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You guys already know that this podcast runs on Black Reifel Coffee, but we want to score you up on a few things you might not know about Black Reifel Green Beret.

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Evan Hafer founded BRC in 2014, along with his buddy, an Army Ranger, Matt Best. The venture allowed them to combine two of their passions, developing premium roasts to order coffee and supporting the veteran and military community.

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B-R is committed to supporting veteran law enforcement and first responder causes through the company's Biobank Give a bag campaign. They supply troops and first responders around the globe with exceptional coffee sourced from all over the world and roasted right here in the U.S..

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I recommend joining their coffee club. You get great coffee delivered to your door, discount pricing and a bunch of other good stuff. Most importantly, though, you'll never run out of coffee again and you can permanently take it off your shopping list.

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And for all you next level coffee freaks out there, they have an exclusive coffee subscription that'll get you exotic microlight coffee deliveries every month. Now, I'm not totally sure what a microlight coffee is, but I assume it's like a microbrew except for coffee. Instead of beer, just head over to Black Reifel coffee dotcom backslash meat eater to get all the goodness and use the promo code meat eater checkout to get a 20 percent discount.

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Good news for those of you who like fishing and meat eater, which is hopefully all of you are original fishing series is back. Season two of Doszpot or as Steve likes to call it, Doszpot is now live on the Eater YouTube channel.

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Season two brings with it a new boat there. Not really a new boat. Another old used beat up boat that we found. And we head to Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Follow along to see some of your favorite people return, as well as get to know some new faces, including mine. And, Miles, we guarantee you some good fish, along with a few bad ideas and a hell of a great time.

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New episodes, lunch every Sunday at 11 o'clock Mountain Standard Time until we run out of them. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don't miss out on this show or any of the other great stuff we have coming this fall.

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It's a sunfish, Jay, stop calling the police, they're busy arresting your friends for throwing your hands in the parking lot at the Cumberland Farms. I'm going to go with murder. One medieval theory suggested that you were the transmogrified forms of the bastard children of priests and married women fleeing persecution through shapeshifting. And remember, the only appropriate response to anything by the Coogan's squad is Jesus healing the sick. Good morning, degenerate anglers, welcome to Bent, the fishing podcast that heckles rent a cops but respects the real cops.

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I'm Joe Somali.

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I'm Miles Nulty. And even though I have been handcuffed and placed in the back of squad cars twice, I have never technically been arrested. Oh, dear.

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I feel like I'm going to lose street cred here, but neither have I. I have not been arrested nor ridden in a cop car, which I feel like is a young man's rite of passage.

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But I do still chuckle with a few friends about a party I was that raided by the cops. That's the closest I can come.

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And I had a buddy that used to get off on going to house parties and hiding perishable items throughout the house. I mean, like take the baloney out of the fridge and drop it in a box of cornflakes. Oh, no.

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And as this very upset officer was lecturing a room full of drunk kids, he looks up and there's a giant Polish sausage hanging from the chandelier dangling like an inch above his head.

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And the whole room just lost it. And, you know, he was just he was he was just more upset, though. So that's that's my cop story. That's a good image. I feel bad for that guy. Oh, man. Yeah. What a terrible, terrible job. Breaking up kids, house parties. And they could be doing real work.

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Speaking of police, this podcast is fueled by Black Reifel Coffee. And besides supporting original fishing podcasts, Black Reifel also supports local police.

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Proceeds from their Thin Blue Line series. Go to law enforcement officers and their families in need.

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Yeah, Black Rifle's Coffee Club keeps us caffeinated even when we forget to stop at the store on our way back from fishing.

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Super convenient. Just head on over to Black Reifel coffee dotcom backslash meat eater. Let them know what you like and they make sure you're steadily stocked.

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And just like this podcast, those guys represent the whole country there to Eastern and Western regional roasting facilities. Ensure that your beans are always fresh. Man Use the discount code meat eater at checkout and they'll take 20 percent off your first order, which is very nice of them.

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It is. It is. And I'm drinking coffee right now. And it is. It's delicious. Just going to it's going to bet that.

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All right. Before we dig into the show, Joe, I got to I got to talk something through with you. I had this experience last week and I just can't shake it. I just want to see what your take on it is. All right.

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So I. And we'll get all psychological on. Yeah. Let's see if we can break this one down.

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Dr. Joe, I went fishing with some friends and we were on the this is last week. And it was one of those days where everything was just kind of lining up, right? Yeah. We had we had that fall light that we get out here and the hills were just glowing gold.

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Beautiful.

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It was really nice. The fish were super active. They were eating on the surface. They were eating subsurface. They were just on the chow. It was one of those days. It was great. And so we're so far so good.

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I don't see the problem yet. So far, so good. We're fishing out of my boat.

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So, you know, even though it's the cool season and the water was very cold, I was not wearing waders because I had no intention of getting out of that boat. We were both fishing, you know, so we're anchored up on this mid river spot. And I hook a fish couple of head shakes and it comes the service and rolls and I get a good look at it. It's like a solid two foot trout, maybe a little bigger.

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It was it was a big fish, right? It was definitely the biggest fish of the day.

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And then soon as it rolls, it takes off downstream. Right. Mid current.

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And like, I'm I'm I'm into my backing on the first run, which almost never happens with trout. Right.

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Like this is. Exactly.

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So I know in this moment what I need to do. I need to hurdle my ass over the gunwale right into the middle of that cold river and chase the fish down like I have to be swimming and splashing, I have to get that fish and no matter what.

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OK, all right.

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There was no time in this situation for me to wait for my buddy to pull the anchor and chasten down. Right. Like I got this fish on a small hook. It's on Lateline. And I'm I've done this plenty of times. I know what's about to happen. Fish that big, that much current, that much lineout. It's either going to break off straight in the hook or Palfry and it's going to happen in any second season. They're in there.

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Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you know, like there's no confusion as to what's about to happen. So I'm standing there, I'm watching the last turns of line come off my real and I'm like having this conversation with myself in my head. I'm like, jump, jump in, do it. You're going to lose this fish. Go get it. Jump. But I just stood there like having this internal battle with myself, like I didn't want to spend the rest of the day soaking wet and freezing my ass off.

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I also didn't want to lose this really good fish because because just because I'm too soft to deal with a little discomfort. And this is the the battle like the tension that's raging in my head as I watch the last couple of turns come off the real and go, I'm about to lose this fish. Like, I know that there was a time when I would have not even thought about it, like I just would have gone over the side of the boat in the water.

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I'm getting the fish to like I I'm sacrificing my body.

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That fish are coming to me. I don't care what it takes, like, I'll swim. But I didn't do that.

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And now I'm left wondering, like, what changed in me. A do I.

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Is it that I care less about catching fish than I used to do I have less to prove to myself or the world like I might. Just getting lame. Hmm. Am I getting smarter?

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I honestly can't figure it out and has been messing with my head ever since.

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I'm going to help you. I'm about to be right now. Please, I'll build you my hourly rates.

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Would this have been the biggest trout you ever caught? No. God, no. I mean, it was a really nice fish, like it was a very big fish. It was a legitimately large fish from Montana. But no, I'm very lucky. I've got a lot of big trout. It would not have been my biggest.

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OK, ok, there you go.

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OK, so I think the decision was subliminally made based on experience.

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Right, because you and I hear me. So you think I'm getting smarter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Kind of right. You and I are both lucky enough to have caught lots of fish in lots of places. Right. As an example, like I'm not willing to freeze my ass off and diving in after like a twenty inch brown, OK, probably not even a twenty two.

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So unless at this point I was convinced like this is the biggest brown I've ever hooked a milestone, you know what I mean?

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I look at it like, dude, I've done my time in terms of freezing and soaking over the years.

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So yeah, if I lose the twenty, twenty two like oh you know, good chance I will stick another one of those, you know. So this one, this one is going to get away for, for my comfort however.

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Yeah. I mean if you're one of those people that only gauges the value of a trip by what you have to show for it on Instagram, it's a different story.

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No, you're not one you're not one of those people, you know. No, no.

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We know so much. We know somebody who is. Who is that person?

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Oh. Don't know, we don't. Don't do it. Yeah, we have to.

