Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: fog bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. I have reasons why I think it's
Speaker 1: best if you can. That's gonna stick with me. Don't
Speaker 1: throw that out there right before the podcast. But you want,
Speaker 1: you want to know why I think it's best if
Speaker 1: you can. Okay, I have a theory about it. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a theory about why it's good. I put
Speaker 1: my theory to Rogan, and Rogan thinks it's good because
Speaker 1: he thinks people to talk over each other less. It
Speaker 1: makes it hard to talk over someone else. You know,
Speaker 1: if you go out to dinner, like you and your
Speaker 1: lady and another dude and his lady at various times
Speaker 1: through dinner, it's like, for whatever, there's like two conversations
Speaker 1: going on, like you're talking to his wife and then
Speaker 1: you're talking to your body, and you know, you get
Speaker 1: less of that effect. You seem to just listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You do a good job of people not doing that
Speaker 1: that it's one at a time, it's not. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you do you see that as a challenge or
Speaker 1: is that just a normal conversation like you said, people
Speaker 1: do that. Well, it's like it's it's like a comment,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? How does it justin levels um
Speaker 1: two figures? Yeah, it just has it's like a normal chat,
Speaker 1: but it's there's like a little bit of discipline to it,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, imposing the discipline. I cannot believe you
Speaker 1: guys do this every week for every couple of fifty
Speaker 1: two a year. We do them, and usually we do uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we'll sit down and we'll sometimes we'll take a
Speaker 1: couple of days and do three or four. We're ready
Speaker 1: whenever you are, m m. Yeah, we've released I think
Speaker 1: a hundred two or a hundred three of them. That
Speaker 1: is crazy. Did you listen to the meat tree ones?
Speaker 1: Both mere to listen to permissions? I've made major changes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that made major changes in my life. Well, uh, Kenyan
Speaker 1: is going to be a pig and ship pig and
Speaker 1: mud you know. I think to go and look at
Speaker 1: your place because he's full of like little ideas about deer.
Speaker 1: He is, and I think that he is going to
Speaker 1: see the potential I mean, and he's going to see
Speaker 1: the ability to um that there are big areas that
Speaker 1: are just unencumbered. No one you know that part when
Speaker 1: he when he asked me, like you did, what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Like that that you've never been in there?
Speaker 1: I'm like, I physically have never been in there. And
Speaker 1: it's big. I mean it's a big I mean a
Speaker 1: hundred acres. I've never been and no one goes in.
Speaker 1: And the difference between um Mark and Doug is a
Speaker 1: Doug sort of grounded in reality, where Doug like looks
Speaker 1: at properties that need to turn profits. So Doug's got
Speaker 1: like agriculture, forestry. Kenyan's perspective is like how are we
Speaker 1: gonna make big giant bucks? It is and we had that,
Speaker 1: We had that dust. So Doug came and spent a
Speaker 1: day and a half and came around. He was very
Speaker 1: nice about some things we've done, things we we did
Speaker 1: do better, and uh um, He's like, what's your goal?
Speaker 1: And I you know, I just I said, you know,
Speaker 1: you would like to hold deer And then he got
Speaker 1: into the conversation about the neighbors, you know, shooting the
Speaker 1: deer and not doing it and what bothers you and
Speaker 1: the same thing. I went down that path immediately too.
Speaker 1: He's like, alright, time out. You know they're gonna move
Speaker 1: through here, and he actually, I really mean this. He
Speaker 1: actually convinced me to have a better attitude about it, well,
Speaker 1: that it's just gonna happen, don't get hung up on it.
Speaker 1: He legitimately convinced me those guys who own yettie coolers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, their places unbelievable, and they're like pride themselves.
Speaker 1: And it's not fence and everything down there's fence, you know,
Speaker 1: and they won't fence it. But they got one neighbors.
Speaker 1: It's one group of neighbors that shoots there, that shoots
Speaker 1: there deer, which is not how the state views it.
Speaker 1: But um so it's there. Probably is not fence, they
Speaker 1: point out, it's just got offense because they fenced one
Speaker 1: property line South Texas or one they fenced one line
Speaker 1: on it. Okay, because everybody else's pride seems similar because
Speaker 1: these guys post up on the These guys perch up
Speaker 1: all along that property line. Dad part you know, I've
Speaker 1: heard us. I told us to Mark that, you know,
Speaker 1: the neighbors, the work we've done unforced and everything that
Speaker 1: they called. You know, we've created a dear fat actory.
Speaker 1: So they post up a lot of them. You see
Speaker 1: a lot of stands just on the other side. I mean,
Speaker 1: and they will because you can bait in Michigan. They'll
Speaker 1: put certain you know, food items out there that I
Speaker 1: don't have on my property. You know. Now, they'll do
Speaker 1: a pile of apples. I don't have apples, and they'll
Speaker 1: I mean they, you know, during certain times of the year,
Speaker 1: they'll pull deer. I mean, so they I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's funny. I was telling that to Mark. They've got
Speaker 1: tricks and they literally, you know, they know the area
Speaker 1: where I've logged, and and and they the transition areas
Speaker 1: and show you to put something, put something not toxic
Speaker 1: but just to taste like ship all over their bait piles.
Speaker 1: Human hair. That human hair. Yeah, human hair is a
Speaker 1: good one. People do that, go to a barber shop
Speaker 1: and sprinkling along. Have you heard that. I haven't heard
Speaker 1: that will keep deer way That that human hair. I've
Speaker 1: heard to do that like a little tufts of human
Speaker 1: people's hair in my mouth. No phone not saying you
Speaker 1: need it for the No. Yeah, I'm down with it.
Speaker 1: Um alright, ready, ready, okay, first thing we're gonna do today. Uh.
Speaker 1: Everyone introduced themselves as though dealing poker so, um, we'll
Speaker 1: start with nice all right, let me honest. I'm here today, Um,
Speaker 1: just coming off a big, big morning and being all
Speaker 1: seasick like man, short morning, lost a enormous amount of
Speaker 1: respect for your honest today. Then going down, Mr Cook,
Speaker 1: Matt Cook from Chicago, Illinois, and you're you're having what
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to set the scene. What's in your cup? There?
Speaker 1: Your glass? Um, I have a youngling beer, South Florida.
Speaker 1: So you poured a beer into that glass. I thought
Speaker 1: you were having some sort of large glass of bourbon
Speaker 1: or something. No, No, it's South Florida style. Okay, moving along,
Speaker 1: Josh right from South Florida. I'm drinking by light and
Speaker 1: the can and the can Josh bright right, spell it
Speaker 1: you guys. And then Ryan, Yeah, but tell him your name,
Speaker 1: Bryan Tubbs, South Florida, South Florida, drunken by light from
Speaker 1: a can. Before we start, you guys are single, like
Speaker 1: not married? Yeah? Girlfriends Okay. So we've had good luck
Speaker 1: in the past by pointing out people's singleness because then, um,
Speaker 1: female listeners, all five of them will know no, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot more that. Because we used to talk
Speaker 1: about the lack of them, and then they point out
Speaker 1: that that they are out there. Female listeners knowing now
Speaker 1: that you're out there right and that you're single, will
Speaker 1: come and find you. I have heard that this happens
Speaker 1: from a man whose initials are B B. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter. I don't so
Speaker 1: uh Yannae, explain you're explain. I want to start out
Speaker 1: with you. Explain your morning. So do your state of
Speaker 1: your state of being in mind this morning? But when
Speaker 1: I when my state of being in mind went south? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like just your little problem, you're a little problem. Well
Speaker 1: we went Can I tell what we were doing that
Speaker 1: made it happen? So? Yeah, So we went fishing with
Speaker 1: Ryan and uh Ran. How far do we go? Eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty miles offshore from so you're not so Ryan, You're
Speaker 1: not so possessive about your spot. So we can say
Speaker 1: we were fifteen to eighteen miles off b town, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Way out, way out, pretty far out. It took us
Speaker 1: a while to get there. It was rough on my
Speaker 1: scale of you know, calm and rough seas. It was
Speaker 1: rough out there. Would you do what you mean? We're running?
Speaker 1: Did you think it was rough? Very choppy. Yeah. Rough
Speaker 1: rough would be a good word for it. Not like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the bolt's gonna flip, but like just
Speaker 1: annoyingly rough rough from a lot of different directions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we ran for at least it was at least
Speaker 1: an hour right on the way out. Um, then we
Speaker 1: finally got to the spot, started rigging up, and we're
Speaker 1: fishing with the fella named Nick. Um. I guess you
Speaker 1: call like the first mate in that situation, right, and um,
Speaker 1: he got everything in the water quickly, I'd say, just
Speaker 1: about the time that mate got down to feet, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, man, here we go. So this happened
Speaker 1: to just like just like you spend enough time with
Speaker 1: a guy and you sort of get a sense of
Speaker 1: how they handle situations, and just to see him just
Speaker 1: like not just staring off into space. Man. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: bringing up a sword fish and he can't even look
Speaker 1: over in the direction of the rod. That was the
Speaker 1: second one. Yeah, I was like, yeah, I saw that
Speaker 1: first one coming in. No, so I swear I was
Speaker 1: looking towards the shore. You can still see just a
Speaker 1: few buildings, you know, at that distance, and uh, when
Speaker 1: I would turn the other direction and look at that rod,
Speaker 1: and where the action was. It was just like those
Speaker 1: swells were just right behind the rod, and every time
Speaker 1: I see one of those swells roll, I mean that's
Speaker 1: all it takes, you know. Yeah, it didn't make me
Speaker 1: like hate you. It made me Um, there was some
Speaker 1: of that, but mostly it made me just pity you.
Speaker 1: And I felt bad for you, but teings with a
Speaker 1: little bit of disgust. Yeah, I was that we need
Speaker 1: to go in as soon as I got sick, and
Speaker 1: maybe you hate me no more pity and my and
Speaker 1: I got in such a better mood once he once
Speaker 1: he started getting better, you kind of like had a
Speaker 1: little bit of a throw up but not really and
Speaker 1: felt a little better. No, I finally, you know, because
Speaker 1: you're wrong through all these things in your head. Like
Speaker 1: even Ryan's like, you know, you want to have a
Speaker 1: dip that don't make you throw Hope you'll feel better,
Speaker 1: you know. I was like, yeah, I already thought about that,
Speaker 1: but like that's too hardcore. I don't really need to
Speaker 1: start chewning again, um, just for this. But then I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about how ron Lane told us about the salt water,
Speaker 1: Like I wonder if I could just pound a glass
Speaker 1: of salt water and cure myself forever. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, you're just being a little bit.
Speaker 1: You just need to throw up. So I just jammed
Speaker 1: my finger, my whole hand as far as I could
Speaker 1: into my yeah, because I was like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: just like you're close, You're close, You're close, and eventually
Speaker 1: you're just like, dude, you know it's gonna be better
Speaker 1: once you get it over with. And as soon as
Speaker 1: I did it, it's amazing. I mean, but I only
Speaker 1: got like ten fifteen minutes out of feeling better and
Speaker 1: then it's sort of sunk back down again. But anyways,
Speaker 1: that's a little sick that's get hit by a mosquito.
Speaker 1: So we just uh that was just a quick teaser
Speaker 1: into something we're out in. I describe how do you
Speaker 1: describe we're at right now? I mean we're out in
Speaker 1: a stilt house like like a check said, pilings out
Speaker 1: in the on the Glades. That's an up and coming
Speaker 1: uh you know, luxury home on stilts. Um. No, it's
Speaker 1: more of a shock. Uh. Six miles into the Everglades
Speaker 1: off of just west of Boca and for Lauderdale and
Speaker 1: a handful of these old places out here and they
Speaker 1: they were grandfathered in under some kind of land management plan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's in this area. It's a state area. There's about
Speaker 1: fifteen of different you know, uh you know levels of complexity.
Speaker 1: Some are falling down in summer, you know, a little
Speaker 1: newer and have been remodeled. Um, they are leases that
Speaker 1: with the state and so um, everyone out here just
Speaker 1: got their leases renewed. So good for how many years?
Speaker 1: I think it's oh so they could feasibly you could
Speaker 1: burn it had the parents placed down in two years.
Speaker 1: It's a twenty or goal still you know it is
Speaker 1: twenty incremental more years. So you're breathing easy. We're breathing easy. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But they've been Um, they've been around for I think
Speaker 1: since they and they were his history said a lot
Speaker 1: of people said they were hippie communes at one time.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have over the years hidden out
Speaker 1: out here fugitives. You hear all kinds of stories. But
Speaker 1: what they are now is just for people that enjoy
Speaker 1: the Everglades, airboating, etcetera. Yeah, like kind of like you
Speaker 1: get the sense and just from conversations with with your
Speaker 1: your friends here is that you get the sense of
Speaker 1: people now buy these more like as beer drinking locations.
Speaker 1: It's that's part of like a social aspect to it.
Speaker 1: Even though it's good duck hunting, frog gig and bow
Speaker 1: fish and alligator hunting, it's not much different than like
Speaker 1: a cabin in the north Woods where supposedly you're going
Speaker 1: there to you know, hunt deer for a whole weeken.
Speaker 1: Some people do that, but a lot of people go
Speaker 1: out there and drink beer drinking purposes. You know what
Speaker 1: it's been described. Someone told me a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: It's a lifestyle. There's several locals that these don't change
Speaker 1: hands very often, so um, you believe it or not,
Speaker 1: it's it's somewhat selective the people that have them, and
Speaker 1: so it's a lifestyle. People come out on the weekends.
Speaker 1: They very often handed down from one generation to the next.
Speaker 1: So um, there's a lot of pride in this area
Speaker 1: and that the people that have been around for a
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, it's it's almost like a little subculture
Speaker 1: in South Florida. You know, you go three miles east
Speaker 1: of here and go into town and nine of the
Speaker 1: people don't even know it exists, you know. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean they don't know that there's these little ships. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't they don't know, you know, they know the
Speaker 1: Everglades are here, in the air boats are here. You know.
Speaker 1: Obviously you guys come in and seeing the people at
Speaker 1: the at the law at the land we call it
Speaker 1: the landing. You know, you see people there watching the sunset, gators,
Speaker 1: you know, birds et cetera, w walking on the levies.
