guys,
Speaker 1: like the good guys people like consider good guys, they
Speaker 1: don't want to flex. Yeah, of course, like the flex
Speaker 1: is the it's the nuclear option. The should only be
Speaker 1: used when all else fails and the clients just won't
Speaker 1: listen to you or won't won't believe you. But you
Speaker 1: do have to pull that card when you're forced to. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: you're the captain of the boat. And if your crew,
Speaker 1: if you're if your sports lose faith in you, that's
Speaker 1: a problem and you've gotta get that ship back one
Speaker 1: way or another. Sure, sure, but I mean unfortunately right too.
Speaker 1: Any charter guys um use that business model though, they
Speaker 1: just what they started out doing is the flex, instead
Speaker 1: of using it to fix a problem, Like that's how
Speaker 1: they go. Yeah, they just stake everything on this over
Speaker 1: the top bravado about how they out fish everyone. And
Speaker 1: I know that works for some people. Fifth fishing me
Speaker 1: on shore. Believe that, believe that no one can in
Speaker 1: to me. I haven't been making videos lately, but I'm
Speaker 1: still out here catch up fish all the time. I
Speaker 1: catch them all the time. Believe that. I It's unclear, however,
Speaker 1: whether it worked for the gentleman, we recently discovered looking
Speaker 1: for a fishing buddy on Craigslist. I don't think it did.
Speaker 1: My guess is did not. But please let us know
Speaker 1: if you would have been sold on the skills up
Speaker 1: for grabs in this week's sale band, Why did you
Speaker 1: put the hand to pay? You don't know what I'm getting. Man,
Speaker 1: You didn't have to be so hurtful with me so angry.
Speaker 1: So this week's sale ban item isn't exactly an item.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's not even for sale. Okay, this comes
Speaker 1: from it's not in a bin. Yeah, you won't find
Speaker 1: it in a bin. No, really really kind of losing
Speaker 1: the losing the thread here, but it makes sense. It
Speaker 1: will make sense. You know it's gonna make sense, Okay.
Speaker 1: And this comes from Craigslist m Philadelphia. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: it's from the barter section, which I have to admit,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever looked at until this came along, right,
Speaker 1: I'll be I didn't even know what existed until until
Speaker 1: this came up. And I've bought, you know, I bought
Speaker 1: and sold things on Craziest before. I've done that, but
Speaker 1: never gone to the barter zone. And it feels sketchy,
Speaker 1: Like that feels sketchy to me buying and selling stuff.
Speaker 1: You know you've done the craigslist thing, like buying something
Speaker 1: stuff with strange. It's already a little awkward, right. It's
Speaker 1: it's fun when you're just scrolling through picks of stuff
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, I want with that, But then
Speaker 1: you got to actually meet up with those people and
Speaker 1: it's weird. It can be not always. Sometimes it's fine,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's weird. And I just imagine that the
Speaker 1: Barter experiences is ten times worse. Oh yeah, And I
Speaker 1: haven't bought a lot of stuff off Craigslist, but the
Speaker 1: most recent purchase was a tug boat shaped sandbox from
Speaker 1: my son. Right, and I ended up in a not
Speaker 1: so good part of Philly. And while the person I
Speaker 1: was communicating with was like very clear and concise via
Speaker 1: email and text, I ended up dealing with like an
Speaker 1: old Polish lady that just pointed and never like she
Speaker 1: never spoke to me. Yea. Like the yard was just full,
Speaker 1: like literally piled with beat up plastic playground equipment. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's yeah, and it was it was very strange.
Speaker 1: I got the boat though, you know, no that It
Speaker 1: sounds strange, but that was legitimately completely worth it because
Speaker 1: I've seen that tugboat sandbox things fantastic. If if my
Speaker 1: kid actually knew that existed, he would be racking his
Speaker 1: little brain right now trying to figure out what he
Speaker 1: could trade for it. Because you want it, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get off. But it's called the Tuggy. It's discontinued,
Speaker 1: and it's actually a hot item. It's a very coveted item,
Speaker 1: that sandbox. There's even people who have like filled it
Speaker 1: with foam and made little boats with trolling motors. It's
Speaker 1: like a whole tuggy culture that I'm now a part of.
Speaker 1: I get the Tuggy newsletter. Anyway, it's it's not up
Speaker 1: for barter, so anyway, but uh, yeah, I was recently, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was recently scrolling through the barter section of the
Speaker 1: Central Jersey Craigslist because I became curious because of this
Speaker 1: this post we got and it's trippy, man. I quickly
Speaker 1: realized this is where the Weird Deviant ship now goes
Speaker 1: down on Craig's list since they got rid of the
Speaker 1: blatant you know. Click here for Weird Deviant Ship page.
Speaker 1: You know Um, so just like a few quick examples,
Speaker 1: and this is this is ten minutes of scrolling. This
Speaker 1: wasn't like hours of searching. Um there was a post
Speaker 1: offering one ladies handbags that read one hundred dollars. Takes
Speaker 1: all the bags in the picture, maybe barter one or
Speaker 1: two of them. Let me know what you're good at.
Speaker 1: I mean, dude, yeah, that's that is a question that
Speaker 1: I'm I can almost guarantee I would never answer that
Speaker 1: question if it was asked to me by some random
Speaker 1: dude on the internet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, dude, it's icky.
Speaker 1: It's icky. And then there was a guy trying to
Speaker 1: trade at painting of George Washington for a laundry list
Speaker 1: of items that included steal I s O shipping containers,
Speaker 1: mushroom production equipment, a drone with an HD camera, UH
Speaker 1: sliding compound, miter salt, or a fitbit smart watch. Like
Speaker 1: it's wacked out, it's wacked out. Yeah, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: this just talking about this is making me think I
Speaker 1: should I'm not sure if this is making me think
Speaker 1: I should spend more time checking out the barter section
Speaker 1: or if I have made the right choice in avoiding it.
Speaker 1: It could really go either way. But listener, Nick Dombrowski,
Speaker 1: he's obviously chosen that he should hang out there, that
Speaker 1: it's worth it because he sent us a post titled
Speaker 1: four to five hour fishing trip for barter. And I
Speaker 1: think we got to say that the gentleman that posted
Speaker 1: this is no Jerry the canoe salesman when it comes
Speaker 1: to the words smith thing. But it's still pretty good
Speaker 1: to give the guy credit. At least he knows how
Speaker 1: to post a photo, and in this case, he chose
Speaker 1: a shot of a large mouth bass, a very i'd say,
Speaker 1: a relatively impressive large mouth bass reproduction mount. So let's begin,
Speaker 1: And just so everyone understands my yelling tone, the post
Speaker 1: was written in all caps. It's got to be read
Speaker 1: this way because that's how I perceive it as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: I will trade a four to five hour fishing trip
Speaker 1: on my boat on the waters of Penn Warner. We
Speaker 1: will pitch lures like spinners and bits at the ducks
Speaker 1: or shoreline structures, slow fish, plastics or jigs, troll lures
Speaker 1: for bass, pike and pickerel, whatever you like. You bring
Speaker 1: your favorite tackle lures, a cooler of food and drink.
Speaker 1: If you feel you need it, and away we go.
Speaker 1: That's all I hear it, I know, so before before
Speaker 1: we go on, I just gotta add I actually live
Speaker 1: right near pen Warner and it's a it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of private lakes that I actually think are owned by
Speaker 1: a waste management company. Um, but they're stocked and you
Speaker 1: have to have a membership to fish it. So I
Speaker 1: just want everyone to understand that the pot is actually
Speaker 1: being sweetened here by this being private water. However, they're
Speaker 1: these huge lakes, there's also plenty of natural you know,
Speaker 1: fish reproduction, and there's also a shipload of members, so
Speaker 1: even though it's private, they get pounded. I've fished it
Speaker 1: a handful of times, and what I'm basically saying is
Speaker 1: just because it's private, it's not automatic, Like the fishing
Speaker 1: can still suck there. So it's not that the pot
Speaker 1: is not that much, right, So let's go on. I
Speaker 1: am bartering my time boat and knowledge. I have been
Speaker 1: out and caught bass and pike already, so it only
Speaker 1: gets better as the spring progresses into summer. We would
Speaker 1: probably start six or seven am until whenever. I am
Speaker 1: not a professional fisherman or a guide of any sorts.
Speaker 1: I am just a fisherman of over fifty five years
Speaker 1: with many trophies to my name, looking to go fishing.
