Speaker 1: Screw the trout. I'm gonna put a handful of him
Speaker 1: on my cream and weet what I want as the
Speaker 1: only buffa hat I've never seen. Nobody cast a rod
Speaker 1: as bad as you. They'll keep your phone dry, but
Speaker 1: nobody will be able to hear you. Good morning, degenerate anglers,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Bent the Fishing podcast. Where we call
Speaker 1: it a scene. I call it disaster down here. The
Speaker 1: kids grow up faster. I'm Joseph Mellie, a mild and uh.
Speaker 1: And to everyone who caught that song, reference round of
Speaker 1: applause and a round of drinks on me if I
Speaker 1: had at the bar. Yes, I'm assuming I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: not many people did catch it, but that's okay. We'll explain.
Speaker 1: We'll explain. That was a tip of the hat to
Speaker 1: the band Operation Ivy, who inspired our new band theme music.
Speaker 1: And we want to know what you guys think. Do
Speaker 1: you think we love it? Yeah, we love it. I
Speaker 1: think it's fantastic. I would listen to that song anytime.
Speaker 1: But yes, it's weird man, the way that like are
Speaker 1: the timing of our song change happened because there was
Speaker 1: that there was that whole subject of the discussion that
Speaker 1: came up in social media recently and and so like,
Speaker 1: just so you guys known, because you're not all following this.
Speaker 1: Somebody and I can't remember who was. Some listener asked
Speaker 1: if if he's the only one that rocks out to
Speaker 1: the Bent theme song in the car, And we're really
Speaker 1: happy that people like it. But the truth is, like
Speaker 1: when we were putting this show together initially, when we
Speaker 1: first started, we just had to grab something that sort
Speaker 1: of fit on the stock music website. It wasn't what
Speaker 1: we had in mind, but like, that'll work and we
Speaker 1: didn't hate it, but it was it was just not
Speaker 1: exactly what we had in mind. So we've been we've
Speaker 1: been talking about an itching to try and get something
Speaker 1: written uniquely for us, and we finally got it done.
Speaker 1: So that's the new song. Things that media or tend
Speaker 1: to like come together real fast and literally it was like,
Speaker 1: we need a song. Are you cool with this? Do
Speaker 1: you like this? Like? Yeah, I like it too, and
Speaker 1: we just went with it. So yeah, that's that's where
Speaker 1: they original theme came from. Um, but the studio band
Speaker 1: we worked with for the new theme is actually from Philly,
Speaker 1: represent East Side, and we got to give a shout
Speaker 1: out to Hayden Samic, who works behind the scenes with
Speaker 1: Phil on our show. He's the one that set up
Speaker 1: the band orchestrated the whole thing, and we had a
Speaker 1: meeting with him and we were like, yeah, just make
Speaker 1: it sound kind of like this. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: they nailed it. Oh, they totally nailed it. It was
Speaker 1: like I said, I would listen to that song anytime.
Speaker 1: And we're pumped because, I mean, the truth is that
Speaker 1: you already know this, but Joe and I are huge
Speaker 1: Op Ivy fans, And for those who were unfamiliar, Operation
Speaker 1: Ivy is a historically significant band of the punk scene.
Speaker 1: They just kind of they just kind of appeared in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, made one badass album, and then vanished.
Speaker 1: It was just like boom, here it is Mike Drop
Speaker 1: and they're out. But their their legacy, Like for a
Speaker 1: band that only had one album, their legacy has endured amazingly.
Speaker 1: Like I'm guessing some of you have heard of Rancid. Well,
Speaker 1: Tim Armstrong, the legendary frontman, was the guitarist in Operation Ivy,
Speaker 1: and Matt Freeman, Rancid's bass player and also one of
Speaker 1: the best bass players ever, was also an ap ivy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And while those two dudes went on to
Speaker 1: be like punk hall of fame people like they got
Speaker 1: a punk rock hall of Fame status op Ivyes frontman
Speaker 1: Jesse Michael's Jes went on to become a lunatic. That's
Speaker 1: that's harsh, but seriously, that's not wrong. You're not wrong.
Speaker 1: The dude went off the deep end. And even if
Speaker 1: you have no interest whatsoever in his music, do yourself
Speaker 1: a favor and look up the Jesse Michael's Thrash Metal
Speaker 1: blog on YouTube, because because I can't help myself, here's
Speaker 1: a little clip montage. What I like doing is lying
Speaker 1: in a bathtub, taking a ship and calling it self
Speaker 1: spa treatment. Now record, I'm like, piss on my severed head.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding, Okay, I like funk I I will
Speaker 1: admit even being an operation. I have a fan. I
Speaker 1: had no idea that existed until you were like, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: have you seen this? Like, no, who's seen that? I
Speaker 1: think it's just proof that like that, to me is
Speaker 1: proof of what's wrong with with the whole punk scene,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens to like a true punk when
Speaker 1: they grow up, not nothing good if you're like really
Speaker 1: like a true punk, like you shouldn't survive into your
Speaker 1: thirties because because you wind up there and that's fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's hard. Like I was never a real punk because
Speaker 1: like that didn't happen to me. And I think, like
Speaker 1: when I listened to those or I watched those, I
Speaker 1: think I think Michael's is both clinically depressed and completely
Speaker 1: straight edge. But if he wasn't, I'd suggest he could
Speaker 1: probably use a drink like, hey man, it's a whiskey
Speaker 1: and talk about it. I don't know, but on that subject,
Speaker 1: I think we need to move off of punk rock
Speaker 1: and uh and and think more about drinking. And let's
Speaker 1: let's get into that's my bar. Yeah, let's do that,
Speaker 1: and everyone will be shocked to hear um probably that
Speaker 1: we're headed back to Wisconsin. And I always knew, yeah,
Speaker 1: I always need the state punched above their weight when
Speaker 1: it came to fishing and drinking. But until we started
Speaker 1: doing this show, I had no idea the extent to
Speaker 1: which Scotty's dominate the fishing bar scene. Fishing bars are
Speaker 1: like a goddamn institution there, uh for those of you
Speaker 1: who are who are not super enthralled by like our
Speaker 1: eighties punk conversation. How about what we're gonna We'll stick
Speaker 1: to that era, but let's switch it up. We'll switch
Speaker 1: up the details. Perhaps you were more in the pac
Speaker 1: Man frogger, nutthugger shorts and sweat bands, best God Damn
Speaker 1: bartender from Tim buck To to Portland, Maine, the Portland argument.
Speaker 1: For that matter, you'll remember that the goal of our
Speaker 1: That's My Bar segment is to pay respect to those
Speaker 1: most important cultural institutions great fishing bars, respect, mad respect,
Speaker 1: and we we will we will never achieve our goal
Speaker 1: of properly documenting all the great watery watering holes worldwide
Speaker 1: without your help. You are critical in this, and you
Speaker 1: know you've got a favorite fishing bar or ten. Perhaps
Speaker 1: take some time and pay homage to those hallowed places
Speaker 1: and send us what you come up with. Please, Yes,
Speaker 1: we we we we get some good ones. This week's
Speaker 1: submission comes from Mike Whittlinger, and and he wrote something
Speaker 1: so compelling. We're not even gonna mess with it, like
Speaker 1: we're not even going to interfere. We can't know, We're
Speaker 1: just we're just gonna read Mike's owed to his favorite
Speaker 1: childhood fishing place. It's it's that good where it stands alone,
Speaker 1: and that's rare. I gotta say props to Mike and
Speaker 1: uh and we begin. Being from Wisconsin, the bar talk
Speaker 1: makes me want to both wet a line and my whistle.
Speaker 1: I'd like to recommend one of my favorite scannie bars
Speaker 1: of all times. It might just be more of a
Speaker 1: memory than a real place at this point, but I'll
Speaker 1: submit it here for your reading pleasure. I started fishing
Speaker 1: around age two. My parents would take me to Pioneer
Speaker 1: Lake in northern Wisconsin. Directly across from the boat launch
Speaker 1: area was the coolest bar I could ever imagine. After
Speaker 1: long days of fishing, evening hours were generally spend at
Speaker 1: the bar. Enter Maple View Resort a ka Oshitsky's Polish retreat.