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Oh, yes, we're going to do it. Now, listen, we've heard from a number of you about our inclusion of Internet sensation Lance V in our podcast.

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And I got to tell you, it reeks of current American politics because, man, you guys are staunchly divided.

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There is no middle ground for the two camps to live. We are learning it is those camps are either love or hate.

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There is no middle. And I know where I sit. By the way, we've kind of thoroughly been enjoying some of the hate's, though, right? Because they say shit like Lance needs to go. And if you're actually paying this idiot, I feel bad for you. So listen, we're listening to you guys, OK? We're absorbing your feedback and we've decided to change up the Lance format a bit. And we're only going to focus on the wants and needs of his true fans.

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And going forward, just have him answer the many questions you guys have been sending in.

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So if you have a question for Lance, whether it's personal or you're like, you know, asking asking for a friend, go ahead and send that to bend at the mediator dot com.

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The land to the boats, to the lake, to the sea, killing up to and with your boy. What's up, brain farts? Today's question comes from at Throwdown Fishing Underscore INQ, he writes, Hey, Lance, just the sound of your voice makes me want to beat you mercilessly. I'm curious, though, what do you consider best practices for posting GIFs as comments on social media? Great question. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

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I mean, one of my pictures are worth a thousand dollars and free tackle. But hashtag hate to play the game anyway, thanks to the magic of Jeff's. Not only do you have the option to post a picture as a response, you can also post an animated picture which makes it like sophisticated or whatever. The critical thing to remember is that a gif is supposed to make people think, don't be obvious. Here's a quick quiz. Someone throws up a shot of what they consider a hard bass, like a four to five pounder.

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The proper response would be a stone cold. Steve Austin chugging a gallon of milk. B, Kanye West clapping behind the words Kanye approves. C, Mr. Being Feinting and D, Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction saying, look, the big brains on Brad. If you answered D Samuel Jackson to Pulp Fiction saying Look at the big brains on Brad, you could not be more incorrect. The answer is C Mr. Bean feinting. Why? Because it leaves room for interpretation.

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Is Mr. Bean feinting because he's so impressed by your holdbacks, or is Mr. Bean feinting because he's sick of idiots like you ruining the Internet by posting small fish that you consider big? You want the poster to lose sleep, ignore his alarm and thus show up late for his shift at Burger King hash tag only whopper you'll ever see. So that's it for this week at Throwdown Fishing Inc. I hope this lesson gave you something to think about. You're sitting around the coupon.

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You keep posting on your inside stories. And remember, the only appropriate gift response to anything by the Coogan squad is Jesus Healing the sick.

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I've said it before, I'm going to say it again. I am among the large ranks of people who lose hope in the future of humanity every single time we bring him on the show. Game over, man.

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Game over strong. That's that's strong. I mean, maybe it's because I am a total troglodyte and I'm terrible at social media. I'd rather read words on dead tree skin than screens, but I just can't find anything to like about that guy.

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I don't know, I, I hear what you're saying. Right. But I appreciate the service he provides. Right.

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So everyone wants to know how to make it as an Internet fisherman so they don't have to have a real job, you know, but the people who've done that successfully, they're not exactly given seminars and spilling their guts. They're not telling you the secret to just being an Internet fisherman.

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So it's kind of like I don't really care about your own Nalmefene either, but I've had to edit many articles about it through my career because apparently other people do.

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So it's a fair point. And maybe Lance will become like the Tony Robbins of Internet fishing. Who knows?

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I believe I've already once called him that. He definitely is. And look, luckily for you, though, like we don't we don't keep you around for your social media prowess, so you're off the hook with that. So we keep you around because of your deep and seemingly unending knowledge of fish species, which you are about to demonstrate in this week's edition of Fin Clip's.

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This is the part of the show where we profile a fish species, usually one we think is more interesting than most people realize. How much do you know about American eels? If you're like most of us, probably not much before sushi got popular here. The only use we had for freshwater eels was impaling. They're young for striper bait. These days you can get barbeque deal over sushi race in all 50 states. And if you don't eat unagi, you're missing out.

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Seriously, it's delicious. Freshwater eels are also one of the coolest fish on the continent. Some people get hung up on the whole four foot long underwater snake. Look, they have going, but don't rush to judgment until all the facts are in. I'm pretty sure Joe is going to tell me that I have it all wrong.

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Eels, since once again, the guy out west is trying to talk about an East Coast fish. And the truth is that I've never actually caught a freshwater eel, but I have been really fascinated by them ever since I learned that they have mysterious orgies at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle. But I'll get to that later, I might stress might have hooked an American eel once I was fish in the Kennebec River in Maine, catching cookie cutter trout on San Juan worms.

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When I hooked into something that was most definitely not a foot long rainbow, it ripped downstream and had me nearly spooled before the line finally snapped.

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Later that night at the bar, I was having a few drinks and tell them what the locals the story about the giant trout that I lost that day. After hearing my details, he told me that what the trout. I was a goddamn eel. So even though I can't prove it, I'm saying I hooked anneal once and it kicked my ass.

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But getting back to the whole Bermuda Triangle Orji thing, American eels, like their European cousins, are catagories, meaning they live their adult lives in freshwater but spawn in the ocean, basically the exact opposite of salmon and steelhead that makes studying their reproduction really challenging. So for thousands of years, people have been trying to figure out exactly where and how Atlantic eels spawn.

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According to the writer Lucy Cook, whose book The Truth About Animals is one you should absolutely consider reading. Quote, Aristotle was obsessed with eel genitals. Way back in the fourth century B.C., Aristotle was hacking away at Eels in his laboratory on the Greek island of Lesbos in a fruitless search for any evidence of genitalia. Since Aristotle couldn't find their sex parts, he concluded wrongly that baby eels emerge fully formed from wet mud. No parentage required. Aristotle was far from the last person to invent an elaborate story to explain the genesis of infant eels.

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Try as they might.

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Early naturalists could never figure out how or where eels reproduce. In the absence of real explanations, they came up with some very creative hypotheses. Eels emerge from the gills of other fishes from the fresh morning dew during certain months, from electrical disturbances from the thatching of roofs after a rainstorm, they reproduce by rubbing themselves against rocks and that, quote, the scrapings come to life. One medieval theory suggested that eels were the transmogrified forms of the bastard children of priests and married women fleeing persecution through shapeshifting.

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These go on and on and was always fun to laugh at the ignorance of ancient scientists from our smug positions in the future. The truth is that we still don't know for sure how big eels make little eels. But here's what we do know or what we think we know. Atlantic. You'll start their life as an egg no bigger than a grain of rice.

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These tiny eggs suspended in the depths of an underwater forest in the Sargasso Sea, the deepest saltiest slice of the Atlantic Ocean located smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Over the next seven months to three years, they undergo to complete metamorphosis and travel 4000 miles to the rivers of North America and Europe. Once there, they wriggle upstream and bury themselves in substrate, eating absolutely everything that gets in their way bugs, fish, mice, birds, whatever.

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Then anywhere from six to thirty years later, they make the return trip back to the Sargasso, undergoing yet another metamorphosis and developing sexual organs somewhere along the way.

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Researchers think that once they arrive, they intertwine in giant wriggling bowls of mass copulation in the darkest depths of the ocean.

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But no one actually knows this for sure because no eel has ever been tracked all the way to its mating grounds and no wild fertilized eggs have ever been found. But why do we care? Well, besides the fact that most people like a good mystery, eels are important fish in American history, similar to the shed we covered in a previous episode, American eels fed both the native people and the early Europeans in North America, although Turkey probably wasn't actually part of the first Thanksgiving eels were today.

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Eel stocks are crashing in some places by as much as 99 percent due to the same things that are hurting so many other migratory fish, dams, overfishing and pollution. If we understood eels, we might be able to better manage our stocks or breed them in captivity and take some of the pressure off wild fisheries. This isn't even close to the full story on freshwater eels to learn more, including the heavily armed gangs that are running the illicit eel trade. Check out the story I wrote over at the Meat Eater Dotcom called barroom banter mysterious eel sex in the Bermuda Triangle.