Speaker 1: So you just explained like it's private water, but it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily that good. And he he tells us you
Speaker 1: can't use his rods and rules and you're on your
Speaker 1: own for lunch. If if you think hunger is going
Speaker 1: to be an issue for you, think human you handle that.
Speaker 1: But but there's also there's a contradiction here and that
Speaker 1: he says you'll start at six or seven am until
Speaker 1: quote whenever, but if you look at the title of
Speaker 1: the post, then you be done by noon at the
Speaker 1: latest and all. So my take, the way that I
Speaker 1: interpret this is that the length of the day, of
Speaker 1: the duration you get to fish will be solely based
Speaker 1: around whether or not he likes you. Right, So I
Speaker 1: think this this is a good comparison Jerry, because like Jerry,
Speaker 1: this guy he's looking for a friend. He just he
Speaker 1: just can't say that he's acting like he needs a
Speaker 1: little something return when he really just wants a fishing buddy.
Speaker 1: But here's the closing. We'll finish it up just looking
Speaker 1: to trade a day of fishing to see what people offer,
Speaker 1: I can only take one person. Is that's what my
Speaker 1: membership rules dictate. There will be no money exchanged. I
Speaker 1: charge nothing, just a barterer of something. Let me know
Speaker 1: if interested, and let me know what you have to trade.
Speaker 1: It's it's so vague, right, So what is the value
Speaker 1: of this trip? And I'm I'm I'm really asking, like
Speaker 1: at least I don't know. At least the guy with
Speaker 1: the George Washington paintings toodfirm that it was worth four
Speaker 1: K four grand, which is why he felt he could
Speaker 1: ask for a drone in a band, Saul, But how
Speaker 1: do you even approach this? Like based it around what
Speaker 1: a guide's day rate? That doesn't seem Yeah, what's offensive?
Speaker 1: If I said, I'll give you a book of Burger
Speaker 1: Can coupons in a case of Natty light, are we good?
Speaker 1: I don't know a weed whacker that needs some TLC?
Speaker 1: What's acceptable? I don't know. Even I wouldn't know how
Speaker 1: to approach it, don't. I mean, my my gut in
Speaker 1: a situation like this is because this is how I
Speaker 1: was raised. I think of food, right, I would offer
Speaker 1: a nice lunch, but the Duda's already made it clear
Speaker 1: that he thinks needing to eat or drink wall fishingcause
Speaker 1: a sign of weakness. So I don't think that's the
Speaker 1: angle that you want to take. Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta shipload of hats. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: do too, maybe like I'll give I'll give you five hats.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I think the only solution
Speaker 1: we have is that you you live out there, dude,
Speaker 1: you gotta test this and see what it will take.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could go, dude, you here, you go big.
Speaker 1: You offer him like a new thirteen rotten reel set
Speaker 1: up and just blow his mind because you know he's
Speaker 1: gonna take that. And then but the caveat is that
Speaker 1: you get to record the whole day for the podcast.
Speaker 1: I dare you, I dare you to do this? Oh
Speaker 1: dare wow? Like what like what like double dog, triple dog,
Speaker 1: double dog and this double dog territory because don't tempt
Speaker 1: me with a good time that could actually be a
Speaker 1: complete nightmare. Are you familiar with the film Tusk anyway? Vaguely? Vaguely,
Speaker 1: we'll see. Maybe I'll consider it because it could also
Speaker 1: be great anyway, Nick, thanks for this and to everyone
Speaker 1: else out there, don't overlook those barter pages. Clearly we
Speaker 1: are missing out on some gems. Dare I say, maybe
Speaker 1: even the better creepier gems. And when you find something juicy,
Speaker 1: shoot that link to Bent at the meat eater dot com. Well,
Speaker 1: that guy has plenty of trophies to his name, and
Speaker 1: I'm always looking at another trophy to my name for
Speaker 1: supplying the most poignant fish related news story. So here
Speaker 1: it comes that weekly flex of Internet searching ability we
Speaker 1: call fish news. Fish news that escalated quickly quick follow
Speaker 1: up on last week's sale bin segment, when we made
Speaker 1: fun of the explosive hook fish net, which is like
Speaker 1: a castable throw net with bait. In case you missed it,
Speaker 1: a couple of you sent links to YouTube videos which
Speaker 1: sent me down this rabbit hole that I probably should
Speaker 1: have explored before we did. The segments would have been
Speaker 1: if we have we done an upsie. If we had
Speaker 1: an upsie, we might have we might have I will,
Speaker 1: I will keep it short, long story short. It turns
Speaker 1: out this product is is actually incredibly popular just in
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia. Not here and over there. They called
Speaker 1: they're they're they're commonly called spring bomb nets. I actually
Speaker 1: watched one video where there's this tiny little pond and
Speaker 1: the banks of this pond are just lined like shoulders
Speaker 1: shoulder with people, and all of them, every single one,
Speaker 1: has a spring bomb net at the end of their
Speaker 1: their spinning rod line all of them. So it turns
Speaker 1: out if you're a subsistence fisherman in Southeast Asia targeting
Speaker 1: telapia and sick lids in your local pond, these are
Speaker 1: highly effective and they make perfect sense. Right. Some of
Speaker 1: these videos actually featured Cambodian kids, who, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 1: they clearly live in poverty and they're they're using spring
Speaker 1: bomb nets to like help feed their families. And what
Speaker 1: I can't figure out is how they self film their
Speaker 1: adventures or upload them to YouTube. But such is the
Speaker 1: world that we live in, right, Like YouTube channels are
Speaker 1: cheaper than shirts now, it seems. Anyway, the whole thing
Speaker 1: made me feel like kind of an ask dude, if
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest, because like I made fun of
Speaker 1: something that's like feeding hungry people and were fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to live like we're fortunate enough to not need spring
Speaker 1: bomb net, right, we don't need that. Okay, here's what
Speaker 1: I want to say that I think like where we
Speaker 1: failed was that we we said it doesn't work right,
Speaker 1: we couldn't figure out how it would work, but clearly
Speaker 1: it does right. So okay, fine, we screwed that part up,
Speaker 1: but like we found it on a site that was
Speaker 1: marketing it to US anglers, so like we're still allowed
Speaker 1: to put I don't I don't feel that bad. I'm
Speaker 1: not losing sleep, but I know and I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think these are going to catch on in
Speaker 1: the US anytime soon, but they certainly have a market.
Speaker 1: We just missed it. No. Plus, you send them kids
Speaker 1: a case of trout magnets, they'll forget all about their nets.
Speaker 1: Light them up, Light them up. Speaking of speaking of
Speaker 1: feeling like an ask, I actually have a sort of
Speaker 1: a correction this week. Um it's it's actually not really correction,
Speaker 1: but more proof that I'm just somewhat slow. You did
Speaker 1: that story about the fishing tourney with Old Walter the
Speaker 1: small mouth, right, and it was like if you caught it,
Speaker 1: you got a hundred thousand dollars, but you had to
Speaker 1: catch it over a weekend, and then the prize dropped.
Speaker 1: And I said, this was shady, because like this Marina
Speaker 1: has a hundred k sitting around to give. It's weird,
Speaker 1: And a bunch of people wrote in and where like, hey,
Speaker 1: dim wit, like you take out an insurance policy for
Speaker 1: something like that, Like when people, yeah, like when people
Speaker 1: are putting up a bunch of money as a cash
Speaker 1: prize where it's like a competition like that, Apparently the
Speaker 1: insurance payment is less than the prize value in the
Speaker 1: insurance company is just hoping someone doesn't win. So they're like, no,
Speaker 1: of course they don't have a hundred grands sitting around.
Speaker 1: They have fifteen hundred dollars sitting around, which is why
Speaker 1: the prize dropped to fill after the weekend. But that once,
Speaker 1: once it was said, it made total sense in my
Speaker 1: head and reiterated why I could never own my own
Speaker 1: business because the finances are lost on me. I do
Speaker 1: not understand such grown up things. My head never went there.
Speaker 1: But so thanks for that, everybody. Um final thing before
Speaker 1: we get in the news. Uh, you know those fish
Speaker 1: eating fish eating fish t shirts and hoodies we've just
Speaker 1: been cramming down your throats. We've decided to give one
Speaker 1: of each away. You know why, because we're cool like that.