Speaker 1: That's being mostly Polish. That's great. Well, that was sort
Speaker 1: of their name. They sold T shirts that read Oshitskys,
Speaker 1: but I think their surname was actually O Sicky. Of course,
Speaker 1: I had the Oshitsky's T shirt and as a preteen,
Speaker 1: wore it proudly every chance I got. Picture the early eighties,
Speaker 1: nut hugger shorts, sweatbands, back when Dad's had hair and
Speaker 1: lots of it. All The photos from the fish cleaning station,
Speaker 1: which is with in a stone throw of the bar,
Speaker 1: of course, seemed to contain sons, father's marl borrows, blats,
Speaker 1: and plenty of forty plus in species for the wall
Speaker 1: or table. To a six year old fishing freak kid
Speaker 1: like me, it was the ultimate bar. Every wall held fish,
Speaker 1: huge glass encase musky mounts in various wheaty or woody habitats,
Speaker 1: monster walleye, four pound perch fish as far as my
Speaker 1: eyes could see, and I swear every one of those
Speaker 1: mounts were world records. From my youthful yet extensive experience,
Speaker 1: those muskies most certainly wayed a hundred pounds each, and
Speaker 1: the wall eyes at least half that. To top it off,
Speaker 1: at the end of that beautiful fish rainbow held the
Speaker 1: world's best cherry cokes, always with extra grenadine, and two
Speaker 1: real Marischino cherries if you ask nicely. They also had
Speaker 1: pac Man Frogger, other video games of pool table or two,
Speaker 1: and hummingbird feeders. Out side the massive windows overlooking the
Speaker 1: picturesque lake side. These windows were artfully sprinkled with a
Speaker 1: handful of fake bullet hole stickers. The veracity of the
Speaker 1: holes in question and how they got there left my
Speaker 1: six year old self in a constant state of wonder.
Speaker 1: The video games didn't fascinate me nearly as much as fishing,
Speaker 1: and whenever I could pull a buddy away from plinking
Speaker 1: quarters to go fishing from the resort dock, that's what
Speaker 1: we do. The most memorable night was late dark, breezy,
Speaker 1: freezing cold, with a constant drizzle, and we were just
Speaker 1: hammering fish on the end of the dock, two kids
Speaker 1: roughly six and eight years old, supervised in quotes. He
Speaker 1: put that in quote, supervised through that legendary bar window
Speaker 1: from a dry, warm, alcohol laden short distance away. Drenched
Speaker 1: and chattering, we were lip ripping fourteen inch perch left
Speaker 1: and right from the end of that bar dock. No
Speaker 1: ship or no ship skis should I say? Writing this
Speaker 1: has reminded me that I really need to make it
Speaker 1: back there and pay my respects either to a bar
Speaker 1: well done or a memory well embellished, hopefully both. That
Speaker 1: was pure poetry. I mean, that was like poetic perfection. Mike,
Speaker 1: let us know how it goes when you finally do
Speaker 1: make that pilgrimage back and I hope it's exactly as
Speaker 1: you remembered it, and do his favor. Send photos, and
Speaker 1: all of you out there listening take a cue from
Speaker 1: Mike and send us your bar nominations. If they're half
Speaker 1: as good as that one, they will probably get our attention.
Speaker 1: I've never been to that bar, but I feel like
Speaker 1: I have. Yeah, much like Mike, I accompanied my pops
Speaker 1: to many a Wisconsin drinking establishment after days on the water,
Speaker 1: and and that story, like that email that he sent,
Speaker 1: it just got me thinking about those days, which then
Speaker 1: got me thinking about what we used to call our
Speaker 1: fishing equipment when I was a kid. Yeah, you've been
Speaker 1: thinking about this a lot. In fact, Miles is going
Speaker 1: to delve into a touchy subject among anglers in today's
Speaker 1: weekly Word. Webster's Dictionary defines fish as I once worked
Speaker 1: with a guy who proudly identified as a North Carolina redneck.
Speaker 1: We'll call him Chris. Let me be clear, Chris was
Speaker 1: neither dumb nor uneducated. He was the kind of person
Speaker 1: who could frame up a wall, repair a hull, and
Speaker 1: rebuild a Chevy short block with the same set of
Speaker 1: rudimentary tools. He never once met a vehicle he couldn't pilot,
Speaker 1: from sport fishers to yachts, to jet boats to super
Speaker 1: cubs to G four's. If it swam, crawled, flapped, or ran,
Speaker 1: he could find it, catch it, and kill it. I
Speaker 1: can't say I always liked Chris. His skills were only
Speaker 1: overshadowed by his ego, but he earned my respect. When
Speaker 1: no one else was around, we'd sometimes share beers in
Speaker 1: a quiet conversation. In those moments, his drawls seemed to dissipate,
Speaker 1: and he'd admit to a love of books and language
Speaker 1: when anyone else was an earshot. Though he mispernoun its
Speaker 1: words and mangled grammatical phrasings, his language became intentionally crude
Speaker 1: and exactingly imprecise. I actually once heard him yell at
Speaker 1: a client I never seen nobody cast a rod as
Speaker 1: bad as you, and that exchange hit on the one
Speaker 1: semantic line in the sand that he could not stand
Speaker 1: here violated. If anyone called a fishing rod a pole
Speaker 1: in his presence, he would set upon them as if
Speaker 1: they had just insulted the good name of his maternal grandmother,
Speaker 1: which is apparently a big thing in the South. More
Speaker 1: than once I overheard him exclaim, you grow beans on
Speaker 1: poles to fish with rods. Here in the US, the
Speaker 1: terms rod and pole are sometimes used interchangeably, and as
Speaker 1: far as official American Dictionary definitions are concerned, their equivalent.
Speaker 1: But few topics inspire as much polarization and fishing culture
Speaker 1: as the rod versus pole debate. What you call that
Speaker 1: long cylindrical thing used to deliver bait and wrangle fish
Speaker 1: says a lot about how you identify as an angler.
Speaker 1: Such semantic sensitivity might seem unnecessarily divisive. Who gives a
Speaker 1: ship what you call the thing you fish with? We
Speaker 1: argue enough about fishing style or species. Do we really
Speaker 1: need another point of contention? Well? No, but like it
Speaker 1: or not, Fishing is what linguists referred to as a
Speaker 1: discourse community or an insulated network of people who come
Speaker 1: together around a shared set of goals, and we judge
Speaker 1: who is in and who is out based on the
Speaker 1: language they use. When I was a kid, we had poles.
Speaker 1: My dad had poles. My uncle's always had the best polls.
Speaker 1: I was usually saving up my money for a new pole.
Speaker 1: In fact, the first nice pole ever bought myself was
Speaker 1: branded the Berkeley power pole. Back before hydraulic shallow water
Speaker 1: anchors were a thing. But when I get older and
Speaker 1: more serious about fishing, I started reading fishing books and
Speaker 1: magazines and hanging around tackle shops, and I noticed that
Speaker 1: the real sticks they didn't use poles, they used rods.
Speaker 1: As I started working my way into the fishing industry,
Speaker 1: I figured out the calling a rod a pole at
Speaker 1: the boat ramp was kind of like calling a deck
Speaker 1: aboard at the skate park. In his classic novella, Norman
Speaker 1: McLean wrote, always it was to be called a rod
Speaker 1: if someone called it a pole, my father looked at
Speaker 1: him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would
Speaker 1: look at a recruit who had just called a rifle
Speaker 1: a gun. And though McLean was describing a scene from
Speaker 1: the thirties, the same attitude holds in contemporary angling circles.
Speaker 1: A quick search through online fishing forums will produce a
Speaker 1: slew of comments like I cringe when I hear someone
Speaker 1: referred to a fly rod, spinning rod, or casting rod
Speaker 1: as a pole or fishing rod is what fishermen use.
Speaker 1: A fishing pole is what rednecks and country bumpkins use.
Speaker 1: In that last quote, you can hear that the two
Speaker 1: different terms also carry a connotation of social class and standing.
Speaker 1: The language policing comes off as obnoxious and snooty. Rods
Speaker 1: and poles are completely separate tools, and their differences have
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing to do with superiority or class warfare. The
Speaker 1: distinction between the two comes from our angling obsessed buddies
Speaker 1: across the pond. In England, if it's got guides and
Speaker 1: a reel, it's a rod, But if it's a long
Speaker 1: stick with a line attached to the end, it's a pole.
