Speaker 1: We have a natural flood pulse of the lower miss
Speaker 1: whereat you don't have it in the Upper miss you
Speaker 1: don't have it in the Ohio, you don't have it
Speaker 1: in the Arkansas. It's all damned all the way up.
Speaker 1: So that's the unique nature of it. And the fact
Speaker 1: that it joins the Missouri and goes another twelve hundred
Speaker 1: miles makes it the longest free flowing stretch of river.
Speaker 2: We've traveled in good ways down the Mississippi River in
Speaker 2: the last three episodes to understand its power and size,
Speaker 2: its ancient connection to man, the settlement of the Delta
Speaker 2: in some of the world's richest soil, the great engineering
Speaker 2: feat of taming the river, and the Great Flood of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty seven. We've covered a lot of ground, all
Speaker 2: of this for the purpose of trying to understand how
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River has impacted America. On this episode, though,
Speaker 2: we're getting into the nitty gritty of river life and
Speaker 2: the fisheries hell and status, and I think you might
Speaker 2: be surprised by what you learned. I was doctor Jack Kilgore,
Speaker 2: who's a fisheries biologist for the Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg,
Speaker 2: Mississippi will tell us about the great beasts of this river,
Speaker 2: the giant catfish, paddlefish, guars, and turtles. We'll also hear
Speaker 2: about finding giant groundsloth claws, bison skulls, and dead bodies.
Speaker 2: Will get to meet a man who spent the last
Speaker 2: fifty years commercial fishing on the river and hear his
Speaker 2: wildest stories. I really doubt you're gonna want to miss
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 1: I hear that a lot too. You know, look how
Speaker 1: muddy it is, and it's got to be polluted. I've
Speaker 1: heard it's not. I tell people it's not. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know, I would catch a fish out of the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Way before and eat it. Before I would eat
Speaker 1: a fish out of my lake there in the subdivision.
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.
Speaker 2: Presented by f h F Gear, American made purpose built
Speaker 2: hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged
Speaker 2: as the place.
Speaker 4: As we explore, how are you doing good? How about you,
Speaker 4: Klay Nukelem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bill, good to meet you.
Speaker 2: This is my colleague and partner, Brent Reeves.
Speaker 3: Brent, yes, sir, A yeah, pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah you've been on the river this morning?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I went and got those hoping now.
Speaker 2: So Brent and I just crossed the big River from
Speaker 2: Arkansas onto the Mississippi side in a truck on a bridge,
Speaker 2: and that's some uptown living. We didn't have to ferry
Speaker 2: across it or build a raft. If you remember, Old
Speaker 2: James Buchanan Eads was the first guy to build a
Speaker 2: bridge on the bigger sections of the Mississippi in eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy four. It's in Saint Louis. Where we get out
Speaker 2: of the truck. The air is thick and muggy. It's
Speaker 2: incredibly flat compared to where I came from. And if
Speaker 2: you're not looking at a crop field, the vegetation is
Speaker 2: as thick as a cane break. Welcome to the Mississippi Delta.
Speaker 2: Bill Lancaster is a commercial fisherman and he's just come
Speaker 2: off the water. He's wearing a ball cap, T shirt, shorts,
Speaker 2: and white rubber boots. He kind of reminds me of
Speaker 2: the country singer Tracy Lawrence, but a lot grittier. So
Speaker 2: how long you been fishing on the Mississippi River?
Speaker 3: Probably I probably started actually fishing in nineteen sixty nine. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's the year I bought my first hook and
Speaker 3: net graduated from high school. My dad belonged to a
Speaker 3: hunting club on the Mississippi. A good friend of mine
Speaker 3: that was in the same grade that I was. We
Speaker 3: moved over there that summer and commercial fished on the
Speaker 3: river in the fall of sixty nine and then then
Speaker 3: went off to the to the army. So you got
Speaker 3: that winter. Yeah, So we we fished all summer over
Speaker 3: there and sold fish, you know to a local guy
Speaker 3: that was on the river at that time from Arkansas.
Speaker 2: And you you were just like, hey, I can make
Speaker 2: a I can make a living.
Speaker 3: Well with this.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: We were, you know, eighteen seventeen, eighteen years old at
Speaker 3: that time, you know, and we were up for pretty
Speaker 3: much anything. But we you know, both grew up hunting
Speaker 3: and fishing, you know, and we enjoyed, you know, being
Speaker 3: on the river, and we thought, you know, that'd be
Speaker 3: a great thing to do. It'd be fished this summer,
Speaker 3: you know, and try to make a little money, just
Speaker 3: something to do before we went off to the the service.
Speaker 2: That was over fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sixty nine.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so every year since then you fished, fished.
Speaker 3: Off and on for a number of years, and then
Speaker 3: started fishing full time, probably around nineteen eighty five eight
Speaker 3: a year round, yeah, year round, Yeah, twelve months out
Speaker 3: of the year. You know, it doesn't matter how cold
Speaker 3: it is, how hot it is. You know, we fished. Yeah, wow, Yeah.
Speaker 2: You spent a lot of time on the river.
Speaker 3: Oh I wish you know, I wish I knew exactly
Speaker 3: how much time I had spent out there. Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Mister Bell is seventy one years old and has spent
Speaker 2: over fifty years on the water. With all this talk
Speaker 2: from Mark Twain about the treacherous river and its incredible power,
Speaker 2: one of my first questions which struck at the heart
Speaker 2: of my curiosity and had nothing to do with fish,
Speaker 2: but had to do with close calls. I asked him
Speaker 2: if he'd had any and you better believe that he had.
Speaker 2: Eventually we're going to talk to him about fishing, but
Speaker 2: not yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've had a couple of experiences out there, I
Speaker 3: was running a small sixteen foot boat with a fifty
Speaker 3: horse motor on it, and earlier that week I had
Speaker 3: broken the trim tab off of it. And when you
Speaker 3: do that, the motor will torque hard to the right.
Speaker 3: That trim tab is what keeps that motor running in
Speaker 3: a straight line, even if you let off the tailor handle.
Speaker 3: So I broke that trim tab off and I was
Speaker 3: running hoop nets, and I had gotten through running the
Speaker 3: hoop nets. I was headed back up river with about
Speaker 3: a half a load of fish, and there was water
Speaker 3: in the boat, and I was going to reach back
Speaker 3: and pull the plug out and let it drain the
Speaker 3: water while I was running back to the boat ramp. Well,
Speaker 3: I pulled the plug out, had one hand on the
Speaker 3: tailor handle, and I was running about half throttle, not
Speaker 3: wide open. And somehow, when I pulled that plug out
Speaker 3: and started to turn around, my hand slipped off that
Speaker 3: tillor handle, and when it did, it made a hard
Speaker 3: ninety to the right, and it sent me out of
Speaker 3: that boat just in an instant. I mean I didn't
Speaker 3: even realize what had happened. The first thing I knew
Speaker 3: I was under the water. And when I came to
Speaker 3: the surface, I could see the boat going off away
Speaker 3: from it, still in gear. It had idle itself down
Speaker 3: to idle speed and it was going off, you know.
Speaker 3: But when it did that hard right turn, it threw
Speaker 3: all the fish over to the left side of the boat.