Speaker 1: But they don't really know all of what exists. You know,
Speaker 1: there is you know, you have some tour boats you
Speaker 1: know that come out and people do see it from that,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll ride them by, they'll see it, but
Speaker 1: they see it from a distance and don't really know
Speaker 1: the whole story of them and really what's gone down here. Um,
Speaker 1: it's like when Ryan takes you to see a plane
Speaker 1: wreck pretty much and they're like, what happened? I don't
Speaker 1: know when to heaven? Don't know? Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: you know, but I can tell you to happen, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what the you know, a little
Speaker 1: special part of it about is out here is it's
Speaker 1: you know, having the select you know, the the opportunity
Speaker 1: to do it, you know, and have the camps and
Speaker 1: you know, it's something that's very small percent that actually
Speaker 1: come here and sit where we're sitting right now doing
Speaker 1: what we're doing. Yeah. I had talked to at Um,
Speaker 1: you know, are are one of our special guests here,
Speaker 1: Matt Cook, some months ago, and you always kind of
Speaker 1: like mentioned the camp in the Everglades and mentioned frog gigging.
Speaker 1: But I didn't really with all the respect, I didn't
Speaker 1: pay that much attention. I mean, he showed me a picture,
Speaker 1: but it didn't really like it didn't. I didn't have it.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a good frame of reference to picture it.
Speaker 1: So we land. We finally agree like, yes, this is
Speaker 1: something we should come down and check out. And we
Speaker 1: flew into Fort Lauderdale and it's not far, I mean
Speaker 1: very short, Like what's the drive from Fort Lauderdale to
Speaker 1: the launch minutes? So like, yeah, you'd be in a
Speaker 1: big airport right direct flight from the West coast, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: direct flight from the Pacific Ocean landing Fort Lauderdale, and
Speaker 1: twenty minutes you had a boat launch. And the first
Speaker 1: impression I have coming out here is this is the
Speaker 1: only place I've ever been where people leave their trailer
Speaker 1: in the water. Like I'm telling you, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like it is customary around the country and I have
Speaker 1: explored it extensively to launch your boat and then and
Speaker 1: then drive your trailer up and park it somewhere on
Speaker 1: dry ground. Yeah, but pure people are like they back
Speaker 1: it down, dry their boat off, and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're going away overnight. It's like, perfect, I'll just leave
Speaker 1: it right here, Just leap it right here, because this
Speaker 1: way it's ready for me when I come back. That's
Speaker 1: probably a function of the air boat, right, you can
Speaker 1: leave the hubs out of the water. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: obviously you want to leave your hubs out of the water,
Speaker 1: keep keep your barings in good shape. But um down here,
Speaker 1: you know the way we part you know, putting the
Speaker 1: boats in the water. You know that's in this area.
Speaker 1: A lot of the parts of the state where the
Speaker 1: air boat you actually dry launch your boat. You have to,
Speaker 1: you know, it's that's pretty red neck kicking reverse floor
Speaker 1: it smashed the break and dump the boat off the trail.
Speaker 1: You drop it off on the ground because there's not
Speaker 1: like a you know, we got a nice little incline
Speaker 1: where we can back in. You know other places that
Speaker 1: we air boat, we're legitimately drop on our boat in
Speaker 1: a field more or less, and that's what you got,
Speaker 1: you know, you just drop it off on the ground,
Speaker 1: drive off little airboat trail and go through the marsh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we get in and we take off in the
Speaker 1: air boats and uh, you guys don't run with you
Speaker 1: guys don't run with lights normally because the way the
Speaker 1: moon is, I don't know if it has to do
Speaker 1: with whether it's throwing moonlight or not. But like you
Speaker 1: get the whole swamp which is just black, but the
Speaker 1: creek or the drainages and the trails look like aluminum foil,
Speaker 1: like strips of aluminum foil and the light and you
Speaker 1: just run. You can see everything perfectly clear and there's
Speaker 1: nothing to hit rocks because there's no trees and no rocks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there is some trees. You gotta know where they're at.
Speaker 1: There are some there's some stumps. There's some willow stumps,
Speaker 1: willow beds, you know that kind of stuff. Went. We
Speaker 1: we've we've found them before. Yeah. And it's interesting about
Speaker 1: running the airboat too, is there's no prop Yeah, no
Speaker 1: underwater Yeah, no, your your prop is you know, it's
Speaker 1: an airplane engine, you know, with a prop up on
Speaker 1: top of the hall and you have a rudder and
Speaker 1: without basically the difference in a outboard boat something where
Speaker 1: you gotta skegg down your only power. You know, the
Speaker 1: way to turn it is with power. You know, you
Speaker 1: got a rudder that's direct and air. When you lift
Speaker 1: off the gas, then you have no you have no control.
Speaker 1: So that's why you notice when we're driving, we're on
Speaker 1: and off the gas. You know a lot, a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, and you can run stuff over without naming it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we would have killed if we had a problem
Speaker 1: in the water. Yeah there manate he friendly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like just like skim right over like the alligators just
Speaker 1: kind of like moving under the boat. And it took
Speaker 1: me a minute because at first I'm used to, like
Speaker 1: when you hit something with a with a normal skiff
Speaker 1: or whatever, I'm used to that, you know, noise of
Speaker 1: the prop. Yeah, we're here. It's just like you just
Speaker 1: like grease right over everything. And you ride out here
Speaker 1: at the camp and the camps like up on pilings
Speaker 1: is what you guys call him. Yeah, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: just pull the airboat up and you guys put your
Speaker 1: seats on them way up high, so you're up looking
Speaker 1: I'm presuming right, so you can see over the grass. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a you know, and like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: as far as like going back to like the culture
Speaker 1: of the airboating, that's a Southern Glades where we ride
Speaker 1: Everglades style because we like to be up high in
Speaker 1: the grasstyle. Yeah, you go up further up to the
Speaker 1: state and they'll you'll tend to see the boats down
Speaker 1: lower their center of gravity because you'll see more of
Speaker 1: like a ride boat was what we call, you know,
Speaker 1: we build more of a hunt style boat. Oh you
Speaker 1: know so because you guys are saying you run a
Speaker 1: palm beach style hole. Yeah, in the Everglades style seat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's well, it's all you know, it's a the palm
Speaker 1: beat style kind of goes back to, you know, in
Speaker 1: the Everglade. It's you know, going way back into the
Speaker 1: you know, early seventies sixties when guys were building them,
Speaker 1: getting in the hot, rotting them up, building you know,
Speaker 1: hunting boats. They built the brought the rigging up and
Speaker 1: then the hall itself is a palm beach style boat,
Speaker 1: you know, um, which is how the hall is designed
Speaker 1: with the round china you know, the boats actually round
Speaker 1: in the bottom, you know, where you have what they
Speaker 1: call like a sled style boat has more of a
Speaker 1: flat side, wider bottom, tends to do better with water,
Speaker 1: you know, shallower grass. Our boats, going back to the
Speaker 1: palm beach style hall that we're running, they tend to
Speaker 1: do better on the dry ground. And the thickers, you know,
Speaker 1: in the thicker stuff. You know, they designed to go
Speaker 1: where everybody else don't go. Yeah there, it's like a
Speaker 1: it's like a sled but best thing you can you know,
Speaker 1: compared as a sled boat too faster, like a hot
Speaker 1: rod style boat. Our boats more like a four wheel
Speaker 1: drive style boat. When did the airbords, like, do you
Speaker 1: know the history of air bolls, Like, when did airbors
Speaker 1: become a thing? M I mean, I couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: they you know, to the year, but I would say
Speaker 1: developing into what they are what we have now. Fifties
Speaker 1: sixties they started getting into you know, years ago they
Speaker 1: a four cylinder you know, airplane motor. They used to
Speaker 1: run them, no battery, gravity fed fuel tank. You know,
Speaker 1: they put the fuel tank up above the motor. And
Speaker 1: they never rent. They didn't run batteries, none of that,
Speaker 1: and they hand propped everything. You know. Then started in
Speaker 1: the old airplane days with yellow contact and yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: magneto hand profit and that's how they went, you know now,
Speaker 1: and then they started getting in I would say, in
Speaker 1: the your sixties, uh seventies, you really start getting popular
Speaker 1: into the six cylinder motors building, you know, fancying them
Speaker 1: up a little bit, uh you know, and now they're
Speaker 1: going all the way to ls you know, all aluminum
Speaker 1: ls car motors with superchargers and gear reduction and dude
Speaker 1: like hot rods. Now, yeah, fueling electronic fuel injection. You know,
Speaker 1: we're we're still we're we're it's starting to become considered
Speaker 1: old school the way our boats are built. And you're saying,
Speaker 1: there was a time when guys around here would run
Speaker 1: whatever kind of airboat, and then the boys from Palm
Speaker 1: Beach had roll into town and people are like, holy
Speaker 1: sh it, that's how you ought to make an airboat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that caught on, well the Palm the Palm Beach
Speaker 1: guys that style boat where like they were known as
Speaker 1: the you know what one of the sayings was it
Speaker 1: if you told guys from Palm Beach that there was
Speaker 1: deer on the moon. They would build a machine to
Speaker 1: get there. And that's just the way it was. That's
Speaker 1: that's the old saying about it. So there's arguments there.
Speaker 1: Now there's guys down south and the in the southern
Speaker 1: part of the Glades. I argued that the sled and
Speaker 1: you know, um there's other builders. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: mention them all because I don't want to start a
Speaker 1: war down here, but um, you know, we're biased to
Speaker 1: what we run. But they can you know, I'll take
Speaker 1: in show you what it'll do, and and they can
Speaker 1: bring what they got. And my gripe with them is
Speaker 1: the noise. I mean, it's so loud. You gotta wear
Speaker 1: a headset. And at first I'm thinking I would just
Speaker 1: get rid of this sum bitch and use a canoe.
Speaker 1: But then it realized the vastness of the landscape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that it's just uh, I mean it is huge, like
Speaker 1: the area is huge. It's just it's just like it's
Speaker 1: kind of a way to get I mean, it really
Speaker 1: opens up a lot. Like I can definitely see it, man,
Speaker 1: I can hear it, but but I can I can
Speaker 1: see the appeal for sure. Because once we went out
Speaker 1: to look at the downed aircraft today you realize that
Speaker 1: it's just it just goes and goes and goes and goes,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of monotonous like that, I mean, like
Speaker 1: in that there's not a lot of like, uh, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of features in some of the areas.
Speaker 1: And if it weren't for the airboat, trails would just
Speaker 1: be really hard to get around. Ye. Um, you know
Speaker 1: you do have change. You know, like this is an
Speaker 1: eastern you know, the eastern side of it. Um, you
Speaker 1: guys only seen a small percentage of you know, obviously
Speaker 1: when you go further west of us, you'll get into
Speaker 1: more cypress you know cypress swamps um that you know,
Speaker 1: actually when you go southwest of US, so actually get rockier.
Speaker 1: You know they years ago down there they actually used
Speaker 1: to wrap the you know, we have also when and
Speaker 1: you guys haven't, I don't know if you've seen it
Speaker 1: or not, but we put polymer on the bottom of
Speaker 1: our halls, you know, so it that helps protect Also
Speaker 1: it's slicker, it helps you run the ground better. Um.
Speaker 1: And down in the southwest towards Tamami Trail. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know big cypress area down in there they call like
Speaker 1: the loop and stairstep. You know, they were known to
Speaker 1: wrap stainless on the bottom and rivet that to their
Speaker 1: hall to help with protect with rock you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but Febry areas got their own little like features for
Speaker 1: the kind of fit whatever sort of. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: little niches out every place. You know, this this area
Speaker 1: doesn't have the you know, now you're going back years ago.
Speaker 1: If you went up to the northwest corner of our area,
Speaker 1: there would be more tree islands. As water levels have
Speaker 1: hired lowered changes. You know, the tree islands have you know, shrunk,
Speaker 1: you know, died off, that type of deal. But for
Speaker 1: the most part this area, you know, you ride around,
Speaker 1: you see the little wax myrtle, you know, you see
Speaker 1: the little myrtle bushes, some willow heads here and there.
Speaker 1: That's about the extent of it here. Um, as far
Speaker 1: as now there is there's a few cypress you know,
Speaker 1: if you go out west of here, there's a few
Speaker 1: low cypress heads and whatnot. But this area, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of sawgrass, you know what from the water surface.
Speaker 1: So the way these guys got the area. But rig
Speaker 1: it's like you're kind of like it's almost like riding
Speaker 1: a supercub where the driver is right in front of you,
Speaker 1: and the drivers is sitting in a single seat, like
Speaker 1: a single elevated seat up above the whole. And then
Speaker 1: behind that thing elevated seat, you've got like a little
Speaker 1: passenger area with two like a little love seat basically
Speaker 1: for two people. How high is that love seat from
Speaker 1: the water surface? My on my boat is it's about
Speaker 1: seventy inches from the surface, so you're about six ft
Speaker 1: up off the water surface. And how long is your frog? Gig? Okay,
Speaker 1: the way these guys gig frogs is like nothing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen before. Where you're out in an air boat
Speaker 1: and the air boat is running and you're just as
Speaker 1: much as you can creep along in the air boat,
Speaker 1: you're creeping along in the channels and trails headlamping for frogs,
Speaker 1: which you wouldn't think they do. They kind of stand
Speaker 1: out like a sore thumb when you hit a bullfrog
Speaker 1: with a with a flashlight, just like something about the
Speaker 1: shine on it and then the yellow throat. You can
Speaker 1: just see them. But from the elevated seat, you're just
Speaker 1: like sitting down holding the eleven foot that's a carbon
Speaker 1: fiber it's actually graphics a GRAPHI leven foot frog gig
Speaker 1: and you give them from the seat while moving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you stop the boat, you send if it
Speaker 1: was ever been in the boat. In the boat stops,
Speaker 1: you send out what's called a bow wave. The bow
Speaker 1: wave spooks the frog, right I presumably Yeah, they feel that,
Speaker 1: you know, they feel the pressure of the way and
Speaker 1: they'll go down. So you can't slow the boat down
Speaker 1: enough to send out a bow wave. The spoot you
Speaker 1: have to like stay faster than your bow wave and
Speaker 1: just as you roll by. It's like watching in movies.