Speaker 1: Here in the States, cane poles used to be common tools,
Speaker 1: but very few people fish with them anymore. Just about
Speaker 1: everybody I know uses rods with reels. Certain folks in
Speaker 1: the UK who target especially spooky carp will tell you
Speaker 1: that casting a line, even a lightly weighted one, makes
Speaker 1: too much disturbance on the water. They proudly use poles,
Speaker 1: some of them up to thirty ft long, to delicately
Speaker 1: dap their baits in front of finicky rubber lips. So,
Speaker 1: if you want to get technical about it, that's the
Speaker 1: difference between rods and poles. I use the term rod
Speaker 1: to describe my fishing implements because it's accurate and it
Speaker 1: avoids annoying rebuttals, but I don't actually care that much.
Speaker 1: I will say that it's pretty damn funny to walk
Speaker 1: into a fly shop and ask where they keep their
Speaker 1: fly poles, so long as you're not hoping to get
Speaker 1: good customer service. And speaking of the fly folks, tankara
Speaker 1: became the hot new thing in certain fly fishing circles
Speaker 1: about a decade ago. If you're not familiar, tin car
Speaker 1: is a stripped down form of fly fishing without a reel.
Speaker 1: The fly line attaches directly to the tip of the
Speaker 1: rod I mean pole, And to be honest, tankara would
Speaker 1: actually be fun if not for the people who love it.
Speaker 1: Tin Carra seems to attract the most holier than the
Speaker 1: uputty folks I've ever met in fishing. They proselytize harder
Speaker 1: than Jehovah's witnesses and Latter day Saints combined. But here's
Speaker 1: the part that I love. Every tin car in enthusiast
Speaker 1: I've ever met proudly refers to their equipment as rods,
Speaker 1: but technically they're wrong. So all you tank car people
Speaker 1: out there, I hate to break it to you, but
Speaker 1: you fish with poles, well done, man, And this ring
Speaker 1: is so true for me. Like when I was little,
Speaker 1: my gramps always said, grab your fishing poles, that's what
Speaker 1: they were. But now if someone refers to rod as
Speaker 1: a pole, I instantly labeled them a google, like you're
Speaker 1: a googan. Just maybe a little harsh, but at least, look,
Speaker 1: you've clarified the terms, right like there is now clarification,
Speaker 1: which means everyone that calls a rod a pole is
Speaker 1: now officially wrong. Like that is wrong. It's no longer
Speaker 1: tomato tomato, You're just wrong. So there you go, the
Speaker 1: judginess of the fishing community about about the terminology right there.
Speaker 1: Use it. That's what we're here for, is to educate
Speaker 1: you guys. And now that we've gotten that out of
Speaker 1: the way, we can move on to clarifying what's how
Speaker 1: opening in fishing's current events. It's time for fish news.
Speaker 1: Fish news that escalated quickly. So that little story I
Speaker 1: did about using golden rod golflies for trout bait, remember
Speaker 1: that last week that that resonated, right, I've gotten quite
Speaker 1: a few notes about that, ranging from just like, hey,
Speaker 1: my pap Paul taught me about this years ago, to
Speaker 1: thanks for spilling the beans on my secret bait. You
Speaker 1: jack Wagon. Um, I'm not. I'm not that surprised because
Speaker 1: I figured more people were going to be in tune
Speaker 1: with that than me. I had no idea, But I
Speaker 1: think my favorite came from Tom Nezick. He sent us
Speaker 1: an email and he says it is good, right. He
Speaker 1: says it's um. His brother Steve isn't much of a
Speaker 1: rotten real angler, but he's just generally big into the nature,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and apparently foraging. And he
Speaker 1: sent along a video of his bro hunting down golden
Speaker 1: rod gall lava to eat. And I watched this, and
Speaker 1: I gotta say, he almost made it sound appetizing and delicious.
Speaker 1: There's no almost. He made it sound incredibly appetizing and delicious.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I believe him, but that's how
Speaker 1: he made it sound. He describes them as having a
Speaker 1: sugary taste similar to maple syrup mixed with banana, and
Speaker 1: they crunch as if they contain crystallized sugar. And I said, hell,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a handful of him my cream of wheat.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. They should be right next
Speaker 1: to the wet walnuts at Baskin Robbins but yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: Golden Rod Golf good stuff. Tom, thanks for sending that.
Speaker 1: Um it was both amusing and informative. So that's what
Speaker 1: I got for shoutouts this week. I just got a
Speaker 1: quick one. Uh. Andrew Peterson wrote in basically saying because
Speaker 1: last week we talked about Toby's Tavern and our That's
Speaker 1: My Bar segment and and he appreciated the shout out
Speaker 1: for Toby's Tavern, but he doesn't think we gave it
Speaker 1: enough credit as a fishing bar because it is located,
Speaker 1: he claims, within eyesight of some exceptional, exceptional pipe fishing water.
Speaker 1: So uh, apparently we we didn't. Again, I've never been
Speaker 1: to Toby's Tavern, but now I have yet another reason
Speaker 1: to go because he claims that the fishing there is
Speaker 1: incredible in addition to the drinking. So you know, yet
Speaker 1: another point in favor of Toby's Tavern as a fantastic
Speaker 1: fishing bar. Toby's Tavern, pike and beers and um Lion
Speaker 1: mounts having sex, good place. Okay, well, okay, so let's
Speaker 1: move on to the real news. Now. Remember this is
Speaker 1: a competition. As always, Miles and I do not know
Speaker 1: what stories the other guys bringing to the table, and
Speaker 1: at the end of it, our official punk rock DJ
Speaker 1: and audio engineer Phil will weigh in on who is
Speaker 1: the news winner. I do not have the floor to open.
Speaker 1: That goes to you, sir. It's true. I'm gonna sidebar
Speaker 1: for a second, and I would love to know Phil's
Speaker 1: favorite punk band. Oh, you've been called out. You just
Speaker 1: called him out as the punk DJ, So I'm just curious. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true. Don't say m x p X or we
Speaker 1: won't like you as much anymore. Sounds true, all right?
Speaker 1: Getting into the goods here. This story is is a
Speaker 1: follow up to an article that Spencer new Hearth published
Speaker 1: on the Mediator website a couple of years ago. Spencer
Speaker 1: does a fact checker series that you should check out
Speaker 1: because he runs down myths and legends and and the
Speaker 1: stories that you know, the culture of of of fishing
Speaker 1: and hunting has a bunch of of of things that
Speaker 1: we take as gospel and that we pass among each
Speaker 1: other that aren't necessarily true at all. Some of them
Speaker 1: are some are complete bullshit. And so when when Spencer
Speaker 1: was a kid, he asked his dad why they had
Speaker 1: stocked so many damn bullheads in their family farm pond,
Speaker 1: and his father's response was that they hadn't why why
Speaker 1: would they do that, and he went on to tell
Speaker 1: Spencer that ducks were to blame in doing so. Spencer's
Speaker 1: dad passed along a popular yarn that fish eggs stick
Speaker 1: to duck feet and water foul spread those eggs far
Speaker 1: and wide, and many years later, as an adult journalist,
Speaker 1: Spencer decided he was going to dig into that theory
Speaker 1: because it seemed like it might be questionable. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: for the record, I've heard that my whole life. I've
Speaker 1: heard that a million times. That's how fish places yeah
Speaker 1: duck feet on on a yeah duck feet. So he
Speaker 1: started doing some research and he quickly identified some some
Speaker 1: some issues with this idea, including the fact that most
Speaker 1: fish eggs are just barely adhesive enough to to delicately
Speaker 1: bind to aquatic vegetation, which would make it kind of
Speaker 1: hard for them to remain stuck to a duck's feet
Speaker 1: during takeoff in flight yeah, like coming out of the
Speaker 1: water at altitude yeah. And another like the chances of
Speaker 1: fish eggs surviving a high speed water landing on a
Speaker 1: duck's feet are pretty slim, right, So those are those
Speaker 1: are two strikes against this and and to quote Spencer's article,
Speaker 1: he said, this duck transfer theory seems to unravel under scrutiny. However,
Speaker 1: a couple of listeners recently sent me a link to
Speaker 1: a Smithsonian magazine article that might force Spencer to reconsider
Speaker 1: his conclusions. Turns out, though the idea of waterfowl transporting
Speaker 1: fish eggs on their feet is far fetched, ducks maybe
Speaker 1: smuggling fish eggs in a different way. The Smithsonian article
Speaker 1: described a study published in the Proceedings of the National
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences last summer titled Experimental evidence of dispersal
Speaker 1: of invasive cyprinted eggs inside migratory waterfowl. Note the word
Speaker 1: inside the Smithsonian article has a catchier title, Fish eggs
Speaker 1: can survive a journey through both ends of a duck.