Speaker 3: You know, everything in the boat went over to the
Speaker 3: left side when it made that hard right turn. And
Speaker 3: when it did that, it sent the boat into a turn,
Speaker 3: and it was running at half speed with the plug out,
Speaker 3: coming around and making a circle. Well, I was in
Speaker 3: the river, had my rain gear on, had boots on,
Speaker 3: had blue jeans under the rain gear, you know, and
Speaker 3: it was heavy.
Speaker 1: I kicked the.
Speaker 3: Boots off, you know, to light myself up, you know,
Speaker 3: and I was just dog paddling, try to stay afloat.
Speaker 3: And the boat I could see it, you know, coming around.
Speaker 3: It was gonna make a and it you know, it
Speaker 3: looked like it might come back by me, you know.
Speaker 3: So it started that turn. I said, well, if I
Speaker 3: can catch it when it comes around, I can make it.
Speaker 3: So we're floating down the current in the current, you know,
Speaker 3: floating down river, and it's coming around just at I speak,
Speaker 3: coming around. Well, when it did, it was just out
Speaker 3: of reach. I was trying to get to it, but
Speaker 3: it was just out of reach, and my hands just
Speaker 3: barely missed the guntle on that boat. I was going
Speaker 3: to just grab hold of the side of the boat,
Speaker 3: you know, and hold on. Well I missed it, you know.
Speaker 3: It wasn't quite close enough. So as it went around again,
Speaker 3: it made a wider circle. It was widen itself out.
Speaker 3: It was coming at a wider make it a wider
Speaker 3: turn every time it went around. Second time it went
Speaker 3: around it, I was lined up with it pretty good.
Speaker 3: And when it passed me, I just locked my arms
Speaker 3: over the guntle of the boat and just held on
Speaker 3: until I got my strength up and got my wits
Speaker 3: about me. You know, I just hung on and let
Speaker 3: it be. It was dragging me through the water, and
Speaker 3: I just rolled myself over the in the boat with
Speaker 3: just brute strength. Just rolled myself over in the boat
Speaker 3: and laid in the bottom boat for a second. You know.
Speaker 3: Then I reached back there and I got the plug
Speaker 3: back in and I got control of it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: But if that boat hadn't come around and picked me up, Wow,
Speaker 3: I probably would have been gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really, you think you would have well, I would
Speaker 2: have you right in the middle of the river.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well I wasn't in the middle, but I was
Speaker 3: out out.
Speaker 2: In You don't think you could have made it to
Speaker 2: the bank.
Speaker 3: I don't think I could. It was cold, so the
Speaker 3: water wasn't that cold in October, you know. But it
Speaker 3: was just the current and the weight, the sheer weight
Speaker 3: of those that wet clothing and that rain gear, and
Speaker 3: I had no life jacket on, nothing. It just sapped
Speaker 3: my strength almost immediately. It was all I could do
Speaker 3: to hold myself up. Yeah, just keep my head above water,
Speaker 3: you know. That was that was one of the closer calls.
Speaker 2: You just got back in the boat, got back in
Speaker 2: the boat and probably say thank you lord.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well my composure and it went onto the boat
Speaker 3: ramp and carried on, carried on that day. Yeah, sold
Speaker 3: a fish, you know, did it all? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What does your wife say when you told her that story?
Speaker 3: Well, she was everybody else I've told it to you.
Speaker 3: You know, they just say, you know, you you just
Speaker 3: it wasn't your time, you know, just lucky, you know.
Speaker 2: You know Davy Crockett had a boat wreck on the
Speaker 2: Mississippi River and he said, if you're born to be hung.
Speaker 2: You'll never drowned. It wasn't his time to drown, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: How old were you when that happened?
Speaker 3: That was probably in two thousand and probably eight.
Speaker 2: Okay, now you're seventy one.
Speaker 3: Now I was in probably what sixties about or sixties?
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible. Boat wrecks on the Mississippi are common.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, the worst maritime disaster in
Speaker 2: US history happened on the Mississippi River on April twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty five, near Memphis, Tennessee. Two hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: foot long steamboat called called the Sultana was carrying Union prisoners,
Speaker 2: just two weeks after the Civil War ended, who had
Speaker 2: been released from a Confederate prison camp at Vicksburg. They
Speaker 2: were headed to Saint Louis to go home to their families.
Speaker 2: The boat had a carrying capacity of three hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy six passengers, but they'd packed on two thousand, one
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty seven people aboard. At two am on
Speaker 2: that April morning, a boiler explosion sunk the ship in
Speaker 2: a fiery ball of chaos. Eleven hundred and sixty nine
Speaker 2: people died, most Union soldiers. Despite the size of the disaster,
Speaker 2: the shipwreck didn't get much press because Lincoln had just
Speaker 2: been assassinated, the war had been raging for years and
Speaker 2: had just ended, and the country was tired of bad news,
Speaker 2: and there was a possible government cover up because of
Speaker 2: the overcrowded ship on a US sanctioned transport. Today, there
Speaker 2: is a Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Arkansas. The boat
Speaker 2: was missing for over one hundred years. It's sank in
Speaker 2: the river, but in nineteen eighty two, over two miles
Speaker 2: off the current river, the Sultana was located in an
Speaker 2: Arkansas soybean field. The river bed had shifted that far
Speaker 2: and the boat is still there. Soon, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about some fun stuff like the charismatic fish of
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River with doctor Jack Kilgore, with who else,
Speaker 2: and I think you'll be surprised to hear how well
Speaker 2: they're doing. But I had to ask mister Bill another question,
Speaker 2: kind of a dark question. And if you're listening with kids,
Speaker 2: we're about to talk about d EA d people stand by.
Speaker 2: Don't judge me. I'm just asking the questions that everybody's thinking.
Speaker 3: But it's an interesting lifestyle. You know, you see a
Speaker 3: lot of different things.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You ever found a dead body on the river?
Speaker 3: Yep, found a couple of those over that year. Really, yeah,
Speaker 3: found two. Actually, what was the story. Yeah, I found
Speaker 3: one just several years ago. She was right down here
Speaker 3: south of town. Yeah, And I was going upstream. You know,
Speaker 3: I've done running running gear. You know, it was in March,
Speaker 3: it's cold. I was running upstream and I was just looking,
Speaker 3: you know, out across the river, you know, just paying
Speaker 3: attention to where I was going, and I saw something,
Speaker 3: you know, floating downstream. You know, it looked a little
Speaker 3: bit different, you know. Then I said, well, that's probably
Speaker 3: a deer. You know, you see bucks, you know, somebody
Speaker 3: had shot upstream or whatever coming down. I passed by
Speaker 3: and I picked up big deer before, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: a big deer, and you know, I said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go back and I'm going to look at see
Speaker 3: exactly what that was. And then when I turned around
Speaker 3: and I got a little bit closer to it, I
Speaker 3: could tell I said, oh my lord, here we go.
Speaker 2: Mister Bill reported these incidents to the authorities and worked
Speaker 2: with law enforcement to help them recover the bodies, but
Speaker 2: it's clear the Mississippi is no stranger to the dead.
Speaker 2: In the first episode, we learned that Hernando de Soto,
Speaker 2: credited as the first European to see the river in
Speaker 2: fifteen forty one, had a water burial not far from
Speaker 2: where the Sultana sank. My intent is not to be morbid,
Speaker 2: but rather to present a slick scientific segue into the
Speaker 2: next section of the podcast. But I'd say there's a
Speaker 2: high probability that de Soto's body was eaten by an
Speaker 2: alligator snapping turtle. If you know wild places, you know
Speaker 2: that organic matter in water does not go to waste.