Speaker 1: It's like watching planes, warriors, lance people from horseback from horseback. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like medieval jousting with an eleven foot gig on
Speaker 1: the move hitting frogs. Which when I first saw you
Speaker 1: hit one while also driving, I thought, Um, that man
Speaker 1: just did something that's a possible, Yeah, but then learn
Speaker 1: that it's not. It's like something about it. It's like
Speaker 1: it was it's one of those rare things that's easier
Speaker 1: than it's actually easier than it looks. But when you
Speaker 1: first did it, I was like I just witnessed or
Speaker 1: I'm like, this guy is doing a really good job
Speaker 1: of acting like he's not shocked. He just hit that
Speaker 1: frog while in motion. And you guys, what do you
Speaker 1: guys call the basket you used to for your frogg
Speaker 1: a frog shoot? Explain that to people. So on the
Speaker 1: frog shoot on the airboat, it's you know, we this
Speaker 1: is this standard feature on the airboat. Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're a serious frog gigger, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: some guys so like I said, some guys just come out,
Speaker 1: ride around, you know, hang out, and that's what they do.
Speaker 1: But we're we like to hunt and use them to
Speaker 1: you know, we're sportsman. We like to use them for
Speaker 1: obviously efficient what we've done. You guys use the term
Speaker 1: that I've never heard. Um, you use the term gladesman.
Speaker 1: A gladesman now like Chestpeake Bay, it's a waterman just
Speaker 1: like means like basically a dude that like does a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff around here outside. A dude that does
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff around here outside would be a
Speaker 1: glades No gladesman. You gotta do a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: in the everglades, you know, yea and ship I mean
Speaker 1: like yeah, like about right, yeah, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: you know the glades. When these guys that come out
Speaker 1: here and are you a gladesman or no? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glades okay, Bryan, But you're also an offshore fisherman. I
Speaker 1: do everything, so you can be an offshore commercial fisherman
Speaker 1: and a gladesman. A gig, frog shoot, ducks, kill, gators.
Speaker 1: What else you want? Fish? Fish, swordfish? Um? Yeah, explain
Speaker 1: the frog shoot the frog shoot. Basically what I have
Speaker 1: is it's uh six inch round piece of aluminum. That's
Speaker 1: you know. They We have a guy that makes him.
Speaker 1: He cuts out a little v and he makes these themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 1: How many do you have any idea? How many he
Speaker 1: produces a pile of you know, quite a But we
Speaker 1: actually have an airboat store down here. You go buy
Speaker 1: all kinds of accessories, yeah, airboat accessories. And basically that shoot,
Speaker 1: that six inch shoot of aluminums. You know, it's six
Speaker 1: inches in circumference and then probably ten inches you know
Speaker 1: tall mounted vertically mounted vertically on the eye mount because
Speaker 1: I you know, you drop, I mean nine percent. Airboaters
Speaker 1: drive with their steering sticks on your left hand and
Speaker 1: your gig what your right hand, So you mount to
Speaker 1: get the shoot on the right front corner of your
Speaker 1: grass raak yeah, just so people get it looks it's
Speaker 1: about like a coffee can. Yeah, it's about like a
Speaker 1: coffee can mounted on brackets in the in the in
Speaker 1: the in the um bow starboard corner. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: that that big the which we call grass rake. What
Speaker 1: goes the big you know kind of the ramp, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ramp in front of the boat, and that helps
Speaker 1: push the grass down. Um So basically what the frog
Speaker 1: shoot does. It just increases your efficiency. You don't have
Speaker 1: to grab them by hand, pull them off or none
Speaker 1: of that. You just stick the gig in there. It
Speaker 1: goes into a little slot. You pull it back, and
Speaker 1: the frog drops down into a like a laundry bag
Speaker 1: as all as we use. Yeah, so like the mesh bag.
Speaker 1: So it's like a picture of coffee can and picture
Speaker 1: to someone cinched a sack around the cinched a mesh
Speaker 1: sack around the bottom of the coffee cant. So anything
Speaker 1: that falls into coffee can falls into the bag. And
Speaker 1: then there's a V notch. It's more complicated this, but
Speaker 1: there's a V notch. There's a V notch cut into
Speaker 1: the coffee can. So when you got a lanced frog,
Speaker 1: you drop the frog into the coffee can and the
Speaker 1: V notches where the gig. The spear falls down in
Speaker 1: that V notch and it enters like a little hole.
Speaker 1: And then you just tugged the spear and the frog
Speaker 1: into the sack and it's like a wink of the eye.
Speaker 1: And that's a part a lot of people don't like
Speaker 1: about frog gigging, is taking frogs off the gig. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is slick, Yeah, and you guys can stack up
Speaker 1: hundreds of frogs a good night, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll do now and a good night. I'll come out
Speaker 1: two hours and you know, me and myself, I expect
Speaker 1: a gig, you know, hundred frogs and two hours. You know,
Speaker 1: that's a good you know, normal, I could come out
Speaker 1: two hours, don't burn a bunch of fuel, get my
Speaker 1: hundred go home. You know, if I really want to
Speaker 1: go get crazy. We have gone out and gone all
Speaker 1: night and you can get three four when the conditions,
Speaker 1: you know, when the water levels right. Yeah, because they
Speaker 1: like us that. You know, if there's a lot of rain,
Speaker 1: a lot of moving water, fresh water, we tend not
Speaker 1: to do as well when we get more stagnant water more.
Speaker 1: You know. That's why I kind of like the late
Speaker 1: winter months when we're not getting you know, we're in
Speaker 1: a kind of a dry season. The longer that water
Speaker 1: gets stagnant and stay, it just seems, you know, we
Speaker 1: get more and more frogs get out into the because
Speaker 1: as the water is dropping, you know, as you gotta
Speaker 1: understand as oh, they're getting pushed out of all the Yeah,
Speaker 1: they come out, they got a feed. They eat mennows, crawfish, bugs.
Speaker 1: But I noticed you guys kept saying that the were
Speaker 1: you saying the frogs are up or high? What are
Speaker 1: you saying? You guys got a term you use meaning
Speaker 1: like shiploads of frogs, But you'd say, what frogs are up?
Speaker 1: You know that's when we say they're up, that means
Speaker 1: you know, you're starting to see him. Okay, I didn't
Speaker 1: know if you meant that the population in general is
Speaker 1: up or you just mean they're available right now. That
Speaker 1: means like it's available right it's good frog, that's good.
Speaker 1: So what's happening is the as the water levels drop,
Speaker 1: they need to like areas that were once wet are
Speaker 1: now dry. Another thing I had no idea about that
Speaker 1: we talked about out frog gig and last night was
Speaker 1: the idea of a gator hole, the areas they exegate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll go in. A gator, I'll go in and he'll wallow.
Speaker 1: You know, he'll wallow himself an area and he'll keep
Speaker 1: wallowing it until the point that a lot of times
Speaker 1: the you know, the roots from lily pads, you know,
Speaker 1: there's actually a route down there, and it'll break off
Speaker 1: and then the little mud clump will float up, you know,
Speaker 1: and he'll have a little hole in there, and then
Speaker 1: he'll you know, he'll live in that hole. That's his sanctuary.
Speaker 1: That's the territorial about those things. If you get a bull,
Speaker 1: you know, a mail gator. You know, I've seen a
Speaker 1: mail gator stay in a hole and you know until
Speaker 1: you either if it's hunting season and we kill him
Speaker 1: out of there, he'll stay in there and guard that area,
Speaker 1: you know, and because he you know, he's gonna that's
Speaker 1: his little sanctuary. Just like a white tail buck has
Speaker 1: his little home range. Gator is going to kind of
Speaker 1: do the same thing out you know, out here for
Speaker 1: the most part, I've noticed other parts of state where
Speaker 1: the gators are a little bit more nomadic, but here
Speaker 1: they'll hang tight. It has an interesting function too, because
Speaker 1: as he excavates that hole and the water levels drop,
Speaker 1: he's got a place to live. But may it collects fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's it's it's pretty important for other wildlife and
Speaker 1: you know, fish, turtles. You know, as the water goes down,
Speaker 1: you got you gotta imagine you have six inches of
Speaker 1: water around and muck and then there's a four ft
Speaker 1: deep hole. You know, the fish that haven't made it
Speaker 1: to the canal, to the perimeter canals, and yet they'll
Speaker 1: go to that deeper water, you know, and that also
Speaker 1: provides that game. I mean, the way I look at gator,
Speaker 1: he ain't too stupid because he got him a perfect
Speaker 1: little spot. He's got a place to live and all
Speaker 1: the food has has a win win situation for him.
Speaker 1: If I opened the bar, I wouldn't do it around here.
Speaker 1: But if I opened the bar somewhere else, I would
Speaker 1: call it the gator hole. Is there a um? Is
Speaker 1: there a bar called the gator hole? Uh? Not to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, but that's you know, I wouldn't do it
Speaker 1: here because people would think you were trying. You know,
Speaker 1: people here would think you were right, like some outsider
Speaker 1: calling it a gator hole. It'd be like your opposer.
Speaker 1: But say you were up in somewhere else, some other
Speaker 1: part of the country. You started a bar called the
Speaker 1: Gator Hole. I drink there. Yeah, so we gigged frogs.
Speaker 1: Not another question about frogs, Um, and Ryan feel I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get to you hot and heavy, So you can
Speaker 1: sit this one out if you want, because we're gonna
Speaker 1: cover you up and down on the soule swordfish situation.
Speaker 1: But um, why do you get Not why because I
Speaker 1: understand now, But can you explain how you clean your frogs?
Speaker 1: So the way you do it is you'll take a knife.
Speaker 1: You're grabbing him by his legs, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: pinch his legs together so he's straightened out. And if
Speaker 1: you hold them, you'll see a little arc in their back,
Speaker 1: you know, were their bone arcs. And you take a knife,
Speaker 1: just slice it, you know, slicy skin, and then you
Speaker 1: stick your finger and that, you know, down in the
Speaker 1: little hole that you made, and you peel back, you know,
Speaker 1: peel all the way back. Pull is my om man
Speaker 1: taught me. And when out a little young and pull
Speaker 1: his pants off. Oh yeah, that's what we taught. We
Speaker 1: can squirrels and pull their pants and well, so what
Speaker 1: you do is you pull these pants off all the
Speaker 1: way down and then when you know, you pull the
Speaker 1: skin all the way down past his feet, and then
Speaker 1: you grab underneath his belly and you'll actually tear the belly.
Speaker 1: You know. If you do it that way, you can
Speaker 1: it keeps everything cleaner. You know, some guys and I
Speaker 1: used to do it. You know, I did a couple
Speaker 1: of different ways, but I've just cut the legs off
Speaker 1: and then do it. See that's how that's how I've
Speaker 1: always seen it done, and that's how we always do it. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll show you another way to do it. But if
Speaker 1: you you know the way I'm trying to explain, if
Speaker 1: you cut it, pull the pants down past his feet
Speaker 1: and then reach up in his belly and you can
Speaker 1: actually just pull you know, the little muscle and you know,
Speaker 1: around his belly and just pull them gut out and
Speaker 1: everything will be attached to his head and you just
Speaker 1: snap his head, you know, you just spin his head
Speaker 1: in a pop right off and you got a clean
Speaker 1: set of leg and you guys, leave the feet the fingers, yeah,
Speaker 1: attached to the leg. That's the best part. There's pros
Speaker 1: and cons but there's pros and cons. The pro being
Speaker 1: I'm with you. The little toes, the fried up toes
Speaker 1: are good. It's just like you equated it when you
Speaker 1: guys equated the fish fins catfish fins, right, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: when you fry a small blue gal or whatever and
Speaker 1: leave his tail on there. But appearance wise, I could
Speaker 1: see that some people might, some people who were sort
Speaker 1: of on the fence about frog eating might see the toes,
Speaker 1: especially a whole basketful of them, and and it would
Speaker 1: tip them in the air direction. Yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: I you know, I mean, if if we got some
Speaker 1: ladies around and there we want to eat fays, a
Speaker 1: lot of times we'll cut the feet off. You find
Speaker 1: ladies are less inclined to want the toes on there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like it looks like Freddy Krueger. It's like
Speaker 1: ugly brother. Yeah it does. That's a good way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a little a little basket of Freddy Krueger's
Speaker 1: little brother. After frog getting, we set out to do
Speaker 1: a little bow fishing. And I have if people, if
Speaker 1: like people were where I grew up bow fishermen where
Speaker 1: I grew up, would they wouldn't even know how, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't know how to begin comprehending the number and size
Speaker 1: of gar down here. It's unbelievable. We never even flung
Speaker 1: an arrow at a guard though. But like up here's
Speaker 1: here's what I'm trying to get to this. In most
Speaker 1: parts of the world, most parts of the country, bow
Speaker 1: fishermen are not generally shooting. This is I'm speaking generally.
Speaker 1: Both fisher were not generally shooting fish that are that
Speaker 1: good to eat, right, like the like people shoot a
Speaker 1: lot of common carps, Like common carps the main thing
Speaker 1: people go after, and of course, like common carp were
Speaker 1: introduced into this country into many waterways as a food source.
Speaker 1: Like people thought that as native fisheries collapse from over
Speaker 1: fishing and habitat destruction, like well, here's this very durable
Speaker 1: for coun to fish that gets big people eat it
Speaker 1: will sort of replace the fisheries that we ruined with
Speaker 1: cart and then it would be happy. But carp have
Speaker 1: never even though you know they raise them and eat
Speaker 1: them in Asia, they're just not popular here. So where
Speaker 1: I grew up, people fished carp, both fish for carp
Speaker 1: and would often just discard the fish because now they're
Speaker 1: considered like a deleterious non native, and people want to see,
Speaker 1: would like to see it's never gonna happen, would like
Speaker 1: to get rid of the cart. But the one fish
Speaker 1: that's sort of like has like a fairly good reputation
Speaker 1: is uh long nose gar you guys have. These are
Speaker 1: long nos. But but the scars shape like footballs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're fat. Yeah, like I'm used to guards that look
Speaker 1: like cars. Yeah, well they're feeding good unbelievable. It's like
Speaker 1: Yanni said, it's like a football with a with a
Speaker 1: swordfishes nose coming out of huge cars. But you guys
Speaker 1: don't mess with them, you know, we don't. We don't,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't really mess with them. So you know,
Speaker 1: guys that like to eat them, I mean I've heard
Speaker 1: of god, you know, certain people. What they'll do with
Speaker 1: them is like you know, they'll actually like scale them
Speaker 1: and then boil the meat out of them, and they'll
Speaker 1: make like a patty out, you know, put some onion
Speaker 1: pepper and you know, make all us like a little
Speaker 1: patty balls. Yeah, I mean, but we don't, you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't messed with them. And you guys have so
Speaker 1: much other stuff to eat, yeah, I'd rather eat a
Speaker 1: frog when I've done them. Like you take like you
Speaker 1: take tin snips if you were maybe you never try to.