Speaker 1: Ha ha, I knew poop. I knew there was some
Speaker 1: poop poop issue. The researchers in Hungary fed five hundred
Speaker 1: fertilized common and Prussian carp eggs to eight mallards and
Speaker 1: waited for the eggs to uh to re emerge in
Speaker 1: plastic trays placed below the duck's enclosure. In total, eighteen
Speaker 1: individual eggs passed through the duck's digestive tracks, and three
Speaker 1: of those eighteen went on to successfully hatch into baby
Speaker 1: carpon interesting to Prussian carpon one common carp meaning that
Speaker 1: point zero zero six percent of the carp eggs consumed
Speaker 1: by mallard ducks in this study remained viable after journeying
Speaker 1: from one end of the bird to the other. Let
Speaker 1: me wings journey a distance best. That number may seem insignificant.
Speaker 1: I mean, with that low of a survival rate, how
Speaker 1: could duck poop possibly be a factor in spreading fish populations?
Speaker 1: So we gotta put this in context, and to do
Speaker 1: that we gotta do a little math. There are about
Speaker 1: twelve million mallards in North America alone. They're also quite
Speaker 1: common in Europe and Asia, and mallards love fish eggs.
Speaker 1: According to the lead author of the study, quote, if
Speaker 1: mallards find these spawning areas, they will go there and
Speaker 1: eat the eggs until they can't move. So if you
Speaker 1: assume just ten million birds consume a thousand fish eggs
Speaker 1: every year, that would equate to sixty million fertilized fish
Speaker 1: eggs popping out in mallard poop annually. Since mallards often
Speaker 1: travel up to fifteen miles a day, the opportunity for
Speaker 1: dispersal could be significant. Now, all that said, the studies
Speaker 1: very preliminary, small sample shoes, and it actually brings up
Speaker 1: a lot of follow up questions. Right, Like, the next
Speaker 1: thing the research team plans to look at is they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna repeat the same experiment with other types
Speaker 1: of fish eggs to see if if this survival trade
Speaker 1: is unique to carp because that would really matter. Uh,
Speaker 1: And they don't talk about this in the article, But
Speaker 1: what I want to know is I want to know
Speaker 1: if fish eggs can survive a trip through other bird guts. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're twelve million millards, but they're like more than forty
Speaker 1: million ducks in North America, a lot of the meat
Speaker 1: fish eggs. Sure, so there's still a lot to learn here.
Speaker 1: But it actually seems possible that the old yarn about
Speaker 1: ducks transporting fish eggs had some truth to it. It's
Speaker 1: just that the old timers got the mechanism wrong. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, what pops into my head is Canada geese
Speaker 1: because around here, I mean, we got some ducks. There's
Speaker 1: ducks got ducks in Jersey, But I mean I see
Speaker 1: more Canada geese than than Mallard's on a lot of
Speaker 1: the lakes and streams and things around here, So I
Speaker 1: would point to them as a culprit. I have to
Speaker 1: imagine they eat certain amount of fish eggs too, and
Speaker 1: they're everywhere. I don't know. I would imagine so too,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that. That's what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: there could be a lot of potential vectors for dispersal
Speaker 1: with with waterfowl, sure, and we just don't know. So
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating one for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 1: not the least of which being there. I have long
Speaker 1: been all these questions like how did these fish get here?
Speaker 1: You know those those spots You're like, wow, sure perch
Speaker 1: get into this lake? I don't know, And we always
Speaker 1: blame bucket biology and that could be it, but it
Speaker 1: might actually be birds. Yeah. Now. Interestingly, though, at least
Speaker 1: around here, it's always seems to be tied to warm
Speaker 1: water species, like the duck connection comes up with carp
Speaker 1: or a catfish or bass, but like I've never like
Speaker 1: I've never heard of that happening with trout. You know what,
Speaker 1: I mean, so exactly that's what I'm saying. So I
Speaker 1: also think it's fascinating because it's obviously only going to
Speaker 1: be certain kinds of fish. They have to have a
Speaker 1: certain hardiness because dude, those there has to be acid
Speaker 1: in those stories. I mean, that's pretty impressive to make
Speaker 1: it through that, you know. So I'll be curious to
Speaker 1: see if if other fish can make it through there.
Speaker 1: And I think you're right, it's gonna be warm water species.
Speaker 1: If there's another one that would work with my money
Speaker 1: would be on pike because those bastards are everywhere and
Speaker 1: you can't kill them. Yes, that that is true. So
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have a great transition other than
Speaker 1: to say we've sort of busted a myth there and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll bust uh somewhere here with this little story.
Speaker 1: So as a media person, I always admire when a
Speaker 1: news story is presented in an interesting way, right, So
Speaker 1: I have to give props to the UK's Guardian for
Speaker 1: this one. And we've we've featured other stories in the
Speaker 1: past about the seafood industry pulling fast ones right, either
Speaker 1: by renaming fish to make them sound more appealing or
Speaker 1: just straight up serving you different species than what's on
Speaker 1: the menu. But this has apparently gotten so rampant, particularly
Speaker 1: in Europe, but also in the US that The Guardian
Speaker 1: ran a story called could you Spot the Fake? And
Speaker 1: turned it into a quiz And naturally I aced it,
Speaker 1: but painted naturally I aced it um if I was
Speaker 1: only that good in in algebra one, but it it
Speaker 1: painted a really great picture of some of the most
Speaker 1: common fakes, which again occur here and there. Um. And
Speaker 1: when you answered, you'd get this little pop up with
Speaker 1: with more details that I thought were pretty good. So
Speaker 1: it was actually very interesting. And the first question, um,
Speaker 1: it would just say this is often sold as red snapper?
Speaker 1: What is it really? And it's a picture of a
Speaker 1: telopia And then you have a multiple choice dropped down
Speaker 1: like what fish is this? And when you click, the
Speaker 1: tilapia tells you red snapper is an extremely popular reef
Speaker 1: fish that has been over fished to the point that
Speaker 1: stocks are now extremely low in most of its habitats.
Speaker 1: It's cheaper common substitute is tilapia. Right now, what they're
Speaker 1: doing with this quiz is posing the question of whether
Speaker 1: you would know the difference if it was served to
Speaker 1: you in a restaurant, and I feel like for that one,
Speaker 1: I would I I would know, I would know that
Speaker 1: I was at least eating a freshwater fish, not a
Speaker 1: salt water fish. Um. And there's a bunch of these that'stually,
Speaker 1: it's a really fun quiz. It's it's a very good time,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to go through all of them,
Speaker 1: but um, one of the more interesting ones to me was,
Speaker 1: you ordered delicious grouper, but what is the common substitute?
Speaker 1: There's a photo of a catfish right, and when you
Speaker 1: click on catfish, it says the Nassau grouper is critically
Speaker 1: endangered species from the Caribbean, while the dusky grouper is
Speaker 1: threatened in the Mediterranean. See In both cases, something else
Speaker 1: entirely is sold in their place. And this one hits
Speaker 1: for me because, again, like you and I can look
Speaker 1: at this with an angler's eye, this quiz is for
Speaker 1: just the consumer of seafood. But with an angler's eye,
Speaker 1: I would never order grouper anywhere, and I've known not
Speaker 1: to do that for years. I've only ever eaten grouper
Speaker 1: I caught because just in the U s alone, the
Speaker 1: seasons and the limits are so wonky that I never
Speaker 1: trust grouper on a menu like it's in It's in
Speaker 1: every restaurant in the Keys, and people just assume, oh,
Speaker 1: we're in Florida and there's grouper here. Well that's true,
Speaker 1: but there's a strong chance that you're you're eating frozen
Speaker 1: grouper from the last time the season was open, or
Speaker 1: you're eating something else entirely, and they assume the tourists
Speaker 1: don't know, which most of them probably don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that substitute happens here, but I thought that
Speaker 1: was fascinating. The Guardian was saying the most common substitute
Speaker 1: for grouper on a menu around the world as catfish.