Speaker 2: I now want to talk with doctor Kilgore about the
Speaker 2: health of the Mississippi River. This first segment is a
Speaker 2: bit of a review, but it will quickly get into
Speaker 2: the new stuff.
Speaker 1: All the other great rivers of the word, the Congo,
Speaker 1: the Nile, the Antsee, all of those they have near
Speaker 1: the mouth of the river, whereas the Mississippi, the first
Speaker 1: dam you encounter is up in Saint Louis, which is
Speaker 1: twelve hundred miles up. However, a fish can take a
Speaker 1: left on the Missouri and go another twelve hundred miles
Speaker 1: to the Gavin's point dam on the Missouri. So I
Speaker 1: tell people this that if you put all of that together,
Speaker 1: there's almost twenty four hundred miles of free flowing Mississippi
Speaker 1: Missouri River. There's nothing else like that in the world
Speaker 1: except for the Amazon. All the other great rivers have
Speaker 1: been dammed, which influences set thement, transport, water quality, migratory fish.
Speaker 1: You know, it has all those negative impacts. And that's
Speaker 1: one reason in particular the Lower miss because it has
Speaker 1: an intact floodplain, it has a natural flood pulse. There
Speaker 1: have been no extirpations or extinction of species in modern time.
Speaker 2: Really, even with all the manipulation.
Speaker 1: That's right, despite all that river engineering, we still have
Speaker 1: a very robust, diversed aquatic assemblage in this river.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're trying to understand and protect and
Speaker 1: conserve because it really has never been evaluated in a,
Speaker 1: you know, in a very holistic quantitative way until the
Speaker 1: last twenty years or so.
Speaker 2: It's essential to understand the river is what it is
Speaker 2: because of its intact floodplain, the batcher as it's called,
Speaker 2: or the space inside the levees. Here's why a healthy
Speaker 2: floodplain is important for fish.
Speaker 1: What happens then is every spring, you know, the river
Speaker 1: comes up and it floods, and the fish and other
Speaker 1: aquatic organisms they follow that floodpulse up into the floodplain,
Speaker 1: and what they encounter are tens of thousands of acres
Speaker 1: of lakes, scatters, breaks, slews, just perfect habitat for spawning
Speaker 1: and rearing and feeding. And then when the river begins
Speaker 1: to contract and go back down, a lot of these
Speaker 1: recently spawned fish will follow the retreating flood down into
Speaker 1: the river and they repopulate the river, so they sustain
Speaker 1: the numbers the biodiversity year after year because we have
Speaker 1: a natural flood pulse of the lower miss whereas you
Speaker 1: don't have it in the Upper miss you don't have
Speaker 1: it in the Ohio, you don't have it in the Arkansas.
Speaker 1: It's all damned all the way up. So that's the
Speaker 1: unique nature of it. And the fact that it joins
Speaker 1: the Missouri and goes another twelve hundred miles makes it
Speaker 1: really one of the longest. Other than that, I think
Speaker 1: it is the longest free flowing stretch of river.
Speaker 2: The flood pulse, the movement of the river up and
Speaker 2: down in its floodplain, feeds the fish of the river
Speaker 2: and can be important for their breeding cycles. It's just
Speaker 2: that simple. Doctor Kilgore will now talk about why having
Speaker 2: extended stretches of free flowing, non damned rivers are good
Speaker 2: for fish, and this might even bolster the tattoo idea
Speaker 2: from episode one. Don't do it, but it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: And so we do telemetry studies and we tag fish,
Speaker 1: and we've had multiple examples of fish moving upstream one
Speaker 1: thousand miles, moving downstream a thousand miles.
Speaker 2: A thousand miles. Yea, what fish? What kind of fish
Speaker 2: are doing that?
Speaker 1: Sturgeon, paddlefish, the invasive karp, we've had, buffalo. They make
Speaker 1: long migratory runs as well.
Speaker 2: Why are they Why are those fish doing that? Like,
Speaker 2: what's what's biologically advantageous about going that far?
Speaker 1: Well? I think one reason is that they're spreading out
Speaker 1: their progeny. Some of them, we believe, we don't know
Speaker 1: for sure, have certain homing instincts, just like salmon, that
Speaker 1: they'll actually go back to their natal spawning area or
Speaker 1: in that general area. Some fish may move from the
Speaker 1: Missouri down into the Mississippi, but they spawn in the Missouri.
Speaker 1: They go back to the Missouri to spawn, so as
Speaker 1: a homing behavior, it's a behavior we don't fully understand,
Speaker 1: but we do know that there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: movement both upstream and downstream of fish.
Speaker 2: Doctor Kilgore is an expert on fish, and as usual,
Speaker 2: I was delighted when he talked about all the things
Speaker 2: they don't know. Mysteries remain brothers, and he and his
Speaker 2: teams have done some seminal work on the river and
Speaker 2: still are. But let's talk catfish.
Speaker 1: But the catfish. We have three species of giant catfish.
Speaker 1: The new state record of Mississippi a blue cat was
Speaker 1: broken last year one hundred and thirty pound blue cat.
Speaker 1: We regularly catch fifty sixty pound flatheads and blue cats
Speaker 1: out there. The catfish population is unexploited. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are there are so many catfish in this river, and
Speaker 1: there's so few fishermen really and there's and there's so
Speaker 1: much habitat and it's in you go down the bigger
Speaker 1: the catfish tend tend to be too. From based upon
Speaker 1: a study we did, you know, in some ways, because
Speaker 1: this river fluctuates fifty feet a year, and you got
Speaker 1: these huge floods. You know, we haven't even reached the
Speaker 1: carrying capacity of some of these fish. They can continue on,
Speaker 1: and that's what's happened. Unfortunately, with the invasive carbon, they
Speaker 1: found the lower Mississippi River to be very hospitable.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, now the catfish I'm interested in catfish. I would
Speaker 2: have thought that commercial fishermen were hitting the Mississippi really hard,
Speaker 2: but they're not.
Speaker 1: Yes, they are, But the numbers of commercial fishermen have
Speaker 1: dwindled over the years.
Speaker 2: Is that a market thing or like the part of
Speaker 2: farm raising catfish that was part of the decline forbid,
Speaker 2: people aren't eating as much catfish as they yoused to.
Speaker 2: Was that true?
Speaker 1: I think we are. There's more store bought catfish. The
Speaker 1: farm raised catfish certainly took a head on commercial fishing. However,
Speaker 1: I worked with the commercial fisherman for years, Bill Lancaster.
Speaker 2: We've already met mister Bill. He and doctor Kilgore, Old Brose.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'll diverge for a minute and tell the
Speaker 1: story about Bill. We were coming in and we'd been
Speaker 1: out there sampling. We came into our boat ramping. Here
Speaker 1: comes Bill in his boat and his boat was full
Speaker 1: of fish. He's a commercial fisherman, of course, just full
Speaker 1: of catfish in Buffalo. And we started talking to him
Speaker 1: and we've told him that we're interested in catching sturgeon
Speaker 1: on the Mississippi River and he goes, did you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions? He goes, I catch sturgeon all the time
Speaker 1: on my trot lines. Go really, well, would you like
Speaker 1: to go out with us and show us?
Speaker 3: And he did.