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I just feel the need to to ask man, like, why do you always take the East Coast species for this?

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You know, that is my turf and you just, you know, stay in your lane, man.

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What do you know about eels? You just admitted that you've never caught one.

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Well, I know I know that they're delicious and creepy looking and everything else I read either in books or on the Internet.

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So the delicious, I think, is debatable.

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Like, I don't mind this, but it's it's all right. I don't know.

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But look, I know I used to catch I used to catch eels fairly frequently as a kid, but it's weird.

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It's really not that common anymore. Well, yeah. Did you listen to the story? They're all dying.

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That's why I think they're dying, because all the Italian stallions out here caught them up, because I think somebody once told me eel plays a big role in their Christmas Eve dinners for people with ties to the old country.

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But I'll tell you what I'm going to do a fin clips on Grayling or West Slope, East Side, yellow, orange, cut through whatever little niche species you have that they will see how you look, what you say, man.

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I am fascinated by the things I can't have. Like so many of us, your Easter, all your Eastern species seem like weirdly exotic to me, even though they're totally normal to you. And you guys. You guys have legitimately cool fish, man. Like it's not all three blankies, that nuclear waste water outlet. So I think you should take this as a compliment and not get all annoyed about it. Well, I know it's a lot of those, though.

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I mean, I could if if you ever come out here in one three, I blinky nuclear fish, I know where to find them.

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And, you know, maybe it's only fair since Eastern anglers have been kind of exploiting your fish for generations, but we wouldn't do nearly as good of a job of exploiting those fish if it weren't for the fact that every what is it like third person who lives in Montana as a fishing guide?

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Those are the most those are the most recent stats in twenty eighteen.

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You know, and since that's the case, we have no shortage of fishy people to call when we're bored and want to ask stupid questions, which we're about to do. It is time for trivia.

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You got to be highly skilled for these shows. You understand it. Yes, I do understand. Are you. Well, first there you very smart man. Yes, I am. Right.

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It is that time where we get to play a trivia game, everyone's least favorite trivia game because there's nothing to win. But you're probably going to lose your dignity. Today we are playing with our friend Kinsley Scott.

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And and I'm going to ask her a couple of questions that will probably bring down everybody's IQ, but hopefully we'll have a little bit of fun with it.

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Thanks for agreeing to do this, Kensley. Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, so you feel good? Yes. We'll see how much I can embarrass myself.

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Miles wrote your questions. I don't know what they are. So he has no idea. I have no clue. Not a clue. And he doesn't get to know either. For those of you who do not know, Kinsley is a guide who splits her time between Montana and Washington. So she does a lot of catching of the trout, among other things. And she's a she's a pretty damn fine steelhead guide. And so this first set of questions with this first question, rather, Kensley is going to be steelhead specific.

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All right. So you feel you feel strong and your steelhead knowledge.

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We'll see. And we will indeed. All right. So Steelhead. And just to be clear, Joe, I'm talking about native range, ocean run steelhead. I have no idea if what I'm about to say is true for Great Lakes fish. I probably do it. So whatever it is, probably not.

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Let's just clear that up right now. I'm not Dolgin on your fish. I'm just saying I don't know if this fits over there. I just don't know.

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Is Velveeta and shrimp boil eggs in your question somewhere? Well, I mean, it's a favorite bait. That is a favorite bait out here. That that's that's just nailed it. Oh yeah. Oh OK. That crosses, that crosses over your fancy steelhead. Eat that. Yeah.

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Our Pacific steelhead. Yeah. Yeah.

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All right. So this part's effect and then I'm going to ask you some questions about why it is steelhead have a higher percentage of females than males in their population. And I want to know why is that? I might give you a few options. You got to pick one. Right. So why are there more females than males? A Well, the males are fat and they're lazy. So because some males steelhead, they just choose to hang around in the rivers.

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Right. Since the impulse to head out to sea can be impacted by the amount of fat in a fish's body. And male steelhead don't need as much fat reserves as females, they just don't bother. They just they just prefer to hang out on the back. Eddie Couch eating cat is Cheetos and watching river monsters. So so a is that it's because they're fat and lazy.

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B, sometimes they're a little too enthusiastic about spawning. Steelhead can migrate back out to sea after spawning, unlike Pacific salmon that all die, but the majority of steelhead never make it back to the ocean. Historically, like 25 to 70 percent of fish used to make it all the way back to salt, depending on where in the world they were. But now, with the dams and habitat degradation and everything else, that number is more like one percent to 20 percent.

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But that number is even lower for males steelhead. Whereas female steelhead will only drop eggs once. Some male steelhead will just keep on fertilizing until they're so utterly depleted that they can't make it back.

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See, male steelhead are mostly unnecessary because one male can fertilize the eggs of many different females and because resident male rainbow trout can also fertilize those eggs just as effectively as male steelhead that migrated. Steelhead populations just don't need very many males to maintain healthy numbers or d all of the above. All right. So your options about why there are more females and males and steal at populations is a males are fat and lazy. B Males are too enthusiastic about spawning.

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C males are mostly unnecessary or D all of the above, cuz there's truth in all of those. OK, so let me get this straight. A they're lazy and they're lazy.

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They don't even bother migrating, ok.

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B they're too enthusiastic about spawning so they, they essentially kill themselves.

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C they're not that necessarily in population anyway.

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So natural selection doesn't really need them or D all the things are true.

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Oh my gut is saying that D because there is truth in every every one of those. Like you said, rainbow trout will fertilize redds for females.

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Oh my God, you are correct. All those things are true. Yes.

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Let me wipe the sweat from my friends. You are 100 percent correct. Every single one of those is true. And all of those are reasons why we have more migratory females than males. All right. So, yeah, your first question, right. You should maybe relax a little bit.

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So you have half of that, huh? Yeah. Irish up that coffee.

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OK, so you are from Montana.

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I know this as a Montanan. You know how many just weird little creeks there are everywhere. Right.

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And and there are some river and creek names that are just like it's like everyone just used the same one over and over and in. They couldn't get creative about it. Right. I once counted the number of Willow Creeks in Montana and I now can't remember the exact number, but it was over twenty and there are a lot of Bear Creek, Rock Creek and Rock Creek.

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Rock Creek. Yeah, we got them in Pennsylvania.

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It's everywhere. You'll hit Rock. That's true.

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But then there are those ones that go the other direction. Right? They're just so unique and weird that you can't forget the names. And, you know, there's got to be a story behind them, but you usually can't figure it out. So I'm going to read you a list of of river and creek names and you tell me which one is not an actual creek somewhere in the world. All right.

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OK, like this. And. All right. So is it OK in the world? Yes. So is it a pick?

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A tooth creek. Be murdering Hutt Creek. See Peckerwood Creek.

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D Dwarf's Kill Creek or E River deha you want to hear if it's impossible, this is impossible.

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OK, there's I feel like the most ridiculous one has to exist because how would you say it's reverse psychology essentially on the question.

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That's a good strategy. I agree with that strategy. Yes. I need to hear him again. Is it a pick, a tooth creak, B, murdering Hutt Creek, C, Peckerwood Creek, D Dwarf's Kill Creek or E, River deha.

[00:29:09]

Whoever, whoever, if that if that truly does exist, they deserve a medal. I am going to have to go with maybe one of the more generic ones in the middle. I'm going to just pick one because I can't even remember the first two.

[00:29:24]

Oh, we'll go with if she doesn't get it. Let me take a shot. What was C again? C is peckerwood Greek.

[00:29:33]

I feel like that does exist.

[00:29:34]

And then D was dwarf's killed Greek. I'm going to go with murder. Whut B murdering whut creek b Joe.

[00:29:47]

I think the fake one is Peckerwood Creek. God, I wish that were true. You're going to win no matter what, because I actually couldn't come up with a fake name nearly as good as any of the real ones. They're all real.

[00:29:57]

So you win no matter what your take on this one. There is no real GED's or I just had too much fun finding ridiculous names and putting them in there.

[00:30:05]

Do you know when these places where they I, I there are some of them are in the last one was in French Canadia. I know that a couple of them were Australian. OK, one was in Pennsylvania I believe.