Speaker 1: So that's two times did not know that, right, that's
Speaker 1: two times already red snapper and grouper, two fish that
Speaker 1: are known to be delicious. That they're saying the most
Speaker 1: common substitutes are freshwater farm raised fish. Man, I feel
Speaker 1: like the texture of those are so different. So do I.
Speaker 1: But again, you you you eat a lot of fish,
Speaker 1: you catch a lot of fish, you clean a lot
Speaker 1: of fish. If you're just you know, my grandma and
Speaker 1: grandpa going to uh lobster, you probably don't know and Uh.
Speaker 1: The last one that tickled me was this one. White
Speaker 1: tuna is frequently on the menu, yet it does not
Speaker 1: actually exist. What is this fish that's used as a
Speaker 1: stand in now in this this is a case right
Speaker 1: of of of Chilean sea bass style renaming because fishermen
Speaker 1: no dan Well, there's there's no such thing as a
Speaker 1: white tuna, And I've always known white tuna is actually
Speaker 1: a fish called an esclar, and their deep sea dwellers
Speaker 1: oil black and ugly as hell. They look kind of
Speaker 1: like deious. Oh yeah, they look they look like a
Speaker 1: black king mackerel kind of. But this story also says
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's usually escalar, but sometimes white tuna
Speaker 1: on a menu is butterfish. That's what I've heard it called. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the renaming i've heard for esclartfish. Well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: butterfish is also a real fish. They're they're tiny bait
Speaker 1: fish that we buy here for chum, Like you buy
Speaker 1: a flat of them. They almost look like little pompano
Speaker 1: silver pompano um. So I didn't know that was a
Speaker 1: common a common swap there. I always thought it was
Speaker 1: always esclar, but I don't really care which one of
Speaker 1: those it is, like, fake me out, don't give a
Speaker 1: ship because it is, as you mentioned, so buttery and delicious,
Speaker 1: like it is. White tuna is my absolute favorite sushi.
Speaker 1: I don't actually care if it's butter fish or what like.
Speaker 1: It is just And however, you also know that it's
Speaker 1: known as the laxative of the sea. So you can't
Speaker 1: you can't binge this a couple of Yeah, he had
Speaker 1: a couple of your sushi deluxe, but like, you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't go all in um. And I've actually been
Speaker 1: on the dock in Louisiana several times, like mean mugging
Speaker 1: taking photos with piles of yellow fin tuna we caught
Speaker 1: and another boat like with complete new but tourists like
Speaker 1: that don't know what they're doing come back in and
Speaker 1: they're all holding an escalar and I'm like, oh, like
Speaker 1: I want, I wanted that, I want the escalar. Want.
Speaker 1: So if you can find it online the Guardian quiz,
Speaker 1: could you spot the differences. It's it's fun, it'll kill
Speaker 1: a little time at work, um, but also interesting because
Speaker 1: there's just so much shadiness. Yeah, no doubt. Sticking with
Speaker 1: salty species that people love um permit are of permit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe once or twice. And we're joking because because these
Speaker 1: fish inspired this like level of obsession and reverence among
Speaker 1: certain anglers, that's I think it might be unparalleled, except
Speaker 1: for maybe with bill fish. The permit love is is
Speaker 1: is real, yep, And there is some irony and how
Speaker 1: much people love permit because technically there there are subspecies
Speaker 1: of jack's, and jack's are like the trash fish of
Speaker 1: in shore angler. I mean they're not like, they're not
Speaker 1: like saltwater hardhead catfish level or dog fish. But outside
Speaker 1: of the state of Hawaii, I don't I know very
Speaker 1: few anglers who intentionally target jack's. Yeah, and I have
Speaker 1: a comment here because the same thing with permit. If
Speaker 1: you put a permit in deep water and throw a
Speaker 1: chunk of crab at it, it'll eat as quickly as
Speaker 1: a jack Kraval, as dumb and fast as it's right.
Speaker 1: It's all. It's situational. It's situational. But despite the fact
Speaker 1: that jack's are kind of considered easy and stupid and
Speaker 1: and not that desirable, they're big eyed, rubbery lip blacktail
Speaker 1: cousins are a totally different story. People just lose their
Speaker 1: minds over permit like permit tattoos are a thing I know,
Speaker 1: otherwise seemingly normal individuals who have spent many years and
Speaker 1: sums of money that honestly far exceed my annual income
Speaker 1: just trying to catch one single permit, one, just one one,
Speaker 1: which is it's crazy and and we we might chalk
Speaker 1: this up as an example of anglers arbitrarily assigning value
Speaker 1: to one species of fish while detegrating another similar fish.
Speaker 1: But as we were alluding to earlier, there's some logic
Speaker 1: to the permit mania, at least logic by fishing standards.
Speaker 1: Unlike other kinds of Jack's permit can be maddeningly difficult
Speaker 1: to catch on artificial lures, and that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason why flanglers go nuts for these fish, because they
Speaker 1: feed in shallow water, so it's site fishing, and they're
Speaker 1: they're hypercritical of presentation. Speaking from experience, however, if you
Speaker 1: drop alive crab in front of one, it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: get munched. YEP, I don't care. You can set that
Speaker 1: flyer out away and just drop that live crab. It's
Speaker 1: gonna work. Um. But because permit inspire such devotion, they're
Speaker 1: they're very valuable to local economies in the places where
Speaker 1: they can be found in significant numbers. Dedicated permit lovers
Speaker 1: save up all their spare time and money to travel
Speaker 1: to places like Belize, Cuba, where permit populations are high
Speaker 1: and less pressured. But the original hub of permit fishing
Speaker 1: is the Florida Keys, and the Lower Keys is one
Speaker 1: of the only places they're consistently targeted in this country.
Speaker 1: For the past fifty plus years, anglers have been making
Speaker 1: annual pilgrimages to the southernmost type of the continental US
Speaker 1: trying to fool these blacktailed devils, and they bring their
Speaker 1: check books and their credit cards with them. The bite
Speaker 1: that value the Keys permit fishery has been largely taken
Speaker 1: for granted. Very little was definitively known about their spawning habits.
Speaker 1: For example, until the Bone Fish and tarp And Trust,
Speaker 1: a fisheries conservation nonprofit, began an acoustic tagging program in
Speaker 1: to figure out exactly, when, where, and how permit reproduce.
Speaker 1: Results from that study indicated that about seventy of the
Speaker 1: permit that live in the Lower Keys congregate in one
Speaker 1: small area to spawn. Now, local anglers have long known
Speaker 1: that Western Dry Docks, located about ten miles south of Qust,
Speaker 1: is a prime spot to find huge schools of permit,
Speaker 1: mutton snapper, yellowtail snapper, grouper, and other fish in the
Speaker 1: late spring and early summer. Many of those anglers were
Speaker 1: savvy enough to know that massive groups of fish congregating
Speaker 1: seasonally meant that they're spawning yep, right, and so some
Speaker 1: chose to avoid the area during that time of year,
Speaker 1: but others would chase the high concentrations of fish. The
Speaker 1: Florida angling community grew sharply divided about the ethics of
Speaker 1: intentionally targeting the spawners and and the area became a
Speaker 1: flashpoint of conflict. Regardless of personal opinion and since morality,
Speaker 1: anglers who chose to fish there during spawning season were
Speaker 1: completely within their legal rights. That changed this year when
Speaker 1: the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission established a four
Speaker 1: month fishing closure in a one mile area around Western
Speaker 1: Dry Rocks, oh In addition to the tagging study that
Speaker 1: showed the majority of the area's permit went there to reproduce,
Speaker 1: other studies showed a dramatically increased mortality for permit and
Speaker 1: mutton snapper that were hooked and released in that zone
Speaker 1: during spawning season. To see, anglers aren't the only ones
Speaker 1: who sometimes maybe take advantage of large concentrations of fish
Speaker 1: that are distracted by biological imperatives. Sharks do the same,
Speaker 1: and research showed that one third of the fish released
Speaker 1: by anglers were getting eaten by sharks. So even if
Speaker 1: anglers weren't filling boxes, even if they weren't keeping anything,
Speaker 1: if they're like, no, I release everything, I'm not hurting
Speaker 1: these fish, those numbers were still getting decimated, whether they
Speaker 1: knew them or not, because one third of the fish
Speaker 1: that they released, we're getting t bombed. And now the
Speaker 1: area is closed to all fishing April through July, and
Speaker 1: the decision, it's kind of amazing to me. It's being
Speaker 1: applauded by a whole host of different fishing and conservation
Speaker 1: groups that include the Bone Fish and tarp and Trust,
Speaker 1: Lower Keys Guides Association, i g f A, Florida Keys
Speaker 1: Fishing Guides Association, American Sport Fishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association,
Speaker 1: Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, fly Fisher's International, and Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation.