Speaker 1: One January nineteen ninety nine, a cold January morning, we
Speaker 1: went out with Bill. He had set trot lines on
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River and one of the first hooks that
Speaker 1: came up he had a ten pound pallid sturgeon, which
Speaker 1: is the endangered species of sturgeon. MM and so okay, hey, Bill,
Speaker 1: would you like to work with us on contract? And
Speaker 1: so for twenty years we worked with Bill and we
Speaker 1: put out over ten thousand trot lines, and we trot
Speaker 1: lined all the way from the mouth of the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River up to the chain of rocks in Saint Bos.
Speaker 1: And that's how we figured out the status of the
Speaker 1: sturching population. Wow, he's to catch.
Speaker 2: Them on troutline ten thousand trot lines. I'd say, these
Speaker 2: guys know the river as good as anybody. I want
Speaker 2: to go back to mister Bill. I've got a question
Speaker 2: about his fishing. What are you mainly fishing for when
Speaker 2: you're on the river. What's your target species?
Speaker 3: Two main species that's a buffalo fish and the catfish.
Speaker 3: You know, all species of catfish, channel cat, blue cat,
Speaker 3: and flatheadcit.
Speaker 2: To the market everybody, it doesn't matter what kind of catfish.
Speaker 3: It really doesn't pay the same. They prefer. They prefer
Speaker 3: the blue cat and the antle cat over the flathead.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, that will be opposite out in just on
Speaker 2: the street.
Speaker 3: Wasn't it right. Yeah, a lot of people like the
Speaker 3: flathead far as eating, but it's harder to dress. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's more waste probably to the flathead.
Speaker 2: Okay, So form for the commercial market where people are
Speaker 2: where they're processing a lot of fish, they want channels
Speaker 2: and blue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, channels and blue cat, you know, and preferably smaller fish.
Speaker 3: You know, they don't they don't really care about the
Speaker 3: big fish, you know, over thirty or forty pounds. You know,
Speaker 3: they'll they will take one or two or three, but
Speaker 3: they don't want to boatload of them. Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you're not targeting big fish.
Speaker 3: No, not at all. Yeah, anything sellable, you know, from
Speaker 3: a two pounds up to you know, fifteen to twenty pounds.
Speaker 3: That's about the range. That's what i'd be looking forward.
Speaker 2: What are you doing with the buffalo?
Speaker 3: Well, the buffalo are sold, you know, sold straight to
Speaker 3: the market as is, you know they are. There's a
Speaker 3: big demand here for buffalo, I mean a huge demand.
Speaker 3: Probably probably sell more buffalo than catfish.
Speaker 2: Really, buffalo ribs, Is that what people are eating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll take the ribs, you know, of course, when
Speaker 3: they dress a buffalo, they take the ribs out and
Speaker 3: then they have the loin, you know, which they cut up.
Speaker 2: What's your favorite fish to catch? What do you get
Speaker 2: excited about when you see when you see a net flatheads?
Speaker 2: Probably really, even though that's not as marketable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but I can still sell them all that
Speaker 3: I catch, so you know, it doesn't it doesn't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I like to see, you know, a net full
Speaker 3: of flatheads when they come up. Why because you can
Speaker 3: feel them before you ever, before you ever raised the net.
Speaker 3: You can tell what's in there just by the way
Speaker 3: they're hitting that net, you know, way they feel, and
Speaker 3: when you pull it to the surface, it just erupts
Speaker 3: into a massive ball, you know, and then you can
Speaker 3: see them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He's not targeting the big catfish. That's interesting, and he
Speaker 2: sells more buffalo than catfish, that's interesting. But he loves
Speaker 2: catching flat head. That is not surprising. Buffalo fish, the
Speaker 2: genus Ichtiobis is a large suckerfish that's not gained as
Speaker 2: much popularity as a game fish like catfish because they're
Speaker 2: hard to catch on rod and reel and their bony
Speaker 2: but they're very good to eat. Any fish restaurant in
Speaker 2: the South Worth it's watermelon salt is going to be
Speaker 2: serving fried wild caught buffalo ribs. It's a honky piece
Speaker 2: of white meat on a single bone. You eat them
Speaker 2: like chicken wings. I've got another question, And if I'd
Speaker 2: left Mississippi without asking him this, I'd be forced to
Speaker 2: resign for my position at meat Eater. You're not targeting
Speaker 2: big fish for the commercial market. Yeah, but just in
Speaker 2: your fifty years on the river, what's the biggest fish
Speaker 2: you've seen come out of Mississippi River.
Speaker 3: I caught a one hundred pound blue cat in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: That's the biggest biggest fish I've caught. Caught a lot
Speaker 3: of fish in the seventy down you know, sixty seventy
Speaker 3: fifty sixty seventy pound range, but that hundred pounder was
Speaker 3: the biggest that i've I've landed. I caught him on
Speaker 3: the trot line too, using the I was using a
Speaker 3: two hot stainless steel hook, A two. I was not
Speaker 3: very big, you know, if you know anything about hooks,
Speaker 3: you know, but it was. It was I think March
Speaker 3: when I caught that fish. The water was super cold,
Speaker 3: and uh, you know he was. He just came up
Speaker 3: to the surface and I got the dip net under
Speaker 3: his tail, and of course I knew he was big,
Speaker 3: you know. I got the dip net under his tail
Speaker 3: and got him about halfway in that dip net because
Speaker 3: he was too big to get in. Well, I guess
Speaker 3: with the adrenaline I had pumping, you know, I just
Speaker 3: rolled him over into the boat and then I looked
Speaker 3: at him. I said, Wow, this is big fish.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: How long you think he was?
Speaker 3: He's he was as tall as I was almost when
Speaker 3: he was hanging when we hung him up the wig.
Speaker 2: And you're not You're you're tall year six two. A
Speaker 2: one hundred pound blue cat is giant. You're glad, I asked,
Speaker 2: aren't you. In April twenty twenty three, the Rodden Reil,
Speaker 2: Mississippi state record blue cat was caught in the river
Speaker 2: near Vicksburg and at weigh one hundred and thirty one pounds.
Speaker 2: And just for reference, the world record blue cat weighed
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty three pounds and was caught in
Speaker 2: a North Carolina lake. The world record flathead catfish weigh
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty three pounds and was caught in
Speaker 2: the lake in Kansas. The world record channel cat came
Speaker 2: from South Carolina and weighed fifty eight pounds. And that's
Speaker 2: a pretty good blueprint for the size of these cats.
Speaker 2: So the blue cats get the biggest flathead second and
Speaker 2: then channels. But most people prefer to eat flathead. And
Speaker 2: it would be a miss if I didn't learn something
Speaker 2: about the gear commercial fishermen are using on the river.
Speaker 2: Here's mister Bill, what kind of equipment is a commercial
Speaker 2: fisherman on the Mississippi River using.
Speaker 3: Well, people use different kind of equipment. Some people you know,
Speaker 3: will fish maybe all gillnet, gil webbing, and then you know,
Speaker 3: you people that have the do mostly hoopnet, then you
Speaker 3: have some that just trot line didn't like myself. For you, though,
Speaker 3: I do a little of all of it, depending on
Speaker 3: what time of year it is and what kind of
Speaker 3: fish I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: A gill net is simply a net stretched across a
Speaker 2: section of water that catches fish traveling up and down
Speaker 2: the river. A hoop net is shaped like a barrel,
Speaker 2: often baited, but not always, and the fish enter into
Speaker 2: a wide opening that nexts down and they can't get out.