Speaker 1: It's true that we are. We are cool like that,
Speaker 1: and we don't need to special occasion to give you ship,
Speaker 1: so for one week and one week only, kind of
Speaker 1: similar to how we've done giveways in the past. Those degenerate,
Speaker 1: Angler and Bent podcast hashtags are worth more than stickers,
Speaker 1: that's right. So to qualify, we're looking for the pictures
Speaker 1: using those tags posted between today, which is June and
Speaker 1: next Friday, which is July two. In other words, you
Speaker 1: gotta do this between now and when the next episode airs.
Speaker 1: And uh, I don't know, make us laugh, gasp, wins, cry,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but we'll pick one of our favorites,
Speaker 1: and Miles and I will post the winner on Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: July three on our Instagram accounts, and somebody is going
Speaker 1: to get a fresh fish eating fish tea and hoodie
Speaker 1: and you will look sharp. It's like a it's like
Speaker 1: a cornucopy of degeneracy, much like this show. All right,
Speaker 1: moving on to fish news. Quick reminder that this is
Speaker 1: a competition. Joe and I do not know what the
Speaker 1: other is bringing to the table, and we are as
Speaker 1: always competing for the love, affection and validation of our patrons.
Speaker 1: Sat of all things auditory filled the engineer who will
Speaker 1: declare one of us a winner and relegate the other
Speaker 1: two a week of self doubt and question of life choices.
Speaker 1: Joe's got the lead this week. Yeah, and if I win,
Speaker 1: Phil gets a hoodie, and if you win, he gets
Speaker 1: the T shirt. So there's more incentive for me to
Speaker 1: take the it's it's a light, it's a night. It's
Speaker 1: a nice weight the hoodie. Anyways, here's where I'm gonna start.
Speaker 1: This comes from our Canadian listeners. Several of them are
Speaker 1: alerted me to this story, and it's pretty interesting and
Speaker 1: sort of speaks to like fish perceptions by country and regions.
Speaker 1: So here in the US, of course, bass are the
Speaker 1: king dog, number one most coveted fish in the US,
Speaker 1: and I'm mainly talking large mouths there, but we love
Speaker 1: a nice small mouth here as well. Well. Certain conservation
Speaker 1: groups in New Brunswick, Canada flip and hate small mouths
Speaker 1: right now, and they hate them so much that they're
Speaker 1: willing to poison the famed Mirror Machee River to get
Speaker 1: rid of them. Okay, yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: So small mouth just so are all on the same page.
Speaker 1: Are not native to New Brunswick. They were first found
Speaker 1: in Mirror Machie Lake in two thousand eight, and it's
Speaker 1: believed that they were illegally stocked by bucket biologists. Somebody
Speaker 1: thought these would be great to catch here and put
Speaker 1: them in. So this story comes from CBC News and
Speaker 1: it says a growing population of smallmouth bass in Mirror
Speaker 1: Machie Lake, Lake Brook and a portion of the southwest
Speaker 1: Mirror Machi River has been threatening Atlantic salmon as well
Speaker 1: as brook trout native to the waters. Salmon conservation groups
Speaker 1: sat smallmouth bass threatened salmon and trout by taking over
Speaker 1: their food and habitats, said Neville crab, a spokesman with
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Salmon Federation. They can also threaten other native
Speaker 1: species around them. So the federal government has officially greenlit
Speaker 1: the eradication of the small mouths by spraying the fish
Speaker 1: killing pesticide, wrote known starting this August. And of course
Speaker 1: this got my attention because I know that the Atlantic
Speaker 1: salmon is to the Canadian Maritimes, what stripers in large
Speaker 1: mouth out of the US. And I mean, look, the
Speaker 1: Mirror Machie isn't some little no name trickle right like,
Speaker 1: this is big hallowed water and naturally the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought was, how are you gonna how are you
Speaker 1: gonna route know in these areas and not have it
Speaker 1: affect the salmon because, and this is directly from the story,
Speaker 1: the product will kill the vast majority of fish in
Speaker 1: the waters being treated. According to an authorization document from
Speaker 1: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the death and decomposition of fish
Speaker 1: will modify the food web, the fish habitat, ecological structure,
Speaker 1: and the nutrient input of the waters. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, right so some of the salmon conservation groups
Speaker 1: are pushing the hardest for this and actually wanted it
Speaker 1: to happen last summer, but it got roadblocked by the government,
Speaker 1: partially because a lot of people with waterfront homes on
Speaker 1: Mirror Machie Lake, We're just worried about dealing with piles
Speaker 1: of decomposing fish and their kids swimming in the lake
Speaker 1: and such. And residents are still complaining about all this.
Speaker 1: Some have been told they'll have to avoid the lake
Speaker 1: for several days, but the spraying is happening. They'll start
Speaker 1: on augustift and um some waters may actually receive a
Speaker 1: second dose in September. Now, the salmon conservation groups are
Speaker 1: participating in the spraying of seventeen point two kilometers and,
Speaker 1: according to the story, to mitigate the number of Atlantic
Speaker 1: salmon affected by the road, no salmon will be captured
Speaker 1: and held elsewhere prior to releasing the pesticide. Barriers will
Speaker 1: also be installed to prevent salmon from entering the area
Speaker 1: being sprayed. Those barriers will be removed once a water
Speaker 1: purifier has deactivated the pesticide, allowing salmon and trout to
Speaker 1: migrate back in. Crabs said the road nome will not
Speaker 1: be at concentrations lethal enough to destroy all fish in
Speaker 1: the water. Brown bullhead, catfish and golden shiner, for example,
Speaker 1: are expected to survive. So the salmon folks are saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is harsh, but you know, look, people come to
Speaker 1: New Brunswick for Atlantics. They are the biggest economic driver.
Speaker 1: They are what people expect to catch in these rivers
Speaker 1: above all else a growing smallmouth population would drastically alter
Speaker 1: the ecosystem. So this is what has to be done.
Speaker 1: But this is where it sort of gets a little
Speaker 1: bit sticky, right. The New Brunswick Aboriginal People's Counsel, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, is saying, hey, listen, we're already catching
Speaker 1: small amounts in areas outside the ones you guys are
Speaker 1: saying has them. They've already flushed the system. They're not confined.
Speaker 1: So this is all going to do more harm than good.
Speaker 1: They're saying, you know, you're you're forgetting about insects and
Speaker 1: birds stuff like that, Like is that even being considered um.
Speaker 1: To further back up their claim, the story sites a
Speaker 1: two thousand nine Department of Fisheries and Oceans report that says,
Speaker 1: if these small amounts get into the Southwest mirror machine,
Speaker 1: eradication efforts will be pointless. And they're there. They were
Speaker 1: first spotted there in that section of the river in
Speaker 1: so it's a whole delity of a pickle here. But
Speaker 1: they are moving on with the spray. Oh ah, that's
Speaker 1: a that is a tangled web, all right. First, First
Speaker 1: is a procedural question. They have a way of moving
Speaker 1: the salmon out. I would love to know what that is,
Speaker 1: but they did not, like, they did not go into that.
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the same thing, the piece that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to fit for me, because if you have
Speaker 1: a way of moving the salmon out, why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: have a way of capturing the small mouth, Like I
Speaker 1: would think those would be one and the same exactly.
Speaker 1: And uh, if I had to guess, like they know
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be death there that they don't like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you could possibly get them. You're
Speaker 1: not going to get them all, you're not, you know,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. Man to me, I definitely see
Speaker 1: both sides of this, and I know how rabbit a
Speaker 1: smallmouth can be. Although it's ironic because I live in
Speaker 1: a place where like the smallmouth fishing has really tanked,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like these big aggressive fish
Speaker 1: to take over everything. So it's just funny to see
Speaker 1: it sort of both ways. But it just comes back
Speaker 1: to that like mentality of we are salmon country, salm
Speaker 1: and salm and salm and salmon sam whatever you have
Speaker 1: to do to protect salmon. Having spoke to some some
Speaker 1: people in this area in the past, I know that
Speaker 1: there's there's like significance and over small mouth and pike
Speaker 1: blinding those waters and and and having a negative impact
Speaker 1: on on the brook trout in the salmon and both
Speaker 1: both of which you are are fish that are that
Speaker 1: are experiencing declines anyway, and they don't need any more problems, right,
Speaker 1: So I get it. I understand the issue at hand.
Speaker 1: I'm not sold on this mitigation effort. It kind of
Speaker 1: seems like too little, too late, and it might have
Speaker 1: cascading effects that the people aren't aren't thinking about, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Agreed, I mean two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: like that would have been the time to do something
Speaker 1: drastic when they first found them in this lake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's sort of how biocracy works. And I also
Speaker 1: like to play devil's advocate. You want to do enough
Speaker 1: preliminary research to understand what you're doing and and try
Speaker 1: and think about the consequences that come from that. So
Speaker 1: I hope that's what they were doing and they figured
Speaker 1: all those things out, and that's why it took this long.