Speaker 1: You take tin snips and just cut up the back
Speaker 1: all the way up the bag, and then you cut
Speaker 1: so you got like you picture the whole guard laid
Speaker 1: out like like your arm right, and you cut a
Speaker 1: big long strip up what would be like his dorsal fin,
Speaker 1: the whole length of the fish. And then you snip
Speaker 1: the ends of that long strip and just peel the
Speaker 1: top part away, peel the hide off to the right
Speaker 1: and off to the left, and just remove the backstraps,
Speaker 1: which is where all the meat is on a car.
Speaker 1: And you've got these big long cigars of meat, and
Speaker 1: people will make guard balls out of those or you
Speaker 1: just you just chunk them up and fry them. It's
Speaker 1: not that bad, but that was the that was like
Speaker 1: in in Michigan, that's like the best fish that you're
Speaker 1: allowed to shoot with the boat will be a guard.
Speaker 1: But here you can bow fish for fish that people
Speaker 1: buy in restaurants. You got telapia. And then we also
Speaker 1: have in some of our canals which we you know
Speaker 1: last night where we were both fishing, we I mean
Speaker 1: there's we've seen a few, but not many, um and
Speaker 1: a lot of are more of the urban canals. They'll
Speaker 1: have bull's eye snakehead, which is you know, actually becoming
Speaker 1: highly targeted fishery. You know a lot of guys are
Speaker 1: you know, they're big into catching them rotting real but
Speaker 1: we actually got into shooting them, which Matt's been with
Speaker 1: us on that, and we've had some you know, incredible
Speaker 1: snakeheads shoots. I mean, you know, load the box tilapia
Speaker 1: snakeheads and and they get pretty sizeable. You know, it
Speaker 1: looks like a little mini Kobe is what I always
Speaker 1: say that kind of like, yeah, what is a big snakehead?
Speaker 1: Nine eight nine pounds? You know, and they'll get you know,
Speaker 1: two and a half three ft long. And the big
Speaker 1: tilapia is what too, yeah to to you know, like
Speaker 1: the you know a couple of you would kill last night.
Speaker 1: Those are pretty sizeable fish. Yeah, you know, they're like
Speaker 1: really substantial, And it's just weird to be able to
Speaker 1: shooting that weird because I mean I've done it in
Speaker 1: South America, but um where you can shoot like great
Speaker 1: table fair fish. Yeah, So to be able to go
Speaker 1: out and both fish for tilapia, even though tilapia or
Speaker 1: you know, non native but none native fish, you know
Speaker 1: how long they've been in these waters. Flap Um, I've
Speaker 1: seen him around since I was a kid, here for
Speaker 1: quite a while. And they dig a nest, like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think the closest example that, like most guys
Speaker 1: would know, picture like a bluegill nest, a bluegill bed,
Speaker 1: but they dig it where it's it's almost deeper than
Speaker 1: it is wide. Yeah, it's like a ball, like a crater. Craters.
Speaker 1: They dig a crater and guard that crater. But the
Speaker 1: problem for bow fishing is a lot of those craters.
Speaker 1: Like there's a when you're trying to hit fish with
Speaker 1: the boat, you're like dealing with refraction. I'm not telling
Speaker 1: you this, I'm just telling like Joe blow listener that
Speaker 1: you're dealing with refraction. Like if you ever stuck a
Speaker 1: stick in the water, right, the stick looks curved. So
Speaker 1: when you're aiming at a fish, you don't aim at
Speaker 1: the fish. You aim way, You aim below, and generally
Speaker 1: you don't aim low enough. It gets worse and worse
Speaker 1: and worse the deeper deeper you go. So these craters
Speaker 1: are four ft down, three ft down, four feet out,
Speaker 1: and it gets to be very hard to hit the
Speaker 1: fish down there because the aral slows down so bad,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and then the thing's too deep. But
Speaker 1: we caught some up in the shallows where they're just
Speaker 1: a few inches under the surface, and we caught them slipping,
Speaker 1: and then you wind up with like, you know, one
Speaker 1: and a half two pound fish that's like a restaurant
Speaker 1: like a restaurant grade fish. Yep. Yeah. People are buying
Speaker 1: them in the every day, you know, down here. You
Speaker 1: go into public's are you know, local supermarkets that are
Speaker 1: down here, and they sell them all, you know, probably
Speaker 1: one of the most popular fish people going by, you know,
Speaker 1: every day. So is it unusual that we didn't see
Speaker 1: anyone bow fishing last night? Uh? No, you don't see
Speaker 1: a whole lot. You know. It's it's not you know,
Speaker 1: down here in South Florida. Yeah, I mean there's guys
Speaker 1: that do it, you know, there's a handful of guys.
Speaker 1: I know a few, but it hasn't really taken off
Speaker 1: to the point that you when you go out that
Speaker 1: you actually see other people. You know, I've been doing
Speaker 1: it now for I don't know, what's what we've been
Speaker 1: doing seven eight years because actually Matt, you know, I
Speaker 1: hadn't really gotten into it until Matt came down and
Speaker 1: we he we funny stories. We were out fishing. We
Speaker 1: were snakehead fishing is what we were doing. And Matt
Speaker 1: had brought some bows and he'd come up with the
Speaker 1: idea and I said, O, well, I know a place
Speaker 1: where I know there's fish there, we go do it.
Speaker 1: We went out that night and I mean we you know,
Speaker 1: they shot till their fingers were so you know, it
Speaker 1: was just that the first night we did it was
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of found a little canal and
Speaker 1: they hadn't been fished, you know, both fish before, so
Speaker 1: it was just you know, as fast as you can shoot,
Speaker 1: as fast as they can get arrows back on there,
Speaker 1: and you know, and then from there he was the
Speaker 1: one who kind of really got me into it. I've always,
Speaker 1: you know, been had interest and it messed around a
Speaker 1: little bit, but it wasn't like go out and do it.
Speaker 1: And then he got me into it and I started
Speaker 1: Ryan and I buddies of ours. I mean, we started
Speaker 1: it was a great time to go, you know, summertime.
Speaker 1: You know, we all we liked the deer hun bow hunt,
Speaker 1: and it was a great time to go past time
Speaker 1: in the summer, and we started out there. We've got
Speaker 1: some beer and go out, get on the john boat
Speaker 1: and go bow fishing. And I mean we were doing
Speaker 1: it all the time, you know. So I think I
Speaker 1: feel like it would be like a I probably should
Speaker 1: be saying this, but I feel it'd be like a
Speaker 1: bow fishing destination place. Well because there's endless water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the logistics are complicated to in some of
Speaker 1: the areas. I mean it's not there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of places are not necessarily the best places are near
Speaker 1: a bowt launch, like we went last night off the
Speaker 1: air boat. You know that's uh, you know it's tricky
Speaker 1: to get over there. So I think that can't be underestimated.
Speaker 1: Some of it's tricky. I can interrupt you. I want
Speaker 1: you to ask yourself, Um, is my microphone really just
Speaker 1: two fingers off my upper lip? It is exactly two fingers.
Speaker 1: I've been admiring it. What he's saying, gears might be
Speaker 1: just a little far. But see the thing is that
Speaker 1: Matt he's got he sounds good. Are you saying I
Speaker 1: have fat fingers, it's placed. I think your ear is
Speaker 1: farther away from your mouth. That's absolutely possible. Is that better?
Speaker 1: A little closer? Little closer? Okay, now we're one and
Speaker 1: a half fingers, okay. Uh. Logistics, it's complicated down here,
Speaker 1: you know, with the camps obviously the only uh, it's
Speaker 1: only accessible by the airboat. And so between that and
Speaker 1: getting into the canals when the water level and we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit on the water level changes quite
Speaker 1: a bit here, so you really got to know the area.
Speaker 1: I have a local that can kind of put you
Speaker 1: on the right spots. And that's how Josh and I
Speaker 1: came together around both fishing down here. Do you just
Speaker 1: rolled in cold here? It would be a tough It
Speaker 1: would be a tough it'd be tough years homet rolled
Speaker 1: in cold would be years for what. Just kind of
Speaker 1: figure it out. We figure everything out, both fishing. I disagree,
Speaker 1: because both fishes, both fishing. If you've got a good
Speaker 1: bow fishing boat and you got all these canals, any
Speaker 1: anyone's gonna find the canals. That's true, I guess. I
Speaker 1: guess they are in the canals really more than like
Speaker 1: out in the grass where we've been running right. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be that would be difficult for people to
Speaker 1: figure out. But to go hunt the big primary big canals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you cat you cat pretty much down here. If you've
Speaker 1: got any freshwater canal, you know that. And that is
Speaker 1: what's you know, kind of gold about it is you
Speaker 1: can in South Florida if it's public water, you've got
Speaker 1: a public boat ramp and any of these canals you
Speaker 1: can go put in and you're gonna see fish that
Speaker 1: you can you know, non you know, obviously it's gotta
Speaker 1: be a non game fish. So you can't shoot large mouth.
Speaker 1: They got no bass um, you know, no bluegills, that
Speaker 1: kind of you know, you can shoot catfish. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know you got down here, if you know, if you've
Speaker 1: got gotta say, you get a little bit east of here,
Speaker 1: you go to some of the you know where you
Speaker 1: guys drove in down that road that canal that there,
Speaker 1: you can go in there and shoot tilapia, uh, and
Speaker 1: snakeheads and oscar oscars and which is the native fish? Um,
Speaker 1: isn't it? I don't think an oscar as native, So
Speaker 1: that's another native. The snakeheads are introduced. You have snakehead
Speaker 1: introduced non native, the oscars. That's some kind of crazy
Speaker 1: South American seclet or something. And then you have a
Speaker 1: miyon cycling. And then we also have peacock bass, which
Speaker 1: the can you shoot those? See the state games? What's crazy?
Speaker 1: As the state has actually got a tougher regulation, like
Speaker 1: if you were to go fishing rod and reel, you
Speaker 1: gonna keep two peacock backs even though they're not native
Speaker 1: and they're non native, but you can you can kill
Speaker 1: five largemouth bass. So that's how they you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess it's kind of a that's pretty that's interesting.
Speaker 1: What's uh? You know, obviously a peacock basses in the
Speaker 1: cicklid family, you know, a cycling and mine cyclid peacock
Speaker 1: pass over. So you can't go shoot a peacock bass.
Speaker 1: It's considered a game fish here. I'd like to hear
Speaker 1: the logic on that. Besides, the people really like them,
Speaker 1: and have you ever eaten one of those? It's a
Speaker 1: good fish. Man. When we were down we're in South America,
Speaker 1: they have a smaller that they have peacock bass, but
Speaker 1: they're not like the giants like they'd be like four
Speaker 1: or five pounds and man, they grilled some of the
Speaker 1: olds one time, and unbelievably good fish, like one of
Speaker 1: the best, like almost as good as like snook, you know,
Speaker 1: like a very good fish. I got a pretty good
Speaker 1: story on a peacock pass please. So when I was
Speaker 1: a little little guy, we used to live on Sea fourteen,
Speaker 1: which is in in town here in Margate, Florida. And
Speaker 1: my dad's an avin, you know, I grew up. My
Speaker 1: dad's a gladesman airboat or that's who I've learned everything.
Speaker 1: He's you know, everything I've known. And he was an
Speaker 1: avid bass fisherman. When he was fishing sea forts, falling
Speaker 1: off bat large mouth large mouth baths, you know. So
Speaker 1: he was in Sea fourteen, which is pretty good for
Speaker 1: peacock bass fish, and he catches like a close seven
Speaker 1: pound peacock, which is it's a canal canal system. It's
Speaker 1: also explosive. Yeah, so he four he catches this you know,
Speaker 1: trophy peacock, you know, seven pound class. And I actually
Speaker 1: growing up, we had a nanny and she was from
Speaker 1: South America, and my dad had put the fish and
Speaker 1: he was taxing. My dad was a taxinger at one time,
Speaker 1: so he'd put the fish in the freezer and was
Speaker 1: keeping it that he want to get a mounted. And
Speaker 1: I come home from school and I'm something. I mean
Speaker 1: just the smell of the house. I'm like, man's you know,
Speaker 1: because she's cooking fish or something to night. And I
Speaker 1: walk in there and look in the pot and there's
Speaker 1: this peacock baths in there. It's boiling. My dad ain't
Speaker 1: home yet, and I'm looking in there. I'm like, her
Speaker 1: name is Vera Severa. Where did you get that fish?
Speaker 1: I was in the freezer. I said, Oh, this ain't
Speaker 1: gonna go good. Needless to say, she know she wont
Speaker 1: her nanny no more? After that, Oh no, she's lost. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know it's a trophy. Is a trophy? Yeah she she?
Speaker 1: We were uh uh, none of us. We all went out.
Speaker 1: I think we went to Checkers at night because it
Speaker 1: was pretty gnarly. Look yeah, um, have you Okay, We're
Speaker 1: always hearing about snakehead because snakeheads keep turning up in
Speaker 1: new locations because like it's a it's a fish. People
Speaker 1: buy it for their aquariums. Um. I think that's like
Speaker 1: tightly regulated now or more regulated than it was. People
Speaker 1: buy snakeheads for their aquariums. The snakeheads get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.