Speaker 2: A trot line is a long string with baited hooks
Speaker 2: dropped off every few feet. I want to get back
Speaker 2: with doctor Kilgore about his experience on the river. He's
Speaker 2: gonna talk about the general health of the fishery and
Speaker 2: some of his river sampling projects, and will bring up
Speaker 2: an interesting idea the river as wilderness. What he said
Speaker 2: was very surprising to me.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, you're sampling the bottom of the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River, so you're not just getting sturgeon. You're getting
Speaker 1: these giant catfish we're talking about. You're getting a gar, buffalo,
Speaker 1: drum goog, gasper goo, all of those fish. And over time,
Speaker 1: you know, you start getting this appreciation that there's hardly
Speaker 1: any limit to the number of fish that you can
Speaker 1: catch out of this river. People are afraid to get
Speaker 1: on it. They're afraid to fish for a good reason. Really,
Speaker 1: you have to really know what you're doing initially, but
Speaker 1: once once you understand the things you've got to watch
Speaker 1: out for, it is a wonderful experience. And that's one
Speaker 1: of my passions. I Mean, you go out there and
Speaker 1: it's just I can look one way, and that's exactly
Speaker 1: the way Mark Twain saw the river when he was
Speaker 1: a cub pilot, and then you work look another way
Speaker 1: and you see dikes and revetment. You know, that's modern
Speaker 1: day Mississippi. But my point is that you can still
Speaker 1: see a lot of natural features in this river that
Speaker 1: still exist and haven't changed over the eons.
Speaker 2: You know. It's kind of I like to think a
Speaker 2: lot about wilderness, and I really value like wilderness with
Speaker 2: the capital W yes in that just a place untouched
Speaker 2: by man. You wouldn't really think of a I wouldn't
Speaker 2: think of a river system as a wilderness. And it's
Speaker 2: not the perfect analogy, but what I'm hearing you say
Speaker 2: is that you can be on that river and you're
Speaker 2: dealing with something ancient. Yes, you're dealing with something very
Speaker 2: old and intact, which is rare. Rarely would you go
Speaker 2: into a natural terrestrial system today and be able to
Speaker 2: We have places like this, but where you would say
Speaker 2: this thing is a lot like it would have been
Speaker 2: pre EUROPEA. Yeah, and you're telling me in the river
Speaker 2: with the fish endangered species other than the invasives, it's
Speaker 2: doing pretty well, which is kind of surprising to me.
Speaker 1: It's doing very well in fact, really even with.
Speaker 2: The pollution and all the stuff.
Speaker 1: See the pollution, I mean, yes, we had before the
Speaker 1: Clean Water Act, there were certainly polluted waters throughout our nation,
Speaker 1: including the Mississippi River, but the legacy pesticides like the
Speaker 1: DDT and the toxaphene, they are not detected in fish
Speaker 1: tissue anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And you hear about, oh, that the Mississippi River is
Speaker 1: polluting the Gulf of Mexico with all that nitrogen, Well
Speaker 1: that's true, you know, because it does drain all the agriculture,
Speaker 1: almost all the agricultural land in the United States, so
Speaker 1: there is fairly high nitrogen and phosphorus, but mainly nitrogen.
Speaker 1: But it's not a form of pollution for the Mississippi.
Speaker 1: It might be a form of pollution for creating a
Speaker 1: golf hypoxia right dead zone, but it's not. But it's
Speaker 1: actually a lot of this nitrogen is being sequestered in
Speaker 1: the floodplains as a flood spreads out, and that's what's helping,
Speaker 1: you know, the plants and the soil to grow and
Speaker 1: be nutritious and support the aquatic life there too. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it is a wilderness. A colleague of mine, Paul Hartfield,
Speaker 1: he worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service for you,
Speaker 1: he called it an engineered wilderness because you get the levees,
Speaker 1: you know, you have the dikes, you have the revetment,
Speaker 1: So it is an engineered system. But it still did
Speaker 1: not diminish or eliminate the natural features of this flood
Speaker 1: polse type river that we have. I hear that a lot.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, look how muddy it is, and it's
Speaker 1: got to be polluted. I've heard it's not. I tell
Speaker 1: people it's not. In fact, you know, I would catch
Speaker 1: a fish out of the Mississippi Way before and eat it.
Speaker 1: Before I would eat a fish out of my lake
Speaker 1: there in the subdivision.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that is kind of shocking to me.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: It's kind of surprising to.
Speaker 1: Me and Bill Lancaster, the commercial fisherman. He has plenty
Speaker 1: of customers, you know, that buy his catfish in Buffalo.
Speaker 1: Like I said, commercial fishing and the commercial fisherman. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: as a dying breed, they're just not being recruited. I said,
Speaker 1: it's probably the economics of it.
Speaker 2: Well, me and me and Brent Reeves, you're gonna come.
Speaker 2: Commercial fisherman a friend of ours. I've got I got
Speaker 2: big dreams, big dreams.
Speaker 3: Okay, there you go.
Speaker 2: Big dreams, folks, big American dreams. If the bottom falls
Speaker 2: out of the podcast market, I have a diverse financial
Speaker 2: plan to make a living as number one stand up comedian,
Speaker 2: number two, a commercial fisherman with Brent Reeves, with our
Speaker 2: Sea Arc catfish boat Laura, named after the Laura and
Speaker 2: Tied ice sheet. Number three. I'll work remotely as a
Speaker 2: Nashville singer songwriter, and those things will obviously be a
Speaker 2: supplement to me already being a major player in the
Speaker 2: high end mule market. A. I don't know if I
Speaker 2: want to tell my plan or not. Somebody might steal it.
Speaker 2: Cut that out seriously, though, we've got to get back
Speaker 2: to what doctor Kilgore was talking about, we're treading in
Speaker 2: some complicated water. Regarding the health of the river. I
Speaker 2: was completely expecting Kilgore to say the big Muddy was
Speaker 2: America's sewer, manipulated by man so much that it was
Speaker 2: a dainty relic of its past. But that's not what
Speaker 2: he said at all. From a fish perspective, the river
Speaker 2: is healthy. I've also got to mention two things that
Speaker 2: were just not getting into in this series. Number one,
Speaker 2: the dead zone in the Gulf. Number two, coastal erosion
Speaker 2: in Louisiana. There's a zone of hypoxia with very little
Speaker 2: aquatic life in it in the range of seventy five
Speaker 2: hundred square miles along the Gulf coast. This dead zone
Speaker 2: is the result of excess nutrients primarily nitrogen and phosphorus
Speaker 2: from agriculture, fertilizer runoff from lawns, and just human existence
Speaker 2: that pools in the non moving water of the Gulf,
Speaker 2: creating algal blooms that suck up the oxygen in the water. However,
Speaker 2: nutrients in a moving current have less impact. These nutrients
Speaker 2: aren't in and of themselves elves harmful, but in excess
Speaker 2: they cause big problems. This drainage basin definitely has problems,
Speaker 2: but the natural fishery of the river isn't suffering from this.
Speaker 2: I'd say that's a pretty incredible report considering a lot
Speaker 2: of the environmental news that we hear on a day
Speaker 2: to day basis. And the hero of this fishery is
Speaker 2: that intact natural floodplain inside the levees of the river.