[00:30:22]

OK, I can't exactly remember at this point.

[00:30:25]

I should have written all that down, but I didn't.

[00:30:27]

I just had too much fun coming up with those titles, but I figured they could all be real too.

[00:30:33]

But I figure if he's going to stick one in, he's just going to throw out peckerwood. I wish I had. I think that's a little story for our trivia. Our trivia segment is based on trust. OK, I feel betrayed.

[00:30:44]

Yeah, you won. You can't lose. This is a not lose not there's no way you could lose this one. You've got them both.

[00:30:50]

You got four for it. OK, well then since when did trivia become Tmall.

[00:30:54]

We all get a trophy today when I was driving or was it so. Twenty twenty. Awesome.

[00:31:01]

Thanks for letting us just be manipulative and mess with your head Kensley. We appreciate it. Thank you.

[00:31:15]

That was bullshit. Oh, come on. You cannot do that because the whole world got crazy about the only one around here about the role.

[00:31:24]

You cannot do that going forward. I forbid it. I can. And I did.

[00:31:29]

When you do trivia, you can write whatever questions you want is our show. And we control the laws of reality in this tiny, tiny little universe of ours, except in one segment where Phil, the engineer, is all knowing, all powerful and all deciding. It's now time for us to genuflect and grovel at his heels in the hopes that we are the chosen one.

[00:31:51]

It's time for Vishnu's Bishnu. That escalated quickly, so before we kick off this news, which as a reminder is a competition, Miles, and I don't know which news stories the other feller has dredged up.

[00:32:08]

And a winner is declared by the infallible audio engineer Evars Phil at the end. We do like to use this space to give a fan shout out and such when appropriate time to time. And I must say, Miles, I don't I don't know if you've been seeing this, but I've gotten quite a few notes about Ushi figurines since your story. A few weeks you got some Ochi stuff. The story seems to have resonated.

[00:32:30]

It appears that the folks are into that one. Yeah.

[00:32:33]

And it almost to the point where I feel like there's a lot more people actually fishing Gucci's out there than we even realized when when you broke the story.

[00:32:41]

I would agree. So I just just wanted to point out of that, that you guys love us.

[00:32:45]

She's apparently in fact, listener Jeff Caldwell even wrote in to tell me that there are misfits or she's available because apparently true.

[00:32:55]

Well, actually, I got all excited, right. Because I'm a huge Misfits fan thinking they'd go great next to my Misfits bobbleheads and custom commission Danzig bust.

[00:33:04]

I have carved out of imported Italian marble, but actually I looked it up and that's that's not correct. Jeff, there are no misfits, bushes that I could find.

[00:33:13]

So if you know something I don't and they do exist, please send me the link. But quick side note and my miles, I told you about this. I just have to share it. Good friend of mine, Mick Trump, and recently sent me a custom Misfits paper popper head with the skull.

[00:33:27]

You showed me those photos. That looks amazing.

[00:33:29]

I put them on Instagram and freakin Doyel. Wolfgang von Frankenstein, the guitar player of the Misfits, shared my fly photo in his Instagram stories.

[00:33:40]

So I. Twenty twenty four letters for ever. Two best year ever, just like that. Peaked with one share. So how about that? You have piqued me and Doyle. So while I'm officially having a good year now, I'll jump in and say not long ago the police and where in Massachusetts were having a particularly bad day.

[00:33:59]

And I love the story of their torment.

[00:34:03]

So we'll kick it off here. Here's one from the New York Times headline, Massachusetts Town Begs Residents to stop calling about fish, OK? Which doesn't that doesn't tell you something good headline.

[00:34:16]

It's a good headline, but it doesn't really doesn't really sell it yet.

[00:34:19]

So I'll read a little bit. I'll read a little bit here. Some of the calls reported an injured seal.

[00:34:26]

Others said they had seen the shark. Still others implored officials to help what appeared to be a stranded fish.

[00:34:33]

By early afternoon Monday, dozens of people had called emergency officials and wear them on the southeast coast of Massachusetts. The town's department dispatched two officers to investigate.

[00:34:44]

So what did they find?

[00:34:46]

Well, it says they soon discovered that the odd looking creature lolling in a cove off Buzzards Bay was no cause for alarm. It was an ocean sunfish.

[00:34:53]

An enormous blob like creature that eats jellyfish, has a dorsal fin that, to the untrained eye can resemble that of a shark.

[00:35:02]

Now, you grew up in Hawaii, right? So probably you know them is Mola Mola, correct? Right. So, yes.

[00:35:09]

And frankly, all the offshore dudes I run with, we always call it a molas when we saw them. Really, but yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I don't know. We also say maybe more, even though dolphin is more the East Coast thing, I just gravitate to the Pacific terms, apparently me and my friends.

[00:35:23]

So they're better. Oh I respect cooler ocean sunfish mola mola. OK, same thing. But see the calls did not stop and the town ended up getting so frustrated that they had to issue a plea on their Facebook page begging people to stop calling, adding in the post it is not not in all caps stranded or suffering. The Sunfish is fine.

[00:35:51]

Fine in all caps then following that in all caps all the way through. Please stop calling the police department about the sunfish.

[00:36:04]

And there's there's a man there's a great quote in here from where was Harbourmaster Gary Buckminster that reads We get it, he added, referring to the concern residents had expressed.

[00:36:14]

But nine one one isn't a good avenue to report fish that are swimming around.

[00:36:20]

That's what I was thinking this whole time. The police like, that's anybody who's trying to control those Coast Guard.

[00:36:28]

I mean, I get not being familiar with how a particular critter reacts or, you know, behaves and expressing concern. I can I can get myself there. But then that your first thought is, well, I better call the cops. You don't understand the function of the police department at all. That's what you do.

[00:36:48]

And not even the local member of the police. We're just going to go we're just gonna go straight to nine one one. But now here's why I'm surprised. Right. And this. Story even kind of echoes my surprise later on, and you might remember this back in twenty fifteen to schmoes fishing on a boat up in Mass encountered a giant sunfish, a giant Molalla.

[00:37:07]

And they video this encounter and it went super mega viral because they were so confused about what they were seeing. This is the infamous baby whale video. Right. So here's a little mash up we put together as a refresher.

[00:37:23]

It's a real man. We got to call the aquarium something. Do you want to try to pull it in? Take we can get some big money for that if it's a fish.

[00:37:36]

Come on. Let's pull up next to that shit helping.

[00:37:41]

And and as we now know, it was not a baby whale, just that normal flounder. Every time I hear that, I cannot help but crack up like it's old news. Now, it's been around for years, but that one still makes me laugh.

[00:37:55]

That video never gets old. So it was not a baby whale, nor, as they suggested, a flounder. Nor is they later suggest that a tuna and it was not in distress nor valuable.

[00:38:05]

You'd actually have gotten no money for it and possibly fined had you brought it back to the dock.

[00:38:09]

But I kind of thought the world saw this video, right? Like it ended up on news channels all over.

[00:38:14]

And even if the world hasn't seen this video, hasn't everyone in coastal Massachusetts seen it?

[00:38:20]

You know, I would think. Apparently not. But I mean, how Jay and Company spent a full seven minutes essentially answering all the questions and ruling out all the possibilities that people were flooding the local where Amp'd with oh, God, last week it would have been so good of the where and could have put together like a similar mash up like what you did and just played that out to people.

[00:38:43]

I think that would have been a better response, actually.

[00:38:45]

I just I just am shocked that there's, you know, that that I don't know. I will say this, though.

[00:38:51]

I bump into tons and tons of MOLAS offshore over the year, and they are one freakishly bizarre fish and they're very one in person only.

[00:38:59]

I can only wonder, like, if they're really weird looking. Yeah.

[00:39:02]

And I think this is what happens most of the time. You see him way offshore, but every once in a while they just sort of ride the wrong current or whatever and they end up real tight to the beach.

[00:39:10]

But they look like an evolutionary accident. Like someone was like, oops, well, screw that. We'll just let it go.

[00:39:15]

We'll do better when we start working on the billfish, you know, and they're and they're just they're so clumsy and goofy. And I've always known what they were. But man, like those big old fins they got have given me and many shark crew heart palpitations because they come up at a distance. I'm there and you're slick and you're like, oh, shit. But it's just it's just old dopey, you know, swimming and hoover and pieces of bunker chum.