Speaker 1: If that's the case, then maybe they know more than
Speaker 1: we do. But I'm I'm skeptical. I have some skepticism,
Speaker 1: but I don't I don't feel like I know enough
Speaker 1: to really like make a firm declaration. But it seems
Speaker 1: like this one, this one, the ship has sailed or
Speaker 1: this small mouth has swum. I did I And I
Speaker 1: completely agree with that, And again, like there's there's no
Speaker 1: way to really know, but it just takes you back
Speaker 1: to rivers in general, like how many rivers have you
Speaker 1: fished where somebody's like, well, all the brown trout are
Speaker 1: in this stretch, But then other people are like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: they're way down here, like they're they're they're here too,
Speaker 1: and there's some here and there's some there. So just
Speaker 1: in my in my opinion, especially when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: moving water, still water a little less, you can be like, well,
Speaker 1: all the small mouth are here. No, no, no, if
Speaker 1: they're there, most of them might be there. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: most of them might be there, but rest assured they're already.
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't see how this works. I
Speaker 1: really don't. The odds of this killing every small mouth
Speaker 1: and and wiping this problem out, I think is slim
Speaker 1: to none. I think. I think you're sadly probably right.
Speaker 1: And and it ties a little bit into my first story,
Speaker 1: which also has to do with like a scaling and
Speaker 1: growing problem that that seems to be booming exponentially and
Speaker 1: uh and and managers really grasping it whatever they can
Speaker 1: find to try and keep things under control and and
Speaker 1: put the genie back in the bottle. As you're likely aware,
Speaker 1: coral reefs are kind of a big deal. They're they're
Speaker 1: kind of they're kind of important. They're they're the primary
Speaker 1: protective barriers that shield coastlines from waves and storms and erosion.
Speaker 1: They're also the most abundant marine ecosystems on the planet.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, they only cover about two percent of the
Speaker 1: ocean floor, but they house at least a quarter of
Speaker 1: marine life, which is pretty freaking amazing if you think
Speaker 1: about it. And so my point is basically, if you
Speaker 1: like fish, and I'm guessing that you do, you should
Speaker 1: probably care about coral reefs. That that should be a
Speaker 1: thing that matters to you. Uh and and and one
Speaker 1: thing I should clarify. Coral and reefs not the same thing.
Speaker 1: They're related, but they're not. Reefs can refer to any
Speaker 1: hard structure that forms an oceanic barrier, but most naturally
Speaker 1: occurring reefs are the result of coral. Coral are these
Speaker 1: tiny anemone like organisms, and they secrete calcium carbonate, which
Speaker 1: is a hard substance that they live in, and that's
Speaker 1: what builds natural reefs. So basically, to to to sum
Speaker 1: this up, you need the coral animals to both grow
Speaker 1: and maintain natural reefs, right, because without the without the
Speaker 1: coral animals themselves, the reefs, they get broken and roded
Speaker 1: and then they're gone pretty fast. Yeah, basically like the
Speaker 1: dead shells leftover don't do anything for you. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be a living breeding system for it to matter, right, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it matter for a little while, but not
Speaker 1: for very long. You need you need the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You need the animal there to keep things up right.
Speaker 1: And as you may also be aware, I'm sure you are,
Speaker 1: corals kind of struggling right now. It's got you know,
Speaker 1: you have warming oceanic temperatures and higher acidity, and and
Speaker 1: those are making coral colonies all over the world look
Speaker 1: like they kind of look like the bison herds standing
Speaker 1: near western train lines in the nineteenth century, just knocking over.
Speaker 1: It's not good. But just in case that analogy is
Speaker 1: not ominous enough, A new form of bacterial infection with
Speaker 1: the extremely literal name stony coral tissue lost disease, was
Speaker 1: discovered on the east coast of Florida in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen and has now spread across the state and
Speaker 1: into the Caribbean. And it is real bad. Over of
Speaker 1: Florida's coral reef has been affected. The disease spreads quickly,
Speaker 1: and once a colony shows signs of infection, it usually
Speaker 1: dies within weeks or months. The causes fast, It's real fast, damn.
Speaker 1: The causes and origins of this disease remain unknown, but
Speaker 1: we do know that it's killing off star, brain, pillar,
Speaker 1: flour and maze corals primarily all the way from northern
Speaker 1: Florida to Costa Rica. And and those are the types
Speaker 1: of corals that contribute most to reef building and maintenance,
Speaker 1: like the big structures. Those are the ones that build
Speaker 1: the big structures that we like. Stony coral tissue lost
Speaker 1: disease can sometimes be stopped by applying a mox of
Speaker 1: scyllin to the affected corals, but doing that at scale
Speaker 1: is just not like, it's just not realistic. Yeah, we yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a story a while ago, remember about the
Speaker 1: treating the bacteria um what was it treat They were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how they could like treat coral
Speaker 1: reef similarly with like, and we couldn't figure out how
Speaker 1: to scale it. I don't remember the details right now.
Speaker 1: I had something to do with Greek yogurt. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Oh I remember. Yeah, it was like a probiotic thing.
Speaker 1: Probiotic that's what I was looking for probiotics for for coral. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is kind of similar, except and stuff
Speaker 1: of trying to help him GROW's trying to prevent them
Speaker 1: from dying. Yeah, And it was the same thing, like
Speaker 1: you can't I'd give him a shot of both one too, oh,
Speaker 1: just like when you were twenty. But I think the like,
Speaker 1: the point is that like the amoxylon is not going
Speaker 1: to solve this. So the Florida Wildlife Commission, the Florida
Speaker 1: Department Environmental Protection, and other nonprofit partners recognized the severity
Speaker 1: of this disease and the enormity of what could be
Speaker 1: lost if all these corals to come to it. So
Speaker 1: in the initiative this program where they they took samples
Speaker 1: of the highly susceptible corals from around all the state's
Speaker 1: reefs and they transplanted them to insure coral farms and
Speaker 1: aquariums across the country. Right, And the idea of this
Speaker 1: is that they're they're creating, uh, they're basically trying to
Speaker 1: ensure that these local corals would not be completely eradicated. Right.
Speaker 1: So and the hope being that, like later on, that
Speaker 1: these specimens could be used to repopulate like future reefs
Speaker 1: in Florida. See what I'm saying. So last week, those
Speaker 1: same groups announced that they had successfully planted one thousand
Speaker 1: and fifty two coral colonies at twenty four different sites
Speaker 1: from Jupiter to Key West from those stocks that were
Speaker 1: grown and maintained in coral farms and aquariums. According to
Speaker 1: f WC, the purpose of this project is to determine
Speaker 1: the fate of corals that are susceptible to stony coral
Speaker 1: tissue lost disease when out planted across Florida's coral reef
Speaker 1: where the disease is still present but no longer found
Speaker 1: in epidemic proportions. The knowledge gained during the study will
Speaker 1: pave the way for future expansions in the restoration of
Speaker 1: disease susceptible corals. All right, hold on this. The language
Speaker 1: that they use there is important. No one's claiming victory
Speaker 1: or that there's a solution here, right. This project will
Speaker 1: help figure out what happens when affected corals get replanted
Speaker 1: in dead zones where the disease is already like ravaged
Speaker 1: and dwindled, a spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Production, said,
Speaker 1: understanding where and when it is safe to start out
Speaker 1: planting species that are susceptible to stony coral tissue lost
Speaker 1: disease again is a major first step in restoring the
Speaker 1: resilience of Florida's coral reef. Now, he said, first step,
Speaker 1: all those corals they planted might just get reinfected and
Speaker 1: die again, or some might survive. Either way, that's going
Speaker 1: to be useful information moving forward. But while most of
Speaker 1: the susceptible corals in the affected areas got infected with
Speaker 1: the disease and died, certain individuals survived, suggesting that those
Speaker 1: individuals have some kind of resistance. And earlier this month,
Speaker 1: the Florida Aquarium announced that they had successfully crossbread rescued
Speaker 1: brain corals with wild brain corals that resisted infection. In
Speaker 1: a press relief, the aquarium said, quote, the hope is
Speaker 1: that corals produced using this technique will be more resilient
Speaker 1: to future disease outbreaks and will help restore the Florida
Speaker 1: reef tract. Point is not all hope is lost, at
Speaker 1: least not yet. Right. The the use of coral farms
Speaker 1: as both genetic seed banks to preserve the global diversity
Speaker 1: and and and like places to develop strains that are
Speaker 1: more resilient to disease, acidity and heat. Is probably like
Speaker 1: the most promising technology that we have, yeah, right, much
Speaker 1: like those those re planted corals in Florida last week,
Speaker 1: these are all possibly good steps like this might help.