Speaker 1: They're hard to feed, hard to take care of. They
Speaker 1: outpaced the size of their tank, and people decided to
Speaker 1: get rid of them. So they keep popping up in
Speaker 1: new places. Um Like, if you follow, if you like
Speaker 1: read about wildlife news, you'll always be reading stories about
Speaker 1: some new drainage that that people have found snakeheads. And
Speaker 1: but then when you go talk to people who are
Speaker 1: in a snakehead area, doesn't seem like it's very often
Speaker 1: that they're like that they reached like the levels that
Speaker 1: Karp have reached. Like do you see is it still
Speaker 1: kind of rarity or do you ever see places where
Speaker 1: it's just nothing but snakeheads when they get into which
Speaker 1: we have a bull's eye snakehead and you know they're
Speaker 1: Asia from Asia, and when they get into uh, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I used to work on a golf course
Speaker 1: and at you know, earlier years great bass fishing and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and we started, you know, caught one on top water
Speaker 1: plug and you know, when I first seen it, I'm
Speaker 1: like the hexas thing, I don't you know, start figuring
Speaker 1: it out. And once we've seen the first one, it
Speaker 1: just from there it exploded and then you know, and
Speaker 1: like I said before, it's like gotten to like this
Speaker 1: crazy little colt that goes in chases east things. They
Speaker 1: love fishing for them, and you know that which it
Speaker 1: was in Coral Springsford just west or just east to here.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but the that's when they show up. They're
Speaker 1: so aggressive, you know, I would say, like peacock we
Speaker 1: used to complain about, we don't. I don't necessarily I'm
Speaker 1: not fond of the peacock bass because they get into
Speaker 1: a bat I'm a large mouth bass guy, and when
Speaker 1: a peacock gets in there there, you know, twice at
Speaker 1: least twice as aggressive as our large mouth and well
Speaker 1: they'll hammer the bait fish, you know, so that kind
Speaker 1: of you know little you know, they can't a large
Speaker 1: amounth just can't compete with a peacock is as far
Speaker 1: as aggressiveness, and the bowl's eye snake, as I'll say, is,
Speaker 1: is even more aggressive. You know, great fish to catch,
Speaker 1: I mean some of the most explosive top water. You know,
Speaker 1: it's need a bottoms. You gotta fish. You fish like
Speaker 1: a frog bait and fish it as close to the
Speaker 1: bank as you could possibly get it without touching the bank,
Speaker 1: and that's how they'll eat it. And you know, so
Speaker 1: once you see it, once they showed up, I mean
Speaker 1: they've exploded. And once they get into a lake or
Speaker 1: canal system, it's almost like they'll overrun it. You know,
Speaker 1: So you do see that happen, because that's certainly like
Speaker 1: the story you hear, but I haven't heard. But I
Speaker 1: haven't heard a lot of cases where people had like
Speaker 1: seen it reach those proportions. Yeah, you have the have
Speaker 1: a thought, Johnnie. Oh, it's just interesting that we were
Speaker 1: in Maryland this fall and on this coast but still
Speaker 1: a long way from here, and they were into catching
Speaker 1: snake heads up there and he a guy, we met
Speaker 1: a guy I don't want to say his name. You
Speaker 1: don't know his name. I know where he goes by.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, you just have VIC signed on the
Speaker 1: side of his truck. He told us what he goes by.
Speaker 1: He told us they called me the whisperer, the X whisperer.
Speaker 1: So he gets telling us how listen, this is like
Speaker 1: only layers of like, no, you know what we Okay,
Speaker 1: we heard it from a man who supposedly witnessed it.
Speaker 1: He knew some guys who were doing Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with selling glass eels? So, do you guys have the
Speaker 1: American eel around here? Do you have a freshwater eel?
Speaker 1: Freshwater that's called the American eel. Now, American eels, like
Speaker 1: a salmon, is a nadrumus, meaning it goes from the
Speaker 1: ocean and runs up a river to spawn. That's an
Speaker 1: anadromous fish. The American eel is catagronous. It goes from
Speaker 1: the rivers out into the ocean to spawn. There's not
Speaker 1: a lot of fish to do that. American eels go
Speaker 1: all the way to the Sargasso Sea and they congregate
Speaker 1: and spawn in the Sargasso Sea, and then they where's
Speaker 1: that awful like like out off from the Caribbean, very
Speaker 1: deep area, like like a very deep area of the ocean.
Speaker 1: It's kind of without looking at the map, it's hard
Speaker 1: to explain. But if you shot from here, if you
Speaker 1: shot from here kind of like through the Caribbean off
Speaker 1: that away, it's like where everything gets deep. Basically, everything
Speaker 1: that drifts down down down winds up in this place
Speaker 1: called the Sargasso Sea. Eels, all the eels and all
Speaker 1: these rivers concrete there and spawn, and then they have
Speaker 1: a larva that just free floats, and eventually it gets
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger and bigger, and when they go back
Speaker 1: into the rivers and start going up, they're called I
Speaker 1: think that at that point they call the glass eel.
Speaker 1: And eels are very popular in Asian restaurants. So if
Speaker 1: you go to a sushi joint, here your eyes eating
Speaker 1: eel unagi, which is smoked eel. Now, aquaculture, they can
Speaker 1: raise the eels in aquaculture facilities, but you can't successfully
Speaker 1: spawn the eels out there. You need to start with
Speaker 1: a wild caught They need to start with wild caught
Speaker 1: glass eels or wild caught juvenile eels. So does a
Speaker 1: market for these wild called juvenile eels, which people net
Speaker 1: up and sell for shiploads of money, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people poach them, and then they go into these
Speaker 1: aquaculture facilities and you can raise the eels up. So
Speaker 1: this dude's telling us that he knew a dude who
Speaker 1: was in the business of of marketing and raising eels,
Speaker 1: and one day he looks in this guy's eel tank.
Speaker 1: This is the dude telling me and Yanni this at
Speaker 1: a gun range. Remember this he says. He peers down
Speaker 1: into the eel tank and lo and behold, it's not eels,
Speaker 1: and he says, the hell is that? He goes, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a fish called a snake head. I'm I've been
Speaker 1: raised this. The guy tells us, I've been raising them
Speaker 1: and letting them go. Why would you do that? And
Speaker 1: he says well, and he kind of walks through. This
Speaker 1: is a waterman in Chesapeake Bay, and he walks through
Speaker 1: his family's history with fisheries that have collapsed and become overregulated.
Speaker 1: So he's like, we used to be able to catch
Speaker 1: X blue crabs, Now we're screwed. Then we used to
Speaker 1: be able to do X with clams, Now we're screwed.
Speaker 1: We used to do this, now we're screwed. Here's one
Speaker 1: fish that no one's ever gonna tell me not to
Speaker 1: catch as many as I want. And that's where he
Speaker 1: in this waterway. That's where this feller claimed that that
Speaker 1: was how this is happening. It wasn't from the aquarium trade,
Speaker 1: It wasn't from people throwing out ones. He's two as
Speaker 1: he's here and there, that it was a concerted effort
Speaker 1: on behalf of some gentleman to um introduce it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because and it already does. There's it already has commercial
Speaker 1: outlets and commercial value because the feller we met actually
Speaker 1: sells the things to a restaurant. Is it under that name?
Speaker 1: At restaurants? Yeah, and I don't want to name who.
Speaker 1: See this is this story starts to make its own
Speaker 1: gravy because yeah, so it started to get a guy
Speaker 1: started selling it, and he got really good reviews and
Speaker 1: like the hot ticket item, and now this guy can't
Speaker 1: get enough of it and he's buying it for seven
Speaker 1: bucks a pound, isn't he It was something like that.
Speaker 1: It was high. Yeah, seven bucks a pound. So that's
Speaker 1: what got this. So that's what that's what this guy
Speaker 1: says is driving this whole snake head thing. Now, this
Speaker 1: could just be like a crazy guy at a gun club,
Speaker 1: which there are plenty of, or it could be like
Speaker 1: the real dope. But Ryan, you're right up in town.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be the hot he did tell us. I
Speaker 1: want to I want to finish on that, he did
Speaker 1: tell us, and would be interesting to try, especially since
Speaker 1: we've been talking a little bit about live Maite this
Speaker 1: last couple of days. But he was saying that a
Speaker 1: thing not to do rolling into a spot where you
Speaker 1: know there was a few and just start chalking a
Speaker 1: lure or two in, but just pitch out a handful
Speaker 1: and get a little friendzy going. And then he said,
Speaker 1: he said, you can just sit there and fish every
Speaker 1: single one out of the hole. Yeah, so start like
Speaker 1: the Sargasso. See I'm looking at a it would be
Speaker 1: it's eastern, it's western edge would be due east of here,
Speaker 1: but like beyond the Bahamas. It's Yeah, it's just like
Speaker 1: apparently like as things go down, like eels go down down,
Speaker 1: now down, down now down, they eventually wind up like
Speaker 1: in the deep spot, and then they FreeCast this larva
Speaker 1: which binds his way all up and down the and
Speaker 1: these eels are having wide distribution. But back to you, Now,
Speaker 1: this is something that had listened. I knew all about
Speaker 1: shooting fish with bowls. I knew all about all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, but I had no idea until I
Speaker 1: came down here. Until last night, I was unaware of
Speaker 1: the type of sword fish fishing that you do. Can
Speaker 1: you explain, Ryan, Can you explain commercial sword fishing how
Speaker 1: it's practiced here. We'll start by saying how it's practice
Speaker 1: north of here. North of here the long line, which
Speaker 1: they'll set anywhere from a long line and berries on
Speaker 1: how many hooks they want to fish or whatever they
Speaker 1: I mean, I know some of them they're fishing up
Speaker 1: to thousand hooks or something like that. Farther north of there,
Speaker 1: they harpoon them. I guess it's up in Nova Scotia
Speaker 1: or something like that where they actually get on the
Speaker 1: surface and they have you know, spotted planes and towers
Speaker 1: on the boats and big pulpits and they actually go
Speaker 1: out and that's how they cop them. Just yeah, I've
Speaker 1: talked the guys who've done that with spotder planes, like harpooning,
Speaker 1: like this is up in Montauk Fence too. But then
Speaker 1: there's a line south of which you can't long line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the line. It's like two hundred miles
Speaker 1: east of Port Canaveral. You gotta be north of that
Speaker 1: and so so many miles east and you could long one.
Speaker 1: But once you get south of there you can hand
Speaker 1: gear fish. So you basically you got a buoy with
Speaker 1: a strobe light. Hold up, because here's the other part
Speaker 1: of this I need you to explain. Um sword fish
Speaker 1: are down in the daytime at what depth. I mean,
Speaker 1: they could be anywhere from as long as it's dark,
Speaker 1: I guess seven hundred feet of water and all the
Speaker 1: way out to I don't know to three thousand feet.
Speaker 1: Are you fish them around? You know, anywhere from dshing
Speaker 1: them in the daytime the daytime, but at night they
Speaker 1: must just spiral. They spiral upward and come up to
Speaker 1: the surface. Something that's happened the generator. I think you
Speaker 1: know what that noise was. Uh sorry, But at nighttime
Speaker 1: they must just spiral upward and come up how close
Speaker 1: to the surface. I mean we've seen him on the surface,
Speaker 1: but most of this stuff we're fishing around hundred two
Speaker 1: ft of water. So explain your your commercial swordfish gear.
Speaker 1: Basically you got it. They call it a jat ball,
Speaker 1: which is just a hard plastic ball with a ten
Speaker 1: pound lead on the bottom so it keeps it upright.
Speaker 1: Then it's got a stem that's probably I don't know,
Speaker 1: about a foot and a half long, and then it's
Speaker 1: got a strobe light that takes two deep batteries and
Speaker 1: he put that on the top. So so it's a
Speaker 1: bootie with a like a like yeah, like I said,
Speaker 1: like a booby with a strobe light sticking up out
Speaker 1: of it right, so you can see it at night.
Speaker 1: And then normally you put another light on there in
Speaker 1: case of stroke light breaks or you know, just easier
Speaker 1: to see it. And then from the booty you'll have
Speaker 1: I use like a hundred and fifty ft of they
Speaker 1: call it um tar line, which is basically like a
Speaker 1: just a cheap kind of rope that goes to a
Speaker 1: longline clip which is basically some kind of a swivel,
Speaker 1: and then you put a leader which is about a
Speaker 1: hundred ft. Then in between there you got another swivel
Speaker 1: and I clipped my light onto there asn't attracted, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then you can fish, you know, any kind of
Speaker 1: bait you want. I like using a lot of squids
Speaker 1: or mackerel Spanish macro, Boston macerel, tanker mackerel, something like that.
Speaker 1: And then you go out and basically you're jug fishing.
Speaker 1: You go out and start throwing these booties overboard, and
Speaker 1: they're not connected to each other, so if you can't
Speaker 1: find one, she's probably gone, like gone gone. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: your lights break or whatever. Sometimes we've had some of
Speaker 1: the leads get ripped out of the balls and the
Speaker 1: you know, ball flip upside down and you know you'll
Speaker 1: never find them again, got you? But you go out
Speaker 1: and set how many of these? How many? Like so
Speaker 1: you're driving out to fift hundred feet of water, we
Speaker 1: go a little deeper because we'll set from the east
Speaker 1: to the west, so be anywhere from two thousand then
Speaker 1: set all the way in to about nine ft. Maybe
Speaker 1: it depends on the current. Sometimes the current pushes to
Speaker 1: it always pushed you north, but sometimes they'll push you,
Speaker 1: you know, east or west? And how many of the
Speaker 1: how many of the of the booties you throw out
Speaker 1: with the hooks on them? I fish thirty two thirty
Speaker 1: two rigs stretched out over what distance? It's probably close
Speaker 1: to five miles. Why so far apart? I mean they're
Speaker 1: really only about a tenth of a mile up, aren't
Speaker 1: So you got I don't know, covering more water. So
Speaker 1: when you okay, this is like, so you start out
Speaker 1: your your furthest one is twenty miles off shore and
Speaker 1: your closest one to shore is fifteen miles off shore.
Speaker 1: And between those two points you have strong out thirty
Speaker 1: two booies with line, a leader in bait and a
Speaker 1: jay hook on the end. And they got lights on top.
Speaker 1: When you're at any particular buoy, can you look and
Speaker 1: see the booty's in either direction? If you're in the middle,
Speaker 1: you can almost see your inside. If you're on that
Speaker 1: now you can't really see at all, but you can
Speaker 1: usually see whatever one's next, right, okay, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you could see probably ten or fifteen in a row
Speaker 1: something like that. Oh okay, So you're seeing like a
Speaker 1: considerable distance. It depends on if it's calm or not
Speaker 1: too you know, if there's if they're you know, the
Speaker 1: moon's full, you can't really see as many as far.