[00:39:38]

And you feel bad for me. I'm like, I feel bad for you.

[00:39:40]

You're weird. This is your life. But anyway, there you go. It's a sunfish.

[00:39:44]

Jay, stop calling the police. They're busy arresting your friends for throwing hands in the parking lot at the Cumberland Farms.

[00:39:52]

Oh, I love that story. And it it's me up nicely because we're weird. We're on the subject of evolutionary accidents and I'm just going to run with that one.

[00:40:00]

And I look, I'm kind of stepping into a little bit of Joe territory here, but I just couldn't let this one go. All right.

[00:40:06]

And I don't know about you, man, but when I hear Isle of Wight, I immediately think of Jimi Hendrix and I think of the posthumous album that was recorded when he played at the Isle of Wight Festival just weeks before his death. And I got to say, that's possibly one of the best versions of Machine Gun ever laid down. Great hands down. But I have to go listen to that now.

[00:40:26]

Like that's been years. It's good. It's good.

[00:40:28]

Yeah, but this next story gives me just a little bit of a slight, slightly new association with the island that sits just south of the UK in the English Channel. British angler Jason Gillespie was fishing just off the Isle of Wight when he caught something unprecedented. He completely white. Top shak now, I got to admit, I'd never heard of a top shark before, are you familiar with these? I know is the short answer. I feel like I've heard that name before.

[00:40:57]

Unlike last week, we mentioned a gulper shark. I don't know what the hell, but I feel like I have heard of shark.

[00:41:02]

It's a new one on me there. I couldn't tell you what it looked like or anything, but they're also called school sharks, snapper sharks.

[00:41:09]

And this one kind of fits Sufan sharks, which pretty well explains why they are critically endangered.

[00:41:15]

Delicious top sharks max out at about seven feet in length and they're normally bluish gray on their backs and flanks and white on their bellies, you know, just like sharks. The specimen that Gillespie landed, however, Gillespie, excuse me, was a mature adult, top shark, completely bone white. And if you look at pictures of this thing, it's it's it's weird looking. It looks a little like those creepy goblin sharks that live in, like, the super deep oceans.

[00:41:46]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:41:46]

Not not the normal two sharks, but this version of it has like a little bit of the goblin shark thing going on.

[00:41:52]

Gillespie was quoted as saying, I've been fishing for 30 years and I've never seen anything like that. It's the fish of a lifetime, one in a million. He went on to say that a friend of his claimed to have caught one before, but he didn't think that albino sharks could survive into adulthood. He told the British news agency S.W., end quote, I think generally if they lose their culture, they struggle to survive because they don't have the same camouflage and they can't hunt as effectively and they get picked off by predators.

[00:42:18]

Biologists agree with Gillespie on this point, which is why they hypothesized that the shark isn't an albino. But instead, Lustick, in other words, it wasn't born without pigment but lost its pigment throughout its life. And for reference, Joe, I'll use one of your personal icons here.

[00:42:34]

I think Michael Jackson like to say like Michael Jackson. Exactly. And while that story is intracerebral and it's been widely reported, I actually have a follow up for that.

[00:42:46]

That popped up after I'd finished that one. It's totally absurd.

[00:42:50]

It's been a big week in our Shark News. Apparently, before I dig into this one, I have to mention that I can't confirm the veracity of what I'm about to say. It comes from the sun, which isn't exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity. But still, I just I had to do it.

[00:43:07]

They report that an Indonesian vessel caught a, quote, larger shark in a net off the coast of Maluku Province in Indonesia. They do not identify what kind of shark it was because that's not the point of the story.

[00:43:20]

The point of the story is what they found inside of the larger shark, an albino Cyclopes shark fetus. Yes, you heard that right. It's a baby shark with fully formed fins and body structure without any pigmentation and one crazy ass giant eyeball right above its mouth.

[00:43:39]

Now, this could be about as real as the The National Enquirer scoop on undead Elvis and JFK Jr. secretly hanging out at Trump rallies.

[00:43:47]

But I feel like I don't forget that boy. Do not forget that boy.

[00:43:51]

Sorry about bad boys there, too, but I felt like I like I came across it and I just had to included since I. I apparently decided to cover the freakish shark beat this week and men. It's creepy looking.

[00:44:03]

Well, there was also something I thought about it for a hot second and I didn't do it. There was also like a two headed shark, something recently I must have going.

[00:44:14]

I would have covered it weird, weird things.

[00:44:16]

Maybe the sharks heard, you know, they heard that they're on the the list for for the covid vaccine. And they're like, we're going to we're freaking out, man. I think that the amount of stress that they're experiencing is is causing some serious deformities. I don't know.

[00:44:29]

Well, the first one, though, the top shark is still the most interesting to me. And oh, yeah, I mean, I don't know, obviously, anything that's an albino, regardless of species we all know has a lesser chance of survival. Right. Because it's just like sticks out like a sore thumb. Absolutely.

[00:44:44]

But I just it's not like it never happens. You and I both seen the albino sailfish in the albino marlin, so. Yeah. And then it makes you wonder if it was so rare for them to reach adulthood, as science is saying, being stark white like that. Were they or did they have the Michael Jackson thing, too?

[00:45:03]

This is this is a good question. It might be Lustick, it might be albinism. I think that just again, I'm not going to claim expertise here, but I think just in apparently the way that that shark lives, it's it's highly migratory and live in the open ocean.

[00:45:20]

So I think that that would be it's not like it's an ambush predator. You could hide anywhere. Right. This thing lives in open ocean. And I think an albino shark migrating across massive open ocean is probably not going to do very well for very long. Yeah, it's just my theory. Is it a deep dwelling shark, too, you know?

[00:45:39]

Yes, it is a deep water species, because I have to imagine after a certain point.

[00:45:43]

Right. I should actually know the math of exactly how deep I mean, it would make. No difference if you were an albino anymore. Well, that's why the goblin shark is totally black, has no pigment. They can pull that off because there's no light down there. But I don't think it's not that deep dweller.

[00:45:57]

Well, they live right next to one of those cookie cutter sharks, their skin right here. There's some scary shit down there. You talk about it more, but I have one more comment just because it's just it just popped in my head about the weird Cyclopes shark.

[00:46:12]

You know, these stories pop up time to time about the sharks with two heads in this and that. You remember one years ago that was trout with two mouths.

[00:46:20]

I missed that trout. I missed that one.

[00:46:22]

And, you know, when you're a kid and you slice underneath the jaw and then stick your finger in there and, like, pull the tongue out in the guts out, like you're cleaning it out to put on a campfire. Yeah. Every which way I look at that photo, all it looked to me is like somebody slit that and separated it and open that little tongue tab below the chin.

[00:46:41]

But it was all over the news as a as a to mouth to mouth trout.

[00:46:46]

This was like this one could be just as real as that. For the record, I'm not claiming that this is real. It looks really creepy. And it also looks like it could be completely fake.

[00:46:54]

But I just had to throw it in there. Every time I see a two headed to I'm somehow I'm always skeptical of it, you know, I just I just don't take it at face value that it's real. But let me tell you what is real.

[00:47:10]

Tell me the mullet toss. You know, the mullet tosses.

[00:47:16]

Oh, my gosh. I have so many theories on this, but I'm not going to take up the time making it up. Stupid, stupid shit. What do you got? What is it?

[00:47:22]

Well, that's fine, because I don't think too hard because it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

[00:47:27]

OK, so this is some exciting news out of Orange Beach, Alabama from FOX.

[00:47:32]

Twenty nine dotcom headline Fish will fly in rescheduled Gulf Coast event mullet toss now it sounds like.

[00:47:40]

Yes, well, I have no I have never attended this event. I have been aware of it. And it's a big deal down on the Florida Alabama border. And it happens every year at the Florida Bama Lounge, which is a well-known and popular drinking establishment roadhouse.

[00:47:57]

And this is right from the story. In this event, contestants throw dead fish from a point in Florida across the state line into Alabama vying for distance records.