Speaker 1: And and that's important because if global coral reefs collapse,
Speaker 1: which is like a super real possibility with all the
Speaker 1: things going on, we're in a lot of trouble, and
Speaker 1: and like what's going on Florida and these other groups
Speaker 1: like coral Vita based on the Bahamas. Essentially what they're
Speaker 1: trying to do is turbocharge coral evolution to stay ahead
Speaker 1: of the rapid changes happening in ocean ecosystems right now,
Speaker 1: which from like an objective standpoint is just interesting and cool,
Speaker 1: But from a personal standpoint, it offers this glimmer of
Speaker 1: hope and otherwise totally dismal trajectory. And so I've just
Speaker 1: been following all of this, dude, it's fascinating, and like
Speaker 1: you have to applaud all of that. And there there's
Speaker 1: certainly there's a glimmer of hope in that, right, Like
Speaker 1: that that's a very hopeful thing. But also like looking
Speaker 1: at it from from a realist perspective, right, because that's
Speaker 1: just what I do. So like this, this bacteria can
Speaker 1: kill off a reef in weeks or months, not a
Speaker 1: whole reef, a colony, a colony, okay, but like just
Speaker 1: looking at it from a timeline. So if this works,
Speaker 1: that's great, But like, how long would it truly like
Speaker 1: maybe you don't know, but like how long would it
Speaker 1: take to repopulate that? And like how looking looking like
Speaker 1: like nothing ever happened and it'll probably it will never
Speaker 1: be the same, right, things have changed. But the idea
Speaker 1: is to maintain as much of that genetic diversity of
Speaker 1: different roles as possible and try and maintain what what
Speaker 1: keep it at a healthy ecosystem and stay ahead of
Speaker 1: all these different changes coming in between acidity and warming
Speaker 1: and bacteria. There are all these different things happening to
Speaker 1: coral populations all over the world. And the hope is
Speaker 1: that this this farming technique is going to do a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One keep that diversity alive when parts
Speaker 1: of the ocean just go dead, and also give them
Speaker 1: a chance to figure out what sorts of strains might
Speaker 1: survive those unique changing conditions, hopefully and replant them. The
Speaker 1: timeline on that, no one knows. It's just yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and I know there's no answer. I'm just like supposing
Speaker 1: out loud. It's like, it's great, we can do that,
Speaker 1: but like I just wonder, like, how would that translate
Speaker 1: to a mile of reef like fully restored? You know,
Speaker 1: how long? Would I Will we see that? Will our
Speaker 1: kids see that? You know? So a mile? Yes? The
Speaker 1: whole thing? Now? Maybe maybe our kids maybe well maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, but I'll say if
Speaker 1: things like we need we need as many people to
Speaker 1: care about things like this um as they care about
Speaker 1: the TikTok video that I'm that would be great. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be great? Wouldn't that be amazing? That a win?
Speaker 1: So I actually hate to admit it, but this story,
Speaker 1: UM might force me to rethink previous statements about refusing
Speaker 1: to get on TikTok And this is you just you
Speaker 1: just gave us a very good, weighty story about real
Speaker 1: life things I've done. No such thing here. There is
Speaker 1: not nearly as much value in the story. But it
Speaker 1: is a fun one, um and it while it is fun,
Speaker 1: it also makes me question our society, which I always
Speaker 1: enjoy doing. So anyway, this comes from the website of
Speaker 1: North Country Public Radio headline fishing for Customers catching a phenomenon. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you heard anything about this, so
Speaker 1: I guess set this up right. So I'm like paraphrase
Speaker 1: in the story, So, an owner of a local toy
Speaker 1: store in Saranac Lake, New York, he's he's crossing an
Speaker 1: intersection in town and he spots a dollar on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: He reaches down to pick it up, and of course
Speaker 1: the dollar is magically whisked away. So he follows the
Speaker 1: dollar into Blue Line Sports, which is a fly shop,
Speaker 1: and he realized he'd just been franked when Ryan Baker,
Speaker 1: a fishing guide with Adirondack trout Fitters who works at
Speaker 1: Blue Line Sports, said, well, come Instar, how can I
Speaker 1: help you? While holding a rod with the dollar dangling
Speaker 1: from the end. Now, look, that's the oldest trick in
Speaker 1: the book, right, a dollar on a string like this
Speaker 1: is this is not new? Okay? Well, that day Baker
Speaker 1: and his roommate Read Mason, who's also a fishing guide
Speaker 1: punked more than a dozen people with the old dollar
Speaker 1: bill trick, and I have to say, like, this is
Speaker 1: such a fly shop kid thing to do. I could
Speaker 1: I could see the conversation like, yeah, so like most
Speaker 1: of the time you walk into a fly shop and
Speaker 1: kids just like you know, playing Mario Kart or like
Speaker 1: tying more squirmy worms or whatever. There's a lot of downtime,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of downtime like sweep something clean.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly exactly, So I'm down with this
Speaker 1: as as a way to occupy time and drum up
Speaker 1: a little extra business, which they did that they did
Speaker 1: with this little trick. A matter of fact, Baker himself said,
Speaker 1: we just figured let's keep fishing. We're always fishing. So
Speaker 1: I put dollar bill online and put it out on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, right, So that's all. That's all cute and
Speaker 1: ha ha funny. But Mason had been filming all the
Speaker 1: reactions to the prank, and he compiled a bunch into
Speaker 1: a single clip, said it to the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song,
Speaker 1: and posted it on TikTok. And this is from the
Speaker 1: story Mason's TikTok account had something like fifty followers before
Speaker 1: this video went viral. According to Baker, overnight he gained
Speaker 1: more than nine hundred followers. His cell phone was flooded
Speaker 1: with notifications. Eventually he had to shut off notifications, according
Speaker 1: to Baker. Quote from Baker, it was constant, he showed me.
Speaker 1: He was like, dude, every time I refreshed my feet,
Speaker 1: it's another hundred, another hundred, another hundred. Every second he
Speaker 1: would refresh his feed. So then twenty four hours the
Speaker 1: video racked up more than one point six million views. Wow, Okay, now, first,
Speaker 1: good for you guys, Like that's that's awesome, right, um,
Speaker 1: And they said it absolutely translated over the next couple
Speaker 1: of days and into more bodies in the show up,
Speaker 1: which is also awesome. I'm happy for those guys, right.
Speaker 1: But the part that gets me, um, is that like,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that would get one point six million views,
Speaker 1: because again, hell, the dollar bill on a string thing
Speaker 1: has been around since paper money was invented. I think
Speaker 1: like I felt for this on the boardwalking Jersey when
Speaker 1: I was ten and got laughed at by a bunch
Speaker 1: of kids smoking cigarettes and napalm death t shirts. So
Speaker 1: I just I just I just can't believe that the
Speaker 1: dollar bill on a string thing still has that kind
Speaker 1: of juice in like people don't even carry dollars anymore.
Speaker 1: Like if it's more than ten bucks I charged, I
Speaker 1: charge that ship. Um. So of course the post was
Speaker 1: also lit up with comments here's just a couple. Uh,
Speaker 1: bro deserves a raise, And to that, I say, similar
Speaker 1: to what you just said, maybe Broke could have also
Speaker 1: been restocking the thing. Um a bobbers, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So it could have been, but I think
Speaker 1: in this case it was a better use of his
Speaker 1: time for sure. That Another one was like, honestly, i'd
Speaker 1: buy something, and like that's great for the shop if
Speaker 1: it's true. But like would you like if you tricked
Speaker 1: me into a health food store, I wouldn't be like, ha,
Speaker 1: you got me and while I'm here to give me
Speaker 1: a bag of them kale chips. So you know, anyway,
Speaker 1: like well played boys. And I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that the TikTok algorithm is kind of wide open
Speaker 1: right now, Like people have said that to me since
Speaker 1: the TikTok commentary. They're like, dude, the algorithms wide open,
Speaker 1: don't so I don't know, maybe it's time to jump
Speaker 1: on that, but I thought this was a fun little story.