Speaker 1: Only mentioned all those names. And you know this because
Speaker 1: it is so rare to get all those different organs
Speaker 1: to agree on anything. It is. They won't even hardly
Speaker 1: agree that they all like to fish like it's it's
Speaker 1: barely a thing that they agree on what color the
Speaker 1: sky is on a given day. To get them to
Speaker 1: come together and agree on a piece of legislation and
Speaker 1: rule change, to me, that signals a ringing endorsement for this,
Speaker 1: And and with that many different people on board, it's
Speaker 1: it's got to be sound, Oh dude. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you talked to anyone who was fishing the Keys in
Speaker 1: the seventies or eighties, they'll tell you that it pales
Speaker 1: in comparison. And even though it's still a mecca, it's
Speaker 1: still amazing fishing, generally speaking, it's nothing like it used
Speaker 1: to be. So if these are the kind of drastic
Speaker 1: measures that need to be taken to preserve what's left
Speaker 1: of that old school Florida Keys fishery, to me, this
Speaker 1: move makes absolute sense. Now. I'm sure there's a handful
Speaker 1: of charter guys who are not so pleased. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: and I mean we were talking about it is drastic.
Speaker 1: It's a one mile area that's closed to fishing for
Speaker 1: four months. Is that drastic. I mean, it all depends
Speaker 1: on your perspective. No, no, no, it's not. I understand
Speaker 1: what you're saying. It's not like they closed the entire
Speaker 1: gulf out of Qua. I get it. It's like this
Speaker 1: one little area. But at the same time, if you
Speaker 1: come out and say, hey, this one mile area, how
Speaker 1: many people are like, oh, that really makes me want
Speaker 1: to fish that one mile area? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like you didn't. It's kind of like if you knew
Speaker 1: you knew, and and there's there's you know, what are
Speaker 1: you what are you gonna do about that? But also,
Speaker 1: you know, you tell me you can't fish in this
Speaker 1: one mile for four months, I'm like, what is happening
Speaker 1: in that one mile? So, I mean there could be
Speaker 1: I hope they can. They can police that, you know,
Speaker 1: or do to the least that um. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: funny people get so crazed over this fish. You've told
Speaker 1: me you've had no problem catching them on the fly.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say no problem. I've had better luck than most. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've only tried it on the fly a couple
Speaker 1: of times. But I'm not eight up with them all
Speaker 1: the permit. I caught it been on bait, and like
Speaker 1: I was saying that they're so funny because if you
Speaker 1: do it in forty ft of water on a wreck,
Speaker 1: it's like fishing jack ravals like no problem, crab touches down,
Speaker 1: it's when they get shallow. Um. But did I think
Speaker 1: that's great? Man? And even though I'm not part of
Speaker 1: that cult, I admire that obsession. I mean, we're talking
Speaker 1: about dudes who refused to use glue on their flies.
Speaker 1: Like they won't put a drop of of cement or
Speaker 1: UV cure on a fly because like, the fish are
Speaker 1: that sensible. They could smell it a mile away and
Speaker 1: they'll they'll turn right off of it. I don't have
Speaker 1: the patients. I I did it a few times and
Speaker 1: missed a few shots, and I'm like, I do only
Speaker 1: barracoutas around can we do that? You know? But did
Speaker 1: I think that's great? And I do think that's amazing
Speaker 1: that all those organizations like you say it's rare that
Speaker 1: they all come to get a degree on nothing. Um
Speaker 1: that that says something to me. Yeah, And the only
Speaker 1: transition I really have here for this one is that
Speaker 1: you know, when you do get your shot and land
Speaker 1: your permit on the fly, I will assume you'll want
Speaker 1: to take a picture of it, okay, And this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a giant free commercial for Apple, but I
Speaker 1: don't care because it's a good P S A. And
Speaker 1: and it's it's too good not to pass along in
Speaker 1: my opinion. Um And you know how like hooking yourself
Speaker 1: is kind of a rite of passage, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like I always say, like, if you've never
Speaker 1: had one in you pass the barb, you're probably not
Speaker 1: fishing enough or maybe hard enough. Um. And I also
Speaker 1: feel like losing a cell phone in the drink is
Speaker 1: a similar rite of path It's like a modern rite
Speaker 1: of passage. You know, I don't I don't believe I
Speaker 1: have any close personal angling buds that haven't sent me
Speaker 1: the I got a new phone, lost all my contacts
Speaker 1: text you know what I mean, like at least one time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I've personally donated three phones over the years. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I found this story on slash gear dot com and
Speaker 1: it's about a woman in Canada anti carrier who dropped
Speaker 1: her iPhone eleven down the hole while ice fishing on
Speaker 1: Westcasu Lake in Saskatchewan in early one Now most anglers,
Speaker 1: like me, as an example, would have said, well there
Speaker 1: goes that, and off to the Verizon store I would go.
Speaker 1: But not Angie. Okay, she was on a mission to
Speaker 1: recover this phone, and she made three separate trips back
Speaker 1: to the lake over the course of a month, loaded
Speaker 1: down with augers and aqua view cameras and the works,
Speaker 1: to get this phone back. Right well, about thirty days
Speaker 1: after she dropped it, they finally located. Was like that.
Speaker 1: It had to be like the Titanic, like the aqua
Speaker 1: view swept over and you're like, there it is. They
Speaker 1: found it and then spent two hours using a magnet
Speaker 1: on a string to get the iPhone back and guess what,
Speaker 1: it works perfectly, according to Angie after a month under
Speaker 1: the ice underwater. Okay, now there's a p s A here,
Speaker 1: so just bear with me. The iPhone eleven is, in
Speaker 1: fact advertised by Apple is being waterproof, but only to
Speaker 1: two meters and only for thirty minutes. Like that's like
Speaker 1: the max two ms. But this this is the useful part.
Speaker 1: They actually interviewed a tech expert in the piece and
Speaker 1: and the phone was down a little deeper than two meters,
Speaker 1: but he said what likely saved it was the stillness
Speaker 1: of the environment, so it hit the bottom and laid
Speaker 1: there undisturbed. So I have to I have to ask one,
Speaker 1: was there a case on this phone? No, no case,
Speaker 1: no case, just no case, just a protective cover, no case.
Speaker 1: And this this tech expert said, if it was summertime
Speaker 1: and you had boat traffic or current or anything like that,
Speaker 1: strong chance the gaskets would have failed. So the point
Speaker 1: here that he makes is if you drop your phone
Speaker 1: in the drink, whether it's an iPhone eleven or otherwise,
Speaker 1: if if you can and try to retrieve it quickly
Speaker 1: and as gently as possible, like if you're knocking it
Speaker 1: and flipping it along the bottom with a landing net
Speaker 1: trying to get it, stronger chance it will be toast.