[00:48:08]

So as I've hinted at, don't think too hard, it is exactly what it sounds like and of course, it's mullet that they're throwing, which I will say for anyone unaware, Mullet are a culturally significant species in.

[00:48:22]

Indeed, they are the country more so than anywhere else is mullet festivals.

[00:48:26]

You can buy smoked mullet on the side of the road and stuff like that.

[00:48:30]

Now, normally the mullet toss happens in April, but Rona, Rona, squash them right now. That's you tack on a few hurricanes in that area this season.

[00:48:40]

Plus constantly fluctuating state restrictions on how bars could operate if they can be open if they can't.

[00:48:46]

And the mullet toss this year kind of got sidelined.

[00:48:49]

But, you know, we can breathe a sigh of relief fish hurlers because the event actually starts today, October twenty third, and runs all weekend.

[00:49:00]

And in case you're wondering, just can we still get flights. I mean I belgin I was just going to say think about what you're saying.

[00:49:09]

Not only can we get them, we can fly first class for like ten dollars.

[00:49:15]

American Airlines emails me daily just like please go somewhere please. We'll pick you up at your house, we'll get you a limo to come to Philly airport.

[00:49:25]

Private jet just fly flights daily.

[00:49:29]

I have to like say I you know it's it's out of control. So yeah, we'd probably well, obviously we're not going to catch today's festivities, but we can be there by Saturday night, you know, I mean, I believe in us.

[00:49:41]

And in case you or anybody else is wondering and again, I'm not judging this information one way or another, it's just, you know, because I like to be factual and give you all sides.

[00:49:50]

One of the bar's owners says masks are optional. So there's that shocker. Yeah.

[00:49:56]

And the same guy reminds us it's an outdoor event and it's usually breezy there. So you don't have to worry about the covid too much, though. It does. It does leave me wondering. Right. This could be we should go because this might be the mullet toss of the century.

[00:50:13]

Records will be broken because I have to imagine you've got eight months of quarantine to just fling dead mullet around the yard like you owned your goddamn craft.

[00:50:25]

If this is if this is your thing that you and we're laughing. But, you know, there are certain people in this competition like there could be a documentary. It's like, well, everybody comes in, has fun. But old Billy Jefferson, he's the mullet toschi. So, you know, it's kind of like how throughout quarantine I have magically gotten better at spinning deer hair.

[00:50:44]

This could be a competition for the hajjis. I have tactical questions. Yeah. And maybe you don't know the answers, but I still have them.

[00:50:52]

I may not. Is there like a particular is this like the Shot-put where you have to, you know, the mechanics of it are dictated and rules and there's only one type of tossing or can you throw these things however you want, you know, two hands over the head, underhand throw like a football, whatever.

[00:51:09]

It's just about your distance. Like, can you get a running start? I want there have got to be some rules around this.

[00:51:16]

OK, so I am not entirely sure about that, but I already have a feeling one or more people is going to write in after this episode.

[00:51:26]

And tell us though I will say and again, pardon if I'm wrong, but I remember covering this at a magazine years ago briefly.

[00:51:33]

And I think it was just like whatever you got to do to get the mullet as far as you can go, like you may even be allowed to make a giant slingshot.

[00:51:42]

Like, I'm really not really mechanical advantage is allowed. I don't I don't know.

[00:51:47]

I don't know. And I should I should have gone further into that. But, you know, Molotov's which is interesting to me because Mullet run wise. Huge deal in the Gulf. Huge deal in Florida, right? Yeah, not so. I mean, we we just got over our mullet run here. It's just not as big a thing here because it never seems to coincide with any other fish.

[00:52:09]

So it's like, oh dude, there's mold all over. Yeah. But the stripers aren't here yet or this isn't here yet.

[00:52:13]

So they just, it doesn't have the same punch and I've never eaten it, but I've bought giant horse Moledet one of the seafood markets here at a time or two of her bait. And to me it is so pungent I don't, I don't fully get it, but I do know it's a big thing down there. I think it's like any greasy fish.

[00:52:30]

If you smoke it, it's good. That's that's my understanding. I've had it in like a like a dip, like smoked fish dip and it was OK, OK.

[00:52:39]

I don't wanna spend too much time a mullet because we're going to run out of time. But I do. I have a couple of things I want to say. Mullet get a bad rap in my opinion and I know why I have many mullet many times, because if you're fishing for other species, particularly if you're in like shallow water, fishing for neurotic species and mullet, show up to do that obnoxious thing where they just jump for no reason. Yep.

[00:52:59]

And they spook everything around you. It's just you just you just hate them.

[00:53:03]

But they strike me as one of those fish that I. Want to learn how to catch, because they're really hard to catch, right, because they're plankton eaters. Oh, yes. So micro hooks and yeah. Yeah, and it's certainly not first, but it's crazy. Yeah.

[00:53:17]

It's the weird tactical fishing rabbit hole that I could see myself going down, that it's like a species like that that's super omnipresent, but really, really hard to to fool is exactly the kind of thing that I can get totally lost in and stuck on. I haven't done it yet, but I'm not ruling it out as a possibility for my retirement.

[00:53:38]

That might be good to see you buying a little place on a bad creek dock with no redfish, no tarabella, nothing.

[00:53:45]

Just not so many mullet. And you'd be happy. I would. I would. And I'm going to I'm going to pivot off of off of dead fish being flung through the air to another dead fish story. But to get there, I got I got it. I want to I want to go through a different lens. I'm curious, Joe, were you were you a fan of the far side comics by Gary Larson? Were you do you ever get into those?

[00:54:08]

I mean, I certainly know I'm I've read a bunch.

[00:54:10]

But now to say I was a fan devoted to him. No, no. I see.

[00:54:15]

I loved him as a kid, like I really did. Like, I we had the books and I read them. And even though, you know, when I was a kid, some of them went over my head because some of them were kind of heady. I really liked them. And Larssen actually did a number of fishing related cartoons. But the most famous of his fishing cartoons shows a couple of dudes fishing from a boat on a lake. And in the background, several mushroom clouds rise from a nuclear attack.

[00:54:40]

And one guy says to the other, I'll tell you what this means, Norm. No size restrictions and screw the limit. Right. And it's it's funny, but it's super dark humor. Yeah, it's it's only funny because you don't expect that to ever happen.

[00:54:55]

But it's it's kind of, in a weird way, becoming a reality this fall in Colorado, except instead of nuclear holocaust, we're talking about record drought.

[00:55:04]

OK, well, I was just going to say, too, I mean, I'm not not entirely sure where you're going, but there were a lot of people, early pandemic who had that vibe, like with their like, when are there no limits? And I it's going to start whacking deer like these people existed, you know, totally did.

[00:55:18]

And I will just say right now, this story has nothing to do with covid, OK?

[00:55:22]

Yeah, none at all. Right, now we are in what's being called a mega drought. More than 45 percent of the lower 48 needs moisture real bad. And Colorado is getting hit particularly hard. The entire western half of the state is an extreme drought and almost 20 percent of the state is in what's called exceptional drought, one to ten, one being not so extreme in ten being extremely extreme.

[00:55:48]

I get this a knife like five fish need water, but right now there isn't enough of it to go around. Some of Colorado's many reservoirs are being drained down to the point where they cannot support fish populations. So Colorado Parks and Wildlife have declared emergency fish salvages. Salvages mean a complete suspension of bag or size limits. Basically, it means that CBW has given up hope that fish will survive in these watersheds and instead allow.

[00:56:19]

Yeah, instead of letting those fish go to waste, they let anglers come in and take as many as they can see.

[00:56:27]

BW has enacted salvages at four different reservoirs, bar jumbo pooter ponds and as of last week, Latoya, though the salvage at Jumbo was recently rescinded. To be clear, as far as I can understand, the other ones are still going.

[00:56:40]

Fish habitat is not the primary purpose of Colorado reservoirs or really any reservoir anywhere. They're owned and managed by irrigation companies. In a state that's mostly arid, reservoirs function as water catchment and retention systems.