Speaker 2: Don't forget it. The other thing that we're just not
Speaker 2: getting into, which is a major issue, is the coastal
Speaker 2: erosion in South Louisiana, where they've lost over two thousand
Speaker 2: square miles of land in the last fifty years as
Speaker 2: a result of sea level rise and less sediment moving
Speaker 2: down the Mississippi River. It's incredibly complicated and serious. However,
Speaker 2: this next section is wild and we're going back to
Speaker 2: talk to our friend and old boat captain Hank Burdine
Speaker 2: about a significant factor influencing river health. It has to
Speaker 2: do with the monetary and cultural value of hunting.
Speaker 5: Stand by within the what we call the batcher between
Speaker 5: the levees, the land between the levees that flood. You
Speaker 5: can't build a house, and unless you build it fifteen
Speaker 5: sixteen twenty feet up off the ground. So the majority
Speaker 5: of the whole area down the river is in hungrams.
Speaker 5: It used to be timber companies, but the timber companies
Speaker 5: realized that there was an inherent value in those lands
Speaker 5: recreationally for hunting. And it was about in the seventies
Speaker 5: and eighties that Anderson Cully, Chicago Meal, all these huge
Speaker 5: timber companies that owned one hundreds of thousands of acres
Speaker 5: of land between the levees said look, and we have
Speaker 5: I can't eat it too. We leasing this land out
Speaker 5: of these hun clothed for nothing. Really, why don't we
Speaker 5: sell them the land, keep the timber rights fifteen to
Speaker 5: twenty years. They sell the land at top dollar for
Speaker 5: recreational purposes, They keep the tumble for twenty years. They
Speaker 5: got doubled up money. So the majority of all this
Speaker 5: land now along the river is in private hunt camps clubs.
Speaker 2: So really in a way, and that's why the hunting,
Speaker 2: the value of hunting, and the money that honey brought
Speaker 2: in is helping preserve the wildness of the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely yeah.
Speaker 5: And when you talk about a hunting club, you're talking
Speaker 5: about catfish point twelfth, our negg hunt club, you know,
Speaker 5: hunting and point dunt Own.
Speaker 2: I mean from from Memphis all the way down to
Speaker 2: New Orleans along the Mississippi River inside the levees, is
Speaker 2: hunting camps.
Speaker 5: From Memphis, I would say, all the way on down
Speaker 5: toward getting close to badon Rouge.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, he's hunting camps, hunting camps from Levity to Levy.
Speaker 5: They don't want those trees cleared. If they do, it's
Speaker 5: select cutting. I mean the tumble companies are out of
Speaker 5: it now. But they've got a managed program. Yeah where
Speaker 5: they go in so let cut the tree, leave this,
Speaker 5: leave that have their food blot all like that.
Speaker 2: And that's powerful for the health of the whole system
Speaker 2: as these as these natural floodplains inside the levees which
Speaker 2: your man made but are remained timbered and managed, managed
Speaker 2: for wildlife, and I mean it's a wildlife mecca. It's
Speaker 2: a wildlife mecca. Water systems are a product of their
Speaker 2: riparian zones. The value of hunting camps inside the levees
Speaker 2: of the river being managed for wildlife, which is primarily whitetail,
Speaker 2: turkeys and ducks, is creating a healthy natural floodplain unique
Speaker 2: to the world at one time the value is in timber,
Speaker 2: but that is changing. I can't express what an incredible
Speaker 2: conservation story this is, once again hunters of the good guys,
Speaker 2: saving habitat and wild places at a time in Earth's
Speaker 2: history when it couldn't be more or important. That's the
Speaker 2: muddy boggy truth. I now want to talk to the
Speaker 2: dock about the big fish other than catfish of the
Speaker 2: Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are several different species of fish that I
Speaker 1: categorize as iconic megafauna. The first is what we've been discussing,
Speaker 1: are sturgeon. There are two species of sturgeon that live
Speaker 1: their entire lives in the Mississippi River, the palid and
Speaker 1: the chovell No sturgeon. The Pallid is the federally endangered species,
Speaker 1: whereas the shovel Nos is not. But they only get
Speaker 1: here in the lower miss maybe ten or fifteen pounds.
Speaker 1: They're not like the giant sturgeon that you see along
Speaker 1: the coast. And the reason, of course that the demise
Speaker 1: of sturgeon was due to the building dams and the
Speaker 1: caviar market. But today sturgeon are thriving and you can
Speaker 1: almost walk on their hacklebacks. You know, they're so really
Speaker 1: the two most abundant bottom oriented fish are blue cats
Speaker 1: and chauvenet.
Speaker 2: Sturgeon more than the other cat fish, more more than more.
Speaker 1: Than flathead, more than channel catfish. Blue cats are by
Speaker 1: far number one of the big bigger fish. Sturgeon come
Speaker 1: in number two based upon our trotline catches. Wow, the
Speaker 1: largest North American fish alligator gar. An alligator gar really
Speaker 1: got a bad rap. What happened to them is that
Speaker 1: people misunderstood them. I mean, they get to three hundred
Speaker 1: pounds plus and they're ugly and they're mean looking. I
Speaker 1: can understand that, but they misunderstood them thinking that alligator
Speaker 1: gar are eating their sport fish. They're bass, they're blue gill,
Speaker 1: they're croppy, and so they put a bounty on their head,
Speaker 1: considering them a rough fish, and they just about wiped
Speaker 1: them out. And then they started doing scientific studies and
Speaker 1: found out, well, they eate shat, they're not eating, you know,
Speaker 1: our sport fish. And plus they're an apex predator of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River. We did not want to eliminate an
Speaker 1: apex predator. And they may also be a bi all
Speaker 1: control for some of the invasive carp and so once
Speaker 1: we we hated them, and now we love them. And
Speaker 1: there's hatchery programs introducing them back into the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: and we're slowly seeing them come back.
Speaker 2: How big you said, three hundred pounds? How long would
Speaker 2: that fact?
Speaker 3: Ten feet?
Speaker 2: Ten foot long.
Speaker 1: The other iconic megafauna which is even more interesting than
Speaker 1: all the other fish, all the paddlefish, spoon bil catfish,
Speaker 1: and they're very abundant here, although they also have the
Speaker 1: black eggs, and so now they're being targeted for the
Speaker 1: caviar because all the sturgeon are now protected. So all
Speaker 1: the states are really watching harvest of paddle fish. But
Speaker 1: the paddlefish, they can get over one hundred pounds. They're
Speaker 1: their gentle giants, just an amazing you know, and they're.
Speaker 2: You call them. You call it a spoon bill catfish. Yes,
Speaker 2: is it a cat fish?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's just the kind of colloquial.
Speaker 1: That's why it's a colloquial name. The sturgeon and the
Speaker 1: paddlefish are very primitive. They were around during the age
Speaker 1: of the dinosaurs, that's how long they have lived the
Speaker 1: same with the alligator guard they're very primitive. Fish.
Speaker 2: What does it mean biologically? Like, what does it say
Speaker 2: biologically when a species is so stable for millions of years.
Speaker 1: They have overcome the evolutionary challenges of adaptation. They have
Speaker 1: adapted to that environment to be perfect. But these fish
Speaker 1: are uniquely adapted to this flowing water fluvial environment. And
Speaker 1: if you take away that flow, you take away that
Speaker 1: flood pulse, then you eliminate those species. And that's what's
Speaker 1: happened in the upper Mist. You don't see a lot
Speaker 1: of paddlefish and sturgeon things up there because of the dam.