Speaker 1: And even if you drop one in like super shallow
Speaker 1: water on the edge, he says, you know, pick it
Speaker 1: up really slowly, really gently, don't like violently snatch it
Speaker 1: and grab it and like move it around underwater, because
Speaker 1: the less it's disturbed once it hits the drink, the
Speaker 1: better shot of saving your phone. So you're saying, fight
Speaker 1: your natural inclination, which is to do for you rip
Speaker 1: it out of the water. You have a better shot
Speaker 1: of saving your ship if you just gently pick it
Speaker 1: up and slowly pull it out of the water. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So I mean I I found that used for However,
Speaker 1: I like, while I feel better about inevitable sogginess now
Speaker 1: that I personally have an iPhone eleven, I still question
Speaker 1: just how you know quote perfect Angie's phone really is
Speaker 1: because I dunked my last iPhone, which was an eight
Speaker 1: I believe, and that was also supposed to have some
Speaker 1: level of resistance. And while everything appeared fine and I
Speaker 1: lost no data and and everything worked, the camera lens,
Speaker 1: microphone and speaker were shot like once you get water
Speaker 1: behind that camera lens, there's no going back, and like
Speaker 1: it was, it was completely garbled. Um. So you know, look,
Speaker 1: some people are very anti Apple. In fact that I
Speaker 1: recently got in a heated debate over this um with
Speaker 1: our friend Ross Robertson and which he called me an
Speaker 1: ostrich with with my head in the sand, because I
Speaker 1: shan't be swayed off of Apple products. But this story
Speaker 1: is a big checkbox for Apple for anglers as as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, and uh, also for any of
Speaker 1: you saying as you brought up. We'll just get a
Speaker 1: just get a case, get a life proof case, right,
Speaker 1: remember life proof? Oh of course I had. Here's another
Speaker 1: p s A right, like, they'll keep your phone dry,
Speaker 1: but nobody will be able to hear you. Okay. So
Speaker 1: that's exactly what my issue was. I had to take
Speaker 1: it out of the case to have a conversation, and
Speaker 1: it's not easy to get him in and out of
Speaker 1: the case. Okay. And I don't know if you had
Speaker 1: the same experience, but when they first came out, this
Speaker 1: is going back a long time now, when they first
Speaker 1: hit the market, they were the bomb. Like my first
Speaker 1: one lasted the entire life in my phone, no problem.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what happened. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they changed where they manufactured or cut corners or what.
Speaker 1: But like the next four that I had, and I
Speaker 1: even would send some back for a free replacement, like
Speaker 1: this one screwed up. I need another one, dude. I
Speaker 1: got so tired of people that people telling me they
Speaker 1: couldn't hear me, which irks me. Anytime I want to
Speaker 1: call there like what I can't hear you? I just
Speaker 1: hang up and I'm like, I'll call you back later.
Speaker 1: That drives me insane. I literally ripped the last two
Speaker 1: life proof cases off my phone and like threw them
Speaker 1: in the closest trash receptacle. Couldn't take it anymore. No,
Speaker 1: it protects your phone, but it ceases to function as
Speaker 1: a phone. So yeah, yeah, then you can't actually talk
Speaker 1: to anybody, so little techy, little little p s a there. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. Hopefully we'll we'll see what Phil thinks on
Speaker 1: this one. I also want to hear about the punk band.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as we're done hearing from philm
Speaker 1: we actually have a fishing report pre spawn report pre
Speaker 1: spawn from our bess pro buddy on the tour Rant Stimpkins,
Speaker 1: who um, probably can't afford an iPhone eleven, but we'll
Speaker 1: see what he's got shaken out there. Joe SURMELI you
Speaker 1: kind of Trojan Horse day tackle hack into that last
Speaker 1: news segment and for that, hey, you're our winner, my
Speaker 1: favorite punk band. I have two answers for this one.
Speaker 1: The one I think you're looking for. I'll call it
Speaker 1: my cb g B answer is television love television. Now.
Speaker 1: I am of the age, and this is what I
Speaker 1: will call my warped Tour answer. My embarrassing answer. While
Speaker 1: you were smoking cigarettes listening to Circle Jerks behind the
Speaker 1: bait shop and I was behind the video games store
Speaker 1: treating Yugo cards. Answer. We're talking bands like Yellow Card,
Speaker 1: Jimmy World Motion City Soundtrack, pop punk Joe. That's what
Speaker 1: I liked. I can feel you shivering from two time
Speaker 1: zones away. I know you thought m x p X
Speaker 1: was gonna be my lame answer. Jokes on you. Listen.
Speaker 1: These bands were unfairly maligned at the time as just
Speaker 1: bait for fox emo preteens, but they're pop songwriting sensibilities
Speaker 1: and neck for melodies elevated them above a lot of
Speaker 1: the bands of that early two thousands generation. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: everyone thought I was so cool after that Pokemon segment
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. Hey, y'all, your favorite professional
Speaker 1: bass fisherman, Ranch Stampkins here with a little update from
Speaker 1: the tour. I'm sure you already heard how close I
Speaker 1: came to placing in the Bass Open event at Lewis
Speaker 1: Smith Like yesterday. If it weren't for a run of
Speaker 1: bad luck, I'd have been in the money for sure.
Speaker 1: But that's all right. I'm fixing to give him a
Speaker 1: hell on Douglas and Tennessee. This is gonna be my tour.
Speaker 1: I can feel it well. Right now, I'm stuck idling
Speaker 1: in the parking lot of a Flying j just outside
Speaker 1: of Old east of Boga. What don't you know it,
Speaker 1: I wiped my ass with the only buff I had.
Speaker 1: What had happened was I bought some bull peanuts off
Speaker 1: a feller, selling them out of the back of a Chevy.
Speaker 1: They caught up to me on Highway sixty five yesterday.
Speaker 1: I plumb forgot about this no mass, no entry bullshit
Speaker 1: at all these truck stops. About twenty minutes ago, I
Speaker 1: gave my last five dollars or some guy named Harlow
Speaker 1: and asked him if he'd please run in and buy
Speaker 1: me one of them hot dogs. I reckon he should
Speaker 1: be back any minute now. Anyway, you ain't here for
Speaker 1: my culinary advice. Y'all want some juicy pre spawn advice,
Speaker 1: So listen up. I noticed over on Lewis they wasn't
Speaker 1: responding to nothing I was throwing. I was in all
Speaker 1: the right places, but even the customs square bills with
Speaker 1: the blood crackle paint. I traded my backup trolomotor battery
Speaker 1: for what in doing Ship. I knew right then there
Speaker 1: I was gonna have to pull out the big guns.
Speaker 1: I tied on my last four inch Yamamoto creature and
Speaker 1: light blurpleo and slung it to the stumps fish ate
Speaker 1: it before it ever touched down. I threw that little
Speaker 1: one three in the well and started feeling like I
Speaker 1: was finding my rhythm. But I got a little too
Speaker 1: excited after feeling that good old wiggle hung that bait
Speaker 1: up on the very next cast. Of course, I went
Speaker 1: in after it, but my trollomotor hit a stop, bucked,
Speaker 1: and knocked the damn whole rod out of my hands.
Speaker 1: Luckily one of the older guys gave me a spare
Speaker 1: outfit after wag in. It's missing a few guys and
Speaker 1: the real sounds like rocks in a coffee can. But
Speaker 1: it ain't nothing. A little w D forty and some
Speaker 1: zip tize can't fix Ship. I fished worse. I figured
Speaker 1: the guy did it because when I'm on stage at
Speaker 1: the Classics someday, he wants to tell his kids he
Speaker 1: helped me get there. Hold on a second harl ship
Speaker 1: An anyway, I gotta scrape up enough cash to buy
Speaker 1: at least three of bags of Yamamoto's and some of
Speaker 1: that Ozark trail braade before I get to Douglas. So,
Speaker 1: if any of y'all in the northern Alabama Tennessee Ish
Speaker 1: area are looking for a pro to speak at y'all's
Speaker 1: fishing club, shoot me at d M. Also, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in buying a CB radio, got a fence that
Speaker 1: needs a little mended, or needs someone to mind your
Speaker 1: kids while they're on zoom school all day, called Darrell
Speaker 1: over at the Dollar General and leave a message for me.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I'll holler at y'all again right after I cash
Speaker 1: that fat and Douglas check. See you later. I love Rance, dude,
Speaker 1: I really, and I wish him all the best. He's
Speaker 1: got the heart kids got moxie if you think about it,
Speaker 1: I mean, Rance is kind of like the punk band
Speaker 1: that's still hustling in the garage, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: booking gigs at the local VFW. Like four people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: four people exactly, and if nothing else, maybe, like maybe
Speaker 1: they'll just inspire, just like one other kid to follow
Speaker 1: his dreams of bass fishing greatness. That's all it takes. No,
Speaker 1: you're maybe maybe I wouldn't Like I don't look at
Speaker 1: Lance's life and be like, damn, that seems glamorous to me. Like,
Speaker 1: even if he made it big, I don't think he
Speaker 1: would change much, you know, like like maybe he'd he'd
Speaker 1: order the deluxe gas station brewed right or no, no,
Speaker 1: do you know what did he do? He'd pony up
Speaker 1: for the big bag of jerky instead of the knockoffs.