[00:56:56]

Colorado has lots of mountains. Those traps snow in the cold months. That snow then melts into rivers, but river flows are in constant seasonal. So reservoirs allow water managers like some insurance that can bank water. But that insurance will only go so far, right? If a drought persists long enough reservoirs get drawn down to irrigate crops and flush toilets and and water lawns. And I'm not going to go off on an anti long rant right now. I swore I wasn't going to do it.

[00:57:22]

I'm not really, really want to. But just real quick watering plots of non-native grass and arid environments because it looks pretty is way up there on the list of pointlessly destructive yet seemingly innocent stupid shit that people do. Colorado, California, Arizona, New Mexico. I am talking to you anyway.

[00:57:41]

I'm not going to do it. I'm not. I'm done. I'm done. That's it. I had that guy. And you know what?

[00:57:46]

And I even agree with you, except I don't feel like the sneers from my neighbors when my my shit's running wild.

[00:57:53]

Yeah, I, I had to say something, but I just I don't I'm not trying to get we're off topic.

[00:58:00]

My point here, fishing is a secondary benefit of reservoirs. So when the water needs exceed the. Water capacity, they get drained and the fish can either die of oxygen depletion or they can be put to some good use as food. So while I find this story a bit of a bummer and perhaps a harbinger of existential threat to the future of fishing in a hotter, drier world, I give Colorado Parks and Wildlife props. Instead of ostracising their way through this, they're recognizing what's going on and doing their best to let the public harvest as much of this resource as possible.

[00:58:33]

And not only that, once water levels in lakes get so low that fishing becomes unsafe. Right. Because like water. So it's just like this Mudflap. You can't let people go out there. Yeah, CBW will close public access, but they go in and try to shake out whatever fish are remaining and then relocate them to healthier systems.

[00:58:51]

This isn't the first time CBW has had to declare emergency salvages in 2012, Colorado experienced a similar drought that drained some of the same reservoirs. But through restocking and management, many of those fisheries were back in great shape by 2016. This is one of those stories that forces you to think about scale in a few different ways. In the short, short term, anglers are stoked. They get to go fill their freezers. It's like that free for all pool scene in Caddyshack.

[00:59:16]

In the slightly longer term, they're going to lose some of their local fisheries, at least for a while.

[00:59:22]

Those fisheries will probably bounce back in a few years. What happens after that will be dictated by temperature and precipitation and the long term forecast out west. It's not that great. Final point to consider here, though, is that all of these are completely unnatural fisheries. They are manmade lakes stocked with non-native fish, managed for entertainment and harvest period. That's it. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but. It somehow makes this whole situation feel just a little less tragic to me, knowing that, yeah, well, and a gut reaction to that could be very easily, especially if you fish one of these reservoirs.

[00:59:57]

It's like, holy shit, like like the place that I love is going away.

[01:00:01]

But I think the overriding message here, even though we're all fishermen and you said it reservoirs their primary function, is not to create fishing and recreation opportunities for people.

[01:00:14]

That's not what they're there for. And it is completely manufactured. It's a manufactured lake that at some point fish were stocked. And that's almost like a bonus for the outdoorsman.

[01:00:26]

Lucky you, if you have a reservoir that fishes really well and you have great access to. Because where I live and this happens in a lot of the country, we have some reservoirs out here. You can fish most of them you cannot. Most of the reservoirs like connected to the Newark watershed that that feeds New York City, like in North Jersey especially. Oh, dude, you hear legendary stories of people like, you know, who hopped the fence and fish this reservoir of that reservoir.

[01:00:52]

And it's like, you know, Midwest smallmouth to the tenth power, like nothing else you can find around here. But they are all under lock and key there. They're protected because that that's New York City's water.

[01:01:04]

You can't like they it's it's there for a purpose. So I, I understand again, that gut reaction of like, that's horrible to lose a fishery, but that's these reservoirs are therefore first and foremost, you know. Yeah.

[01:01:20]

Yeah. I mean, it's a little different in certain states, like when you're talking about water management out west. And we can't get into this because we don't time. But there's a little there's some some issues there in terms of having all the power. But in this particular case, we're talking about the fish that live in the reservoirs that aren't native there. They were just really put in take fisheries that that's a different story than the perhaps native fish that live downstream of those.

[01:01:42]

Sure. Anyway, a lot to chew on there.

[01:01:45]

Phil, Litsa, I pandered to you last week with the Pokémon story, and that didn't work. So this week I went a completely different direction and I expect some good's going to come out of it.

[01:01:56]

Buddy, I thought you had the shoe in with the Pokemon, too, but you did not. And now it's time to see who swayed the all powerful Phil this week. And as soon as he's done weighing in, join us for an extremely awkward family dinner and a poke in the eye with a sharp object in our Selborne segment devoted to idiotic online classified ads.

[01:02:17]

I have to be honest, this week is a little tough for me. I keep hearing you guys talking about, oh, well, I chose this story because I think Phil would like it.

[01:02:27]

Oh, Phil likes video games. Phil likes Pokémon. Well, it might some lab rat to be to be prodded with a stick. Oh, which which stimuli does he respond to? No, no, I am a person, I am a human being with an evolved brain. I will not be objectified and looked down upon like this. Anyway, Joe Savelli is the winner this week because I like the fish flying through the air. That was funny.

[01:03:11]

Why did you put the head of hair? You don't know what I'm getting at. You didn't have to be so hurtful with me, so angry. All right.

[01:03:18]

This week on the Sale Bend, I am running a twofer, a two for one special buy one, get one free, because I've got two items here that are definitely worth mention, but not because of what they are, just because of the descriptions.

[01:03:34]

And we've got two terrific instances here of TMI within a sale post, and I just love them.

[01:03:41]

OK, so I love a bargain and two for one to love bargain. What do you got for me?

[01:03:48]

The first one I was tipped off to by my buddy John Feardorcha. So shout out to him, who sent me a link to a Facebook marketplace item, an old bridge, New Jersey. And what we have is just a surf fishing combo. The title is just teka 10 foot six two hundred dollars or best offer.

[01:04:06]

And dude's got an old 10 baserunner on it, which I assume is part of the deal. We wouldn't know, though, because the description simply reads 200 oboH. I don't fish anymore because my dad is a jerk.

[01:04:22]

So there's that.

[01:04:24]

I feel like this guy needs a little bit of a marketing 101 class for the life of me.

[01:04:29]

I can't figure out why you felt the need to include that information on the sale description. It's like, well, I don't want people to think there's something wrong with the item. So I bet I just hate my father. I just hope it's all resolved by Thanksgiving.

[01:04:44]

You know, that or to considering Thanksgiving is a huge strieber weekend. You know, his dad will show up talking about the blitz he fished all morning. Sleeping Beauty over here, couldn't get his ass up again like it could be really ugly.

[01:04:56]

Good to look. You know what, Dad? I sold that present you gave me on Craigslist.

[01:05:03]

So that's one rod for sale because dad is a jerk. And we're going to move on here to double our pleasure today.

[01:05:10]

This one is on Facebook Marketplace in Rumson, Rhode Island. And the title of the post is Giant Fish. One hundred dollars. And we have a very nice sale fish replica. And tell you what, a hundred bucks ain't bad. One hundred bucks for a big sailfish like that.

[01:05:25]

Not bad if it was around the corner. I'm looking at my photo. It looks like a decent amount.

[01:05:30]

It looks like a decent fish.

[01:05:32]

So you guys maybe so to catch you guys up, I only sent Miles the photo of this. I do not have the description. No, you do not know why. It's funny yet.

[01:05:43]

However, in the photo right, there are two chairs under the sailfish.

[01:05:47]

And if you were to sit in either of them, your head would hit the sailfish and the ceiling is, I don't know, maybe five inches away from the highest point of the dorsal fin. And so to my eye, if I were a betting man, I'm going to I'm going to guess the sailfish is hanging in a mobile home, OK? And my suspicion is bolstered by this description.

[01:06:10]

If you don't have an eight foot sailfish hanging in your home, you don't know what you're missing. We normally keep a tennis ball on its bill to avoid serious eye injuries.

[01:06:21]

So wherever this is hanging, there's not really enough room know to be hanging.