Speaker 1: Good good for that fly shop. I give props to
Speaker 1: both of those those guides who were clearly bored, and
Speaker 1: I hope their manager recognized that what he might have
Speaker 1: thought was a waste of time and they should have
Speaker 1: been restocking or cleaning actually turned into something more valuable.
Speaker 1: So hopefully people thinking about that, like, oh, maybe we
Speaker 1: should give these kids some some marketing responsibilities and I'll
Speaker 1: tell you they're smart. I also feel like that the
Speaker 1: dollar bill trick, like, um, I knew somebody who did
Speaker 1: it with a ten dollar bill once in college and
Speaker 1: end up like almost getting beat down, Like some people
Speaker 1: don't appreciate that trick. No gotta watch that one easily
Speaker 1: just turned into you know, a knuckle sandwich. So the
Speaker 1: other they all say is that it's it's possible that
Speaker 1: the reason that people came chasing after that was because
Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out what it was. What
Speaker 1: is that that fluttery green thing I see on the
Speaker 1: ground and where did it come from? It's like a
Speaker 1: bitcoin I can touch. Where Whereas that story covers a
Speaker 1: part of human culture where everything is maybe vapid and
Speaker 1: has no consequences. The one I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: is is purely consequence And I gotta say, uh, this
Speaker 1: one really pisces me off. This one, this one really
Speaker 1: grinds my gears. A couple of weeks ago, Oregon Department
Speaker 1: of Fish and Wildlife sent out a news release in
Speaker 1: regard to a series of steelhead poaching incidents that occurred
Speaker 1: last winter. So Oregon DFW they use fish traps to
Speaker 1: capture migrating steelhead so that they can harvest the milt
Speaker 1: and the eggs from these fish and then raise small
Speaker 1: in state hatcheries right and then released the small back
Speaker 1: in the rivers and keep steel head around. One of
Speaker 1: the places they do this is an area of Woodward Creek,
Speaker 1: which is a tributary of the South Coquille River, and
Speaker 1: that that area is closed to the public and not
Speaker 1: easily accessible. That's why they do the trapping there. Bi'll
Speaker 1: just set the traps and then they rely on local
Speaker 1: volunteers to check them and and say like, hey, there's
Speaker 1: got some fish in there, and go check them. The
Speaker 1: biologist then removed the fish and they spawned them. The
Speaker 1: last winter they ran into a problem According to district
Speaker 1: biologist Mike Gray, we would get a call from a
Speaker 1: volunteer saying there were six or seven fish in a trap.
Speaker 1: Then when we got there the trap was empty or
Speaker 1: there was only one fish in it. We found evidence
Speaker 1: that the trap had been damaged, so we knew someone
Speaker 1: was getting in there. And this went on for weeks.
Speaker 1: Right they'd get calls saying, oape fisher in the traps
Speaker 1: and they'd come up empty handed. Of Ventually, troopers set
Speaker 1: up surveillance cameras and caught three individuals on video the
Speaker 1: first night they did it. Those individuals and possibly others,
Speaker 1: continued to return to raid the traps. One of them
Speaker 1: noticed the cameras, stole one, shot another out with his rifle,
Speaker 1: but he didn't get all the cameras, and so far
Speaker 1: that individual, Kane M. Horner, is the only one of
Speaker 1: of the poachers to have been identified, and fish traps
Speaker 1: weren't the only places where wild steel had theft occurred
Speaker 1: in the area last year. Brew have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of broodstock boxes? Uh? No, I mean I know a
Speaker 1: broodstock case. I've never heard of broodstock box. Now I
Speaker 1: had neither, so this this was new to me. Apparently
Speaker 1: this is something ODFW does. They they set these boxes
Speaker 1: in rivers near popular fishing areas, and the anglers can like,
Speaker 1: if you catch a steel head, you can release it
Speaker 1: into that box and then let ODF you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I got a fish in the box for you. Interesting it,
Speaker 1: Yeah cool. And so anglers were doing this and they
Speaker 1: were calling in and the biologist show up, no fish
Speaker 1: in the box. Alright, So these were also getting rated
Speaker 1: A biologists ultimately had to resort to netting a bunch
Speaker 1: of the creeks and the rivers in that area to
Speaker 1: get enough steelhead to maintain their numbers, and and that
Speaker 1: practice is both expensive and it's detrimental to the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and steel is just a bad deal. Is not what
Speaker 1: they want to do. That's why they started doing the
Speaker 1: boxes in the first place. Now, yes, say, I am
Speaker 1: not I'm not in favor of raising steelhead and hatcheries
Speaker 1: and releasing in the wild because hatchery fish have a
Speaker 1: sub hatchery fish have a some negative impact on wildfish
Speaker 1: recruitment survival. And it's a complicated topic with a lot
Speaker 1: of tension, and there are valid concerns on all sides,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to get into all of that here,
Speaker 1: because that's not the point. The point is when I
Speaker 1: first read this story, I thought maybe this was like
Speaker 1: an ed Abbey monkey wrench gang style insurgency by wild
Speaker 1: steelhead activists, right, And if that were the case, If
Speaker 1: that were the case, I would not condone these actions,
Speaker 1: but at least like I could understand them, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you have you have a cause of some kind of
Speaker 1: like you have a relief. And that's where what I
Speaker 1: first thought. And so I'm like, yeah, these are these
Speaker 1: are like wildfish vigilantes and they're breaking in fish traps
Speaker 1: and brud stock box and they're setting the fish like
Speaker 1: they're setting the fish free as a way of increasing
Speaker 1: wild production and sabotaging the hatchery programs so they can't
Speaker 1: get their numbers. Like I I see that as idealistic,
Speaker 1: if misguided. But the end of this story is that
Speaker 1: O d f W caught the one suspect identified on
Speaker 1: camera while he was illegally fishing in a section of
Speaker 1: the river that's closed to allow steelhead to spawn unmolested. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that wasn't the answer. No, they're just dart bags. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're not vigilantes. They're just despicable humans with no regard
Speaker 1: for fish, and they were just breaking into those traps
Speaker 1: and boxes to steel steel head for themselves. The first
Speaker 1: arrest went down in February, and o DFW just sent
Speaker 1: out this press release just like just recently, which to
Speaker 1: me that suggests the investigation is stalled. And they're they're
Speaker 1: they're talking about it now because they're like, hey, anybody
Speaker 1: come forward with information because we want to catch these
Speaker 1: other people. And I just I can't wrap my head
Speaker 1: around the sense of entitlement that a person would have
Speaker 1: to have to do something like this. But I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like they didn't just steal from the hatchery.
Speaker 1: They stole from They stole from all of every everybody, everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they stole wild steel head, which are like such
Speaker 1: a rare, diminishing resource. I find everything about this violent, despicable,
Speaker 1: and I do hope the punishment ends up feeding the crime.
Speaker 1: I actually can't even think of the best punishment for this.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what it is. Should he
Speaker 1: be like should he be sentenced to spend the next
Speaker 1: twenty years working on habitat restoration, Like is that valuable
Speaker 1: that that work should he get should he be required
Speaker 1: to get poacher tattooed across his forehead in in big
Speaker 1: black letters? Who has to wear it like a scarlet letter?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't I'd love to hear anybody's
Speaker 1: thoughts on what you think the punishment for this crime
Speaker 1: should be. I'm not holding my breath that that we're
Speaker 1: gonna get justice out of it, but I think it
Speaker 1: might be fun to hear what you all think should
Speaker 1: happen to this guy. Oh, I'd love to hear the
Speaker 1: poacher things. Great, that's not gonna happen. The habitat restoration
Speaker 1: thing though, Dude, that's a that's a pretty that's pretty.
Speaker 1: I like that. I like that a lot. But you know,
Speaker 1: you you you talked about like motivation for this stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, the guy's stealing from everybody and just
Speaker 1: reading so many of these stories with so many different
Speaker 1: kinds of fishery, and this one's definitely on another level
Speaker 1: because of how precious those fish are to begin with,
Speaker 1: you know, how rare. But I also feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like murder, Like everybody wants to know why, and
Speaker 1: sometimes the answer is because I'm just a ship bag
Speaker 1: that doesn't care, Like that's that's sort of like the
Speaker 1: end of the story, Like we see it out here
Speaker 1: with stripers all the time. These guys putch all these stripers,
Speaker 1: none of them probably follow or or they just don't
Speaker 1: care about anybody else's conservation effort going on behind that.