Speaker 2: But would they be considered an indicator species?
Speaker 1: Yes, for free flowing natural river system.
Speaker 2: I like the idea of that that fish that old
Speaker 2: would indicate that he kind of has met his optimum design, Yes,
Speaker 2: and to exploit the environment that he's got, and then
Speaker 2: we could deduce that if he's still here, the conditions
Speaker 2: are like they were a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Well, and the main channel of the Mississippi River provides
Speaker 1: the same sort of habitat quality that it did pre Europeana.
Speaker 1: So that's why we have had no extinctions or extirpatients.
Speaker 2: That's that's amazing to me. What other natural system can
Speaker 2: we say exists in relative similarity to pre European arrival.
Speaker 2: The only places that could compare would be our wildernesses
Speaker 2: with the capital W the federally protected terrestrial wilderness. That's
Speaker 2: some wild stuff. And I'd love to see a three
Speaker 2: hundred pound alligator gar, wouldn't you. Let's hear doctor Kilgore
Speaker 2: talk about something a lot smaller that lives in this river.
Speaker 2: This surprised me.
Speaker 1: The river shrimp are prior to you know, the exploitation
Speaker 1: of white shrimp and brown shrimp along the coast, which
Speaker 1: is where we get most of our shrimp. Now, the
Speaker 1: river people and the Indians, indigenous people would eat the
Speaker 1: river shrimp because there are billions of them out there. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll put a troll through there, and the trall sometimes
Speaker 1: is so full of river shrimp we can't even get
Speaker 1: it on board. And you can imagine how important those
Speaker 1: river shrimp are to the forage base of.
Speaker 2: How how would they have caught How would have Native
Speaker 2: Americans caught river shrimp?
Speaker 1: They could put traps in there where you can, like
Speaker 1: a weir or something. And because what they do is
Speaker 1: they they swim and walk along the bottom of the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River all the way up to the Ohio. They
Speaker 1: can go over dams, they can they can go up
Speaker 1: to the Missouri. But in order to complete their life cycle,
Speaker 1: they have to go back down to salt water. So
Speaker 1: those little shrip have to walk all the way back
Speaker 1: down one thousand miles to get to the gulf to
Speaker 1: complete their life cycle.
Speaker 4: Who knew?
Speaker 2: Now, though, I want to talk about turtles and the
Speaker 2: big picture of fish in the river. Yeah, tell me
Speaker 2: about the turtles.
Speaker 1: Along the river into the swamp areas. You get these
Speaker 1: alligator snapping turtles that can get over one hundred pounds
Speaker 1: I mean actually several hundred pounds. And you know there
Speaker 1: are another primitive species as relatively unchanged over the years,
Speaker 1: and they have that specialized appendage on their tongue. They
Speaker 1: can remain under water for hours and hours, and they
Speaker 1: open their mouth and they stick out their tongue and
Speaker 1: they have this little red appendage that flips back and
Speaker 1: forth and that attracts the unwary fish close to their
Speaker 1: mouth and bang, you know, they'll snap shots.
Speaker 2: They have a little bait they go.
Speaker 1: They're tracting their bait to Wow, this is.
Speaker 2: The out the alligator snapping that's right.
Speaker 1: The alligator, snapping turtle. Like I said, there's about one
Speaker 1: hundred species of fish that maintain reproductive populations in the
Speaker 1: Lower miss If you include the tributaries, then there's probably
Speaker 1: about two hundred and fifty species of fish that are associated.
Speaker 2: How does that compare with the other rivers of the world.
Speaker 2: Is that that's quite biodiversity?
Speaker 1: Yes, it is, But it's nothing compared to the Amazon,
Speaker 1: which has probably over two thousand species of fish. Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I mean Amazon is such a anomaly.
Speaker 2: You know, like Amazon's the NBA and we're playing like
Speaker 2: in yeah high school one a basketball dow d.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, I mean, you can't compare any river
Speaker 1: of the world to the Amazon. It's in a class
Speaker 1: by itself. The outflow of the Amazon is up to
Speaker 1: twenty million cubic feet per second at a major floods
Speaker 1: on the Mississippi, we only get two point five million
Speaker 1: cubic feed per second. Wow, It's ten times higher, and
Speaker 1: it's longer. The drainings basin is wider, and there's no dams,
Speaker 1: no damn Amazon, whereas all the other great rivers of
Speaker 1: the word, the Congo, the Nile of the ant Sea,
Speaker 1: all of those they have dams near the mouth of
Speaker 1: the river.
Speaker 2: The Amazon is a beast. I waited until the end
Speaker 2: of the series to mention it because it makes our
Speaker 2: beloved Mississippi look like a creek. The Amazon is the
Speaker 2: river all rivers are compared to. Doctor Kilgore has spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time on the Big Muddy, and I
Speaker 2: want to hear him talk about the perils of navigating
Speaker 2: the river. You said that people are afraid to get
Speaker 2: on the river because of how dangerous it is. Anybody
Speaker 2: in American history that has been on the Mississippi River
Speaker 2: has some boat wreck story. Our boy Davy Crockett crashed
Speaker 2: a boat just south of Memphis and nearly died on
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River. And then you know all of Mark
Speaker 2: Twain's riding talk about the dangers of Thessissippi River. And
Speaker 2: today it's still dangerous, even though it's it's been tamed
Speaker 2: from those days.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: What do you You said there was some safe some
Speaker 2: things that you would look for you can be safe.
Speaker 2: What would those be?
Speaker 3: Well? Uh?
Speaker 1: I mean for me, Number one is I watched the
Speaker 1: wind because there's nothing worse being on the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: When you have a south wind pushing against a northern
Speaker 1: moving river and the waves are like this. So in
Speaker 1: small boats that we're in, you know, we're just we can't.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't get on plane. You know you're
Speaker 1: getting inundated by all this water. It can be very
Speaker 1: dangerous out there in high wind. The most dangerous thing
Speaker 1: out there are the stone dykes, There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: We've had some tragic stories about folks leaving Vicksburg and
Speaker 1: never being seen again other than their boat turned over
Speaker 1: because of a You have to first of all, know
Speaker 1: kind of where the dikes are, what the tailtale signs
Speaker 1: of these dikes, because they may be underwater, but they're
Speaker 1: still not deep enough and you can still hit your
Speaker 1: lower unit on it and flip the boat. So you
Speaker 1: have to know and have navigation charts. Is good, but
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, I'm familiar with this river around here.
Speaker 1: I know where all the dikes are. But if you don't,
Speaker 1: you better be real careful and stay along the booy
Speaker 1: line because the coastguard generally not all the time, but
Speaker 1: they'll adjust the booyes according to the flood height. And
Speaker 1: then the other thing you have to watch out for
Speaker 1: the towboats, because towboats can't stop on a dime, so
Speaker 1: you don't want to get in front of them. But
Speaker 1: when they're pushing upstream, they're creating these really big wakes
Speaker 1: and that's going to slow you down too, So you
Speaker 1: know you have to be able to take these wakes
Speaker 1: slowly and get out of it. You don't want to
Speaker 1: hit them hard because it'll flip your boat too if
Speaker 1: you're careful. So it's the wind, the stone dikes, and
Speaker 1: the towboats. But once you have a feeling and understanding,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like I said, it's a wilderness
Speaker 1: out there. Usually the only people, the only thing you
Speaker 1: see out there are the part of the toboats. You
Speaker 1: don't see a whole lot of recreational boats out there. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: during the summer, if it's a nice day, that sand
Speaker 1: bar across from Vicksburg gets got boats up and down
Speaker 1: that thing. People are just laying out on the beaches.