Speaker 1: You know, you might only see a few. But and
Speaker 1: you set this rig out there, or this big collection
Speaker 1: of rigs, you set it out there after dark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll start like right at sunset. You know, it takes
Speaker 1: about hour hour and a half to get them all
Speaker 1: on the water. And then you're drifting at what speed
Speaker 1: it varies in the gulf streaming. Some nights you'll have
Speaker 1: you know, two knots of todd Some nights you know
Speaker 1: the title will be rage and will be you know,
Speaker 1: four or five knots almost. I mean that's fast. But
Speaker 1: I've seen it, And are you just cruising up and
Speaker 1: down keeping an eye on all the booties. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta. Normally we'll go and throw all the booties,
Speaker 1: hang out, eat a sandwich, and then we'll kind of
Speaker 1: start going out to the end. Whatever fish we got,
Speaker 1: we'll catch them, throw them in the boat, clean them,
Speaker 1: and then pack them with ice, and then we'll go
Speaker 1: out and start checking them from the outside end. So
Speaker 1: how do you what tells you when one of these
Speaker 1: booties hits a fish? They'll go east west, um north outh.
Speaker 1: I mean most of them somewhat. They will kind of
Speaker 1: have a line, you know, definitely have different currents where
Speaker 1: stuff just goes everywhere. And so so you're you knowing
Speaker 1: that the swordfishes hit one of them is not based
Speaker 1: on that it's bobbing, but just that it's traveling in
Speaker 1: a weird direction. Or you'll pull up to them, they'll
Speaker 1: be half you know, BULLI will be halfway underwater. You'll
Speaker 1: see it spinning like sometimes you know, you'll fish on
Speaker 1: there that are dead and they're not really pulling, so
Speaker 1: you won't see like a wake behind it, and buy
Speaker 1: you'll just kind of sit there and spin real slow
Speaker 1: as you're driving past it. And then you don't know,
Speaker 1: like there's something on there, and what's a big swordfish
Speaker 1: and what's a small swordfish? Oh, I mean I caught
Speaker 1: one the other night. I don't think it weighed five pounds.
Speaker 1: Well that you find them that small, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: not often. That was the smallest one I've ever seen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was tiny. And at night do the sharks tear
Speaker 1: the swordfish up? Is it not as bad at night? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I've had it happen coupled maybe five or six times,
Speaker 1: but not too not too often. It's not as bad
Speaker 1: as it be in the daylight. Yeah, I've never had
Speaker 1: one really messed with in the daytime. So here's it's
Speaker 1: not that much of an issue now because you're talking
Speaker 1: about fishing yellow fin that they'll sometimes you'll lose fish
Speaker 1: to sharks. Oh yeah, those sharks are on the elephants
Speaker 1: and they got like a feeding frenzy going, and those
Speaker 1: tunas they'll pull off so much line. You're pumping them
Speaker 1: up and they're kind of a circle, like you know,
Speaker 1: spiraling up real slow, and them sharks will get on
Speaker 1: real bad. Got you, But they don't hit the sword
Speaker 1: fish that bad, not too much. And like, what's it
Speaker 1: so when you're out doing commercial sword fishing like this,
Speaker 1: what is like, what's what's a bad night and what's
Speaker 1: a good night? Bad nights obviously when you catch nothing,
Speaker 1: so that can happen, it's happened, I mean good night.
Speaker 1: You catch anything over five, it's good. I mean you
Speaker 1: catch over a thousand, it's real good. But you're talking
Speaker 1: dressed weight, all dressed out. Yeah, can you can you
Speaker 1: explain to people like how you dress the swordfish? Basically
Speaker 1: they're gutted. All the fins come off, the head comes off,
Speaker 1: and then they're gutted and every you know, heart, everything,
Speaker 1: everything on the inside comes out. And then there's a
Speaker 1: bloodline that goes from all the way to the head,
Speaker 1: all the way to as far back as like the
Speaker 1: gut cavity goes. You just take a knife and run
Speaker 1: it down there. Then there's a little bloodline. You can
Speaker 1: kind of stick your finger and pop that up. He's
Speaker 1: a little wire brush and just clean it out and
Speaker 1: then pack it and crushed ice. Yeah, just pack it
Speaker 1: with ice. And like what's the so when you talk
Speaker 1: about the weight that you're selling, you're talking about that weight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what you could hit a word for what you call
Speaker 1: those things we call them, just say it's cord out,
Speaker 1: cord out, and you fill your coolers up, and you're
Speaker 1: not like in what would strike people as a commercial vessel.
Speaker 1: I mean you're like you're seven basically like a sport
Speaker 1: fishing boat, like a twenty seven ft sport fishing boat, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I fish tournaments and I charter fish. I mean
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a you know, do all everything
Speaker 1: kind of. But but you can pack a thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of cord out, a thousand pounds of swordfish core on
Speaker 1: a boat and that's a good night out. That's a
Speaker 1: real good night. Yeah, Like the other night we caught pounds.
Speaker 1: I mean we had all fish packed there. Anywhere you
Speaker 1: can have a box and ice in it, we had
Speaker 1: fish in it. And then that's a really good night.
Speaker 1: That's the best night I ever had. And then you
Speaker 1: take them in and how do you sell them? Basically
Speaker 1: just pull up out of the fish market. Obviously, I'll
Speaker 1: leave all the fish in my boat. Makes a lot easier.
Speaker 1: You ain't got to touch them two three times. But
Speaker 1: you pull up here, you pull your boat out of
Speaker 1: the water and put it on a trailer, and I'll
Speaker 1: just drive it over the fish market and then um,
Speaker 1: and you know the price before you go out and
Speaker 1: do this. No, sometimes you get screwed a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you've got a lot of fish,
Speaker 1: there's it's hard to get rid of him other places,
Speaker 1: or you don't have a wholesale retail license or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I just saw them my fish at the same spot.
Speaker 1: Makes it easy to drop them off when you're done,
Speaker 1: and there's you don't have a contract about what the
Speaker 1: price is going to be. No, basically you go in,
Speaker 1: you you pull all the fish out of her boat
Speaker 1: and then you know, they got like a little scale
Speaker 1: or whatever, it's a big scale. They go and they
Speaker 1: put the fish on there. They'll cut the tail, see
Speaker 1: if it's got color or whatever, and check the bloodline
Speaker 1: and then they'll grade it. What do you mean, what
Speaker 1: Steven's got color? Um, Well, you have some fish that
Speaker 1: will be like like a white fish, which obviously that's
Speaker 1: kind of like a little bit lesser per pound. Oh,
Speaker 1: the white are less the more they call it peach
Speaker 1: or you know, they'll say light peach, peach, orange orange
Speaker 1: obviously being the best whatever it because they eate those
Speaker 1: world red shrimpoint that fish we caught today and it
Speaker 1: dies the flesh that color so different makes for a
Speaker 1: fattier fish. And that's why maybe it's more expensive when
Speaker 1: the color is in it. I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: it's more of like a sweeter taste or something. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't really see too much fat, not like a tuna,
Speaker 1: you know how you have like fat content in the
Speaker 1: meat or there is, and you just can't really see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't really know what they all look
Speaker 1: for for that, but but it's just the guy's judgment
Speaker 1: call when he's buying your fish. Yeah, and he grades
Speaker 1: every fish, especially like on the skin color. If you
Speaker 1: throw a harpoon through the side, you know, because you're
Speaker 1: dead ruin some kind of meat right there because you
Speaker 1: put a hole in it. Then the harpoon turned sideways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should probably back up and talk about that because
Speaker 1: we didn't. I meant to cover that a little bit.
Speaker 1: So your your cruise long and here's a booty booking
Speaker 1: off in some weird direction. What do you do? Just
Speaker 1: pull up on the ball and you'll have a basket
Speaker 1: of rope with a clip on it, and you'll clip
Speaker 1: actually clip the basket onto the line and pull the
Speaker 1: booty off. So that basically so to get the booty
Speaker 1: out of the way. Yeah, that's basically like you're rotten
Speaker 1: reil because you're hand fishing. You know, everything's with your hands.
Speaker 1: So that's basically like your real and your extra line.
Speaker 1: You know, fish wants to take line, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of how that works. So first thing, it's ditched the
Speaker 1: buoy and get the whole thing attached to another long line. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a thick enough rope to handle. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: much the same. It's the same as um what the
Speaker 1: dry we call it a drop, you know, the tar
Speaker 1: line that comes off the ball. It's just a giant
Speaker 1: basket of that. So then you got them and you
Speaker 1: start to try to jack them up pulling them, and
Speaker 1: they put up a tussle when you start pulling on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes you know, you can't get around to
Speaker 1: them fast enough and they're dead. I mean we've pulled
Speaker 1: up and two pounders dead. And it's makes it real
Speaker 1: nice and easy because he just i mean, he hasn't
Speaker 1: been dead that long. No, I mean, just you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I mean, you you know, you hook them kind
Speaker 1: of deep or whatever. You know, sometimes they get wrapped up,
Speaker 1: you know, tail hooked, and you know they do die,
Speaker 1: but he's still marketable because it's only been so long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you. So the ones that are still frisky,
Speaker 1: you bring them up and then gaff them or harpoon them,
Speaker 1: depending on his temperament and size. Yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: it's a big fish, I mean most of all the
Speaker 1: big fish with harpoon them just it's kind of like
Speaker 1: an insurance thing, you know, and try to hit him
Speaker 1: up in the head. Yeah, you try. I mean, fit's
Speaker 1: a big fish, you try to get it wherever you can,
Speaker 1: just for insurance or if you know. Sometimes fish will
Speaker 1: be swimming around the boat and never ate anything, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you get an opportunity to you know, throw a
Speaker 1: harpoon out a free swimmer. I mean, so you'll just
Speaker 1: be looking in the light and you'll see swordfish for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. What are they drawn to the light? H
Speaker 1: I think it's more you know, you'll have other fish
Speaker 1: on you know, you'll sometimes you'll have a swim all
Speaker 1: er fish and a bigger fish, or you got a
Speaker 1: bigger fish on the line, you'll have a little bit
Speaker 1: smaller fish with them, you know, because it's like a
Speaker 1: male female thing. You know, normally it's a bigger fish
Speaker 1: as your female than your smaller fish is the male.
Speaker 1: So you'll just all of a sudden realize here's a
Speaker 1: sword for swimming by, and you'll grab your harpoon and
Speaker 1: stick them with the harpoon sometimes when you get lucky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like how often does that happen? A few times a year?
Speaker 1: Not all the time, but it happens, and you're throwing
Speaker 1: the harpoon or jabbing it. If they're close enough, you
Speaker 1: can just jab them. I mean, if they're a little
Speaker 1: deeper far or whatever, you know, you just throw it
Speaker 1: and just see if you can get them. And you
Speaker 1: got another basket with I mean I got like a
Speaker 1: thousand foot or open a basket too. Just yeah, because
Speaker 1: then he's not played out at all. He's just gonna run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: depends where you hit him with me. If you hit
Speaker 1: him kind of far back or something like that, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna they'll be pulling on him for a while,
Speaker 1: and events you drag them up and then you put
Speaker 1: a gap in the drag more the side of the boat.
Speaker 1: Then we picked up all the cleaning. So to move
Speaker 1: us back into the future where we belong. You go down.
Speaker 1: This fish guy comes in and takes each fish and
Speaker 1: says like he wants to judge the color on it
Speaker 1: general condition, and then what does he do? Then they
Speaker 1: just they have a giant floor basically, and it's just
Speaker 1: actually it's kind of like um plastic pallets and they
Speaker 1: have all you know, laid out and then they just
Speaker 1: stack fish on there where there's ice under them, and
Speaker 1: they you know, covering with ice. They put like a
Speaker 1: you know, whatever your boat name is. They have like
Speaker 1: a little tag on a number for however much the
Speaker 1: fish wade. You know, they're calling and trying to sell
Speaker 1: the fish, and they'll go in there, pick it and
Speaker 1: put ice in a box and ship it offered. And
Speaker 1: they're selling fish at the same time. Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: other night that we're we're catching fish and we had
Speaker 1: a couple of nice fish that you know, they're pumpkin
Speaker 1: and they're puking colored. Yeah, and I mean most people
Speaker 1: want those, so they sell real quick for you know,
Speaker 1: a little more money. They were already taking and pack
Speaker 1: them in boxes getting random ship and we ain't even
Speaker 1: off float all our fish yet. So it's that fast
Speaker 1: turnaround sometimes and then he he rates every fish, weighs
Speaker 1: every fish, and then you just get he just cut
Speaker 1: you a check. Yeah in like two weeks. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's only catch, so you don't have a fift pound
Speaker 1: night and then just go out and just walk out
Speaker 1: of there in the check in your pocket, which is
Speaker 1: make it seem kind of nice. Now, normally it's like
Speaker 1: a week and by the time they you know, put
Speaker 1: it in the mail, you got it normally in about
Speaker 1: two weeks. So how much will the price fluctuate from
Speaker 1: day to day? Like, is it moving all the time?
Speaker 1: Is like most commodity trading where it's just like up
Speaker 1: and down, up and down most less swords, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it stays pretty level around like September over,
Speaker 1: I mean it gets a little low. I mean then uh,
Speaker 1: And you're saying when the guys start harpooning in the North,
Speaker 1: it drives the price dead, drives the price down huge.
Speaker 1: And plus I know there's a bunch of long line
Speaker 1: boats fishing up there too, like on the Grand Banks
Speaker 1: or whatever. I mean, they're catching a lot of fish too.
Speaker 1: So now that like this winter time in the North,
Speaker 1: your prices are good, there's not a lot of fish
Speaker 1: coming out of the north. Yeah. Normally right around like
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving time, the price goes back to like normal, or
Speaker 1: you know, depending on the weather, if it's been rough
Speaker 1: for a long time, you know wherever, then they'll you know,
Speaker 1: the price goes up a little higher. I forget whatever
Speaker 1: that holiday is where everybody eats fish, lent or something
Speaker 1: like that. Like that fish just goes through the roof
Speaker 1: around that, does it. Yeah, So if you got fish,
Speaker 1: I mean definitely making some extra money off them. There's
Speaker 1: enough people observing lent to drive up sword fish prices.
Speaker 1: I mean, all fish, every fish, any whatever is fighting
Speaker 1: at that time. Fish prices just go through the roof.