Speaker 1: It's just it's irrelevant. It's pure selfishness and they just
Speaker 1: don't care. So I hate to say it, but I
Speaker 1: would guess these guys are not super in tune with
Speaker 1: the plight of the steel head, Like it's just like
Speaker 1: there they are, and I need those. It's awful. But
Speaker 1: I want to believe that there's more of a reasoning
Speaker 1: behind it. I want to believe there's some like coherent philosophy,
Speaker 1: even if it's at odds with my own. But maybe right,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just blind stupid I want. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. They probably they probably didn't didn't get
Speaker 1: into this, But BECA, is there any correlation between the
Speaker 1: phone calls and the group In other words, like were
Speaker 1: they checking all the time or would they just seemingly
Speaker 1: get hit after somebody called and said they're steel heading
Speaker 1: the trap? I don't know. I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to that. I don't know. I mean, how would they know? Like,
Speaker 1: is there a ring? It's just like a ring? I
Speaker 1: I I'm I'm joking, but I doubt it. I just
Speaker 1: think these are just dirt bags. They're everywhere, dude in everything,
Speaker 1: like they're everywhere, but this one is particularly and I
Speaker 1: want to I want to think better of humanity than that.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're wrong, I just want to. I
Speaker 1: want to assume that people have some sort of coherent
Speaker 1: reasoning for the shitty things they do. And I know
Speaker 1: that's not always true, but it helps me make sense
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, well we'll see what Phil thinks about
Speaker 1: all of this, about the poaching, about the TikTok, about
Speaker 1: coral reefs, about killing off smallmouth, and then um, after that,
Speaker 1: we'll do a little weekly word and give you a
Speaker 1: new word to call somebody who you don't like or
Speaker 1: maybe who poaches your your steelhead. All right, it's my
Speaker 1: favorite part of the week where I get to choose
Speaker 1: which parent I would like to live with after the divorce,
Speaker 1: and this week that parent is Joe Sermelli. What kind
Speaker 1: of an idiot falls for the old dollar on a
Speaker 1: fishing line? Trick? I mean, come on, alright, guys, Sorry
Speaker 1: to cut it short this week, but I have to
Speaker 1: run off to the Western Union. UM. Don't mean to
Speaker 1: name drop or anything, but there's a Nigerian prince who
Speaker 1: could really use my help. And then after he pays
Speaker 1: me back with interest, I'm quitting this job, retiring early.
Speaker 1: I never have to listen to this shitty podcast again.
Speaker 1: Que Webster's Dictionary defines fish. As we started this week's
Speaker 1: show in Staten Island, New York. But for the Weekly Word,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hop on the Jersey Turnpike and make the
Speaker 1: two hour drive south to Philadelphia. And this journey is
Speaker 1: actually by request of several listeners who have asked me
Speaker 1: to give an oral history of the term shooby. And
Speaker 1: that's s h o O b i E. Like most
Speaker 1: slang terms we've covered in this Weekly Word, John shooby
Speaker 1: isn't tied directly to fishing, but it's used pretty often
Speaker 1: by anglers along the Jersey Coast from roughly mid state
Speaker 1: to the southern tip of Cape May. However, research shows
Speaker 1: that shooby can also be heard uttered in Delaware and
Speaker 1: even certain parts of southern California. And that's all well,
Speaker 1: and good. But I'm gonna go ahead and say that
Speaker 1: even if there are shoe bees and Cali in the
Speaker 1: first state, the term was still borrowed from the O. G. Shoobies,
Speaker 1: which come from Philly. Shoobies or shoes for sure, have
Speaker 1: been around since the late eighteen hundreds, and back in
Speaker 1: those days, the Jersey Shore was not the sprawling, crowded
Speaker 1: tourists scene it is today. In fact, only a select
Speaker 1: few areas of development even existed along the coast in
Speaker 1: the southern half of the state. Now these days, thanks
Speaker 1: to the Atlantic City Expressway, you can get from Philly
Speaker 1: to the beach in about an hour. Of course, back
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundreds, your fastest option was by train,
Speaker 1: and furthermore, the train was a relatively affordable option for
Speaker 1: poorer families in Philadelphia who would pack the cars on
Speaker 1: a Saturday morning for fun in the sun. Now I've
Speaker 1: read accounts that the price of the train ticket also
Speaker 1: included a boxed lunch that came in a shoe box.
Speaker 1: I've also heard that after ponying up for that ticket,
Speaker 1: many families just didn't have enough money left over to
Speaker 1: buy food at the beach, so they carry their lunches
Speaker 1: to the beach in shoe boxes. Either way, the day
Speaker 1: trippers were easily identified by their shoe box lunch pails,
Speaker 1: and the term shooby was born. While shooby is alive
Speaker 1: and well, how one gets to find as a shoeb
Speaker 1: has morphed over time. Shoobies making a day trip these
Speaker 1: days aren't hanging around Wildwood and Avalon eating stale bread
Speaker 1: out of a Buster brown box. But according to Urban Dictionary,
Speaker 1: a shoeby can be any person who looks out of
Speaker 1: place while at the beach, usually identified by the wearing
Speaker 1: of black party socks with shorts and flip flops, and
Speaker 1: or a severe sunburn. Other sources note that common shooby
Speaker 1: traits include pale skin, a lack of familiarity with local customs,
Speaker 1: and wearing shoes on the beach. However, Philly Magazine went
Speaker 1: all in with an article that featured a series of
Speaker 1: questions aimed at helping you figure out if you are,
Speaker 1: in fact a shoebie. Here are a few examples. Have
Speaker 1: you ever used wet towels as car drapes so pedestrians
Speaker 1: or other drivers can't see you shimmy out of your
Speaker 1: wet bathing suit. Have you ever spent more than five
Speaker 1: minutes getting your towel in the perfect tanning position to
Speaker 1: the sun. Do you carry enough blankets, towels, coolers, umbrellas,
Speaker 1: and other beach paraphernalia that your family looks more like
Speaker 1: a Safari expedition When you finally get to the beach,
Speaker 1: do you go in the water, dip down to your
Speaker 1: waist to wave your hands in the water, and then
Speaker 1: get out? Do you insist on listening to a Philadelphia
Speaker 1: radio station on the beach, even when it sounds like
Speaker 1: noise from World War two field radio? Do you engage
Speaker 1: in any kind of relationship with seagulls, feeding them, chasing them,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Now, if you answered yes to any of
Speaker 1: those questions, you might be a shoebe Now if you
Speaker 1: want to know if you're a fishing shooby, I devised
Speaker 1: a few questions of my own. Do you roll a
Speaker 1: surf cart full of tackle in three hand of foot
Speaker 1: rods onto a crowded beach and soaked blood wears for
Speaker 1: croakers right where everyone is swimming? Do you attempt to
Speaker 1: walk out onto a wets not cover jettie carrying six
Speaker 1: ft spinning rod and wearing spiry topsiders that have no
Speaker 1: tread whatsoever. Do you repeatedly bomb a tuna size plug
Speaker 1: under the bridge directly into the wakes of three jet
Speaker 1: skis and ski boats at noon during a deadlow tide
Speaker 1: and expect something to eat that if you answered yes
Speaker 1: to any of those questions, I've got an old shoebox
Speaker 1: full of banjo minnows with your name on it. Look, man,
Speaker 1: if it'll get me a shoe box full of vintage banjo's,
Speaker 1: I will strap on some topsiders and go jetty skiing tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Hook it up, send them. You won't. You won't get
Speaker 1: very far. Just a couple of rocks out and you'll
Speaker 1: bite it. That's usually what happens. But you like, if
Speaker 1: you like vintage banjo's, I have some. You know, I
Speaker 1: could actually arrange that. But speaking of vintage and flexing,
Speaker 1: uh Miles is gonna see us out this week with
Speaker 1: our end of the line segment where he's going to
Speaker 1: discuss an old bait that you might legitimately find in
Speaker 1: an old shoe box in your grandpa cedar chest. But
Speaker 1: that also paved the way for decades of chest beating
Speaker 1: over one's skills to rope hog bass. Well, that's not
Speaker 1: loud enough, Burt. When I was six years old, my
Speaker 1: holy grail was a five pound large mouth bass. My
Speaker 1: uncle Bob had one on his wall the gate mouth
Speaker 1: green and black, emblem of his fishing greatness. Now, as
Speaker 1: a grown man, I realized that a five pound large
Speaker 1: mouth is a respectable northern specimen, but nothing onspiring, and
Speaker 1: that this particular skin mount, an amateur garage job done
Speaker 1: by a buddy of his bargain cost, is actually far
Speaker 1: from exceptional. But thirty five years ago I didn't know
Speaker 1: any of that. I idolized my uncle and would sit
Speaker 1: on the musty cabin couch staring at his fish and
Speaker 1: ask him to tell me the tale of its capture. Again.