Speaker 1: I'm being like, dude, what do I know? Like that?
Speaker 1: That probably is some kids dream you never the truth
Speaker 1: is like you don't know which people or bands or
Speaker 1: anglers or whatever will turn out to be massively inspirational
Speaker 1: and and influential until way later, far into the future.
Speaker 1: And that's actually the case with the with the lure
Speaker 1: the Joe's covering this weekend end. The line it rose
Speaker 1: to glory made history without knowing it was making it,
Speaker 1: and paved the way for countless other great lures. But
Speaker 1: just like you can still download up ivy music on
Speaker 1: iTunes today, this lure continues to have dedicated fans. Well
Speaker 1: that's not allowed enough, Burt. You can't escape swim bait
Speaker 1: culture these days. It makes very little difference what you target,
Speaker 1: because there's a swim bait. For that, swim baits are
Speaker 1: loosely defined class of fishing lures that imitate fish, which
Speaker 1: doesn't really say much because lots of lures that aren't
Speaker 1: considered swim baits imitate fish. But what we can all
Speaker 1: agree on is that swim baits like tacos are available
Speaker 1: in harder, soft varieties, and it's the soft ones that
Speaker 1: have really become ubiquitous across all fisheries. Chasing smallmouth tie
Speaker 1: on a little three and a half inch k tex
Speaker 1: swing impact Muskies go for the eight and a quarter
Speaker 1: inch defiant trout cropp eas You say the two and
Speaker 1: a half inch z man slim swims have you covered?
Speaker 1: Regardless of size, what all these soft plastics have in
Speaker 1: common is a paddle tail or a modified paddle tail
Speaker 1: that thumps away when you reel, creating both action and vibration.
Speaker 1: This style of bait is so commonplace now that it's
Speaker 1: not even really a thing worth talking about anymore. It's
Speaker 1: it's been around so long that it's hardly considered innovative.
Speaker 1: But how did we get to a place where there
Speaker 1: are twenty five or more varieties of soft plastic swim
Speaker 1: bait at any given tackle shop. Most people credit the
Speaker 1: California big bass scene that bloomed in the nineties with
Speaker 1: kicking off the swim bait craze, and that's not totally inaccurate.
Speaker 1: The lower building pioneers are that era may have created
Speaker 1: the demand for big swim baits designed to catch big
Speaker 1: gas fish, many of which were super expensive in the
Speaker 1: early days, But to say those lures lead to smaller, cheaper,
Speaker 1: widely available swim baits isn't totally true. Ask any of
Speaker 1: those early swim bait makers what inspired them, and many
Speaker 1: will point to Mr Twister's sassy shad. With so many
Speaker 1: soft plastic bait companies around today, I think it's fair
Speaker 1: to say that Mr Twister has kind of been sidelined. Yes,
Speaker 1: we all know this company made the curly tail grub
Speaker 1: is staple and fishing, and there's a strong chance you
Speaker 1: still buy Mr Twister grubs today. I mean, I certainly do,
Speaker 1: but we're not exactly hearing the prose praise their latest
Speaker 1: innovations on the tournament trail. But what people might not
Speaker 1: realize is that in the nineteen eighties, Mr Twister was
Speaker 1: a tighten not just because of the curly tail, but
Speaker 1: because when they dropped the Sassy Shad, it was revolutionary.
Speaker 1: The Sassy Shad was really the first mass produced, widely
Speaker 1: available paddle tail swim bait to hit the market, and furthermore,
Speaker 1: Mr Twister produced them in a wide range of colors
Speaker 1: and sizes that appealed to everything from cropp ease two
Speaker 1: large mouths to stripers. All you had to do was
Speaker 1: stick one on a jighead, cast and reel. They were
Speaker 1: also no more expensive than any other soft plastics at
Speaker 1: the time. Personally, I have a very distinct recollection of
Speaker 1: buying a few packs of small Sassy Shads as a
Speaker 1: young lad, but not really catching a whole lot on them.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's because I didn't give them a fair shape,
Speaker 1: but it certainly didn't feel like I was fishing something
Speaker 1: revolutionary at the time. Strong chance that's because while these
Speaker 1: lures were certainly pioneers, they also had shortcomings. The plastic Mr.
Speaker 1: Twister used was stiffer than modern plastics, injection molding techniques
Speaker 1: at that time didn't really allow for realistic colors and patterns.
Speaker 1: You mostly had solid or two tone options, perhaps with
Speaker 1: some glitter mixed in. Lore historians also point to a
Speaker 1: design flaw yes. The Sassy Shad had a paddle tail,
Speaker 1: but compared to modern paddles that tend to be large
Speaker 1: and really really ramp up vibration, the Sassy's tails were
Speaker 1: pretty small, making its kick pale in comparison to present
Speaker 1: day offerings. By the early nineties, there were no shortage
Speaker 1: of Sassy Shad copycats on the market, many with more
Speaker 1: effective tails. Still, even then, most were fairly rigid, limited
Speaker 1: in color, and required an external jighead. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: storm In reduced the Wild Eyes Shad in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, complete with an internal jake head and snazzy
Speaker 1: holographic finishes, that the paddle tail craze really kicked in
Speaker 1: the high gear. Mr Twister still produces the Sassy Shed,
Speaker 1: which tells me they still must have devoted fans in
Speaker 1: the freshwater scene. I just don't happen to know any
Speaker 1: And while a Sassy Shad or a Sassy Shad knockoff
Speaker 1: may not be the first swim baite anyone's tying on
Speaker 1: for snooker stripers, these days, they have carved a niche
Speaker 1: in the saltwater scene, particularly in the Northeast, for the
Speaker 1: countless dudes trolling umbrella rigs that might feature a dozen
Speaker 1: or more sassy shads, that harder plastics stands up to
Speaker 1: all that drag and water resistance far better than new
Speaker 1: school plastic. And if a blue fish clamps down on
Speaker 1: one of your shads, it might not get cut in half.
Speaker 1: And if you need to replace shads within your umbrella rig,
Speaker 1: you can do so very cost effectively. I can't honestly
Speaker 1: remember the last time I saw a bag of large
Speaker 1: sassy shads for sale in a Northeast tackle shop. In fact,
Speaker 1: maybe I never did, because just like when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, these baits are usually sold individually, often displayed
Speaker 1: on the bottom shelf, and repurpose tubs that once held
Speaker 1: bulk cream, cheese or perhaps macaroni salad. The only real
Speaker 1: difference is that instead of being fifty cents a piece
Speaker 1: like they wear at Bayside Bait and Tackle, Sir, I reckon,
Speaker 1: they're pushing about three bucks a pop these days. That's
Speaker 1: all the time we have for this week. Remember, if
Speaker 1: you're headed to the thrift store, keep an eye out
Speaker 1: for an Ocean Sky's T shirt. Grab all the op
Speaker 1: IV seven inches you can find, but don't ask Jesse
Speaker 1: Michaels to sign any of them. Purchase that hazy zip
Speaker 1: block bag full of old school sheds if you're feeling sassy,
Speaker 1: and if you're looking for a lightly used CB radio,
Speaker 1: we got a guy. We do. We got that guy.
Speaker 1: And if you've got any questions, comments, concerns, bar nominations,
Speaker 1: sabin items are awkward photos to share. We're always on
Speaker 1: CBE channel nineteen and my handle is jaz Bone Coyote
Speaker 1: or just email all that stuff to Bend at the
Speaker 1: meat eater dot com. We'll see it there as well too,
Speaker 1: jas Bone Kylote. I don't I don't have a follow
Speaker 1: up to that. I don't want to get along, but
Speaker 1: I actually got that off of a CBE handle generator online.
Speaker 1: That is like my personal Yeah, that's what I'm sticking
Speaker 1: with it. Uh, don't forget those degenerative Angler and Bent
Speaker 1: podcast hashtags on the Graham. We are watching you at
Speaker 1: all times. Hopefully those of you who liked rocking out
Speaker 1: in the car to our old music are are digging
Speaker 1: the new jam, or at least we hope you'll get
Speaker 1: used to it. Yes, but remember eyes on the road.
Speaker 1: Don't give yourself whiplash and Phil crank It Up Stop
Speaker 1: at