Speaker 1: That's another thing about the Mississippi River. It's got these
Speaker 1: giant point bars. There is more sand beaches along the
Speaker 1: lower Mississippi River than all along the Gulf Coast, Is
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Do y'all remember when Hank Berdine called the Mississippi America's
Speaker 2: fourth Coast.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: I'm doing some cleanup work with doctor Kilgore. I wanted
Speaker 2: to ask him about shipwrecks, and turns out he was
Speaker 2: holding out a great story on us this whole time.
Speaker 2: So you think, are there a lot of shipwrecks in
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River hundreds hundreds.
Speaker 1: Hundreds, and some of them may be in a n
Speaker 1: agfield because the Mississippi River has changed course as at meanders.
Speaker 1: Remember that meander belt. A guy named Henry Fisk, he
Speaker 1: did this geomorphic study and he mapped out all the
Speaker 1: meander belts on the Mississippi River over the last ten
Speaker 1: thousand years. And it's it's beautiful. I mean, you just
Speaker 1: can't believe all these meander bins that have cut off.
Speaker 2: So you maybe twenty five miles from the current Missippi
Speaker 2: River today and find a I mean, the channel could
Speaker 2: have been there. So you got a shipwreck exactly four
Speaker 2: hundred years ago on your place.
Speaker 1: That's right. We discovered one on the Old White River
Speaker 1: right where the White River comes into the Arkansas. The
Speaker 1: Old White River mouth is kind of a meandering shoot,
Speaker 1: and we were there during low water, and we looked
Speaker 1: up there and there was this long wooden boat that
Speaker 1: had been exposed by the bank slopping off. And we
Speaker 1: reported to the Arkansas folks and they had heard about it,
Speaker 1: but they came out and excellent hold of it. It
Speaker 1: was an eighteen hundreds version of it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Isaac. Can you believe he wasn't going
Speaker 2: to tell me the story he's holding out on. What
Speaker 2: other interesting things have you found in the river.
Speaker 1: I haven't found him, but I've been with folks who
Speaker 1: have found him. A giant ground sloth claw.
Speaker 2: Wow, how big is that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's probably eight or nine inches long, curved black, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And I've seen all kinds of teeth and Indian artifacts
Speaker 1: like old bottles. You'll find old bottles, You'll find pieces
Speaker 1: of pottery, You'll find old whiskey jugs, pieces of the
Speaker 1: old whiskey jugs, and find china that used to be
Speaker 1: on the boats that sank out there. You'll find chips
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Do you ever see the bison skulls?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: In fact, yeah, they Bradley another guy down there, we
Speaker 1: were walking on one and all of a sudden his
Speaker 1: foot hit something and he starts digging around and he
Speaker 1: picks up an entire intact bison skull. Wow, that was
Speaker 1: preserved out there.
Speaker 2: You should have pushed him out of the way, and
Speaker 2: I touched it first.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When we say okay, let's take a break on this
Speaker 1: gravel bar, and we all just spread out, you know
Speaker 1: where everyone's looking. Some people are running, you know, for
Speaker 1: big stuff, and others are just going real slow looking
Speaker 1: at wild.
Speaker 2: The river just constantly revealing news.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 2: When Brent and I start commercial fishing and we find
Speaker 2: our first shipwreck, trust me, that will be the first
Speaker 2: thing we bring up in conversation for the rest of
Speaker 2: our lives. Hopefully it's not Laura Misty would get burned
Speaker 2: out quick on a shipwreck story if I found one
Speaker 2: or was ind one. Undoubtedly, the Mississippi River is one
Speaker 2: of America's most extravagant natural systems, rivaling the Rocky Mountain Range,
Speaker 2: the Appalachians are great deserts, our giant inland lakes, our
Speaker 2: majestic coastlines. This river, its size, and its location has
Speaker 2: been a fundamental component of what makes America America, both
Speaker 2: functionally and culturally. I want to end by asking mister
Speaker 2: Bill about why he's dedicated his life to working on
Speaker 2: the river. You love fishing the river. Yeah, Why what
Speaker 2: is it that you love about fishing the Missisi River?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Just the solidarity of it. Yeah, just being out there.
Speaker 3: If you're out there, you know, before the sun comes
Speaker 3: up and you see the sun come up or you
Speaker 3: see the sun go down, it's just a almost a
Speaker 3: spiritual experience. You know, when there's nobody, you know, there's
Speaker 3: nobody to talk to, there's nobody around, you don't see anybody.
Speaker 3: You're just out there in the wilderness. You know, almost
Speaker 3: like like you know, you're the only person on earth. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In episode one of this series, we learned about the
Speaker 2: river's incomprehensible power and size, along with man's ancient connection
Speaker 2: to it. The first Europeans saw it in fifteen forty one,
Speaker 2: and we'll never know when the first Native America, the
Speaker 2: first human sought time has forgotten. In episode two, we
Speaker 2: talked about how the Mississippi Delta was one of America's
Speaker 2: last frontiers that kept civilization that babe because of constant
Speaker 2: flooding until the advent of levies, long after most of
Speaker 2: America was settled. We talked about the plantations, slavery, sharecropping.
Speaker 2: We talked with mister Earl Jasper about growing up in
Speaker 2: the Delta and the sharecropping family that was big. We
Speaker 2: talked about the art and literature of the Delta and
Speaker 2: how prior to the Civil War this region was one
Speaker 2: of the richest places in America, fueled by some of
Speaker 2: the richest alluvial soil in the world. On episode three,
Speaker 2: we talked with author John Barry about the engineering feats
Speaker 2: that defined the century staring men sought to tame the river,
Speaker 2: and how human nature and ego helped formulate the circumstances
Speaker 2: for America's most costly natural disaster, which changed America forever,
Speaker 2: Flood of nineteen twenty seven. On this fourth episode, we've
Speaker 2: talked about the health of the fishery of the Mississippi River,
Speaker 2: and I am highly encouraged to learn that the river
Speaker 2: is thriving, and much of it has to do with
Speaker 2: an intact floodplain preserved by the value of hunting camps
Speaker 2: inside the levees. We've just begun to scratch the surface
Speaker 2: of really understanding this river. Like I've said so many times,
Speaker 2: there's so many directions this story could have gone, and
Speaker 2: I just had to choose some directions to go. But
Speaker 2: I believe every American ought to know about the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2: I started off with a knowledge gap that plagued me
Speaker 2: and a desire to understand this river is a natural
Speaker 2: system and how it's impacted America. And I think we've
Speaker 2: taken a pretty big swing and understanding the Mississippi River.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear gris Hey.
Speaker 2: Be sure to check out the Phelps acron Inhale, exhale,
Speaker 2: grunt and bleak call for deer hunting. It's made of
Speaker 2: fine white oak wood and we only made five hundred
Speaker 2: of these calls, and they've even got my dad gums
Speaker 2: signature on them. For real. I stand by these calls
Speaker 2: as incredible deer calls. Nothing else on the market like it.
Speaker 2: Have a great week and I look forward to talking
Speaker 2: with the folks on the Render next week.