Speaker 1: It happened in the spring in the shallow back bay
Speaker 1: of the small Wisconsin Lake where I first learned to fish.
Speaker 1: We never caught anything in that bay because when I
Speaker 1: was there in the summer, the bass were in deeper water.
Speaker 1: But I would still make my uncle take me back
Speaker 1: there at least once a year and have him show
Speaker 1: me the down log, where on a fateful day in
Speaker 1: the late seventies he caught two trophy bass and a
Speaker 1: handful of casts, one weighing four and a half pounds
Speaker 1: and the other the wall hanger, coming in over five.
Speaker 1: He caught both fish on the same purple rubber worm.
Speaker 1: Older listeners will remember the worms I'm talking about. They
Speaker 1: came pre rigged with a leader threaded from the nose
Speaker 1: of the worm through the body, attached to two or
Speaker 1: three hooks that's stuck out of the belly. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: hooks had thin wire weed guards on them. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: leader came dressed with other fish attractors, like beads, a
Speaker 1: spinner blade, or a propeller. Back then, we called them
Speaker 1: ubber worms, even though they weren't actually made of rubber.
Speaker 1: Over time, I've noticed that the terminology has changed to
Speaker 1: more accurately describe what we fish. Most people call them
Speaker 1: plastic worms or just plastics. Now only the real old
Speaker 1: heads still talk about rubber. Synthetic worms go back a
Speaker 1: very long time. The first American patent on an artificial
Speaker 1: worm was submitted in eight seventy seven, and it actually
Speaker 1: was made of rubber, but real rubber worms never took off.
Speaker 1: Rubber is relatively stiff and does a poor job imitating
Speaker 1: the supple juiciness of an annelid undulating in the water.
Speaker 1: For nearly a century, anglers and lure inventors struggled to
Speaker 1: find a fake alternative that worked as well as a
Speaker 1: live dirt snake. Once that finally happened, however, it changed
Speaker 1: sport fishing more substantially than just about any other new
Speaker 1: technology and history. Except the fish hook itself. Nothing flexes
Speaker 1: in modern fishing like soft plastics. The man credited with
Speaker 1: inventing the first plastic worm is Nick Cream, who came
Speaker 1: up with this prototype in ninety Some evidence suggests, however,
Speaker 1: that a man named David DeLong may have actually figured
Speaker 1: it out three years before Cream, but DeLong was not
Speaker 1: as successful at marketing his creations. Laura also claims DeLong
Speaker 1: as the first person to scent his worms with annis oil,
Speaker 1: a tidbit I have to mention as a nod to
Speaker 1: our resident stryper expert, Bob the garbage Man Britana Nanananwski.
Speaker 1: While soft plastics really gained popularity and came into their
Speaker 1: own in the American South, they are Midwestern in origin.
Speaker 1: DeLong was from Indiana and Cream held from Ohio, where
Speaker 1: he worked as a machinist. The mid twentieth century saw
Speaker 1: the peak of American industry. Guys like Cream and DeLong
Speaker 1: understood industrial design and production. They also had enough disposable
Speaker 1: income to go fishing on the weekends and enough Moxian
Speaker 1: confidence to dream of quitting their day jobs and king
Speaker 1: of living at what they truly loved. Cream saw his
Speaker 1: opportunity in an emerging new chemistry, plastics. Exactly how do
Speaker 1: you mean it's a great future in plastics. The story
Speaker 1: goes that Cream paid a visit to DuPont Chemicals in Cleveland,
Speaker 1: and a lab tech gave him some chemicals to take home.
Speaker 1: How exactly he talked his way into walking out with
Speaker 1: a few buckets of proprietary chemicals to play with remains unclear.
Speaker 1: Maybe he paid the guy off, Maybe they shared a
Speaker 1: couple of nips from a pocket flask. Maybe Cream was
Speaker 1: just that smooth. Maybe the story is total bs, but
Speaker 1: it makes a good story, so I'm sticking with it.
Speaker 1: Nick Cream and his wife Cosma spent the next year
Speaker 1: playing with polymers, pigments, and oils in their kitchen. Each
Speaker 1: time they thought they had a viable mixture, Cream would
Speaker 1: carry a vatio it down to the basement and pour
Speaker 1: it into a mold he made from a steel model
Speaker 1: of a real nightcrawler in the couple took the first
Speaker 1: plastic worm to market. Like I said, cream Lure wasn't
Speaker 1: the only company making similar products with pre harnessed plastic worms,
Speaker 1: but they also sold unrigged replacement worms, and a few
Speaker 1: years later, an unknown bass angler fishing on Lake Tyler,
Speaker 1: one of the many newly created reservoirs in East Texas,
Speaker 1: came up with a rigging technique that would make Nick
Speaker 1: and Cosma Cream's worms world famous. That anonymous angler removed
Speaker 1: the brass islet from a bell sinker, threaded his line
Speaker 1: through the weight tied on a bare hook, poked that
Speaker 1: hook through the nose of one of Cream's replacement worms,
Speaker 1: pushed it through, turned it around, and inserted the hook
Speaker 1: point and barbed into the worm's soft bellies so that
Speaker 1: both were hidden within the supple plastic. The Texas rig
Speaker 1: was born. By nine cream worms were the hottest commodity
Speaker 1: in the Lone Star state, selling for a buck of peace,
Speaker 1: which translates to about nine dollars today. Cream Lure was
Speaker 1: making good money, and a year later they moved their
Speaker 1: headquarters from Akron, Ohio to Tyler, Texas. Cream Lures achieved
Speaker 1: early success by being the first large scale plastic bait manufacturer,
Speaker 1: but competition caught up quickly. Cream had to find new
Speaker 1: ways to stay ahead of the spreading sea of soft
Speaker 1: plastic lure options hitting in the shelves. He recognized the
Speaker 1: marketing power of influencers, a half century before anyone ever
Speaker 1: used that term. Cream tracked down the best local anglers
Speaker 1: and started paying them to travel all over the South
Speaker 1: showing off the effectiveness of soft plastic bits and teaching
Speaker 1: others how to use them. He also targeted the pros
Speaker 1: and allegedly struck the first angler endorsement deal with John Powell,
Speaker 1: who he paid eighteen thousand dollars to fish Cream worms
Speaker 1: on the B A S. S Series in n Additionally,
Speaker 1: Cream conscripted Bill Dance, who endorsed the worms of tournaments,
Speaker 1: events and on his long running television show Nick Cream
Speaker 1: died in He's been inducted into the Freshwater Fishing Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame, the Texas Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame, and
Speaker 1: the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center. More importantly, though, every time
Speaker 1: an angler rigs up a soft plastic bait, which is
Speaker 1: to say, thousands of times a day all over the world.
Speaker 1: They're unknowingly paying homage to a machinist from Ohio who
Speaker 1: wanted to build a better worm. So that's it for
Speaker 1: this week. If you're staring into the mirror trying to
Speaker 1: get that beach bod to pop in just the right ways,
Speaker 1: remember never suggest your guides fish finders on demo mode.
Speaker 1: Bring your own lunch when creeping on pay leaks with strangers.
Speaker 1: If you decide instead to take that lunch to the
Speaker 1: Jersey shore, don't pack it in a shoe box. And
Speaker 1: Nick Cream and his inventions flexed harder than macho man
Speaker 1: Randy Savage Clean to the boy. Yea, how perfect was
Speaker 1: that clip? Anyway, right after you slather your bleached white
Speaker 1: skin with a quart of SPF two thousand, feel free
Speaker 1: to share sale ben ittem bar, nomination, awkward photo, or
Speaker 1: newsy bit with us at Bent at the meat Eater
Speaker 1: dot com. We've also got eyes on those degenerate Angler
Speaker 1: and Bent podcast hashtags on the Graham and using them
Speaker 1: as the fastest way to score stickers from us. We
Speaker 1: also hope you've gotten eyes on the new fish hoodies
Speaker 1: and T shirts store because they will look great on
Speaker 1: you while you were jamming out to the Bent Spotify
Speaker 1: music playlist on the beach this summer. That's right. They'll
Speaker 1: also really bring out the ship and that ship eating
Speaker 1: grin you love to flash while flexing on the twelve
Speaker 1: year old bass fishing at the local golf course Pond.
Speaker 1: Don't Don't Say back My life