[01:06:29]

And I could not help myself with this one. And I ping the cellar and I just said, does the tennis ball come with a fish? I'm interested, but I've got serious safety concerns.

[01:06:40]

And she wrote me back and just said, I will gladly fix the tennis ball to assuage any fears, would you prefer a tennis ball with a squeaker? So she gave me a little. It would have been a tennis ball with a squeaker asshole like would have made it even funnier.

[01:06:53]

But she says she gave me a little shit back. Yep.

[01:06:55]

She did so good for her. But you're so proud of yourself, Ishmail. But it's hanging in a place where, like, it could take your eye out.

[01:07:03]

I just that's that's very I feel like there's a domestic dispute behind this one. And not I don't mean in the violent or terrible way. I mean, like in a we have a small home and you brought this into it and someone lost an eye or nearly did. It's got to go.

[01:07:20]

It's it is highly likely because my home is not that small and I'm looking at an eight foot tapin on my wall that has been around for 12 years now and is still a domestic dispute, even though it's in my office, if my wife had her way, that would have never been in the home.

[01:07:34]

So very highly likely. But that is your twofer for this week or two. For one special. Remember, we need your help in finding awesome Selborne items. You guys have been doing a killer job of sending those in and tipping us off. Keep those coming too bent at the meat eater dotcom.

[01:07:52]

I just kind of want to reach out and do an intervention with that guy who hates his dad. Maybe, maybe invite them down to the beach, toss out some surf rods, moderate a little, toss the old pigskin around, you know, model healthy communication, use use fishing to bring families together.

[01:08:14]

It could be like the anti politics.

[01:08:16]

And I know you want to think that's possible, but really I do probably isn't.

[01:08:21]

And it probably is a side note, though. I actually used to own the exact rod that he's selling and it's a total piece of shit. The particular Teekay he's selling was in my high school senior age price range like at 60 bucks. But somehow it still came with a lifetime warranty. And five times in two years I sent it back, snapped for no particular would just it would just randomly break like Medfly would be throw in a plug and it would just snap.

[01:08:46]

But I mean, that's how you learn, that's how you come to appreciate good gear and learn what to avoid. But it sucks having to do it through, you know, repeated frustrating trial and error like that.

[01:08:57]

That's true. That that is a frustrating part about fishing. But one way to help yourself out in that process, at least when it comes to lures, flies and baits, is to listen to our weekly end of the line segment. Because, you know, we're never wrong.

[01:09:10]

Never.

[01:09:12]

This week, Joe's going to tell you about a fly that an idiot can tie, but really smart fish will eat if it's not loud enough Mark.

[01:09:27]

The flash tail Whistler was designed by legendary fly angler, writer and photographer Dan Blanton in the late 1960s, early 1970s time frame.

[01:09:38]

Now, just to rattle off a few of Blanton's achievements.

[01:09:40]

He received the Federation of Fly Fishers Lifetime Membership Award for outstanding achievements in fly fishing in 1990, the Silver King Award for Contributions and Saltwater Fly Fishing in 1995. And in 2009, he was inducted into the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum Hall of Fame.

[01:09:59]

Now, according to the Internet where everything is true, Blayton originally designed the Whistler to target striped bass in the San Francisco Bay Area. And the goal was to create a fly that mimicked a popular Buchtel jig in the water.

[01:10:12]

To achieve this, Blanton used a short chank hook which allowed all the Buchtel extended past the bend to have a more fluid action in the water. And he also added, led Rapp's to the hooks of the fly would fall nose down while the buoyant Buchtel trapped air and lifted the tail, further enhancing that Buchtel Jig's style action.

[01:10:33]

As I understand it, it wasn't until just a little bit later that Blanton tweak the pattern, extending the trailing flash material well past the Buchtel that we landed on, the most common iteration of the tail Whisler, which is still widely available today.

[01:10:47]

And in case you didn't catch it. That also means the pattern hasn't really changed again in 50 years.

[01:10:53]

Now, of course, since Fly tires love to tinker and can never leave well enough alone, you can find whistlers incorporating modern synthetics and titan on a variety of hooks.

[01:11:02]

But today we're talking about the Oji Whisler, the classic flash tail whisler features a set of lighter bead chain eyes and behind them as a collar of Schlapp and feather, usually red to simulate gills, which fades into white or yellow Buchtel.

[01:11:19]

Down each side, you'll find a single grizzly hackle feather and then that long tail of tinsel flash extending way out the back.

[01:11:29]

We live in a streamer obsessed world and sometimes I think the mark of a good streamer these days is related to how much skill and effort it takes to tie it.

[01:11:38]

But it takes very little effort to tie a flashy tail whisler.

[01:11:42]

Matter of fact, anyone who got themselves a basic tieing kit for Christmas can knock one of these out.

[01:11:47]

While the Whisler is hailed first and foremost as a salty pattern for everything from tapin to snoke to stripers, I got woke to its powers thousands of miles from where any of those fish live.

[01:12:01]

It was on a pike trip in Saskatchewan on the Cree River system, and the trip was sponsored by Cabelas, which meant that every angler was giving one of their conveniently prepackaged pike fly sets.

[01:12:12]

Now, like many serious anglers, I scoffed at this, right? Like, thanks, guys.

[01:12:17]

I appreciate it, but I doubt I'll be dipping into this little starter pack of basic deceivers and loosely packed hair bugs, right? I mean, I brought five boxes loaded down with eight to 10 inch Buford head monsters. Man works of art. I've been crafting for months streamers with more material than all those kit flies combined.

[01:12:35]

And it was around lunchtime on day one that my good buddy Ben Romanes tied on the flash tail whisler from his courtesy Cabelas kit. Not for the record that the gym socks we were heaving weren't catching fish.

[01:12:47]

No, no, quite the opposite. We'd been riffing on High Thirty Inch Pike all morning. Ben just wanted to throw something a little less taxing for a while and within 15 cast that slender little flash tail got wolfed by a forty six inch northern. And we thought, well this is a fluke.

[01:13:05]

This can't be right.

[01:13:07]

But it was by the end of the trip five of the six forty plus inch fish we put in the net eight a flash tail whisler.

[01:13:15]

So effective was this fly that we even pillaged all the details from everyone else's box and all that remained of them by the time we got on the seaplane to depart.

[01:13:25]

We're five short shank hooks with chain eyes and tattered red schlapp and collars. Now I've caught countless pike as well as Mahimahi Lake Trout Stripers and Jack Ovalle on flash tails since that trip many years ago. And it's a pattern that's always with me now on large predator missions.

[01:13:44]

Even if it's not what I tie on first, it has proven to be a great insurance policy when all those sexy Instagram photo where the meat flies aren't getting done for one reason or another.

[01:13:56]

The flash tail whistler is a testament to the idea that if it ain't broke, don't fix it and you need not go broke to buy all the materials.

[01:14:04]

You need to make a fly that appeals to all the big nasties out there.

[01:14:15]

Man, I tied a lot of whistlers sitting on my weather report, sent Alaska to court.

[01:14:19]

I mean, they caught salmon, trout, pike, grayling, pretty much everything. That's why I'm in that river. And best of all, I could bust out a dozen of those things after a full day of guiding cleaning boats, doing chores, serving dinner and washing dishes. Even when I was exhausted and half drunk, like I could just get them done.

[01:14:37]

The half drunk is key because that makes it a guide fly. If you can tie the fly pretty shitfaced, then then then I consider it a guide fly.

[01:14:46]

Absolutely. Anyway, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. And for those of you outlining a book report for English class, Myles is officially old, OK?

[01:14:55]

He can also tell you how Whisler totally drunk Aristotle was obsessed with junk. And Australians have some crazy ass names for Greeks.

[01:15:04]

If you're plan to turn that heady knowledge in for credit, all we ask is proper citation. Give us some stars. Wherever you listen to our podcast, holler at some friends. Write us a review or an email. We promise we will not grade on grammar or punctuation.

[01:15:19]

No, we will not. And yes, keep those emails coming to bent at the meeting or dotcom. We read and appreciate every single one of them. And remember, if you hook a big one, don't be like Myles.

[01:15:29]

Sacrifice your body for the glory. Sacrifice it for the grand.