Speaker 1: And this is some of the you're saying today, this
Speaker 1: is some of the best sword fishing you've ever seen
Speaker 1: right now, Yeah, the last couple of weeks, perhaps because
Speaker 1: the weather up north, let's push fish down. So today
Speaker 1: we went out, So we go out to fish today.
Speaker 1: That's what you're doing at night when you're out commercial fishing.
Speaker 1: And we went out today and went out to about
Speaker 1: ft of water and explain the rig we fish today,
Speaker 1: like how like how you rigged up and how we
Speaker 1: fished it. Basic fish electric rail. It's called an LP
Speaker 1: that's just it's an LPs twelve dred that's the type
Speaker 1: of electric rail. It is loaded with fet ds. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yards of pound breaks, which is a shipload of money
Speaker 1: worth a braided line. Yeah, it's a couple hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: And then um, from there, whatever kind of rodded. Some
Speaker 1: people like a long road, some people like one, some
Speaker 1: like stuffed soft. I mean it's whatever they like. But um,
Speaker 1: you got a rod, you got the sixty five pound tests.
Speaker 1: Do like a little bamny twist, which is the knot
Speaker 1: makes a loop, and then you put a wind on leader.
Speaker 1: Use the knots called a cat's ball. And when you
Speaker 1: say the wind on it used to be like a
Speaker 1: big long lead, it's a hundred foot lead, right yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's no swevel from your braided line to your
Speaker 1: wind on leader. So you'll tie a beaminy twist and
Speaker 1: at that wind on leader, I'll have a loop and
Speaker 1: the knot you tie it's called cat's paw. And then uh,
Speaker 1: why do you not want? Oh, you don't want because
Speaker 1: you need to be able to reel the whole kind
Speaker 1: of come on the rail. I got you, I got you,
Speaker 1: and uh, so wind on leader means you don't need
Speaker 1: to stop at a big barrel swivel. You gotta stop.
Speaker 1: You gotta stop at the lead, Yeah, and pull and
Speaker 1: pull the lead off and basically from that not it's
Speaker 1: whatever three or four ft and then you gotta um
Speaker 1: use wax line, make a little loop on there to
Speaker 1: put your leg, which you use a longline clip, and
Speaker 1: whatever pound moon that you want to use. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you got a ten pound lead, and from that ten
Speaker 1: pound lead, it's like in simple terms, it's like you
Speaker 1: got the reel in the rod and then you got
Speaker 1: sixty five pound test braided line down to ten pounds
Speaker 1: of lead and then one feet of leader. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's about one fifty as what was on there today.
Speaker 1: And then the bait it's a it's a standard. It's
Speaker 1: like a j hook with a skirt and then piece
Speaker 1: of bonito on it. Yeah, it's just like a they
Speaker 1: call like a Panama strip. It's kind of what kind
Speaker 1: of Patos cut cut as you know. Sometimes you'll say
Speaker 1: a belly strap. Some people say some people actually just
Speaker 1: cut a strip, but that's called a Panama strap. Got
Speaker 1: you and you're sending this thing downet down because you
Speaker 1: wanted like a hundred feet off the bottom, because you
Speaker 1: got a hundred leader, The leads a hundred fifty ft
Speaker 1: off the bottom. Right, the leads a hundred fifty ft.
Speaker 1: I'd imagine your hooks. You know where you're bait is.
Speaker 1: It's a little under it. It's a picture like these
Speaker 1: guys want this rig to lay out flat. You can't
Speaker 1: just like open the bail on the reel and send
Speaker 1: the whole thing down. It's gonna be a mess, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the lead is gonna be leading the way, and
Speaker 1: the whole leader is just gonna spiral around the main
Speaker 1: line and be screwed. So they lay the rig, They
Speaker 1: lay the leader out, get the lead in the water,
Speaker 1: and then motor and run. Meanwhile, the leads fallen, but
Speaker 1: they're driving away from the lead until they get the
Speaker 1: right amount of line out. Then you swing the boat
Speaker 1: around and come back at the point you started at
Speaker 1: so that that whole thing falls smooth and doesn't get
Speaker 1: all wrapped up. And then there you are five football
Speaker 1: fields of line out dangling around somewhere down at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean. Right, and the swordfish hits and
Speaker 1: it looks like there's a bluegill messing with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: today them things barely even tapped it. Like you can't.
Speaker 1: You would think, so how big was the biggest we
Speaker 1: had a We had an eighty five pound swordfish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had one und Ay five and other and like
Speaker 1: you would think that thing would take that thing out
Speaker 1: of the rod holder. But we're staring at it. You
Speaker 1: guys are staring at it debating whether there was a
Speaker 1: hit or not. It is just like, like so much
Speaker 1: gets lost in that amount of line, even though braid
Speaker 1: is so like sensitive and like like transmits signals so well.
Speaker 1: I always think like like if we're jigging hallibut two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty ft of water, you can take a you
Speaker 1: can take a twelve bounce lead ball and hit the bottom.
Speaker 1: I can tell you what the bottoms like, rocky soft, right,
Speaker 1: It's like it transmitts, it transmits that well. But when
Speaker 1: you get that much line out, it's an eighty five
Speaker 1: pound fish down there hitting a bait the most way
Speaker 1: half a pound and it's barely registers on that rod. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty stiff rod too. I mean if you
Speaker 1: use a little something a little bit lighter, I mean
Speaker 1: you'll see a little more of it, like a tip
Speaker 1: bounce or something, you know, I like a little bit
Speaker 1: you know, longer, heavier rod okay, And then when that
Speaker 1: thing hits you don't take it out of the rod holder. No,
Speaker 1: you throw the switch and it takes about what how
Speaker 1: many minutes? I don't know, probably about ten minutes or so.
Speaker 1: That man, ten twelve minutes, twenty minutes. That long, that's
Speaker 1: what it is, because like you're fift of water, but
Speaker 1: there's like some scope and belly, like there's some scope
Speaker 1: in the line or some belly in the line. So
Speaker 1: the read out on that real says yeah, and you
Speaker 1: gotta sit there and watch that thing count down. That's
Speaker 1: what takes for so long. If you just look away,
Speaker 1: eventually it would come along quicker. I would like, do look,
Speaker 1: and they'd be like sevent d feet look and then
Speaker 1: a while later, but then pretty soon it gets like
Speaker 1: three feet and then he started getting excited at one
Speaker 1: feet here comes the lead. I have personal experience with
Speaker 1: looking away because second fish today, I wasn't looking at
Speaker 1: my watch, but it still felt like a long time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was hanging on the off the tea top going
Speaker 1: there's like, man, I think still hasn't come. I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna return to me like having of me like sort
Speaker 1: of like slowly falling out of love with the honest
Speaker 1: and couldn't find it in himself to take interest in
Speaker 1: our fish. That we were I can't say we were
Speaker 1: fighting it, but that we were, that we were watching
Speaker 1: the thing play out. A lot of people would hate
Speaker 1: that kind of fishing. Yeah, like I was trying to
Speaker 1: tell you it is kind of boring, you know, there's
Speaker 1: not I was that those people aren't very smart. I mean,
Speaker 1: I like it, especially when you see a big one.
Speaker 1: You know, you see when it come up, you know,
Speaker 1: three or four or five pounds, and it's it's pretty cool,
Speaker 1: that's what you know. It's like going deer hunting. You know,
Speaker 1: you go somewhere where you can go shoot a bunch
Speaker 1: of lower ones, or you go, you know, spend the
Speaker 1: time track hill big one. It's kind of the same.
Speaker 1: To me. It's like it's like, um, it's like you're
Speaker 1: transmitting signals into outer space when you're fishing that deep,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's like it's hard to even
Speaker 1: imagine yourself being on the same planet as the fish
Speaker 1: when you're fishing for a fish feet away. Some people
Speaker 1: like and I like the immediacy to like I like
Speaker 1: sight casting to fish, which is fun. But I also
Speaker 1: like when you're sort of it's like talking to et man,
Speaker 1: like when you're when you're like got that much line
Speaker 1: out and you can't even picture what it looks like
Speaker 1: down there. They're in another word, old man. They're in
Speaker 1: the black. They really are nearly black. It's like, but
Speaker 1: you're up here in the sunshine looking, you know, watching
Speaker 1: your honest and down there is like yeah, and and
Speaker 1: then fifteen hundred feet away at the bottom of like
Speaker 1: in the ocean. You know, you can't go down there
Speaker 1: with scuba tanks. He's just down in some other planet
Speaker 1: that obviously you throw that switch and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: here he is back up in your world. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's cool when they come up to they're all silver
Speaker 1: and purple, and then they had the deck and then
Speaker 1: they're just like brown looking. It's like crazy how they
Speaker 1: changed colors that fast too. Yeah, it's it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1: I liked it. And we had one like I don't
Speaker 1: know how long do you think we had the first
Speaker 1: set out for I don't know, you're watching your watch,
Speaker 1: it was about minutes. How far do we drift? I
Speaker 1: don't even think it was a mile. We didn't even
Speaker 1: drift a mile. And then the second time we sat down,
Speaker 1: I mean the minute it got down, Yeah, taught us,
Speaker 1: I'll make a short drift for you, like we gotta
Speaker 1: drop one more time. Though it took longer to get
Speaker 1: it down than it did for the fish to be
Speaker 1: on there, and byam another swordfish. I thought I was
Speaker 1: I thought I was tripping out. I thought I've seen something.
Speaker 1: I'm like maybe, and then it really was. It places
Speaker 1: tricks on me too, especially when you sit there for
Speaker 1: a couple of hours, you're like, well that was a
Speaker 1: bite because what you're watching, like there's wave action. So
Speaker 1: as you're riding up on a swell that the rod loads,
Speaker 1: and then you get to the top of the swell
Speaker 1: and the rods sort of the rod sort of relaxes
Speaker 1: and go straight and then you and then it loads.
Speaker 1: Then you start to drop down and the rod goes
Speaker 1: sort of slack and falls and then repeats itself, and
Speaker 1: you kind of memorize the cycle, and you're looking for
Speaker 1: like an interruption in the cycle, and the interruption could
Speaker 1: be on the ride up, there's like go a pause
Speaker 1: as the swell brings you up, or on the drop down,
Speaker 1: it's like a like a stutter, and that's all you're
Speaker 1: really looking for. Sometimes you don't see it all. You
Speaker 1: look over and the row just buckled over and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh god, him on hit the You're like, oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1: Caught me sleeping, but caught him sleeping. You know, like
Speaker 1: you guys like to fish crapp ease, right, Yeah, that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But it's like I like to I fish a lot
Speaker 1: of small fish, but I would like to fish for
Speaker 1: big fish, like we like to catch halib it. But
Speaker 1: when you spend all that time fishing small fish and
Speaker 1: then you catch a swordfish that big, which isn't even huge,
Speaker 1: but like it's a swordfish and there kind of like
Speaker 1: all meat, they have a high yield. I start picturing
Speaker 1: if I was gonna take all that meat and make
Speaker 1: a pile and then start flaying yellow perch, and I
Speaker 1: had to flay enough yellow perch to match that pile.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel like small fish don't make sense,
Speaker 1: don't It's about a bite of file at. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if someone said, okay, you clean perch until you've
Speaker 1: matched those piles up, or clean croppy until you make
Speaker 1: me a pile of meat. The size of the pilo
Speaker 1: meat we got off the small swordfish would be a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred hundreds of crop. We speck fish all
Speaker 1: season and probably won't even amount the one fish one
Speaker 1: sword fish. One of the things too, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a freshwater guy, you know the you know, I've
Speaker 1: been out with Ryan, I'm a gladesman and uh but
Speaker 1: I will say that my other the passion for me
Speaker 1: in saltwater and is going with him and bootie fishing
Speaker 1: the night time because when you you know, I've been
Speaker 1: with him a few times and then I went with him,
Speaker 1: just me and him, and got the you know, I
Speaker 1: made it for him. And you when you grow that
Speaker 1: line on a big fish and you're you grab you know,
Speaker 1: and I fought, you know, hunt gators, you know, fought
Speaker 1: gators in that. But when you grab a sword fish
Speaker 1: and you're pulling that line, you you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty big guy when I grab you know, when
Speaker 1: you grab ahold of him and you actually feel the
Speaker 1: power that that fish has you, you don't got nothing
Speaker 1: for him there you know, and that's what he you know,
Speaker 1: when when I went out with him, he's like, look,
Speaker 1: you know I was trying. He says, Look, when he
Speaker 1: wants to go, let him go because you ain't gonna
Speaker 1: stop him. You know, when they are there, pretty gnarly fish,
Speaker 1: when they want to go, they got you know powerful,
Speaker 1: that's what. Oh, there's something like really shocking about him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a prehistoric fish kind of comes up with
Speaker 1: that blade, yeah, sticking out of his nose. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then when you got you know, when we went and
Speaker 1: you you know, even we harpooned him and then gaffed
Speaker 1: him and get him in the boat and they go,
Speaker 1: you know, nuts in the boat and that bill gets going.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, that's you know. If I
Speaker 1: would say I like to go, I'm like total opposite.
Speaker 1: All either like to go bass fishing or I want
Speaker 1: to go sword fish and I don't have no interest
Speaker 1: in the troll and the you know, sailfish and nothing
Speaker 1: like that. I want to go pull handgear. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: either want to finesse a large mouth and let him
Speaker 1: go or stick a harpoon and fish you know there.
Speaker 1: It's just something like you were saying like et it's
Speaker 1: at something like out of the world. When you even
Speaker 1: with the booties, you know you're pulling on him, you
Speaker 1: don't see him, and then all of a sudden when
Speaker 1: he lights up in the light of the boat and
Speaker 1: you see him, it's like, you know, it's like when
Speaker 1: you see a big buck, your heart like you know,
Speaker 1: skips a beat for a minute. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: exaggarly Tom about man watching a big fish come out
Speaker 1: of the depths is like kind of awe inspiring and
Speaker 1: like surprising. Yeah, has has that go away? Now that
Speaker 1: you've done it so long? I mean as long as
Speaker 1: you could be doing it, not because I was plugging
Speaker 1: you guys as being single fellers mid twenties. You're both
Speaker 1: in your mid twenties. Yeah, I'm twenty nine. What's uh?
Speaker 1: I should ask um? What's your window? Right? Like? I
Speaker 1: always figured my window personally, like like whatever if I
Speaker 1: imagine like my window, I was always being like generally
Speaker 1: I would be imagining that it would be within five
Speaker 1: years of my age, like when I was before I
Speaker 1: was married, before I met my wife said, if you
Speaker 1: had to guess how old would this potential spouse be,
Speaker 1: I would say I'd bet she's you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna be younger than five years younger me, but probably
Speaker 1: not older than five years older because that was a
Speaker 1: substantial window. That's a ten year window. Right, there's three
Speaker 1: sixty million Americans or female, and then you got a
Speaker 1: tenure window to catch them all. There are tens of
Speaker 1: millions of potential mates in this country. And that's not
Speaker 1: even talk. She's gonna be clean fish. You're gonna have to.
Speaker 1: So at twy nine, you're cool. So you're twenty nine,
Speaker 1: you're cool going back too, are you okay to hop
Speaker 1: ahead to thirty four? N? Okay? So that's a big window. Yeah,
Speaker 1: slot limit slot about fifty. So all right, So there's
Speaker 1: two so women in this area. If you're looking for
Speaker 1: um um, he gets both gainfully employed. Yeah, avid outdoorsman,
Speaker 1: prone to getting an airboat crashes, but not their fault.
Speaker 1: These guys have both. Basically you've both been run over
Speaker 1: by other run over by other less experienced voters. Uh
Speaker 1: you know what they say, um in the wrong place
Speaker 1: at the wrong time, pretty much. And you guys both
Speaker 1: not a cook. Yeah, because I said you cooked us alligator,
Speaker 1: you cooked us bullfrog, you cooked this frozen French fries. Um,
Speaker 1: how did you guys cook your frog legs? They were good.
Speaker 1: We just battered them, you know, like a little Cajun
Speaker 1: Cajun batter. It's a fine not even it was like
Speaker 1: a breading, like a fine bread. Yeah, this is I
Speaker 1: don't like to get crazy. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: people like to get crazy with the bread and and
Speaker 1: I feel like it takes away from your meat, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I like to use a little lighter you know, a
Speaker 1: little more corn meal base, you know, and then we'll
Speaker 1: put like a little you know, it wasn't bready what
Speaker 1: you guys didn't Actually, it wasn't like a wet batter, right, No,
Speaker 1: it's just like you don't even got we don't we
Speaker 1: actually don't even use like an egg batter with it.
Speaker 1: Just you wet you know, just make sure it's moist
Speaker 1: and you know, and then we put a little creole
Speaker 1: season in in it in the flower. Um it's yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it is either Tony's or Zadaran's one. I
Speaker 1: knows that ran Yeah. Yeah, I've always been a Tony's man.
Speaker 1: I mean I like a lot of stuff. I like Tony's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then uh, you make a secret sauce. What is
Speaker 1: the secret sauce? I want to be secret and we
Speaker 1: told you the secret. Okay, Like give you a rough
Speaker 1: sketch on the secret sauce. It's have you been to
Speaker 1: like bonefish grill? You been to a bonefish grow? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: bonefish grill? Yeah? They do like a bang bang shrimp.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. It's kind of like a like a
Speaker 1: spinoff of their version, you know. It's it's you know, saracha,
Speaker 1: some red chili, you know, like the chili pepper sauce,
Speaker 1: A little catch up other things. The counter over there
Speaker 1: got a milk, a couple of frogs. Well, it was
Speaker 1: good man. This has been like a really educational couple
Speaker 1: of days for me, like a handful of different activities,
Speaker 1: and then the sword fish and stuff is just kind
Speaker 1: of shocking to me. I think I'll be talking about
Speaker 1: that for a long time. That's pretty cool, especially when
Speaker 1: any catching that quick. Yeah, everybody leaves a dot at nine,
Speaker 1: were already running home by what fifty two big two,
Speaker 1: big huge fish land in the bottom of uh ycluding
Speaker 1: thoughts and the final guy on those sword fish like
Speaker 1: that eyeball. Right, Well, I mean it makes sense right
Speaker 1: where they live. But you don't catch fish that have
Speaker 1: an eye that. I mean that thing might be bigger
Speaker 1: in your eye too, definitely two to three inches. That's
Speaker 1: a good point, big around as a Copenhagen can There
Speaker 1: you go, Ryan, you're you're mate. That was out with us.
Speaker 1: I was talking about when you bring a he's talking
Speaker 1: about bringing a macop up in the boat and he says,
Speaker 1: when you're walking around the boat that Magel watches follows
Speaker 1: you thus sketchy. You can see him following you, following
Speaker 1: you with his eyeball as you walk around. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: killed a couple of this. Well. I did have one
Speaker 1: of the final questions where airboat culture outside of southern Florida,
Speaker 1: Like where where else do you find it? Um? Nebraska
Speaker 1: the Platte River they actually have. Um uh, they have
Speaker 1: pretty big event up there every year. They call it
Speaker 1: thunder on the Loop. They do like races that you
Speaker 1: know which they that's like a that's like car motor
Speaker 1: boat territory. You know they run a lot of what's
Speaker 1: down here too. You know there's a lot, but um,
Speaker 1: you know Louisiana, Texas, UM Mexico. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of the duck hunting. You know, they got a lot
Speaker 1: of the duck hunting operations down there. They use them. Alaska,
Speaker 1: Alaska caribou moose hunters using airboats. And you see guys
Speaker 1: even fishing same without airboats. I mean even um you
Speaker 1: know Illinois, um there starting you know there is some
Speaker 1: air boat in there that I've heard about through conversations
Speaker 1: and that. Um. But I would say as far as
Speaker 1: recreational airboat use, South Florida, Central Florida is like the
Speaker 1: mecca for it, you know, and we have multiple actual
Speaker 1: manufacturers here, diamond Back air Boats, T t O, Stossil
Speaker 1: air Boats, UM actual Classic UM looma tach like actual
Speaker 1: places where you can go get a production built boat.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been in the which we were up
Speaker 1: what last year at diamond Backs plant. Pretty cool operation
Speaker 1: to see how they actually, I mean you go from
Speaker 1: where our boats were built where it's kind of a
Speaker 1: one man shop, handbuilt, Hal's aircraft riveted. You know, everything's
Speaker 1: done with hand jigs. Where diamond Back everything's done by
Speaker 1: they have actual jigs built. They have it's like a line,
Speaker 1: you know, guys, Weldon Halls Uh, they're cranking them out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they crank them out, you know, more like your UM agencies,
Speaker 1: you know FWC. You know they go as far as
Speaker 1: Louisiana and that you know they buy more from them. Now. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's you know on that touching on that. You know,
Speaker 1: so there there is. Actually it's a pretty decent sized
Speaker 1: industry here for that because we're in ground zero of
Speaker 1: air bolt culture. Yeah, I would say, Um, our friend,
Speaker 1: I keep thinking. My concluding thought, I'm gonna do it
Speaker 1: right now is are a guy we work with, Garrett
Speaker 1: Dirt myth he'd like it down here because people like
Speaker 1: to chew tobacco and he loves chewing, but none of
Speaker 1: us to chew with him. He come down here to
Speaker 1: drive around and air bolts having to chew the heaven
Speaker 1: man and he likes to turn a wrench and yeah,
Speaker 1: he likes motor sports, like chewing tobacco, motor sports. He'd
Speaker 1: be all over the you know what, you know what
Speaker 1: they about all this? Is it? Just the other day
Speaker 1: we were driving around and Uh, I don't know what
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're at the airport, maybe getting those immigration
Speaker 1: not to immigration, the customs forms for guns going to Mexico. Anyways,
Speaker 1: were early and the guy wouldn't see us early. We
Speaker 1: had to show up on time. So we went to
Speaker 1: get a beer and uh, it was snowing and it
Speaker 1: was kind of cold, and he's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of getting over the winter. Really Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we might have just found found his you know, his
Speaker 1: new place. He likes the ice climb though. This guy's
Speaker 1: throwing the motors that when he sees uh like he's
Speaker 1: I've seen him be almost moved to tears By super Cubs,
Speaker 1: moved tears By, but just like just like strikes him
Speaker 1: somewhere down deep. Uh, Matt Cook, you know, I was
Speaker 1: just talking about Ryan and Josh. You know the reason
Speaker 1: I come downers. They really represent kind of the essence
Speaker 1: of South Florida where I mean, as far as you've
Speaker 1: got commercial fishing. And it's fun to see how that
Speaker 1: whole thing plays out. Obviously, Josh uh amateur trying to
Speaker 1: be professional bass fishermen on Okechobi, etcetera. It's just fun
Speaker 1: to see. I know, you like to fish bass, but
Speaker 1: you want to become a tournament bass. I fished a
Speaker 1: lot of tournaments, um fish, some amateur event, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of amateur obviously, we have you know, tons
Speaker 1: of you know amateur event team tournaments here, UM fish,
Speaker 1: some flw outdoors events, and you know, got some aspirations
Speaker 1: that go pro you know one day, you know, sooner
Speaker 1: or later. I like specializing in what we do because
Speaker 1: our style of fishing is you know, unique in its
Speaker 1: own you know, they just had a tour level event
Speaker 1: on the lake with on Okeechobi, which is you know
Speaker 1: they travel throughout the country and it's neat because you
Speaker 1: know what's kind it's hand in hand. When the Florida
Speaker 1: guys go North Alabama, Tennessee River, Valley Lakes, you know,
Speaker 1: Gunnersville real popular, you know bass fishing. UM, we tend
Speaker 1: to we struggle a little bit because we're so shallow minded.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't I don't ever use it that finder.
Speaker 1: You know, we're shallow minded meaning you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like we're like you're talking site fishing where I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a yeah, you don't know about Like we don't fish
Speaker 1: ledges and you know here and there, but we don't
Speaker 1: fish deep water clear water. You know, we're used to fishing,
Speaker 1: you know, punching is what we call it, which is
Speaker 1: a you know, using a one ounce yeah, punching match.
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta you probably heard of him the
Speaker 1: he's an amateur bass angler out of Oregon, um Matt Elliott.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he told me he broke the whole world
Speaker 1: of bass fishing down. And he's like also talks about
Speaker 1: all the different basque cultures. But he's from fishing small
Speaker 1: mouth and moving water in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, very different.
Speaker 1: I would be lost. That's more like fishing. That'd be
Speaker 1: like from your perspective, would be more like fishing for swordfish.
Speaker 1: You know, that's you know what. And on our side
Speaker 1: worth fishing heavy cover, you know, thick vegetation. That's kind
Speaker 1: of that's my specialty. And um you know where a
Speaker 1: lot of guys are more into the finesse. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean when I go bass fishing, I'm fishing with
Speaker 1: a seven eleven seven and eleven inch rod, almost eight
Speaker 1: foot rod, extra heavy action, sixty five pound braid. Like
Speaker 1: it's you gotta get him out of the junk because
Speaker 1: when you flip in there. You know, the gloria fish
Speaker 1: in Florida is any flip can be a ten pound fish.
Speaker 1: You know. Um on like Akachobe when the when when
Speaker 1: it's when the lake is producing at its top um
Speaker 1: depending on conditions. And you know, obviously we had a
Speaker 1: hurricane come through this year and that actually, you know,
Speaker 1: change even the everglades. That change a lot of our
Speaker 1: landscape if you call it um. So that affects things,
Speaker 1: you know. And one of the cool things about Florida
Speaker 1: and our fisheries is in the freshwater world, in the
Speaker 1: bath fishing is it changes a lot. So it's always
Speaker 1: a justin you know, you'll hear guys, you know, pros,
Speaker 1: guys at fish you know for a living. They come
Speaker 1: down here and they you know, they'll come down and
Speaker 1: have GPS marks from last year and they'll say they
Speaker 1: just erase everything and start all over because it doesn't know.
Speaker 1: She's constantly changing. So you ever f upitty large mouths. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not in a long time. I'm kind of It's like
Speaker 1: one of those things where now I feel, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a hard time killing one. Yeah. My dad
Speaker 1: and my dad's a redneck, Like I mean, I've read neck,
Speaker 1: but my dad is. My dad's on the old school.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard for him to put back. You know,
Speaker 1: he looks at you know, we always mess when we
Speaker 1: go deer hunt and we say, you don't see horns
Speaker 1: when they walk out, he sees pork tops, you know,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of you know, but we you know,
Speaker 1: I I don't I really don't like I can tell
Speaker 1: you a good story about Matt, you know, but Matt
Speaker 1: finish up your concluded though you concluding thought, No, I
Speaker 1: just uh, you know, I think people enjoy Florida for
Speaker 1: the beaches. You know, you always hear about Miami and
Speaker 1: and or the West Coast Naples. But for me, the
Speaker 1: essence of Florida is is kind of the center of
Speaker 1: the state. And what's fun to come down here in
Speaker 1: this area is you obviously can freshwater fish. And then
Speaker 1: you know, for everyone listening, you're only ten minutes away
Speaker 1: fift and you can go deep water fishing. I mean,
Speaker 1: so oh yeah, yeah that's we We woke up this
Speaker 1: morning in the in the swamp house, the swap stillt house,
Speaker 1: and fished off shore. Yeah. People can't conceive of that.
Speaker 1: You can do all of that in a three day period. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had to take an airboat to get into the
Speaker 1: big boat. Yeah. We almost squeezed in a large mouth
Speaker 1: on Okechobee and and uh um, striper hunting. You know.
Speaker 1: So it's just a magnificent place for the outdoors. You
Speaker 1: can't and you can do so many things in a
Speaker 1: short period of time. So that's the reason I come down,
Speaker 1: and these two guys have opened my eyes to it.
Speaker 1: Sportsman's paradise, gladesman, I am. I want to be gladesman,
Speaker 1: which is totally different guest gladesman. Yeah, guess gladesman. Ryan,
Speaker 1: you got the concluding thoughts? Does anything you want to
Speaker 1: stick in there couldn't stick in there? I can't really
Speaker 1: think it too much. Yeah, Um, how old do you
Speaker 1: think you want to before you get married? Like? What
Speaker 1: would be like? Do you have in your head like
Speaker 1: a cut off at which you I think that people
Speaker 1: should be married personally. I'm not leaning on you yet
Speaker 1: about it, but I think that people should be married.
Speaker 1: I think it will do a lot for your fishing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have to go anymore. She's got a bunch
Speaker 1: of money. It gives you already of mind. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this later. Um, all right, everyone, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us.